Chapter 124: Day 171 – Blue

I wondered if the mage-kings needed to sleep. Fourth-tiers did, and even with kinetic and stellar Affinity Iniri did, but mage-kings had way more power than they did. But I didn’t, so if they were hoping to wear me out by sending monsters out at all hours of the day and night they weren’t going to get far. Maybe they’d wear themselves out that way and start making mistakes. Or, more mistakes.

Their scouts navigated the lava terrain fairly easily. I let them, of course, watching the flame elementals simply flit by and the lava slimes and oozes crawl across the terrain without being bothered. The gillborn mostly swam up the canal, but some of them prowled the shorelines and explored small rivers.

There wasn’t anything for them to find, for the most part, since I’d made sure to pull everyone that had been in the area out, whether they liked it or not. Most people had gone with mass village, town, or dwelling relocations. There were still some people when I combed through it ahead of the monsters, all of whom I dropped in Meil. I didn’t know what they were doing, and I didn’t care. I just didn’t want any of the mage-king forces to find any people.

I was actually curious as to what they thought they’d find, and what value the intelligence would be. Were they hoping that the scouts could locate my cores by combing over the fields and forests of Tarnil? Or were they looking for the Scalemind, since they figured those were my monsters. Maybe they were just getting an idea of the lay of the land, since I understood there were some difficulties with figuring it out by scrying. The equivalent of high-altitude spying wasn’t as useful as it might seem without good ways to record and analyze the results.

[Lost Woods] went up the moment the scouts crossed into actual forest. In the wee hours of the morning it wasn’t at all obvious anything was going on, and by the time they figured it out I was sure whatever organization they had would be gone. I was also fairly well amused by the idea of getting a will’o’wisp lost, though I couldn’t be entirely certain that the Field would work on something with non-standard senses.

The floating islands swept closer until they hovered just offshore, and the mage-kings took to hammering my towers in earnest. It actually kind of amused me, because while the weather towers were important-ish, they weren’t a vital strategic asset and there were only six in range of their guns or the spell equivalent. If they wrecked every tower it would be an issue, but their focus on just the six did nothing but give me an idea of what they could do.

The four mage-kings had different preferences in spells, when they weren’t coordinating. Bel Aci liked fire and volcano spells, of course. It matched his flame elementals, but he had more finesse than one might expect with those elements. He tried simply hammering the towers, but [Structural Mana Reinforcement] kept that from being particularly effective. I knew he wasn’t trying as hard as he might, but he was still testing my defenses. I doubted they had nigh-infinite mana to work with like I did.

What I could do was cool things down and reinforce with mana. It wasn’t a very complex strategy, and when he started using tiny ultra-hot jets of fire that crawled over the walls and spiked themselves into the stone like pitons, it started to fail. It also gave me a new appreciation for what spell Skills could do, because when it came down to it, I hadn’t seen much in the way of complex spellwork. I sure couldn’t do any, I didn’t know how to read Iniri’s runes, and there hadn’t been any enemies to really use high-powered spells on for any other Classers around. Even inside Wildwood, most of the good stuff went on out in the woods where I didn’t have any presence.

Though I couldn’t stop the tower from crumbling, at least not without pumping more mana into it than I liked and maybe tipping off the mage-kings that I did have that much to spend, an idea occurred to me. Simply stopping the tower from breaking wasn’t the only way I could protect it. I had no idea how well it’d work on something I’d made, but I had a Conservatory Climate that was supposed to restore things to the way they were.

I slapped it overtop the tower before it could get too damaged, since it wouldn’t help if the Conservatory rebuilt it to its broken state, and focused on the others. Vok Lim seemed to prefer Kinetic energy, and lots of it, smashing at the stone with pure force. That said, he wasn’t a complete brute, and the kinetic casts were embodied in punch-chisel shapes that gouged at the base of the tower.

Sen Rii used water, sending it whirling about the stone, gouging furrows a few meters below sea level and occasionally smashing into the tower with enough force to make the massive structure shake. The whole effect was enough to send cracks spiderwebbing through the tower base. Tem Irn seemed to favor earth Affinity, since his spells basically transmuted the solid stone into sand. I would have thought that’d be more effective than any of the other attacks, but in this case his mana was directly competing with mine rather than bringing physical force to bear, so as long as I held up [Structural Mana Reinforcement] he could only convert a small amount at a time. Relatively small, anyway. The towers were pretty huge.

I gave them all the Conservatory treatment and didn’t worry about trying any harder to keep them from crumbling. As soon as the bombardment stopped they started growing again brick by brick, and after a few more attempts to fully level them, the mage-kings gave up on trying to do permanent damage. By the time the islands resumed their advance it was well into morning, and Iniri was having brunch with Shayma.

After the long period of waiting around the prior day, Iniri had decided it wasn’t necessary to hold court and keep everyone updated on nothing happening. She stayed in one of her offices with Shayma, instead, catching up correspondences and requests. Between [Queen’s Insight] and myself she would have plenty of warning when she needed to defend Meil, especially given the leisurely advance of the fortresses.

“All right, I’m going to hit them in a minute or two here. Better inform everyone that it’s planned.”

“Blue’s going to attack soon,” Shayma reported to Iniri.

“Then I shall announce that whatever noise and fury occurs is due to his defense,” Iniri said, taking one last bite of toast and rising to head out to the audience hall. I focused back on the mage-kings.

The fortress-islands were at about a hundred meters altitude, which was quite a distance, but considering the size of the things they seemed to almost scrape the ground. Though I didn’t want them to actually land and force me to deal with dungeon combat, I didn’t mind them being low enough that I could actually influence them with my mana.

Though if they did touch down, I had a much, much larger mana pool this time. I didn’t know whether or not I could keep my head, but even a stupid version of me would hopefully empty my mana pool into the opposing dungeon. Two hundred thousand [Bane] mana would probably be enough to vaporize it.

I didn’t think they were interested in that, though. They could have dropped down right into the ocean just in front of the lava fields if they were. Plus, from the comments I heard, they might know that I had control of all of Tarnil but it didn’t really make them think about treating Tarnil like a dungeon. I thought they wanted to force me to surrender, or rather, force the person they thought was controlling the dungeon to surrender, without doing too much damage.

Obviously they were willing to wreak property damage, but since dungeon-to-dungeon combat involved core HP dropping, it was a different beast altogether. Even if they burned down every square inch of Tarnil, or covered the whole thing in ten meters of lava or really anything, I’d be effectively unharmed. Well, except for my Bargain, but they didn’t know about that.

My first surprise for them came when their floating islands were all poised over the strip of volcanic land I’d allowed them to make. Though the four islands were in effectively a straight line, the contours of the coast meant that their positions relative to the lava line were actually staggered. Since each fortress-island was about ten kilometers across, that wasn’t a problem, and soon enough all four were in range.

I shoved energy into the volcano Climate and watched as it detonated right under the islands. Between the inherent energy of the Climate and the extra mana, the whole thing went up in a rage of superheated rock and boiling gas. Massive cracks shot through the ground and the shockwave stripped the nearby earth bare, even going so far as to annihilate the trailing elements of the scouting force.

I had to reinforce Meil and the Palace, even one hundred thirty kilometers away, as the ground shook. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been, the Climate somehow containing what ought to have been an apocalyptic explosion. Over a hundred kilometers of angry volcano hammered against the underside of the islands, shattering wards and eating into the reinforced rock.

Sen Rii’s island seemed to be hit the hardest, actually lifting it higher into the air and tilting it precariously as the underside glowed with sullen heat, but it didn’t lose anything more than a few layers of rock. I didn’t quite manage to flip the thing over, if that was even possible, but the angle sent a huge stream of water pouring out of the interior, along with a few monsters. They were higher-level Gillborn than the scouts, but most of them went splat when they hit the ground. With luck, I’d boiled quite a few more, but despite the damage I’d done to the rock exterior I hadn’t bored into anything inhabited.

Tem Irn’s fortress didn’t move so much but took far more damage. One particularly volatile jet caught the upward slope of the island’s side and melted through, exposing part of a cavern system and flensing it with superheated gas and rock. Compared to the entire bulk of the thing it wasn’t much, but I still felt the thrill of victory as I cooked whatever was in there. Probably more slimes and oozes.

The eruption didn’t do much to Bel Aci’s island, which didn’t surprise me. He clearly favored volcanic Affinity himself, and while the sheer power of the eruption smashed the outer wards and heated up the underside, that didn’t accomplish much more than lifting the island up a few dozen meters. Vok Lim’s actual land showed more damage than that, some of the rock melting and more of it cracking, but his wards held out longer than anyone else’s.

All of that happened in maybe two minutes of orgiastic destruction, and then the islands were lifting higher in the sky, moving away from the kill line. Once they were clear I dialed back the volcano Climate, since I didn’t need it at full blast anymore. Which wasn’t to say I wouldn’t be trying again if I had the opportunity, but now that they knew I could do that, they weren’t likely to go near any such trap again.

“How the fuck did Blue do that?” Vok Lim growled, glaring at the projections of the other three mage-kings.

“I’d say he has access to a fifth-tier volcanic user,” Bel Aci said. “If he’s not one himself. It’s looking like he’s got a lot of mana reserves from his dungeon. That may be the reason behind spreading over such a massive area.”

“More reserves than we do?” Tem Irn asked.

“Possibly,” Bel Aci admitted. “He may also have a number of Classers working for him, in addition to whatever he gets from his dungeon. We’ll have to anticipate any Affinity being used against us.”

“We’ll just have to dispose of any Classers that come out to play,” Vok Lim shrugged. “Isn’t there a city nearby? Blow it up.”

“They’re going to try and attack Meil,” I told Iniri. “You’re going to need to shield it when they get closer.” If worst came to worst, I could relocate or teleport Meil, but between the palace acting as a giant casting instrument and being able to pull on my mana, she could probably protect it.

“I almost feel I need to protect Tarnil from you,” Iniri muttered. “How much of Tarnil is intact after that?”

“Surprisingly, a lot, and I can fix it all. By the time I put back the cities and towns it’ll be just fine, I promise.”

“Then I’ll keep Meil safe. I just hope you’re right about having ways to drive them off.”

“I am!”

Chief among those ways was what Shayma had done with all the [Firmament] I’d made. It wasn’t a classical weapon in any sense, simply a hollow handle with a hundred meters of incredibly thin wire on the end. That would be dangerous enough, considering [Firmament]’s properties, but in Sienne’s hands it would be a terror. Though Sienne wouldn’t be able to use it too close to the mage-kings due to depletion worries, and it would be too damned dangerous to wield in any sort of group endeavor, but with Shayma to hide her she could take big chunks out of the fortresses.

It had been entirely Shayma’s idea from start to finish. She’d talked to Sienne, she’d done the testing, and she’d forged the Firmament. Once we’d tested that [Firmament] wasn’t destroyed by void Mana, Sienne had been very interested in using it. Even so, the end result was more than a little unwieldy.

“This is very awkward.” Sienne said, holding the hilt gingerly. A brief flick sent trees toppling and brush sagging as it cut through everything it encountered. It wasn’t without resistance; the wire was thin, not a monofilament, but considering Classer strength it was enough to cut through ordinary foliage. Shayma and Giorn were standing well away, outside the potential reach of the weapon.

“You’ll be fine, honey!” Giorn called back. “Let’s see what you can do with it!”

Sienne approached the targets, three huge pillars of Stonesteel with [Structural Mana Reinforcement], and activated her void Skill. She made a face, but the whole thing turned black and a flick of her wrist sent it right through all three pillars. I could even feel how the void mana simply sheared right through [Structural Mana Reinforcement]. Then the darkness faded and the [Firmament] weapon was still there.

“Yes! All right, mom, I know what we’re doing if one of them gets closer.”

While the Ells made their plans, I took care of the scouts. Most of them were still lost, for obvious reasons, but the Gillborn swimming in the rivers, for example, were making slow progress. The accumulation of monsters was seriously getting on my nerves too, so it was time to trim them down. Good thing I could teleport.

[The Pit of Despair] created.

[Defender’s Superiority] grants 35,000 experience.

It wasn’t the spatial functions directly, but I’d made a kilometer-deep box lined with spikes of [Cultivated Steel] and saturated with [Purgatory]. Then I just teleported monsters into the ceiling, flipping them upside-down in the process, and they didn’t even realize they were falling until it was too late. It was the floating elementals that needed portals, since for some reason they were too slippery to catch easily with teleports. On the other hand, [Lost Woods] just herded them straight into my portals as long as I put one nearby and marginally camouflaged it.

Obviously, the floating elementals weren’t too affected by a drop into a pit, but when I dropped flailing Gillborn with a ton of water on top of them, that pretty much did the trick. From what I could tell it was more the drop that killed the slimes than the spikes, but they were all dead anyway. Anything that survived I could pop with a LAE and, every once in a while, I turned up the temperature high enough to crisp all the dead meat and then washed it out with water. In all, it took me less than an hour to clear out some ten thousand monster scouts.

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“Blue somehow wiped out all my scouts,” Sen Rii growled. “They didn’t see anything!”

“Mine too,” Bel Aci said. “I would say it was the Scalemind, except they shouldn’t be able to take over my scouts. Though considering his dungeon control so far, he might well have found some evolution that does.”

“Your scouts are not very helpful,” Vok Lim said.

“You haven’t even deployed your monsters yet. I think it’s time to start.” Bel Aci told him.

“Fine. I’ll go take that city.” Vok Lim said.

“Monsters first,” Bel Aci reminded him. “Don’t just blow it up unless you need to.”

Vok Lim’s island began to move off from the strict battle-line that they’d shown previously. It moved surprisingly quickly but, considering how massive it was, that still wasn’t too fast. I hadn’t gotten a good look at how they’d deployed the monsters into the ocean, but now that they were nearby and overland, I did.

Magic flared deep inside the island and shot down until it hit the ground, and suddenly there were thousands of [Crushmonger Ogres] and [Spellburner Ogres] on the ground. It was a teleportation spell of some sort, clearly not anywhere near the same as my own, and it deposited the various ogres in regimented lines.

Unlike the scout types, who had all been in their low to mid-twenties in terms of level, all the ogres were level fifty at least. They reminded me of Tor Kot’s army, with mixed melee, ranged, and magic, not to mention the basic power level. Each pulse of the teleport put down several thousand at once, though I wasn’t sure why Vok Lim was putting them down so far from Meil. If it were me, I would have tried going overhead and teleporting them directly into the city center.

Maybe that wouldn’t have worked for the red cores, though. I could tell they were still using mage-king and red core capabilities as the template for their expectations, not realizing what I could actually do, and I had to be careful I didn’t succumb to the same blindness. I had to remember that they could do things I couldn’t.

When I thought about it, I might be able to break their teleportation with a strong enough [Warding]. It wasn’t something I wanted to bring to their attention, though, unless the monsters started getting too intimidating. For the moment, if Vok Lim wanted to give me a bunch of monsters to throw into the grinder, I wasn’t going to interrupt him.

“You might need to move or defend yourselves soon. Vok Lim’s sending a bunch of monsters before he tries any magical attacks.” Shayma was still chatting with her mom, and when I broke in, she gave both Sienne and Giorn a hug.

“One minute, mom and dad, I need to talk to Iniri. Keep ahold of The Whacker, we’ll probably be using it soon.”

“You named it The Whacker?”

“Well, it’s not a sword, and she was just whacking stuff with it, so yeah.” Shayma said, then trailed off as she focused on her Companion Concord.

“Can’t really argue with that.” Of course they were going to name it something silly. They were the Ells.

Iniri was with a bunch of caster-type Classers in a big rune circle. The actual mechanics of what they were doing was a bit beyond me, but I got the general idea — they were going to try and undo the wards on Vok Lim’s island. Considering that the magical defenses could take at least some of a volcanic explosion to the face, tearing them down would make it a lot easier to get at the soft underbelly of the fortress. Relatively soft, anyway.

“Oh, I’m ready for him.” Iniri said in response to whatever Shayma had told her, far more confident now that she’d gone up against the mage-kings with more than fair success. “Is Blue going to take care of all those monsters?”

“Oh yeah, absolutely. I’ll just throw them in the pit.”

“In the pit?” Shayma questioned, and over in the Palace Iniri raised her eyebrows. So I described what I was doing to get rid of the monsters they were dropping on us and Shayma got a thoughtful look. “Couldn’t we use that as an easy combat opportunity for people? For anything that isn’t killed outright, that is.” Iniri nodded agreement, clearly following along via Companion Concord.

“I feel like I should have thought of that. Okay, go ahead and round people up and I’ll make a shooting gallery place for them.” I wasn’t sure how much experience could be gotten from the idea, since they would be hitting dying and helpless monsters, but it couldn’t hurt. With level fifty-plus monsters, just the drop onto two-meter needle-pointed spikes might not actually kill everything anyway. Physics was not king when magic was involved.

I reshaped the pit a bit, made it narrower, and then ran a balcony around the inside, set into the wall and framed by spikes. Since I didn’t want any incidental spellcasting or splashing or whatever to hit anyone there, not only did I raise it a good fifty meters above the floor, I protected it with cultivated steel and thin Adamant Stone shields, leaving tiny arrow slits with a few more open alcoves if someone needed more than just line of sight with a bow or spell. It’d be too bad for the melee types, but I couldn’t think of any way to make it safe for them. Even if I was conservative about grabbing monsters they’d be coming down by the thousands, along with all kinds of debris. It was done long before Iniri wrangled up fifty or so ranged Classers to take advantage of it.

Taelah volunteered too, mostly to act as my relay for the Classers. That said, she did have some vials along that looked to be charged with fire and ice types of mana, probably to bomb monsters with. If it was free experience, she might as well take advantage of it.

Annit and Keri arrived alongside Taelah, since Annit was still trying to get a Skill for her new bowgun. Instead of my idea about the hydraulic pressure, Shayma had added a water reservoir that Annit could use to freeze ice heads onto the bolts with precision wind use. It made a lot more sense than my initial idea, in hindsight, even if it did mean that Annit had to tote around extra water to refill her bowgun.

The whole thing was a little awkward, but in theory if she could graduate to storm Affinity, she wouldn’t need the external water reservoir and her ice would start benefitting from Storm magic instead of just being mundane. I was glad I’d handed the project off to Shayma, because not only did she know more than I did about these things, so did Sienne and Giorn. The end result had been a bowgun with two tanks, one for water and one for air, and a quick-load mechanism. That last one wasn’t even magical, just the result of some work by an artificer from Wildwood.

Iniri’s mage circle couldn’t go either, of course, since they were needed to deal with the oncoming wards, but everyone else seemed eager for target practice. Once people were situated and ready, I spun up a teleport under a group and popped them to the top of the killbox. As soon as they appeared, gravity took hold and pulled the monsters into a freefall.

A couple of the ranged monster types had movement Skills, sharp reflexes letting them leap off the bodies of fellow monsters, but with the [Purgatory] field over everything they didn’t even see the ceiling and just slammed into it at speed before starting to fall. The Field now only covered the outside of the pit, since the Classers needed to be able to see their targets to shoot them, so the perspective was now an infinite nothing with spikes at the bottom rather than just an infinite nothing.

Being able to see bottom didn’t help them much.

As I’d expected, they didn’t explode into giblets like their twentieth-level counterparts, though the spikes still did a number on them. At least half of them did die outright, the [Cultivated Steel] punching through their armor, but some of the spikes got bent and at least one of the ogres actually managed to angle itself so that it grabbed a spike and slowed itself down with minimal damage, which was a damn impressive maneuver.

Unfortunately for it, there were an awful lot of Classers ready to finish it off. Arrows, bolts, blobs of all different colored magic, pellets, phantom spears, and one very angry bird tore into the monsters the moment they appeared. Just a few seconds after they fell, every one of them was dead, and with very little collateral damage to my spikes. So I lassoed the next company and pulled them down, keeping an eye on the island as it floated toward Meil.

The issue came when I tried to grab the seventh or eighth group of ogres, who’d noticed their compatriots were disappearing and had something very strong that dispersed spatial magic. When I shoved over five thousand mana into the teleport without it closing on them, I decided to do something else. I could have put in far more, of course, but I wanted to keep that a bit of a surprise. Bel Aci, if nobody else, was smart enough to notice things and come up with countermeasures.

“Hey Shayma, what do you say to taking Sienne and cutting up some mage-ogres?” I described what was happening and Shayma got a slow smile.

“I think mom has wanted to do something like that all her life.” She turned to her parents with a grin. “How do you feel about killing a couple hundred ogre mages?”

“Oooh, the Whacker?” Sienne’s grin looked exactly like Shayma’s.

“The Tree can probably help too,” Shayma said. “Blue’s got a square of spatial mages he wants us to take out.”

“That sounds like fun!” Giorn grinned, spinning The Ell Family Tree with casual menace. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed to be ever so slightly stronger in magic than it had been when Shayma had gifted it to him.

“Precision strike?” Sienne asked, picking up The Whacker and pointing it straight up.

“Yeah, I’ll hop us there through my [Phantasmal Path], then back out after you do your strike.” Shayma said. She held hands with her parents and hauled them through the Phantasmal Realm, following my directions until they were on top of the band of ogres. I thought that they might have to drop out further away, due to the spatial shenanigans, but [Phantasmal Path] didn’t seem to count as spatial.

“Three, two, one…” Shayma counted down, and Sienne and Giorn took positions, clearly knowing exactly what they were doing without needing to voice a plan. The actual attack happened in a blur. The three fox-kin popped into reality in the middle of the regiment of mages, and Sienne and Giorn each took a half-circle swipe. For Sienne, the Whacker glowed black with void magic, and for Giorn, the Tree extended to about two hundred meters in length and as narrow as Giorn could make it.

The Whacker cut through several hundred ogres with the soft sigh of noise I associated with void magic, of air rushing in to fill the gap left behind from a cut. In its wake ogres faltered, freezing before they started to just fall apart. Giorn’s cut was more dramatic, making a sharp ripping noise as the Tree displaced air in front of it and then smashing into the other half of the ogres. His targets practically exploded, the kinetic magic rippling through the staff slamming into them like a falling mountain and leaving a wave of gore. Sienne and Giorn swept quickly, smoothly, and perfectly together, each of them ending the arc of their blow where the other had started. Shayma blinked, then pulled them out again, vanishing into [Phantasmal Path] as the shock of the sudden attack rippled out into other nearby companies.

“Wow, that did it for sure.” I took advantage of the devastation by dumping another set of ogres down the pit, finding it even easier with that particular set of mages gone. Apparently, they hadn’t just been protecting themselves. Even with my mana sight and all the Status stuff I got from [Genius Loci], it was hard to discern all the various bits of spellcraft or Skills or equipment, especially in big groups like with the army. I could see exactly why scrying broke down.

“That was amazing!” Shayma gushed, hurrying back to Meil with her parents in tow.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done something like that with my Void skills,” Sienne said. Blood was dripping from her hand, since even with Firmament the touch of the Void still took off a few layers of flesh every time she used it. Fortunately, Taelah had produced some tinctures that helped fix it quite quickly.

“I used up most of my stored kinetic power,” Giorn said. “But it was worth it. The Tree is amazing!” It was also completely clean of blood or guts or even weeds or sap. I’m not sure how that worked, since that wasn’t one of the magical properties on its Status. Maybe it was just some bit of finesse on Giorn’s part.

“Blue is destroying one of my divisions,” Vok Lim growled, pointing his fingers at the images of the other mage-kings. “Distract him so I can actually get some units through.”

“Very well,” Bel Aci said. He flipped a hand, gesturing around at the others. “Burn everything.”

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