Chapter 7-199: Cleaning the Pot (1/2)

I was paying strict attention to the numbers coming out of the lava lake.

The original numbers of servant creatures in the caldera were basically all dead by the end of the second hour of our assault, which surely pissed that King Firecobra off. But more Elementals were crawling continuously out of the lava pool, keeping up pressure on me as long as things were also coming from behind.

Of course, things had really started slowing down from behind, which relieved pressure on Cryoclasming, and let me apply more pressure forward.

We began to advance downslope again, standing on our Disks and sending out death in various forms as we did so.

The Mick starting taking opportunities to engage in physical combat, since it gave him a chance to stretch his legs out and actually kill things faster than just Sharding them would allow. Since anything that could survive a Cryoclasm was tough enough to be a threat, it wasn’t just a slaughter... although they were weakened enough that one good hit from a Coldphased Smior was generally enough to do for them. If nothing was close enough to Cleave, he sent out more Shardings.

That generally wasn’t a problem, however. Seeing him over there by himself having fun, he got plenty of attention as the Elementals naturally tried to surround him. They made fine Shard targets for Reaping as needed, or Master Fred would put up Walls of Icefire to secure The Mick’s flanks.

Killing forward accelerated, and now the lava lake was being smashed repeatedly by Cryoclasms, not just the caldera, and the magma was blackening, freezing, cracking, splitting, steaming, and getting hit again.

Naturally new Elementals couldn’t come out of those areas closest to us, and I kept pushing them back, back, back...

The lava pool was a thousand feet across. Elementals were now being slaughtered at its edge, further extending the frozen influence plunging into the crimson goo as pyromana became cryomana. The air temperature was actually dropping from the sheer amount of cold magic I was putting out.

When the ambient temperature around me was less than 180 F, Snowcasting began to kick in once again as my personal air temperature fell below freezing.

Not much later, it fell below the Severe Cold threshold, and Tier Two Ice Magic was kicking in. It wasn’t huge on the overall scale at +2 per die, +4 Caster Level to magic using Cold, and effective +4 to Save DC... but it was the equivalent of a snowstorm turning into a howling icestorm as far as potency of the Ice Magic went, and those jetsilver ice feathers were now howling for blood as they raged out.

I was getting something like +6 per die with my Cold spells right now, so even the Cryoclasms were spitting out something like 4d6+24 BASE damage against fiery creatures, before any Kickers, and the Elementals weren’t taking it very well.

The King could only watch as we pressed out onto the lava lake as it rapidly crusted over. There were plenty of streams and flows to the sides venting any pressure from below, and they rapidly began to surge as dark stone grew with jetsilver haste under terrifying feathered assaults of icy force.

I could imagine some of his confusion. He could sense the beginnings of the Ritual of the Burning Heart upon me, alluding to mastery of Fire magic, but my continued usage of monumentally lethal Cold magic was pushing him back, back, and back from his seat of power.

Even the cracking and splitting of the lava under me was faltering under the continual impact of cold magic, the stone getting thicker, harder, and colder despite the limitless pressure from below.

The boys just went along with the show, aware of the true target, playing their parts and soaking in the Karma with me.

I naturally hadn’t forgotten my Duskstopped Stone Shape at V, and it worked perfectly well on frozen, i.e., solid, magma. Cold was associated with Earth because Earth was the frozen state of all matter...

I reinforced the ground underneath us as I walked out over the lava pool, pushing that big firecobra back. Jetsilver coated the rock beneath us as Sleipner trundled out on his little glowing fields of force just above the jagged stone and ice, ready to reverse and dodge at sign of any real threat.

-There’s definitely a bigger one down at the center of the pool, waiting for us,- Master Fred /informed me, after an intense gaze directed down at the heart of the lava pool.

Well, that meant there was no reason to keep this second stringer around, didn’t it?

I swirled up a Paired Crown of Stars, fifty-six glittering Shardstars circling around my head, bringing the celestial sky down around me in a galaxy of silver force magic. The temperature around me plummeted hard enough to start snowing carbon dioxide, and that big Firecobra realized a bit too late that he probably should have buried himself down in the lava and just waited for me to leave.

The jetsilver Shardray Spellwarped all those Shards into a single apocalyptic driving line of cold that literally chilled the eyeball just to look at it... and then they hit the glittering prism in midair, and fractured into two equally powerful Split Rays. Frozen oxygen and nitrogen along their paths condensed in hollow tubes and foot-long icicles of solidified gas, hovering there for a crazy second before shattering as the Rays faded, and they fell in misting shards to the lava below, instantly creating dozens of black rocks along the path.

The Shardrays drove into that massive Fire Cobra on the opposite side of the lava lake, and dumped a whole lot of anti-heat into it. Its whole crimson and molten-cracks midsection instantly went cold black edged in cutting silver, spikes of frozen gas spurting off it as the chill swarmed up over its head and down to the lava in under a second.

We all looked at the gleaming statue of gleaming black and glittering silver frozen there, before there was a muffled ripping and crack from below the lava’s surface, and it fell slowly, grandly over into the molten stone, instantly freezing the magma that came into contact with it even as it slowly faded from sight.

“Jesus Christ and his mother!” The Mick muttered, blinking his eyes rapidly to clear them as the shockingly cold wind burst past him and half-quenched the Elementals in the area. Feeling the film on your eyes freeze in the heart of a volcano was a new experience for him. “Just how cold was that?” he had to ask. The nearest Elementals also seemed to be pretty distracted. The Ray of uttercold probably looked to them exactly like a death ray looked to us.

“224 times d6+7.” Sucks to be vulnerable to Penetrating Cold, and someone totally abusing the hefty Shard limits of a Crown of Stars.

It was definitely my biggest single kill spell effect, made only better by the fact it could just wait around and be triggered when I needed it.

Master Fred was looking down rather intently, and smiled thinly. -It was starting to rise. It’s going back down,- he /reported.