Chapter 7-198: Into the Hot Pot (1/2)

The landscape was burning white around and below us, and I was sniping stuff trying to climb up to us or fall down on us as we went up the caldera. There were many, many lava tubes coming in and out of this one, and from the way various serpentine forms of Elementals were coming through it, I had a good idea of the kinds of things that might be found within.

Were they a true threat? Not individually, no... but they weren’t coming individually, and their true importance was anchoring the influence of the Firelord, not in being a threat. I had just driven a spear of Land-food into this place, and was threatening that control and influence thereby.

The payoff would be the Glory award, not necessarily the slaughter of these creatures... which was still enough Karma to pay for a lot of Leveling going forward.

Snakes and serpents were a theme here. The Fire Asps and Cobras were dominant, but there were thoqua fire worms, the spiked bodies of massive charwinders, the wingsnake scorchfangs, and lots of Elementals in serpentine forms, their cruder versions of the scaled things not hurting their brutal power in the least.

There were a lot of long forms slithering back and forth inside the lava lake bubbling and overflowing at its core there, too.

The air temperature was well over two hundred degrees, and while we weren’t affected by it, I couldn’t get my cold bonus. I might have to improve it to a V Valence effect to do so, setting the area at a specific temperature regardless of the natural environment. I wanted those cold bonuses...

Whatever, I’d have to make do with the Power of the Land flowing so freely here, although the pyromana getting converted to cryomana wasn’t exactly part of its plan.

Arcanataoic Elemental Energy Mastery ftw!

There was a lot of snake chopping and hacking as we headed into the caldera, Masks on to help deal with fumes, our fire resistance doing lots of work, and we were preceded by waves and volleys of killing cold that sprayed ashen vivus (and little glittery souvenirs) all over the place.

When the car-sized head popped up in the lava pool and spit a Meteor Swarm out, I was watching.

A Meteor Swarm was theoretical in Valence prediction, a confluence of four Widened Fireballs with tremendous destructive power, rocking 10d6 of physical impact damage and 10d6 spread damage each. The blasts overlapped, and unlike normal spells, stacked, especially in the area directly between all four of them. Get caught there, and you were eating a LOT of fire damage, and saving against four different Bursts!

It was possible to approximate such a thing with a Widened Paired Admixtured Fireburst, if you could somehow fit all that into your Metacap, except such an attack would all be launched at the same area and target, not spread out for massive area coverage like a true Meteor Swarm. True higher Valence spells had advantages over Meta’d ones...

Seeing a Valence IX magical power come arcing up and over for us was definitely a moment, and I paused just to watch the extraordinary beauty of the magical weaving that it entailed. It wasn’t that I couldn’t comprehend and understand it, but if I tried something similar with a Spell, I’d blow my own skull apart.

That said, it might be one of the mightiest classical magical spells ever, but so what? It was still a magical spell, despite how devastating it was when it hit.

Silver magic came in and tore apart the primary components of its structure. Yeah, it took a lot of power to cast this, and the source was doing it at Twenty, but my Dispel Check was closing in on Thirty, so I didn’t much care.

The growing fireballs got about halfway to us when they blew up in midair, and I promptly Cryoclasmed the area about me in response.

I covered a lot of area, and the smaller slithering and squirming things nearby all went away. My big black ice feathers explosion covered a lot more ground than its big fire explosion would have, and definitely looked much more out of place, especially with the way it left jetsilver ice everywhere.

The smaller creatures froze, blackened, died, and burned to white dust and ash. The bigger creatures got blackened, but lived... but that didn’t help save them from the second, and possibly the third blasts they had to wade through to get to me, the second one hurting even more than the first as the 4d6 of Practical Penetrating Cold was Topped to a full 24 with Residual Magic paying for Widen. Generally speaking, 95%+ of the creatures had to save or die.

The big snake in the lava had risen up, and was urgently shooting Rays and Firebursts and the like at me, trying to interrupt my spellcasting and allow its minions to get close to me.

I had to do three things at once: Counter its magic, harvest ki, and keep attacking to slow down the wave assaults coming at me.

No problem, that’s what Arcane Fusion was for.

For the I slot, thirteen Weaponized Shards lashed out to reap the wounded mid-size, or living weaker creatures, feeding me back what I’d expended. For a III Slot, Dispel Magic glittered out there, empowered by Silver Magic, and slammed head on into whatever it was tossing, dissipating it, fracturing it into useless streams, or imploding it in on itself as its structure was torn apart and it exploded harmlessly.

And I kept Casting Cryoclasm and thinning down the numbers further, swirling icefire feathers of jet and silver lashing out to cover the landscape in ice, so fast that it wasn’t melting quickly, if at all.

Anything coming towards me had to bull through at least two of those to reach me, probably eat a Shard or two, and Master Fred was happy enough to shoot them if they didn’t want to die. If they got any closer than that, The Mick’s Shardings ate into them with bloody frost, and none managed to reach us as we advanced down from the rim.

I had to admit the master snake was patient, and it wasn’t running out of lesser fire magic, continuing to spit out Rays and Bursts to keep me occupied, all its servants slithering towards me, trying to make it past my magic. It could see Cryoclasm wasn’t intrinsically all that powerful... but, oh, them kickers!