Chương 156: AF Chapter 155 – Gimme Some Quid

The Mick and the chosen Scouts for this mission looked a lot different than they had six months ago, and it wasn't just the new sleek blue-black adamantine Armor. Their professional job for the crown was still scouting, and that meant stealth, which meant light armor. But Dungeon-going in this place was largely not about stealth. Summons didn't react to noise the same way living creatures did, but fighting would draw them in fast.

They also weren't subject to the morale and panic of surprise attacks, never running away or trying to save their own lives. A different strategy and something to take account of when planning a run. Months of time had passed. Plenty of time for Naming Karma to do its slow and steady work… and for a Forsaken Smith to work the kind of wonders that Powered needing precious materials to make their stuff couldn't truly do. Everybody knew who The Hag was now, just like everyone knew who The Mick was now. And The Magos.

They knew who I was, too. And the Roaches, they knew them now, too. There was a lot of rivalry and competition among the younger generation. With sources of Karma restricted by availability, time spent killing was time growing, and certainly the enemies on Dereth weren't going to be slowing down in their own fighting. The growth of the Royal Scouts had been basically meteoric compared to the rise of all their peers. One Level a day, one point to any Stat or Skill was a metric known to almost everyone.

Those Levels, when taken in the Matrix system, had allowed a level of specialization and versatility that the Isparian system simply didn't allow… or stacked on top of them to greater effect than spending points in the Isparian System. I was still the only devoted Caster in this bunch, but they were ALL Artificers to one level or another, which was just crazy useful compared to their former circumstances and restrictions on the gear they could use, especially customizing it to a specific opponent.

There were only three opponents in this Dungeon: virindi constructs, floating armored suits with only the crudest intelligence; Bile Grievvers, among the most powerful of the powerful spider-aliens from the olthoi homeworld, and down at the bottom, the Black Breath and some other powerful shades, including a derived remnant of the Archshade himself, Bael'Zhaeron. Only teams of paramounts dared the bottom and the potential death there, but we were going to turn that on its head today…

although we hadn't told anyone else that. A Clear and a Total Clear were very different things here. Chewing through the grievvers was almost a daily ritual for a lot of the higher-Level people here seeking their daily dose of Karma in a controlled environment. It took a lot of very bad luck for the paramounts to die here, and one was almost always trailing the younger teams that took the place on, Healing them in emergencies and ordering them out if they overextended.

The Mick was our paramount, and he definitely didn't need a nursemaid from another paramount interested in how we were going to approach the problem. Certainly a team of melee-dominants was interesting, as it was known that melees didn't have the damage output to really dominate the place… but junior Casters didn't have the punch to harm the grievvers, so it was what it was.

"I be hearin' the whining from all the way over here, lass," the Mick called out to me, arms crossed over his breastplate. His beard was trimmed very short after Princess Kris had used it to throw him into a wall face first several times, still salt and pepper enough to give him a rogue-like elder look that attracted a lot of women's eyes. He also had a harder, sharper air about him, something that made other paramounts get out of his way and wonder what they were missing.

"Obviously I am a sedentary person, a secular scholar, and I am unfit for active field duty as a Warcaster, Lord Mick." There were low laughs from the others, including Kris. They all knew that all the teaching I was doing was something I tolerated because it had to be done, and that I only had fun when I was Warcasting to beat the band.

What nobody knew who wasn't Marked was that I had a second personality who basically took care of all that very boring scholarly stuff on my behalf, and was basically always in contact with other scholars worth being Marked. Mira was exulting in the intellectual work.

All the most important work on integrating Matrix and Isparian Magic, advancing Artificing, and discovering the purest, higher forms of the known Runework, Cleaving, and Slaying effects, knowledge that was indeed being disseminated among all those people who had Item Magic, was all mainly happening in the Markspace, Visual Files shifting back and forth furiously as the best remaining experts of magic put their heads together over matters.

The collapse of the four Schools of Isparian Magic was also underway, bowing to the power and breadth of Arcane magic. Lifelong scholars of magic were completely revising how they approached magic as the two types of magic were being integrated into something new and greater. The roots of it were Pool Theurgy. The Power of Ten system didn't use a Mana Pool, so being able to have one certainly meant the magic here was stronger than back where we were from in some regards.

Valences were alternate methods of Casting here, not the best means, and there was some very spirited discussions on long-term viability going on in the back of my head, with Mira riding herd on everything. The sheer amount of mana that could be stored in Valences was a huge selling point, however!

"Formal Fellowship," I spoke up, Crown glowing softly and extended out. Everyone automatically reached out to grasp it, and the Karmic bond settled in. Full Karmic sharing and enhancement for the sharing, nine people getting 30% each, instead of 11. 1% or whatever personal performance would be. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Formal Fellowships really drove the teamwork mechanic.

You didn't have to kill as long as you did something that helped the group make more Karma: Debuffing, Healing, trap location and disarming, lockpicking, scouting… as long as it led to more Karma, it worked for a Fellowship. Rogar, Selena, Hundig, Milee, Mizaya, and Kopf were the ones joining the Mick, Kris, and me for this trip, meeting the nine-person limit for this run.

Kopf, the big lugian, had elected to stay with the Mick, with his king's permission, after seeing some of the things we were doing, and was now bearing an ogre-sized Moon Axe and a heavy Shield as tall as a human. The Feats Kris had beat into him had turned him into a true Heavy Melee and tank, the eight-foot mountain of muscle finding much to enjoy of the 'combat magic' of Feats and Masteries that had turned him into something far, far more dangerous than any melee combatant the paramounts of Dereth were aware of.

He'd been back to Dereth and put them to use in real fighting, too. The Mick didn't stop his duties even as he Leveled in the Matrix system, after all. -Call it, Warlord, - the Mick /said simply. Kris was plenty ready to go to Dereth, and in fact had become the primary mode of doing so for the Scouts, her and the Invisible Wagon capable of carrying whole teams forth and back as required.

Sometimes there was an attempt by the minions of The Deep to intercept, but most of them had learned the lesson that to get in front of the Wagon was to die. The Wagon only got deadlier as we had time to work on it, and the skill of those aboard it increased. -Slashing. Let's get a Mass Slash Vuln on the virindi Constructs and wipe them fast, get the Skull, and move on to the next, - she /said predictably, just as she had a score of times before. My role here was to conserve Mana unless it was needed.

The Mass Vuln was equivalent to cutting the Health of the Virindi almost in half. While a Chained Shardray could likely do the same kind of job, the damage it would do would have taken multiple spells to actually kill most of the stuff here. I was helping them practice rapid removal of enemies, while I Countered incoming magic. Letting them handle offense was a safer play in this circumstance. Kopf was in front, his Energized Shield Scutum leading the way.

It was the single biggest piece of adamantine Gear currently made, and it had proven every bit as valuable as expected once made Impervious. Energized meant it wasn't ignored by Isparian AoE's and Ray-type attacks that normally ignored armor, meaning he was a moving wall for every single thing behind him. A Shield that finally acted as a shield against magic! It was a fantastically unwelcome development for a lot of enemy Casters who found him a rock that they simply couldn't crack.

The Mick and Kris followed him, Selena and Hundig next, me at Six, and Rogar, Mizaya, and Milee backed me up.

The air of the tunnel down was cool and dank, the substance of the tunnel becoming something attuned more and more to Shadow and Blood magic, the unclean corruption that had long ago seized Tou-Tou and never given it up. The top level was a bunch of hallways with shade guards. While powerful, they weren't really there to stop anyone, more of a test to determine if anyone was tough enough to keep going. If you couldn't take them out, what were you trying to do going to the rest of the Dungeon? -Left.

Magos, start Vulning, - Kris /said, and Kopf veered instantly to the first tunnel as I snapped up a Disk, Rogar tapped it to take control and keep me moving while I stepped up on it in a crouch. Mizaya and Milee stepped up onto their own Disks, both of them pulling back racking their Autobows, leg muscles working as they took the force of the action pulling back the strings, and thick razorheads cycled up into place.

Rogar and Selena raised their Bows, and broadheads flickered themselves into existence on their bowstrings. Everyone's pace increased as Kopf led the way. My Detect Evil at IV was both going off on the latent malice in all this corrupted ground around me and looking past it to the animated incarnations of it posted in these side corridors. The shades heard Kopf coming, as half-ton lugians further girt in heavy armor are not quiet in the slightest.

Happily, the Summons didn't retain knowledge from one life to the next, and so when a literal moving wall was racing towards him, the yellow light of the Slashing Vulnerability went off around him, and his instinctive Pyreal Fire Bolt went off, the shade still watched it smash harmlessly off the Fire Baned Shield in amazement, the fires playing wildly on the floor and walls, which writhed and burned under the blazing magic.

Th e n the shade was smashed right off his feet, his lighter-than-meat mass working against him this time, crushed into the wall with brutal force and down to the ground. Bunita whipped across his unarmored chest with lethal force, blazing with Banefire and Holy energies the Summons had likely never felt… and a swirl of final ending from vivus that ate and tore at it internally as the Mick moved on.

Kris added a cut across the throat as she also moved past, Radiant energy from the motes of Lost Light tearing at its essence. The two One Strikes were probably enough to kill it, but Milee and Mizaya finished it with a glowing quarrel each into its head as we moved past, towards the next guard. My Vuln led the way, but this time Kopf had to turn right, so he smashed the shade left, and Hundig and Selena released, bolts punching deep into his chest.

Bunita cut low, Quaver sliced across the throat, and Rogar stabbed into the shade's head with his Glaive Accent as he pulled me past it, the two Autobowers punctuating it all with precise side-by-side shots into its eyes as it hung there.