Chapter 9-257: The Storm Comes to Shanghai, Part I (2/2)
It was nothing like they had ever used before, or imagined was really possible outside of fiction.
We could do it; we had done it. It was time for them to vent, and Make Some Karma.
And they did.
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Shanghai was burning around me. Burning, because cultivators naturally didn’t give a shit about property damage or innocent lives, and the Dragon Hand Adepts and Warriors couldn’t afford to be all that much better as they took them on.
While staying around me, because I was in the middle of the entire sphere of fighting, literally.
Detect Qi at VII was lighting up the area for a thousand meters around me, picking out the targets with searing precision. Nobody strayed from within that range, because that was also the range of the Rays that could save their lives.
Spellwarp/5 meant I could change basically any spell with a range into a Ray, and that included just about everything when I also had Reach Spell, and could change Touch range to Short, to a Ray with Medium Range, and increase that to Long Range.
I could also Chain it to hit a bunch of people in the area, and then ladle on additional benefits with Imbued Healing if it just happened to be a Healing spell.
Or Cure Mortal Wounds, bringing someone who had just gotten themselves killed back from the dead.
The Cultivators were nice enough to give me all the ki I needed to keep Casting. Sure, I needed to use two Shards on them, but that was still plenty of excess ki from my Pool when I was throwing out over forty Shards, and popping a couple dozen of the weak ones per Casting.
The tougher ones didn’t much like taking the hit right before the High on Elevator to Heaven Music chi-wielders slammed into them.
Dropping +6 Force Armor onto the mostly unarmored DW’s and DHA’s, Enchanting their Weapons to +V, adding Bane to Cultivators, Protection from Evil effects, Blessings, Prayers, Aid,Energy Resistance...
I doled out monstrous amounts of Buffs, and dying Daoists paid for all of it. It was no exaggeration to say that the longer our people were fighting, the stronger they were getting, somewhat to their disbelief.
It got really sick when the Duskstopped Haste spells were dropped on a couple squads, and suddenly they were moving 50% faster than physics said was possible, and the killing speed REALLY picked up.
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The increased speed didn’t faze Briggs or Sama at all. They kept allocating forces here and there, choosing who fought what for the best picks.
These Cultivators had a crazy Elemental dominance schema that included Wood as an Element, and broke out Metal as an Element separate from Earth.
Wood. Right. So, Flesh would be an Element too, then? No?
Whatever, Fire users against Wind/Lightning users; Storm stylists against Water users; Ocean Dragons against rigid brute force or armored stylists; and Crystal Dragons wading through the attacks of fire users. Sun Dragons against Mentalists; Fire Users against Poison and Wood users (they were basically the same thing most of the time); Moon Dragons to lock someone down so random Beast-totem users could beat them down; and Shadow Dragons contesting with the Daoist’s own oh-so-clever sneak attackers and any twits using Cold, only ours knew exactly where their opposites were.
Sama and Briggs were performing all those roles, of course. There’s sneaking up on somebody, and then Briggs coming through the brick wall you’re hiding in the shadow of and Endure coming down to really ruin your day.
The two of them tanked so many palm strikes, wind blades, ray fingers, claw storms, and whatnot without a scratch on them, and of course none of the Daoists could fly or dim-shift away with whatever the Movement Technique of the moment happened to be.
No, it was pure speed and brute force when dealing with the two of them, and just how good you were.
Strangely enough, the Daoists weren’t anywhere near that good.
My attention was going in every direction, tracking the whole Raid via Status effects, four whole thoughtstreams on that task, and my spellcasting was nonestop.
Buildings exploded, fires spread swiftly as winds swirled madly, called in every direction by desperate Qi wielders. An inferno was chasing behind us through the city, and while I had Called in a storm to put it out, it was going to take time to get to us, because we didn’t want to be fighting in the rain, either.
On the other hand, I could also dole out Chained Protection from Rain, so the storm arrived sooner rather than later.
Perhaps not too surprisingly, the whole city began to erupt as we slaughtered our way through it. Guns came out of wherever they had been concealed for this moment, and junior Cultivators were being riddled with holes, much to their disbelief.
The Warlocks along conscripted any shooters or hidden Powered suddenly showing up to vent their anger on the Daoists, making sure they acted in teams... and they suddenly started getting Buffs dropped on them by Chained Rays coursing through them. A grandfather who’d lost his daughter to the whims of a Cultivator suddenly holding onto a fifty-year old Colt pistol that was now +V and bearing Endless Ammo good for an hour abruptly became a very dangerous threat.
Double-tap, double-tap. At least two shots at any one of them, no exceptions!
Screaming their hatred, the citizens of Shanghai who could fight back began to mob the Cultivators, slowing them down, distracting them... and dying if I couldn’t get to them in time. Sama and Briggs were always moving between the mobs, and it was utterly remarkable how deadly a simple mob of people became when they were suddenly +6 to hit and damage...