Chapter 17-460: The Final Phases (2/2)

We had that bacteria now. Evolving them to feed on Energized oil was the job. The lab had access to one of my thoughtstreams, and several Druids to wield the evolutionary control needed to do the job.

Oil didn’t Energize to anything but Death or Water well. If it did Earth, it turned to coal. If it did Fire, it blew up. If it did Water, it gradually dissipated as it lost its oily character. The darkseas and Deepseas might have partially formed from oil deposits going Water and draining away.

Modifying E. coli to eat natural oil was actually not a big step, especially in a magical universe where it could mutate, potentially forming oozes, slimes, and jellies of various types.

But those things were going to form anyway, echoes of Shoggoth genes drifting around and stuff. The Black Blood was a disaster waiting to happen, and getting rid of it far more important than keeping it around. There were races out there that would clean off the planet just to get access to large quantities of Black Blood, so making sure they didn’t, by the simple factor of not having any to take, was much more valuable than using it as a resource of our own.

Bacteria live and die fast, and with Alchemists and Druids cooperating to hasten and direct the evolutionary cycle, and my 12 Ranks in both to draw on, they’d rampaged through the science and alchemy of the whole thing to make cultures of bacteria keyed to both the core design of hydrocarbonic oil, and specific varieties thereof. West Texas Crude and Aramco Standard had very different characteristics, after all.

The bacteria couldn’t produce vivus, but they could attract it if it was close by, and use it to energetically attack and digest the Black Blood, rapidly breaking down it and the surrounding oil into component elements and organic compounds, the latter of which would doubtless have a tendency to turn into oozes or puddings or something if they could. But if the hydrogen and oxygen lit off down there, it would help keep them under control. We’d just have to be ready for them... but it was a load better than getting the planet glassed.

We didn’t ask permission from the wealthy or powerful to do this, as this might harm their interests. If they knew ahead of time, they’d try to push the costs off on someone else by whatever methods they could, if the sheer reluctance to stop oil production was any clue.

I had touched the coasts of the entire world by now, crisscrossed North America, and was doing Asia. I had definitely crossed over all the underwater oil sites, and knew where they all were.

So, added to my daily duties was visiting all those places and unleashing some hungry E. coli on the black goo, letting the power of multiplying life and time do the job we were unable to do ourselves. Establishing vivic lamps near some of the sites to conduct vivus through the mass, forming a chain of life to those Black Blood accumulations, was also part of the plan, but that was quietly set up and executed by other Brotherly parties.

Eating away the death in the air was never a bad thing, after all. We just had to scoop out a room below ground, place the braziers, and seal them back up so some enterprising soul didn’t walk off with them for their own enrichment, which was considered pretty much a given if we didn’t.

And so, every day I put down a dozen or more of these things in different places, and the hungry little fellows started eating, making more of themselves, dying, and eating more... and the oil began to go away.

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The two high-end concealment magicks are Illusion and Transmutation. All the schools can play at the job, but those were the big two, covering functional invisibility and perfect camouflage between them.

A simple See the Invisible, a II Valence Divination, worked totally well against invisibility effects up through V, which showed how difficult making invisibility work was. The lack of need for anything above IV meant nobody ever Raised the effect, unless they were invoking True Sight or something... which had a very short range compared to See the Invisible’s full visual range.

Casting Invisibility at effectively VIII was Seeming, a powerful combination of illusion and invisibility effects that wiped you from sight and overlaid you with whatever was supposed to be there. So, not only were you effectively perfectly transparent, it overlaid you with an illusion of a clear space that transmitted the appropriate visual image to whoever was looking at you, like a camouflage cloak.

Evading other senses via Astral Ward flummoxing routine Detects was another factor, and the Darkstalker Feat extending the ability of Stealth to mask you against non-standard, non-magical senses, like tremblesense, lateral lines, infravision, and the like, was all part of the kit, too.

Then, you just shrink yourself down to make yourself harder to see. Sure, powerful senses can detect grains of sand if they focus... but if all you are doing is scanning passively, finding something suspicious is much harder if what you are looking for is small.

Accordingly, I was a foot tall, about the size of a pixie, as I Stone Shaped a tunnel to the surface. I first moved horizontally to almost directly under the reported location of the fallen Deathgate from all those years ago, and then straight up.

I could Shape over 3000 cubic feet every six seconds once the VIII Valence opened for duty. I had gonzo Spell Pool to pay for Widen VI to add to the base spell, and that meant I could make a tunnel a foot across and three thousand feet long in but seconds, making traveling through the ground a speedy and easy thing to do.

The biggest things I would have to avoid were active Divinations, active Telepathy, and any actual spellcasting while I was in range of the Shroudlord. He’d sense me looking around, he’d sense the play of living thoughts crossing his own, and he’d sense the pull on magic, none of which I could mask. From there it was a Stealth vs. Perception check, and I wasn’t doing too bad at that angle, sitting at +61 against undead, and a nice +20 circumstance bonus for being invisible on top of that.

Unless I was really close to him, or rammed into something to draw his attention, I should be fine.

I felt the edge of the Shroudzone at twenty miles down, just deep enough to include Navar Nevrend about fifteen miles away. I was flying upwards quickly, enough tremblesense active through my Primal Ring to make sure I didn’t run into anything, and I was definitely scanning the ether to make sure some incorps weren’t sitting down here playing sentry, which was totally possible.

I was also sure he had buried sentries with tremblesense to detect diggers, but I wasn’t striking any surfaces to transmit vibrations, just opening and closing the earth and stone behind me. Unless I was dumb enough to wander into range of their tactical tremblesense, their passive seismic listening wasn’t going to register me.

Magic is so cheaty. I gave my Matrix a fond pat in appreciation for its brokenness.

I watched the depth indicators zip by as I ascended, watching through the ether and feeling through the earth to make sure some sentries weren’t posted here. I didn’t put it past him to have Grave Elementals or something to make use of, too... or rather, I was almost certain of it, but they shouldn’t be buried this deeply. As long as I didn’t get too close, and didn’t leave my tube of travel open, I should be fine...