Chapter 9-282: Killing Royally (2/2)
I didn’t have to worry about the Warlords or any of their forces following me through an active Shroudzone. I warned them that they didn’t want to get anywhere near Bombay, or they were going to kneel down in homage and worship and present their throats to be cut in remorse for their unclean status as demon-cursed individuals. The Buddhists would surely remorsefully forgive them as they complied with the request.
I also didn’t miss the pillars of Light extending up through the Haze. They were bringing in reinforcements urgently to deal with me.
That didn’t bother me, either, as I simply roved the whole province outside the city, methodically destroying their Shrine Formations, starting the destruction of the Qi they needed to keep that Dome going, and for their precious Buddhas to use and live on. A Dome that big had to use a lot of power, and Qi was not the primary energy of the environment, so it did not replenish itself.
All I had to do was get it consumed faster, ever faster, and what was that Dome going to have to use against me when I closed in?
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They tried to ambush me exactly once.
They probably could have avoided discovery by anything resembling normal Divinatory means, but really, the Arhat in charge had Qi swirling about it like a tornado, and its escorts of devic guards, lesser Enlightened, and the like were like a huge vortex of bright, shiny filth upon the Land. I couldn’t see what was making it, but it was freaking impossible to miss just by the ‘noise’ of its existence.
The Land found it totally revolting, after all.
Their problem was that my Commune wth Nature stretched out to ninety miles in radius, which was waaaaay further than they could see, even gathered up there on top of the Dome to survey the whole area. I also had a Citybound sitting right here with me, who could talk to Bombay and make sure I could see the entire city ‘naturally’, too. Yay, Eldritch Theurgy!
Bombay was half-frothing nuts, torn between submission to the Light bearing down on it and trying to make it subservient, and trying to resist such utter alien domination with all its strength.
My flames lighting up all those Shrine Formations helped bunches, letting it know there was something out there fighting the Qi and the monstrous aliens who had descended upon it. It was plenty happy to work with the magic and let me know what was going on, although the area under the big Dome was one big slime-out, like having a downspout full of shit jammed down your throat and someone sitting there with a grinning bastard’s hand on the lever to open it up.
Mental flossing encouraged when working with high-end Divinations, thank you...
Also, they gave things up when they left some acolytes and disciples to guard some of the Shrines. Seriously, millions of them were abandoning their landscapes, killing off the humans they’d shepherded, and it wouldn’t strike me as unusual that they’d left some guards here?
Oh, they must have thought I didn’t know about Divine Sense, or how acute their eyes could be.
Ha-ha, funny. I could do 50x just with Eagle Eyes at III, and at V it was upgraded to a max of 100x. I could definitely look across twenty miles and see the fat fuck and his entourage sitting up on the top of the Dome, trying to follow me.
Oh, yes, Astral Ward works perfectly against your ‘divine sense’, dumbkopfs...
They wanted to narrow down where I was, which wasn’t too hard with the trail of vivisizing Shrine Formations I was leaving behind me. Then they could come on out here and surround me, beat me down in fine fashion, and dispose of the problem I represented, if by nothing else than watching the bright lights of me blasting the heck out of everything vile they were leaving behind.
They hadn’t bothered to kill all the local humans, probably not wanting to deal with millions of undead beating on their Dome who wouldn’t die, and who would only get tougher as they were resurrected.
Naturally I toyed with the Buddhists, crisscrossing back and forth in an ever-closing circle around them, surrounding them in pinpoints of vivic fire which devoured the slime in the air ever more quickly and cut into their supply.
Seriously, I could have just sat out there and waited for them, but where was the fun in that?
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They made their move in a finely laid-out Shrine some ten miles from the looming golden light of their Dome, Teleporting into the grounds of the place in a nice circle. They saw the figures there shooting out streams of Shards into the hapless defenders inside and blowing them apart. They immediately rose into the air and let loose with everything in a perfectly-coordinated strike.
Rains of photonic swords. Sweeping titanic palms hammering down. Walls of spinning chakra circles. Cutting beams of Light, thunderous incantations coming down like paens of doom to rock the mind and soul.
It looked very impressive from well outside the walls where we sitting, not forty yards beyond them.
Why NOT spend illusions at every assault point, Projected Images that can conduct spells, when the acolytes here were happy to replace them for me?
You have to be fairly close for your True Vision of the universe to be able to pick out an adept Illusion. Too bad, so sad, you couldn’t get that close, because we routinely moved with an Interdiction so we couldn’t be whiz-banged like this.
And you know, attacking out from the center of an encirclement is annoying. Coming in from the outside and sweeping up the thin line of the attackers wasn’t that hard at all.