Chương 161: AF Chapter 160 – New Roads

"Not honest, comparing us to the Fall!" Mizaya piped up as we sprawled out around the Wagon later.

"They got to exit through Portals when they killed dungeon Bosses back then, didn't they?" she pointed out.

"Well, yeah. Making us hoof it all the way back up the Dungeon t' go through the respawns again? Why not let us walk out? We just would have Recalled away at the bottom, anyway." The Mick rolled an eye at me.

"Not that such a trick was going to work in there, lass?"

"Aye, it's proof against dimensional movement in there, probably a side-effect of the residual Wards from when he was trapped inside. So, we would have had to walk out regardless, and no convenient Portals at the bottom for us!"

"Realistic, if not convenient. After all, a Portal out is also a convenient way in for those who know what they are doing," Kris summed up dryly, not batting an eye.

"The next time we go in, you might want to drive some stairways down behind some cover. Hoofing it up twenty stories is also exhausting, but that ramp is just mean." We were sprawled around the Wagon, Kris' mobile floating home, now known, admired, and desired by a lot of others who wanted similar things. She put a lot of continuous Gear-magic effects into it, as well as spatial expansions for the inside.

I'd helped her quintuple the carrying capacity, and it could turn from basically a mostly-empty box to an apartment a-hover with a few pulled levers, as well as possessing slide-outs and fold-downs and rise-ups and extend-downs that could make it into a decent house or forward operating base if she bothered to park it somewhere for a while.

Mostly, she used it to haul stuff and people around, buying and selling stuff here and there, moving Scouts and well-paying travelers both around the Vesayans and across the channel to Dereth. It meant she was running around pretty much constantly here and there, and she had earned a fast and deadly reputation for the Wagon being able to suddenly disgorge an elite human Scout team out of nowhere. Her laugh and Quaver were very well known among the intelligent creatures of the southern lands now.

If I was with her, even the more savage of the intelligent creatures knew to leave us alone, as we cut them down, Burned them en vivus, and moved on, no muss, no fuss. If they didn't bug us, we didn't bug them. She easily hoofed it over a hundred miles a day, not at all put off by the sheer amount of running as she crisscrossed the landscape in pursuit of goals major and minor, charting and tracking and putting everything into the Markspace Map. Scouts had to know the lay of the lands they were covering.

That area was expanding every day Kris was out there, every day a Marked Scout walked into new terrain, and it was updated in real time. Today, she was back to help run the Dungeon that had consumed a lot of her time in vicious hacking combat. Nobody here had seen Matrix-style fighting styles, especially the Fire Dragon techniques, and her ability to shred through Bile Grievvers faster than even a paramount had been noticed a long time ago.

When the Mick started to chase her with that speed, using his own Blade that wasn't trailing Lost Light, that was noticed, too, and that was when the recruits had begun to come in. Key among them had been enthusiastic younger Royal Guards, their mindsets and devotion to their King running smack dab into the Mick's curse-ye-roach style of teaching and an Imperial Princess' towering presence and utter lack of willingness to put up with any shit. The new generation was now growing in power with impressive speed.

The Summons points of the Vesayans were seeing lots of daily traffic and more kills than ever, to the point where established circles of travel were in place as teams rotated between close points, getting in a lot of cardio while running from one Summons to the next. That wasn't the big reason why we'd run the Quiddity Seed tonight. Tonight, I flipped the switch to Sage Sorcerer/9, and a bunch of things were going to change when I did. My chosen Sorcerer Valence V Rune Engram was Harden.

It completed the Crafting Pentad of spells, a spell I basically used every single day, my key metric for a Sorcery. Everyone was waiting for the final spell, which would take the durability of their Gear to an unprecedented level. I also received a Feat, which would be Extra Spell Known, which was going to Arcane Fusion. Spend a Valence V, cast a Valence IV and I at the same time. It devoured Spell Slots, but it was a lot of firepower and multiple spells going out at once, the very essence of magic!

My Ring Domain adding Astral Ward, my Bloodline adding Contingency, my Arcane Healing Domain adding Raise Dead... they were all secondary to the real power, and that was the fact I had access to Valence V Spells. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Which meant I could upcast Exemplar Surge to the V Valence and start fetching spells off my inner spell library there. The first of those was going to be Sending. The other huge kicker?

Slotting my Divine Domain of Travel spell to its V, Teleport! The loss of the ability to Portal and Recall about Dereth had been the most crippling of losses to the Isparians who had dwelled here. They had eventually made an entire Portal Network, a building/Dungeon in dimensional space that had linked to over fifty different locations around the island.

The Fiun Outpost in the far northwest took less time to get to from Ithaenc Cathedral in the far southeast than it took to run from Mayoi to Hebian-to overland, or to even walk from one side of Mayoi to the other. Those Portals, and the Recall spells tying Item Magic wielders to specific callpoints and Portals, had united the populations of Isparians, lugians, Aun tumeroks, Gear Knights, and eventually the freed Empyreans and emancipated shades in the way no conquest or kingship ever could.

Trade had blossomed, knowledge could be rapidly exchanged, and there were no isolated communities unless they deliberately chose to be that way. Governing became easier, and there was no need for multiple armies to be dispatched about multiple holdings. Word could be sent in literally seconds if there were invaders, and reinforcements arrive from a central location to take up positions. As long as you held control of the incoming Portals and Callpoints, major garrisons didn't have to exist unless there was a Siege…

and a Siege was pointless unless you could close the relevant Portals or block incoming and outgoing Recalls. The Fall had both destroyed the existing Portals and sent almost all of the buildings in dimensional space crashing back into reality. Suddenly everyone had to hoof it between two points, not just when exploring in the wilderness, and they couldn't just Recall home for the day when they were done.

It had been a hard and brutal adaptation, going back to the old way of doing things, where being fleet of foot and long-running were great advantages, and the untiring nature of the undead meant they had relentless dominance in such things. My getting Teleport would unlock a LOT of doors.

Even the other Isparians practicing Wizardry and Sorcery were dependent on what I was unlocking, as they didn't have the Akashic connection to Matrix spellcasting that I did, and without my guidance would have Leveled with maddening slowness as they fumbled through the way forward. As far as we knew, the only being capable of outright Teleporting right now was Oswald the Green Hunter, a power he used to his great private advantage on whatever his goals were. Level V also meant access to Sending.

I would finally be able to Send a message to Princess Kristie's folks and let them know how she was doing… and I would be able to Send a Message to anyone from across the length and breadth of Dereth, if required, without needing a Scrying Pool, Rituals, and lots of mana to do the same, as was required now. With access to Valence V Slots, I could start gaining new Valence V spells every day for my Ringbook, ready to teach to the others.

Dozens of Casters were hanging on the fact, waiting for new Infusions and Spells that would help them change the world and reclaim our place in it, fighting back against those who held the advantage against us now. It would happen at midnight. I had moved my Renewal time to Mystic Renewal, midnight, the time of the Silver Queen, a time much more in accord with someone who was Sustained.

I sighed to myself, considering the massive numbers of Masteries I had taken the time and held off advancing to acquire as I stayed Deep and did not advance willy-nilly. I had stayed at Five for months just catching up to my Masteries, and then not advanced more than one Level every three days since then just to keep Masteries current and my Karma usage maxed. The Karmic Load from Cursing that soul-eating Entity back on Ispar was gone now, finally used up after three months of once-a-day updates.

I hadn't focused my Karma on any particular skill or Stat, staying largely even with all of them, knowing that they were, in effect, purchasing the Exemplar Template slowly but surely. Karmic gain on that side was steady. My students and peers were earning me Karma, Leadership was taken as a Feat, right there with Duty and Faith as a factor getting people to believe in me, follow me, and help change the world.

If there were a lot of people who wanted to be in at the middle of what was going on, and had to be content with staying on the outside as things dribbled out, well, it was a new day, a new generation, and the paramounts were not going to be dominating everything as they had for nearly two generations now.

Some of them hadn't liked that, of course, and there had been excitement to that end, wherein lessons we were supposed to learn failed miserably to teach us anything, and lessons that should have already been known were administered in return, usually to quite lethal effect. There were five more dead paramounts at our hands, but nobody missed them. The new generation was rising, and Princess Kristie and I were leading the wave!