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

It turns out that it isn’t hard to work on rep counts while traveling, even if it is much slower.

I wanted Reserves first, as I could take the Feat or Mastery tomorrow. Thus, it was all about grinding, and happily I didn’t have to Renew and wait for 20 mana, I could use I’s, which only took 10 to refill, and get my counts started handily without it. It wasn’t five reps a minute, but it was still progress.

Getting my Reserves going should accelerate what I could draw from my Matrix, refill my Mana Pool faster, and then loop around and fill my Sorcery Spell Pool. It was very important, but the Reserve wouldn’t kick in without the Feat to trigger it, which would be in the morning at best.

Kris wanted to go investigating and exploring and get more Karma in, and I needed it, too, so why not?

Thus, I was riding on a second Disk while she hauled me around after her. Elevated as I was, I had a higher field of view and could pick out things from slightly further away, Mask of Clarity and everything still active.

Rep counts for one thing did not do double-duty for another thing. So, Casting Shards and Disks and Shields and Force Armor to key up the two Force Reserve Feats did absolutely nothing towards Siegecasting Counts. As I wasn’t attaching Metas, it didn’t contribute anything towards Efficient Spells or Practical Metamagic, either.

Kris wanted to follow the river, reasoning that it would have more Summons of different kinds than following the road, there would be tracks to observe behaviors of creatures on, and the water would lead to civilization regardless.

Thus, we headed downstream, her feet misting and gliding easily over puddles or mucky ground, occasionally hopping logs or brush or debris, barreling through stuff with the assurance of someone with innate Natural Armor and Damage Reduction. If I was tossing Force Armors onto her, that was nice, even if they only lasted ten minutes before fading away in her Null.

There was a lot of stopping along the way, because we basically killed every Summons that we saw, Kris quite cheerful about exploiting the opportunity.

The Phyntos Wasp Summons along the shore tended to be blue and shoot acid from their stingers. Just a bit into the trees off the river, they were green, and shot fire.

If they were Black, they were far, far more dangerous than the others, and I Vulned them to Slashing so Kris could take them out more quickly, which she was totally happy to do.

Her style wasn’t that far off from the Sama in my memories. If she could get the charge on it, she would, and that was a triple-damage One Strike which could take out anything weak without fail. If she surprised it, that was Sneak Attack damage on the stack.

If it fought back, it had to overcome her Damage Reduction of 8/-, and then her Combat Focus Trance was mending Soak at 4/rd, so she could take 12 points before actually having to eat any damage, which she usually took to her Health because she could Fast Heal it away.

If she landed a crit on the charge, there wasn’t anything that had survived it yet, and that was including the Reedsharks, the frilled waist-high three-legged predators with the attitudes of wolverines, and increasingly larger and more spiked shreth variants showing up.

---

The humming of the wings we heard was too deep for the wasps, so when the bushes parted to reveal one of the flying olthoi hovering in place, Kris looked expectant.

“Look.” I pointed left, and there were some of the walking olthoi beetle-types, except smaller and colored paler and towards the purple, off a short distance away.

“Great! I’ll get some proper practice! You notice the number of mushrooms has been thinning?”

“I did.” I also vivisized every stand of those that had come within range... said range now being quite impressive with Reach Spell and Spellwarping turning even Cantrips into base Medium-range Rays, boosted to Long range with Reach Spell. 400 feet + 40 feet/Caster Level was a nice long way to reach out and touch something.

“Think I can take them?” She hefted Quaver in eager anticipation, her Sword’s gentle humming actually countering the drone of the fluttering flying Olthoi Nettler’s wings.

“My Assay said weakest to pierce on the flyer, blunt secondary, and the opposite on the beetles,” I informed her, flipping my hand back and forth for emphasis.

“No problem. Versatile Armed Strike, or a bunch of thrusting, got it. Huh, epee versus bugs, that’s different...”

“How’s your Acid Resistance?”

“Eight points.”

“Mmm. The flier spits acid, it manifests as a breath weapon, so your Null will probably shut it down. But that’s actual acid spittle from the beetles.”

“Got it. How fast can you take them down if I need help?” She was fearless, but she wasn’t stupid, and she was a team player.

“I can knock them down instantly with a Toppling Spell, and likely finish any one of them.”

She nodded once. “Okay, let me try these myself, get a feel for how they fight, and I’ll yell for help if it’s needed.”

She didn’t need me on overwatch, I was sure she could just run away long enough to Fast Heal, then turn around and deal with her pursuers the hard way. But it was nice for her to show I could still be useful, and she wasn’t taking chances with the wonky toughness of the creatures here.

She didn’t even bother to kill them on the Charge. They were a Summons, so they wouldn’t run away or anything, they’d attack mindlessly until they were dead. So, it was an excellent way to get a read on them.

They were also a good deal weaker than the ones I’d fought earlier, which might have been a guard unit for a young queen. These... were probably closer to young olthoi?

Regardless, I sat back and watched. I could always Cast and renew my Mana, I was not going to have nothing to do for some time...

She started with the flier, as it would be the most maneuverable, and she wanted to see if her Null could handle its breath weapon. Such things were still magically created, and thus her Null would work against them. I doubted she’d have a problem.

Still, the Summons perked right up when it found something to attack, buzzing right on up to her and starting a pattern of peck-and-nip attacks with its snipping jaws and multiple hard forelegs. Kris was staring at it intently as she parried and dodged, wielding Quaver with both hands and totally strong enough to parry what it was trying, forcing it back if it tried to press on her and grapple her with light strokes at its eyes that made it flinch and retreat instinctively.

They did a dance in a circle, and the olthoi nearby seemed content to watch, Kris having accurately judged their threat trigger radius.

There was an expulsion of acid...which flushed quietly into nothingness against Kris’ Null. She smirked slightly, and then tapped her foot significantly.

Her Null Interdiction went out, paying homage to King Gravity as it did so, and the Summoned olthoi flier dropped awkwardly to the ground. Its wings beat harder, but were unable to keep it off the ground as its internal levitation was disabled.

Significantly hampered in its movements, it could only keep fighting tiredly as Kris began to whittle at it here and there, searching for the weak points, how to hamper how it moved, testing the toughness of its chitin, and even letting herself get hit a couple times and allowing the thing to draw blood.

Then the wounded, tired, half-dead winged olthoi was put out of its misery with a spinning thrust driven behind its head, severing the nerves there and precipitating a catastrophic explosion of ruptured acidic blood vessels throughout its brain.

The flying olthoi gave off its dying shriek before trembling and falling still... and that did trigger the other two olthoi.

Completely unfazed by this development, Kris flitted forward to meet them, Quaver leading the way with trembling notes to contrast the shrill calls of the olthoi.

This was another, different kind of fight, as the two olthoi were prancing around on their ridiculously small legs, poking at her with pedipalps like spears, or nipping in for acidic bites. Kris took them on in a defensive mindset, Quaver a Gold-black blur of motion as it parried and hammered at the bugs, learning their attack patterns and tells, how they acted and reacted, and above all slide-dancing ahead of them as they tried to get around her.

The point of her Sword probed at joints and junctures of the carapaces, testing them, hacking in occasionally to feel the strength of the chitin in different locations, compare them, measure the openings left when they lunged, and generally just give them the chance to show off all their instinctive moves and behaviors in the middle of deadly combat.

I watched patiently, not moving in lest I distract one of the big insects from its flailing in her direction. They were rapidly hampered and weakened by her pokings, slowing down and making it easier for her to dodge any contact, and she even smashed into them on several instances, bowling them over with strength far beyond natural for her size and sinewy slenderness, anchored with heavyfoot and proving quite capable of bashing the far-bigger and balance-vulnerable insects over.

The fwzap as the Summons point behind her reloaded and spit up another walking olthoi like the ones Kris was messing with only added to the fun, as now she got to see how their three-on-one group tactics worked.

After about ten minutes, the Summons were so beat up they could barely flail at her, although with their programming they still tried. She finished them with a blunt chopping to the skull that split one’s head apart precisely, knocked the second off its slender feet with a shattering swipe and crushed the equivalent of the groin, tearing its femoral artery open, and dealt with the last by crushing open a seam in the side of its shell that shattered two sections of carapace. A network of blood vessels there exploded and took it down in mere seconds.

I vivisized all the corpses before she could say anything, along with the Summons points. She arched an eyebrow at me, as I’d mostly left that function alone.

“Olthoi Summons means it is safe for the bugs to travel through those spots, but not others... they effectively form guards for the olthoi. I don’t want to see that, so I’m shutting them down.”

She nodded once. “Good reasoning. Especially if they are re-Summoning the same things.” Her violet eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Do you think the Summons changing is a way of declaring territory for some creatures?”

“That’s... an interesting military application. Butcher all the Summons in the area so they come back as members of your own species?” I had to consider that. “If that’s true, there might be places around with humans as the Summons...”

“Oh, would that not piss off and frighten so many people. An eternity of being called into combat and dying in battle as an astral template...”

“Astral Templates are just that, templates. They aren’t original souls, just snapshots of them frozen in astral essence and filled with power. They should be more frightened that such copies could be made. Actually enslaving a soul is a step higher on the scale, and would definitely be working with necromancy.”

Needless to say, the field of Summoning and Conjuration versus Necromancy had a lot of overlap and discussion about them!

“Which we’ve seen no sign of, as yet. Ispar was surprisingly light on undead, too, mostly from Curses, mother said.” The princess kicked the olthoi, and the last of their ectoplasm swirled and was consumed by softly glowing unwhite mist, creating bright white spots on the ground. “It does mean that if we find a fairly unbroken line of Summons of a singular species, we’re probably in something’s territory, then.”

“I imagine if they die randomly from exposure or deprivation then the respawn might be random. Of course, I don’t know how to attune the Summons, so maybe there’s an art to it.”

“Easy enough. If it’s random and includes them as Summons, kill all the creatures until the ones you want to pop up do so!” she grinned.

“Which is a totally viable tactic,” I conceded. “Let’s keep moving. We don’t know how long it’s going to be until we make it to the next town.”

“Meh, a cold camp will be fine, or we just don’t stop.” But she still anchored my Disk to her again, and we were off and moving.