The Power of Ten

The cruise missile zipped around the hills and mountains with uncanny precision, faster than any Cultivator could fly. It was covered in E-plumbum, ignoring all magical and Qi energies on its course, and one protruding fin had an Interdiction on it, so attempts to intercept it with dimensional movement would be impossible. Its radar would avoid anything waiting in the air to stop it... but there was nothing doing so.

It plunged through the protective Barrier around the Hellfire Ice Note as if it wasn’t there, and if the guards on duty saw the dark shadow of it coming faster than sound, they weren’t in position to do anything to stop it as it flew directly above the central nexus of the Grand Formation, where the Sect’s Elders and Grandmaster were all engaged in directing power to the distant Black Dragon Claw Sect.

An atomic weapon by itself would have been lethal to almost everyone in the Sect, but that wasn’t the point of this. The Vivic Enchantment inscribed on the warhead and about the inner shell of the missile gave the explosion a hungry edge, and the concentrated Qi lines linking this Formation were like trails of gunpowder.

There was a flash of the sun, and then not only did whiteness bloom over the Sect, but it lunged out into the distance at the speed of lightning, growing at calamitous speed with every mile.

When they reached the sources of the Qi, those walls of flame were like sky-born tsunami stretching from heaven to earth, and the aghast Daoists could only gape as they came down on them.

The Grand Formation overloaded as the vivus devoured the Qi inside and out, and the Cultivators linked to it didn’t fare much better. Some exploded from within as the vivus got inside them, others managed to vent all their power before it could do so, and heavy white stars and striped cloaks devoured the landscape, throwing off waves of hungry vivus that devoured all the Qi, everywhere.

Atop the Black Dragon Sect, the incoming vivus collapsed onto that congealed dragon of Qi, and it blew apart with a devastating roar as it finished its cataclysmic breath. The Sect’s Formation only contained the explosion for the half-second necessary to intensify it even further, and then it all blew out in a blast of unwhite fire that reduced all the Qi-infused constructions, almost all the Cultivators, and everything they’d made upon this world into heavy white dust.

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Briggs and Sama led the vanguard team up to the Black Dragon Claw fortress while the world was still smothered in whiteness and dust.

There were only twenty of them, but they weren’t expecting much opposition at all. Tremblesense painted the ground for the whole group through the direct Fellowship link, and so they didn’t need to see too much as they ran or were Disk-dragged up to the fortress.

Detect Cultivators at V ranged out, painted those still surviving into the Heavens-Up Display for all of them, and five teams of four split up to make sure none of them survived the day.

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Nearly two million screaming Chinese assaulted all of the Sects at the same time. Their Formations erupting, their Qi sucked away by devouring vivus, their masters reeling, and the air thick with the horrible smell of the white dust of mortality, none of them were prepared to take on the assaults, even with the time gained by none of the attackers breaching the sensory edges of the Formation prematurely.

The searingly pure energies of vivus infused the air and devoured Qi everywhere, driving their spiritual animals crazy, to the point where some turned on the Cultivators with them to devour them and regain some Qi. It wasn’t enough and didn’t save them as the Purgers swept in.

The most decisive of the Sects gathered their survivors and immediately pulled out to the north, aiming to get over the mountains and into the desolate lands beyond, abandoned by mortals, where they could set up anew, gather their energies once more, and rebuild.

Unfortunately for them, they ran right into the North American Armed Forces waiting for them there, while those to the west ran into the European Forces assembled to make sure they didn’t spread anywhere else.

It wasn’t their first time seeing jets, helicopters, tanks, and assembled rotary cannons, but it was their first time seeing so many of them, of so high a quality, and all of them were directed at them!

Ammunition was spent very freely. There weren’t too many armed conflicts where it was going to be valuable anymore, so using it up on Cultivators was definitely the way to go here.

Most appropriately, the powerful Masters called in from other worlds did not have any experience with higher technology and gunpowder. Once they ran into Stillflight Fields and Interdictions and could not get away, artillery and rocket barrages focused on them did an excellent job of wiping them out, even if they raised whole hills of stone to protect themselves. A fuel-air warhead simply didn’t care, nor did radar-guided vivic-enhanced rocket loads eating away all their Qi and reducing them to merely enhanced physical combatants, which radar-tracking Gatling guns were happy to concentrate on.

There was no guarantee they got them all, of course. But there were Druids Communing with the Land, looking for sources of Qi in circles nine and ten miles in radius. There were Rangers tracking them down with impossible skill, be it on land or flying, and there were Wayfists and Fireswords grim on the hunt, following every last trace of Qi, every sleepy murmur of irritation from the Land, chasing after those trying to hide and stealth their way to safety.

No, they didn’t get all of them, but they got the vast majority of them... and as for the rest, they would be hunting them down forever.

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The only Sects left after the Changing of the Season, as the Chinese named the event, were those mid to low-tier Sects in the middle ground between the coast and the mountains. They were generally close to the two lines of the Great Wall of China, which was still in the process of being fully eradicated.

They didn’t know exactly what was going on, as there were far too many Purgers between them and the powerful Sects, but all the omens were bad, indeed, and when the dirty mortals turned out in such force that they completely surrounded each Sect one by one and began to reduce them, they knew their time was up.

Their end might have been more bloody and valiant were it not for the amount of artillery fire that pounded down on them and reduced their fortified bases to rubble, destroying their Formations, while missiles from aircraft blew apart towers and walls, softening them up for the final push.

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As the last of the Daoist Cultivator Sects was crushed, it turned October 15, and Sama and Briggs rolled that Glory Award into making Ten, an event that rippled across the Allegiance.

They were part of a Legendary Racial Class, so going right to Eleven was going to be nothing much for them, part of their inevitable progression to domination.

There was a lot to dominate, so that wasn’t unexpected at all.

Clavus finished up Slot Elb, and started on Zwolf, 46 more days of whack-a-mole fighting here and there.

India and China both still had Shroudzones to clear, but were wisely saving them for the new people who wanted to get in on all of this and gain Levels. Russia still had a ton of Shroudzones as well, which the Americans and Europeans were addressing.

Seniors started diversifying their experience kits, going down into the Felldeep to fight different kinds of foes, expand the maps of the Felldeep, and discover what else was down there.

That often meant fighting and killing it, but it also established contact with a lot of primitive cultures amazed to find out that there was life in places with no ceilings above them...

They also went to complete war against the Harvesters of the Black Death and the plagues and disasters they were spreading, turning the world upside down in their hunts for the bastards. Nines hunting Sixes generally didn’t end well for the latter.

The real Seniors started to work on the Shattered in their little hidden dimensions all over the world. They had brought down the King in Yellow; what were these things but pale imitators?

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As all that change of focus was happening, ships all over the world were moving into position, because my map of the Indian Ocean was rapidly nearing completion, and they knew where most of the bombs were going. There were only a few potential targets left here and there, and they could be addressed by dropping them from low-flying bombers as needed.

The system was worked out thoroughly. A fine sheath of E-plumbum paint, so magic couldn’t register they were coming. Vivic enhancements wound about the warhead and the inside of the shell, just like in China, giving the eruptions that vivic edge that would basically cancel out any lingering harm to the environment.

The True Seeking attachment to the warhead and those who launched and dropped them was also key, as it would overcome things like the wind and water currents, compensate for them, and make sure the bombs reached their targets.

Shvaughn and Legion were very busy for all of October, verifying that all the Warded dark zones were actually targets, painting the targets into The Map, and relaying the information to those who needed to confirm.

It burned a lot of goldweight, sure. But those in the know could only clench their teeth, as the biggest first strike in history was about to go off.

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-There will be consequences for what we are about to do.-

I surveyed the people in the mindscape here, brought in by Alliance and Marks, not by Allegiance. World leaders, generals, religious heads, powerful Casters, some of the Allegiances that had managed to solidify themselves.

They’d been read in on what we were going to do, and if it made them clench their teeth, the fact was it was in motion and wasn’t going to stop.

-The creatures that we are about to attempt to drive to extinction will prey on us forever. Once technology shifts down, it will be harder than ever to reach them, and they will have access to their Racial Patrons, and things like Fiends to aid them in attacking us.

-This is the one time we will be able to attack them from a position of strength, as opposed to enduring their endless attacks upon us.

-But some of them will get away.-

I let that sink in. Statistically, it was almost impossible to kill them all, there were just too many of them in too many places. The merfolk and tritons were definitely willing to help hunt the last of them down, and we could certainly sweep for them... but the oceans were large, and some of the creatures were quite powerful.

-What is about to be done is going to bind you to the gods forever, because you are going to need them to stave off whatever vengeance our enemies are planning. In the deep of the oceans, in the depths of the earth, waiting in the Hollow World... those we don’t kill will remember, and they will seek to strike back, likely in ways far more horrible than what we are doing to them.

-We will need the gods to help protect us, warn us, and aid us in thwarting them. So, ladies and gentlemen, I very strongly suggest that you find your Faith somewhere, and get used to praying.

-When the Shroud falls, a new world starts, and I will not be here for it. It will fall to you to take advantage of all the tools you have to stand guard against what is coming, and the gods and the Land are the two greatest of them.

-The Heavens bless us all as we bring fire.-

Neutrals would happily have let the status quo go on, as long as the enemy preyed on someone else. Evil people would have worked out a beneficial relationship for themselves, as many had done so already.

Good eliminated the threat. Whether we could make it stick would be a question for the years and decades to follow.