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

We walked back out into the open sky of Rithwic. I took immediate comfort in being out of the constrained energy field and mana flows of the Retreat, back among living mana and the smells and sounds of life, even if it was of a ruined town emptied repeatedly of the living by the Fall and virindi purges happening regularly ever since.

“If Martine was around and the virindi knew it, they likely will interpret your breaking of their Wards as his action, especially with the feedback from your Spellflare,” Kris pointed out thoughtfully. “I handily doubt we have to worry about them rousing themselves to investigate.”

The Mick had been nice enough to fill us full of stories of Martine’s power when he was running about like a mad lab experiment, trying to cope with his forced evolution into a Prodigal, virindi-modified Human.

The virindi had done the same kind of mutating with multiple creatures and races, both as a race and by random individuals of the race, notably the renegade named Aerbax. Examples included Bonecrusher, the drudge who had wiped out Cragstone; Bobo, the Tusker King, and the false Bobo meant to replace him after he escaped; the banderling Harraag; the Shadow Kresovus who had kidnapped and replaced King Kresovus; an attempt to make more Tremendous Monugas out in the direlands; warping and mutating an Olthoi Queen; a Shadow Child made from the spirit of Kirenne Palacost, the nephew of Bael’Zharon; a mosswart named Bragara attempting to pawn itself off as a new god; and multiple Hea, ranging from Hea Rheaga to Hea Arantah and the warped Hea ‘gifted’ by the virindi with powers and authority over the Hea, and who had led their transformation as a race.

Martine had been by far the greatest accomplishment of them, turned into a being who could rival an ancient Empyrean basically overnight. The idea that we could handle such a powerful being, or more importantly, the one who had killed him, was a fanciful pipe dream at this point.

But that didn’t mean we couldn’t stealth the shit out of him, especially since he would likely have no knowledge of the existence of Forsaken like Briggs and Kris.

Likewise, the virindi weren’t going to test him, as Martine had been as powerful as the mightiest of them, killing scores whenever confronted with them. Rithwic was effectively free of virindi interference for the foreseeable future.

Now that we knew it, we could of course use this for a base. More importantly, we could use the Retreat as a base, and the fact it had subterranean farms that the simulacra no longer needed, was not a consideration, no, no. They’d been down in caves extending away and down from the Retreat proper, an area we hadn’t gone to without any good reason to do so, but certainly we could send scouts down to ascertain if they had been salvaged by Martine and were usable once again.

Protected food and water sources were always appreciated.

“How long do you reckon before you think you can survive a trip up into the Olthoi North?” I asked her directly.

“I’m pretty sure we could survive the overland portion of the journey without too much problem right now. Escaping notice by a post-Twenty Black-souled arse of an Empyrean Archmage… ugh. It’s taking a risk any way you look at it.”

“And he was a Summoner who spammed Elementals.” She patted her new Stone, while I fished out the coffer, opened it, and handed her another two of the fourteen raw Crystals we had. “One for Briggs, and one for me, please.”

Silently, she took them and much-too-sharp black nails that were Profound Weapons, guided by tremblesense for a huge circumstance modifier to the gemcutting check, went to work cleaning off the bristling fringes and extrusions to the proper Crystals.

In a few minutes, she handed me a Stone of my own to work into Crown as needed, and pocketed the one for Briggs. We didn’t have Elemental or Blackfire Stones for Briggs, which was unfortunate, but we were working on them.

The former Stones involved trips to the Elemental Vaults, and hey, we had Stones that would grant Elemental Slayer to the Weapons they were set in. Double damage to a specific foe was a nice effect we weren’t going to pass up, although we weren’t sure how it was going to work with spells, as yet. I was guessing +damage per die, not a straight doubling, but who knew?

The latter Stones meant a trip to Aerlinthe Island, and possibly confronting one of the greatest Empyrean Undead, Lady Aerefalle herself. Also something we were not too keen on pursuing at this point.

“Simulacra are timeless, so when we get back is when we get back to them. There’s no immediate need to hurry on the quest, so we add it to the list as something we can do.

“Optionally, we could farm it off to Oswald, and see how much he can find out.”

I considered that calmly. “He’d get, uh, first clear Karma, as it stands. Do you really want to give that up?”

Kris grimaced. “Dammit, no. But after six months of butchering grievvers, I only hit Ten. I need a LOT more Karma.”

“That’s just because you’re that awesome,” I sniffed, and she promptly hip-checked me, nearly knocking me over if I hadn’t slid away with the bump. “You have something in mind for the grinding, even if we succeed in pushing the Hea off Osteth.”

“Supposedly there’s an easily accessible, but very high-level olthoi Dungeon in Baishi.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it on my comment about what the fuck olthoi Dungeons were doing that far south. “Right… the four Matron Hives. Dungeons dropped conveniently right into towns so you could just wander over from the tavern and plunge yourself into intelligent belligerent insect hive-mind hell, and then stumble out to have a pint when you were all done slaughtering hordes of merciless loot-dropping superbugs.”

“Yeah.” Kris stretched out and cracked her neck. “I want to find out if I have what it takes to take on the tougher olthoi, if not the truly highest tier you only find in the North.”

“Or on the Olthoi Island,” I reminded her.

“Baby steps,” she nodded agreement. “We can work up to that when we start wiping their ecology out of the North, right?”

“With the Healing magic and ability to return people from the dead, even if it is expensive, we should have no problem working up a warhost that is capable of doing exactly that, without the karmic cost of whatever System the likes of the Hea and Gotrok are linked to that keeps them from improving themselves readily.”

“Minions that keep getting more powerful have ideas about not being minions anymore,” Kris commented knowingly.

“Horrible, I know. The servant becoming the master just is not permissible.”

Low-born Aluvians from common clans rising up to butcher blue-Bloods and become Emperor and Empress? No, no, not happening, people.

“All noble bloodlines tend to go back to warlords and bandit kings, as it were. We just took the traditional road to power, and the entrenched power structure forgets that so much,” she smiled cheerfully.

“You’re going to make Borelean nervous saying stuff like that.”

“He’s only a High King as long as the people say he is, and not a moment longer,” she sniffed. “Ready for a run to Baishi?”

“We have lived-lines less than twenty miles from it, stemming from the Soushi advance. Given that, I can drop us there and we can probably be there inside an hour.” I glanced east tellingly. “Update Briggs and ask if we’re needed, and moreso, if we should be there if we aren’t. Us going off investigating is important, but to a lot of the soldiers, it’s gaffing the important stuff for fun adventuring.”

“True. Let me clear it, and promise I won’t stay long regardless.”

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Brilliant was known as The Dragonslaying Enchantment among high-end Weapon wielders. It was a four-Slot Weapon Enhancement that turned a Weapon into a thing of solid light, and largely ignored most Natural Armor.

When a creature has +20 of Natural Armor, better than wearing a coat of adamantine steel, getting that cut right down to nothing made them hugely vulnerable, as a lot of dragons found out when facing warriors with Weapons that looked to be made out of solid light.

These olthoi were somewhat similar. They had carapaces as hard as steel, and were hugely resistant to elemental damage. Their carapaces pointedly were a bit brittle, and there were lots of gaps and seams to poke through, but the shells themselves defied slashing and hacking attacks, too.

However, if you could ignore the armor, then hacking was Sooper Effective.

Which was good, because the bastard things had obscene truckloads of Health.

I really, really loathed the atmosphere of the place, especially the way their alien ecology warped the mana in the air and the way their secretions covered up the stone so I couldn’t access it. I really, REALLY wanted to douse everything here in vivus, shut everything down, fill the hole in the ground in, and be done with the place.

Kris, on the other hand, was laughing manically non-stop, the notes of it pinging on the auditory membranes of the olthoi, and whatever these Summons were using for a hivemind was registering it and associating it with slaughter.

She had two Shields out, because she had no choice. There were too many of the walking beetles with their plunging pedipalps, cutting pincers, and acid-spitting, and she had to block too many attacks. Those attacks could chip into stone easily, the edges of them charged with magic or psi or something, and crashing and bashing them aside was about the only way to survive fighting these things.

She also had to rip out all the damage combos she could in endless fashion to advance into them with Quaver, her Arakne Arms managing the Shields as Lost Light swirled in flicker-quick cuts of unrelenting speed and terrifying slashing force. Cut apart from inside, the acid blood of the olthoi exploded out internally and they collapsed into steaming corpses leaking sizzling fluids upon the resin-streaked floor. Acids that could sear stone and steel did nothing to the hardened goo before the corpses discorporated, happily not building up.

They had sick amounts of magic resistance, sitting at least at 36, something a Twenty who didn’t invest heavily in Spell Penetration would almost never have been able to get through. The only thing I could land reliably that was of use was Shards, and so I was pummeling them.

As Shards ignored the protective effects of their carapaces, it turned out I could use the Bludgeon, Piercing, or Slashing variants with basically equal results, slamming internal damage into them to start the internal bleeding process which killed them with their own acidic blood liquefying their organs.

2300 bloody Health on the things! One of them could take a full Shard volley to the face and live through it!