[Be Gone] Ch 31 – Spiritual Influences

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            Of course, that incredible showing generated all the buzz anyone could hope for.

            The invading army hadn’t even made it across the river, which was now flowing as clean and pure in front of Little Kettle Fortress as if it had never been Tainted at all. Icy chunks burning white with mistfire were floating downstream, spreading sanctity as they did.

            There was green all over the far side of the river where creatures of darkness had died.

            So, naturally enough, everyone and their mother wanted to see me, and I was basically nowhere to be found.

            Forming all those Formations had been a great thing to dump my Death Curse into, and it was basically dissipated now. ‘Retreating into the mountains’ was simply a wise thing to do at that point.

            Which is not what I was doing, of course, because I was a gamer, and as my Aelryinth template could settle down and reintegrate with me, I had an Int score of 50ish, with multiple thoughtstreams. I could totally multi-task while doing my rebuild, I didn’t have to sit around staring at my navel or anything.

            There was a huge Karma farm Right There. I didn’t have to spend time with friends, family, ruler’s duties, or even Infusing things... although Korbald made sure I had the goldweight to do some work for him, and I was polite enough that I wasn’t going to turn him down. Sustaining Rings didn’t take that long to make, after all, and were so automatic I didn’t even have to think about them. I was also Writing out spells as soon as I got my Valence I’s back, adding to the Great Book and their spell libraries every day.

            No, I wasn’t in seclusion. I was out there killing stuff and feeding the Land, putting my money where my mouth was. If the Tigers weren’t exactly reporting where I was at, that was because I was roaming around quite a bit, and the military forces of the Great Wall were undertaking a great revision of means and purpose now that vivic fire was here.

            Not only was it possible now to fight the oni and win, since they would die if slain, it was possible to reclaim the Land and purify it by killing them!

            The amount of fighting intent in the korobokru Houses and Clans SOARED. The only stop gap was the supply of Vivic Weapons and spells to spread the unwhite fire.

            The Houses of the Bear and Horse had a lot of smiths, and they had a lot of money in some ways.

            More importantly, they had plenty of enemies to fight, and Named Weapons would do the job.

            Weapons forged from nothing special, but Invested by sacrificing gold, gems, jade, and valuable items began to spread slowly, limited by the number of smiths, the required Quality Level, and the wealth thereof.

            Initially, it was simple knives, spears, pokers, or Eternal Torches holding the vivic flame, meant to finish enemies and get rid of the dead. They were used to set corpses alight, one by one, and ensure the dead stayed that way. But as the days passed and turned into weeks, true Weapons meant to be wielded in battle began to appear, including Bows and Arrows.

            As long as the enemy was burning, it didn’t matter how they died; vivus took them and they wouldn’t come back. Scepters, Wands, and Staves with the Enchantment spread among the spellcasters, adding the unwhite to their attacking magic, and spread the white lands further.

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            “Master Aelyinth-sama! Master Aelyinth-sama!”

            I turned on the golden-hued elf addressing me.

            His shiny gold-trimmed green outfit seemed considerably worse for wear, probably as a result of the hard traveling he’d been doing over the past couple of weeks. Imperial Heralds had been trying to meet with me, along with those of other clans, all of them very, very eager to find the newcomer who could wreak such changes in the eternal conflict on the border. The Tigers had been happy to send them running after me wherever I went... except I always moved much faster than they did, so they never caught up, although I definitely had been there...

            This one had finally gotten smart and stayed in one place, maybe helping pick off some goblins or something to pay for his meals, and eventually I’d come back down to this place.

            The Oni no Kabuto the size of a small hill roasting in front of me did shake the gold-skinned elf a bit, as did the fact I was actually standing on the head of a dragon, who turned to look at him with neutral-annoyed glowing slitted silver eyes.

            The Tigers standing about would have been happy to chop him down, throw him on the mistfire, and swear on their lives that he had died in honorable combat with a demon of Jigoku. But I waved them off, and the raised Glaives let him pass after a moment’s pause that clearly indicated his colors and status weren’t why they were doing so.

            Still, he knew all the protocols, and he stuck to them precisely, as the pride of his status ran deep through him.

            He bowed deeply to me, indicating my higher status. “I am Huang Nochita of the Imperial Heralds. I bear an invitation for you from His August Personage, the Jade Emperor of the Eternal Empire. Please accept this invitation!”

            He untied the scroll at his side in a jade case, and offered it to me with both hands.

            He was very non-plussed when the case itself floated off his hands and returned to his side, tying itself back in place.

            “Huang Nochita-san, is it in your capacity to serve as a messenger in turn?” I replied calmly, not refusing the scroll, as the three repetitions rule would basically force me to accept it eventually. Just taking it into my hand would constitute acceptance for such a thing.

            It was basically a summons, from their point of view.

            “Y-yes, Aelyinth-sama,” he replied, totally stunned at the smoothness of my denial.

            “I am not going to write anything down. I will leave it to your sense of honor and propriety on how you wish to convey my words.

            “I am a Monarch who rules over more than ten million souls, I am not a subject of your Emperor. Daimyo Korbald is an old associate of mine.

            “I am not in the territory of your Empire, so I am not intruding upon your Emperor’s domain.

            “I have no intentions of staying here, playing games of power, involving myself in your internal politics, or wasting time on such games. I have my own land, nation, and world to return to, far from here, and I have no aspirations, care, desire, or will to take, claim, invade, or otherwise acquire that which belongs to your Empire.

            “The entirety of my focus here is to do the things that will send me home. Taking however much time to visit a potentially hostile governing official in a small country on a foreign world is not going to send me home, and more than likely would get me involved in political games I do not wish to be involved in.

            “The entirety of my time here I intend to spend cracking open your little dimensional invasion problem, drowning it in vivic fire, and then be about heading home as I make use of its fall to send myself on my way.

            “That’s it. That’s all.

            “I will not be meeting with any Clans or Houses that are not directly involved in feeding these Tainted creatures to the Land as snacks for Her. I am willing to work with them solely for the benefit of killing more of these creatures and furthering my path of getting out of here and off this world. If all goes well, I really won’t have to set foot on your territory at all, and I certainly have no intentions of claiming any of it.

            “Is any portion of my desires and standings on various delicate issues of territory, ambitions, and whatnot unclear? Because I simply do not care about any of them.

            “I seek to go home. That is all.”

            The Herald looked both grim and confused. “Surely you would seek some form of recognition for your feats, Master Aelryinth?” the herald asked haltingly.

            “I have the recognition of the Land upon which you stand, the Spirits that swirl all about, and the knowledge that Heaven itself approves of what I am doing. Your Empire does not have enough wealth to reward me for the value of what I am doing. If it did, it would have accomplished the same thing long ago.”

            The herald grit his teeth at the observation and connotations. Of course, he didn’t like his empire being called a small nation and his emperor a minor ruler, but what was there to be done in front of me? I was not a subject of said emperor.

            “And the Pit of Obsidian Screams?” he asked directly.

            That was in the House of Snakes territory. Some convoluted politics, deals with Tainted clans and powers, and apparently a demigod or something dying had created a gaping hole to Jigoku, out of which free Karma-bearing entities graciously emerged from time to time to let people know what true Evil was, not that they took it to heart.

            “What of it?” I returned calmly.

            “Are you... willing to close the Pit?” the herald queried.

            “That would involve entering your Empire’s territory, with all the political implications thereof. I believe that if I can bring down this Tainted area you call the Shadowlands, the other forces also currently active at this task should be able to deal with a minor planar rupture.”

            His lips silently repeated ‘minor planar rupture’. “I see and hear your words, Master Aelryinth. You do not wish to encroach on the territory of the Empire, you seek no awards nor recognition from it, and your foremost desire in your actions is to use the destruction of these Shadowlands to allow you to return home,” he repeated, only a little stiffly.

            I was utterly sure that would be interpreted by certain parties in all the worst ways, but I just smiled agreeably. “That is the gist of it, yes,” I replied. “It seems I should make written declarations of my positions and leave them with the Tigers. I will do so in the future, so as to spare messengers the problems of finding me to hear the same thing.”

            Feature lifted me higher into the air. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, word just came in of a Wurm no Traak about fifteen miles thataway, and the Horse Clanners riding urgently away from it sort of would like to live to see tomorrow.”

            Feature turned and swirled in the air, around and away, and took off like an arrow, leaving the imperial herald staring after me. The Tigers just glanced after me, cocked their heads as they received their own silent orders via the Allegiance link, and headed off for their own fights.

            Something big was looming at the heart of the Shadowlands in response to what we’d done, and everything was in agitation, moving over the landscape, raiding, gathering in throngs and roving somewhat aimlessly about, threatening without actually passing the River Corpus and the waters that were running clearer and brighter as more sunken magical Walls burned away in its depths.

            The toll being taken of the creatures of the Shadowlands was rising accordingly, as they weren’t united, and so were easier prey for the coordinated forces moving forth to face them and bring them down.

            Unfortunately, the enemies at work were not all from without...

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            The Clans of the Horse had begun to move with a great number of their armies, sweeping down from the mountains of the north in unprecedented force. It was not unreasonable to say that they had not gathered in such numbers for at least a generation, and in truth, in terms of percentages, they were committing more to this fight than they had on behalf of the Empire, ever.

            That was only to be expected. The Shadowlands were their ancestral lands too, places they had once called their own and rode free upon, not some plains foisted off on them by the Empire, who did not care for the highlands... and which had made them the default guardians against incursions from the rival species and nomadic beings from the north and west.

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