Chương 554: BECMI Chapter 553 – A Last Glimpse of Twilight...

Edge…

"The Other Shore was an epic, legendary playground for burgeoning Eternals. It is no longer. It possesses possibly the highest-level average population among populated worlds that is possible as a result of three thousand years of war, and those people will need challenges and a target.

"If we don't give them a target to face, they are going to go looking for trouble on their own. We can occupy them for a few years with downtime, raising families, rebuilding a world for peacetime instead of wartime… but the martial culture over there is bone deep.

"The call to liberate thousands of worlds from the undead? They will flock to it, and make no mistake," I stated firmly to reassure Sama, Briggs, and Tek.

"The Nested Worlds will do no less, but they are smaller in size and scope, offset by their temporal acceleration, I believe," Tek said enthusiastically, only vaguely aware there was a great foe out there ready to fight.

"I trust they've been built up at least as well over there as mine have?" he inquired earnestly.

"Many times more, actually, given thousands of years more time to develop them. When the Other Shore merges in, so will the Nested Worlds, because of their role as the Stairway to Heaven," I told him.

"You've been following the directions of the gods in developing the realms, however, so inclusion should be swift and smooth." Briggs was contemplating in silence for a moment, but then his pale violet eyes sparkled.

"Nown is a world that just Fell to Good, didn't it?" he asked me. It was Aelryinth who interjected first.

"Very good. And most importantly, it did so successfully. Usually, such a triumph means a resetting of the scales… but that is what they just overcame." Sama sat back, pursing her lips, halfway between a grin and a snarl.

"There's no way we'd stay behind if our people are going on a grand crusade out into the multiverse. Thor and Sif have to be planning to Warlord that entire effort, and using Other Nown as an engine to feed the machine of war."

"That… was my distinct impression of what Mithar was hoping to enact here, except He didn't know about the Shroud," Aelryinth agreed calmly.

"He was hoping to use Nown as a training ground for heroes who could be sent throughout the cosmos to sow some Good in places that need it. Without Evil gods present to counteract the play, He'd finally be able to start working on some grand designs He's had to let slide as part of the Alignment War."

"Except someone already made up something that is going to suck the entirety of that effort away," I murmured, finally getting it, and Ael just nodded grimly.

"This whole massive effort, a potential ground-breaking move by Mithar to really get out front… is going to be diverted away immediately by a great Evil that has been moving in secret without being addressed.

"Mithar's great move was anticipated in advance. Looked at another way, Mithar could be said to have created a counter-move for a grand move He isn't even aware has happened."

"Just when you think the war is over and you cleared the board, you find your entire board was just one more pawn in a game with a much, much bigger playing field," Briggs sighed in resignation.

"It justifies the effort to save the alternate world. I have to ask, because they are so interconnected… what about Delpha?"

"We've already started quiet evacuations to Nown of Good folk and some communities. There's a lot of land to re-settle on Nown, and we don't want people popping up randomly in Meandrel's airworld… although that could certainly happen, we feel it is unlikely. Maybe if the Old Ones get involved."

"Ohhhhh!" Tek blurted out, a little wide-eyed at my mention of the mythical and unseen Elder Immortals.

"You think they would?" I just shrugged.

"The gods confirmed they exist, and also that they are above my pay grade and I really don't want to deal with them if I don't have to. They had the tones of speaking to peers they really wish they didn't have to, but not the tone of opposition."

"Powers at the Intermediate and Greater God level dominated by Neutral mindsets of one kind or another," Briggs clarified, to which I nodded.

"Like the Immortals, except more smug and higher up the scale than they are." He just rolled his eyes.

"As expected..."

"What are your plans?" Sama asked Aelryinth directly as he sat there.

"You don't have the attitude of someone coming to fight for us."

"I will work on one of your existing Pyramids to turn it into an anchor for the next leg of my multiversal crawl back home. In between, I'll finish up getting some spells from Edge here. In short, I'll be keeping my head low and be very, very quiet and unobtrusive. There'll be a small light show when I leave, and that will be that," he replied easily.

"I don't think you want me drawing attention with displays of Theurgic magic like I can use."

"That would not be a good idea, no. Some of the Immortals would immediately want to lab-rat you, all the while proclaiming it's for the best interests of everyone," I murmured agreement, having absolutely no faith in any those Immortals. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"About what I thought," he nodded slowly, and we moved on to other matters.

Aelryinth started working on the buried Twilight Pyramid that powered and protected the Twilight Library, the most secluded and thus best place to hide a multiverse-jumping spell and the Formation that would allow him to return to such. Visiting the Twilight Libraries was only a precise Teleport spell to the right location out in nowheresville buried in the planet's crust, of course, no sign it was there for anything around.

It was the only Pyramid whose Domain was basically self-contained, forming the space for the Twilight Library and effectively extending nowhere in the real world, basically nigh-impossible to locate now. Most of my own time was spent setting things in place for the refugees, who were delighted to learn that the War was over, and absolutely silent when I told them it had been nearly three thousand years since they had left the Other Shore to come here.

The world had been ravaged, none of the lands were what they remembered, and there was nobody alive that they would know, except the Emperor and Empress, and Doro and the Master Shef… and perhaps a few Eternals who would also be thousands of years older. No, pack everyone off to new lands, because the new land here was not much different from turning around and going back home at this point. In reality, this place actually offered more opportunities to them!

Aelryinth stayed only another week.

That was a tribute to just how good his Stone-Shaping abilities were, just how fast he could read via Scholar's Grasp as well as Write all those spells to Magnus, plus how much effort was saved charging up for the jump with the massive Immortal Power reserves inside the Twilight Pyramid shuffled into it from the destruction of rather large numbers of Entropic Artifacts over the past four thousand years of history, as well as the recent surge of 'accidentally' collapsed Immortal Home Planes.

Quietly collecting horrible tools of Immortal magic, or Artifacts that just plain abused mortals and amused Immortals, had become quite a habit for my Sims, costing their creators time and IP to make anew while powering up the defense and security of my main Library. Fwoosh woosh, and Aelryinth was off, never hitting the Astral and so out of sight and away from the attention of any watching Immortals, the echoes of the IP siphoned sent right off beyond the Veil with his Theurgic magic.

The newest Fount of the Lost Light went into the Sun Pyramid in Transyvia, much to everyone's initial surprise, and then grudging acceptance that it really did work well as part of a public temple to the Morning there, said area also being the home of some of the nastiest Undead Hunters in the world.

I didn't want it restricted to only the Marked, but the fact was that anyone who qualified to use the Lost Light probably qualified as a true Paladin, Champion, or Warder, and it made a great excuse and catalyst for Lunia, Dame Adama, and Molniya to quietly open those Paths to such supplicants if they came there for the Blessing.

Making the pilgrimages to all the appropriate volcanoes to gather the Infusions necessary to upgrade your Weapon was a nice challenge for characters strong enough to earn and deserve such a boon. Of course, the very fact they were destinations to help out Good characters meant that instantly meddling Immortals decided that there absolutely must be proper guardians at each and every one of said locations…

but that was hardly a surprise to anyone at this point, once the Fount was set up and its potential benefits against Undead and other Evil creatures were made known. But Warriors and magi of pure heart being offered a chance at Classes they could never gain otherwise? The Immortals didn't have to learn about that at all right now, especially while they were still so busy with all the fallout of shattered planes and Immortals dying in them…

I spent sixty days on this side of the Portal, getting things ready, helping make new homes and roads for all the refugees, even going so far as to reshape some forests so that they wouldn't have to be cut down to make room for fields, saving time and labor and preserving hunting lands all around. The population influx was rapidly making the Eismark Federation a true power in the world, with so many immigrants in so little time it was amazing it wasn't strained to the breaking point trying to fit them all in.

The Nested Worlds were a big part of that, sending out endless amounts of grain and food to tide people over until new fields could be plowed in, put to seed, and so on. Likewise, they also produced a lot of the basic goods needed to get the factories up and working, exchanging for raw minerals they didn't have large amounts of in their smaller worlds, exotic foods, and materials for magical devices they also desired. It was all good.

If they needed to, they could produce monstrous amounts of excess with little effort, which was exactly what they were meant to do. The Mirror Portal handled a great deal of that trade, keeping exact knowledge of where everything was coming from quite secret. The influence of the gods was obfuscating matters for any Immortals who were curious about such things, but the big thing that mattered here was Immortals' lack of Divine Awareness and them having no Omniscience.

The Immortals had no Priests to speak of in our lands, so there was no information getting to them about us at all, save for rumors and hearsay. If they wanted to find out more about us, they had to come down personally… and Tek wasn't going to take that lying down. As soon as the sensors picked up big bundles of Immortal Power walking around, he was right there on top of them, kindly inquiring what the fuck they wanted and to get their arses out of his people's territory.

If that didn't work, Sama or Briggs could wander up and reap the Avatar of its existence, and make it very plain they weren't wanted there. Of course, I was sitting there at Level 70, pretty certain I was close to the apex of what Eternals here could advance to. I was the equivalent of a Hierarch/4, two ranks from the top of a High Hierarch equivalent, and I had a level of magical ability at the Eternal Level that even these arrogant bastards would have to respect.

I hadn't used it overly much here on the Far Shore, but those thousands of years on the Other Shore had been put to good use, and I could definitely pull off some shit with magic that most Immortals could only dream of doing. Sure, sure, they could use Immortal Power to fundamentally alter reality and shape whole worlds and suns and stuff. But that wasn't something they did in combat, and I really did have some spells they couldn't directly emulate with IP, and which were totally effective against their kind!