The Power of Ten

Chapter 8-211: The Fifth Pact

The waves of the Gulf of California lapped gently at the shore ahead of us.

It was a mild, grey day, as normal, on the cool side with the sea breeze. The gulls were raucous about our presence, I told them to shut up as we’d be leaving soon, and they did.

Briggs and Sama were here, too, as was Master Fred. This was going to be The Big One for all of us, a gluttonous Karmic Feast that should satisfy taking Class Levels for a long time, and pay for massive, massive chunks of their Stat boosts. It didn’t grant them the extra TIME, of course, but I had a theory I floated past them.

“I think you only have to pay for the one Stat, and you should be fine,” I mentioned to the two of them, as we all watched Master Fred walking out over the waters. This was a fairly deep beach, dropping off fairly quickly, but with hidden outcroppings and undertows, making it highly undesirable for anything resembling a port, and with the prevalence of sharks and hostile marine races, the number of casual boaters in this world had taken a precipitous hit regardless.

Serious boaters were basically restricted to the Great Lakes and big rivers, now. Anywhere else was just tempting fate, although the Mediterranean wasn’t all that bad.

“Elucidate?” Briggs asked, thick brow furrowing.

“You’re basically paying for a Legendary increase in capability, just like making an Eternal-level magic item, right?”

They both made thoughtful faces. “Sure, that’s what the pricing is at,” Sama agreed.

“Well, doesn’t that by default make you Legendary, if you can DO that?”

Both of their eyes got really narrow, really fast. “I’m dense. Make sure I understand what you are saying,” Briggs said slowly.

“Take Legendary Stat Boosting as a Feat, and you should be able to allocate 10k a day to upping your Stats, instead of just 1k, since you’ve already broken into Legendary with at least one of your Stat boosts.”

They both stared at me. “Is that even a Feat?” Sama had to ask.

“Legendary Crafting most definitely is, and I’ve got confirmation on that from a Solar. It does exactly that. As for whether you qualify,” I rolled my eyes, “take a goddamn good look at your Rantha Racial Levels, and tell me if those weren’t boiled down to a Template they wouldn’t be Legendary.”

“Take a Feat yet?” Sama asked Briggs.

“Hells, no. I’ve got too much other stuff to spend Karma on. But that Glory Award should definitely be enough to pay for a Legendary Feat, no?” he mused thoughtfully.

I made a hurry-up gesture, watching Master Fred moving out into open waters. Normally, something like this would properly be done far offshore, in the deeper ocean or sea, but he was already a Warlock with multiple Pacts, and this could be seen as him being very cordial about an intrusion into a Place Spirit’s territory.

He was a Multi-Pact Warlock, and Spirits paid much, much more attention to him than they did other Warlocks. If he was moving between cities, there’d be no comment, but he was going to be doing an extensive amount of traveling over open waters, not between neighboring cities. It ‘could’ be seen as an infringement and an excuse, and given how coincidences worked, none of us believed it wouldn’t be seized on as an opportunity.

He only had the one Elemental Pact, why couldn’t he have another? He preferred Citybound over Landbound, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still room to negotiate with other Place Spirits.

Something huge and immense interrupted that thought process, spinning and revolving down out of possibility right next to me; a couple massive amounts of Karma were abruptly spent and gone together, and something descended out of the Akasha and plopped down right next to me in a possibility wave of Yowza, HOT DAMN!

“FUCK ME!” Briggs and Sama both chimed out at the same time. It was pretty cute, especially the cheek-splitting grins on both their faces.

Investment time for Stats, now 1/10^th!

“You’re welcome,” I said out of the side of my mouth, and then was airborne.

The literal wave of hydromana deposited me twenty feet back as a solid wall of the stuff blew through the manafield like a tsunami.

Briggs and Sama turned back to look at me laying on my back on the ground, spluttering with the sensation of water getting in everywhere, and then looked back to where the Gulf had risen up.

Way up. Like, several hundred feet up. Anyone who could see the massive Standing Wave sitting out there, frothing and falling in this direction, would likely be panicking if they had any sense.

Briggs politely stepped over to me as I was spitting, and the warm sun of his Source washed over me, shooing away all the excess hydromana, and chasing away the impression of drowning. I took his proffered finger and pulled myself up, blowing out my nose, which contents thereof were sparkling blue, while blinking my eyes free of glittering sapphire teardrops.

“Hey, I think he made contact with the Gulf!” Sama pointed out helpfully.

“Thanks, I might not have noticed. I don’t even want to know how bad it is going to be if The Pacific pops up, but hopefully He’s suppressed and still asleep.” Because my memories of a similar event were something along the lines of miles high, and The Pacific was a greedy twat.

“That reminds me, I was going to ask... couldn’t we just Waterjump to our destination?” Sama asked, completely amused at my situation.

I spat out the last of the gleaming blue stuff to dissipate on the sands beneath us, and pointed up emphatically. They both looked up, and sighed.

“What’s it doing this time?” Briggs groaned. Damn Haze, making us natural world travelers slog along with everybody else!

“Same thing as Teleport, it’s suppressing curvature dimensions and the like. Waterjump can’t form the true ‘all waters’ connection that makes it work, which operationally is skimming along the edge of the Elemental Plane of Water before getting dumped at a boundary of the Waters with something else. It’s restricted to the same natural geometry as Teleporting, which follows the land... but Teleporting is currently limited to line of sight, as the halvyr Nines and a lot of the Soulborn trapped here have proven. Waterjumping has the same problem.

“So, without a Lived-Line, you can Waterjump exactly to the horizon, no further, just like Teleporting.”

“Mumble-grumble curse bitch whine moan complain!” Sama snarled at the Haze, then dropped her eyes down to that colossal Standing Wave. “Still, quite a show for a Fifth Pact, right?”

“One little inlet sea and it has to announce itself like that,” I sniffed.

“Probably reacting to you being of Fire?” Briggs hazarded helpfully.

“Don’t need to be reminded. There’s a reason I’m heading south!” I glanced at my crimson hands, and just sighed. I could disguise it with Morphing, and I had when moving through public areas, or people might think I was a devil or something.

“It’s being pretty damn nitpicky if you’re just standing over here watching, too. Does it think we are watching a peep show or something? It’s just a Pact investiture,” Sama huffed in support of me.

“Says the Null who has never Sworn a Pact, so don’t downplay just how moving that is,” I chided her, having echoes of doing such a thing in my memories... and which I tearfully would have done again in a heartbeat. Living in the Light of Heaven was just awesome...

“Is it like tearing the heart out of a Hag’s Curse?” Sama asked, flipping her hair off that side of her face tellingly.

“Are you talking about the pain aspect of it, or the ability to Change Your Life aspect of it?” I tossed right back at her.

She opened her mouth, closed it, and thought about that, before grinning with that wild savagery that nobody in their right mind wanted directed at them. “The pain aspect!”

“I’ve personally never seen a Hagchild go through that, but I pretty much am going to say ‘no’ on behalf of every Pact out there.” Magic hadn’t been around on Terra-Luna long enough for any Hagchildren to get old enough to take the Ritual... and we were looking for them, and the Hags that had come out of the Dreamtime to bedevil us constantly, so there’d only been like six found, and all their Hagmothers had been aced.josei

“You’ve got a weird look on your face again. Remembering something?” Sama asked.

“I told you both you’re an item back on Terra-Luna, right?” They both nodded, the oddest expressions on their faces of joy and embarrassment that they were so predictable. “Your templates adopted all the hagchildren found there and are raising them. None of them were old enough to go through the Ritual of the Silver Queen, so Aelryinth had never seen it happen.”

Sama looked away, back to the Wave rumbling and roaring and trying to sound petulantly impressive in Aquan out there. “I lived through mine, and I’ve stumbled across four others over the years. I went to all of theirs, too.” Her nostrils flared. “One gave in, the other three made it.” There was a terrible, brittle rage under her voice, as if the one who had failed was a personal failure for her, too.

“The aftermath is pretty hard. It tore the families apart when they found out, almost every time.” I didn’t have to ask what happened to the failure. Sama would have killed her before the transformation could complete, so the girl didn’t die a Hag, giving her soul a chance... if and when we took down the Shroud.

“I sent them off to Heavenbound Hall as recruits.” She flicked a challenging glance at me.

“Rose, Ivy, and Lily. Yes, I saw the Marks. No, I’m not dumb.” She’d hidden it well, but Lily was now a known Null, and a big leader of potential Forsaken. Rose and Ivy were naturally her helpers, shellycoat and greenhag-blooded respectively.

“The Void Brothers promised me that if they ran across hagchildren, they would alert Heavenbound Hall in the future, so that we could do something about them. That’s a plus,” she sighed.

“They don’t talk to me at all. Did they take me up on my advice?” I had to ask.

“They are in the Mexico City Shroudzone, re-Leveling now. With the Shrine there gone, there’s no outsiders deeper in the Shroudzone to see them at work, so they are steadily picking off undead and getting their Levels back fast,” Briggs cut in with a rumble. “I don’t think they like the idea of being obligated to a Powered, and are embarrassed to admit it.”

“Given how many they’ve probably had to kill, it’s understandable.” I didn’t begrudge them that. “So, aren’t you even going to ask?”

“About what?” Sama replied, and I just smiled slightly, and did not answer. “Fine!” she half-spluttered. “How much did you pull out in one day?” she demanded.

“Two hundred and fourteen tons.”

Both of them groaned in their best theatrical manner, in perfect harmony, “Powered!”

Damn, they were so cute at it! “That’s from the ore, so it’s chemically locked up. Uh, five parts gold to one platinum, by weight. I think by the time they crack it all apart there’ll be a hundred and fifty tons or so, allowing for purity levels.”

“She thinks by reducing it to a hundred and fifty TONS we shall be less annoyed with her,” Sama leaned over to Briggs and pouted.

“She is trying to tricksies us, she is,” Briggs agreed in a stage whisper.

“By the way, thanks for all the dwarven connections for helping with the mining. They are going to be really useful there.”

Sama waved it off, then paused, and a wicked smile came over her. She started to pull out her phone, swore, and then just put her hand to her head.

I gave her a lazy eyeball, wondering what she was doing. “Yeeeeesssss?” I drawled, knowing she was paying me back.

“I’m just spreading the news to certain parties who were wondering if they should commit after you pulled out one hundred and fifty tons of refined precious metal from just two veins in the Charlands IN ONE DAY.”

Briggs broke out laughing, and I had to snort, and then chuckle, picturing the faces of said parties when they realized they were now going to be in the second wave if they were lucky, probably in the third wave, and really miss out on the good money... but they’d still be clamoring to join in.

“So, how’s it feel to earn ten thousand goldweight raw in one day?” Briggs had to ask.