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

“We haven’t even entered any of the truly legendary high-Level Dungeons or fighting areas, if what Lord Mick says is true, although the Frozen Valley is probably less desirable than it once was. Basically down to Frozen Wights, Bloodstones, and Frost Golums.” And Briggs and his boys up at Stonehold were exploiting that, with rather more than a few paramounts wanting to head up there and also take part in some old excitement… once they had more magical protections in place against the Frozen undead of Gellid, of course.

“The Matron Hives should take care of blooding the lads on olthoi,” she nodded, pointing. I stepped up on a Disk, rapping Crown against Quaver to pass control, and she headed back towards the sparks and flames and mists of the volcano blast area, replete with Elemental lights blazing and no doubt many Elementals trying to get free. “We just need to grab the other two so we’ve a clear and easily accessible progression.”

“Uziz and Khayyaban,” I recalled, as her gliding steps picked up effortless speed. The watching olthoi in the distance could see us go, but if they were following, it was very slow and more like investigating what had happened at the Mansion with the thick mist boiling over everything… and eating away all signs of olthoi ecology in the area, too, so they’d find it very uncomfortable to remain there.

“It’s hill country, on the border of the deserts the undead basically claim, so right on the edge of a new conflict zone. Unless we roll across the deserts and clean the undead out first, which we basically were going to do regardless.”

“After we dealt with the Gotrok.”

“Correct,” she confirmed. The renegade lugians needed to be dealt with, and were under increasing pressure as we tightened the noose around them, Sealed the landscape spawn points, and reduced their Summons to a mere tithe of what they had been able to command before to artificially swell their forces.

That, and their warriors not coming back when they died had dropped some lightning on their too-conductive heads, while our refusal to be baited into a fight where hidden armies of Lugian Summons would erupt out of mines, surround us, and annihilate us on their behalf was making them gnash their teeth.

“Let’s get your mana back, wait for night, and go do some investigating. I’ll add another stop: we need to check out Arwic.” We’d only run by it in the distance earlier, and gotten lucky with popping the Matron coming to move into the place.

Arwic had once been the big adventurer’s city of the Aluvians, and the busiest center of adventurer traffic in Dereth. Flattened by the Shades and rebuilt bigger and better, it had been abandoned like all the other cities during the Fall, with many of its buildings shattered and fallen from magical feedback stemming from the Wards about the city. The paramounts in particular spoke about rebuilding it wistfully, but the scouting reports were that the area was crawling with olthoi after the Hea had cleaned it out.

I considered that, and inclined my head. “The Olthoi Hunter?” I asked reasonably.

“Pretty powerful NPC, for all her low Levels, if she can instantly transform olthoi hides and carapaces into shields and armor, right?” Numerous examples of her craft had survived the Fall, although they needed alchemical skills to maintain and repair them now. Both Briggs and Kris had examined samples of all of them, and dearly wanted to know the methodology behind them, as the results were clearly superior to what Briggs had been able to work out for himself.

Like all the NPC’s, nobody knew her actual name, or how she was THE Olthoi Hunter, despite her Level, which was much too low to fight the more powerful olthoi successfully. Heck, the appellation should have gone to Queen Elysa, who had at least wounded and nearly killed the senior Olthoi Queen!

Established NPC’s were hard to get rid of, clearly tied to the System in some way, and even the undead had recognized that fact. If they were harmless and useful, the undead had only corrupted them into undead themselves, instead of slaughtering them and making sure they couldn’t respawn.

“Didn’t the Hea have some tales about some vengeful ghost killing the olthoi near Arwic?” I asked thoughtfully.

“Aye, that’s why I’m curious. It would be funny if the Olthoi Hunter was actually hunting the olthoi there, right?”

“Decked out in her own olthoi armor, no doubt…”

“I’d like to see for myself. But one thing at a time.”

“You’re so lucky you can Warlord from half the island away without missing a beat, and we can get to a needed location so fast as needed,” I sniffed.

“Bondmages for fun and profit!” she laughed at me.

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The Hellfire Elemental’s white-hot, or rather, blue-hot flames snuffed out as Quaver disrupted its force structure, and it dropped to puddles of Elemental fire, which rapidly dissipated back into the manafield and ground, leaving only scorched spots behind to indicate it had been there… and an array of glittering stones.

I scooped them up so Kris wouldn’t have to, shaking my head.

The biggest one was nearly the size of my fist. I flicked it over to her, and she nabbed it to examine closely.

It had been a head-sized chunk of burning Firestone and oozing Acidic energies, which she had taken upon herself to split apart to alleviate her boredom while I drew mana and we waited for nightfall.

The eruption of the Elementals was anticipated and dealt with coolly, one of each energy type popping up after she split the stone.

What was not anticipated was how minor gemstones seemed to be part of their makeup. Furthermore, Kris, being the perfectionist she was, had started carving down the two resulting stones, whittling away the dead areas and imperfections in the crystal… and more Elementals had spawned out of the stones she cut away, then dropped refined minor gemstones when she killed them off.

She was now holding up a fiery jacinth, swirling with purified Elemental energies, a clearly magical gemstone worth at least ten goldweight, twice that in Fire aspect. It matched the new glittering box-cut emerald also quietly seething with corrosive Acidic power.

The minor stones themselves in total added up to more than a goldweight of assorted stone types, all with a Fire or Acid bias doubling their value if used in such forms of magic.

Kris looked at me over the fortune in her palm, and our eyes mutually followed a complete circle looking at all the rocks around us, seething and spitting with so much imbued Elemental energy.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked shortly.

“That Gaerlan’s ego deserves a big fat kiss before we take his head?” I asked her quietly, helplessly counting lights and numbers.

We both stopped looking around as we settled onto the multi-colored lava spilling out of the Citadel Canyon a few miles away.

“Not only did he throw out a few zillion Elemental gemstones for us to scavenge, he gave us an active mine of them,” Kris said softly. “Do you think the arsehat knew what would happen?”

“Nothing I’ve heard about him indicates much in the manner of foresight. Maniacal monologuing, hatred of everyone, ambition for power, and underestimating short people seem to be the things I remember most about him,” I answered.

“So, gloating over the fact he may just have solved the goldweight problem for all Isparians is totally proper.”

“Oh, it is,” I agreed, shaking my head. “Even if the mining involves killing at least four True Elementals or larger.” Based on what had just happened.

“Not something for all the low Levels, true, but… loot drops!” She had to grin at the irony of it. The manifesting Elemental gathered up the discarded stones from the gemcutting and refined them into viable gemstones that regulated its form. We hadn’t found anything worth more than a hundred gold coins, a fifth of a goldweight, for value, but it was still money falling out of nowhere.

“And from what I can see, the olthoi aren’t scavenging them, they are just removing them. They probably discovered that cleaving them generated Elementals, and decided to just move them out of the way.” At least, that was what the olthoi on the mountainside seemed to be doing, shoving them into small stands and piles, and very obviously NOT taking them into their hives to scavenge and transform for their own uses. “I’m gathering they are antithetical to the olthoi ecology, and can’t be broken down by their mold, slime, and acid baths.”

“That’s a lot of money just sitting around,” Kris mentioned thoughtfully, her soulclaw, which she’d used to cut the stones, glittering over her black nails.

“And you need to be a master gemcutter AND an extremely skilled combatant to take advantage of it all. That’s not a common combination,” I pointed out.

“The Mick has been wondering what kind of trade skill he could be picking up that would be useful. He was leaning towards Whitesmithing, so he could triple the value of pyreal making Craftcoins in his downtime. I think I have a better idea for him.”

“Claiming and working that mine is going to be quite the adventure,” I mused, eyeing the matron hive sitting there like a swollen boil on the mountainside above it.

“There’s still three hours to sundown. Mind if we make a fortune during that time?”

I considered the downsides of having a metric arseload of goldweight to play with, instead of just Naming Karma, and nodded slowly. “I need to get started on my Primus, my Prime Elemental Command Ring. This is just perfect for doing so.”

Kris gave me a look, doubtless running over the Stats for such a thing in her head. “Mithar and His mighty Mutt, you can actually make one of those?” she finally asked.

I nodded again. “The important thing is the Elemental Command and the passive abilities. The triggered spells are mostly electives. I’d rather have four-way Elemental Command than Burning Hands on demand, but everything in time.

“It takes a full year of Karma to make a Prime Elemental Command Ring to completion, but only three months to get all the passives in place.” I inclined my head at the nearest chunk of too-energetic rock, fire and lightning chasing one another over its surface. “Given how the System works here, I imagine wearing one makes the Elementals regard you as one of their own, unless you attack them. We might even be able to talk to them, and if so, give them orders.”

Kris’ eyes narrowed. “An Elemental army could be VERY useful. Weren’t the people at that Crater place doing that?”

“Localized to their area, and it’s probably the biggest Fire mana hotspot on Dereth, but yes.” According to Master Oswald.

“I’d like one!” Straight-up admitting it, no hesitation.

“I can make one up as a Bondring, tied to our Bond. That means you can use Naming Karma on it, as well as drop goldweight into it.”

“What about the differences in Elemental definition?” she asked archly, considering the implications of that.

“I’ll go with the traditional Four, and you can make up the Isparian equivalent. We’ll find out together, I imagine.”

“Sounds good!” She grinned in anticipation, quickly selecting a lightning/cold rock, so we’d have one of each Element to compare to one another. Quaver hummed in anticipation, the sharp hues of the Prismatic Stone’s anti-Elemental effect shimmering over her Golden edge as Kris paced towards her target.

I probably wouldn’t have to do much, and I still had lots of mana to get back, given how low I’d been in Pool and Slots, but no reason I couldn’t help with Elemental Dart Cantrips, for instance…