The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

The feedback damage from a Spellflare was equal to the level of the interfering spell times d6... plus my Warcaster bonuses, plus the Kickers I could attach via Clavus and whatnot, and of course the extra Smites from all the Paladins and Champions, just for kicks.

Did I spend ki to Consecrate it, boost it with literally a ton of alchemical fire, pour thousands of Heartsong uses into it, and add Wrath in for another +21d6 to the recipients? Surely I wouldn’t be so rude, would I?

I’d happily blown extra Pool to give it the whole loadout I could, and while I doubted it would actually kill anything there of note, any lesser undead participating in the spell were probably going to end up messily immolated.

So, I imagined it raged right through the Shroudlord’s spell, unraveling it violently and setting it alight, and then came down through its own conduits of power onto the sources of their Ritual.

Those explosions going off on everything were probably nice and exciting. I was thinking in the nature of 15d6 Topped to 90, +35 Boosts, +30d6 of extra Kickers. That would totally toast most of the lesser undead and lesser Congregants, although it would only injure, not destroy, an actual advanced Congregant, and be a flyswat to one of the Dark Clergy.

Also, very personal, very distracting. Possibly so distracting it didn’t actually realize the ominousness of what was going on.

We had pushed back the Haze, and very pointedly, we had pushed back the Shroud. Under the Curse of the Sun, that also meant we had pushed back the Deadzone.

One hundred miles, minus twenty for the old Deadzone, was eighty miles of push-back. That meant that everything beyond the ‘new’ Deadzone, also twenty miles out from the Shroud, had to turn around and proceed that way, ignoring all other actions, until they once again came firmly into the Shroudlord’s control.

In other words, there were millions of undead there who were nothing but running ducks.

“LINK IT UP!” I wrapped the spell up, and it Sang through the Pattern. Other Casters contributed, tied into it, as the Pattern suddenly became one huge Teleport Focus, and thousands of formerly somber Ritual participants suddenly swapped out comfy clothes for their fighting duds. Weapons burned to life in many hues, but black and white were on all of them.

Disks were deployed, ready for use. Ranged attackers got ready, Melee combatants prepared to find their targets, focusing on the Constructs who weren’t under obligations to pull back.

The majority of ALL the forces ringing the Shroud were right here, right now, today. Tens of thousands of people, nearly one hundred thousand, gathered together to help the Ritual out... and then do this.

“GOING!” And my Teleport VII went out, thousands of others went off with it at the same time, and picked us up and sent us over thataways, Without Error.

Because the Shroud was gone, and so was its Interdiction against Teleporting.

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We materialized right in the middle of literally thousands of local undead heading back to the east, people materializing right out of nowhere in and around all these undead.

Undead killing instincts are always ready, but right now, they were being overridden by the total urge to head east and get back under their Shroudlord’s control. So, while they might take a swing or bite at someone, they immediately kept moving east and would leave them for others to finish.

We, of course, also promptly took swings back at them.

I started blowing off Shard cycles like no tomorrow, jetting up just above the walls as I popped my wings, and began to shred everything around. A grand Alliance was already in place, dozens of Allegiances large and small participating here, and I blew the Heavens-Up Display through it with the assistance of Casters from each Allegiance.

The sky was full of X’s and O’s in various colors almost instantly, and the numbers of X’s next to O’s dropped precipitously as everyone started letting go.

Everyone who could simply got airborne. The number of undead who could fly relative to those who could not was small, and fliers were always the first to go, especially swarmers and incorps.

I specifically focused on every damn incorp within two hundred yards of me and began to shoot them, even as they juked and altered course to fly past the living in their way. Chained Shards blew in every direction in wild rainbow jetsilver streaks, painting the earth and sky with undead. My first set wiped thousands of them just by itself, while the ground below exploded in multi-colored magical flames of the undead-extinguishing kind.

The Warlords were out and calling orders, with Briggs right there at the top of the whole pack, looking at the overall scene from inside the devoted Markspace, watching the entire arena of combat and the entire HUD even as he was bouncing into the attack against a Possessed Tank, burying Endure in its engine before shattering off its hatch. Helix flew past, dumping a single burning Arrow inside the Tank, which detonated and lit off all the ammunition stacked within, instantly doing for the thing in a black-green deathfire explosion whose flames were devoured by the rising vivus feasting on it.

I watched the squads forming up with magical speed and the information-processing speed of Tens. The central area was cleared of undead within twenty seconds, forming a center that wounded or overwhelmed combatants could retreat to for healing, or Healers could position themselves at in order to reach those fighting at the fringes.

The Melees without major levels of mobility arranged themselves into Dragon-Teeth lines across a front over fifty miles wide, with an overwatch of the less-experienced but still lethal Archers or Gunners shooting clean-up. There were support Casters and Healers, and plans quickly spinning out to deal with some of the largest undead creatures coming this way, but all in all, I had no worries for them with Briggs commanding that line.

Sama was in charge of the chasers.

The undead could only run, which made them totally vulnerable to sniping. Furthermore, there weren’t all that many openings in the walls that repeated every couple hundred meters or more, staggered endlessly across the miles. The undead would form running steps, those in front stopping to form steps or ladders for those behind, done so smoothly it looked like a movie clip as they bent down atop one another, or the largest ones stretched out and formed unmoving ramps as other undead raced over them.

Those were just clusters and places to Kill Them All to us.

Sama was moving at speed, outrunning the undead who, although tireless, couldn’t sprint, and although quicker than a normal human with their Corpsecrafted energy, didn’t have lightfoot.

More importantly, they couldn’t outrun a bullet, arrow, or spell.

We had Teleported in a mere ten miles from the edge of the new Deadzone, deployed across a fifty-mile front, and we were going to kill absolutely everything now on its way back to that Deadzone across that arc, and chase down everything between us and it.

Constructs were big blinking lights that the Melees turned to address, Forsaken who could use Baneskulls and Slaughter with two active Banes taking the lead in getting rid of them.

There was a lot of Reserve Casting and Sieged magic going off, the occasional Cast spell used for finishing blows or to soften something up from range. Kickers were blazing with additional damage, and there was nonstop death raining down from the skies as we chased, caught, killed, and kept chasing.

I was dominating and clearing a huge area in the middle because I could, exploding undead erupting beneath me and around me as I flew past. Those ramps of undead clearing the walls were just convenient focuses for Bursting Shards, turning into new pyres of undead, and the bigger Bone Walkers and Corpse Gargants and similar things made from agglomerated long-dead were just nice big fat targets.

Pointedly, there was nothing at all incorporeal surviving within my range, and I was flying fast, looking to kill as many incorps as I could, leaving the hapless undead on the ground for those slower and without the raw killing energy I wielded.

Lightfooters sped through and past the undead, striking them down, moving from Construct to Construct to hack them apart as Sama called targets across a massive area with ease and aplomb. They brought down Gunsleds, Tanks, A-A Guns, and Gunpoints, as well as sorted out the cogmen, gearhounds, and other mechanical things that were watching all this undead activity without comprehension, but still obeyed their orders to attack the living and defend themselves.

Behind us, the undead were running between lines of the living, and dying from the combination of Cleaves and Attacks of Opportunity generated by either running past waiting defenders, or charging a ready person. The bigger and tougher stuff was softened up on the approach as it was painted in higher colors, and generally didn’t reach the Melee lines too intact. The stuff that made it past the spread-out men ended up as target practice for the clean-up shooters on overwatch.

Briggs was right there in the fighting, but he was ‘ahead’ of the line, out in the oncoming undead, pounding his way through them like a boat through the surf. Endure was moving so fast all you saw was burning undead flying away about him and the Hammer flickering on one side, then the other of him. He was moving from one tough undead to the next with speed and precision, making sure mass didn’t break the line in his area, totally unworried about being swarmed and overwhelmed.

The undead couldn’t stop to pile onto him; they had to keep moving, see.

Sama was racing from Construct to Construct, treating them like breakable toys, and if that involved flipping a tank over on its side so Tremble could scream along its underside and set necroic-Possessed steel alight, that’s what she happily did.

The undead did shoot their necroarms if we got ahead of them, and some could shoot on the run, too, although it was kind of hard.

I had a full Bullet Ward and Protection from Missiles going on around me, just in case, although I actually wasn’t worried. I had enough immaterial defenses around me that bullets basically flew in every direction except straight at me most of the time. Furthermore, I was really hard to see and didn’t stay in line of sight long... nor did I leave many shooters behind me to take shots at me, as I prioritized getting rid of them.

Still, it was the incorps who were my main targets, and they naturally moved faster than the undead on the ground. I did, too, quickly outpacing most of the attack line as I ravaged the lines of undead below and around me, pressing forwards to catch up to the undead who weren’t fleeing from me and the True Death I was bringing and the vivus in the air and the shaking air lighting up with anathemic Light and all the stars and moonlight pouring down from above...

No, no, they were just trying to move as quickly as possible because they had to, yuppers.

The ten miles to the new Deadzone passed in only ten minutes for me. Nobody tried to pace me... the job was to kill everything they could, not race on ahead. Even Legion and Shvuaghn were doing Firewall Sweeps through undead ramps, not bothering to keep up with me, fully aware that in eradication of areas, I was pretty much the Empress and it wasn’t worth even talking about.

Of course, right there at the edge of the Deadzone, the undead ran into another problem, and that was the fact that there was a massive amount of them already built up right there at the edge. As in, all those retreating undead slowed down and kind of stopped once they got inside the required area, while other undead from deeper in were advancing to the edge to meet them. The slow relay of what was going on went in for hundreds of miles from dead to Congregant to Minister to Bishop to Cardinals to the Hierophant Shroudlord, and then slowly came back with new orders on what to do.

In the meantime, I hit that line of defense with quite literally everything I could, since it was literally PACKED with targets.

Widened Pyroclasms went out, and circles a thousand feet across were emptied of the chaff undead. One volley of Shards arced between the Congregants on the ground who survived that spell, and another one between all the incorps in the sky, who, all being Congregants, also survived the simple explosion of fire that absolutely eradicated tens of thousands of extremely tough Corpsecrafted and enhanced undead who nevertheless couldn’t survive the sheer amount of Kickers I had on my spells.

Then I Linejumped a thousand feet north and repeated the process.