Chapter 10-320: Marching to Death (1/2)

Update: The First Day ebook SHOULD be out on the 15th, but now Amazon has been nice enough to inform us that they need 3 days to clear the EIN for it with the IRS. Yes. Mmm. So timely. Here's hoping for no delay.

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My a-Mastery-Tier-a-Day-Keeps-the-Levels-Away advances continued, moving from Perception to Stealth +1’s per day, topping out at Five like normal, moving onto the next in an order I could vaguely influence. For instance, my Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Intimidate Tiers had all been maxed out before the much more combat-applicable Perception and Stealth. Why? Because at this stage of the game, growing my Allegiance and influence was actually of primary importance, and even if I didn’t need to be immediately available to do such a thing, those modifiers made working and leading my Allegiance ever easier.

The only reason to up my Stealth and Perception modifiers was if I was going to be going up against stuff with equally monstrous modifiers. That the Shroud was making sure I had them was definitely a warning for some of the stuff I still had to fight... which probably wasn’t inside the lesser Shroudzones, but only the big one in Russia.

Something to think about.

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In the meantime, we were blowing the shit out of tons of undead who, trapped inside their Dome to serve as power supply to their masters, who were themselves chained and churning out the Death Qi, couldn’t do anything about it but be served up as sacrifices to power-leveling Chinese feeding their Weapons, and one silly Magos getting her rep counts in.

There was one abortive attempt by the Daoists to come out and stop us. Abortive, because the first twenty-five of them to breach the Inner Dome blew apart into vivic fireballs, raging eagerly in midair there for a full five seconds as they were completely consumed, rich in Death Qi and all that.

The ones following behind naturally decided that discretion was the better part of not committing suicide, and retreated back inside their little Dome.

Perhaps the most clever among them realized their Dome was actually a convenient corral, a self-made fence for a ranch delivering great Karma to the hungry?

Were they watching the numbers of vengeful Chinese and hungry Tomb Clans growing every day, while their own numbers remained stagnant? Were they hearing the insipid excuses from their fellow Cultivators about gathering together to break the siege, now that we were here? Alas, they didn’t know that every Cultivator incursion within thirty leagues was an immediate alarm to me, and the Chinese moved out to get ready for them... or I wandered over that way after rep counts.

Commander Haru’Ara could tow a bunch of people on Disks very quickly, and had taken to fighting Cultivators with a will. Capable of wielding some excessively powerful spells for emergencies, and having copious amounts of Warlording experience, he watched over the Purgers as they ambushed infiltrators and scouts time and again, and vivus reclaimed the Land from the odious pervasiveness of Qi.

These Daoists had literally painted themselves into a corner, thinking themselves invulnerable and that they’d ride the super-abundant Death Qi to great power... only to find their great power and wonderful environment didn’t actually mean all that much to me.

It was interesting how none of their Tens and post-Tens came out to mess with me, either. I guess watching their minions taking a Chained Split Shardray to their faces and blowing apart with such hungry enthusiasm was fine-tuning their sense of invincibility, and with such powerful protection at work for them, they naturally couldn’t breach it very readily with ranged attacks from inside.

I really did want them to try protective Shields and other stuff to protect them, and watch what the combination of a Spellflare and Shardray did to their sense of superiority.

But, no. Instead, they did what encircled and desperate people who are all going to die do, and started looking for help. Hey, the Buddhists could do it, so why couldn’t they, being far superior Daoists, do the same thing?

So we looked on from the outside as they began some massive Summoning Ritual, meant to bring in help of some sort or another from elsewhere.

I was actually REALLY amused by this. These Daoists didn’t have a church-like organization, unlike the Nirvanic Mantra, which was based in its own separate sphere. Sure, there were higher Realms of Cultivators, who’d walled off the rest of Creation from their private realms so they could rule over everything and butcher one another as they wished, but the direct ties and chains of control and information just weren’t there, especially with the Sects in the way.

Did they think that the truly powerful beings among them were immune to the effects of the Shroud? I found that pretty damn arrogant... and totally believable with the level of self-conceit and lack of information these bastards had.

Of course, they thought their Qi arts were totally superior to ours, until it was proven to them that, being an inferior blend of mana and chi, their Qi was totally susceptible to the effects of both powers, so things like Spell Resistance and Dispel Magic worked perfectly well against them.

Well, I didn’t know how much that knowledge had actually spread, given how surprised the Cultivators were to find out that our measly inferior arts could directly counteract their own, right before they tended to die to them.

Idiots.

Okay, they were pulling in something from outside, using Death Qi. I had to smile, especially as I saw the Shroudzone above them thickening. It had been shrinking rapidly as we offed hundreds of thousands of undead every day, but now was thickening and churning as power was pumped into the sky, bending the Shroud, looking for something beyond to bring in and succor them.

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“Those total retards,” Briggs murmured, watching the long pillar of black energy extending up into the churning mass of the Shroud above Beijing. “Do they not realize how the Shroud actually works?”

“Mmmm, no, probably not. In their very limited experience, the Shroud works on undead, specifically Dark Clergy who have evolved out of undead,” I informed him. “Maybe they have word of Fiends being enslaved under them, but nothing like, oh, Sama’s revelation that an incoming balor ended up a Shroudlord,” I mused for him.

The Shroud was not that picky. It would take for a Shroudlord ANYTHING that satisfied the requirements of Death, Negative Energy, Evil, Power, and Not Mortal.

In fact, if the most powerful Death Cultivator in there had actually figured out how, he could have directly replaced the Shroudlord he had enslaved there, started drawing power right off the Shroud... and forever enslaved himself to it, and possibly to the Curse of the Sun.