[Be Gone] Ch 41 – A Burning Pit

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            The Iron Bear, Xiong Ochotai, turned to look down at the Burning Pit of King Gravity, as he had been informed it was to be called. It was still blazing, deep and glittering with purified sands. A road split and passed by it on each side, carved out of the fallen stone and rubble, each passageway a hundred feet wide and made to endure armies on the march.

            The battlement he was looking over was in an unusual style, but was made to the heights of both Bear and Horse, usable by both. Arrow slits, angled walls and tops, ridged footing to sluice away water and ice... little things put in place that reflected advanced design considerations and skill at working stone.

            These were no blocks of stone fit together, either. This was stone Shaped into place and form by magic, and THEN it was split into horizontal hexagonal columns, so as to be able to withstand impacts more easily.

            He looked back at the keep and barracks rising here on the northern side of the pass, the style once again unfamiliar, but lethally functional. Sloped roofs to shed water and ice and incoming fire, angles and curves designed to deflect siege weapons, multiple angles of coverage and fire, and walls set up like stars instead of squares, much like the keeps and defenses of the Tigers.

He still remembered his father’s disbelief when the Tigers had begun adding those additional walls to the Great Wall, like teeth jutting out from it, challenging the Shadowlands... and incidentally adding room for many, more archers on the walls to kill them with, more spears to attack them with, while the demons’ own frontage was no greater, and the climbers were more exposed to the archers on the opposing wall...

            He lifted his eyes, to where General Hiesetie was on his own matching wall across the valley a thousand yards away, the sharp ridge cut away and re-Shaped, as this one had been, to make another fortification for them.

            One human had done all this...

            One of his generals, Chukkin, trotted up to him with several lightly-armored attendants with him. “The preliminary survey is done, my Lord.”

            “And?” he asked, turning around.

            “The keep and the dungeons below can hold at least ten thousand soldiers, and supplies for at least a year, if need be. There is a functioning air circulation system, water supply, reservoir, and sewage system; multiple kitchens, barracks, stables, assembly halls, smithies, training halls, shrines, extra rooms for whatever purposes are required, and they go on and on.” Chukkin took a deep breath. “I did a preliminary examination of the rooms which seem to be intended for the commander of this keep. There is a complete set of plans for the keep there, done both in print to marvelous detail, and one of their... holograms, I believe is the word, displaying it all in three dimensions.” He glanced north. “The excess chambers extend more than a thousand paces in all directions, and there is a large tunnel connecting this place to its twin across the pass, with secondary tunnels for various purposes all over the place.”

            General Chukkin took a deep, grimly satisfied breath. “While there are definitely places where things can be improved, my daimyo, the hard work has all been done. We can literally move in and take over today with no trouble,” he stated confidently.

            The Iron Bear nodded slightly. “Make it so. This place will be the anchor of our return to our ancestral lands.”

            “I hear and obey, my lord!” General Chukkin bowed, clapping his gauntlet to his chest and turning around to start issuing the orders.

            The supply caravan behind the Bear army was quite long, but it was pouring into the keep at speed. The great covered tunnel leading up to this keep, with several stops in exceedingly well-protected areas for quick resupply along it, had been magically enchanted to seem half the length it was and like level ground, not a steeply rising passageway climbing up a thousand feet of stone. He himself had barely believed they were at the top when they’d come out into the faint sunlight after less than five minutes in the tunnel, and without a single switchback.

            The ease with which he could march an army in and out, or resupply it, was extreme. The tunnel itself was beneath a security tunnel that could drop block after block down to seal it, all the while plying arrows or oil against those below, a true Hell to take by force.

            Greeting them at the top had been a massive roller, and the embedded ruts along the walls had been suddenly explained.

            The roller was twenty feet high and made of solid stone, sitting off to the side and propped up by wedges of stone and its own weight. Remove them, and suddenly thousands of tons of stone would lurch into motion and roll down the restricted confines of the tunnel, absolutely flattening anything in the way.

            Master Aelryinth seemed to have a very ruthless and inventive personality, and he definitely knew how to work stone...

            Ochotai eyed the Symbol of a straight sword point down on a kite-shaped shield that was worked into so much of the artwork, displaying a purity and grace worthy of a master artisan. If he remembered correctly, it was the Symbol of one of the alien gods the humans worshipped, their God of Strategy, called Mithal or something...

            He looked up at the highest watchtower looming over the pass below, made in a rendition of the Earth Dragon so pure and true just seeing it seemed to make the earth tremble under his boots.

            It faced another such sculptured tower directly across the pass. He had recognized who was portrayed on both towers from literally miles away.

            Blessed by the Earth Dragon and an alien god. He felt an odd contentment at the situation, and he could hardly complain about it after being given a base this magnificent for nothing. How the human had done all this so quickly and thoroughly... the best architects in the Empire could not have even drawn up the plans for something like this in a month, yet the human had actually built TWO of the things!

            Not just a destroyer of demons, but a builder of buildings meant to last a thousand years. The Iron Bear could not help but appreciate and be impressed by the human after such a feat...

--------

            Four months in. Sorcerer/8 had finally ticked over.

            The single Helix method worked, sort of. The Double Helix method did not.

            I could stack up Theurgic levels and Racial bonus levels to equal my Primary Class, and then advance a Secondary Class to exceed my Primary in effective Caster Level. However, the cost was equal to the benefit I received, and an advance in Spellcasting was a huge part of a Level advance.

            So, for instance, stacking four Theurge Levels on Wizard/1, then two Human Racial Levels, then advancing Wizard/1 to Wizard/4, made me a faux Wizard/10 for Casting... and my Wizard/5 cost was commiserate with advancing to Wiz/11 in cost, NOT based on my Sorc/8.

            If there was a Level cap in effect, it was a nice way of jumping a ceiling, but in terms of Karmic Cost efficiency, there was no gain.

            Likewise, I couldn’t take three Theurgic Levels to get me to faux Sorc/11 without raising the cost of ALL my other Class Levels to that of an Eleven with it. Since I was sort of doing this to minimize Karmic Costs, that totally defeated the purpose of everything.

            It did mean that a chosen Secondary Class could stay quite even with my Primary Class for much longer than it had before, since both Human-Class spellcaster advances went to it, but I wasn’t going to get a really cheap faux Seventeen Caster Class out of it.

            The complex thing was my Matrix. Even though I had over thirty Theurgic Classes to improve, I only had to be slow about taking Class Levels that added to my Matrix. If they provided other benefits, even magical ones, they were basically easy to slap on. The adjustment in my Matrix as I added more spells, more Valences, more Caster Levels, and wove them all together was the big thing that was happening here.

            Reaching faux Wiz/8 also meant I could finally add the Second Star, which used my III and IV Valences. I could also add the Divine Star of spells from opposing Domains, the Natural Star of Seasons tied to Elementalism, and the Arcane Star, of spells from rival Bloodlines.

            +4 Spell Power in ONE Level was, well, it was a lot of juice.

            The mishmash hodgepodge of spontaneously-Cast Spells Known I had before was being totally revamped. All my constantly-used ‘common’ spells went into my Spells Known lists which, now that Sorcerer was my Primary Class, were going to be much more extensive and applicable than before. Theurgic Learning, Favored Class benefits, Extra Spells Known Masteries, Domain Spells for Cleric and Druids, carefully parsed spells for Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom-based Classes... all in addition to Spell Mastery basically providing the same benefits.

            In direct contrast, I only had ONE list of Prepared Valence Engrams, albeit those spells could be from any of my Prepared Class Lists. That was because the Spells and the Valences were one and the same, whereas for the Spontaneous Lists, they were separate items, and so I had multiple Classes of Spells Known, but only one supply of Valence Spell Slots to power all of them.

            Well, with the Theurgies, I could totally Cast my Prepared Spells with Spontaneous Valences, too, and vice versa, so my Prepared List was effectively an extension of my Spontaneous Lists, and vice versa.

            The Single Helix Method was a way to keep a Secondary Class closer to a Primary Class post-Ten. But in so doing, you had to pay the higher-Level costs when you Advanced the Class Levels, instead of the Theurgic or Racial Boosts.

            Well, now I knew. I’d also be able to eventually burn the Ninth Ring on my Prepared Casting Side, which was the reason Single Helix DID work. I could make Twenty-true in my Primary, and faux-Seventeen in my off-side, which basically took care of a lot of potential problems. Off-Primary Casting was basically Faux Casting, anyway...

            It was still a lot of work, all my thoughtstreams hard at work balancing Star Mage Theurgy with Master Archtheurgy. More Spell Power and Spell Potency were coming soon, with the new Archmage and Hierophant Class Levels...

            My Shugenja Levels swirled there as an outlier, built on a completely different paradigm that didn’t actually require a Matrix. Indeed, it seemed to be much more dependent on my Ki Pool, which was also pretty charged up in comparison to most folks. Since Shugenja Magic operated off a Stat and Skill basis instead of a Level basis, well, I wasn’t doing too bad.

            Primus was the Nexus of that, his Elemental Command functions making the conjunction of my Theurgic Levels and Shugenja Levels possible. Sure, sure, the locals whined about taking years to condition yourself and learn the essentials and blah blah blah.

            Magic. The Magic of Learning, people!

            If you could use magic to toss a Fireball and blow apart a mountaintop, I could use magic to learn stuff faster and easier. That was Karma, that was experience, that was Reality rewarding you for holding your head up and advancing the power of your mind, body, and soul so it paid attention to you.

            So there, neener-neener.

            Bearing a Crown of Fire seemed to have an effect, too. There was something to be said for massively powerful Elemental Spirits giving you a big thumbs-up for what you’d done for them in the past.

            As a result, putting up those keeps for the korobokru was as easy as if I’d been at a full Fifteen, all the local Earth Spirits happy to help after I’d vivified the whole neighborhood. I did it in downtime between purging more square miles of Taint, one of my thoughtstreams putting those Architect Skill Ranks and Visual File to use.

            My ‘day job’, as it were, was chaotically monotonous. This Shadowlands area had all sorts of horrors, monstrosities, mutants, mutates, and twisted things to throw at me, cursed areas of landscapes birthing ever-more abominations and colossal monsters for me to put down until I Burned away the sources of them.

            Well, I left the bigger ones for Korbald and his Fellowship, who were very good at popping up to dispose of them after I cleared off the chaff and set the unholy transmogrifications to the Land on vivic fire.

            I think I pissed off the big demons. Here I was, wading through their hundreds and thousands of minions, bringing down their defenses, setting everything on unwhite fire, and then I up and left while a whole team of high-Level muscle popped in, fully informed of what they were facing and Buffed up to take them out without having to do the crap shuffle through all the chaff and traps and scenic killing grounds.

            Sucked to be the oni bosses, I guess!

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