I had tipped over Binder/2, I had sent the 4 Skill Points to Sailor as I had Binder/1, and I had done my Crafting and mixing.
It was time to put it to the test, as a foggy evening turned to dark, and the Mask I'd Tattooed on my face lit up and let me ignore that darkness with Devilsight.
Huge forms were gathering further up the hill. The Brine Zombies were already dead, or more undead might have been crawling out from the wreckage of the Beatrice that I'd burned away.
Tremble popped his pommelstone, and I grabbed the first of the four Growth Potions in there. They'd take effect at level Eight, and then be doubled by the Girdle… but I was still restrained by my Null nature to the max of ten minutes to slaughter as many Jotuns as I could. It was a pure comparison of damage against a weaponless foe with great numbers, testing to see if I could slaughter them faster then their numbers could generate hits and bring me down.
There would be no wasted damage, no wasted overkill. Through double Swarmbane and their hordemind, they'd be eating all of it!
"You ready for this?" I asked Tremble, popping the cap and skating up the hill as the zombie giants lumbered down towards me.
"Oh, yeah, baby!" he answered, and I sucked down the Potion.
It tasted like wet moldy feet, but needs must. Even as it went down my throat, I could feel it working, ectoplasm streaming in and mass accumulating. Everything began to shrink around me as I grew in perfect proportions to double my height, four foot-something to eight foot-something… and Tremble's blade doubled in length.
From 4-32 to 8-48 base damage, and then the Holy Water configuration set up, and the acid damage on the blade became some really, really, REALLY potent holy water.
I met the first ones on the first rolling level, and the slaughter started. Their moans and bass-driven howls would have driven a normal person mad with terror.
They only told me where their most vulnerable points were, a foot or two below the things making the sounds.
I began to kill with a rolling explosive swirl of glowing, fluid light, incredibly beautiful if anyone was there to see it.
Giant zombies.
They didn't have the primal DR they'd had while alive, and they didn't have the massive Constitution bonus they'd had before, either. Just undead with more Hit Dice and Toughness, easier to kill then before. Auto two-hit kill. One hit with a crit, which meant getting up under their ribs and spraying the Holy Banewater up into their upper torso, up and into the neck and through the spine. Auto-kill on a charge.
It was fast killing, faster then anything I'd done in a long time. Their arms were long, but no longer then my reach anymore. Everything became arcs and vectors, equal parts precise calculation and free-flowing intuition through the press of massive bodies. First hits were generally limbs melted through, before sending peace up into their main body cavities.
Arcs and whorls swept through the air like the birth of new and moving flowers. In their wake, massive zombies folded, their undead flesh dissolving like melting wax, and if there was no vivic fire to clean them up, that was totally okay for now.
I started at the path side, worked my way across to the ramp side with an elegant savagery that was very cathartic. I wasn't jumping, spinning and dodging so much, I was killing them as they reached for me, and they were dying before they could hit me.
Growth Potions were going to change a few things for me, it seemed.
Up the ramp side, into the slaughtered knights, and as I worked through them, the inhabitants of the house began to shamble out to join in the fun. Even had on the same clothes, now all rotted and half-falling off to fit the theme.
They all burned and melted in an unrelenting chain of Ripostes, Sword beats Fist, Cleaves, Hews, Finishes, and Whirlwinds. I cut my way through the press, multi-ton bodies dissolving around me, unable to press me enough to restrict my movements before they died.
One hundred and eighty-four zombies died, fourteen zombie Hell Puppies. The ghouls the sailor officers, the knight commanders, and the noble lords had turned into were the only blips in the fighting, but only the Wight that used to be the Count or Duke or whatever held me back more then a few breaths, as he was the only one wielding a weapon.
I Finished one of his guards, Hewed into him, parried his life-sucking Sword into another guard, then repeated the Hew to him off a One Strike with a spinning leap that took both of their heads in the same slash.
It hadn't taken me ten minutes. I'd moved too fast, covering ground as fast as I could to max out the benefits of the Potion.
"Firephasing, all Fire, Sundering!" I snarled, and as Acid turned to Fire, I smashed it into the wooden exterior of the mansion, smashing through the façade and into the wooden siding and beams behind. Tremble whooped as fires exploded around us, and with the efficacy of dream, caught and expanded with unnatural speed.
I raced into and through the mansion, gouging the walls, floors, doors, and streams of fluid fire followed me.
I left the shattered kitchen in flames, stepped out to the back path, and walked out towards the front of the house as the two minutes dead time ticked down, and the duration of my Potion ticked away with it.
I stood there at the corner of the yard, still trashed from earlier that day, wondering what the Curse was going to come up with next.
The stacked, half-dissolved corpses of the zombies began to twitch under the blossoming fire of the burning mansion. I blinked at them.
And their heads all blew apart, exploding messily. Those who didn't have heads instead had gore erupt from their necks like a garbage disposal exploding.
All of them had rather large and impressive clusters of black and phosphorescent green tentacles suddenly sprout from their necks, flailing about wildly before settling down. The corpses began to flow back together under an invisible power.
"Vivus next time," I said in no uncertain terms.
"I hear that," murmured Tremble. "The hell is this…"
"Aberrants. Moits of the Elder Gods." The corpses were starting to stand up as they were pulled together, still showing signs of being half-melted, but mobile and working regardless.
The configuration on Tremble changed back to the new Cerulean Seal Pattern, as we liked to call it.
"I have the impression this will be a lot more difficult then zombies?" he asked softly.
"A human-sized one can have twelve hit dice. A Huge one… don't know. Basically Olympian-plus… I don't know. Double, at least."
"Ugh. I have the feeling we're going to beat ourselves against these for a while."
I accepted the Potion that came out of his Hilt Chamber, shaking my head. I'd made four, but I wasn't going to last long enough to consume the other two. Two claw attacks, multiple hentai tentacle attacks, with the cooperation Feat cheats (not that I should complain)… okay, I was going to die, but we'd see how many I could kill first…
One hundred and eighty-seven Huge Moits. Nope, wasn't getting through that. Tomorrow, I'd use vivus, dump the Holy Banewater, and leave no bodies behind for this crap.
They still didn't have reach on me if I stayed this size. I wasn't getting the huge damage push from the Banewater… but I could and would Wardance this.
Tremble began to Sing, and I charged at the Moit occupying the Duke's body in a blur of motion. Convenient how a Growth Potion didn't require actually adjusting to a new size here in dream, reality instead re-sized to a new perspective…
As the mansion burned, I hit the first of these creatures still three times as tall as I was, and they shrieked in Aklo about hunger and mating and other things appropriate for a bad hentai flick. Tremble hit them singing about the crushing power of Fate coming down on them for having the bad luck to meet me, and we started the dance and the grind as thrice-used bodies began to fall apart again, and this time burn away.
------
I woke up. First thing I did was a cellular-level scan making sure there wasn't something implanted in me that I didn't want, because I didn't put it past the Curse to attempt something like that.
Yeah, there was something nestled up against the back of my spine. The Moits had somehow managed to put a slug in me… after I was dead.
My Vajra surged, and my blood turned wildly corrosive, something aqua regia might tip its cap to. I definitely didn't protect that slug as I split open several vessels around it, and it shivered and screamed about horrors from beyond Creation as my blood began to reduce it to sludge, and then all my cells linked up and sent a blast of bioelectricity through it to make matters less comfortable for it.
It lost any influence over my motor systems, I reached out for Tremble, sat up, and to his "Hey!" punched him into the back of my neck, perilously near my brain.
Hissing, bubbling goo ran down the back of my neck and back to the floor. Tremble made appropriately disgusted sounds as he watched it run out of me.
"So, that's how they reproduce?"
"Yeah, they stick a slug in your brain." I used Healing Soul use to seal the wound, as clean as any surgeon could have made it, and so easy to bind shut… after my Vajra shoved a good half-pound of Aberrant sludge out of me, as well as any cells I considered compromised.
"Vivic all the way."
"It'll probably bring in some 'innocent civilians' and do the same thing." I exhaled as I closed my eyes, ticking over Binder/3. "We're just going to have to skirmish them down, long and involved. They still couldn't keep up with us, and if we have to, we can just go into the burning mansion."
"We should have set it on fire a while ago," he judged.
"Honestly, I was expecting the Curse to go with some rampaging fire elementals or salamanders again on the spur of the moment, but, eh. That sure did surprise me." The noise of so many things babbling so many horrific things they were going to do to me in Aklo meant I'd had to cut off my hearing and Tremblesense, at the end.
"What are you doing?" he asked me, able to hear some undercurrents in my voice.
"Excising parts of my memory related to what they were saying last night. You get that many creatures speaking Aklo, the maddening, insanity-inducing power of it multiplies. I had to render myself completely deaf, or I'd probably be having a psychotic episode right now, or would when I faced them again." I slid away from the slime, which was burning unwhite nicely. "This is going to be unpleasant, but the basic tactic seems to work. Using a Growth Potion can save us a lot of healing. I'll keep four Healing as a Reserve, and make more potent ones to replace them as needed, but Growth is definitely going to dominate going forward."
"At least the comps are easy to get!" Only needed giant blood, after all.
I pulled my mini-lab out of his Hilt Chamber, empty vials, and a small jug of giant blood taken from the Duke, definitely the toughest of all of them.
I could make four Potions a day as a Rune Chemist/4, up to the maximum of a goldweight in power comps, which were not hard to get for the minor Potions I wanted.
A Growth Potion for the Sailors, and another for the Dogs and Knights, would conserve a lot of Healing power for me.
Stronger healing Potions, a day at a time, using up the rest of my limit for what the Growth Potions did not.
Then we'd see how hentai those bastards thought they could be, if they came back…
Mythos stuff is always inherently unsettling, but it butts up hard against Undaunted...
"So, Captain Sama Rantha. You're a long way from Coralost, Sama," Briggs noted, not unamused.
He'd swapped out his torn leather shirt for a simpler, embroidered vest that his mother's sister had made for him. It wasn't high QL, but the feelings behind it were much deeper, and it conveyed great status in the tribe. He'd been seated with the elder warriors when they sat in council, and he often represented the tribe with the dwarves.
"I'd say the same for the great Commander Briggs of Redshore. Just one more neo-demonic invasion to thwart, eh?" That oddly compelling toothed smile of hers had him shaking his head.
"Why are you keeping the Mask up?" he asked, glancing at the floating Disk next to them, which was still burning slightly. The sight of such naked magic was keeping his kinfolk away, which was probably for the best. The crazy killer girl's rep had come with the rangers who had arrived late to the fight, too, and everyone was sharing careful drinks and looks at the two of them.
"Hagsign covers half my face. People tend to react poorly, but it's buried under the active Tats, and the neck isn't as off-putting," she replied crisply, and he nodded understanding. The Mask washed away before his eyes, and he looked over the blue-black mottled flesh, and the devastating blue eyes.
He had images of her biting on his shoulders, and firmly reminded himself that he was still too young for such things. The side of her mouth curled up.
"Those purple eyes of yours are gorgeous," she told him, leaning in slightly. "How does your tribe see them?"
He was rather embarrassed by her directness... and she was turning him on effortlessly. "Uh, they thought it was a bad sign when I was born, evil eyes from ogre blood. They were very surprised when I turned out to be smart, rather than vicious."
"Good!" she complimented him, offering a tunk of her cup of ice water, which he clinked automatically. Her Sword cooling it down made it very nice.
"How are you already at Ten?" he asked, a little aggrieved. "I thought I was making pretty good progress. I killed my first ogre at four, and my first giant at seven. I thought I was doing pretty good!"
"Ehhhh." The way her mouth on that side turned down made the Tat's whiskers exaggerate her frown. So cute! "Well, you're leading the typical life of a tribal Ancient, you just had sentience when born, and knew what to do and where to put the Karma, right?"
"Pretty much." He flexed his arms and chest, watched her delighted eyes follow the motion, not at all off-put by his body hair. He so wanted both of them to be ten years older about now...
"Wellllll, I found out that being a reborn soul destined to be a Hagchild is something right out of a horror flick."
He blinked. "What? Doesn't the Ritual of the Silver Queen take care of that?"
She nodded, but that side of her mouth was at a weird angle. "Yeah… if you're the persona the Curse sets up. For the soul, well, it's only possible if the soul is refined away."
Briggs felt his jaw dropping. "What?"
"Hags can't have true children, it's an aspect of the Curse. Their children are extensions of their Curse, made to corrupt innocent souls. In my case, the annis Tusk Annie ate some poor fool after having sex with him, bore a Hagchild, and that Hagchild ate and replaced a week-old baby, before living out her life… and I was that baby."
Briggs blinked, then blinked again. "Holy Hell," he murmured. "And… it couldn't refine your soul. Instead of the Ritual cleansing it from without… you Nulled and broke out from within?" He watched her nod. "Then… what of the persona? She…" He followed her eyes to Tremble floating there, watching and listening silently. "Ah, she managed to transfer to your Soul, because of the Soulbind tie…"
"So I've been told," Tremble said softly in her chiming voice. "I don't have many memories of being human…"
"And you're being Ten is related to this?" Briggs asked, curious now.
"Mmm. It was like being caught in a video game, where I wasn't allowed to die, because if I did, the Curse died, too. So, the Curse was trying to wear me down, by pain and killing me over and over again until I couldn't take it anymore. I met it head-on, treating it as a game, and I leeched power off of it, growing my soul and tempering my psyche, as I was basically caught in Nightmare."
Briggs was silent, picturing that. Being caught inside a video game and dying over and over would be a horrible, non-stop cycle of violence, pain, and ultimately dying futilely. Enduring until you were strong enough to break the cycle would take an awesome level of willpower and perseverance.
Which is exactly what a Null did. They endured and persevered.
"And you got enough Karma to make Ten from that? Damn, that Curse is strong…"
"It's hollow Karma. It's like I have it all, but I don't. The Curse was pervasive and continually sucking in the real stuff, but it's not like it had enough power to make me an F-Rank Ten, just like that. It had more then enough power to make me the equivalent of an Annis, but above and beyond that, I've got to earn that Karma all over again before I can try anything new."
"So, the structure, filling in the meat." He got it. "Still, that's a lot more Karma then I've been exposed to," he admitted. "Although I've been killing stuff beyond my means, too…"
"That Hammer Grandmastery kick in at Five?"
"Yes, not too long ago, really. Adding Ranks in Hammer-using Skills to my damage with a hammer has been very useful…"
"The four Smiths, Miner, Sculptor, Lumberjack, Carpenter…?" she wondered aloud. He grinned and nodded. "+40 damage, at least. You're just a monster, just like back home!"
"How about you? You're a Sword Grandmaster, too!…"
"Ah, I didn't get mine by building on Warsmith. Mine let me use any weapon-related Feat that could conceivably be used with a sword, with a Sword. So, I can Hew and Finish, for example."
Briggs blinked, turning over those two Feats in his mind. Hew was a nice Feat for Axe-users, as it helped not waste damage while Cleaving. It was only limited by having a Cleave target, so useless against most bosses, and only if you killed something, so more a minion-clearing tool. Finish was just a way of making sure that something that fell down, didn't get back up. Basically, an anti-healing/regeneration Feat.
But if you could use them together, then…
"A crit once a round, whenever you kill something…" he murmured. The damage would splash to the next target, resulting in a huge opening blow, and if they were weak, probably another kill, and another Cleave instantly.
She flicked a finger at the piles of corpses, most of which had burned down to soft white ash by now, the mists hanging around long eaten by the ever-insatiable Land. "I want to charge the little guy, then hit the boss," she agreed cheerfully.
"Damn! But, what about your base damage?"
"Well, you took Warsmith's Class Feature to an extreme. I took Profound Artisan."
He went dumpster diving through his memory again. "Plus synergy bonus from a chosen Skill to your Focused Weapon damage?" he asked. It wasn't a bad bonus, but not a great one…
"Started with Mastersmith. Expanded it to every Skill that had a viable connection with any weapon through my Grandmastery. Earned a new Title for it, The Sage of Swords."
"I, whoa… That… would eat a lot of Skill Points. But any and all applicable Skills, just start stacking the synergy bonuses… That could get really high, Sama…" He eyed her thoughtfully. "Is that how you were such a badass in-game?"
"Twenty-plus appropriate Skills at ten Ranks." His whistle was low and impressed. "I've effectively got just over half that right now as the Karma fills in. It won't go as high as yours, I think, but it's got a lot more niche bonuses, like Stealth increasing SA damage."
"Didn't know you had two Titles, impressive!" Titles weren't easy to come by.
That cunning smile rose again. "I had three. Now, I've got four."
"Three!" He blinked. "And you earned another?" That was hard to believe!
"It's more an Achievement Feat, but because it has so many pre-reqs, it applies as a Title."
"What was the third one from the game?"
She laughed brightly, which raised goosebumps on his skin, it was like birds singing about steel. "I was The Trembling Sage." Those incredible blue eyes danced in the firelight from her Disk.
"Trembling Sage? Tremorsense?" There was a pulse on the ground, he could feel it perfectly, as Tremorsense was a skill he had also cultivated to the utmost, for both its usefulness in combat, and just plain knowing the ground around him.
"Tremblesense includes the air via echolocation and blindfighting, electricity via lateral line, heat via infrasense, air pressure, and even rough visualization via light on the skin; magic, chi, and psi via Null deletion, in addition to dimensional shifting." She swished her long golden mane of hair, which he was sure had been moving by itself when he wasn't staring at it. "Hair acts like a tuned receiver and multiple contact points of reference."
He pursed his lips, wondering just how much effort it must have taken to put together combined abilities, Skills, and Feats like that. "So, it's a total sphere, instead of a hemisphere." He grunted as he thought about that. "Damn. No wonder you were called The Tip of the Spear. No one had any secrets from you, did they?"
"Any strong chi, magic, psi, ki, or Essence field can mask what's behind it, but otherwise… nope. Get heavyfoot up, take the Ranks in Tremorsense, Feat to double, magic item to double again, hook them all in together to work on ki vibrations, and I had a sixty-foot sphere where I knew where everything was. Yeah, I was near impossible to surprise."
"Damn!" He had never realized it could be upgraded to include the air. "And here I practice Thunder and didn't realize that…"
"Eh, no one did, which was funny, but you only get the Title if you work it out yourself, so I just ruined it for you." Her lopsided smile was so damn cute.
"I'm just happy I've got another skill set to work towards." Not that he didn't have enough on his plate. "And your last one?"
"You know how there's a bunch of anti-monster Feats out there, especially for undead and the like? And they all hook into Favored Enemy masteries, and Achievement Feats for slaughter, and the Vendetta Feat for stuff picking on you?"
"Yeah?" This sounded interesting.
"Well, I combined them all with Dark Knowledge, poured in the Karma, and got a new Title out of it, working off of my Sage of Swords. Turned all the relevant bonuses to derive from synergy bonuses with a Knowledge check, made them insight bonuses, and they kick in on killing enough of an enemy, instead of straight Karma investing." She leaned backwards slightly. "And damn, Briggs, did I kill a lot of stuff during those years in Nightmare."
"Wow." Insight bonuses were not easy to come by. Dark Knowledge and Favored Enemy were both morale bonuses, coming in to the same effect from different angles. "No more Favored Enemy or Dark Knowledge, then?"
"No, but I don't much care. I can Wardance or Sing for morale bonuses."
"I am soooo far behind the curve," he lamented.
"Meh. We've got to get you going with Endure." She glanced at his Hammer. "You didn't even Name that. What's going on?"
"Ah, dwarven Hammers are basically only used by their Priests of the Forge-Father. I found this one buried in the midden of a clan of the Nailclubs, the ogre tribe you saw here. As I was using it to kill ogres so successfully, the dwarves let me keep on using it… but it's not my Hammer." He handed it over to her, and she took it as easily as a willow wand.
"Yeah, shaft is too short and thick, balance off for your build. I imagine you have to replace this thong all the time." She snipped off the frayed thing with two fingers, and he said nothing. "Go on, give it back. Let's get you a starting Hammer."
He hesitated a moment. "I don't have the metals for-"
"Starter Hammer. You need to start accumulating Naming Karma," she admonished him. "You and I both know we're going to be going after these warbands. A thousand Karma a day cost-free into your Weapon. Every day of combat you don't have a Named Weapon in your hand is costing you the money you don't have.
"Once we've actually got some pull and gold, we can go about getting some adamant and mithral and stuff." She motioned Tremble over, and he accepted the Sword into his hands, feeling her with hands and Ki and Essence.
"She's only a 33, and that post-refined." He glanced at her. "You refined a Sword you found?"
"There's no real way to get her to 35, so we got her to 33 and made her Impervious. Just waiting on the real metal to make a real weapon."
He nodded. "And you can make a Hammer?" he asked, his pale violet eyes almost glowing.
She gestured at a couple of cabinets. "I've got a set of Shaping Tools, an Anvil of Silent Thunder, and that Disk is a Floating Forge which can melt adamantine. I had two sword-blades of adamant, but once I smelted them down and got rid of the Shadow bias, I was half a pound shy of making a new blade for Tremble."
"What did you get those off?"
"A couple svartalfar some Hags contracted to kill me. I'm hoping more show up for me to kill."
"That would be a convenient source of more adamant," he agreed. "You want to get started now?"
"You have a Diamond Vajra, you gonna waste time?"
"No." His hands were suddenly itching as he looked at the cabinet she pointed out. "A full set of smithing tools?" he asked softly.
"They're sized for me for now, I'll grab some leather wraps for you."
"Good!" He got to his feet, hefting the Hammer she had passed back to him. "Let me go return this, and we'll get to work." It was a +II Weapon, he wouldn't really miss it. An Einz Slot Soulbound would totally replace it.
"I'll get my materials ready, we'll pick what you want to work with, and get started. We should be able to do 8k of work per eight hours, so twelve-some hours and we should be good to get you a 35 QL Hammer."
He blinked despite himself, remembered what she said, and then recalled his own smithing set-up from back in-game. She didn't have the adamant, but she had all the basic Artifice to do it. With him helping her, this should be simple to do…
-----------
"Speaker Hundrek." The dwarves had seen him coming, and turned to look at him, as much bodies as necks, since they didn't have a human's range of motion.
"Young Briggs," the warpriest nodded at him, the metallic hue of his beard identifying him better then his symbol, since the former covered up the latter. "Haf du news for us? From your young lass, perhaps?" There were some chuckles from those around, as his hanging around the masked girl was totally obvious, and easy to read into.
"Aye. She said she would forge me a new Hammer, and so I've come to return this one to the Forge-Father," he replied, always amused that the dwarves here sounded more German then Scottish.
Armor and leather creaked as the Priest got to his feet, treating the Weapon that was being held out to him with the respect it deserved. "Oh? She cans forge a Hammer more suited for du, lad?" He accepted the Hammer with both hands somberly, his polished eyes interested.
"Aye, she can. She also asked me to inquire if the Rockborn are selling some rare metals. She's in need of some to forge a true Sword for herself, and some other things. Foremost are adamant and mithral, naturally."
All the dwarves drinking quietly there looked at him as if they'd discovered a new species. "Du canst bin thinking du can forge star-silver, let alone world-bone, lad," the priest rebuffed him firmly.
That was true, for now. "Of course not, Speaker Hundrek. But Lady Sama can. She can probably give you lessons." After all, Rockborn or no, the Priest wasn't a Ten, merely a Seven. The +4 Racial bonus was impressive as a Dwarf/3, but compared to a Ten? Especially with her Stats?
Hundrek's beetly eyebrows flared up to his stiff hairline. "Du thinks so, lad? Mights I bin able to watch this Lady, then, und see er working?"
"Of course, Speaker Hundrek," he bowed immediately, giving the Priest the respect he was due. "She's a Master Runesmith, however, not a Runeforger, so the style may be unfamiliar to you."
"A Runesmith? She canst call nae on dweomer?" His interest, and that of many of the Rockborn there, was immediately piqued. "Aye, I mights wander ofer und see she skillz, young Briggs." Given how they revered their elders, he was unsurprised the dwarf was subtly putting him in his place. The initial War Council between the various forces gathered here had not included him. After all, for he had never been to war…
"At your convenience, Elder," he replied humbly, before turning to go.
He couldn't help the partial smile that was tugging at the side of his mouth. Sama was a Ten Master Runesmith from the game, and she'd taken time to make all the right Forging toys, because the speed advantage they gave her was more important then anything else in the building of power. The combination wouldn't impress the Rockborn, who certainly used such things themselves… but the fact she was toting them around with her certainly would!
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