Chapter 10-318: Another Town, and One More Show (2/2)

Which, naturally enough, was why I was here.

I rode into the camp, definitely attracting attention, but everybody knew who I was, and, given the shit they’d seen, they weren’t going to be put off by a mere flaming skeletal not-horse running along a foot above the ground.

I naturally had a lot of Blessings to distribute. There were a half-dozen very loyal Chinese who’d invested enough in Tatting that they could now make Sama’s Marks, which was a very not-small Investment in Skill Ranks, Feats, and Masteries. However, they were always busy, because Nulls weren’t limited to just one Mark, after all!

Me doing the initial Blessing saved one Tat per person, and got the recipient very quickly into the Markspace and the /tellepathic link that replaced an Allegiance /tell system for them.

They were basically all sworn under Briggs, although he could and did organize them under gifted commanders with potential Warlord talents, creating sub-Monarchs/Nobles to head up fighting companies with particular sets of skills or combinations thereof. The uncommon Sources were nominally ideal for that, but of course just because you were a Source didn’t mean you had the head to be a good commander. As often as not, Sources were just the strongest men in a company or platoon, and even that might not be true if they weren’t particularly strong to start with.

Such was the fact that average people were average in most ways. Even if they had been hardened and conditioned by a tough life, it didn’t make them Amazon-level in their Stats... although taking Forsaken Sorcerer Levels and the like so they could Nog their Stats up to at least 14 quickly was definitely a big thing for them.

Cultivators weren’t the only ones building for perfection, and the Chinese were definitely ready to push the point down their throats!

I spent an hour passing out hundreds of Blessings, mostly Constitution or Intellect. The instant +4 was a major benefit over Marks, which had to be Infused in fighting and combat towards their full power, a process that took over two weeks if they were fighting every day.

If they were Nulls, they could hold a lot of Marks, but only one Blessing.

Things to Invest in, after all.

But they weren’t the only ones working on Investing...

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I touched Clavus to the outer Dome, and as the Formation’s field snarled at me and tried to get through my Death Ward, my Argent Touch took the Force elements of its structure and blew them apart.

Silver and jet energies blew inward, vivic elements devouring the Death Qi running through the air, and I floated through the opening while it tried to reseal itself, getting a better look beyond the shadowy Formation that had been protecting what was beyond.

Oh, isn’t this cute...

A whole bunch of dead and glowing eyes turned up to look at me. I waited for some Congregants to let loose, or incorporeals to manifest, but nothing happened.

There was a flock of undead birds or something that came my way. Chained Swarmkiller Shards blew through them, and they became dissipating white feathers of vivus.

It looked like they’d surrounded the primary Dome for a mile around with a solid mass of undead, at least one per square meter. They were on the ground, atop ruined houses, covering roads and ditches and streets and plazas and pretty much damn near everything.

There were definitely a lot of them to be fighting, but they didn’t have any fliers, and no ranged attacks to speak of. There were some mutated monstrous varieties which were pretty strong if they got into a physical fight, but like I was doing that.

No, this was just an opportunity for me to get a lot more higher-Valence Rep Counts was all.

Expecting this, I had memorized an Arcane Fusion, a hard-set of combined Energize and Shards. Since it was hard-set, I got Rep Counts to fuel the Energize, and the Shards would regain my Ki for me. That meant I still had a Fastcast I could use to top off more Valence III’s and even IV’s with Residual Metamagic, working on Pair, Admixture, Top, or Repeat Spell.

I had literally millions of undead in a great big ring around the Inner Dome to work with, too. This was going to be useful to me for a long time.

I could also alternate with Fabricate, which most amusedly would get some of the work I was doing with rough gems done instantly if I fell behind.

So saying, I began to Energize stuff. LOTS of stuff. I wasn’t restricting myself to gems, although I was doing ten-goldweight gems as standards now, and I had a virtual hill of crap gemstones I was working on, purifying, assembling into greater stones, and making ready for some sudden upgrades in value and usability.

Naturally, I didn’t want the local lads to miss out on this fine, constant, readily accessible bonanza of packed undead. So, among the first gems I brought up was crap rubies purified and merged into a flawless ruby, said ruby then Energized to Fire to be worth twice its nominal value towards doing Fire stuff, and it paid for the Permanency on the Sudden Widened Full Holy Meta’d Wall of Fire Cast at 50+.

This particular Wall of Fire was once again anchored to a pair of Rods buried in the ground, blazing away merrily right at the edge of the Dome. I shattered the Dome in front of it with an Argent Touch, and instead of healing back, the Dome was instead eaten away everywhere the blazing thousand feet and more of the Wall touched, forming a huge burning gateway into the area of the Outer Dome.

That area also happened to be massively antithetical to undead, as in any that entered it promptly exploded in Banefire and all the fun stuff. It also was completely harmless to Good and Neutrals by design, so the Chinese warriors could enter, stay within the 20-foot killing zone of the Wall, or retreat back through it, where no undead there could possibly chase them, and they could open up on the undead to get their daily Karma fills.

They had a Shroudzone right in front of them. It only made sense to work it.