[Be Gone] Ch 42 – Routine Mass Slaughter

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            The Shadowlands didn’t seem to realize the situation they were in, but that was fine. We took advantage of it.

            When you are faced with whizbang tactics, or continuous strike and fades, the smart thing to do is gather behind defenses, fortify up, and spring traps on the attackers. You also want to strike at the base of your attackers if you can, forcing them to retreat and defend themselves.

            Now, some of the Shadowlands forces were doing that, but the fact was they were Chaotic, Evil, violently destructive, and very disorganized. Demons roved about the whole landscape, randomly setting up shop here and there, or going this way and that to wherever they could find a fight.

            The goblins were happy to hide away in their caverns and tunnels if not forced out by more powerful things. The many mutates and beasts also had lairs, but needed to go out to hunt or defend their territory, and anyways were irascible and wanted to fight.

            The most organized forces were the ogres and the undead, especially the latter. The ogres and trolls weren’t the brightest, however, and didn’t have the best defenses. The undead were smart, and no longer feeling as immortal as they once had, but they had to make those defenses, and had a clear lack of spellcasting to help them out.

            Certain demons were smarter and could order the others around, sure, but oni didn’t like to sit behind walls. They were demons, meant to be out attacking, not patiently waiting through a siege!

            And if they did come out to attack, that was just fine. I was cleaning up the landscape, as were more and more korobokru, and of course, the Tigers.

            The Horse were pursuing the Duty of Fire, dragging Vivic Walls of Fire across the landscape, purifying dozens of square miles a day once the armies moving across it wiped out any lingering dangers. The Tainted soil might burn for hours, but it did eventually burn out, and the gleaming white would fade at Renewal as the first hints of green returned.

            Electrified by the results, the Horse were happy to sacrifice the goldweight for Permanencies to empower more and more of those Walls. The fact that a Firewall Sweep was a devastating tactic to use against an unprepared Tainted army didn’t escape them, either, but the fact the Walls wouldn’t damage Good or Neutral beings also meant they’d be of limited usefulness in mass conflicts against most mortals.

            Clearing Taint off the land, be it stationary or moving around, was a different matter.

            The ongoing news that the Jade Empire was basically tearing its own throat apart behind us didn’t deter me. The remnants of the Spider and the Scorpions were doing everything they could to set the Houses at one another’s throats, and the resultant bloody conflicts were raging right up into the Imperial Palace.

            The Obsidian Abyss was also more active than usual, but some Vivic stuff had made it to the Snakes for copious amounts of goldweight, and now they were beginning the grim process of harvesting oni and forcing back the gap in the Land, bit by bit.

            It was a bad supply situation, but the Great Dragons had made sure there was a bumper crop to feed everyone, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Tiger Inquisitors had also raged through the Horse and Bear lands, cleaning out hundreds of desperate Shadowed Clanners and their cultists as they did so in a rather unprecedented purge.

            With the new spells, Feats, and Masteries I’d brought in, the Tigers could scan more people faster, and at a greater range. Cleaning out a major city in one day wasn’t outside a team’s new capabilities, and if villages had their people lined up for scanning, they could be cleaned up in no time.

            The whole process was so swift that the alarms going out didn’t actually reach most of the cultists and hidden Tainted until after the Inquisitors actually arrived and commenced their purges, so they didn’t have time to conceal themselves or flee.

            The Eblis, also called the Sword Crane Clan, actually ponied up the gold to have a sweep done by the Tigers. The daimyo of the Clan did not tell anyone of what was about to happen before the Inquisition Team bearing his Writ and Seal popped up on the door of his own Clan Stronghold, and the abrupt executions began.

            The main province of the Eblis alone had over a thousand cultists in it, shaking the Lord’s belief in his own people to the marrow. They included one of his own trusted advisors, and several of his regimental commanders, messengers, and envoys, not to mention dozens of the lower classes serving the samurai, let alone the merchants and the farmers working the fields.

            A Hound lord, Shishi Matuchai, came raiding down from the north, eager to take advantage of some of this chaos, and unfortunately for him, ran right into the Inquisition team, which decided to do the House of the Lion a freebie. As the shocked and outraged Hounds looked on, they cut down the lordling’s primary lieutenant, and nineteen various members of the troop and supply train for being followers of Jigoku.

            The totally dispirited Hound lordling turned his men around and headed back north without ever actually facing any Cranes in combat, contemplating suicide for the shame of being taken in by a cultist as his friend, lieutenant, and advisor.

            The internal conflicts in the lands of the Eblis died away quickly... although, perhaps unsurprisingly, rounds of denouncements and protests came from the Herons and the Luan about what had been done, couched in very strong terms. Several Luan lords even threatened to march on the Eblis!

---

            I shook my head as Korbald and his people relayed all these fun tidbits to me while I was sitting there in half-Meditation, waiting for Highmoon and the Salute to Sylune. Feature was resting as well, his silvered eyes mostly-closed, but he was anything but asleep.

            Just resting, getting ready to get back to the grind.

            Goblins were annoying to dig out and get rid of, that was the truth. They dug deep into the ground, their tunnels went all over the place, they ran away and hid rather than die, and they dug even more holes when they ran away.

            But, if you’ve the power to move the stone around and Earth Spirits to help, you could gradually narrow down their options, herd them into tighter spaces as you closed the tunnels down, and then simply collapse the whole underground maze in on itself, set it ablaze, and be done with it.

            It was slow, boring, not very rewarding, tedious, dangerous, and it had to be done.

            Back home, it was something for a small army... or we’d set up combinations of Rock to Mud or floods to destroy the tunnels and drown them. The tunnels did not have to remain intact, after all.

            Using them as a test for lower-Level newbies was an idea that many had floated, up until they were required to foot the bill for the Raise Deads if any gobs snuck past the guards and slit the throats of a farmhouse or three. Suddenly, the gobs were worth killing if it would cost the lazy money.

            Goblins didn’t have a lot of Taint individually. When there were hundreds of thousands of them, all engaging in activities which furthered Taint, it was a different story. This whole thing was about Burning Taint away, after all.

            Of course, bring in a few Called Earth Elementals, bestow Vivic Weapon on their natural attacks so they could Burn their way through the Tainted Earth and set the whole thing on Vivic fire, and it didn’t matter how deep the goblins dug, they were still going to die... and their whole tunnel system was slowly and inexorably going to Burn, too.

            As it picked up speed, mistfire raged through the areas of greatest goblin populations and thus the greatest Taint. It followed the goblins steadily as they fled, often killing one another in their panic and frenzy to escape.

            They would start coming this way, herded this way by the ravening appetite of the Land, and the implacable white mistfire following them hungrily.

            Shadows were being vomited out of the many cracks and caves of the broken landscape in front of me. Miles behind them, unwhite flames were clinging to the landscape and crawling over it hungrily, shepherded by thoughtful Earth and Fire Elementals helping it to feast, protected from the Taint by vivic hunger as they gleefully watched it all Burn.

            “They are here.” The waves of Taint approaching were impossible to miss, even in the darkness.

            Feature opened his eyes and lifted his head with me atop it, for a moment flaring his hood wide. The black blade on gray was somehow hugely distinct against the gold and silver of his scales, and the swarms of goblins gathering as all the escape routes came this way paused despite themselves when they saw it.

            I’d taken some time to make sure all the roads, paths, and trails all led right down here.

            Shards flickered up around me in circles of glittering colored spearheads of force.

            However many came is how many would die...

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            It took nearly five months after I arrived here to hit Ten. Oddly enough, the remainder of my Caster Levels to Fifteen would be completed at the end of six months, because the many, many five-Level Theurgic Classes I used were finally maxed out.

            There were some Caster-based Advanced Classes, of course, like the new Archmage and Hierophant Classes Einz/Traveler had mentioned.

            I reflected that I was missing out on a great exploratory opportunity. The Tigers themselves hadn’t done a whole lot more than send some scouts and explorers out to circle the Shadowlands and get an idea of the other cultures that also bordered it, sharing some information with them along the way. Most of the outer area was actually desert or cold mountains where little lived in the way of humanoids, and because of that, the denizens of Jigoku had no interest in expanding into the new lands and countries to terrorize, contenting themselves with the Jade Empire they seemed to be linked to.

            Meh. The Tigers and korobokru had happily given me all their knowledge of the other surrounding lands, including the humanoid and serpentine races that occupied them and kept a wary distance from the warlike elves. The korobokru would trade with other races, but the elves generally considered it beneath themselves to do so.

            Exploration of this world could be left to the Tigers. They were Tens. When they got it into their heads to do some serious exploring, they’d get this world mapped out in no time, especially with a Markspace Map.

            As for the future of humanity on this world, I was sure that if the Aruan Pantheon made it here, that wouldn’t be an issue. It should also decrease the metaphysical distance between here and Terra-Luna.

            Well, if not, then in a few generations, there might not be any pure-blooded humans being born here at all. I considered that unlikely, considering how many kids the human women here were having each, but it was possible.

            Korbald would decide how to address the problem, in the end. It was his world here, not mine. Going off-world to bring back some humans was certainly possible.

            Ten Sorcerer meant Awakening a Second Bloodline, too, and it would be time for me to make something to get out of here when that happened. I just had a few areas to address first...

            I had basically been moving from one chopped-up Tainted zone to the next, first touching on what lived there, getting an idea of the lay of the land, and then proceeding to wipe out as much Tainted shit as I could manage.

            If the areas had bosses, I made a Seal Focus, and brought Korbald and his team in to deal with them. I kept my involvement down to mass purification, and shrinking the whole area of the Shadowlands down.

            Pits of dark goo? Ignited. Fumaroles spewing Taint? Became unwhite plumes of mistfire. Corrosive landscapes of slime and filthy water, diseased air, and rotting poison? Torched with vivus and Elementals, and their own versions of wildfires chewed wildly at the nutritious Land-fertilizer in the air, cleaning everything up in a pleasant little stew for the Land.

            Miles passed behind me. Death tolls mounted on Mortus Dius as I brought their Last Day. The borders of the Shadowlands continued to retreat, the purging of the Firewall Sweeps continued to advance, and the lands claimed by the Taint shrank in and began to pressure and grind against one another.

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