Chương 562: BECMI Chapter 561 – Coming Together is such Sweet Sorrow

"In counterpoint, Heaven was amused to note that your darker half normally saved her attentions for the more hypocritical of Aspirants to Immortality, thwarting more idiots attempting to Ascend than any other Immortal, and she never bothered to sponsor one of her own. At least one of you had a greater conscience, if neither bearing any sympathy for common mortals." The Split Immortal grimaced at me, his face twisting, unable to refute me.

"I can, I can divide myself again!" he swore, but his face paled when I lifted the Seal again, and he shuddered to see the Name upon it.

"And I can force you back together. Don't even bother. Heaven is watching. If you're going to be an Immortal, take all the blame with the deeds, and if you are weak, then bloody well work on being better.

"Now get out of here." I flicked the Seal away, his face dropping as he realized I was going to keep it… but also twisting as he realized the command as what it was. He didn't have their combined power, the excess having bled off into the Pyramid, but he did have the experience. With a final hard look at me, he flashed into his incorporeal state and away like lightning. He'd be outside the Birch Domain within seconds, and able to return to his Immortal home(s)…

although what those actually were to him now was going to be very up in the air. Certainly he could just build some Avatar bodies and take up the places of his split selves, except now they'd be the exact same person. I doubted he could give up the chance to play both sides, cunning thief and overconfident diplomat that he was. But Heaven was watching, so it would be interesting to see what he did. And maybe he'd read the bloody scriptures and not try to get things from me next time!

"They now know that a High Cryptomancer's arts can affect an Immortal in ways they never dreamed, and you were totally cool with showing them that." Sama just rolled her eyes, but she wasn't upbraiding me for it as we tinked wine glasses down in the Thisbean Inn.

"According to Tek, you just unnerved a lot of them even more than they were before. Uh, and a bunch of the scriptures of the Gallivants have gone missing from various places. It's like having the secrets of their enemies right out there and not being secrets at all finally occurred to them." I was… fantastically unconcerned about dealing with small groups of Immortals, even senior ones. They just…

didn't realize how dangerous I was, and since I wasn't going to be sparring with them if I didn't have to, they were still treating me like a young Immortal at best, wondering where my power was coming from. They were not taking it too seriously because I wasn't an Immortal. They could SEE I wasn't an Immortal. They couldn't see much else, including the fact that I was an Eternal, but that was on them, not me. Since I wasn't an Immortal, it didn't matter how powerful a mortal I was, they could deal with me.

Just like a draeden could, right?...

"It's fine. There's a lot they don't know and they are just starting to realize it. When they finally understand how many Eternals are around and how vulnerable they just might be… and, I am fairly certain, how outnumbered they are, well, that will be the key point." Sama could only smile in expectation for that. She didn't have the advantage of so much time leverage, and so Eternals she had helped train were now far more powerful than she was. It was all good. She still had a whole planet to look after.

"Do you think there'll be war?" she had to ask me.

"Entropics have poor impulse control, and the idea of Good souls actually going to a reward in the afterlife has got them all hot and bothered. They have to make at least one attempt at trying to invade Heaven, just to weed out the idiots among them who think that because the four Spheres don't come down and wipe them means that whoever the gods are, they just aren't allowed to do so, either.

"It's going to be a rude awakening for them, just as it was on the Other Shore. Dame Adama and Molniya killed off about half of the Entropics there, in the end, and a dozen Immortals of other Spheres who dealt with them frequently. They might be older and wiser here, but that just means they are more afraid of what the Gods represent… and the Gods are stronger now than they were over there."

Six Greater Gods was a lot of muscle, and even Iatro, Catleya, Jian, and Arbor were Intermediate Gods, totally capable of messing up High Hierarchs, or a draeden rampaging by. If I kind of wondered what they had encountered after they stepped through the Arch of Eternity, in the end it didn't matter. Wiping out demiplanes and home realms of Entropics and Burning them for Creation's sake was obviously a whole lotta Karma, and they were plenty happy to continue the fight in this timeline.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. But as their power grew, their ability to attract worthy souls to their rewards also grew, which created a locus of Alignment-based power, which expanded their own power continuously, allowing them to expand their reach in a virtuous cycle. That was happening here, and the whole process was what was really cementing their power now.

"So, how's that spell you hit the draeden with work, anyway? I admit to being quite impressed you can take down something the size of a small mountain range like that," Sama asked, bending in eagerly.

"Well, there's two ways to go about spellcasting at that level. The first way is normal spellcasting done large: ungodly expensive and valuable rare material components; great Rituals undertaken with multiple spellcasters, sacrificing hours or days of time, along with significant magical energies, to do what is needed to do, all the while blathering some incredibly complex magical formula out to take all that energy and send it to the proper target.

"That's totally possible, and the 'right' way to do spells." I made the quotes for her.

"Also, pretty damn stupid, what with it being so inflexible, hard to prepare for, and easy to mess up and interfere with.

"What you want is to be able to do most of the work yourself, and not have to worry about all the accoutrements that go with it. The best way to do that is sacrifice a lot of Valences to the spell, particularly high-order ones, to take on the loads other people are using Rituals and comps for.

"But since sacrificing Valences is a quick way to run out of power, you have to be original about how you are doing that.

"That particular spell is a base Fifteen, with a required Caster level of 100 to get it off. It's heavily modified from an Exalted Spell used by servants of Heaven, and then Meta'd to a Twenty Slot to be as effective as it was.

"You Cast the spell by using Time in a way mortals can't. Essentially, I Cast the spell fifteen times prior to it actually being usable, taking the profound weight of it and dispersing it across a longer stretch of time, using the Valences up, and aiming the spell ahead at the present.

"In the present, I Cast the spell at my desired target. However, I wasn't done after that. I had to Cast the spell fifteen more times AFTER I already shot it off, and basically send that energy back to the past, aligning with the spell then. Only when I Cast it fifteen more times was the weight of the spell sufficiently dispersed, and that Twenty Slot opened up again." Sama blinked at me.

"So… you actually hit the draeden with the equivalent of thirty-one identical spells?" Her face scrunched up as she tried to picture the formulae for something like that.

"Like, wow. But it was super effective, I have to admit! Are all the Fifteens like that?"

"No," I shook my head as a fresh batch of Eternals wandered in, coming off some Ooze-popping on other planes, judging by the acid burns on their clothing and skin.

"And you could turn around and get rid of all that Casting to work the spell normally, given you have a hundred archmages supporting you and about a million gold worth of incredibly rare and valuable material components. I believe the Star Dragon would not be happy if you claimed an eye from each of his three heads, even if he can just grow them back, however."

"I imagine that could upset him and a whole lot of dragons," she admitted, waving at the bunch of Eternals, who waved back at us while Master Ialo glided up to take their orders with a smile.

"So, the number of past and future Castings is highly variable, and could be manipulated if you had other resources on hand.

"Or you can't figure out the Spellcraft and have to do it the simpler way. Fifth-dimensional Casting across the fourth dimension has eluded even the Immortals, or at the very least I've found no evidence of them ever being able to wield it. It's a stretch for most of them just to time travel, whereas I can still use the Portal through time if so needed, even if the range of years is limited.

"Sure, they could use time-accelerated planes to try and mimic it, but I tried that with the Nested Worlds and… well, let's just say that's probably not a good idea. Tiny little planar imbalances become cavernous yawning chasms when they hit Eternal Valences."

"I've not tried cracking being able to hold X's or higher in my Matrix, so I wouldn't know," Sama admitted candidly.

"Too many other things to spend my Karma on, and it sounds like it wouldn't be all that useful… unless there's some Eternal way to refill Null Matrices fast?" she asked me directly.

"Sif stumbled onto a way to regenerate Ability Damage faster, which is basically the same thing to you. Soul Magic, Ki, upgraded Matrix and Vajra dancing around… talk to her about it. Spread it through the Nulls to help out the Eternal Casters. Really helped considering the number of powerful Outsiders and Aberrants constantly being brought in to face us," I informed her, giving Master Ialo a glance which shortly brought him over to our table with a fresh bottle of wine.

"Anything you would like with this? A couple snickerdoodles?" he asked cheerfully.

"Just came out of the oven."

"Those!" Sama promptly pointed in agreement, nodding. His cookies were as wonderful as the rest of his fare, of course. Four thousand years was a long time to be practicing cooking, and he had expanded his Domain to the Inn on Prime Nown, of course, taking over for my Sims and the others who used it as a staging area now, full-time Avatars at work in both Inns now… and the Portal was an easy way to jump between both wrolds, too.

It turned out that if you tossed a Teleport spell at it, it basically became a Gate to the other concurrent Portal, and you could stroll right through without fail. I was a good cook, but the Master Shef and the Postal Guy were already expanding his Domains through on this side, just like Captain Emeril was as Doro and Spock… and Himmelstern for his kin who had remained behind here. The food and service had only gotten better!

"What's the skinny on reactions of the other Immortals now, Ialo?" I asked him directly. Naturally, none of the four Immortals on Other Nown were mentioned in the Scriptures here as yet…