Chapter 10-305 - A Guarantee to Ten (1/2)

I waited just long enough for it to become undead, its soul to be shackled and bound to the Shroud, its total faith in the Mantra completely subverted... and, it being a Twenty, it instantly started a war for control of the Dead March here with the already-invested Dark Bishop, who had unprecedented solidarity of purpose with its Ministers in their goal to subjugate and enslave this Dark Arhat.

That was when I started killing everything, because now it was ALL undead. The Dome had collapsed long ago, the place was filled with negative energy, and now all my undead-destroying magic was pretty much online and ready to rumble.

Rumble it did.

There were over a million undead. They didn’t last ten minutes.

Twinned Arcane Fusions sent off volleys of Chained Bursting Repeating Shards, ripping through the masses of swarming undead, while the secondary blasts harvested back the ki necessary to continue empowering it all. Azaia picked off Congregant survivors with Legion empowering her Shards, while two Mighty Grits boomed and undead skulls exploded constantly.

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When Azaia and Legion had gone into their first Shroudzone, I had waited nearby, working on a Ring of Sustenance for Azaia. I handed it over when she was done, mine apprentice nearly dropping from fatigue as the morning arrived.

She sighed and made sure to let her old Levels go as she took Sorcerer to Four immediately, and confirmed it as her Primary Class. Naturally, she had taken Sustained Effort before the sun rose.

The Feat she took afterwards was Wand as Staff, which immediately turned the one Shard per charge of the Wands she was using into three... with all the Kickers riding on them, of course.

There were more Feats after that, more Levels, raising her Spell Power, but those lower Levels could accumulate rapidly, and establishing a true Foundation was not going to be quick. There were Classes she could do without, of course, and others that she was really going to need.

Her ideal end goal was Master Archtheurge of the Seven Traditions. To do that she needed to reach a Ten-equivalent in all Seven primary Traditions. Since there was no active Soul Magic here, that also meant Ten in Arcane Fist.

It would make her virtually unassailable in terms of spell power, and she should be able to surpass me if she got the Title.

A big fight like this was simply a Karmic surge to her, guaranteeing that she could reach Ten, and then she’d simply have to reinforce it to make sure she could get everything.

There were at least eight other cities around, several of them much larger than Lucknow, including Delhi and Karachi among others. Getting her the Karma wasn’t going to be a problem, and she was getting the experience in wielding magic and rep counts needed to make her truly good at this.

I had told her about the Ghost-Eating Ki trick, and my belief that it wouldn’t work once the influence of the Shroud wasn’t there, so it wasn’t a good thing to rely on. She agreed, which meant she was going to have to rely on a lot of Wands for the endless firepower, and building up her Ki stores to support her spellcasting.

I had programmed Ki Mastery and Death Ward into her Ring, along with SacredProtection, tying it to her Oath so she could empower it on the run every day, just like she was building up her Staff Nimbus. There was no chance at all she would not get to Ten and do her Double Helix.

Getting more Shard Wands wasn’t an issue, either. I could charge one up in less than a minute, one charge per Shard I Cast. She could then use Wand as Staff to turn each Shard into three, four, or more as her Shardcasting power increased.

When her own Caster Level was high enough, she’d be able to do much the same, but that was going to take some time, as she had a lot of Levels to earn, Feats and Masteries to take, and Karma to acquire.

I was helping with the Karma and the guidance.

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The Dark Arhat was the last to die, because I wanted it to see all its power evaporate twice. Sure, it was independently powerful as an undead, unlike the Dark Clergy that had lit off... and which Azaia had lifted a crystalline Nimbus out of when the ex-Dark Bishop blew to the skies and cleared off the Shroud above entirely, revealing the stars above looking down on the miserable Arhat.

Both of Master Fred’s Grits were crystalline now, too, and Idiot had a vein of laen running through it. Multiple Dark Clergy lighting off is a nice opportunity for free Empowerments of your Gear, after all.

The Dark Arhat’s jovial smile was now a rather horrid grimace as it looked at us there. It was blasted and ravaged by vivic energy, unable to heal itself or purify away the Curse magic of the Blooding. It couldn’t fly, it couldn’t dimension-skip, and there were no remaining undead for it to command.

Legion got off Sleipner, popped their wings and horns, and went in to finish them Dark Angel-style.

It was Azaia’s first time seeing that, and she glanced at me in astonishment as Legion went to work on beating down the damned thing with overwhelming physical power. The Greyfield that should have protected it from more of our magic didn’t help it at all against them.

“Erinyes boosts. They’re sitting on a Strength of 60 and a Might of nearly 70.” We watched them rip off the Dark Arhat’s right leg, shove it down its throat to distract it a bit, and then literally carve into it, looking for the bullet that emanated the Greyfield. They hauled out a twenty-pound chunk of meat and inhuman guts, tossed it away, and the Arhat’s eyes went dead black in the light of Idiot igniting with some non-Heavenly Purity backing it hard.

The explosion of vivisized Qi as Legion cut the bastard into whole bunches of burning bits blew past us, and was offered up to the sky in further homage as I discreetly put the proper Circle into place around it. The Haze drew back further as the Shroudzone vanished entirely, opening up the night sky for a short period of time... although the bloody-red lightning was already bubbling at the edges of it.

Took care of the Qi in the area, too, which did wonders for by dose. Mithar, I dot sig od smellid da shid.

Azaia flipped open the Wand Chamber in Nimbus and withdrew the Wand; it crumbled to dust in her fingers after it exited the Staff. She calmly shoved in another length of charged-up, lightning-struck oak, and clicked the Wand Chamber shut.

“Could you have killed it?” Azaia asked quietly, as Legion was walking back with a crystalline skull, too broad and flat to be human, clutched in a red-nailed hand.

“Well, I wouldn’t have shot a Greyfielded bullet into it if I had intended to, but yes, there’s ways to wrap magic around a spell, make it Heavy, and blow the crap out of stuff inside Greyfields.”

“I have to learn that!” she exclaimed instantly.