I felt bad that I hadn’t contributed to the Broom Closet Pyramid in some time, but there were a bunch of Archmages taking regular turns at it, every one of them able to stop and turn and watch the whole Closet expand when they completed a tier of Blocks and it floated up to join the main Pyramid.
The Closet Pyramid was up over a hundred tiers now, so that meant over ten thousand Blocks to make a new tier. Two thousand feet tall, power radiated out of it as it pushed back the Aether and formed a new world, with the endless labor of Men and Beasts helping accommodate the expansion each and every time.
I stayed on overwatch on the Mexico City Deathzone as the Undead Hunters continued their grinding crusade.
The media contributed to the fascination with what was going on, watching the slow and inexorable advance of territory taken, re-taken, and slowly pushed forward in spite of the numbers of the undead constantly flooding out every night to contest their territory with the mere humans here.
We had just passed the point where the undead might have caused some havoc by trying to push the Wards and overwhelm the main army. Trying to do that now would create severe weakness in the forces facing us. We’d rage forward, annihilating a path toward the center, instead of just leveling the perimeter and expanding the frontage of their efforts by utterly demolishing every structure still standing in the Death Zone.
Any undead trying to put their buildings back up just made themselves great targets for bombardment. The many, many tunnels were repeatedly collapsed and filled in with vivified stone that was extremely hard for the undead to remove, and so restricted their movements and their ability to deploy rapidly in numbers.
The Ahaws were both contributing numbers despite everything taking place in the evening, as they were both needed to hold us off.
They were forcing entire armies to Go Down into the stone at dawn instead of returning them to the Pyramids or cover, just so they could erupt from the ground at dusk and be in place to prevent us from getting any further. Even if we slaughtered them readily and easily while they struggled up from below through the vivisized ground, already weakened and disorganized, it gave the Ahaws time to march out new legions at urgent speed to confront us.
Driver Sam had taken the step into Sagedom with the sponsorship of all three of Michigan’s Great Beasts, and taken the Chaos Element to honor Princess Karegnondi, much as Cameron Dow had. With his Earth, Ice, Void, and Argent Elements added in, he was Named the Horizon Walking Sage.
He was also in charge of the Demolition Teams below, helping bulldoze down monument after shrine after obelisk, cracking open the ground and flashing the undead within. His presence during the day meant the Mick and Red could retire without any worries, all of them ignoring the fact that I could show up as needed, as my job was to do absolutely nothing unless the Ahaws made a move, and so during the day I was also usually gone.
Since he couldn’t join me in the Netherworld, Reynard proudly announced he would fill in for me during the day, and he helped deal with any undead surprises during the day shift. Little Turk rode him around enthusiastically, and together they smashed everything they could, showing off how good Little Turk was getting with his magic.
Most of my time during Overwatch was spent just applying Soul Jewels and Tempering more of my own Stars to Tier 7, raising my foundation higher, even while all my Syzygy advances were also going on. There were also magic items to Infuse, the various Elemental Command Rings big and popular items to make... while, being one of the few people who could Infuse Legendary-class items, I mostly spent time on those while other people Infused or Invested for me, saving my time.
If I wanted to stay busy, there were always things to do.
When the dawn came, I Gated down to my Nether Pyramid and got it moving to its next destination. At two miles an hour, that took ten hours to get beyond crossover limits of the Storm that would be coming, but happily I had lots of things to work on during that time period.
It also basically meant I could Storm once every two days at best, which was plenty fine for me. The billions and trillions of castaway undead here weren’t going anywhere at speed.
All five of my thoughtstream trios were Applying Truepoint Mana now, but given it was three minutes apiece to treat one Star, my forward progress was still incredibly slow... except for my Channeling Node, which was moving along at three rounds per point, instead of three minutes!
One round to start the formation, sacrifice 40 Health and blow 96k Mana. One round to gather 360 Mana, one round to refine and purify it, one round to sledgehammer it from all sides and Compress it with all that Mana, one round to similarly Compress a point of 40x Mana, one round to mix and Apply them together, one round to Compress them to make a point of 400xTruemana and reslot it in the False Star.
Three thoughtstreams constantly at work. If I was on overwatch, I was doing just the first three functions and storing the 360xManapoints in my Truepoint Orbital, then drawing them back out when down in the Netherworld instead of wasting time on three-minute cycles to finish them up in two-round cycles, effectively allowing me to focus on my Channeling Nodes 24/7.
The weakest Soul Crystals I’d harvested shattered in my hands as their essence was used to Compress the Mana down. The undead who accidentally entered the Warded Zone around the moving Pyramid I shot down, and instead of harvesting Crystals off them, simply Burned them away for their vivisized Mana.
The Health I sacrificed was dealt with by my Fast Healing in ten seconds. It didn’t make it any less painful when it happened, but I dealt with it so fast and routinely that the ripping, nerve-jangling sensation faded to background pins and needles as I just focused past it.
I would be finishing up with my Channeling Truepoint Mana in a couple days, and then, then I’d start working on the Highpoint Mana.
Health and 960k Mana per Highpoint. I’d have to use a Fastcast Heal XII to recover that much pure Health that fast, and it was going to be plenty painful taking that much Health damage. I’d be pulsing my work, because there was no way I could continue doing any work with that much ripping apart inside me all in one go.
It would be most efficient if I just assigned a thoughtstream per stage of the Highpoint Mana, slowing down the lesser energies as I really racked up my Highpoint Mana counts. It would increase my Syzygy the fastest, and if it wasn’t all that balanced, I just had to make sure all the lesser points were still progressing so that everything stayed in resonance and harmony.
Good enough. Could I sustain that sort of effort on multiple Truepoint Mana? After all, I could get the spell off multiple times a round with layered Fastcasts. It would be more than my Fast Healing could deal with, unless I sat in an inferno of Phoenix flame or something, but the additional Healing required would be incidental. Perhaps sitting on an Invisible Wall of Fire?
==========
Soul Essence (outside Pool): 14/80 (Truepoint Mana, 1 Star/3 minutes or 1 Node/5 days)
---66x40 +14x400 Nodes = 8240 x 2401 Mana/Node = 19,784,240
Arcane Pool
Channeling: 40/46 (Truepoint Mana, 2 Nodes/day)
---6x40 + 40x400 Nodes = 16,240 x 2401 Mana/Node = 38,992,240
Alchemy Bombs: 16/68 (Truepoint, 1/5 days)
---52x40 +16x400 Nodes = 8280 x 2401 Mana/Node = 19,784,240
Ki: 8/152 (1/5 days)
---144 x40 +8 x400 Nodes = 8960 x 2401 Mana/Node = 19,880,280
Spell Pool: 1/878 (1/5 days)
---876 x40 +1x400 Nodes = 35,440 x 2401 Mana/Node = 85,091,440
---------Total Syzygy Mana: 183,532,440 Mana: 79 Truemana Nodes, 1144 Lowmana Nodes
===========
Stars: 49 x Tier 8 (56 Mana); 12,314 x Tier 7 (49 Mana); 4493 x Tier 6 (42 Mana)
Total Mana: 794,836
Mana Regen (Mana/7200): Base 110.4/second
===========
I’d had to put a lot of extra time into the Spell Pool Nodes to keep them close to the others, as the size of the Spell Pool and being at a lower Tier had started to cause grave imbalances in my Syzygy. Accelerating the Stars to once a cycle by devoting more thoughtstreams had enabled me to catch up to the others, if somewhat slowing down overall Mana growth.
Despite my desires, I wouldn’t be able to go for Realmpoint Mana immediately afterwards, as my Syzygy wouldn’t stabilize with a three Tier gap.
That was fine. The key was having Highpoint Mana, as that would allow me to use High Imperial Magic. Each Node was exactly one Imperial Spell of the applicable level.
I would finish off my Channeling Nodes at Truepoint, and begin Highpoint on them, with all its costs. When I completed it, I would cycle through to the next Energy type, using the extra thoughtstreams to keep everything nice and speedy.
uses of High Imperial Magic was nothing. I could burn through it in under two minutes if I was really going all out. But, it was still much better than having NO High Imperial Magic.
I probably had a weird expression on my face as I contemplated the fact that not only was I the first Human to ever Cast Imperial Magic, in the space of just a couple months I was going to jump two entire tiers and be able to cast High Imperial Magic.
Even expecting it was going to happen, I was going to shock the Hell out of all the Beast Emperors. After all, it took every single one of them hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of years to do the same thing.
Two months, I had made the jump? And I hadn’t even really finished off my Truepoint Mana to do it?!
Humans were so cheaty!
I could only agree with that assessment, at the same time making damn sure nobody knew the fact unless I told them personally with my Astral Ward at XXI up ALL the bloody time!
I couldn’t even use High Imperial Spells down in the Netherworld, as that much energy was bound to attract attention, reverberating past the edges of my Ward. Low Imperial boosts were plenty good enough with my Caster level to do what needed to be done.
Sooner or later, I was going to be discovered. It would be quite wise to do something to prepare for that fact, too. Something that dovetailed with all the other stuff we had to do.
Mmm, yes, I most definitely could plan ahead and make all this massacring of the Damned amount to something more substantial. Now how to go about it all?...