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

“Easily. One spell,” I confirmed. “Its armor is not adamantine or particularly enchanted, Quaver should rip right into it. I’m betting a Null Strike from below would kill it almost instantly. Also, it has spellcasting ability with a Mana Pool, probably a fixed selection of combat spells. It might be a good idea to mess around with it and see just what spells it sets off on you.”

“Oh, guinea pig time!” Princess Kristie grinned broadly. “Fine, you just be ready with a Cure if the thing can breach my Null. I’ll dance around and get its fighting style down, and promise not to take advantage of any opportunities to gut it while it is Casting.”

“Understood. Pen and paper ready.” A Holo popped up of a quill and feather, and she smirked before charging towards the thing.

---

It didn’t sense her coming until she quite literally smashed into it and sent it flying, which amused her to no end. Then she start playing around with it, while I sat there and took notes.

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, it became plain it only had about a dozen combat moves, which, if you weren’t prepared for them, were easily of the head-taking or disemboweling kind, although its use and timing of them were suspect. It certainly hadn’t developed any combination in tandem with the shock value of its spells, and its choice of spell timing showed either massive unfamiliarity with combat, or a complete lack of understanding of how different magical and martial combat were.

I was pretty sure the true virindi would be much more tactical than this thing.

Kris confirmed she could shear through its robe-like mesh of crystalline metal, and just swatted the thing around, seeing how it responded, and towards the end, even invoked her Interdiction, dropping the thing down low to the ground where its shell scraped the dirt, throwing off some of its combat routines with the awkward location.

In the end, I just waved to her as it Healed itself up for the seventh time, and with a calm One Strike, she actually cut it in half diagonally, plainly testing out her muscles. There was a flutter of pinkish energies dissipating with an odd sound, rising in a sharp note as vivus flashed and consumed them.

No, it wouldn’t be reporting what had killed it.

Its shell was ectoplasm, and fell apart exceedingly rapidly as the unwhite fires Burned over it. In under thirty seconds, only a white spot on the ground remained of it. By tomorrow, the plants would all be regrown and there’d be no indication this was a Summons point at all.

“A very basic combat style, but it could be expounded upon readily,” she said, smiling happily as she strolled over. “What have you got for me?”

“It really was a Summons. It had almost no prior combat experience and wasn’t learning as it went very well. It was programmed to fight like it did and couldn’t adjust based on how quickly you shifted styles, locked into a series of ‘most effective tactics’ and the like. Probably not intel we want to rely on for the real ones, however.”

She nodded. “Spells?”

“It had the full seven Wives in War and Life Vulnerabilities, plus Imperil. Also, it tried the full array of Stat Debuffs from Creature Magic, along with effective negatives to melee, missile, and magical defenses.”

“That’s a fairly remarkable number of spells for a virtual automaton, but I note it didn’t coordinate them at all.”

“Almost as if it didn’t realize the relationship between Life and War magic,” I confirmed. Trying to Vuln her to Acid, and then hit her with a Copper Whirling Blade made no sense at all. “Again, not something we should rely on for the real deal,” I warned her.

“It was shooting Silvers, too,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s very impressive for the lowest rung, and the simple fact it could access all seven Wives...”

“Yes. With a true virindi present to give orders, its effectiveness against particular enemies could rise several times over.” Either a straight mono-Element Vuln followed by the same War Magic, or Debuffs stacking on Imperil if they closed to melee... which should be their last option, instead of merely one option equally possible among others.

Summons had difficulties building an experience record, since their ectoplasmic minds and bodies were basically set in simple templates that unwound when they died. When it was already an energy-form and interacted with the material world oddly, that only made it worse.

We knew that, so this fight was only to see what was possible, not what would actually be used.

“A proper hivemind hierarchy would be able to set up a gut-wrenching array of volley fire with little effort,” Kris nodded calmly, instantly realizing the danger, especially in mass battles. The thing hadn’t managed to punch her Null even once, but she wasn’t a fool. If something was powerful enough to punch her Null, the nature of Isparian magic meant it was probably Casting beyond Gold, to the Air Gold, or even the Platinum scarabs we’d found.

That would be INCREDIBLY dangerous. It was left unsaid that the Necklace I was working on for her was going to need continuous power-ups, or she was going to have to prevail upon me for temporary combat Buffs.

I had three layered Protections on it: Force, Cold, and Acid. The Slashing, Pierce, and Bludgeon variants were just considered aspects of Force by Matrix magic, and I took advantage of it to save some time. She was already immune to Fire and Lightning, so there was no reason for me to put those in, either.

Three spells times CL 1 x Valence I was 3k for the first set of Lead Spells, already completed. Three times CL 3 x Valence II was 18k for the next set of Iron Prots, so another fifteen days of work.

Copper and Silver would be 3 x 3 x 5, then 3 x 4 x 7. Total ending cost for a three-way Protection from Force, Acid, and Cold Necklace at Silver, 84k in goldweight equivs, and three months of work.

Once I made it, she could replicate it without a problem using Runesmithing, but she needed something to work from because of the Isparian magic.

Bringing it to Gold, if and when, would be 3 x 5 x 9, or 135k goldweight, and 5 months of total work.

“I did note that it didn’t Buff itself, beyond the Healing, and once it ran through its mana, it seemed to want to use the Transfer Stamina to Mana to get its power back, and it fizzled. Errant programming that is no longer functional...” I added in. And that had affected its staying power, forcing it to stay in hapless melee with someone it couldn’t hit if she didn’t want it to, and, it turned out, couldn’t damage much when it did.

Kris had at least 16 points of Damage Reduction. An average person whaling on her with a baseball bat would probably break it on her skull. Its sickles were sharp and fast, but the creature wasn’t really strong, per se. She had basically fast-healed right through most of the residual melee damage... when she allowed it to hit her, just to see how dangerous it was.

“That’s what it was doing. I thought it bloody odd... it actually has to make the Caster Level check to use the magic?” She thought that was pretty funny, too, although it was all part of Isparian Casting.

The Matrix side was a hundred percent effective, but was much easier to interrupt, too. Isparian magic was all about starting the process. Once you did, it was self-completing, and getting stuck by a spear wouldn’t stop the spell that was coming, to the dismay of many a spear-wielder. Trying to Cast a Matrix spell in close-combat with a skilled person was just creating an opening to be hit, and you’d lose the spell if that happened.

Intelligent Magos stayed away from melee combat if possible! Those who didn’t were called Battlemads for a reason, and even had the Melee/Caster ‘Theurge’ Class named after them...

“I’ll work on extrapolating from there, and maybe testing it out if we run into some higher-Level versions,” Kris agreed, thumbing her Necklace absently. “I am not looking forward to the intelligent ones, unless I get my Null WAY up there...”

“This place is a Karmic Fountain if we find the right area, with tougher things that can be killed repeatedly. Just imagine how fast your Favored Enemy Masteries are going to rise when you can kill the same stuff a thousand times?”

She grinned at the idea. “Yeah, I agree, that’s a fine thing to look forward to, just like filling up my Slaughter with all the extra Banes.”

“Planning on assembling the wagon and heading out tomorrow?” I asked her, and she nodded.

“You going to be able to Camouflage it?”

“I’ll grab the spell tomorrow,” I confirmed. “It’ll work best when motionless, but at least it should draw less attention while we are moving it around.”

-------

The next day...

We hauled all the things we had worked on out through the front door over the course of the evening. Gearcrafting, Woodshaping, wood-working, and Kris’s basic forgework all combined to get everything snapping and fitting together with great speed, Prestidigitation able to screw, fit, and press in everything that was needed quite handily, although wooden dowels and glue did a lot of it, minimizing the metal we needed.

The Wagon would nominally move on ten Disks. I was Casting them out of III Valence, so the amount of weight they could take was increased fourfold, their duration was basically all day, and I tied them off to Recast as soon as their time was coming up. I also linked up their guide/follow protocol, so they all worked to the same link, and Quaver could take it over with a tap.

Floor, walls, moving walls, internal compartments, folding stuff, sliding parts... it all fit together with machined precision, magic helping fit things together seamlessly where machined tools couldn’t possibly get in, making the job flow a lot faster. It basically only took a couple of hours to fit things together, something that would have taken an entire crew to do without magic to accomplish.

We were putting the final pieces into place when Kris turned and cocked her ear sharply. I pushed in four sets of dowels completely out of reach to a normal arm and hand with Mage Hand, and then paused to watch her.

“You hear that whooping sound?” she asked suspiciously.

I tilted my head and listened, just as there was a chorus of booming sounds, like a cavalcade of basic Blast spells going off. “No,” I said cheerfully. Kris stuck her tongue out at me as she looked around quickly.

All of the heavy stuff was already aboard, especially the salvage. We’d been working towards casting her Anvil of Silent Thunder, once her Floating Forge was suitably powered up, so all the supplies and stuff were basically aboard.

She threw open the main hatch on the back. “Extra lumber, and we’re out of here,” she stated.

My contribution was to lift the lumber off the ground as quickly as possible so she could grab them and fit them inside at greater speed. Mage Hand III, or Minor Telekinesis, did my share of the work smoothly, and even arranged everything inside as Kris plowed in another thousand pounds of spare lumber we might need onto everything inside.

I could definitely hear an odd whooping sound now, irregular and varied slightly in tone, and it was coming from the direction of a bunch of bright and colorful flashes coming our way... and explosions of spells that were startling birds into motion, and actually shooting after some of the birds, who dodged them deftly.

My Mask magnified in that direction, and I saw... mobile lumps of jello in a spread of colors, bouncing into the air with appropriately-delayed whooping sounds, and occasionally shooting off spells?