Chapter 18-476: The Dead March Goes Grey (1/2)

It was February 15, 2021. The Map of the World was largely complete.

I didn’t do the Hollow World, leaving that task for others in the future, a downtime play for Azaia and others reaching higher Levels.

There wasn’t the time left to do so.

Its Pattern had to be nearing completion, and through the waiting Pyramid sitting in a fold of space doing naught, I could feel the thrumming in the ley lines around it, starting to gather, and to Call.

It was now time to seriously PUSH.

Briggs and his people had pushed back the Shroudzone another hundred miles in radius, leaving hundreds more of the endless Walls wrapping the dark clouds standing there cold and empty, holes punched through them as the Deadzone pulled back, and back, and back.

Everyone had seen the storm of crimson hate lightning crawl across the Shroud, presumably when it realized that its armories of Constructs had been found and destroyed. Yay for Divinatory Obfuscation concealing the fact for days. It had likely been forced to dispatch another Construct to one of the isolated storehouses we weren’t monitoring all that closely to find out what had happened.

There were still hundreds of millions of undead left to kill, but that was fine. We had a huge battle line to face them on, and they couldn’t occupy or march out into the Deadzone anymore. They could try to and did set up traps and ambushes in the Shroudzone as we pushed forwards, but a sallying attempt into the Deadzones generally didn’t take place, as anything that might be threatened by such a move was very good at running away... and I, I was very good at getting there, especially if massive numbers of incorporeals were involved.

As far as the Void Brothers could tell, every major and most of the minor cephalid bases had been destroyed and fed to vivus. All of the drow major cities, and all the minor settlements that Legion could track down linked to them, were now empty of everything other than ex-slaves.

Over a thousand haror were now in Ælfheim, including three dozen adults, impressively enough. They were a bit out of sorts after their homes were completely wiped out, but the ruthlessness of their homelands came out in their pragmatism as they quickly adapted to the surface realm and the strange elves there, and began to build something new.

The effect of Legion carrying around so many souls was so pronounced that everyone pretty much forgot they’d ever not looked like they did now. Going through multiple rounds of Atonement had tempered them like the finest alloy, and if over half of the new souls couldn’t take the price of forgiveness, it was still far better than all of them.

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My Mapping was done, I was on Shroudzone duty now, and I was going to force the Shroudlord into action, make him spend his trump card now, or never spend it at all.

At least half the native dead of Russia had already been expended against us. They had taken to firing real artillery from the distance, hoping for some kills, and helpfully giving our own vastly superior artillery something to shoot at.

I, I went out there and slaughtered everything I could as fast as I could. I started with the thickest numbers of incorporeals that I could find, and proceeded on from there.

Shardchains filled the skies with arcing jetsilvers streaks as flying Casters towing shooters trailed behind me and cleaned up my leavings. Vivus erupted over dozens of acres at a time on the earth and in the sky, and I killed every single damn thing I could.

Our Opening of the Sky Ritual had proven that we could push back the Shroud many miles if given targets who couldn’t fight back, and we could slaughter them extremely quickly. Now we were gathered up against numbers of undead who could fight back... but to me, that didn’t matter. They were just victims who couldn’t reach me, there to be harvested as I sought them out.

I killed everything that I could fast, and the literal thousands of people trailing after me cleaned up any survivors, Constructs, or the like. The infantry line raged ahead, pinning defenders in place as I swept past behind them, and the undead were obliterated, unable to shoot me at the distance I was killing them at, only able to wait as winding Shards and bending Chains Seeking them sniffed them out in their tunnels and cul-de-sacs and trenches and walls, and killed them all.

My kill totals rose very rapidly indeed. I was absolutely merciless, and if that meant Linejumping across the horizon to continue the slaughter by myself while those trailing me turned back to support the infantry and mechanized cavalry line blowing a path forward, that was fine.

Above us, the Shroudzone was again retreating as undead died in massive numbers.

The more the undead came and converged on me, the more Congregants filled the air with negative energy blasts, and the more incorporeals wailed and tried to surround me... the faster everything died.

Aelryinth had never really unloaded like this. In ideal circumstances, he would just serve as another ranged attacker for the push, letting his juniors reap the Karma and experience of the fighting, satisfied with the Glory Award and the pass-up coming from below as he waited in support and reserve against disasters. There had never been this kind of total need for obliteration... until he went to Pentara, and top-end slaughter was the name of the game.

My kill totals climbed and climbed, and kept going. I didn’t care where the undead were; I went to where there were more of them, and they died, filling the sky with rainbows and white, and covering the ground in vivic fire that blazed for a long time after I left.

Those fighting below watched the Shroud recede visibly, faster than they themselves were advancing. All around the Shroud, the many forces were trying to kill undead as fast as they could, sending a message in fire and vivus, the front as wide as we could make it so we could kill as many as possible, leaving the undead fighting outside the Shroud as it retreated above them.

Outside it was important, as my kill totals rapidly passed a million, two million, three...

I was going further into the Shroudzone, deeper than anyone had ever gone while still living, reaving as I did. The undead seemed to be shocked when I flashed in above them and unloaded, the first reaction of their commanders being to turn and fire at me, and as their slow-witted troops followed suit, they died as the Shards came streaming down and exploded on the targets they’d made of themselves.