Greed God chapter 204

April 8th 2016 Brightedge City, Hall of Nevers, 10:00 AM EDT

After  the arrival of the depleted promethium stockpile (dad finally got it  shipped out) I was back up to around five million GP, which meant I had  plenty of points to make a weapons cache. I'd also managed to stockpile a  serious chunk of items in Gemworld, and after contacting Zee for a  location, sent Cherry to go pick up a bunch of useful vamp hunting items  I could use for merging.

Naturally, I wasn't stupid  enough to waste a ton of points making single use objects, so I went  with quantity over quality. My new weapons and items were still pretty  useful, but I was limiting them to G rank, which should keep costs down  even if I pumped out a decent number of the things.

The  base materials were easy to gather luckily. A few flash bangs to act as a  foundation, a few stakes, some crosses, a couple of bags of paintballs,  and a few tanks of flamethrower fuel. Basically every basic weapon form  that is useful against the undead. From Gemworld I had a decent bit of  magic sunstone and some Garnet that would let me work in some blood  based effects.

Since they were so good at this kind of  thing, I even let Amy, Cherry, and Barbie sit in with me while I worked.  Dinah of course needing to sit things out given the already stern talk  they'd given me about 'reckless endangerment'. I swear, knock one bitch  up and suddenly everything you do is under a microscope. Well...three  bitches. But they only knew about two of them right now anyway so I  didn't count Mordiel.

"I admit." Said Amy in fascination.  "I only vaguely remember how vampires work. Before I went to Gemworld I  read Dracula like everyone else and saw some movies, but it's been a  long time, and fictional monsters, or ones I thought were fictional at  least, faded from my mind when there were real ones to be slain. Can you  walk me through the thought process for each of these choices?"

I  shrugged. "Sure, nothing complicated. First up is the flashbangs. I'm  planning to merge in the sunstones to create sun bombs. Probably won't  be strong enough to instakill the older ones, but most people have  trouble concentrating when they're suddenly on fire. Especially if they  were just sleeping. Flamethrower? Second verse, same as the first, add  more fire. Probably gonna mix in some holy oil or something."

Cherry  snickered at that. "The paintballs are less contradictory to that  effort than they might sound. I'm guessing you're going to make holy  water of some kind? The cross makes sense to me too. What I'm curious  about is the stake. Like...staking a vampire already kills them doesn't  it?"

"Sadly, no." I said with a grimace. "Not directly. I  talked to Siegfried about it. Staking a vampire is a way to kill them,  but only because it completely immobilizes them to be decapitated. He  also said older vamps are immune to the effect, or at least highly  resistant, so pounding in a stake for Mary isn't likely to work, nor her  oldest courtiers. I'll explain the deal with the stakes in a minute.  Lets test out the sun bomb process first. Cherry how many flashbangs did  you get?"

The grinning ghostly girl hauled a bag up off  the floor to let it thump onto the table. Opening it, she slowly laid  out twenty or so flashbang grenades. The grenades stood upright on their  own, dark green and thin with a blue stripe in the center of a cylinder  that had holes punched out along the sides to reveal a fuse. I used  appraisal.

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure  detected. M84 Flashbang- H rank. The standard issue stun grenade of the  US SWAT forces. Upon detonation, releases a loud bang of 180 decibals  and a blinding flash of more than a million candela within five feet of  point of release.]

I whistled at the specs. Not  overwhelmingly effective on their own, but this was definitely the  secret sauce. I raised an eyebrow at Cherry. "Where the hell did you get  a bag of SWAT issue flashbangs?" She smirked wickedly and I held up a  hand. "No, wait. I know where you got them and I'm almost positive  you're just trying to piss off Barbie. Remind me to lock you two in a  room and let you go at it for a few hours until you're friends."

Despite  the scoff, I considered Barbie's faux casual glance at Cherry's ass  when I said that a good sign. "Anyway." I said, dragging their now  wandering attention back to me. "These are perfect. I have an ass load  of sunstones that can work for material." Pulling out an H rank sunstone  I tossed it toward the first grenade and triggered the merge, focusing  on exactly what I needed. I only bumped it to G rank, but given the  materials and what they were already made for, it was an easy change.

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Daybreak  grenade- G rank. A special tool created for the destruction and  disabling of vampires. The Daybreak grenade releases a burst of  concentrated sunlight into the room for twenty feet from point of  release, accompanied by a special high frequency  burst of noise  triggered in a register only the undead can hear.]

I  grinned as I picked up the new device. Made of bronze and filled with  glowing yellow liquid that bubbled ominously, the Daybreak grenade was  everything I'd hoped it would be. I passed it to Barbie, giving her the  rundown on what it did, and she looked ready to try the thing out right  in the room with us. I gently took it away from her with a smirk. "You  can have dibs on using the first one, but why don't we do the rest of  them first."

Barbie clearly adored weapons and devices,  which should have been obvious given her whole schtick as batgirl. I saw  her pocket a few of them, but honestly I'd made extras anyway, with all  the other weapons we wouldn't need twenty of the damn things. The next  few items were easy enough to make. I didn't have holy oil or anything,  but I had crosses, and sparing a few of them to merge with the  paintballs and the tanks for the flamethrowers.

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Holy  paintballs- G rank. A series of paintballs imbued with sacred energy,  enhanced effect against unholy entities such as vampires and demons.]

[Appraisal  function activated. Treasure detected. Cleansing fire flamethrower- G  rank. A flamethrower modified to emit holy flames. Particularly  effective against profane entities such as vampires, demons, and evil  spirits.]

Perfect. I upgraded the rest of the  stock we had of each. I knew the paintballs wouldn't be as effective,  since despite being G rank as a group they were individually weaker than  that. Still, I wasn't fucking upgrading every single paintball to G  rank, points aside that sounded annoying. I could probably have kicked  them all up to F rank and gotten a similar effect, but honestly combined  with the other items the mild burning effect should work fine.

Reaching  into the bag, I pulled out a stake. "Now." I said as I held it up.  "Like I told you before, I have an idea for the stakes that I think you  all might be interested in. Part of the reason stakes are effective  against vampires is they represent life, which is antithetical to the  unnatural undeath caused by vampirism. Same with the sun. It's a  symbolism thing. Mary and the others are probably going to be mostly too  strong for normal stakes to work on them. Which is why I'm going to try  this." Pulling out an emerald, I triggered the merge and then appraised  the result.

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Lifebound  stake- G rank. A stake infused with the power of life itself.  Antithesis of death, the lifebound stake is particularly useful for  destroying necromantic constructs and the undead. Designed to find the  heart of its victim, the stake is an excellent counter to master  vampires, able to immobilize them for centuries if left in place.]

The  result of the merge looked...weird. As I explained what it did to the  girls I stared in fascination at the greenish white wood shot through  with veins of glowing green emerald. The object practically dripped with  vitality to my eyes. Which gave me an idea. I reached out to grab the  object, focusing on my own magic, and then I SHOVED a bit of Primal  Force into the mystical structure of the weapon.

With life  energy already coursing through it, I had a pretty good starting point.  I'd been a powerful vitality based dragonkin for a while, and I was  still that, though I was also so much more. The green lightning of my  Primal Force supercharged the stone veins in the stake, making them  intensify and shift subtly, changing the nature of the object until...

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Primal Stave- F rank. A weapon of earth and might and life. Bane of the dead.]

It  had changed. I didn't get the points for that obviously, I never did  when upgrading things I already owned. Still, that would be a nice  little trump card. We only had about ten of these stakes, but I could  effectively make F rank items for G rank prices, which meant we would be  much better able to protect ourselves. Not just the girls either. If  Mary was C rank she would be a bitch to take down. I didn't think an F  rank item would kill a C rank vampire, even one specced for it, since I  knew for a fact she had some resistance, but I also doubted she'd enjoy  the process of taking the business end of the weapon.

With  the leftover crosses I managed to merge some new ones that were a bit  more attuned to vampiric enemies, but honestly it was mostly just aiming  their potential a little better. Crosses weren't inherently magical in  as much as they channeled the power of faith, so tweaking the target of  that power was about the best I could do here. Passing out everything to  the girls, I grinned at them all. "So, anyone have any other ideas?  These things should be enough to take out as many vampires as we find."

Barbie  looked extremely excited by the weapons. "I can even go in costume.  Killing things isn't ok with me, but vampires are dead anyway, I have no  problem taking out a monster." She spun the stake in her hand in the  same way I'd seen on a few episodes of Buffy, and I had to mentally  remind myself we were busy as my cock stiffened. Note to self, vampire  slayer roleplay with Barbie.

Amy  giggled at the enthusiasm. "Of course darling, we'd be glad to have you  along. You're so loyal and driven." She stepped up next to Barbie,  giving my redhead an affectionate hug.  "We're lucky to have such a  devoted and courageous retainer. I'm so glad we're friends Barbara!"

I  had to stifle a laugh at the way my redheads face turned almost the  same color as her hair at the comment. Cherry looked like she was trying  not to snicker too, but I think she was afraid Amy would pull her into a  group hug if she made a sound. Despite the sweetness of the moment, I  couldn't help but applaud my wife. She was much better at managing  people than expected.

She  didn't use the same overbearing style as I did, preferring to catch  flies with honey (unless those flies were an uppity greek bitch trying  to take what was ours I supposed), but she was able to cover for my  blind spots. "Alright." I said, cutting them off. "I think now that we  have our weapons our best bet is to move out. It's the middle of the day  so they'll be sleeping or at least weakened. Let's go fuck up some  vampires."