Chapter 9-279: A Little Practice Makes the World a Better Place (1/2)
It looked like one of Master Fred’s Amazons was pursuing the Zen Gunner route, because she was using his Grit non-stop, firing as fast as she could at the undead coming from all directions at her.
The undead were dying, of course. A Mighty Firearm enchanted as high as Fred’s Grit had one hell of a kick, and Bane and Vivus naturally made riding the gravy train easier.
I was surprised to see she was Oriental. Maybe she’d heard too many tales about the American West, or just wished she could use guns instead of bows. Master Fred was probably using the Amazon Pact so she didn’t have to be short, and all Amazons had the same build, so just overlaying her face meant she was basically in her former Amazon form through a roundabout way.
I popped some undead in the distance to recharge my Pool, patiently waiting as she got in hundreds of rounds of shooting practice. The real trick for a Gun-Fu expert was Pistols Akimbo, of course, meaning he’d have to make a Main-Gauche Gun with an Endless Ammo cylinder just for her.
He had already spent my three Wishes today... two for new Chinese Allegiance members to get them to a 14 Stat, which was sending them on the Helix Leveling road, and one to improve the QL of an existing QL 21 revolver he happened to have stashed away to 30, enabling it to be Named and improved by her.
I gathered she had already shot a bunch of things with it, and was just using his Grit to clean things up for now.
She wasn’t doing bad, working hard on the Zen gunmanship side of things, although the monstrous physical Stats she had certainly weren’t hurting her aim. Now it was a case of Precise Attack and Rapid Fire piling on penalties to hit, and still being able to hit everything.
It was noteworthy that the Way of Zen didn’t help you hit more; it made you miss less, i.e., it got rid of penalties, but it didn’t raise your ceiling. Distance penalties, fancy shot penalties, rapid-shooting penalties, Guns Akimbo penalties... Way of Zen helped mitigate all of them, and since rapid, distant shooting with great precision was the key to a ranged attacker, it basically applied almost all the time regardless.
Abruptly, she put his Grit back into the shoulder holster for it, and her face shifted with a marginal change in skin color to a Eurasian mix, and Idiot flipped out of its scabbard, growing to its normal size. The Sword was lifted for just a moment in a formal Chinese dueling style, and then she was darting to the attack.
I raised my eyes as the next Amazon started using Wind-style Swordplay, working on the lightfoot in the style of a Chinese jian-user.
Of course, Idiot was a Heavy Weapon made of laen-wrought adamantine now, and about as much a true finesse weapon as a brick. However, when your default Might is 52, using a Sword weighing twelve pounds that lightly without breaking your wrist is akin to wielding a table knife.
I just sat up there in the air and watched as she ran around, working on the speedy and agile lightfoot of Rising and Racing Winds, slicing off the heads of undead with ease and grace, charting where to go to weave in and among them while taking them down one after another.
Mmm. She had quite a way to go to get to Whirlwind Attack or a Storm of Steel, but Karma was Karma. Progress had to come from somewhere.
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It was an hour before they were all finished up. The two Priestesses were last, one working on a Cold Reserve of Ice Darts with the Grit, the other blowing Slot after Slot on Valence I healing spells she discharged through Idiot, until they were all gone.
I waited by Sleipner as Master Fred flickered back, Riding the Light, long golden hair chasing away the dark hair of the Priestess as an Oriental face melted into classic blonde bombshell.
“They all agreed so quickly?” I had to ask, offering a kiss for their cheek Master Fred accepted calmly. A dose of Wrath had already cleared away any sweat and smell.
“It didn’t take much sensory sharing to convince them, especially after our talk. They all want to get out and be doing something... and they’ve been watching as we took down the Cultivators, and what they’ve done to the normal people. They all loathe Cultivators, while the undead have just been a nuisance,” Master Fred replied calmly... in a fourteen-voice reverb.
“Understandable.” They’d not had to worry about undead, save for people who died before midnight not being incinerated and getting up and stumbling around... and the Rue Priestesses could actually control them, if the undead weren’t tied to a Shroud. Trapped in Hong Kong, they’d had one enemy to withstand, and so naturally hated them. “There’s a difference between seeing them, and seeing everything they do, however.”
“Yes. The utter subjugation, the mass conversions, the scale of the Qi-making Formations... and it is all designed to just keep going, keep marching on, until the whole world ends up that way.
“Without that Ward, they would’ve been overwhelmed long ago,” Master Fred agreed.
“If they’d turned to the planetar instead of Hell, Heaven would have been on their side, and they wouldn’t have sacrificed their best people to the Damn thing. They’d easily have been at least twice as strong as they ended up, instead of growing more and more reliant on the Ward and sacrificing more people to it.”
“That is also becoming painfully apparent to them. They were lied to on so many levels by the devils. They are hoping they burn a long time,” Master Fred nodded.
“I imagine it will take a year or more. It depends on how many others are sharing the load.” I hopped up on my seat, while Master Fred took the lower one, as normal. Sleipner rolled into motion smoothly as soon as we were set. “A Priestess of Hell can’t get Healing Reserve or Positive Edge. What is she hoping to accomplish?”
“The negative versions of them,” Master Fred replied calmly in their fourteen-layered voice. “It was how she fought against Cultivators when she had to. They had no special resistance to negative energy attacks. She is merely hoping to gain proficiency in both energy types, and interchange them.”