[Be Gone] Ch 36 – Dark and Burning Roads

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            The Watunzusji Fortress was the edifice that the Panda daimyo had decided I could remove and convert.

            It rose outside the old ogre kingdom’s capital, a cyclopean ruin of ancient stone buildings, long toppled by the Taint-fed violence that had brought down their people and culture, and a civilization that the old records of the korobokru claimed was glorious, enlightened, and highly spiritual in ancient times.

            Now they were hulking brutes who grew bigger, stronger, and more savage as Sin infested them, reveling in violence and gluttony.

            The trolls who had been their wise seers and prophets were no better, or even worse, since some of their magical talents still existed among their females, and perhaps they knew what they had once been.

            The Fortress was the center of the Tainted population of former Imperials, fallen to Dark Enlightenment and gone into the Shadowlands to better serve Wanho the Damned, the sole God of Jigoku and supposedly the architect of all this.

            I had severe doubts a mere demigod could arrange all of this, but whatever.

            Watunzusji lay at the end of a long trail known as the Road of Fallen Jade. Many battles had been fought along this trail, and great ones before the fortress and city at the end of it. Any intelligent, as opposed to just random, moves of the Shadowlands tended to start somewhere in the fallen city, or up in the fortress always being rebuilt above it.

            The trail was littered with the black plugs of corrupted jade, discarded when they could no longer protect the soldiers carrying them. Over the centuries, they had added up to a lot of discarded jade, now ebon smears on the ground that further concentrated the Taint there.

            The black jades burned like magnesium in vivic fire: bright and pure, with heavy mist billowing out of them and staining the ground white.

            I began trailing that vivic fire at the beginning of the trail, down near Ironfang Fortress, the great Fortress that stood before Howling Bear Pass and denied the creatures of the Shadowlands entry into the pristine lands of the Jade Empire beyond.

            A threat at the Pass was one of the places that actually drew reactions from the Houses beyond, as the elves had no wish for such unclean things to come prancing about in their lands. Cranes, Snakes, and even Lions would come boiling out of the lands of the Empire to defend those walls when the threat was too great for the Bear to deal with alone.

            It always started with insults about the Bear being too weak to do their duty to the Empire, and it generally ended with screams and a lot of dead elves who learned something about weakness. Fighting one another wasn’t the same as fighting oni who weren’t afraid to die.

            The Road of Fallen Jade was a popular place for patrols from each side to meet and butcher one another in ambushes, counter-ambushes, or full-on skirmishes and assaults. The Fallen Clans, calling themselves the Scorpion and the Spider, had the advantage in being able to stay out here for any length of time, but that didn’t make their meetings any less vicious.

            It also generated more undead for the House of Bone, such as it was. But the undead of these lands didn’t have the same ambitions as demons or Tainted, although a powerful enough demon lord or Priest of Wanho might be able to command them, regardless.

            As far as my ambitions, I’d made them pretty clear. Total war was not something even these once-mortals were truly familiar with, or were really expecting from anything living.

            I guess they’d never really dealt with Heavenbound, and the hunger of vivus.

            Or an even more important hunger: Karma and Glory Awards! Although the Tigers had likely been teaching them all about those things for some time...

            I conferred with their scouts and experienced patrols, making a map of sorts with all the ambush points and surprises along it, what I could expect to see and possibly face on the way.

            Then I went out and saw it all personally.

            Thus, they all knew I was coming. It was fine. Feature shared my Mask of Clarity, and x100 visual range puts eagles to shame. I saw them, too, even if I stayed along the ground so I could trail fire behind me across the Tainted landscape.

            It attracted a lot of violent attention to me. I was sure word was flying across the bleak and deadly lands around me, and forces were whelming to take a shot at me.

            Their expressions at my arrogance in thinking that such a thing happening was exactly what I wanted to occur would have been interesting to see, if they but knew.

            But, I wasn’t in a hurry. I was perfectly happy to hit and clear off anything converging on the road to fight me, and if that meant larger encounters further on, well, that was how things worked out.

            My Sorcerer Caster Level had hit Five and was now my Primary Class. I had access to III’s, which meant my Dawnstopped Stone Shaping was back on the table if I so desired. I had also constructed the First Star for my Star Wizardry, and was gratified when my first Star Caster Level bonus manifested.

            It was only +1, but those things had to start somewhere!

            A Sudden Widened Stone Shape with the free Widen II from rep count Efficiencies was x32 in area.

            My effective Caster Level of 51 turned that into almost two thousand cubic feet of earth and stone manipulation. It was one of the hallmark spells and skills I had, and I used it basically every day at home, for anything from making new roads to sculptures somewhere, putting up fence posts and rails, walls, buildings, sewer pipes, rain gutters, sidewalks... and Pyramids.

            I’d made a lot of Pyramids with that magic.

            Oddly enough, I had NOT made many real long-term strongholds of any kind. I’d helped clear some out of the way, but I’d never really put up anything you’d call a castle, nor even a real church, and I certainly hadn’t torn them down.

            Well, there was going to be a first time for everything.

            For now, the burning Road was being reshaped into nice sets of stone tiles, forming a real road, smoothing out the ground, making it easily navigable... and able to easily support carts, among other things.

            More to the point, it was another big vivic nail in the side of the dimensional sliding, placing more and more stress on it as the landscape would once again be unable to move around it, and it would drive the oni crazy to see it all there.

            That was fine. It was a glittery white road cutting through the Ugh that was the Tainted soil, feeding on it, burning, spreading with the hunger of the Land, with occasional big white splotches where I met natives objecting to what I was doing here.

            They got to Feed the Land, too. Oni, goblins, ogres, trolls, Tainted mortals, infected Spirits, undead; it didn’t matter. They became white smears on the land as I advanced along the Road, heading for the ancient capital of the ogres and wondering what reaction I’d stir up there.

---------

            I was patient, I was methodical, I was showy, I was persistent, and I was ruthless.

            I was thus a huge freaking distraction, naturally enough.

            Korbald had his own Mark now, empowered by and linked to me. He had put all his Skill Ranks from his last Level-up into Tattoo Artist, a Skill he had left to others before, just so he could now start handing out Marks and Empowering them, something he was spending literally hours a day doing right now, investing Masteries, getting a set of Tatting Tools made, buying Skill Feats for, and so on.

            That mediocre son of his, who had been trying for years to Level and slowly gone Deep such as he could, had started popping a Level a day when suddenly his Strength hit 14 and he could be the warrior he had always wanted to be. He remembered me every day in his prayers...

            I wasn’t the only one spreading the vivus around for the Land, by a long shot. Oh, no, no, no. The Tigers were out, and they were going apeshit on the Shadowlands, such that the Horse and Bear looking on, and the occasional Lions, Cranes, Pangolins, and Snakes slumming in shows of support, could only watch in disbelief at their absolute zeal for combat.

            There’s fearless in battle, there’s really enjoying combat, and then there’s Power Gamers grinding for more Karma!

            The Tigers had been stuck so long, and now they needed Karma to advance. The elders were all PoT gamers, and they had been here so long that their human children were all grown, while their hybrid children had their other parents to look after them.

            Vivic fire blooming on Weapons, Baneskulls burning against the Taint, new Jade Tokens ringing with even more anathema, and more spells, both Buffs and Downtime, were being Cast than ever before. The Tigers and their Obelisks were burning deep into the Shadowlands, and they were killing everything as they advanced.

            Mile by mile, sometimes acre by acre, they were advancing, burning the Taint as they came. Firewall Sweeps with vivic Kickers swept great arcs across the land, leeching the Sin out of the soil in miles-long swathes. Great white arcs followed behind lines of riders crossing lands cleared of threats as they gripped great long poles from which the Walls extended, bringing the Duty of Fire to return to ash, to reinvigorate and renew once more.

            Aspects of the lands were still flowing by where the vivus had not locked things up, the horizon slowly changing by the day as the vortex spun the benighted lands slowly. But there was mounting friction now as great geographical spikes were driven into the side of that vortex, disrupting the smooth cycling and forcing dimensional compressions and distortions to compensate for the suddenly very strong Veil there that did not want to bend and get shoved back and out of the way anymore.

            The Tigers were showing what had to be done. Vivic fire was literally going to have to walk across the entire landscape, an area of millions of square miles, and purge it free of the Taint.

            There was that, or it would be infecting and despoiling the landscape for potentially forever.

            The River Corpus was now running much clearer, although there were still feeder flows that were corrupt and streaming into it. Again, they were something else that had to be cleansed.

            Camping next to one of the Sacred Walls of Fire soon became the norm, instead of trying to find cover. The Tainted rain would burn away before it could reach those below, but the flames would harm nothing that wasn’t of Sin. Bright and pure, the soldiers camped within reach of the flames, able to ignore wind and rain and sit out under the sky comfortably as they escorted the Cleansing Flames across the landscape.

            Arc by arc, mile by ridden mile, slowly and steadily, the Land closed in as Tigers raged across the landscape, Obelisks anchored the gains, and great Walls of multi-hued Fire swept everything clean.

            I was doing more than any one of them, but I certainly wasn’t outperforming ALL of them.

            The Shadowlands had seen desperate Tigers, vengeful Tigers, scornful Tigers, Deep Tigers... but they had never seen truly HUNGRY Tigers.

            But now the denizens there were seeing such things, and they didn’t seem to be particularly enjoying it.

            I had shown Mother Bea how to make Sustaining Rings. More to the point, how to make Oathrings, and beyond that, how to make nine Rings at a time with the help of other Tigers.

            Sustained and basically tireless Deep Tens were absolute nightmares for anything to have to deal with. Delivering Naming Karma to Oathrings that could eventually gain Elemental Command, among other effects, and deliver to the Tigers the power of a Shugenja, was just another power play.

            If I just evaporated now, the Tigers could and would totally grind down the Shadowlands without me. I was merely in a bit of a hurry and accelerating the whole process. I just needed my Caster Levels back to do what needed to be done.

            Making Five and getting day-long Shaping Stone back was the hammer for the anvil they were making to the north of me.

            I had plans to execute, and miles to go before I rested. This fortress ahead of me was just another brick in the foundation of those plans.

            No more. No less.

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