The Power of Ten

Call Lightning is the best single targetable damage over time spell there is, unless you count someone sitting in a Wall of Fire or something. Perhaps I should instead say multi-shot Area of Effect direct damage spell.

It has a massive range of Long, which I promptly doubled. Its damage is an extremely nice d8/Caster Level, capping at base 20d8. You get a number of bolts equal to your Caster Level, falling once every ten minutes.

The Casting Time is a full minute, but Rapid Ritual got that down to six seconds. Ten minutes between shots sounds like a lot, sure... but what about if you kept Casting them?

And Casting, and Casting...

Ten such spells means a big crashing bolt of doom coming down once per minute. A hundred of them means one every six seconds, flattening everything within 30’ of the impact point...

Just one more Valence IV to refill courtesy of dead Daoist ki, fit in when I had a chance. It made it really easy to tell where we were, if the flying woman spitting out a kaleidoscope of colors in all directions wasn’t enough of a sign.

In the Kill Them All parlance of experienced grinders, we called this Building Momentum.

Still, even the Buffed-up lads and ladies didn’t let themselves wander out of my support range. All of them had received cumulative injuries that would have killed them twice over within the first half hour, had happy new battlescars to tote around, and really, really wanted to live through all of this while getting into some extremely violent and lethal fights with these alien bastards.

The city was burning, but now it was also raining cold shit, and cracks of lightning and thunder were coming down as regular as drumbeats. Totem Beasts of chi and Qi were crashing into one another, flying Daoists were falling out of the sky when Sama or Briggs got close to them, and we were a moving circle of death.

The Warlocks were doing a lot of clean-up work on junior Daoists and those who had just started Dantians, coldly merciless and unfortunately necessary work. Most of those had changed loyalty from their own species and energetically joined the attack against us. Many were mobbed and killed, sometimes by their own families.

There were a lot of Daoists, and all types and manners of attacks, and if you were into the aesthetics of profound combat, there were so many Forms, Techniques, Styles, and Disciplines being unleashed here, it would have been a feast for any martial enthusiast. Certainly the DW’s and DHA’s on our side were getting the fighting experience of their lives seeing all this shit and having to constantly change their own attack styles to deal with different foes.

Happily, the rain coming down really annoyed the Daoists despite themselves, reducing the usefulness of things like bugs, poison, eye Techniques, and advanced movement Techniques, while not hampering our side at all. Yes, the water and ice Cultivators loved it, but they still had to deal with the lack of visibility... and such people were my ideal Cultivators for Death from Far, Far Above.

Windwise/Shvaughn was, as normal, a literally unholy terror. She was Dim-Dooring around like a ghost, coming out of the wind like a Wraith for +13d6 of stacked damage on that Sword of hers, all nice and helped out by a Cultivator Baneskull. Her howling pack of Amazons was also introducing many Cultivators to the wonders of the physical perfection they were so insistent on chasing and how the gods perceived such things, and the wonders of Amazons fighting in Cadence who knew what they were doing and finally had the power to do so.

Another Ray attack slid past me from the distance as yet another Cultivator tried to snipe me. I gave him ten Shards back, and the Chains blew through everything behind him wildly, if the other thirteen didn’t do the same to those close by.

There was a Sect headquarters a bunch of Daoists in orange and white were retreating to, protected by a Formation that ostensibly would ward us outside until we pounded it down.

The Spellflare at Forty blew it and its Nodes apart rather violently, sending the Daoist Sect members powering it flying in all directions screaming. Shards hunted for the weakest, while a force of ten Dragon Warriors raged into them in corkscrews of fire, stone-shattering charges, and a literal charging wall of spears.

Daoists screamed and died; survivors screamed louder and evoked some great fiery tiger Totem of their Qi Style just before the Bear, Elephant, and Rhino stylists led by Master Go Man crashed into and began to harvest them, whereupon they started screaming yet again.

There was a mob of people over there, clawing at some Cultivators trying to rip them off and get away. I sent a Ray of Greater Magical Fang through them, and suddenly all their attacks were at +V. Shining fists and feet crashed down onto the Daoists, and with an exultant roar, the crowd took them down.

The only ones who could keep up with Sama and Briggs afoot were basically Wind stylists. They got to witness Cleave Trains being used by two masters of the Technique who had the fixed damage, AoO uses, and Masteries to turn a charge and a kill into a bloody rampage of mangled bodies getting shredded in explosive gore.

Seriously, it was like watching serpentine explosions winding through the press of the hapless Daoists and their profound fireworks, snuffing the Qi Techniques in passing, and then bodies coming apart with extreme violence to the Singing Weapons that were utterly terrorizing the pale bastards.

-------

“There is a time to endure, it has passed.

Rise, rise, and let them tremble, tremble, tremble...

You’ve felt their fear, ate their scorn,

For that moment of light, for victory’s horn.

Unfair Heavens? Challenge the gods? Defy Fate?

Hollow lies, empty scorn, proud contempt, bitter hate!

Let their words live! Rise, rise, rise!

Wrath lifting to the heart of the skies!

Bring it down!

Tremble, ohhh oh ohhh, tremble, tremble, tremble...

We come!”

Briggs wasn’t Singing (bless all the gods), but his Hammer was beating along to it, the pulse a heartbeat that pounded in the veins like a drum. He bulldozed a path, and gleeful Dragon Warriors high on a feeling of invincibility like nothing they had ever experienced before piled in after him. Boosted magical speed meant they could just barely keep up with his speed afoot, and their Weapons moved like rivers of death, every executed attack raging with gold-black Banefires, and the hungry fires of vivus, swathes of unwhite everywhere as it fed on the greasy Qi in the air.

Sama blew through a bunch of older men tossing walls of palm and fist strikes her way, looking quite magnificent in their ornate robes and accoutrements. Their sense of style wasn’t helped anything when she chewed through them as if they were made of jello instead of reinforced bone and Qi-reinforced bodies after a volley of Shards softened them up to get them into crit and two-hit kill range for her, and that lightning bolt thundering down with all sorts of Consecrated goodness didn’t help their formation much, either.

Burning blood and bodies soon splattered against the columns and pillars of this place, where an unhealthy red-blue Vortex in the air was spewing out fresh stinking Qi at a steady pace.

Sama lifted Tremble and was about to bring it down when Traveler /sent, -Hold up, Sama. Stack the burning dead under it, I’m gonna reverse the function of that sucker. Be there in a minute.- Sama was operating on the outer edge of Traveler’s support range, after all.

A bunch of Sect disciples charged at her, Shards came streaking in from way off thataway, over rooftops, down streets, coming in at a right angle and juking sideways suddenly to hit the group from behind.

Holy golden fires lit off with multi-colored flames and force, and the Chains blew out in all directions. A hundred or so Daoists blew apart under the assault of too goddamn much magic for anyone sane to want to deal with.

Sama smiled. So good to have a viable Powered Caster on their side who knew what they were doing...

She eyed the Heavens-Up Display, looked towards a temple nearby, and as chasing DHA’s of Fang Anna’s Archer team ran up after her, she took off for the building and the unclean things hiding within, not even stopping.

Sighing, the Archers flowed after her with unnaturally smooth and stable paces, drawing and shooting the many targets of opportunity in every direction being painted right onto their eyeballs. Flaming arrows trailing sparkles of moonlight whispered out in every direction, One Shots that could not be dodged by fiat, and which were Boosted by all sorts of fun stuff.

Two Thunderbolts crashed down into a defensive line drawing up ahead of them, sending bodies flying in heavenly wrath. Sama drove into the thickest remaining part of the line, and everything within ten feet of her suddenly came apart as she ripped through them.

Arrowstorms of chi pounded down on the Daoists still remaining as she exited the back of their formation, nailing them to the ground before they could raise Qi shields to take the hits. Snapshot arrows were suddenly protruding from the skulls of those that survived the hits, and the Auspicious Moon archers raced after her, swearing at her speed and the fact that these Daoists were really having a hard time even slowing her down.

The example she and Briggs were setting for the Forsaken was not being missed at all, however.

The Spellflare came in from a thousand feet away, a corkscrewing jet and silver helix of barely constrained polyspectral wild magic. The Formation about the Temple blew out, as did all four of its delicate towers, and whatever Wards were on its great doors instead ripped it all apart as they became liquid purple bubbles and a herd of spectral flippered pigs racing in all directions from within it.

Smiling ferally, Sama charged into the hellstorm of Qi techniques and clouds of knives being hurled at her, her Null taking the first and Evasion sliding her aside from the other. She did not slow down as her first Sharding went out in return and cut down one of the throwers, who was a bit shocked he couldn’t dodge the One Strike in time, and even more shocked when it killed him instantly.

Weapons sang out, mostly the long and slender jiang dueling swords. A couple spear and saber users were among the men and women charging out to meet her, but that only made things fun.

“Tremble, She COMES!” she swore in their Feather Tongue corruption of ancient Mandarin, and saw the alarm in their eyes at the force in her words as they came together.

There were sixteen different openings in the combat formation they were using, mostly because blocking for one another just got their Weapons Sundered and the original target hacked anyways. She was a walking no-dimensional-shit, no-flying-crap harbinger of doom.

Many dreams of challenging Heaven were put to rest soon thereafter. Their temple to the philosophies of Dao, erected in defiance and mockery of the gods, was soon blazing merrily thereafter, the flames tinged in white...

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They were the biggest Sect in the city, now gathered up behind their leader, the elder called Jade Dragon. This was an older-looking fellow with those overlong eyebrows and a mandarin beard, extended fingernails, and hair ornament, wearing an oversized hat that the Chinese who saw it identified as a mockery of the dragon crown of an emperor.

The area around the walls of his Sect’s palace had a very secure Formation in place, the strength of it enough to defy a couple Thunderbolts from above... although the crashing boom of the impact made the Daoists nearby flinch and stare at the clouds that were writhing with golden and silver lights above them. Even the falling rain looked like arrows of punishment descending from above, dancing and splashing over the ground in puddles of seemingly molten metal. It looked very, very much like Heaven was angry with them, and far more dangerous than a mere lightning tribulation...

Only water, it was only water...

They watched as Sect after Sect fell, schools crashed and burned, and Cultivators fled in their direction. The strong were allowed to enter, the weak were turned away ruthlessly. They could only dash themselves against the Formation and die to the roaring Qi-dragons that erupted out to deal with them, or flee and die to the remorseless forces sweeping in from every direction... or the wrath of Heaven pounding from above, crashing and thundering down so relentlessly.

Hundreds of Powered had died under the hands of the Daoist called Jade Dragon. Once he had been a kung fu master who had devoted his life to his art, only to find that when the Shroud came, and the Powered arose from among the people with their impossible, superhuman gifts, he had been passed by, and received nothing.

Nothing!

He could only watch as undisciplined fools, brutes, sneering egotistical bastards, haughty idiots, and bumbling dolts received the power, and with it the privileges and benefits that should have been his.

That was, until he found the secrets in the old Taoist manuscripts, that true power, the rightful inheritance of the mortal races, and not some arbitrary strength awarded by the uncaring Heavens, resided in the meridians. He had only to take the Power from the undeserving and use it to grow...