Chapter 18-467: Grading the Curve (2/2)
The Firewall Sweeps had simply continued all night along the Deadzone, consuming the stacking undead who built up along that edge, wiping them off repeatedly while I lagged behind and cleared off an even wider area of everything, including the incorporeals who could just fly up to avoid the Sweeps and watch them go by, even if they couldn’t do anything to stop them.
The Angels had been happy to simply Teleport back to the edge of the crowded area, shift one wall east as the Shroudzone shrank, and repeat the process on new arrivals. Shvaughn and Legion did the same, pretty much in tandem with the angels.
I had wiped a cool million incorporeals of all levels of strength at least, and probably ten times that in undead of all levels of power on the ground.
Perhaps tellingly, not one Dark Clergy had actually fallen in this whole campaign of ours, anywhere around the entire Shroud. Tens of millions of undead had fallen, many of them actually moved into the Ritual area ahead of time to help with trying to counter it, and instead were just set up for disaster.
The outer limit of the Shroud had retreated by over thirty miles in all directions. It didn’t push the area we’d Opened to the Sky back any further, of course, but it meant areas that had been in the Deadzone for over half a century were now totally free and clear, as were miles of area once inside the Shroud itself.
It was also the grindiest, highest-Karma, most endless fighting many of those here had experienced, save for the fighting on the Tibetan Plateau. There was a massive Karmic harvest that would be playing out for days and weeks for those under Ten, and even the Faux Tens would be grabbing at least a couple Levels in something here and there.
Briggs broke in on the Alliance /Overtell. -Well done, everyone. Before you go off to rest, there are tasks to be accomplished, most of which do NOT involve fighting. We need a primary road forced through the walls to bring in artillery and armored cavalry from the west. There are still thousands of Constructs and Possessed units in the areas vacated by the Shroud which need to be removed, and that should be done during the bright, bright light we have overhead. Those tasks are being allocated as we speak.
-The most elite Construct-killers, you are coming with me, and we are going to wipe away the cache the Shroudlord has in the Opened area. The Shroudlord didn’t release them, so it wants them to be a surprise at a later date. We are removing that surprise.
-Everyone take note that with the retreat of the Shroud, all those undead in the affected Deadzones and Shroudzone areas have respawns redirected to the leading limit of the Deadzone. When dusk comes, those areas are going to be VERY packed in any area they were not wiped from. If you were wondering why we were staggering so many of your combat areas, now you know! When they pop up, exterminate them! Your new assignments for the coming night are being passed down.
-If you need Leveling advice or Naming advice, send it up and we’ll send it back down. High Karma, high risk. Don’t waste this. Yes, goldweight off this is scarce. Focus on your Weapons and yourself. It all comes back in time.
-Again, well done and good work. No time to be tired. There’s more work to be done before dusk. Prove you deserve to be Tens, and get it all done!-
As he was a Ten with some nasty impressive Depth, his words actually held a tremendous amount of weight, not to mention he was the most impressive Warlord on the planet. All the fighting Monarchs and Warlords just went green with envy and knuckled under when Briggs was around, it wasn’t even a contest.
I just nodded as I floated through the air on flaming jet and silver wings. I’d been allocated to helping make a road, no Mapping today. As I’d finished up the entire continent just before the Ritual, taking that day off was nothing much.
I set down on the wall, and ReachVivic Dawnstopped Double-Widened Shaping Stone VIII renewed itself and went down into the cement and gravel composite wall underneath me. Three thousand cubic feet of stone, earth, dirt, and variations thereof collapsed beneath me, flowing out into an opening in the wall as smoothly as if it had all just melted, widening out and forming into a smooth, wide open path through the wall, starting right at the edge of the Deadzone.
Other teams were locating the ‘swingblocks’ the undead had worked into the walls, triggering them permanently. The few who could Dawnstop and Shape Stone on a large scale were doing much the same as me, albeit at a slower pace.
Legion and Shvaughn were severing the walls at ground level with that method and the appropriate width, then either tossing them out of the way or dragging them aside, as they were able to. Teams with someone with just Dawnstopped Stone Shape could do the same if they had enough muscle to push the sections of the wall aside, and with this many Powered on the field, that wasn’t an issue.
Being able to Summon Earth Elementals or Treants or Jotuns or anything else would have helped tons, but I was perfectly happy not to use Summons if the Shroudlord couldn’t, or this fight would never end.
There were a lot of drudgework openings to make in this endless field of walls, but there were also tons of people to talk to as I did it.
The most important for the moment was The Mick. -Well, you throne-raiding upstart of a royal aspirant, how did it go?- I /asked him.
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Kiev, or what remained of it, stood exposed under the sun. The Mick had no knowledge of it, or its ancient buildings, and what history he knew of it his girl had taught him. Nothing about the ancient capital of the Ukraine struck much of a chord with him, but that was not true with Amaretta.
Ten miles to the south of the city had been the manor estate of her family. It was along that section of the battle line that the Blood of the Irish had been deployed, and very notably a whole lot of Blakhamars.
Even Old Man Hank himself was here. So were thousands of dwarves and men from across Europe and America, fighting behind the Blakhamar name, and that had been some impressive muscle, to say the least.
Many of them had lived in these lands when the undead came. The undead they’d been killing might have been their enslaved kin, and more than one instance of a spectre, phantom, ghost, or wraith that was the cursed soul of an old loved one had been recognized among those they’d slain.