The Power of Ten

Chapter 9-294: Of Cultivators and Mortals

“Cultivating either method turns you into an inhuman creature, a Cultivator. Daoism turns you into a Daoist Immortal, a thing whose soul eats your own, takes your body and refines it into an alien, pursues the Dao, opposes Heaven, wants to alter the world you live on to its whim, and seeks to turn humanity into a breeding pool to create more Daoist Immortals.

“The Buddhist Mantra turns you into an Enlightened, a brainwashed, soul-bonded accessory wedded to the Nirvanic Enlightenment, an Axiomatic Hivemind, whose only thought is to serve the Mantra. Normal people are the way the Mantra grows, as it recruits all people who can Cultivate, adds them to the Mantra, and grows relentlessly, subjugating all others to the Buddhist Way as it does so, turning Powered into enslaved souls doomed to endlessly reincarnate in subservience to the Mantra!

“I have so far had to kill millions of the living who fell to both paths. They are inexorable, relentless, devious, patient, and utterly impossible to sway from their paths. If there is a substantial number of them present on this world when the Shroud goes down, we could lose the entire planet to the things they could call down from their unholy Heavens.”

And I gave them the vids.

I gave them the slaughter of the tribes in the island nations. I gave them the pill furnaces used to cook down the bodies of the Powered of all ages. I gave them the killzone of millions of Chinese they’d slaughtered just to create a buffer zone between us and them of undead, and to deny us the ability to take away their minions. I gave them the Chinese, a people never allowed to come into the modern age, who were forcibly reverted back over a hundred years of progress so that it would be easier to maintain power over them.

I gave them the Buddhists with their bright smiling faces, of all races and creeds, mindlessly singing out the Mantra and giving power to the acolytes, disciples, lamas, and abbots who battled for them and attempted to overwhelm and convert all who opposed them to worship.

And I showed me killing them.

If they were wondering about my power, they needed wonder no more. They watched me moving across battlefields and slaughtering thousands at a time. They watched me exploding Domes of Buddhist faith, and blowing apart battle lines of Cultivators. They saw me tear apart cities with hurricanes and lightning, rip apart Sects, and bring down temples. Endless Shrines and Monuments that were Qi-Making Formations were blown apart, or reversed to consume the stinking Qi.

They saw the Arhats, they saw the endless millions of civilians slaughtered by the Buddhists.

They saw the Devic Guards, mockeries of angels, doomed to be forever reborn as obedient servants to the Mantra, unless vivus took them and destroyed their very souls, the fate of all Powered who were overcome by the Mantra.

They watched me kill millions of Buddhists with their pious smiles on their faces even as they fought and died, and that didn’t stop me at all, just as the cold milk-white perfection of the Immortals meant nothing to me.

For humanity to grow, to even exist properly, those things had to go. They had no business in Creation at all.

“This is what I fought in the Yellowstone Firezone.” And I brought up Hastsezini in the Caldera, and all His forces. “This is an Old God, once given some worship by the native tribes, but retreating into His own realm as whatever primitive and partial magic that was here died away. With magic’s return, so too did He return... but He was close enough to being undead, enslaving the spirits of those who died close to his realm, that He was made a Shroudlord. Free, yet trapped once again.”

I didn’t go into Antarctica, because there was no need for them to know that, and Sama and Briggs wanted dibs on those shoggoth. They had to Level, see, and it was going to be hilariously expensive in Karma for them to do so. Giant CR 20 oozes were a great way to work on that little problem, and turn them into the toughest goddamn bastards on the planet as they did.

They were slowed down by how fast they could invest the Karma for all their high-priced innate racial abilities, akin to having to pay for Gear themselves and not being able to fob it off on other people for the boring part.

Still, when they got it done, they were going to be unstoppable, and the world was going to need them to be that way, there was no doubt about it.

“The Cultivators I will make my problem, because they are your single greatest threat,” I concluded, as the image of Bombay’s Dome shattering and the millions of Buddhists there being devoured by a living tornado faded away behind me. They were all gawking at me. “If they survive to bring down others like them... that could be very, very bad. They infest the mortal population like maggots; they grow, they breed more of themselves, and they are the mortal enemies of all of you, Powered and Warlocks alike.

“You are either slaves in body and soul, or you are pills. There is no middle ground with a Cultivator, only a delay until they can do that to you. You butcher them, or you submit and die.”

I let them stare and stew on what I had said. Perhaps they had not believed me when I said I could take out the Shroudzones. They definitely had no doubts I could do it now.

“I will return to the Cultivator fight tomorrow. It is something that has to be prosecuted, and all of their strongest slaughtered. I am going to have to scour most of Asia to find them and kill them all. It is going to be very annoying, a complete waste of time that could better be spent helping you all prepare for when the Shroud is coming down... but if they don’t die, everything you do to prepare is probably going to be moot, so I can only rely on you all to do what must be done.”

I let that hang in the air, with all the notes of dread and fear that went with it.

“And there is one other minor, but important item. That item also concerns me.” I clasped my hands in front of me, and let my gaze travel across them all. “Some of you are already terrified of me, and starting to make plans to deal with me if ever you cross me, because I am certainly a threat to your plans. Well, you needn’t worry about that.

“There is a price for the power I have been given, and that is that I am tied to the Shroud. When it goes, so do I... to some other place where the Shroud already exists, there to work to free that world.”

Despite themselves, they gasped. That also meant that I would not be there to help them face down the shit that was coming when the Shroud dropped!

I couldn’t BE the Queen they wanted, no matter how much they tried to convince me. If I could be their Queen, would that not have solved so many problems for their people and nation?

“Thus, the day the Shroud falls, is the day I go elsewhere. I can work up until that day, but no further, and then it is ALL ON YOU.”

There we go. I had just handed off a crushing weight of responsibility, and foisted it off onto all the proper shoulders. My, didn’t they all have the most bittersweet looks on their faces about it.

I couldn’t defend them at all if I wasn’t there. They HAD to Level up their people, there was no choice in the matter. And if they didn’t have enough, their weak people would be preyed upon...

“Lady Traveler, this other Earth,” President Havier spoke up again, rising despite himself. “How... how did they survive their... tribulation?”

“The souls in the Shroud don’t really know, they were barely able to touch the world before the Shroud’s hold was broken. The only thing I can pass on was that the population of the entire world was concentrated in the heartlands of North America, there were substantial geographical changes, and pretty much the rest of the planet had been abandoned by humanity... and was being invaded by opportunistic races brought in by other gods and entities.josei

“I gather they got good at killing undead by killing a massive number of undead. If there were only twenty million of them left, I can imagine the number of undead they had to kill had at least ten digits to it, and the killing definitely hasn’t stopped since.

“Oh!” I had to smile and clap my hands. “You want them to come here and fight your battles for you!” I had to smirk as he sighed heavily once again. “Given their power, expertise, and Levels, they would rapidly take over the planet, I imagine. Now, it IS another world of Earthlings, but did you notice something else?”

I replayed the videos of them from above again, and turned my eyes on the non-humans.

“They are all human,” the Ælven queen caught on first, her large emerald eyes flashing back and forth. “There are no other races among them!”

“That is correct. They are still a completely human native world. They didn’t have any of the semi-magical reversions that characterized this world. While I am inclined to believe those who display such powers of Good are not racists... our world is not theirs. I think we should handle our own damn problems, and if we make contact with them, it be as equals, don’t you agree?”

Despite themselves, they got the gist of it, especially the non-humans here. While there were definitely racist humans here who would be happy to deal with another Earth of all humans, the non-humans had no wish to be knuckled under by them.

“One of the things I can do is try to set up contact with those people, which will only be effective after the Shroud comes down. While this might be a planetary security threat... they simply have too many damn problems of their own to be invaders, I’m inclined to think. I shall simply have to pick someone viable from among those the Shroud informed me of. It should not be an issue.”

And just who might that be, I wonder?, I mused to myself with an unseen smile.

“Any other questions?”

---------

I didn’t give them my itinerary of who and where, because they had no need to know, but I did catch a couple of them glancing towards my Banner, and wondering if they should bend a knee to me... or go grabbing for power elsewhere as fast as they could.

I did remind them that everything I had talked about with them was going to be released by Heavenbound Hall to the public through multiple venues and servers, giving them time to think, but not time to monopolize... especially if they wanted to attend the Opening of the Sky tonight.

It was nearing dusk as the meeting wrapped up, and I departed without standing around for small talk, as I was helping with the Ritual.

Well, to be blunt, I was going to be the center of it, and the Sylunar who had been undertaking this for years were basically going to be assisting me. I had no problem working out the intricacies of the Ritual. It used multiple Casters to boost a Control Weather high enough to temporarily overcome the power of the Shroud, allowing the people around here, for one cold night a year, to look upon the stars all night.

As Ceremonies went, it was world-famous, as no other force out there could really gather the amount of magical power necessary to do it. The pumping of dozens of Heavenbound-complemented Priests from all Faiths gathered together to participate in this Ritual, and there wasn’t any place else in the world that could really concentrate enough holy power to do the job.

Now, of course, there was me...

I could have basically done this alone. Using that long to Cast a spell, building up all the power necessary, layering it and Raising it to VII for even more punch and power... yes, I could have done this without them. It was only better that it was a combination of Holy and Natural magic, got Theurgy boosts from every direction, and my Caster Level for it bluntly surpassed that of the Shroud itself.

But that was fine. With their help, this was going to go down in history, such as it was.

I was going to display a LOT of power. I was going to attract a LOT of attention. I was going to be a big diversion.

Briggs and Sama setting up a Monarchy and going for the Kingships was probably going to catch just about everybody blind-sided, and that was exactly how it should be...