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

Indeed, the Mick considered, if all they wanted to do, instead of claiming the room beyond, was sit down here and defend this tunnel constantly, that would be good regular Karma for decent soldiers, and easy to control by simply retreating. They’d just have to be sure they could take down the Matron, which would be a fine incentive to work on Wolfpack tactics.

Whatever, easy enough for them to figure out the particulars, now that they knew what to do.

Another half-hour, and Natural Renewal would come, and he could pick up a third Major Stinging Stone. The second had materialized within five minutes of taking the first, the energy to coalesce it plainly having built up long ago.

He didn’t have the Minor Stone for all the bells and whistles, but just having the Major Stone was going to be useful against the Lightning Elementals of the Amperehelion Vault, as acidic energies really tore into the magic that allowed the things to manifest.

He heard the fwzash of the Matron respawning up top faintly, and just ignored it as the corpses of the previous olthoi dropped away and the membrane at the end of the tunnel cut off his scent.

He’d grab his third Stone shortly, then see if he could run his way out of this place. He grinned in anticipation, letting his Vigor run through and restore his Soak as he rested. Healing Edge had taken care of almost all of his physical injuries, so he’d be good to go shortly…

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“Hoo ha!”

He came shooting up out of the ramp in the ground, a bunch of olthoi Swarm Soldiers and Workers pounding after him. But they had no chance of catching him, and he was off and heading south at speed on the Waveskating Step, uncaring of who might see for the moment, and pointedly not slowed by mud or sand while running right across the water’s placid surface.

The following bugs rapidly stopped, turned, and returned to the hole in the ground that was the Incunabula Vault, unaware they were being set up as a grinding and harvest point for Isparians eager to gain more Levels, and earn some decent money doing so.

He didn’t bother to recast his Invisibility for now, saving that if he needed to run away from something. He’d be challenging some things as he made his way overland, fighting things he’d not met in years to see how fighting now compared to back then.

Aye, he could be clever and be sneaky if it were required, and he’d be testing that out, too. A full attack Flurry from behind was like as not going to kill almost everything he encountered here, with the most dangerous threat to him being the War Magic things could Cast, as ever.

With the Augmentations he’d taken so long in the past, his natural Resistances to magic were at V, Gold Level, or -50% of damage, and his resistance to Bludgeoning damage, the most universal kind, stood at 70%, basically Incantor-grade.

It was a shame natural defenses didn’t stack with basic Protections, only the less-powerful Wards, and Gor, weren’t getting those things back a pain in the arse. The only Ward he’d been able to replace after all these years was the Flame Ward from the Rose of Celdon on his finger.

Odds were that the Artificers out there could make Mana Capacity items once again. He knew he could, if he were of a mind to, although they’d not be that powerful. But after the Fall, the number of people who’d touch the work on such things were slim to none, and the number who’d buy them even less. The knowledge that someone, something, out there could twitch a finger and slaughter you with the very Artifice you were wearing?

Nobody would wield such things, even if the methods were tried, true, and easy to make. None had been made by the smiths in a full generation now, and while the art was comprehensive and preserved in the archives in full, nobody made such things anymore. They were only points of reference.

It was the main motivating reason behind the explosive demand for learning Artificer Levels, and the Matrix methods of magical items. The only things the smiths had been able to make were finer and finer non-magical Weapons, and putting in the basic Runes of Biting Strike, Crushing Blow, and Armor Cleaving, along with the various Slayer Runes they’d managed to work out.

The addition of Sockets and adding powerful Gemstones for further magic had allowed all those smiths to craft items with their previous skills, proving that they still had value.

Four-Methods Artificing, the new pinnacle of magical craftsmanship for Arms and Armor. He could only wait to see what they would be doing with Jewelry and other supplemental items. Magical Shirts and Trousers would be fine things to be wearing again.

Ho, here was a big honking Behemoth Guruk, all alone. Scales, blubber, muscle, and bone made it a big, clumsy-looking thing that nevertheless moved with great strength, power, and nigh-universal hostility, and it could soak or ignore a tremendous amount of punishment.

Deft hands swapped in his Major and Minor Shivering Stones, and Bunita became a cold diamond of frozen death as he paced towards the hulking toad-man from another world entire. The guruk saw him coming, raising its tree trunk of a club and pounding on its chest, daring him to come in and challenge its mass and bulk.

He was more than happy to oblige it.

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It was a good fifty miles overland to the Amperehelion Vault, running first through the hills and swamps of the Cratered Hills with all their little circular valleys within, then along the rims and dealing with the Spawns as they came.

He didn’t head directly there, being the sort of fellow that he was. He had a job to do and sights to see, and if he was going to run around and find places, then that was what he was going to do!

Using the new Markspace Map as a reference for points of interest, the Mick verified the continued existence of four burun temples and two other Dungeons in the Cratered Swamps area.

There was one Gotrok base operating out of a cave at the southern end of the Cratered Hills, and the Knath Lair still existed near that as a new Dungeon extending off into the base of one of the ridges there between the Black Hills and the Cratered Hills. The Black Hills, tall and conical mounts, were more like capped pillars than anything natural, and possibly the original terrain of the entire area now occupied by the Obsidian Plains, it was hard to know. They broke up the terrain into little mazes of valleys and abrupt slopes between them, which would have been a mite harder to navigate if he didn’t have his lightfoot and the Sandals to take him over such obstacles.

He also looked up and promised to himself that he was going to reach the top of each and every one of the damn things, just to see what was on top of them, unnaturally straight and capped as they were. Surely there had to be some purpose to them, right?

There weren’t too many spawns there, dominated by clusters of virindi and their minions, packs of shades, and some clusters of undead of various sorts, all a bit too numerous for him to want to deal with. They forced him to detour around them, or race by too quickly for them to do anything to him.

If it was a solo Diamond Golum, now, well, he was happy to take care of that, and he offed four of them. He also saw two Diamond Lords surrounded by trios of Diamond Golums, similar clusters of which were being warmly received by the Knights of the Lost Light working down in the south. It appeared the Direlands ‘Boss’ creatures were alive and active, as were the Champions that appeared if you killed too many of any one type of creature too quickly. The Knights had reported engaging said Champions repeatedly, sometimes solo to test themselves, often Wolfpacking them to see how fast they could bring them down.

Diamond Sovereigns, Magma Exarchs, and Coral Viceroys were particularly sought after, as they dropped a LOT of gemstones when they fell. If they dropped a Heart, there were some powerful alchemicals that could be made off from them, too, for which the pent-up demand was massive.

Then the Mick was out of the Black Hills and facing the great near-solid fused black ridgeline of the Obsidian Rim, a literal wall of black rock shoved out from the center of the plains, fused together, and only open in cracks at a few scattered locations around the Rim. The Obsidian Rim Swamp ran completely around the circle of the thing, having no discernible release, yet never overflowing, presumably being drained off underwater somewhere near Wai Jhou had stood.

That was his next goal, to find out if anything remained of the Sho outpost in the Direlands.

He wasn’t ever sure why the Sho had bothered to build their town in such a dangerous place. There had been Summons points right inside the town at times, and only the mana-reinforcement of the buildings kept the strange folk who lived there alive.

Still, there was no denying they were tough, and if you wanted to explore the Obsidian Plains, it was the place to go, with a Lifest- er, Deathstone at the edge of the town, and a way up into the Plains literally across the water from it.

There were also a couple Dungeons nearby he could check up on, and, importantly, he now was less than ten miles away from the extensive area that was the Mhoire Graveyard.

Long, long ago, the Dericost noble family of the Mhoire had rebelled against their Empire, and fled to Dereth. After a thousand years or more, they had been discovered by Lord Rytheran, who had unleashed upon them a great Curse from the infamous and dreaded Book of Eibhil, slaughtering the whole clan and transporting their holdings to a shadowy realm, removing them from this world entirely.

Reverberations from other machinations had brought the Mhoire back into reality, millennia later, except they were now all spectral or skeletal undead. They really had a hate on for the undead forces of Dericost, who in turn were ceaselessly trying to suppress and dominate them using the residual magic of the Curse that had been used to punish them.

The Town Crier of Zaikhal had mentioned that the Undead had been kicked out of the Graveyard, which was one of the big high-Level playgrounds to fight in before the Fall.

He’d spent a lot of time at the Graveyard back then, killing the toughest rats and their boss on the whole island, skeletons of Mhoire, undead under Rytheran, those damn Dreads and the most dangerous Wisps known.

The Mhoire could finally be put to rest now… but that was something for the future.

For now, just Wai Jou.

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There was the Deathstone pit, just like all the others, fritzing in the center of the bright blue crystals, which were jutting out of a watery pit that was free of the slime and muck that was part and parcel of the Rim Swamp.

Not as many dead as most of the others. Probably less than threescore, he judged, looking the fused, gaping remains over, before touching Bunita’s Blade to them and letting the Lost Light spiral out and set everything there to vivus.

He looked down towards the town and the tents and buildings that had once been there, and saw nothing intact, with a dozen Summons groups visible around the place.

All the Summons groups were virindi, which told him all he needed to know about who and what controlled this place. He didn’t know if any of them were real and controlling the Summons, but it was obvious nothing human was going to be left here for him to worry about.

There was only to run quickly to the other areas close by, confirm they were still there, and then take off.

---

The Disaster Maze was now a Dungeon, but he didn’t bother going in. If he was right, there was a virindi presence he didn’t want to stir up, and if there wasn’t, it didn’t matter.

The Black Hill Portal was gone. It had been the only way to get up on top of the Black Hill right next to it, which was also the site of the Direlands Lighthouse, situated most oddly on top of it.

He wasn’t sure how anyone was meant to get atop to climb the thing, or what purpose it had ever served being where it was. Airships or something, maybe?

Still, it was time to run around the Obsidian Rim atop the swamp’s waters, avoiding most of the things on the way, and make it to the Amperehelion Vault.