I came down from the sky in a shining Thunderbolt, Riding the Lightning and smashing to a halt directly in front of the incoming army of the Undead.

They thought they’d be clever and try a sneak attack at night against the camp of Undead Hunters outside the Graveyard. Humans and Beasts had to rest, after all, and the Undead did not. Their range was greatly extended at night, too, so they could reach our camp.

Burning with The Light, I faced them down, and the incoming tide racing through the defile basically skidded to a halt a hundred feet away from me, mummies and ghouls forcibly stopping themselves as I stared at them.

The Aura of a Sage was not something they could ignore. It was cracking their magical abilities just breaking over them, especially laden with alien, Holy power like it was.

“This,” I whispered to them in Necrus, “was a very bad decision on the part of your masters.” They all heard it, extending back miles over the racing path of their raid, hundreds of thousands of Undead committed to the night attacks.

Very few Commanders, I noticed.

“I bring your Last Day,” I said at last, and then I lit them up.

Yeah, I was flexing because I could. I didn’t need to spend more than a point of Mana or two per with not many of them being Commander-grade, which meant I could Cast literally all day and I would gain Mana while doing so.

The defile had been leveled and opened somewhat by prior fighting, the broken ground both shattered and filled in by the conflict, collapsed and then ground down, opening up the Graveyard to easier entrance and exits.

It was fine. There were already plans to warp space and put illusions around the entire place to make sure undesirables didn’t find their way in come the future.

Still, it was a narrow place, a choke point in classic terms, and now I filled it with cheap, endlessly regenerating havoc.

Nearly three thousand Bursts went off as four separate sets of Greater Shards leapt to their staggered targets and Chained through the packed mass in an optimal spread of weaponized doom. The entire front of the Canyon in front of me lit up with The Light and Arias of Repose to send the Undead on their way.

Intertwined Rose vines of Fire and Ice snaked up the sides of the canyon and sidled forwards, relentlessly adding a constant barrage of synchronized, neo-automatic attacks of Blessed Flames and Frost to the constant attacks, making sure anything that survived the Bursts did so only by seconds.

At the center of the Diadem of Twinned Brilliance upon my head, a small Flower of white and gold bloomed as if it belonged there. The Radiant Light was bolstered by its power, the illumination sweeping out to Burn at any Undead in front of me with multi-hued flames as I began to advance.

Reynard materialized under me, trotting ahead lazily, but his eyes and mind were sharp to spot anything and everything around. Mighty Turk scampered and hopped about in front of me, his Stick whacking here and there, some of the tougher Undead trying to pretend they were dead exploding as he made sure we were not interrupted or ambushed. To the sides, the Roses of Fire and Ice snaked across the sides of the canyon with long tendrils, radiant blossoms and golden razor-thorns all lit up, their barrages following up each of my own, and the Undead paid for it all.

I didn’t stop the killing as I entered the Graveyard, and the Undead commanders either had their orders or weren’t wise enough to stop, their more spread-out formations only saving them from some Burst damage as I lit into the entirety of the force and slew them all as fast as they could come.

I was content to let the Undead come and die, and so they did. There were maybe a quarter of a million of them, racing forward with speed and energy to strike back at the Humans who were daring to farm THEM, THEM of all beings, when we were only crops to be harvested ourselves, our souls and carcasses theirs to take and do with as they wished...

Hundreds of Soul Crystals were blithely harvested by the second as over-killed Undead were instantly consumed and blasted to dust. Zeben kept about his task diligently, letting none escape him!

As the last of the undead approached, I spent five Mana on the Rifling resonance for the Shards, expanding the range and Chains fivefold. The javelins of multi-colored force blew out in over a hundred streams, each with a hundred and forty targets, and I leveled the remaining Undead forces instantly.

Streaming Firefrost explosions made short work of anything out there still remaining, even Reynard deigning to crush several dozen who’d been tough enough not to die instantly.

Then, quite contrary to expectations, I pulled out a Disk, sat down on it, and entered Meditation right there amid the field of glowing unwhite mist, channeling the full force of my Wrath to regain my strength and recharge my Contracted companions. A circular fence of glowing, burning-thorned Rose Vines surrounded me, Reynard and Mighty Turk knelt together to join in, and a ghostly white light from the Protea on my Crown suffused everything gently.

-----

The Pharaoh never bothered to try a night attack again, and indeed, took pains not to tempt me into taking action. There was a Bat King and his Tribe who were sent out to try and ambush me one night. Despite copious use of Shadow and Sound Magic, I instantly detected their presence, alerting the Avian Nobles and other Beast Rulers about the place promptly.

The Bats came gliding stealthily out of the Graveyard, looking for Human victims and me in particular, and were hit from all sides by gravity-smashing Earth effects, a Stillflight Field a mile wide, and roaring, raging, trumpeting Beasts of all kinds there to greet them as the Bats plummeted to the ground. Some of the ambushing Beasts even had Vivic Eternal Lights on horns, claws, fangs, or beaks!

The Bat Duke was throttled by King Koga without any remorse, then pounded to pulp as the shiny new Stick the big Golden Mountain Ape was wielding lit it up en vivus.

Nobody was daring to eat any of the Bats, and those who bit them reported for vivic cleansing immediately afterwards. My instructions on that point had been emphatic and repeated, and the Nobles took them very seriously.

The few Bats who escaped the Stillflight Field were picked off by whole flocks of waiting Hawks, Eagles, Falcons, and even a few Cranes and Parrots eager to contribute. War Talons Eagle Emperor was still watching from afar, after all...

This Death Zone was nothing but a numbers game, and a game that its living participants were eager and willing to win. Even with only one Level in Wizardry, suddenly combat became a great and glorious avenue to power, leveraging their Magery to new extremes. Soul Crystals bolstered Stars, new spells magnified the power of downtime, Tokens and Baneskulls proliferated, and every one of them wanted their own Scepter as a Mace of Disruption to double up and add insta-kill to their options against ALL the netherworlders...

There are very few things better than fighting and killing Undead and Shadows to spur some deep contemplation of souls and one’s fate in the afterlife. There were Nobles of the Plants and Beasts here, and even a Plant Low Emperor. The natives of this area were famous in the magical world for the number of their Contracted Beasts and Plants, and so this was a good place to begin a foundation of something as integral and simple as Faith.

There was no repurposing the unused Church of Light buildings, which were instead quietly removed and gardens planted where they once had stood, to the irritation and concern of the few remaining faithful.

The first buildings of the Church of Heaven were put up, and an experienced minister of the Kabbalists came in to help set up the administration of the place.

I was the only one who could directly access Divine Magic because of my Ur-priest Levels, but stealing Faith was just another trick and means of power for the natives of this world, something the Black Curia had been pulling off quietly for decades. They made up false religious movements whose Faith the Cardinals could tap for various reasons, undercutting the Church of Light and using the worshippers of what usually ended up as hedonistic cults as both pawns and recruits for greater schemes.

At least, that’s what the skull of the Violet Cardinal told us. Didn’t have any reason to doubt her.

There were a lot of Coralost Communities around now, their sons and daughters being trained, and some of their traditions overhauled and streamlined so they could contribute and become something more. Many were places where people existed to exist, instead of those with great ambition, but those who wanted to finally grasp the power of legends and be free from under the boots of repeated oppressors grinding them down into lives of virtual slavery, when they weren’t running in terror from Beast attacks, could finally be addressed.

As Briggs and Sama repeated to them over and over, they wanted those kids to go home and help raise their communities up to something productive, something the citizens could be proud of, instead of just existing and knuckling under to the winds and the tides.

By now, dozens of those communities had actually fallen, too few and too scattered to actually be defended, driving home their status and inability to determine their own fates as refugees.

People with very little left to lose were often the most ready to try something new, and the most willing to fight to reclaim what they had lost. Sparks beaten down over generations reignited with Hope and Valor helping spur them on, the best Warlords and managers in the world helped direct everything, and the shoreline defenses of the remaining communities stretched out to one another in networks of support and fast reinforcement that weren’t coming from the local governments.

And now, little points of The Light were igniting in them, as those communities raised new Churches in the spirit of Heaven, the attitudes and help that was getting them through these trials being worked out in doctrine and story and practice, but definitely not going overboard on the puppies and kittens.

Even if Humans and Beasts worked together more, there was always going to be conflict. This wasn’t a world where Good could afford to be soft. A better world could still be made, but you were always going to have to fight for it.

Only so much, so fast.

The death tolls of the Aquatics around the world hadn’t let up. Many smaller communities were abandoned and/or obliterated, withdrawing behind the Wards of the major cities, putting great strain on their ability to feed people with the limitations on farm land. Eating Aquatics soon became a necessity, rather than a barbaric indulgence. Happily enough, the long-standing Littoral Zones had plenty of recipes to share about that kind of stuff...

-------

-The Synod has noted a new Church movement based in our communities, and spreading.-

Sama’s news was unwelcome, but not unexpected. Once the movement started, it was only a matter of time before it got press, was noticed, and they started investigating. There were always old lay folk or such of the Church of Light in such communities to call on.

The message wouldn’t have bothered them so much, if there wasn’t such clear rhetoric separating the Church of Heaven from the Church of Light, and basically calling the doctrine of the Church of Light full of falsehood and lies.

Well, I suppose the sheer arrogance of trusting an Imperial Beast over the infallible words of Ihovah was going to generate a reaction one way or another.

-What’s the fallout?- I /asked fatalistically. Sama had personally infiltrated hardware into the Synod Headquarters and the Vatican through multiple vectors. The mighty Archangels and Angels had no idea of just what kind of fine, devoted tech we could make and put into place, hiding it right in plain sight among their existing technology.

Sama had made sure all the incoming tech coming into the Synod’s operations was as clean as possible, with some of the very best anti-virus technology in the world to thwart anything like what had happened before, multiple levels of protection, and so forth.

The Awareness of powerful mages could easily sense changes to objects around them, even very fine ones. However, just activating actual hardware that was already in place, just in odd places, wasn’t going to affect anything. Sama was thus listening in on all their important stuff, often through the display technology, or the camera operations which, oddly enough, used Coralost lensing tech!