Chapter 8-243: Feeding the Land with Cultivation (1/2)

The isolated area of strength was naturally a hidden Cultivator, here to monitor the situation and perform actions in the dark. He was taking care not to spread his Qi and possibly be sensed by the locals, but the Land was a bit more pervasive and aware then he was.

Cultivators didn’t have Soak, per se. They had Health, and they used body tempering of various kinds to make themselves tougher in ways humans could not, i.e., taking more Outsider/Cultivator Racial Levels, but their Soak was instead their Qi supply. Thus, to kill them, you literally ran them out of power, down to just their physical forms.

It meant that they could be very hard to kill, as that was the equivalent of me having Soak equal to twice my Slots and Spell Engrams, which could amount to hundreds. On the flip side, as they executed forms and techniques, their toughness dropped quickly, unlike Powered, who could be hanging on with one Health and if they had spells or chi left, just keep on going.

The biggest problem for Cultivators was actually a lack of Gear and knowledge of proper techniques, as they didn’t have advisors, and they didn’t have a functional Akasha. The Techniques of chi-practitioners were generally far more developed, but didn’t work for Cultivators, and while Casters could give them ideas, spells didn’t work for them either, Qi being the alien and inefficient stuff it was.

Thus, in terms of staying power and pure offensive ability, Cultivators tended to lag. It was just harder to kill them fast because you had to burn down their Qi.

On the flip side, when a Warlock with a Might of 40 Rides the Shadows and comes up out of your own shadow and locks you in a grappling hold while burning you alive in 11d6 of Wrath, having all the Qi in the world doesn’t mean a thing, especially when that Wrath has a Dispel worked into it.

I Blinked into place in front of the man, his alchemical disguise of Chinese-hued skin burning away from the true milky whiteness below as he writhed in Master Fred’s four-limbed lock, trying to get away as he hammered his Qi against the Silent Warlock.

I lifted a sword hand across my chest, Shards gathered into a blade of cutting force down my arm along the guidance of Force Blade Reserve. His eyes went very wide as I cut back across his neck.

His Qi exploded and gave way under the assault of Force energies as the Touch-Shards discharged, and See the Flaw completed the motion, sub Concentration Check for weapon damage.

I had a very impressive Concentration modifier, after all, and releasing Arcane Focus, took 15 on it.

His face was frozen in disbelief as his head jumped free of his neck.

Gold-black-red blood jetted into the air, was consumed by Wrath, and his seared and smoking corpse, local clothing styles burning away on it and revealing more of the milky white skin beneath, fell to the floor as Master Fred released it.

I caught the head in mid-air, and stowed it away. I turned my attention down, and kicked aside the rug dominating the middle of the room. The floor looked perfectly fine, until Master Fred washed it with a Devouring Pulse, and the illusion it concealed revealed the trap door there, Wards hissing and spitting as they were ripped apart by his Wrath.

He politely wrenched it open, and when the two oriental vampires surged forth, they blew into vivic ash below the neck with a fusillade of Shards. Their heads and faces, complete with the talisman script still attached to them, joined their master in my Masspack.

I glided down the stairs, Master Fred swinging down after me silently, but there were no more defenders waiting.

What was down here had me gritting my teeth, despite knowing it was likely to be here. Loathing the very idea of it not being blown to ash and slag instantly, I instead examined it all quickly but very thoroughly, especially verifying how many times certain aspects of the equipment had been used to make certain things.

I left it intact behind us, but I did use my Shaping Stone to erect a Wall of rock around the house, making sure nothing could get in casually, and put an Alarm on top of that, so I’d know if anyone did manage to get in.

I had Detect Qi up at V, effectively VII, scanning the area for nearly a thousand feet in every direction for signs of those with Qi.

There were quite a few more individuals than I wanted to see, but they would have to wait if they were Ones and Twos. If they were Fours... then I had to clean them on the way, because they knew the jig was up, and they had to run. If they were Threes, they had to die, too, because they were on the cusp of power, and there was no way they’d ever stop before they took that last fateful step, and got themselves eaten for their hunger for more strength.

Sleeping the households kept everything quiet, and Sleipner was of course an invisible ghost as we played phantom killers through the city...

------

The areas of lesser Qi contamination were naturally neighborhood dojos, spread around the city to teach the ten to twenty percent of people who had meridians suitable for Qi harvesting and nurturing a Golden Orb. Of those, only a fraction would ever get truly strong, just like the Powered, but the additional strength was only more support for the city in its struggle against the Druids and the sea, so it had been encouraged by the government here.

Two of the areas were barracks where soldiers practicing Cultivation trained. I grit my teeth again, seeing they were all Threes, and they all had to die.

Perhaps it was mandatory service, perhaps it was volunteering to defend their home and people, but they were loyal soldiers, and I still had to kill them all.

I hated Cultivators even more.