With Bonecrunch finally dead, things in Osteth finally opened up completely.

  Undead occupants in the northwest faded away completely. Between infighting and the threat clearly formed by the resurgent living Freeholders, the undead had no stomach for vanishing into the void of the System until they were reborn, as they continually told themselves.

  The three busiest areas were the Gearknight Recovery Area, the Viridian Rise, and Neftet.

  The first was overseen by the rebuilt Gold Gear Primus, Atamarr, and the few loyal subordinates we’d managed to repair and upgrade. Pyreal bars powered up many a Gearknight Core where once aetherium had done the job for them, giving them a more stable and enduring power system not susceptible to power fluctuations from planar disturbances.

  The Gear Knights were enthusiastic students of the Matrix Artificer path, with focus on recovering and reanimating their brethren. Time and raw materials to do the gearcrafting, especially for the higher QL parts required for the more powerful members of the Construct race, were major stumbling blocks to all of this, but the Gearknights were also quick volunteers to the Elemental Fields in the Olthoi North to gain more jewels from the seemingly limitless numbers of Elementals, or anywhere golums could be found in numbers, delighting in battling these latter ‘primitive, barbaric cousins’.

  I wasn’t much involved in the daily activities of the Gearknights as they literally rebuilt their numbers, although I was approached several times to consult on new designs and numerous Artificing questions.

  They also named their new power core The Magos Heart, saluting me for the creation and sharing the design with them freely. My ability to redesign and upgrade their systems soon gave me a rather exalted position among them, for all that I never made any requests of them. The only thing that made them giddier with excitement then reassembling an old friend was the prospect of upgrading with new designs of artifice like nothing they had used in the past.

  The bulldozer and mek-loader designs were being salivated over, the biggest impediment to those being the massive amounts of steel required to make them, which drove interest in opening up more mines abandoned by the lugians during the Fall, and so forth and so on.

  The Viridian Rise was naturally dominated by the adult gromnatrosses/dragons and the Deru Tree that they guarded. The main people interacting with them were with the Aun Shamans who likewise revered the Deru Tree, they didn’t need to be interacting with them, having control of their own realm and not much in the way of dangers to it, inside or out.

  If King Borelean wanted to talk to the dragons about mutual defense, that was his to do. My habit of looking at them as mobile spell components probably meant I wasn’t the most suitable person to deal with them.

  Neftet was the territory of the Anek’shay, who were basically lesser genies or elemental-kin. They preferred their desert territory to be windswept and wild, with little care for who wandered it, as long as they weren’t undead.

  Learning that their kinfolk could be liberated from the System by vivus, however, did mean that they encouraged the intrepid to come and clash with them, and no, no, no, do NOT Seal the Spawn Points, until they Summon up no more of our kin.

  Given the level of danger there, it wasn’t a place frequented by anything but teams out to secure more Burning Sands Golum Hearts for mages wanting to Cast their Eights again. The Anek’shay were going to have get serious about freeing their own people, rather than it happening in passing.

  -------

  The Dark Isle…

  Bunita’s Kiss slashed across, Radiance-edged adamantine crashed through a reinforced coral body… and a harsh gray light flashed over the golum, turning the rigid, stony natural armor softer and porous.

  The Wolfpack, using Versatile Armed Strike to turn Swords into crashing blunt weapons instead of slicing tools, promptly doubled their damage output, and the first Black Coral Golum went down.

  One Strike at a time, and the golums flashed with Platinum-grade Imperils. Two were down, and the boss Black Coral Viceroy spawned in with its two attendants. There were a few seconds of rapid repositioning as the team rapidly adjusted tactics to accommodate whoever was the target of the new golums, and the Mick rotated in to rapidly strike each of the new golums in turn, Imperils flashing off and doubling the speed of all the takedowns.

  He sat back, tanking as the Roaches swarmed in to wipe the Viceroy, Milee’s turn to take the kill this time, and then returned to deal with his attackers as he juked, parried, slid this way and that, and basically waited for them to get to him and finish the job.

  I stood by, watching closely as the cluster of golums was finally crushed, and the enthusiastic Roaches whooped at the ease of it all.

  “That be like a fine field test,” the Mick also grinned. The pommel of his Claymore spun in his grip, and opened to reveal the hollow hilt in his Sword. He tilted it, there was a tink of a crystal disengaging, and a corrugated pale green pyreal Wand topped by a faceted diamond array fell out into his hand.

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  “How’s your mana?” I asked him calmly.

  “Near gone,” he admitted immediately, looking back along the length of the shore. A couple hundred yards away, a Spawn Point that had hosted shades flashed and a Summons of the ubiquitous blue-purple remorans was brought in to replace them. “Mana Conversion be not the greatest of me skills, especially with Sevens, lass.”

  Sifting out the gems from the remains of the golums, the cluster of Roaches, all of them walking on the water with Cloudstepping Sandals, retreated off the beach. They’d rampaged down the length of it with skill and speed, helped by the Imperils the Mick had ladled out with strikes from Bunita’s Kiss, nary a one needed from me, which among other things allowed me to concentrate on Healing them.

  The major use of mana among the group was replenishing Artificer Infusion Slots used to Buff up their Weapons or Armor. That often meant they used very little mana over the course of a day, as swapping Enchantments back and forth was not something they needed to do. On the Dark Isle here, Firephasing took care of most enemies, and that just involved switching focus of two Elemental Stones.

  “’Tis not quite the same as the old Hunter’s Lense that I be remembering, mostly afore the humongous amount o’ mana the damn thing contained, but aye, that were very satisfying!” the Mick declared, and the rest of the Roaches eagerly chimed in with agreement. Imperiled creatures were much, much easier to deal with, especially if they went to negative armor!

  “Who has maxed out their Assay Creature?” I asked the Roaches, who promptly all raised their hands eagerly. Following in their teacher’s footsteps, indeed…

  I flicked out another Wand. The design was similar to the Mick’s Lense, but more irregular, not shell-like, and the focusing array at the end was ruby, not diamond.

  All their eyes fixed on it hungrily. “Be that what I think it be?” the Mick asked, almost swallowing as his throat went dry.

  “Hunter’s Lense of Fire, the second Runewand,” I nodded slowly, the hungry light in his eyes not fading. “Twenty bloody days to empower, just like yours, Lord Mick.”

  His expression was a mixture of consternation and disbelief. “Well, that be a mite bit longer than the, eh, five minutes it used t’ take me t’ make one in the past, once I bought the parts at any decent alchemical vendor, aye?” he could only say.

  Perfectly trained, all the Roaches threw up their hands in disgust and groaned in unison at the power of magic before the Fall. The Mick beamed proudly at them all.

  “Rogar. Got a Wand Chamber?” I asked him.

  “Yes, Magos,” he replied with a swallow. His Glaive Accent shrank down, the heavy cleaver on the end of it glittering with Blackfire Radiant Motes spiraling up and down the length of it.

  A press of his finger opened up a hole in the spine of his Weapon. I formally handed the Lense of Fire to him, and he quietly withdrew the Wand of Cure Light Wounds therein, depositing it in his Masspack. He carefully fit the glittering Runewand into the Wand Chamber, then thumbed it closed with a click, no sign it was there at all.

  He stepped out to get some room, Accent flicking back out to full length, and quickly and deftly went through some katas, Lost Lights swirling around him as he spun himself and his Glaive through the motions with a master’s precision.

  “No change in the balance. I’m good to go.” He did wince a bit. “I probably need to work on my Mana Conversion a bit,” he admitted.

  “Ye go until ye’ve thirty points o’ mana left, an’ then pass it on, in order o’ seniority.” Rogar nodded quickly at his teacher’s order. “And now ye’ve all got serious reason to max out yer Mana Pool an’ Mana Conversion,” the Mick stated, looking over all of them. “I expect both to be the next thing ye top off.”

  “Yes, sir!” all the Roaches replied in unison.

  “Now let’s show them shades back there some fire.”

  Swords and a Glaive ignited as Major and Minor Elemental Stones flared to life, bathing all of them in Plat-tier Cold and Fire Protections at the same time. With predatory smiles, they followed Lord Mick in a charge at the fresh spawn of shades floating on their clouds of voidsmoke.

  I drifted behind them calmly. The Mick would pull the shades off the Spawn Point, so that the vivus wouldn’t Seal them, drawing their fire and attacks, and the rest of the Roaches would Wolfpack the lot, ripping them down rapidly with flaming Weapons as the Fire Vuln blew over the shades and made it a really bad day for them.

  Not as bad as the Imperil Lense, because these shades happened to go to negative armor. The Roaches plainly hadn’t remembered that fact, but would in a moment, driving in the point that they had to remember the weaknesses of their enemies. Fire Vuln was more effective than Imperil on some creatures, not on others, which meant they could mix and match on who to apply a debuff to.

  Then they could double-debuff a Boss coming in, and likely take it down faster than its servants, if needed.

  The damn sleeches, for instance, died pretty quick if Imperiled, but the boss sleech coming in was made of much tougher stuff. Double-tap it, and it crumpled quickly.

  The Mick would hand off his Lense after the Roaches noticed the difference and came up with the idea of alternating Debuffs, starting to understand the tactical choices their Support Mages had to make.

  The Runewands were going to be in insane demand as soon as they became known. They didn’t work on missile Weapons, much to the regret of the Archers, but they could be used by mages who for some reason didn’t have Life Magic… or weren’t skilled enough to land on powerful foes, yet had enough Assay Creature Ranks to employ them.

  Being the idiot perfectionist that I was, I’d made the Lenses equal in power to those before the Fall, a full twenty days of Imbuing involved. Much weaker ones could naturally be made more quickly, although for all practical purposes we weren’t going to make anything below a Four, as it wouldn’t work against stronger enemies.

  It wasn’t an Elemental Render or Cleaving, but in some ways it was better, mostly because the Wand Chamber allowed it to be used on anything a melee combatant could hit, meaning no need to switch Weapons… and unlike an inbuilt Render, it opened up the opponent to EVERYONE attacking it.

  Mana Conversion was going to come back very much in vogue with the return of the Lenses, and less dependency on Debuff Casters was only a good thing...

  Imperil never triggered the spawns to come attack, unlike normal spells and wands (presumably because it was letting you see weak points, instead of actually making them weaker). So you could Lense a whole spawn, then charge in and kill them, instead of pulling them to you. Which was alternately good and bad, meaning you had to use something else to pull them if you didn't charge in, which was more swapping...

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