The Power of Ten

Chapter 9-277: Oh Holy Light, the Stars are Brightly Shining...

Thousands of Buddhists blew apart in truly Holy light, sending ripples of fear and astonishment through the group mind as they got to experience the true condemning Light of Heaven. Rainbow flames of the Chaotic Good Aspect of Heaven blazed from the Buddhist’s skulls as they burned, utterly incensed at the slavery being inflicted on innocents, and vivus naturally was there to feast and finish them off, returning their stolen power to the Land.

The senior Buddhists could survive the hit, but it wiped their chanting power suppliers, who were delivering energy via the Mantra, right out... and naturally made them vulnerable to a follow-up refueling volley launched from a kilometer away.

Suddenly, this big invulnerable geodesic Dome of theirs, which could have taken the full force of the Thunderstorm I wasn’t using here, wasn’t a big defense; it was a gigantic shooting gallery enabling me to kill thousands of them with every Spellflare I Cast... which is exactly what I proceeded to do, as quickly as I could.

On one side I was issuing volleys of Shards to scythe down Buddhists for fuel, and on the other I was blasting apart shining golden Hexagons throbbing with the power of the Mantra, watching them blow backwards into those empowering them as a completely improbable Caster Level overwhelmed their numbers and did its thing.

No mercy, no stopping. This was indeed the fastest way to Kill Them All. I had to make use of it to butcher them before they realized they were giving me the power to kill them all faster.

It took them about ten minutes to realize that each Hexagon was basically a huge target letting me kill thousands of their weakest with the backlash. I was taking out two Hexagons every six seconds, ten pairs a minute, and a hundred of the things went down before the Buddhists started pulling the Dome back and shrinking it, abandoning ever more of their people.

Over half a million of their people were dead and burning in white and holy flames as they tried to condense their defense, raise the Caster Level higher, higher, higher...

They were trying to beat a +58. It wasn’t going well, but that was fine. My biggest protest was that now I had to kill all the reeling, chanting, enslaved Buddhists tossing glowing fists, hands, palms, rings, rays, bolts, bursts, bright lights, enslaving charms, and similar wonderful things my way.

Happily, all the crap was running into Spell Resistance 49 just for starters, which didn’t leave a whole lot of room for other stuff.

I didn’t give up the bombardment of the Dome, I just concentrated it. Even the senior Buddhist Llamas were exploding from quadruple feedback, and their minions were dying in hordes of five to ten thousand, depending on how many were feeding into the Hexagon I picked.

The ones I was killing with Shards only ranged up to a thousand or so at a time, much less efficient, but at least it refilled my Pool.

I slaughtered them as fast as I could, while they simply could not believe how I kept ripping apart their mighty magical effects. Spellpower, contested checks, absolute advantage, taking 10 via Arcane Mastery.

My last surge targeted nine Hexagons at once, aiming at overlapping junction points, and ended up taking down the entire Dome as at least forty thousand Buddhists lost their heads explosively. I was promptly into the inner city and wreaking all the kinds of havoc I could.

They could converge on me, that was fine. Their problem was that all that did was open them up to Bursting attacks on top of the Chains. When they were all lined up conveniently shoulder-to-shoulder like that, it fairly screamed that they were minions, and one leaping Chain blowing into a Burst could clean off seven to nine of them at a pop, hugely accelerating my kill-counts.

Clustering up to swarm me just helped me kill them all the faster. If they were flying, that just added more dimensions I could blow them apart in.

Oh, some of them got close... and then ran right into Master Fred’s Wall of Fire guarding me, with all that nice guaranteed damage for trying to fly through it, and so none of them got close to me unscathed. One Shots they couldn’t dodge were constantly picking off the toughest of the wounded, while Sleipner maintained the Wall of Fire.

My surroundings exploded in Shard-borne death, and the slaughter continued, three thousand former-people every cycle of spells.

They spoke of the Buddha’s Mercy, and I saw it all around me on smiling faces, minds and souls rewritten and enslaved to the Mantra. In return, I showed them the mercy of Heaven, and fed them body and soul to the Land.

------

Some branches of the Buddhists finally gave up and fled, but it wasn’t like they could outrun me, and I could track them infallibly from ninety miles away. Ten thousand fleeing Buddhists would perish in under a minute, and I could do the job from a kilometer away.

The senior Buddhists were the most dangerous, of course, because they could easily restart the whole process somewhere else. I thus had to kill as many of them as possible.

My reach was long, my Concentration was steady, my capabilities inhuman, and it was a job I had to do.

Vivus devoured the slimy Qi blanketing Thailand, and in passing, I tore down Formation after Formation adding to the problem.

The Qi only grew thicker as we looped around and drove north and west, toward the borders with India. I could only imagine what was happening there and head for it, knowing I had to be faster than they could send word... and that was impossible, as the senior Llamas definitely had ways to communicate over distances, while I had not managed to kill every single one of them that had seen me at work.

They knew something was coming for them, that I was powerful, and that they had been unable to stop me so far.

Would they simply start a grand slaughter of everyone, in pure spite? I did not consider it impossible. At the same time, there was no way I could stop them from doing so. If Cultivators in such numbers started Summoning in powerful members of their ilk here once the Shroud was gone, normal humanity could kiss its ass goodbye, as this place was going to become a direct battlefield of higher Powers and obliterate the natives... all perfectly reasonable by the standards of the Cultivators. If they couldn’t get the mortals they needed, why should anyone else have them? It was no different than burning the land to deny some invaders the food they needed.

It literally did not matter if they killed every person in India just to spite me: they still had to die, or the planet was still going to be hosed.josei

Now, if they moved out for the rest of the world en masse, I could only hope some nukes were ready. Cultivators weren’t invulnerable to nukes or even guns, and by now all the intelligence services of every mortal country interested had received multiple reports, videos, and footage from Heavenbound Hall about exactly what the Cultivators were and what they had done in the Far East.

There was every chance that their countries would be next, because they were already intended to be next regardless. Cultivators didn’t discriminate; they had just found it easier to get started in the Orient.

I wanted to turn back and clear Malaysia and Indonesia, succoring the natives there, but I couldn’t let India make the preparations that were possible with their immense population. I was going to be freaking busy enough just destroying and reversing the Qi-making Formations that were all over the place, as well as destroying their power base.

All this, and I was literally ignoring the dozens of Shroudclouds we were passing as I did what I had to do as brutally and quickly as possible.

I was Mapping them for later attention, however...

---

Into my basically endless slaughter came Sama, as cheerfully unsympathetic as always. -Hey, can I interrupt your grinding to shuttle some people here? The Mick has found a whole lot of volunteers to come here and, um, help the Chinese, sure.-

I noted The Mick was Sworn to me, and had not brought that up. -Tomb Clans?- I had to /ask.

-And you would not believe how many mercenaries and alchemists looking to make a lot of money harvesting Cultivator blood,- Sama /confirmed without batting an eye.

I considered that. -Have you, or are you going to, confirm that if they try to preserve any Cultivators for milking that the reward for such profitable behavior is termination with extreme prejudice as a traitor to everyone on the planet?-

-Not yet, but I was intending to if you didn’t,- she /said.

-I can handle it. +43 should do the trick, right?- She could definitely get higher if she was equal Level, but I had the advantage for now.

-I’m in the 30’s, so go right ahead. Given the numbers, I thought a Mass Waterjump might work out better than Teleports, so I had ‘em gather in a park on Lake Erie. They are waiting for you now.-

Master Fred was listening in. I pointed for him to veer towards a Shroudzone nearby. “Take a break, let the girls out to get some practice in. I’m going to be a bit.”

-Understood.- Sleipner veered off, and covered the five kliks to the circling blackness lit up by occasional red hate lightning in a couple minutes. I scribed the Energized Focus to bring myself back here, and Master Fred was already letting the first of them out as I Teleported away, Idiot turning into a flaming Weapon as deep brown hair replaced his blonde hair on the Amazonian physique.

That would be Monica, who was taking over Fire Dragon and related weapon studies. She had a strange look in her eyes as she glanced at me; I just gave her a wave, and spent ki.

Lived-lines connected across the miles. I had driven right by that park with Master Fred, surprise, surprise, so I knew exactly where it was.

I could feel The Mick’s grin when I reached out for the Focus, too.

----------

There were a bunch of them on the ground in the early morning light. They must not have had experience with dealing with Intimidate checks as high as mine, oddly enough. They’d had some ideas, probably about transforming the Cultivators, hiding them, and smuggling them out somewhere to be milked, and now they were looking at my eyes searing into their souls and realizing that was a horribly, horribly bad idea.

“When the time comes to muster out of China, I am going to be gathering you all together, and I am going to Ask you a Question. It’s going to be about the final fate of any Cultivators that you came across. And if you don’t answer that question truthfully, I will know. If you do not answer that question correctly... I will kill you on the spot. No hesitation, no remorse. You are succoring the enemy of every mortal creature on this planet, as bad as or worse than the undead in their own way.

“I WILL NOT FORGIVE YOU FOR YOUR GREED.”

There were almost a thousand people here. The Mick and his new lass had set all of this up, and were looking on with smiling faces. The Tombclanners, not so much.

“Alright, we’re going to be doing this with a Mass Waterjump.” I drew up a map of the world, starting here, going down the St. Lawrence seaway, arcing back up and around Canada through the Arctic ocean, and down to China, where we’d be going up Jiaoxi Brook to near Sandangzhou to hook up with the Chinese defenders there. I glanced at The Mick and Amaretta, who shook Masspacks full of Itemized supplies, especially ammunition for the shooters there.

“To do this right, I’m going to need to shrink you all down and put you on Disks.” I waved my hand, and more than a few of the people here jumped in fright when four dozen Disks coalesced out of nowhere. “Grab your gear, there’s going to be four of you on each Disk.”

------

Five Mass Disks, forty Chain Shrink Persons, and 45 ki later, a bunch of people now less than a foot tall were sitting on shimmery jetsilver force Disks as I walked out over the waters of Lake Erie.

All the Disks were touching, everyone was interconnected by extended hands and arms. There was a shiver as all the Disks aligned, then sank towards the water below, which began to churn and bubble. Everyone held their breath as we all plunged in together.

Currents swirled around us, the boundaries of different waters slid by, all part of a whole, yet different in form, temperature, and substance. The edge of all Waters drew near the glow of an Energized Focus in the distance, and with a geyser of foam, bubbles, and waterspray, we all broke through the surface of the river there.

Sama waved from the shore, kicking away the Focus there, while I glided in to her with my army of shrunken warriors.

“Hop on,” I told her, and popped my wings.