Chapter 9-263: Shrouds and Sects (1/2)

Sama watched the few survivors from inside the whelming Shroudzone above them stumble past. Few carried much beyond a container of water and rough food. Money meant little under the Daoists, after all.

The elderly were generally riding bicycles or being towed in rickshaws with the smallest children, while the most fit people walked, trotted, or stumbled along, depended on how tired they were.

They were relieved and afraid to the point of tears when they saw Sama’s team there, but it was not time for them to stop. They were hurried on, for the faintly burning corpses ignited in the area assured them that they weren’t out of range of the undead.

Sama ran over her deployments again, mental view sweeping over Marked and Blessed spread out in positions over a distance of nearly two hundred kilometers.

Those with Vivic Weapons had been running around and aggressively burning all the dead, forming a buffer area from the areas with greater numbers of undead sure to rise beyond.

They didn’t have to spread evenly, of course. There were areas of greater and lesser concentration, and they were largely working the former, clearing away as many of the dead as possible before midnight came... and it was coming quickly, everyone could feel the moaning in the wind of the Damned circling, waiting to come back and take their revenge for being murdered upon the living.

Nothing to do but put them down again, and in doing so, let the people become more than anything they had ever believed possible.

Every corpse ignited with purpose was more Karma for these people, so Sama wasn’t going to interfere, although if something was out of easy reach and there wasn’t a shooter around, she shot the corpse and watched blood and gore ignite in purifying vivus.

The whole world was watching this, Marked back at Heavenbound Hall feeding illusions of multiple viewpoints through to cameras conveying this over the World Wide Weave.

Tens of thousands of dead were put to the vivic torch, pale white fires in the thickening night, defying the Shroud and the wails of the coming undead.

-Pull back!- Briggs’ orders /came on their mutual agreement, were repeated aloud, and everyone began to race back to the positions indicated where they’d be making a stand. They were very afraid, but very excited, too, for they’d seen what they could do when properly Buffed up.

There were very few Casters among those here, but those who were here had hastily added Holo 0 to their Cantrips, so they could broadcast what was happening to the south to those not Marked or Blessed.

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The Eagle’s Vantage spell showed them the sight from a couple hundred meters above the ground, and with great magnification, too.

The winding trails of the Shardrays zipping out constantly in paired lines of death were shadowy, obviously invisible to normal sight, crossing thousands of feet of space as the ghostly blur of the unicorn motorcycle, the image of the sacred steed’s soul around it growing more distinct as the Shroud gained power.

At the far end, Cultivators were exploding in multi-colored fires.

Flying, taking cover, hiding, or oblivious to what was happening, the deadly Rays came in and leapt back and forth in unseen, coiling streams of death homing in on them.

Some of the panicked Cultivators were raising alarm signals, but nobody could see the source of the death coming in at them, as the Caster was several hundred paces away, and the spells were only visible when they hit.

They began to panic, of course, as was only logical when you are getting blown apart by something you can neither see nor hear.

Those who fled very early were the only ones who got out of range in time as Sleipner rolled through the night, never getting closer than two hundred paces to them in the thick, cloying night, a darkness that did not impede the carnage erupting around them at all.

Occasionally the Shardrays would be alternated with a spread of twenty Shards arcing out to find targets and recharge my Pool, reaping the weakest and most hapless among the Cultivators who did not know what was going on.

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Sama’s attention flickered over to Master Fred.

There was a terrible, deep vein of rage on a deep-pressure boil inside the Silent Warlock. The level of anger seething there would likely have driven any normal person into a berserker rage of fury at what he had witnessed.

For now, he was just burning with anger, and it was going to take something exceptional to cool him down, she had no doubt.

There were still people arriving, making their way frantically towards the fires and the lights... the same lights and fires that would be drawing the undead to their deaths.

But the time between dusk and midnight was not short, and a unicorn motorcycle could cover a lot of ground during that time, as he had covered it before dusk. Unmoved by the slaughter, not viewing such things as civilized humans did, the dead forest king yet realized Evil when he saw it, and knew it had to go.

Also, the Qi in the air was putting him into a truly foul mood, and seeing Daoists explode into vivus was wonderfully cathartic.