A Richer Reality: Part 6: Mining and Studying
When I awoke, I felt... not quite fully refreshed. Elysian draining my reserves, or a side effects of the spells used to annihilate so much of my body? The sound of similar spells blasting away at my gate had been what woke me, so naturally I went to investigate. Tired as I had been, I had paid little attention to the hall. It had a rich red carpet, like royalty, and braziers with lit torches, and the carving of the tunnel was much better done. It made it seem like the path to a throneroom, even though the study itself was much less ostentatious, being filled more with books and maps and the like than anything that was particularly attention-grabbing.
As I rounded the corner, passing through a solid steel door, and I found Luna waiting with my Gold soldiers in the room with an actual straight-backed platinum throne I off-handedly stuck in my Swordrealm, beyond a large stone door, which Luna had barred with torn up sections of the floor. As the edges of the room lacked the much larger red carpeting in line with the previous hall's, the carpet was intact despite this. "Hm, any idea where they came from?" I asked, refreshing the Gold gate blocking their access, to audible frustration from the Liches who'd been cracking it. I estimated 70 Tier Seven Liches, and 700 Tier Sixes of various stripes.
"Based on what I heard, the Risen appear to have been in towers like this one, but smaller, meant more as outposts and fallback positions to facilitate troop movements. Since equally-sized parties came from each of the remaining 7 tunnels, I'd estimate this is most or even their entire force, here for the marching orders on that Silver Tree Kingdom the Lich was ranting about." she explained.
I nodded. "Well, I'm not sensing anything out there that would cause us trouble." I noted. "Just in case..." In my sleep, my range had expanded to 848.2 meters, or an extra 0.9 meters on where I'd reached when the leader of these Risen had fallen. Not much, but confirmation that it would grow noticeably per day was appreciated.
I had no compunctions about killing the Risen without ever seeing them with my physical eyes, and reformed my Gold soldiers amongst them, over 30 guarding each of their potential exits, while the remaining 90 appeared in their midst and began to slaughter them. No need to take chances at this juncture. While they were no match for a Tier Seven individually, their teamwork was far, far better, and they couldn't escape when the only way not under heavy guard was the ramp, which was heavily damaged in the fight with the Lich, to the point the spot I'd been struck on had collapsed, and the ring immediately below it was badly damaged. My Gold gate reconfigured into a wall of guns when the Sixes had been wiped out to the last, and began firing on them as well, especially any that were trying any spells I hadn't seen before. Luna and I didn't even need to move from our spot before they were dead. When the last of the Risen had fallen, I was sitting at 889 meters, precisely, from the 10.65 Tier Nines of Essence I was sporting.
"Right, how about we head back to the vault and study?" I asked, gesturing to the door to the right of the throne if you were facing it, which I could tell were quite full.
Luna nodded, but asked the obvious question. "What exactly is the plan? I haven't been on a proper vacation in literal decades."
"Not a vacation, exactly, we just won't be going looking for fights." I explained as we made a leisurely pace to the vault, even by normal standards. "I'll teach you the rest of the Numeracies I know, and I'll mine in the mean time. My Essence sense is more than enough to find any veins within nearly 900 meters of me. There's actually an iron vein 600 meters in...that direction." I pointed to what I would've called the east if I'd been on a normal planet, but as it was simply lay 40 degrees off from my left before rounded the corner to the vault.
"Frankly, between my Gold constructs and relatively similar physical attributes, you wouldn't contribute more than a quarter of my own progress even if you were some kind of master tunnel architect." I added as we reached the vault. "Numeracies are a better use of your time." I explained.
"For how long?" Luna queried as I began using my Sword as a sort of inverted soup ladle, allowing my nearly-sentient skeleton servants to deposit it all into neatly stacked piles in the vault in the sub-Realm, a third floor having come to be with my recent acquisitions in Essence.
"Well, it depends a little on how long teaching the Numeracies takes, and if you'll feel confident in tackling the Verses after Three and Ten Thousand come through." I explained.
Luna rubbed an eye with one hand. "I think it would help us both if you gave me a full list of your powers."
I nodded as I continued to pour coins into my vault, and correspondingly increase my ability in Gold. At this point, I was going for a major luck boost via simply pouring material wealth into my vault. "Alright, the Curse Broker offered me a list of powers, in exchange for my 16 Mythic Coppers, 6 Mythic Platinum, and 2 Mythic Jade, though he admitted the Jade was all that really interested him."
Luna, knowing the gist of this, still hummed in thought as she digested the thought of someone carrying the economic wealth of a span of territory in excess of a planet. "Quite a bit of wealth. I can see why you'd want to know why you had all that, whether or not genuine familial affection might be difficult to muster with no memories of them. I can't help but wonder what Mythic Silver and Gold would have made available." she commented.
"Perhaps Color Blue or Orange? Those are missing among the primary and secondary colors even if Gold takes Yellow's place." I responded.
Luna shook her head. "I've heard of a Color Yellow, an alchemic Color I believe, the common theory is that it's a cosmic reference to the transmutation of elements that occurs in suns. A group of adventurers called the Colored Band who'd come together under the banner of each possessing a Color. The Emperor Red holder was the leader, Blue, Yellow, Green, Orange, Violet, Silver, and Gold were all present."
"Any idea what the rest are?" I asked, doing my best not to groan at how on the nose that name was. There was being straightforward with your names, and then there was a lack of creativity. Even an anagram like Band of Rocol would have been better. Sure, it was efficient, but a band of adventurers would be trying to stand out, and an unusual name could only help with that.
Luna began ticking off fingers. "Blue seems to be knowledge-based, essentially the more you know the more efficient and powerful magic in general becomes, supposedly tied to natural life coming from the ocean or by hitching a ride on meteors and falling from the sky, though it's not much use by itself, sort of like Gold. Orange is much the same, and enhances the mundane skills and talents, making a master swordsman superhuman in the Colored Band, though it's less effective the less skilled the target is. It's apparently tied to Greed in some fashion, in the sense of wanting more and never being satisfied than anything to do with material wealth. Silver seems to be a healing Color, high-level users even being able to manage resurrections, though the one in the Colored Band could only manage three seconds before you risked loss of memories or skills, and having it stains your skin a silvery-blue permanently, which you'd think would happen with Blue, but I didn't make the rules. Being tied to mundane silver working as a disinfectant seems pretty straightforward. I can't guarantee there aren't more though." she turned to me in consternation. "We were talking about your powers." she huffed.
"It's not my fault you like lecturing people who know less than you." I replied, and in the face of her skin gaining what a human would consider a healthy skin tone, I continued where I left off. "I took Elysian and Red for my Jade, which made me eternally young and immortal, provides the massive healing abilities I've demonstrated, even if being atomized can still kill me, gives me massive resistance to most poisons and diseases, and pushed my baseline to the peak of normal humans. I spent the Copper on my Step Up Verse, which not only lets me teleport, something I can advance into greater and greater spatial mastery, but also makes me smarter, which can also grow as the Verse does, Numeracy Three, which lets me see Astral energy, illusions, and deceit, and my Sword, though it also cost Platinum. Speaking of which, most of it went to my equipment.
My indestructible singing Sword, which absorbs some of the Essence of anything I fell with it, which improves the Realm inside it, my Gonne, which I'll be improving as soon as we find a blacksmith, as it provides a skill-boost and related knowledge in every facet of war, from wielding my Sword to earthworks, which is how I know what I'm doing mining, and even gun-related magic. Both it and my Sword can pierce magic and phantasms, which is why I've never had trouble with Shadow Beasts. Though I have to be careful about waiting for Color Red to boost my willpower enough that the end-stages don't mess with my mind and warp me into a warlord and nothing else. Finally, my Plate." I tapped a gauntled knuckle on the armor. "It provides baseline protection akin to something the Curse Broker called a 'main battle tank' which seems to be far more than any armor I've seen, but more importantly it weakens magic two orders of magnitude, or conceptual tiers, though I'm not entirely sure what the difference is since I've done no real research into the subject. I'm sure you've noticed it repairing itself too, especially now that I've merged their Essence pools with mine. Seeing as it's saved my life from what would have been instant kills twice now, I feel like it was well worth it. Numeracy Ten cost me the last of my Platinum, and I considered ending things there and going on my way." I explained, more than half the contents of the vault swallowed by my Sword by now.
Luna seemed to recognize my motive. "...But you started to wonder if it was enough for your goal." she determined.
I nodded. "Plenty to give me a relatively secure life, but I felt like I'd mostly been grabbing immediate safety and combat power-ups in general besides Red. I grabbed one of each of three tiers of Curses, Stains, Tarnishes, and Blights. Some of them felt counter-intuitive or weakened me directly in some way and got dismissed out of hand, or I felt like I didn't understand their workings well enough to predict how bad they could be, so ultimately I picked two social curses and a monster-gatherer that I could eventually outscale. The Captain, Hunted, and The Wretch. In return, I claimed Color Gold, Stitch in Time, which can pause, rewind, or fast forward time, even if it's exhausting and powerful beings can resist, like us, Last Laugh, which I'm hoping to use to contact the Broker again if I'm not forced to pull it out. I would have done it yesterday but..."
"Half your brain was gone. I would be disturbed if you'd been thinking clearly." she admitted.
"Lastly, Numeracy Ten Thousand. It gives you ten thousand mental instances, which you can stack for every task you wish, the main limiter being enough tasks for them. It also blocks boredom, fatigue, or lack of focus, though it doesn't do anything for physical exhaustion. I'm thinking you should focus on Three first, because it'll let me demonstrate Ten Thousand for you, which should make it a lot easier to learn. I'm expecting it to get harder the further along on the number line it is, so it's probably still going to take quite a while."
Luna stared for a solid ten seconds. "...I'm sure most administrators would kill for something like that if they take their job remotely seriously. No wonder that cost a Mythic Jade if
immortality and
the king of Colors are the bar for that sort of thing." she eventually groaned out.
"It works off my baseline, so the improvements from Elysian, Step Up, and Red all stack with it. You should get a lot out of it too, since Red will make sure you keep up, and I'm fairly certain you better baseline speed involves better mental processing speed, so there's that. You might even get more than ten thousand, since I've started gaining instances from Essence." I finished speaking just as the last of the coins disappeared into my Swordrealm.
While the treasure in the vaults was impressive, a full 2201 platinum, 21504 gold, 73626 silver, 15887552 copper coins, and a novel addition, 14 jade coins, a part of me was disappointed there hadn't been a Mythic Copper among all the wealth the Tier Eight Lich had collected, even if the lack of any Color Gold in her repertoire meant she couldn't have made any herself. The magic research in the study was also of significant value though. For one thing, the Entropic Cloud spell was apparently the name for the spells the Liches had been using for the waves of destructive power they'd unleashed, which generated a mystical ash cloud that broke things down at the molecular level, or conceptual if it was purely magical, though it was useless for anything but atomizing anything you targeted it with. Considering it had behaved more like pure energy than anything physical, I suspected it was more 'mystical' than it was 'ash' especially on the high end.
Regardless, we spent a few hours on the new spell. I, personally, was planning on charging my Plate with it for a bit until I could successfully imbue equipment without hurting myself or it. Best to try it out on the equipment that I knew for a fact could self-repair. Sure enough, I had to immediately abort my first attempt, and wait on my skin growing back as my Plate regrew the flecks of material it had lost in that brief span.
"Are you
trying to get killed?" Luna asked with a hint of concern, having made a ball of Entropic Cloud and tossed it at a wall in the bottom level of the tower we'd descended, as if it were an explosive. The skin on her hand had regrown nearly instantly.
"No. I was expecting it to be less nasty than that, but I underestimate how much Color Red boosted the spell relative to my protections. I'll need a few tries to modulate it, but it should be doable to make my sword eat through mystical protections more easily. Plus, I think it'll make mining go a lot faster." How had that Lich managed to use this without damaging herself? Was there a trick, or was it pure skill from centuries of experience? The main tome that had taught us the spell didn't have anything on the former, but didn't outright state the latter, so I'd have to operate on the latter for now.
The books were skimmed through, and most of it was research into the ritual she'd mentioned, alongside detailed records of her orders and a more general report on her activities. What was most valuable to me personally was the detailed map laid out on the desk, which she'd clearly been planning out her moves on. It pointed to the Silver Tree Kingdom being the tunnel that most directly led south, but also to a few existing mine shafts she'd been digging in the tunnels of her outposts, the six not pointing at the Silver Tree Kingdom, which I'd be ransacking for Color Gold's advancement. I'd see how long it took Luna to figure out Ten Thousand, but I was planning about three weeks of mining, leaning towards a few days more. Luna had mentioned about 27% growth per 24 days. That would translate to more than 50% greater combat strength even if I just accounted for greater strength and speed, to say nothing of intellectual boosts.
While I didn't find much of anything in the holes the Lich had carved in that fight, or the tower in general once I'd picked out the stuff they had in their hoards, I did stumble across a poor copper vein in my range near the end of the big one. Though with my speed I did the work of hundreds personally, and my Gold constructs pushed that past the 500 mark, since I only really needed the tools and carts for removing the material. Again, it wasn't a very good vein, so I'd mined it out in 6 hours. Not needing to take any breaks whatsoever helped.
Each outpost was almost exactly 100 kilometers from the central tower, with the exception of the one to Silver Tree. As we began heading for the first of the existing mines, Luna had gained what she considered adequate mastery of Entropic Cloud, such that she didn't cause more than minor lacerations to her hands if she created orbs of the magic in them and held them for a few minutes, so we repeated the process that had taught Luna Numeracy Ten. I used Gold to replicate the flow of Astral energy, while various diagrams and explanations from upwards of a thousand mental instances explained it's inner workings to her. While she'd already learned Ten, it didn't seem to aid in learning the other Numeracies like the Verses did. Still, it only took 18 minutes, which seemed to point towards the Numeracies being easier to learn at lower numbers, but which would point to 41.66 days of study being necessary for Ten Thousand unless actually being able to see Astral power helped her a great deal, though Essence-based improvement would likely help too. Combined, I was expecting about half the time to be lopped off. She could occupy her time moving the hoarded money and minerals from the various sub-caves in the other towers to the bottoms so it could all be grabbed with a singular trip after that, or perhaps hunt Shadow Beasts for unique blood types using the outposts as a base, provided she didn't mind a brief window outside my range.
Weeks passed, my control over Entropic Cloud grew as I worked away at it, just as the hoards of material I was carving from the earth did. I was careful to leave some supports in place, so the caves I was carving out didn't collapse, but my increasingly fine control was sufficient for me to only destroy the normal soil and rock, as opposed to the minerals I wanted to extract, leaving my Gold constructs to excavate tributaries and 'splashes' of the minerals, as well as removing the last layer of detritus on the material. My vault had actually run out of space by the twentieth day, so my skeleton servants, despite the sub-Realm growing by roughly 20% in that time, were increasingly forced to stack it in any place it wouldn't block the walking path or interfere in the use of furniture. The bedroom, for example, had an entire wall lined with various metals, though the Lead was kept in the vault no matter what.
As I'd hoped, about halfway through the twentieth day, I felt a significant change in Luna's Essence. "I've done it." she proclaimed proudly. Despite some interruptions, as she'd insisted on grabbing the coins while we were there, and given she hadn't had the benefits of Ten Thousand at the time, the breaks had probably done a lot of good. It would make her a lot more capable as an administrator, and make learning more magic much, much easier.
"Great! I'm going to spend about 3 and a half more days on this, and then we'll go visit Silver Tree. In fact, I've just about exhausted the easily accessed material in the other 6 outposts, so we might as well go mining in that direction. Do you want to go hunting for unique Shadow Beasts while I mine that big stretch out, or what?" I trusted her enough that I didn't think anything would go wrong. Given that she was immensely stronger now, most Shadow Beasts wouldn't manage much, but unlike me, she could profit from new blood, as opposed to mostly being relegated to cultivation and new magic types at this point.
Luna thought it over, before nodding. "I should have a look. If nothing else, I haven't been so far from the mines in any of these directions in quite some time." she nodded at me, and sped off. Given that she was faster than me, I suspected she could sniff out dozens of Shadow Beasts per day even without Red, simply by clearing out a grid.
As I worked my way down the last tunnel, I considered my exact plan. I was intending to merc myself out again, killing local beasts and clearing out dens of Risen. Though first I was finally going to a blacksmith's shop. For one thing, I needed all this ore properly smelted. First, I was 89% sure that it would work better with Gold. Second, it would likely take up less space. Not to mention needing to restock my Gonne's ammo, and re-engineer it for better performance. The question was payment, since outright removing money from my Swordrealm permanently would weaken Gold, and the only way I'd countenance that if it was avoidable was if I got Mythic Coins out of it.
Hm, there was the paper mill idea I'd had, and heck, maybe they had local mines they could use some 'prospecting' to see if they'd missed any veins. Not like I would have the space for more metals in my Swordrealm for the moment, so it wasn't any direct use to me. Water and windmills were also things I could manage, though it didn't seem like there was more than one especially large river in Silver Tree from what the Tier Eight's map had shown me. Really, the options were waiting more on the exact situation when I arrived than anything else.
Between my much-improved Entropic Cloud and my increasing physical attributes, 3 days was only enough to clear about 850 kilometers. The fact was that this was much less exploited than the nearer outposts, for fear of an Earth Elementalist figuring out something was up, so there were no pre-existing mines already removing metal, meaning more than once I'd drained a seam, and then found a new one in my range. The most memorable time was when it happened with an aluminum(well, bauxite), zinc, and iron vein, after I'd exhausted a thin seam of gold not far from the original cave. The last half day ticked that up to 970, before Luna caught up with me.
"Huh, I figured you'd be done by now." she blinked.
I shrugged. "Sometimes clearing out a vein would give me access to another one, and they can be hundreds of meters long." I explained as I extracted the last of the iron ore from this vein. "I'm pretty sure this is the last one though, I don't think my Sword has space for the ore from any more veins, so it doesn't really matter if there's another vein or three in the final stretch or that last tower."
Luna asked the obvious question. "How much is that anyway?"
A quick mental calculation later, I answered. "About 30 tons of various metals. Most of it's common stuff like iron and copper though."
Luna hummed. "An ounce of gold is worth more than a fifth of a ton of copper, so I can see why you'd be disappointed." she elucidated. That helped my calculations somewhat. "At any rate, I've drained Shadow Bats, a Shadow Cobra, a Shadow Zebra, a Shadow Giraffe, a Shadow Ox, a Shadow Auroch, a Shadow Mule, and a pack of Shadow Wolves." she reported.
"Got anything out of it?" I asked as we started to walk towards the exit.
"I can turn into a bat, normal-sized, human-sized, or Shadow Bat-sized, with accompanying effects. I've regained the ability to turn into a wolf, though human and Shadow Beast sizes are new, and I've also gotten turning into mist back, presumably from draining so many different Shadow Beasts." Living mist sounded absolutely terrifying to fight without access to weapons with magic-piercing properties.
"I've got good news too. I stumbled across a trio of new Verses. They each seem to be an outgrowth of one of the ones I've got." I raised three fingers, which I began ticking off. "Stasis lets me freeze an object for thirty minutes, though I can't damage it in that time, as moving it in any way would require moving the whole universe. Inventory gives me a pocket dimension able to hold mass equal to half my carrying weight, which would ordinarily be kind of useless to me, but is actually reasonably helpful at this point. Finally, Call For Aid lets me call for help without alerting hostiles, or those who would become hostile if they came across me, with a range twice my voice's, and it points them in the correct direction. I can only use it once a day right now though." I listed.
"Those don't sound very powerful. Stasis could be really powerful if you took advantage for prep time on a ritual or explosive, and Inventory will scale up with you, but you don't know any prepared effects, and your Swordrealm does the same thing but better. Also, doesn't Call For Aid rely pretty heavily on luck if we want to get anyone useful at our level?" Luna pointed out.
I shrugged. "Verses are supposed to take a really long time. I think I only got these so fast because I had Verses with ties to each of them. Without Step Up, Elysian, Color Red and Ten Thousand, it'd take way longer. I'm hoping these new Verses make it easier to learn more. Plus, more backups never hurt anyone." I answered with good cheer.
At any rate, I used Entropic Cloud to clear out the intervening earth between the path and the veins along the remaining 30 kilometers, even if I didn't start mining them, we placed the coins from the last tower in Inventory's pocket dimension, which were about 5/3rds of the Mausoleum in total, and found ourselves exiting a cliff face facing a lake about 2 kilometers long and 1.5 wide, with a narrow path leading out of our exit. The dumber Risen wouldn't be able to manage this, but the smarter ones would be more than capable of navigating the treacherous path. Luna and I had no trouble either, with the path or the few Risen we encountered before reaching the city, and the only event of significance between reaching the surface and reaching the town was seeing it from afar for the first time. Major city didn't really do it justice. This was obviously a very important town, what with the castle sitting behind the town itself and the 10 meter high wall of solid stone I could tell was enchanted. Given that there were no banners in the town besides one bearing a tree made of silver, I suspected this was the capitol. That Risen could have done some serious damage if she'd caught them unawares. I should probably tell someone about the tunnels. If I was lucky, they'd even reward me for killing off a threat before it could rear it's head.
This plan sprung a few leaks when the guards pointed their spears at Luna the moment we came into their view as a sound like a bell rang out with no obvious source. "What business do you have here, vampire?" one asked, proceeding to ignore me. Huh, could they tell I wasn't a vampire? Still, this would need some delicate diplomatic work.
"I am under an agreement with my companion not to harm innocents." she began calmly.
The other guard scoffed. "Because we're supposed to just buy that you didn't enthrall your friend there?" his voice dripped with sarcasm.
"She didn't even try, actually." I noted.
"Hm, we have no reason to believe you." the first guard said. "We'll call in the captain. If you're with a vampire, she'll decide what to do with you. If not, you'll be free soon." he grunted. Hm, this could be going worse. Assuming they didn't mean 'free in death' at least.
"That's fine by me." I noted. A minor delay like this was worth the information and resources the locals would have, and no one I could sense was strong enough to take me on, even if they were eight times as strong as they felt. That Tier Eight really would have torn through them like paper after her ritual. She might've been worn down into submission like in our fight, but she'd do some serious damage along the way, and the Risen from all the dead would only make things worse, since most of these people wouldn't be able to put up enough of a fight for Entropic Cloud to be necessary.
One of the guards called over someone from inside the gate, who listened as he explained things to them through the bars. 15 minutes of waiting later, a red-haired woman, short, unlike Luna or myself, in classical knight's armor, save the helm, marched over to us. I withheld my amusement that I was nearly half a foot taller than her. The slight quirking of Luna's lips, quickly suppressed told me much the same.
"I'm told you claim you haven't placed your companion under hypnosis, vampire. I will discern the truth of the matter." she stated, blue eyes gaining a glow as she stared at us. She pointed at me. "Remove your mystical protections, or I'll assume you have something to hide." I obliged by removing my helmet. Half should be enough to give her something, and Red told me this was just a scan. "Hm, no mystic ensorcelment..." she quirked a brow. "Blood of Kings, eh? Haven't seen one of you lot before." she extended a hand. "I can't say I trust you, but so far you've told the truth. Name's Aria." her eyes dimmed, and her natural blue seemed very dark.
I assumed she meant Color Red, and returned the gesture. "Flower."
"Luna." the vampire princess stated coolly.
"What brings you to Argent?" she asked.
"Five reasons. First, I need some ore smelted. Second, I need replacement ammunition for my Gonne. Third, I was hoping to set up a few businesses. Fourth, I'm interested in mercenary work, clearing out dens of Risen, that sort of thing, though I won't object to slaughtering pigs at least a couple times. Fifth and final, the tunnel the Risen made led here." I decided straightforwardness was the best call here.
"...Come again?" Aria asked, eyes narrowed.
"A Tier Eight-
"Rank Eight." Luna corrected, presumably for the benefit of the residents of the kingdom.
"I don't care." I replied as I replaced my helmet. "A Tier Eight Lich was massing up a huge number of Sevens and Sixes, over 500 of each, and had made a tunnel from a thousand kilometers north. We stumbled across them while clearing an abandoned town, killed them all, and made our way down here for the reasons I mentioned. A reward for doing that would be appreciated, but I have other ways to make money." I shrugged. Luna seemed conflicted between stifling laughter at my raw bluntness, and hanging her head in her hands, so she opted for some of both. The guards glanced at each other, grips on their spears tightening that the thought.
"Hm, my eyes say you're telling the truth." Aria muttered, her eyes briefly flickering back into a full glow before dimming. "You wouldn't mind showing me this tunnel of yours, would you?" she asked. "Nothing personal, but like I said, I don't trust you yet."
Luna and I traded glances. "I don't see why not." Inwardly I was cringing at how slowly we'd have to move so she'd be able to keep up.
"Don't give me that look vampire. I'm plenty fast enough to keep up with you." Aria told Luna, unable to see my face, but seeing the barest flicker of such a reaction from my companion. Aria turned to the guards. "Tell my second who I went with and why. Just in case they missed some." she jabbed a thumb at us. The guards nodded, and one of them moved over to the gate proper to tell another messenger the same.
To my surprise, Aria actually could keep up. She had to jog at our walking pace, but she could. Sensing our shock, she grinned. "I was never the strongest, but I've always been the fastest."
Given her confidence, I'd give good odds she had a magic that could accelerate her further if she needed to close the gap. Best not to try her patience now though. Another 15 minutes later, we were back at the entrance. We went first. Specifically, Luna took the lead, I went second because my defenses were better if our new 'friend' was less friendly than she'd seemed with people around and tried to kill us. Aria whistled as she beheld the tower. Shorter than the main one, but clearly unnatural. "This is definitely a lot of effort to go through for some kind of con, so I suppose I'm willing to buy it." she begrudged.
"I'd be willing to make the journey to the main tower." I noted, glancing at Luna, who paused a moment, then nodded slowly. I wondered if she was getting restless. I had been taking it pretty easy the past three weeks, and here I was volunteering to go a thousand kilometers just to prove my veracity. Still, The Wretch was nasty. If I could get the local guard captain to believe me, that would go a long way to making inroads.
"Nah, I can manage. A straight shot?" she asked, legs tightening like springs.
"Ignore the side paths, and go straight forward. I think the Tier Eight had some issue, because she seemed very exacting in general. As much as the Risen allowed her to be at least." I answered, before she was off like a gun, a surge of Astral power denoting a spell. I'd thought so. "Learn anything from that?" I asked Luna.
"Too fast." she shook her head. "Even the magic was faster than normal."
"I don't think we'll be waiting long either way." I said, resting against a nearby wall. This should work out fine, then to see what the deal was with that Assimilator Demon Kingdom I could hear the townspeople muttering about.
AN: Shorter than some of the others, but I have 10 days and the update is going to be pretty soon. Luna was waiting by Flower, but she sniffed out the incoming Risen, and went over to be on hand if they managed to break through, which an hour or so of bombardment was starting to manage. They started to really pull out all the stops when it became clear they were actually doing something, which made it louder. Once Flower woke up though, they were pretty much entirely doomed. There were less of them than had been in the Tier Eight's throne area. Before anyone asks, the throne area is occupying the direction Gilvale was in, so there isn't a tower sitting right on it, though there is one about 50 kilometers away since the remaining 7 of North, South, West, and the various derivatives all have towers.
Since Rihaku doesn't seem to have the Color Magics elsewhere, I decided to make some up. If they do come up in canon, I'm most likely going to be wrong, but if everybody waited on canon to finish before they did their fanworks, they'd never get anything done. Luna is channeling me a bit here, in that I haven't actually decided if there's any more, since there are still unfulfilled niches here, like illusions(Grey, I would think), teaching/learning(White, since it's got all colors and can be divided into them, so one of it's big powers would likely be granting the ability to teach/learn other Color Magic without the usual consequences and in general let you bypass restrictions like incompatible elements so you could learn all the magic you wanted, a Bloodline that let you learn every Bloodline in Naruto terms, and so something Orochimaru would slaughter nations for), sealing/summoning magics(Black, classic black magic like blood sacrifices to summon things, alongside knowledge of the disruption of stuff like it), but the Colored Band was already stretching credulity a bit having so many different Color Magics in one spot without an Astral Lord or the like personally going around collecting them.
Aria is pretty much a Glass Cannon. She's got speed superior to the party, but her offense and defense are roughly an order of magnitude weaker than either of them. She also doesn't have their healing abilities, and she's focused pretty much everything into speed, and is basically treating her dodging as armor. Which is to say, she'd lose a fight with Flower and Luna pretty badly. She could get a few hits in, but largely she'd be stalling them. She'd likely do better against the Tier Eight, given that she'd likely be able to get an Alpha Strike in, and maybe a few hits more before she disintegrated.
The Assimilator Demon Kingdom is sort of like Orks from 40K. They cannot be reasoned with. They can be bribed, or pointed in another direction, but they lack any real benevolence, even towards their own kind. Much like the Ethereal Vampires like Luna, they're less actual Demons, and more mythology sprung to life than any normal being. The Tier Eight had decided to strike now because the war wasn't going well for Silver Tree. Not terribly, but they barely managed to stop a ritual to mutate a lot of outlying villages and minor towns into Demons both to utterly destroy Silver Tree's backline and to recuperate the losses the Demons have taken, and a lot of their Heroes are either dead or in critical condition from the effort. Coming that close to a knockout blow like that, and losing so many Heroes stopping it, is also kind of demoralizing. Sure, they're pissed off about the whole 'Magical mutation spell.' thing, but if the Heroes got mulched like that what can they do? The Heroes were understandably rushing, so they ended up being very reckless, which cost them, but they'd have put up a lot more of a fight if they hadn't been beating their heads against a wall and could afford to act more like an elite strike team than army-killers. The damage they managed going down swinging is also the main reason the Demons haven't taken advantage.
962.8 meters from the 13.53 Tier Nines, currently.
6666 Words, discounting this line.
Your tears are delicious. Remember this feeling, it will never stop being relevant.
