Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

I rose from the ground as the last of my Mana Pool filled up. While I had been drawing in some energy from it, the vivic mist had still spread literally everywhere now. It had crawled its way up the walls after the veins of unhealthy white and grey fungi, and chased after the veil of yellow-green stuff coating everything, too.

It didn’t so much consume them as drain them of whatever passed for the magic inside them, and they withered up and fell away, revealing the bare stone behind the softly falling mists as the vivus Burned.

It exposed a lot of bones all over the place, too, all Burning away cheerfully now, as well as the scattered remnants of crushed and broken gear.

I didn’t see anything magical at all, but Detect Precious Materials did ding as I took a walk up and down the area.

I paused by the heaped mound of agglomerated stuff that was blocking the other doorway out.

Vivic fires were creeping up it now, interfering with the spores it was sending up. That... probably was going to have consequences.

There was more minor jewelry buried among the cemented stuff on and within that mound, and the bones and flesh-fuel powering it all were falling apart.

I couldn’t bring myself to say it was a bad thing. I’d just have to deal with it.

The destruction of manufactured things was far too thorough to be anything but deliberate. Acid had done a lot of it, eroding away armor and weaponry into uselessness, while wood and leathers were simply decayed and used as food or fuel. Actually, there were specific mounds of decay, tapped into by both biosystems, where the various metals were being broken down, possibly as specific reagents for the whole process, which had a lot more to do with Weird Science and Alchemy than nature.

Thus why vivus was disassembling it. This stuff couldn’t exist without some form of magic powering it.

Out of pure need, I flicked up a Force Disk to carry all the stuff, and heaped my haul into it.

Disks were ubiquitous, probably the single most common utility item in Power of Ten, and back on Terra-Luna. If you didn’t have a metal one enchanted up and following you around all the time, you had the spell in memory so you could whip one up.

Three feet in diameter, slightly concave. It wasn’t a shield, and it could be hacked apart or shattered by strong blows without much problem... but even Cast from a I Valence it also carried a hundred pounds per Caster Level, it lasted a base one hour per CL, and it could both move slowly by itself, hovering above the ground using geomagnetism, or be ‘tied’ to the Caster or another person, and dragged along without using hands.

If you invested in the time, magic, and mastery of using it, it could do other things, like easily change shape, be ridden like a surfboard, become tougher and usable as a blocking tool, and so forth.

I just needed it to carry the coins of Air Gold I was finding, and all the fallen jewelry and minor gems that seemed to be all that remained of those who’d come before me.

A bit grimmer now, I slowly let that Slot recharge as I stepped towards the tunnel the ruling thrungus had come through, which the thick vivic mist was now slowly creeping along, like a lawn fire eating up leaves in the fall, sparking here or there as bones ignited in the mess and began to fall apart, destroying the fungus about them.

The tunnel was not as clear as the hallway outside, the trail a hard mat of mold and moss instead of the stone floor beneath. It curved left, then right, opening up into a larger room that I slowly moved up on, and paused at the entry to survey.

Um and ugh. Blugh. Blargh!

Another large room with supporting arches and cul-de-sacs in the back, repurposed for growing mushrooms.

Lots of mushrooms, with five ten-foot mounds heaped up around the room, and one massive mound in the middle of it, reaching towards a faint shred of light leaking through a narrow window out of reach above.

Mounds with a lot of white things jutting through them, and toadstools on them that wriggled and waved stunted, immature limbs.

There was a lot of haze from spores in the air, and the baby, planted thrungus were all wriggling in agitation, all of the mounds seemed to be lurching somewhat.

There were twelve smaller Hungry Thrungus around, doing... nothing. Not reacting to anything.

I could get off one Web if I needed to, although they were spaced some distance apart. They also... seemed to be a different color than the other toadstool folk, and the areas around them were surprisingly free of any fungi, even the stone underneath them visible.

And why were they emanating Summoning magic?

I slowly wound up three Darts, focused on the nearest one, and let fly with one Dart.

The Dart of lightning and force smashed into it and sent it tumbling awkwardly as the Kickers and Toppling did their thing.

The two thrungus nearest to it turned to look at me with exactly the same motions, then jiggered into motion, racing around the mounds and stands of mushrooms for me.

The others in the room? They didn’t react at all.

I waited until they covered half the distance between the one I’d sent tumbling, now getting stiffly back to its fibrous legs, and snapped the other two Darts off at them.

Both of them were clotheslined instantly by the impact, even as chunks of flesh were blasted off of them. I wound up two Darts with a flick of my wrist and wand, and the third Dart slowly cycled in as the first one looked at me again, then came running fearlessly to the fight.

I retreated out the entryway, out of sight of any other thrungus, moving backwards as the first one charged heedlessly for me.

It hit the entryway and started towards me just in time to take the Holy Banefire Kickers of the narrow crystal of violet lightning square between its vestigial eye-spots, and was knocked down again as its head sparked loudly and blew apart, spraying gray goo and fibers in all directions as toadstool and animated stem-body parted ways.

That seemed to excite the two I’d knocked down previously all the more, and they came running in as I retreated back to the curve. They were halfway down the hall when the Darts also took them between the eyespots, and they blew apart.

I lifted my eyes to watch the first one I’d killed dissolve into ectoplasm and vanish. Counting down six seconds between deaths, numbers two and three dissolved into goo and vapor that simply vanished into the Veil.

Summoned Monsters. Like, what the fuck? Why would there be Summoned Monsters in a fungi garden?

Fwoosh!

I heard the sound from the room, and paced cautiously back up to the doorway.

There was another Thrungus standing where the first one had been. I counted off, and fwoosh, fwoosh, in a swirl of rainbow particle effects, two more Summoned Thrungus appeared where the others had been standing. The three didn’t look exactly identical to those I’d killed, but it was VERY close.

I eyed the clear spot under the closest one’s crude legs. Was there some kind of automated Summoning effect that brought in basic copies of the local creatures? If so, it had to be based where they were standing.

The proper way to shut it down would simply be to vivisize the location, which would strengthen the Veil and shut down the Summoning of Astral Templates which most basic Summoning Magic consisted of. The vivus would feed off the ambient magic which powered the Summon, like a flame burning on the end of an oil lamp. Drawing in more oil just made the flame bigger for a moment.

Well, that I could do, at least.

-Killing it added to our Karma.-

I blinked at Mira’s note, looking at the glob of indigestible Karma we had, held back by investiture rules.

She was right, it had gone up.

Did that mean... I could just sit here, pop mushroom men, and gain Karma if I desired to?

The idea was surreal. Did the magic here really work that way?

Then again, I wasn’t going to get MUCH Karma, in time. As you got stronger both the relative value changed, as you needed so much more, and the absolute value changed, as you received less Karma for killing weak things, unless they were hugely Buffed, attacked in a mob that could actually threaten you, or something that actually made them a threat.

There were some experiments I wanted to test out, however.

But first, all those mounds were going to die. That meant vivus was going to eat their fuel, while I shot down anything around them. That probably meant the Summoning points were going to get shot down, and if that happened, too bad, so sad.

Mmm, maybe shoot the first trio again...

---

After they dissipated this time, I waited for two whole minutes before the Summoning points flared, and more Thrungus popped into existence.

So, make note to self. If creature has been Summoned for a long time, there’s likely an energy build-up in the system, and a new Summons can be generated very quickly. Once a fresh Summons is dead, however, there’s a build-up before it is replaced.

It was possible the time delay was based on the level of Summoning Magic, but that could be equally misleading if it was in a location with a stronger ‘point’. I didn’t know what the underlying power supply was.

It did mean I didn’t have a whole lot of time to kill stuff, unless the vivus worked to shut down the Summoning points.

Best to get to work on that.

No mana needed, I just slammed the mounds with Vivic Darts and set them on misting unwhite fire. The larger growing thrungus I just picked off with Fire Darts, one by one, and if it took a while to do so, well, I was patient, had time, and the Summoned creatures were not programmed to investigate odd things happening to the landscape, so they weren’t reacting to the emergency and alarm spores and anything else in the air.

More to point, when vivus withered the ‘shrooms and stuff, the gunk became pretty Burnable. As the vivus expanded towards the Summoning points, I started picking off the silent, unmoving Summons there meant to guard against things.

It was easier to draw their attention physically, get recognized as a hostile, then pull them out of activation range of the others, and it was also safer overall. I stepped up in range, the Summons noticed me, turned, and didn’t puff out any warning spores, just heading for me.

Some backwards trotting, and bam, hit it with Lightning Darts and knock it over, then hit it again as it got up, so the Kickers could reset. Simultaneous hits meant the Kickers only went off once, and the Kickers were what was finishing these things for me.

Hence, I needed more Kicker damage. Well, needed more ALL damage, really...