The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

How long they’d had some of this stuff ready to go nobody knew, as germ warfare had never been pursued here to the degree it had been on Terra-Luna before the Fall, but the devastation the Harvest wrought as cell after team after cult unleashed their lethal surprises against everyone, everywhere, totally indiscriminate as to who lived and died, was quite real.

So were the ends of the perpetrators.

The fanatics just wanted the people to know and fear the names of their gods. The participating Alchemists found this an awesome time to put their deadliest toys into play, and study the results.

The Templars were literally obeying the orders being beamed into their brains, puppets they’d willingly made themselves into, thinking they were going to evolve into the next stage of man and never realizing that their ‘enlightenment’ was knowledge and commands given to them by Aberrant masters hidden deep in the Felldeep.

On our side, we had two things: Wishes, and Legion’s Cohort, who scaled up to 17 Ranks in Chemistry, Biology, Healing, and Alchemy urgently, and then went to work on cures and vaccines.

The Western world’s help in China and India had to be pulled back to deal with the massive numbers of undead rising, passive via deaths from disease, and then even faster via spawning from being killed by undead.

Twenty-three new Shroudzones erupted into being across the world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was southeast Asia that stayed mostly free of everything like this. The perpetrators came from the West, and couldn’t join any of the active Allegiances at work there, or they would have been revealed. That made it very easy to determine who to focus attention on, and what agents thought they could infiltrate the area were quickly exposed and dealt with.

Perhaps the biggest heroes of the whole effort as a people were the Tomb Clans.

Largely immune to the diseases, the Tomb Clanners returned and threw themselves into the fight against the undead all across Europe, the Americas, and even Africa as the plagues spread further, daring worms and fleas as they put the undead down, burned endless corpses with vivus, and were some of the most dogged agents going after those spreading this Black Death.

This was another fight on scale, and I couldn’t do much of anything. Oh, I could pop in here and there and Mass Cure Disease on several dozen people at a time, but that was about it. It wasn’t like there was a Healing Plague I could spread in retaliation.

I could only use Wishes to track down and learn who was spreading things. Wishes used directly against the plagues and nerve gas and whatnot would utterly fail, as the Shroud was encouraging the effects of such things at raising the numbers of dead. It would simply block any Wish acting against them.

The only thing we could do is find out who was responsible, after the fact, and go for them. Which we definitely did, every single time.

There was one thing I had done, and I had wrapped it up with Leveling advice for healers.

There were nowhere near enough Casters to treat everyone who could be afflicted in a plague with standard Valences. But, that was the sort of thing that Siege Magic was made for.

All battle Priests learned spells to heal injuries, but the other job of healers was Condition Removal, be it fatigue, pain, hunger, sickness, nausea, delirium, or whatever. Plagues and biological attackers inflicted these things on massive scales, and the only way to fight them was with Siege Magic, endlessly repeated, lower-power variants of the standard spells that nevertheless were enough to do the jobs, if the Caster put in the time and effort and rep counts.

The three key spells were The Mother’s Mercy, Resist Disease, and naturally Cure Disease.

The Mother’s Mercy was a pre-Cast Valence I spell that lasted until the next dawn, and gave you a +1 Sacred bonus to your next Fortitude Save that involved disease or poison for every three Levels of the Caster, max +3.

Resist Disease was a II Valence, and gave you a +1 per Caster Level bonus to your Fort save against a disease for its duration, as well as an immediate saving throw if needed. The key part of this was it was reinforcing the body to fight off the disease, so it left behind resistance and immunity to future infections of the same kind.

Cure Disease was III, and involved a contested Caster Level check against a disease. Sieged Spells had a flat -4 bonus on most Contested Checks, but if you could use it over and over again, even diseases helped out by the Shroud might eventually give way.

Sieged Spells required great Concentration to get off, thousands of rep counts to build up their Caster Levels, and enough magic in Valences to support them.

They also required initial Castings to create the basic knowledge required to Siege them. As a result, one of the things I had repeatedly emphasized to any Healer was to get the initial rep counts in on at least the first two spells. I didn’t expect them to be able to Siege Cure Disease, as the Siege Check on it was III x 10 for Valence, + 5 x 5/CL minimum, for a 55 starter.

Mother’s Mercy started at 15, and only hit 55 if you had the reps in to Siege it at Nine. Resist Disease started at 35, which was a huge number for almost anyone Six or below... but there were a lot of people who were over Six now who put some real effort into Concentration for them Sun Saves, and could pull it off. Yeah, it was a 65 to pull it off at Nine, but I could do that, too, once I had enough rep counts in (a mere 16k).

It was one of the useless spells I Cast and sent along on my Shards when I had free Ki to replace them all, so I had the basic rep counts to Siege as needed. I could go into an area and help them out.

Those Cured, however, didn’t get the herd immunity or resistance bonus, and could just get re-infected. So, the key was always Mercy and Resist, stacking that Fort save so they threw off the disease or effects of the gas themselves.

Lesser Restoration could deal with Stat damage, but didn’t heal as fast as the diseases harmed. Like Mercy, Resist, and Cure, you only got the benefit of one per Renewal, too.

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In the meantime, those spreading these things learned their own meaning of fear.

The hunters for them included Void Brothers and Paladins combined, an odd pairing that was nothing if not totally relentless. Wishes and Miracles led the way, and those who thought that spreading the word of their gods to get into their good favor when said god finally arrived learned a bit too late that the Shroud really didn’t give a fuck who was supposed to get their soul. It took them all.

Three powerful Daemonic servants of Skulos, the last remaining Shabnodaemon of Shoul on the planet, dozens of lesser daemons, four members of the Illuminati, two Ghoul Sages who thought all this was a good idea for fun and munchies, and even two Elder Vampires who had remained concealed and hidden before now all ended up burning en vivus, along with scores of Sinbound Warlocks, fanatic lesser Priests, and many mad Alchemists cackling in glee at their discoveries and mad insights even as they died.

The Templars were subtler, and mixed in terrorist attacks on infrastructure with their other assaults, adding disasters to the mix as no less than forty dams were blown apart, dozens of bridges shattered, and scores of different political figures, celebrities, and prominent leaders were targeted with assassination attempts.

They were all over the place, and they were well-buried, disciplined, and controlled by a single source somewhere out of our reach. They fought coldly to the death, detonating themselves rather than being captured, only trying to inflict as much harm as they could before passing.

It really, really sucked, but despite everything, and even defenses against Wish-level magic, we were closing in on them, even if they couldn’t tell.

Regardless, there were no rewards for their devotion waiting for them. The Shroud took them all, and whatever masters they claimed allegiance to didn’t know or care.

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September 1, China...

Clavus was calmly presented back to me by Commander Haru’Ara.

There was a weight about his length of Jotun bone that wasn’t there before. It was a density and purity of magic that was beyond the mortal ability to wield, something only possible at post-Twenty.

Legendary Crafting.

It was a simple thing, ‘just’ opening Slot Elb. Just that one simple thing had taken the planetar 100 days of focus and labor, working at microscopic levels on Runework, Matrices, Empowerment, modulation, Infusion, and had Burned off five thousand pounds of gold.

Einz was a little envious of the flagrant spending, but there was no way he could reach Legendary himself, since Haru’Ara wasn’t a Ringmaker.

Just one Slot... but now, there was basically no end to the number of Slots I could add, limited only by the Craftsmanship of my Staff. Clavus was now sitting at 55, the highest possible with mortal materials we had available. That meant seven more Slots.

Only seven, but, ah, what difference +7 could make, especially since the mortal cap of +5 was no longer in play...

I had no desire for any of the various +VI or higher Legendary Enchantments, leaving such things as options for Sama and Briggs, who could use Arsenal to swap them in and out.

Nope, straight numeric Enhancement was all I was shooting for, and so I began the process of improving Clavus to +III, which would take 42 days of use.

Spike I handed off to the Warlocks still back in Heavenbound Hall to Imbue. I would add Disruption to it, and turn it into the required material component for some very powerful anti-undead, anti-Fiend magicks... as well as a terrific personal combat weapon against the undead.

Despite plagues and insane terrorist attacks rocking the world, I had kept up my Mapping of the Pacific, and on August 30th, I had completed it.

There had been attacks on nuclear storage facilities, among other things. However, there were constant Wishes in effect to warn us if the nuclear arsenal was being attacked, and Legion was ready and able to go to any and all North America military bases to stop them, and could be instantly joined by Shvaughn.

The whole Morningsun family could basically reach any base in Europe... and had to, three different times. Cue some very bright and deadly fireworks.

If the ships were anywhere in the Pacific or Atlantic, I could reach them instantly. I had to do so four times, once barely getting to the cultist commander and the Templar crew of a submarine after they murdered the rest of the crew before launching.

On September 4, Lore would finish up Wizardry I and start on II. More spells for me to not use as I spent sixteen hours a day riding around the Indian Ocean, Mapping the shores, the Felldeep, and the eel-men and krakens who lived there, and some things in deeper waters where, like the Pacific and the Atlantic, nobody wanted to know actually lived there.

The Black Death continued on its rampage across the world, spread deliberately by fanatics and uncaringly by those moving around and trying to run from it, something hard to stop in a magical world. There were too many people who could escape a quarantine easily now, and if they were intent on spreading a disease, it was hard to stop them without knowing who they were and killing them.

It would take me another three months to map the Indian Ocean. Once I was done, things were going to get very explosive, and we wouldn’t have to worry about deep cover or suborned agents trying to get their hands on nukes, because they were pretty much all going to be gone.