A Richer Reality: Part 5: Teaching and Slaughter
There were three issues with trying to teach Luna. First, I had no aptitude for teaching, nor any experience. Oh, I could cheat with the ability to devote a thousand mental instances to it, since even 2 devoted to cultivating Red, one for Luna and one for myself, and 2000 apiece investigating Stitch, Step Up, and Last Laugh, and making minute constructs of Gold within my line of sight to assassinate an Risen who got brave enough to enter my sightline, since skill was still relevant to my ability to wield it, I simply had hundreds to spare. Unless I had a number of new magic systems to investigate, there were limits to how much new minds would influence how much more progress I would make, as they were still all copies of the original linked in a Hivemind. Even though my rise in Color Red advancement had granted me a full 500 more instances, I was devoting them all to making progress on teaching. With only a singular student, and the value teaching even a single Numeracy that bolstered from my physical peer to my vast superior, I couldn't afford to mess it up.
The second issue was how incredibly simple the Numeracies were. The problem was akin to attempting to explain why 2+2=4, instead of simply explaining that it did. I shuddered to imagine the Verses, whose difficulty in study had actually drawn comment from the Curse Broker, being taught. No wonder no one was willing to teach Verses. If this was what a comparatively simple system was like to teach, then who would want to if they weren't a teacher by profession or loved teaching?
Luna, her brow furrowed, commented "I should understand this..." as she examined the Gold diagrams. Since she lacked the ability to see magic via Numeracy Three, which I was considering teaching her next if only to make it easier to teach her other spells, I was forced to improvise with my Gold constructs. It took a few tries to exactly mimic the flow of Astral power, especially since my own use of Numeracy Ten had taken active effort to turn off, and was as simple as flicking a mental switch to reactivate. It was good practice though. I guess the saying that good teachers learn just as much from their students as the reverse had some truth to it.
Then there was the third problem. Luna had no experience with magic outside her bloodline, excluding a system that had been wiped out. Even ignoring that it had relied on her father's influence, the Skeleton King had struck out the Array her kingdom based it's spells on, which meant that system was lost even if she regained the strength to make proper use of it. She'd also had dedicated practitioners of the art teaching her in that instance, including her own parents. I had literally been using this system for less than two weeks, and then there was the issue of how, unlike her old teachers, I had met her today.
That being said, my mental faculties were far in excess of a normal person's, and Luna, having gone out of her way to learn proper administration both as a general part of her education as intended to rule one day, and to support her father, who it was recognized had more of a distribution issue than a power issue, possessed a detailed understanding of math. Not to mention being a somewhat kind example of a vampiric eugenics project. It still took a full hour, during which time the Risen grew bolder, and bolder, having noticed our retreat, and taking it for a sign of weakness. My further enhanced senses caught at least one conversation along the lines of "The Fives... must have... hurt them." from the Fours.
Luna glanced at me, having caught it as well. We grinned in anticipation. They were gravely mistaken, and the occupants of the third and fourth levels of this inverted tower had surrendered any real home ground advantage in coming to us. Luna's new speed, literally ten times her old one, would have been enough for her to slaughter the Tier Fives from before, singlehanded, and that was ignoring how she was stronger and tougher than them now. The 3rd and fourth levels came at us, and Luna was able to slaughter them more or less by herself. Me, I used my Sword's air slashes to cut apart my opponents one ring lower on the ramp, diminishing the incoming 900 Tier Threes by more than half, while she slaughtered the 3 Tier Fives and 50 Tier Fours, my Gold soldiers keeping anything below a Tier Four from getting past so she could focus. Each Tier 5 was still a notable increase to my range, for the moment, and once Luna, now relevant against a Tier Ten, finished literally ripping the Risen in her path apart, we halted to plan our next move.
Luna seemed a bit shocked, and it was hard to blame her. Knowing you were ten times as strong, fast, and tough was one thing, but putting a hundredfold combat power boost to use with no adjustment period had to be a bit of a shock. The positively shrieking Sword in my hand might also have something to do with it.
Since my air slashes gave me the Essence instead of my Sword, I actually managed to hit my 50 meter goal by the time Luna killed the second Tier Five. I began attempting to combine my Sword's Essence with mine, and while it was a struggle at first, the third Tier Five and the remaining Tier Fours were enough to push it from 'possible' to 'simple enough' and my range swelled to 61.7 meters as the combined Essence from the more recent kills and what my Sword had collected was more than enough for me to also connect my Gonne and Plate to my own Essence pool, hitting roughly 35.5 times a Tier Five's Essence, or 3.55 Tier Sixes, as well as achieve the Adept stage with my Gonne. Finally able to use bullet-generating magics, my tactics changed a bit.
Firstly, I could now use guns effectively, since use of Gold to directly make bullets out of was... not effective, given that it would require constantly making new Gold bullets out of the same pool of Gold used to make my soldiers in the first place, and while I could discorporate the Gold bullets, I didn't want to get into the habit of making non-melee weapons out of Gold, since I had a very much finite casting pool, and bullets would add up after a while as my number of Gold soldiers went up. This meant that I could create a wall of guns, and my mastery of my Gonne, fueled by Essence and my improved mental faculties, was significant enough for muskets my new knowledge informed me were primitive but functional to be made. I'd like to visit a blacksmith's forge to improve my Gonne directly sometime soon, but being able to cast some bullet-aiming magics currently forgave many sins, and regenerating the ammo via magic forgave the majority of the remaining sins.
Thus, most of my soldiers were discorporated, save for a quartet which served the purpose of holding choke points such as the ramp and the entrance to the carved caverns. My Gonne occupied one hand, and my other used air slashes to account for ranged targets, while my Gold guns served. With only one hand, I was limited to my Essence-sense range multiplied by 5, but since I couldn't see to the limit of my two-handed range, that was no problem. Luna frequently flitted around the battlefield, her speed making her a black and silver blur.
In the fifth level, which we had decided to investigate just in case, as the previous two had some stragglers, we started to find coins. Small amounts, with a decidedly different stamping compared to the ones from Gilvale, and there was more in the way of small hoards of precious metals, but there were definitely coins down here. "Were they trying to mint their own coins?" Luna asked, a disgruntled expression on her face at the thought of the Risen trying to form any kind of civilization.
"Depends on if the others were doing the same thing. It could just be that this town is far enough from Gilvale that it traded with a different people." I surmised. "Nothing for it but to continue and see if the zombies have more than one type of coin, or if they have anything to mint coins with. Though I suppose a Lich might have magic for that." I deposited the coins in my Swordrealm.
The sub-Realm had grown immensely. With my own Essence fueling it, the skeleton servants were fully capable of carrying conversation, and modifying rooms to some extent. Further, they were more than capable of turning precious metals into full coinage, though I held off on that for now. I would wait until I found a kingdom in something resembling an intact state before trying to leverage any increased value. As for my Swordrealm itself, it had more than doubled in size, and the amenities had improved considerably. The craftsmanship of the furniture was noticeably better, both in comfort and utility. The vault had quadrupled in size, to the point it had needed a second level installed to make use of the space, which my servants were in the midst of as we fought.
So we continued. The sixth level had a full 10 Tier Five Risen, and finally a Tier Six. This one, was a Wendigo. Where the Tier Fives had regained a fully human appearance, the Wendigo was gaunt, and the look in it's eye was a constant, gnawing hunger. I strongly suspected those were boneshards from it's fellow Risen, that it was using as claws. Still, Luna was far superior, even on the defense, and handled it with ease, alongside it's underlings, the Tier Fives the only ones worth mentioning outside of huge numbers at this point.
The seventh floor followed the trend of rough doublings, and there were 2 Tier Sixes, one a Wendigo and one a Dullahan, though it's horse was somewhat limited due to the cave, the wider confines of the caverns, especially when they too roughly doubled in size each level, drastically lowered this effect. The Eighth level had 5, however, 2 Wendigos, a Dullahan, and two normal Risen of that tier. The Ninth? 10, and again, it advanced to a singular Tier Seven. This was where things got dicey again. "Ah, the interlopers." A skeleton with violet flames in place of eyes greeted us cordially, wielding a staff topped by the same flame, and waving away the lesser Risen. I was immediately on guard. The Risen had never been cordial before. Even with effectively double Essence compared to this Tier Seven, thanks to the previous levels giving me 2.15 times a Tier Seven's Essence and a range of 112.4 meters, I had no idea what this Lich was capable of.
Sure enough, when Luna narrowed her eyes, he waved a hand and she janked to the left, tried to catapult towards him, and abruptly slowed to a crawl. Well, a normal human still wouldn't have been able to follow her, but she was moving 1% as fast, more than slow enough for the Lich to raise an earthen wall to enclose her, forming a dome. No, my mastery of Stitch in Time let me tell from the Astral energies, that wasn't a direct slowing effect, time had been slowed down. I had never undone an outside temporal manipulation, and my increasingly skillful attempts were noticed, the Lich turning it's attention to me as Luna's slowness and the magic in the wall caused her to take a full 30 seconds to tear herself free. Luckily the momentum was unchanged because from her perspective she was no slower than before, so she would hit just as hard.
"Really? What rude guests. At least let your host finish before responding." it grumbled. My Plate stifled the spell, so I was only slowed 25%, but given how much slower I was than Luna, that was a problem, even with Red draining both caster and spell. Luckily for me, there was nothing stopping me from firing my guns, and they were formed outside the slowed zone, so they fired just as fast. The Lich spun his staff once counterclockwise, and the bullets abruptly reversed direction, though this time he'd actually inverted their time instead of their vectors as it would appear to one less well-versed in time manipulation. The Gold knife that lodged itself in his back, however, ignored that, as it was not an actual defense.
The Lich had just enough time to notice his heart was destroyed, before he had to place a barrier between his skull and a similar Gold knife, alongside it's 18 brethren. Given that the 12th made it crack through, I came to the conclusion that time magics were his specialty, and much like myself in my first encounter where Stitch hadn't handed me the victory, he was unprepared. Unlike me, he didn't have Plate to save him, so his head was eviscerated. The time spells he'd cast disintegrated.
"That was unpleasant. The whole point of this was that I could drastically accelerate your harvest. We didn't even manage to make it a third Rank before we were effectively back where we started." Luna groused. Bafflingly, she managed to do it elegantly, somehow.
"To be fair, I am well over ten times as strong as when you learned that Numeracy, so I'd say this sped up our progress quite a bit. Besides, time magics are incredibly difficult to deal with. My experience with a time-related Verse and my Plate's anti-magic properties are the only reason he wasn't free to wail away at me. Hopefully the next floor won't be such a challenge." I responded, the Tier Fives perishing to my Gold guns as Luna tore through the Sixes like paper.
Speaking of paper, my new mastery of my Gonne had given me an idea or three. With 'Napoleonic' war engineering, whoever that was, as the Curse Broker had said, I knew how to make steam engines as part of a train's place in logistical lines, which would more than adequately substitute for water or wind mills in providing the power for a paper mill. I'd test it out at the next major town. Gilvale was in fairly rough shape financially, and I'd like to be compensated for bringing the ability to produce paper en masse to an area, as well as building it myself via Gold constructs to save money, and likely time. Given what I'd seen of local technology, unless the city was much more advanced, they'd be relying on magic for any significant quantities of paper. I'd even found some more money here, though given it was stamped differently, I suspected each Risen had ambitions of being the founder of a new kingdom of undead, rather than bearing the stolen coins of their living counterparts or plans for a singular undead polity. We found the phylactery in a small alcove hidden next to the entrance, a cubbyhole carved into a shadowed area and hidden in an illusion layered on top of a 'don't notice me' spell, my Essence-sense fully capable of locating it even without Numeracy Three, and I drained it of every last drop. The ring crumbled to dust the moment it was exhausted, presumably a consequence of being the vessel for a soul no longer present.
The tenth level ceased the doubling at the highest Tier found, and instead there were 20 Tier Sixes, with a single Lich present. This one specialized in flame magic, and was very surprised when Luna's Weakness Inversion Bloodline turned it cold, dark, and removed it from his control. As he'd started with blue flames, they turned orange, which was interesting to note as Luna snuffed him out and the Lich's Essence fed into me, though not much since his body only contained a shred. This time, I found a hoard of money roughly equivalent in value to the vault back in the Mausoleum, 102 platinum, 1254 gold coins, 36686 silver coins, and 788654 copper, to the point I wondered if this Lich had gone out of his way to have a hoard just a little larger than the Mausoleum's occupant. It would have been a remarkable display of pettiness, but considering the utter lack of concern the Risen displayed for their comrades, I couldn't say it would catch me completely by surprise. Amazing the difference 5 levels made though. There was an actual vault here. The phylactery was inside as well, and I drained the ruby of the Essence.
The eleventh level had two Tier Sevens, but the Tier Sixes numbered 30, which made me suspect the formula had changed to something along the lines of '1.25 times as many of the highest Risen, and 1.5 times as many of the next highest, rounding up.' which suggested the leader was capable of extreme regimentation, as the Tier Fives and below had entirely vanished with such abruptness that it was the only reasonable conclusion. So, it was likely a Tier Eight, perhaps even Nine. Given the trouble a Tier Seven had managed with the right powerset, even a single Tier higher could be very bad if I was unlucky. Then again, Gold had gained roughly double the wealth it had access to when our descent began, so that was actually less likely than it sounded. It was hard to exactly measure luck, but my number of Gold soldiers and guns had risen high enough that I felt comfortable tripling them, with some help from Red. This kept the shields of earth and metal the Liches raised the only thing keeping them alive, and with the constant fire from so many guns with regenerating ammunition, they struggled to do much else before Luna smashed through their defenses and killed them. Hm, perhaps that first Tier Seven was a fluke. That, or he'd been placed intentionally in order to guard the others. On the other hand, if I hadn't gained so much power from killing and stealing, which sounded a lot worse than it was, the synergy of their magics might have been nasty to deal with. Still, Luna would have carried the day on that end, Numeracy Ten putting her beyond their ability to defend if they couldn't stop her from getting in arm's reach.
With 12.25 times as much Essence as the Tier Sevens, even with their magical tricks, I was starting to get beyond them, and Luna, by the same token, was profiting off of my growth, to the point that she was frequently significantly faster in the time between finishing one level and the next. 200.7 meters wasn't enough to 'see' the bottom, given we were only about halfway down, but I felt this trip had been well worth it, even if this eleventh level had had a comparatively pathetic haul of a few dozen rubies about the size of a curled pinky finger. Given this, I felt confident the tenth level had indeed been one-upping his counterpart, which suggested a significant surface presence to stay on top of things there.
"Say, I've been thinking. Maybe there's another reason they tunneled down here." I said as we paused between floors. Having cleared 55% of the underground tower, it was likely that they'd be massing up again soon. "How difficult would it be to carve a new ramp in other places, letting them get to the surface with speed, if they had 700 years to do it?" I asked, my knowledge of engineering giving me a guess that I rather disliked.
Luna's widening eyes confirmed my suspicions. "We may well end up playing whack-a-mole with outbreaks of high-Ranked Risen flushed out of their holes if we don't hurry. There's no telling how large a tunnel network they've created." she stated, scanning the bottom of the complex. "I'm counting 8 more cave entrances at the bottom, beyond the ones I could see from the top. Since it's flat down there, I'd guess that at most, one is the leader's enclave, while the rest could well be tunnels to complexes like this one."
"All the more reason to hurry then." I said, speed more limited by not wanting to destroy the ramp than anything else at this point.
The next five levels were much the same, the Tier Sixes rising 50%, rounding up to the nearest hundred when it broke that margin, and the Sevens rising by 25%, rounding up, but when the latter hit 10, it abruptly stopped, as if barred from rising any further. The one exception was the 15th level, which had an extra 400 Sixes for some reason. Instead of bothering with coins, I just found bars of metals, apparently they'd been doing a little mining on the side, or they'd be sacking treasuries, so there was both precious stuff, like silver and gold, even a bar of platinum on the 16th level, and a lot of iron, nickel, and zinc, though I was careful with the lead, mostly because I knew how poisonous it could be rather than any genuine danger to me at this point. As the Risen were dead already, lead poisoning was probably not a priority for them, and Luna didn't seem likely to be affected with my Essence cultivation actively purging her of any such influences, the same as myself. It was hard to tell the exact value, given that I didn't know the exact composition of each coin or the purity of each bar, but it still represented a significant amount of wealth for my Color Gold. I wondered how much I would need to forge Mythic Coppers. Maybe by the time I hit my first kilometer in Essence range? Probably longer though. I hadn't unlocked any abilities in Gold, merely increased the potency of the base ability, even with how much Red had grown and the improved baseline from all the money. My engineering knowledge was of little help in determining the value in the gemstones, since they had little value in war, so I doubted any help would be coming from that quarter.
"Any idea what this is worth?" I asked Luna, holding up a sapphire the size of my fist. The largest of the lot, and one we'd found in the vault on the sixteenth level. I'd eventually given up on trying to puzzle it out.
"We were mostly focused on trying to gain Mythic Coins so we could grant father access to Color Blue and improve his efficiency with his power, but I believe a sapphire that size is worth roughly 1/400th it's equivalent weight in gold. The exact amount depends on market fluctuations, but a 300th is the best price I've ever seen, and that was after a new gold mine had opened and a sapphire mine had been exhausted in the same year." she explained.
I blinked. "So it's practically worthless by comparison." I noted. I still stuck it into my Swordrealm, obviously, I'd done it for
iron and lead, but if I was paying for anything, and the option to spend the gems instead of the gold came up, I'd definitely spend the gems.
She shrugged. "It's used in a few rituals here and there, but it can't be converted to a mythical form, so it's not worth as much even ignoring how it's not as strong as diamonds are. Neither is useful for much in the mundane sense besides measuring wealth anyway, which makes it perfect to pad out your Gold power." Speaking of which, it had increased roughly an order of magnitude to 300 soldiers. The fives levels between them having roughly 5 times as much wealth as the tenth had, resetting my expectations on each level to about what the Mausoleum had given me, and confirming my supposition from the Curse Broker's explanation that Gold was exponential after some time.
Where my Essence was concerned, the haul was similarly massive. Between the 5 levels, there were 36 Tier Sevens, almost universally Liches, and 1530 Tier Sixes, mostly Dullahans and Wendigos. Ironically, the Sixes were giving me more Essence in total now. This was relevant, because 201.25 Tier Sevens of Essence, or 2.0125 Tier Nines, was enough to more than double my range, to 510.2 meters, which was good enough that I could detect that all eight tunnels snaking out from the bottom the remaining 200 meters down extended a significant distance, but one was shaped differently, probably the leader's 'throne room' or what have you.
"Hm, I can make 300 Gold soldiers now, and with how much stronger Gold's gotten, I think they could handle anything below a Seven apiece. My range is long enough to tell that 7 of the bottommost caves are fairly uniform, but the exception is probably where the strongest one is lurking. Should I have my Gold constructs seal off the 7 with 10 apiece, and send the rest to engage the leader? It's probably going to come out and deal with us soon, if he hasn't already noticed us." I asked.
Luna considered. "I don't think a Rank Seven can threaten us at this point, but a Rank 8 could be bad. Especially with Tier Seven attendants." Luna commented. "Then again, if your range has grown so much, wouldn't it be easy to deploy them ahead of us like with the past 5 levels? It probably wouldn't even take another 10 minutes at this rate." she pointed out.
I paused at the 'deploy' she'd mentioned. I hadn't used any of my Verses for a while as part of their concealment from Luna, but that was unnecessary at this point, and my Red was much, much stronger now. Combined with over an hour's investigation... "Hold on. Let me try something. Step Up." I intoned, attempting to teleport 100 meters straight up, which my memory told me was an unoccupied space. To my surprise, it worked, and my full set of equipment didn't imped me in the least. I tried again, but as far as I could go, which turned out to be... 150 meters. Coming back to where Luna was waiting a slightly put-upon expression on her face when she realized I was revealing outright teleportation of a significant distance.
"And you didn't think to use this in the fight with the time-Lich?" she asked. Ah, that would explain it.
"I don't like using powers I haven't tested out in combat, especially when Gold is so useful. Plus, now we can jump between caves more or less at will." I stated.
"Fine!" she threw up her hands. "Go with your soldier strategy, and hopefully the Eighth Rank won't break through mid-fight." She was more grumpy that I'd been hiding the exact workings of my Verses than anything else.
We carried out my plan, and with 270 Gold soldiers able to trouble Tier Sevens working in perfect unison, they began mauling the horde of Sixes and Sevens that came to meet them. Meanwhile, Luna and I worked our way through the last 4 caves above the lowest floor. It was another 40 Tier Sevens, and the Sixes hit a ceiling at 1000, meaning only 3800 were about. As my range expanded, and more of the wider cave that was clearly different from the rest came into my range due to moving down to it, my soldiers advanced, and their numbers increased a bit as my Red increased my mastery, adding another thousand Sixes and a hundred Sevens to the tally. Jumping to 815.5 meters wasn't quite the jump I'd gotten before, and I was starting to think I'd need some way of killing Tier Nines en masse to progress with any speed, given that I was sitting at 8.22 Tier Nines of Essence. I got the feeling it would only slow down from here, until Red was my only reliable means of gaining any more power without massive amounts of wealth, synergistic powers, or allies who I could empower to a level relevant to me, though 1% of my current growth would make it difficult to do that, since they'd need to improve themselves significantly enough to matter on my level unless their power was amazingly useful. My musings were interrupted by a figure whose Essence clearly marked them as at least a Tier Eight exploded into being in my senses, shortly followed by blasting it's way towards us. My Gold soldiers were reconfigured into Gold walls of spikes, which were plowed through regardless.
"YOU! YOU HAVE RUINED A PLAN A MILLENNIUM IN THE MAKING!!" the Tier Eight roared, bearing a large number of wounds from the Gold spikes, but nothing more than superficial, even if it made it a little easier to grasp at her Essence via Red, it was nothing compared to my blood on her. I'd though it might have gotten past, but I'd been expecting a Lich. Why was a normal type in charge?
"BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER! DO YOU THINK YOU CAN STOP ME NOW THAT THE RITUAL OF PERFECTED ZOMBIES IS COMPLETE?!?" Based on the amount of Astral energy she was emitting, and the clearly 'woven' nature of it, I had to conclude she'd been busy with some sort of ritual when I got here. That would explain why she hadn't shown herself when we got about halfway down.
"EVEN IF I SCOURED THE REMAINS OF THIS WRETCHED REDSTONE KINGDOM, AND KILLED EVERY INHABITANT TO FEED IT, I WOULDN'T HAVE A TENTH OF THE FORCE, AND A TENTH OF THAT MUCH OF MY OLD FORCE'S POWER WOULD BE GENEROUS! I'LL BE TAKING IT OUT OF YOUR WRETCHED HIDES, AND DESTROYING THE SILVER TREE KINGDOM ANYWAY!!!" she continued to boom, more than rage backing her words.
"I believe she's on the level of a Tier Ten right now." Luna noted. "I've never seen a Lich with flesh before." she admitted as she dodged with swiftness still beyond my own, leaving me to use Step Up to flicker out of the way of a blow that cracked solid rock ten meters away. Definitely stronger than a Tier 8 ought to be.
...Wait. What? This one was a Lich? Why did she have flesh besides the things a Risen needed to survive? Though, if a Risen was planning on disguising themselves, then it would be useful to look exactly like a human. If I hadn't been looking for it, or I lacked Numeracy Three, I didn't think I would have noticed in that first instant. Someone with neither might have been fooled for week. Plenty of time to manage some serious recon and sabotage. If the ritual had also carried some serious extra power as an additional carrot, I could see it being extremely important to her. Such that she might ignore, oh, being unable to tell what was happening beyond for some time.
I attempted to repeat the trick I'd used again the Tier Five, only with the addition of air slashes, but the Lich simply erupted with the same sort of blackened magic, forcing me to dodge with another Step Up. She began to pulse with it, each new pulse beginning before the previous had ended. I tried to use a two-handed slash, using Step Up to teleport to the edge of my sight, 400 meters away, but it wasn't enough to pierce the halo of destructive magic. She was also fully capable of launching direct blasts at me while keeping up the pulses, which were steadily eating into the floor where she was. My Essence sense had grown much better defined, telling me a lot more about the substances it passed through, and I could likely identify veins of various substances to open mines if I didn't die here, which let me know that was no convenient magma to dump the Lich into a few meters down, or even 800 meters down. My 'vision' got a little fuzzy at the edges in that last 20 meters or so, but I was confident magma wouldn't solve this problem.
Luna was largely unable to contribute beyond harrying her via drawing some of her , and my Gold soldiers and constructs, now that she wasn't utterly blinded by rage, were casually tossed aside by the same corona of magic. I could literally see bullets disintegrating when they encountered the nimbus of destructive power. I'd gotten cocky, and the universe, possibly including Hunted, was punishing me for it.
I was forced to gamble. Theoretically, I had 80 times as much Essene as her, and while the Curse Broker hadn't explicitly stated that it could be directly improved like Step Up, Red and Verse investigation should have made it a lot stronger, even ignoring my general performance boost. "Pause." I intoned. I retained the ability to move in the frozen time now, though only for a second. On the other hand, the Lich was frozen for only the first second, but that was enough that the pulse of destructive magic, now more than a meter away, couldn't safeguard her from enough Gold blades to obscure her from the outside, precisely calculated not to interfere with each other. Unfortunately, they only sunk in a centimeter before time resumed for her, and I was frozen.
She screamed, likely because her skull was thinner than the blades had penetrated, which I knew because my awareness remained, and forced the blades out, though their magical nature allowed them to resist the displacement enough that 5 seconds passed before she got them all, even if sheer numbers had played a role. An additional 3 seconds was spent gathering a massive blast of blackened magic. Unfortunately, my timestop had lengthened significantly, so it didn't end there. She stared at me with hatred boiling her gaze, and black flames in place of eyes which were slow to heal with all the damage already done to her. I could tell she was putting a significant amount into this spell, to the point she ceased the waves of destructive magic she'd been using as a defense.
It was at this moment Luna struck, ripping the Lich's heart out and crushing it before time stopped for her again. The Lich collapsed to one knee, the gathered magic sputtering out as one of her vital areas on her body was snuffed out. A dismissive, contemptuous wave of her hand smashed Luna into a wall, a third of her body just gone. Then she turned her attention back to me. This had consumed another 6 seconds. Time resumed just as she finished charging her spell, allowing me to intone "Step Up! and dodge it. A cavern a kilometer long was carved, causing tremors felt as far as Gilvale, even if it was much narrower than it was wide, being roughly the same width and height as myself at maximum extension. With little recourse, I kept dodging while Luna recovered. She wisely kept quiet, though I was keeping close enough tabs on her Essence to tell she was conscious, and I was careful to avoid Stepping into a position that would leave her to take the blast. The pulses of ruinous darkness were more erratic now, being more irregular instead of perfect rings. My guess was that mustering that much magic, twice if you counted the spell Luna disrupted, had taken a huge chunk of her energy. Enough that she was healing noticeably slower, at least, since that had apparently been dependent on her magic too.
Finally, as Luna regained her other leg, enough to run, the Lich noticed that I was avoiding her spot, and began to move towards her with a ball of destructive magic. I used Step Up to jump to a point on the spiraling ramp, and I stopped time and repeated my previous feat, piercing another centimeter deeper. She staggered drunkenly as time resumed, the massive rents in her entire brain that practically reduced the first centimeter+ to a flesh slurry making it difficult to move her body properly, focus her magic, or much of anything else really. She still had plenty of time to fire on me, even if it took a full 10 seconds with so much damage done to her mind, in the literal sense. Even with Plate, with all the power Red had granted me, and a tiny fraction of a second's movement more born from my imminent death allowing for a shield made of Gold to partially deaden the blow, I lost my entire left side, and a hundred-meter-deep cavern was carved behind me. With that much of my brain gone, my perception became very strange. Though, the knowledge that another strike like that would definitely kill me was probably not helping.
The Lich actually blinked at my continued living, clearly baffled that I wasn't dead, before she snarled and began to gather more magic, though the Pause would wear off before she could finish charging again, especially since those massive strike seemed to be taking huge chunks of her energy and it was charging noticeably slower this time, I was in no condition to take advantage. My mental state was no better than hers overall, and my healing wouldn't kick in until time resumed. Even I would need a few minutes to recover from this sort of damage, an eternity in a fight like this. If I survived, I would slow down, I decided. I was able to put up a fight against a Tier Eight supercharged into being on a level with a Tier Ten. Surely more than enough power that Hunted is going to take some time to bring anything to bear, especially when this represented so much of the local Risen population. It would give me some time to do a little mining in these tunnels, which would likely have all sort of benefits even if most of it didn't contribute much to Gold.
Sure enough, time resumed, and though the Lich's healing had slowed to a crawl and she teetered simply staying standing, she had almost reached the point of the spell's charge being full. I had enough presence of mind to place layer upon layer of Gold in the way. She launched the spell, grinning with satisfaction as the first layer's of Gold evaporated like they weren't there. They were placed again at the rear, so the blackened star of destruction had shrunk by nearly half when it reached the final meter, before abruptly winking out as Luna stabbed a clawed hand into either ear of the Lich, and went to town on her surviving grey matter. She rushed up to me, and helped me up, my head having recovered first, my Essence manipulation well past the point where I could direct my healing.
"I think we should take a break." I said, the familiar exhaustion of a massive adrenaline crash, the sort that might kill a normal person as close to death as I had been, settling onto me like a blanket.
Luna didn't even make a pretense of objecting. "We've harvested enough power for one day." she agreed. "I should be able to maintain a gate made of Gold in my sleep, to block the entrance to the cave the leader was using. They might not need to sleep, but a safe place is better than nothing, and the other Risen might be hesitant to attack her quarters when there's been a massive battle. We'll have to drag her corpse inside to complete the illusion." I said.
"I'll do it, I'm already covered in her blood, a little more won't do anything." Luna said. A tone of absolute authority laced her statement as we headed back down.
"I got a lot of Essence from her. Felt more like a Tier 9 than a Tier 8. Though, since you said she was fighting like a Tier Ten, we're probably still going to need to find her phylactery." I noted. Luna nodded. I stayed awake just long enough for Luna to drag the Lich's body inside the cavern we'd claimed, allowing me to set up the Gold gate and soldiers to block the way, the latter out of immediate sight of the entrance. The chair in the Lich's study was the closest thing in the area to a bed, and the moment that task was finished, I was asleep. When I awoke, two things would be on my mind. The possibility that massive healing drained my stamina, and the battering on the gates.
AN: Ah, Flower and Luna going around being murderhobos is ruining so many people's plans. Expect this to continue. Red with a high-end companion, Numeracy 10/1000 and another Color to bolster is nuts, even without the Trinkets effectively serving as a pseudo-Panopoly due to Red linking them. She's something on the order of a hundred times stronger than she was at the start, across her parameters due to Red. Her increasing luck is also going to become noticeable to people sensitive to the vagaries of fate relatively soon.
So, how much land would you say the Rising covers, exactly? I'm going to say, about enough to equal to a million Earths. This is the outermost edge of a universe-spanning Realm, but the Skeleton King is not all-powerful and though his reach has slowly expanded as he works out kinks in the spell, there are limits to what a billion souls will get you, even with a ritual focused on empowering yourself.
Of course, this is still more than enough that it would take literal ages for the party to reach the edge at their current speed. Not that they'll stay at that speed for long, given Flower has more than a hundred times as much Essence as the 50-meter requirement to changeover to exponential growth threshold. At this point, it's a race to gather Essence before pre-existing growth outstrips the opponent before you can harvest them to boost your progress. This period of explosive growth is unlikely to every be repeated, excepting perhaps claiming Violet and going on a killing-spree.
Anyway, Flower has no knowledge of Earth history, so, much like an American such as myself, she knows little of Napoleon. I have yet to decide if the old Flower would have, but I'm leaning towards no. Luna's knowledge mostly falls under administration and a magical system that was wiped out when the Skeleton King massacred her clan and killed the creators of that system. Otherwise, her education was merely adequate for her station, and vampires tended to use magic for a lot they couldn't just have lesser semi-feral vampires do for themselves. Yeah, Luna is very,
very reasonable by vampire standards, since she was born into a clan that had little reason to go out hunting, especially when her father couldn't accompany everyone and sustaining themselves without his aid would have been very time-consuming, so they largely left humans alone beyond making very clear that they would brook no dissent. The average vampire would have tried to eat Flower on sight, as the ferals did.
The Rank 8 Lich here was planning on attacking a kingdom of the living some 1000 kilometers to the south as soon as he finished mustering his forces, and had been playing the long game, allowing certain places to recover so they could provide more bodies and Essence to raise a greater army of Risen in the long run, which is why this place was so ridiculously top-heavy and the kingdom here had largely fallen. Flower is much more likely to encounter a ridiculously immense horde of a million-strong than for something like this to happen again. Now, keep in mind that most of these guys have Astral Rank 3, at best, and the Skeleton King has 7.5, in addition to vastly more experience than virtually all of the Risen, so his effective combat strength is much greater than his original Risen-Rank 10, ignoring the fact that he has a trump card of his own, one much nastier than this.
With the killing of the Rank 8 and the extermination of the Risen in the neighboring inverted towers, she's basically cleared out significant Risen presence between Gilvale and the Kingdom of Silver, which they are going to notice. It's going to make finding anything worth killing Essence-wise difficult if she heads south, which, unfortunately, she has, due to exhausting the other towers, which generally led to hidden nooks to let the Risen creep out and kill before slinking back into the shadows. The last tower's aboveground entrance leads to a small cliff that is actually within sight of a major city, and the difference will lead to investigation.
Fun fact, sapphires are great at conducting heat, but are great insulators with electricity, and their durability lets them make sandpaper that takes ages to wear out. Of course, Luna doesn't know this, because they didn't have many alchemists, and the few they had were regarded as mostly-harmless kooks. The Gonne will eventually be very helpful here, because there's a lot of stuff you can do with electronics in that vein.
You may be wondering why they couldn't find the phylactery. That was the price of the ritual. A power boost akin to becoming a Lich in the first place, and a body akin to Risen, which is to say the best of both worlds, which she intended to use to sabotage the Silver Tree Kingdom by passing for a human, and then lead her army of high-level Risen on a rampage through the compromised defenses. So, she's not coming back, as she traded the potential res ability for a lot of immediate power. If Luna hadn't been there, or if they hadn't taken the opportunity to cull all the Risen here, or if this jaunt into the complex had happened even ten minutes later, Flower would be dead. As it stands, Elysian is the only reason she's not dead or permanently crippled.
9.22 Tier Nines of Essence extends her range to 847.3 meters, for the curious. She's likely to budget the next 24 days towards more normal cultivation, and catching her Gold up a bit via Gold constructs mining out metals and minerals of any significant value in the area, which the (averaging 100 km, save the one to Silver Tree) tunnels the Risen have graciously provided will be facilitating. Her speed, strength, and Gonne-supplied engineering knowledge will drastically accelerate this, even without accounting for the Gold soldiers being traded in for Gold miners. Luna, meanwhile, will be learning the remaining Numeracies. Her affinity for numbers is the only reason this is remotely feasible, as Flower would otherwise need to micromanage her teaching for it to be at all possible. Luna is a mathematical genius, a product of a eugenics program, being bolstered by constant Red buffing, and has a teacher who constantly iterates improvements, so just about anyone else trying this would... very much struggle more. As it stands, 20 of the 24 days will be spent learning Ten Thousand alone, and, of course, Flower can't teach what she doesn't know. By the same processes that make it so difficult to teach, it is even more difficult than the Verses to discover new ones. It is entirely possible to stumble across the correct formula, but completely fail to understand it, and thus fail to gain any real progress in obtaining the Numeracy. It's very frustrating to learn, and with this sort of difficulty in the comparatively simple magic system that is actually teachable, they aren't going to bother with trying to teach Luna the Verses unless they come across a linguistic genius of a similar caliber.
8052 Words, discounting this line.
