“Still, we should be able to open a gap right up through here.” Endure glittered on his shoulder, and a parallel line of Holographic walls ran to the north up the side of the illusionary slope towards the corrupted former shrine where the undead Vaeshok, the leader of the effort to free Grael, had set up shop… and which we’d emptied of Summons, including him, vivified everything, and then buried the whole thing in liquefied ex-blightstone.

  The Spawn Points had all shifted up to the surface after the spaces below were filled in, but they had changed to more random surface spawns, ‘losing’ whatever individual character settings had been fixed below, mostly as sclavi guards and a few scattered mukkir.

  “Following the ridgeline north means we only have to build one wall,” Princess Kristie Rantha stated, eyes narrow as Quaver hummed and Briggs’ wall grew, advancing up to near the sheer slope on the far side before shifting to follow it north-west. “Those spawns aren’t too dense. We can actually make decent time up there… and cut off the ends relatively easily.”

  “Ley line surge,” the Mick promptly spat out. “They can un-Seal them without passing the wall, aye?”

  Everyone looked at me. “Funny thing about how walls are avenues for conduction of magical energies. It’s why Wards work so well. So the proper thing to do in such a case is to make the walls into Walls and have something in them which can use up all those energy surges. As long as the surge doesn’t hit the whole Wall at the same time, there shouldn’t be any issues.”

  “What kind of magical effect?” Kris asked, sniffing out a grimly ironic surprise.

  “Glyphs of Warding with vivic Kickers, I’m thinking. Can plug them right into the ley lines, no sweat, let the land power them up. If they want to feed the Wall power, let them.”

  “How about blasting them down?” Maga Thera asked, the brown-haired Aluvian likewise intent on our problem.

  “Once there’s a ley line connection, that’s almost moot. They’d have to sever the connection or bring out real Empyrean magic to overcome a mana-reinforced wall, and they don’t have the physical power to chop through it in any reasonable amount of time. Plus, there’s a problem with blasting or hacking a section of wall.”

  Briggs’ smile was grim. “Interested parties can tell exactly where you are and come over to dissuade you.”

  Golden Light shimmered over Kris’ hand, turning her hand into curving razored finger-blades. “And some of us are better at climbing sheer walls than others,” she purred in anticipation.

  Briggs nodded at that. “Okay, we’ll take a survey of the teams working the shore here, see if and where they want other dividers to be put in place. Breaking up the open field with clear avenues of retreat without worrying about triggering other spawns should be a popular idea if we set it up right, and we can turn this place into a real training area, instead of a free-for-all like we have now.

  “Tomorrow, we’re going to make some progress and keep it. We’re bringing the Wagon up the slope once the Walls start going up, and when the undead come down to try something, I think we’re going to light them up.”

  I nodded. “I’ll get my Resurrections done early, after everyone’s done Investing,” I nodded at the plan.

  The planning devolved to exactly what Spawn Points and where I’d displace them, clearing what and who and plotting everything out in Visual Files for tomorrow so we’d make good progress.

  Me, I was designing the Glyphs to be splayed over the Walls going up, and the basic Formations to put inside them to tap the ley line running right down the center of that ridge of Tainted blightstone up there, and how I was going to mess those undead up.

  Tomorrow was going to be a decent day.

  -------

  Briggs wasn’t actually there the next day. He’d promised his Stonehold lads some days of personal attention, and he led them over to work the Vissidal spawns, hunting gold pack bosses along the shores there for Luminance opening, giving them the feel and confidence to take on the creatures there repeatedly and confidently.

  It was fine, we had plenty of offense, and he’d mostly been here because Kris was here and he enjoyed beating on tough things that thought magic could take him down.

  The Skeeters and the Roaches were two groups of the toughest adventurer-types in all of Dereth now, with Warfang Weapons of Lost Light and Blackfire that were definitely the best on the whole island. They went about the task of wiping the spawns out again with cool professionalism, and made record time as I paced them with the Walls going up smoothly just behind them.

  All of them had minor Levitation magicks at the least, or enhanced jumping, and could get to the top of a thirty-foot wall without too much trouble, even if they had to be dragged up by someone else by riding a Disk and keeping even with them. Heck, Disks could walk them up in steps without too much of an issue, and running through a few drills where Disk-steps were lined up quickly so everyone could just race to the top became a drill the next day during a short rest period, everyone assigned a ‘step’ and testing how fast the Disks could be placed in position by the person in front.

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  Something else to drill and practice, nobody satisfied with the speed, but it would do for now, as we were in a combat zone.

  As before, everything was vivified, kills of the bosses were carefully allocated among those who needed them, Mnecromonic keeping track of kill credits and Visual Files enumerating everything. It was a lot of kills to get, and definitely not something normally done in a single day, especially as people traded off the primary damage roles and luck’s damn RNG had its own role to play.

  Up the beach, forming a path fifty yards wide between two Spawn Points I bumped left and right, the Walls marched from the shallows up the steep slope to the top of the hill, where the land leveled out partially and the Spawn Points started reappearing. They weren’t too dense up here, but could still flash and flare and suddenly surround us in respawned numbers if we were unlucky, or draw neighboring Summons over which logically should have been fighting one another madly, and instead all went after us.

  The toughest part was killing the dense Spawn Points around the shallow crater where Vaeshok and the blighted Shrine had been, as triggering one spawn of them from a distance dragged three over at a time, which wasn’t exactly fun. Sending up Kris to bait them over was more useful, and she was constantly Skating back and forth, pulling them in regularly as they were surrounded and cut down by wolfpack tactics and some intense arrow fire.

  From there it was a march along the ridgeline. I raised the Wall parallel to the slope falling away to the north there as we progressed.

  Selene pointed out the Falatacot undead in the distance, watching us advance from at least a half-klik away, not bothering to get any closer. The only sign they might have been a little upset by what we were doing was when the numbers of watchers grew, and then red started appearing among the black robes of the male guards, indicating the priestesses were taking a sudden interest in what we were doing.

  They could stay downslope or further along the ridge all they liked, of course. All they could see behind us was a Vivic Wall of Fire burning atop the defiled shrine, staining the black stone white over there, crawling mists of purity slowly sidling down the hilltop toward the white circles scattered like measles of purity on the tainted blightstone there, spreading the love and the cleansing through a wider and wider area.

  When it came time to stop for the night, I simply drew the Wall right across the front of our advance, sealing off a strip about a hundred paces wide along that ridgeline and its fossilized blighted coral formations.

  I also dropped a bunch of Vivic Eternal Flames on said coral formations, turning them into nice big vivic bonfires spreading the love around.

  The Wagon was trailing along behind us, the archers and mages using it for elevated cover fire readily, half up top, half on the ground as needed for the fights.

  The Wall rose from the blightstone, white-streaked brown as I Shaped up the purified stone into the form desired, and there it sat, a pale snake on the oily black skin of the Dark Isle, daring the undead to do something about it.

  -----

  Nobody else bothered to help, because there really was no need for them to.

  Yes, the undead had a couple thousand Health.

  Yes, there were like forty of them, combining forces to blast away at the Wall in front of them, and really not liking the results. Mana-reinforced walls really ignored Isparian-class magicks trying to harm them once set up.

  There was a big patch of white ground where they’d come too close after their attempt to Surge lit up the Glyphs along the faces of about a hundred yards of wall, and blew out on them. Didn’t kill any of them, but did set them en vivus and desperately beating the stuff out with acid magic and the like, as rolling on the blighted ground just set the ground en vivus, too!

  So, I walked up Invisibly, looked down at the cluster of them blasting away, and I unloaded on them fast and heavy.

  I knew there were more undead looking on from the distance, I could see them right over there, heya hiya, and I could probably reach out and touch them, whether they liked it or not.

  But, no, killing these would be sufficient for now, and I didn’t need to be giving away my killing range to any survivors I could not see.

  “Tremble,” I whispered in Necrus, and they all looked up at me in shock.

  Twinned Admixtured Chained Shardrays with Fastcast Twinned Chained Shardrays, both Split, both with Undead Slayer, both with Disruption, both with Legendary Healing Prowess for that sweet +50% Kicker, maxed out with Holy Metas and die-increased and +50% twice for oodles of fun, and the Lost Light was shining and thrumming through it all as a Blackfire Starfield lit up like an aurora in the night.

  They didn’t have much of a chance, and that was entirely by design. This was basically Force and Radiant energy damage, the Elementals were just on there for additional Kickers and free Metas. The whole force of undead lit up and was connected by raging strands of undead-eating starfire pulses binding them all… and then they evaporated, blasted to dust and less, and their clothes, disintegrating under the force of the Elemental Kickers, fell to the ground, and dissolved to vivic powder with the rest of them.

  I eyed the undead in the distance, then fell back into the shadows of the night and left them behind.

  I didn’t expect any more trouble that night, and there wasn’t any.

  ---

  -Lady Magos, the situation you warned us of has come up! We’ve got a force of Falatacot undead and sclavi moving along the southern beach with all speed, coming right for us!-

  Presper Farnshall was one of my Wizard students, and like most of them, had advanced quickly because his services were in very high demand. Paramounts loved them some support Casters, and they really, really loved folks who could Teleport. They were plenty happy to help him gain Isparian Levels with high-Karma hunting, and vary it all up to get him to Nine so they could go out to a hunting zone way across Dereth and then be back home in time for dinner.

  Supplemental Mass Resist Elements to give the finger to the spellflingers of the Dark Isle were nice, too.

  Messages to scream out alarms when needed were even better at key times!

  ============================

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   Ebook Series: The original Power of Ten: The First Day, The First Week, and finally The First Month, Vol Five and Six!