The Power of Ten

Chapter 9-282: Killing Royally

West, Lord Owat. I aim to kill as many of these aliens as I can as fast as I can, and they are helpfully gathering themselves there, I believe.

Can we be of any help in this? a burly fellow in enameled white armor and turban spoke up. Maybe a Sikh?

Likely not. Cleaning up the countryside behind me is all Im expecting you to do. I looked over them. You dont have access to the internet, I see?

The Buddhists make efforts to cut the cables and towers, among others, Lord Qwat stated easily enough.

I looked at Master Fred, who reached down with one hand, grabbed the Obelisk in Sleipners hovering sidecar there, and without visible effort, lifted it out and set it on the ground. The men all pursed their lips at the display of a woman doing that, which Master Fred calmly ignored.

The first thing is to get you all on the same wavelength as far as languages go. I pulled out an Item Scroll with a bunch of Vaccines embedded on it. There are some videos you truly need to see as quickly as you can.

And which were very quickly going to upset their management of their territories, with all the people Leveling...

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The Human Tongue was going to be spreading quickly in India now. Each of the local Warlords got an Obelisk made to connect to the internet through Heavenbound Hall, enabling them to hook into the information stream of the greater world... something the Blessed I was recruiting, largely limited to Priests and Priestesses at the moment, could have told them more of.

They could bring new people in for me, and certainly had enough stars in their eyes to motivate them to do so. To speed the process up, I set up a repeating hundred-foot illusion of my videos to introduce them to the challenges going on in the wide wide world, and herald another new age.

The warlords would want to restrict the information. The clergy were going to get it out there to everyone, regardless of what the self-made nobles wanted. I wasnt impressed with the prevalence of blues and greens here, but being caught between Buddhists enslaving everyone with false holiness, and dozens of Shroudzones from all kinds of nasty events in the past, it was hardly unbelievable.

Any attempt to present a united front and instruct me on what to do in their homeland fell apart before it started. They had all seen me butchering Buddhists by the thousands, including their most elite. The sheer level of magic I could pull off, and the quantity of it, was terrifying them.

After all, they ruled by force. They could complain all they wanted to if I decided to do the same, but there was little doubt their people would follow me without an ounce of complaint, because I could deliver on what I promised.

By the time Renewal came again and my Nobility/3 ticked itself over, making them cringe ever more, changes were getting underway as information was being dispersed to everyone who asked, normal people were lighting up their eyes at the idea they could gain power, too, and forces were in motion to make it so.

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It took three more days for me to make it to Bombay, 160 days into my life on this world. A regional capitol fell every day prior, and three hundred different Shrine Formations were destroyed or reversed, plumes and fountains of unwhite flames burning, drawing the Qi in as the world pressed in where it had been forced back. It was a good feeling, getting all those things into place.

My kill total in India now exceeded twenty million. The death toll the Buddhists had claimed was at least twice that. They had revealed the lie of their philosophy, and purified the souls of all the commoners who could not flee, saving them from corruption by us... and as they vacated the lands, undead rose in massive numbers behind them, howling for revenge on anything that came in reach.

The size of the Shroudzone exploded to something only the Russian Superzone would rival in no time at all. Perhaps I should have been grateful for the fact that any higher-Level souls had either been slain, chased away, or conscripted already, and so none of the undead being created were really that powerful to start with.

However, the Dark Clergy Wars started instantly, as different mindsets of the undead fractured them, instantly prodded to fight for dominance by the Shroud, and they started their own Leveling process, tens of millions of dead turning all of central India into a warzone.

Naturally enough, the undead were more than happy to turn on me and Master Fred as we went on by, taking out the Shrines that they could have cared less about now... although they very quickly avoided the vivic flames that started to burn in them.

Or rather, some of them did. Large numbers, screaming from the pain and horror of being undead, ran into the Shrines and burned. The Shrines truly became holy white sites of freedom from the enslavement that had taken them in life, and now wanted them in death.

The Buddhists were all retreating towards Bombay, trying to reach it if they could before I caught them.

Sometimes I caught them traveling on the roads, cutting their way through or between warring knots of undead, the landscape ahead of them already purged of human life. The undead were more than happy to attack them, but there were no Dark Ministers to organize them and power up the Dark Congregations that could have made a go of it yet. The Buddhists cut through them like wheat, not that it would make any difference in the end.

Tomorrow morning, the undead would all be back again. That was not, however, true for the Buddhists when I caught up to them. They Chanted, and then they screamed, and then they burned in unwhite fire.

The Mick had a running total of the gallons of Cultivator blood I had foregone, and just how much potential goldweight that was. It was getting impressively large. He didnt let me know how big the betting pool was, however, only that a lot of people had to buy in again as I kept upping my total past their predictions...

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I didnt go right into Bombay, the massive city sprawling out for miles and miles around its harbor. The biggest city of India had been the home of the Indian Buddhists, and in all likelihood the Nirvanic Enlightenment had started here.

I could see the Dome they had brought up to protect themselves from twenty miles away, easily. It didnt quite go up to the Haze, but it was huge and fake golden, shining with a Light designed to force itself into your brain and make you submit, submit, pray for forgiveness and mercy...

I didnt have to worry about the Warlords or any of their forces following me through an active Shroudzone. I warned them that they didnt want to get anywhere near Bombay, or they were going to kneel down in homage and worship and present their throats to be cut in remorse for their unclean status as demon-cursed individuals. The Buddhists would surely remorsefully forgive them as they complied with the request.

I also didnt miss the pillars of Light extending up through the Haze. They were bringing in reinforcements urgently to deal with me.

That didnt bother me, either, as I simply roved the whole province outside the city, methodically destroying their Shrine Formations, starting the destruction of the Qi they needed to keep that Dome going, and for their precious Buddhas to use and live on. A Dome that big had to use a lot of power, and Qi was not the primary energy of the environment, so it did not replenish itself.

All I had to do was get it consumed faster, ever faster, and what was that Dome going to have to use against me when I closed in?

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They tried to ambush me exactly once.

They probably could have avoided discovery by anything resembling normal Divinatory means, but really, the Arhat in charge had Qi swirling about it like a tornado, and its escorts of devic guards, lesser Enlightened, and the like were like a huge vortex of bright, shiny filth upon the Land. I couldnt see what was making it, but it was freaking impossible to miss just by the noise of its existence.

The Land found it totally revolting, after all.

Their problem was that my Commune wth Nature stretched out to ninety miles in radius, which was waaaaay further than they could see, even gathered up there on top of the Dome to survey the whole area. I also had a Citybound sitting right here with me, who could talk to Bombay and make sure I could see the entire city naturally, too. Yay, Eldritch Theurgy!

Bombay was half-frothing nuts, torn between submission to the Light bearing down on it and trying to make it subservient, and trying to resist such utter alien domination with all its strength.

My flames lighting up all those Shrine Formations helped bunches, letting it know there was something out there fighting the Qi and the monstrous aliens who had descended upon it. It was plenty happy to work with the magic and let me know what was going on, although the area under the big Dome was one big slime-out, like having a downspout full of shit jammed down your throat and someone sitting there with a grinning bastards hand on the lever to open it up.

Mental flossing encouraged when working with high-end Divinations, thank you...

Also, they gave things up when they left some acolytes and disciples to guard some of the Shrines. Seriously, millions of them were abandoning their landscapes, killing off the humans theyd shepherded, and it wouldnt strike me as unusual that theyd left some guards here?

Oh, they must have thought I didnt know about Divine Sense, or how acute their eyes could be.

Ha-ha, funny. I could do 50x just with Eagle Eyes at III, and at V it was upgraded to a max of 100x. I could definitely look across twenty miles and see the fat fuck and his entourage sitting up on the top of the Dome, trying to follow me.

Oh, yes, Astral Ward works perfectly against your divine sense, dumbkopfs...

They wanted to narrow down where I was, which wasnt too hard with the trail of vivisizing Shrine Formations I was leaving behind me. Then they could come on out here and surround me, beat me down in fine fashion, and dispose of the problem I represented, if by nothing else than watching the bright lights of me blasting the heck out of everything vile they were leaving behind.

They hadnt bothered to kill all the local humans, probably not wanting to deal with millions of undead beating on their Dome who wouldnt die, and who would only get tougher as they were resurrected.

Naturally I toyed with the Buddhists, crisscrossing back and forth in an ever-closing circle around them, surrounding them in pinpoints of vivic fire which devoured the slime in the air ever more quickly and cut into their supply.

Seriously, I could have just sat out there and waited for them, but where was the fun in that?

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They made their move in a finely laid-out Shrine some ten miles from the looming golden light of their Dome, Teleporting into the grounds of the place in a nice circle. They saw the figures there shooting out streams of Shards into the hapless defenders inside and blowing them apart. They immediately rose into the air and let loose with everything in a perfectly-coordinated strike.

Rains of photonic swords. Sweeping titanic palms hammering down. Walls of spinning chakra circles. Cutting beams of Light, thunderous incantations coming down like paens of doom to rock the mind and soul.

It looked very impressive from well outside the walls where we sitting, not forty yards beyond them.

Why NOT spend illusions at every assault point, Projected Images that can conduct spells, when the acolytes here were happy to replace them for me?

You have to be fairly close for your True Vision of the universe to be able to pick out an adept Illusion. Too bad, so sad, you couldnt get that close, because we routinely moved with an Interdiction so we couldnt be whiz-banged like this.

And you know, attacking out from the center of an encirclement is annoying. Coming in from the outside and sweeping up the thin line of the attackers wasnt that hard at all.