Once again, flashes of Nightmare going by...

Skittering subsonics, creeping movement against the stone, almost levitating, it was so light. Insectile feet ghosting across brick and mortar, angling to get into position for a swift kill.

She was very surprised when Tremble came plunging through the brick wall into her guts, wreaking rather nasty harm on the skulking slayer. I slugged the brick and plunged on through the hole a moment later, while the red-skinned figure writhed upon the floor after convulsing off Tremble’s point from the lethal wound.

Mercy wound, of course. I had a use for a Mantissari daemon, one of the best assassins of the Evilborn.

My fist came down, popped an insectile eye, and stopped the frantic writhing. Then I broke off both of her mandibles, sucked on the truly nasty poison politely as I nailed her to my Dexterity Mark and Burned her away into the Seal around it…

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“Mmm. You know, Brilliant Weapons are designed for dragon-slaying, right? Do I look like I have any natural armor?”

My opponent was a ghaele ahren, which shocked me… until I saw the ragged, raw edge about her, stains at the edge of her shininess, which meant she’d Fallen. The Curse had no problems sucking in a supposedly-Good creature that thought it was doing a great deed by getting rid of the soul of a Hag…

“You are a Tainted soul, a thing of mortal and immortal filth, that needs to be cleansed forever!” she exclaimed, shrill even as her voice two-toned melodiously, pointing at me with one of her two blades of hard light. “The Light will find you and purify you from existence!”

I mentally went, Oooooo-kay. Not off her rocker or nothing, is she? Does she even know that if I die, she becomes the new soul? No? Was the Curse being cruel, kind, or just judgmental, killing her off with me?

“Do I Bane for this?” Tremble asked softly.

“I guess so,” I murmured back, looking at the remaining greyed-out warriors behind her, all of a generic sameness that blended into one another, while still somehow remaining different if you focused on one of them.

Einheriar from Limbo, probably the Realms of War, following a fallen ex-Chaotic Good Celestial who had lost herself in the fight, instead of the reasons BEHIND the fight.

The light sabers – really, they were sabers made out of hard light, not plasma – came scything in to do their thing in a dance of twinkles and streams of motion. She was trying to glow hard enough to blind me, which was useless with the devasight from my Mask.

Tremble sang softly and sadly to meet her, while I bent my attention to her combat form and the martial style of Celestials, and how it compared to mortals.

If she turned into a big ball of light, I probably couldn’t catch her, but I could tell after the first ten seconds that killing her actually wasn’t going to be all that hard…

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“Wow. That was probably the most depressing day I’ve had in here,” I mused aloud, watching as the devastated city once again faded into gray mists as Renewal came through and reset everything.

I glanced down at my hip, where the Speed Mark had an orange light around it. No, I hadn’t Sealed her, although I’d destroyed her. As a Greater Ahren, she should have reformed in the Celestial planes. Having gone through vivus, this entire incarnation of her should have been wiped, and hopefully she’d be back to the freedom-loving type of person the ahren were at their core, with no memory of her past.

If not, another ahren should have been promoted to her place. Still, never expected to fight a Fallen Celestial in here. The Curse was just showing that it could happen to anyone, I guessed.

I looked up as Fido and Shirley came out of the mists, wagging their tails in greeting after being resurrected once again. I waved them over to give them a good ear-scratching.

“It’ll be a bit before we head out again,” I told them, and they growled in response, looking around to find a place to sit down. I had forging, Investing, and alchemy to do, and needed a couple hours of Meditation.

After flipping the levers.

I ticked over Melee/10, and Human/4, Atlantean Human.

Power swelled inside my soul, seemed to be bursting against the edge of my skin, as if it had hit some kind of hard limit. The Second Ceiling at Ten, the one that had never been broken in the game.

It could be broken. Everyone knew it could be broken, but nobody had managed to do it. We didn’t know if it just wasn’t coded, or what. There were Feat Chains and Advanced Classes, even Masteries, that couldn’t possibly conclude until after Ten.

Still, I was at Ten, the top Level of the Classes that I knew of.

Basic reward for reaching Ten, +1 to all Stats. Being Sustained, reflected to mirror Stats, effectively +2 to all Stats.

Atlantean Human. It changed out +2 to two Stats I’d elected for +2 to all Stats, and gave me back the skill points and Feat I’d lost. As I’d elected for Con and Dex, that meant Str, Wis, Cha, and Int went up by +2. As a Racial bonus, it didn’t mirror with Sustained Effort.

Skill Points. Saves. MAB to +10, with the mental and physical acceleration to make it possible. Techniques again, bonus Combat Feat, bonus General Feats.

All relevant Masteries were already at Five. Many Feats and Masteries had effect increases at Ten, especially Skill Focus and Affinity-type Feats, suddenly increasing Skill checks over those at lower Levels, one of the most powerful effects of becoming a Ten. On average, my Skill Checks went up by +7 over being at Nine...

In addition, my Soul Capacity for Soul Feats and Tats changed to a base Three, which actually meant Four since I’d upgraded all of them by +1 long ago. My UA damage also ranked up a die type, to the full 2-12 I could top out with… which would increase my Sword damage another step.

I could take Advanced Classes to Five, and Secondary Classes to Six, which I would do patiently for the next few weeks, if I had the Karma… which I should have, given the scale and number of things I had been killing.

“Hey, Trem.”

“Yeah, Sama?” my Sword asked me in a low voice. Had things to think about too, I guess.

“Helluva way to make Ten. Almost like the Curse planned it, just to depress us.” I took a deep breath. “Don’t add Good to the Slaughter side of Enmity, even if I don’t think you can. Ever. Holyborn Bane has a viable use against Fallen Celestials, because it keys off their origin, not their current status. Enmity to the Good can only work against Good people, and I’ll not have you doing that, ever.”

“Understood.” It seemed to cheer him up a little.

“Taking Levels now, after reaching Ten, costs a huge amount of Karma, we’ll see if we’ve earned enough to take them all. I’ll start with Secondary Levels, and then work on the Advanced ones. After that, I’ll be forging into new territory with Racial Evolution Levels, if I’m allowed to do so.”

“And since the Soulborn ARE their spirits, it’s actually possible,” he recalled firmly. “Just more work to do.”

“Aye, but I’m a Ten now.” My eyes narrowed as my thoughts were expanding, spiritual growth becoming a Point of Interest. “Tens can do things others simply cannot. It’s a bridge to the higher Levels, but we just don’t know how. I can expand laterally for a while, but at some point, we’re going to find that bridge and cross it, be it in here or outside.”

“If I may ask… Do you think the Curse has a reason for moving us to mass combat?” Tremble inquired. “I mean, it has no chance of killing you…”

“It’s trying to form apathy towards killing, and drive me towards callous and cruel behavior in order to win. Unfortunately, to do that I’d have to consider the denizens of Dream as real, when they are more like NPC unit assets to me. Have you noticed how I have been leading them?”

“Ah, no, I’m not particularly good on that side of things,” Tremble admitted. “More about the Singing and inspiring them. They’re a good audience.”

“They are. But, I noticed that if they die, they don’t improve.”

Tremble hummed to himself. “That sort of makes sense?”

“Aye. So my goal has been to slowly increase the overall power of the troops I gain, keeping them alive with what tricks I can gain… and choosing who lives and who dies, rotating who dies so that everyone has been increasing in power.”

“… by where you choose to fight!” Tremble figured out.

“Yes. Who I defend is who lives. I figured that out some time ago. It means I regularly sacrifice whoever I can’t afford to save. By rotating that, I’ve been able to improve the troops slowly, giving them Levels and making it easier for them to fight. I don’t think the Curse has really caught on, given how good their foundation originally was, and how they are now.”

The Curse had been gradually shrinking everything down to normal size, or growing me to proper size, I wasn’t sure. Whatever, my formerly giant attackers were now normal human-sized troops under my command, fighting all manner of foes and forcing me to develop a very different skill set than just soloing monstrous numbers of enemies if I wanted to profit from the lads being around.

This was actually pretty valuable, as who had the opportunity to command literally hundreds of different mass combats against all sorts of foes, outside of video games? The Curse was hoping that I’d fall into boredom from killing or bloodthirstiness, when I actually viewed it as an intellectual challenge.

“I have noticed that more of them seem to be surviving than they did originally,” he said after a moment’s thought. “I had no idea it was because of what we were doing.”

“I could improve them a lot better if gear I gave them lasted from one scenario to the next, but only my closest followers have that honor.” I.e., I didn’t have to make barding and saddles over and over for Fido and Shirley.

Sparkie hummed next to my shoulder meaningfully, flashing with golden light. The Baneskull it was wearing flashed Runes all over it as it floated there, glowing light from Sparkie crackling around the eye sockets, looking dangerous and malevolent.

Sparkie was an extra set of eyes, a finisher, a sniper, and occasionally a flanking partner. He couldn’t get too far from me, but he could zip around fairly fast within ten paces of me without too much trouble. Generally, he hung over my left shoulder, high enough to stay out of Tremble’s way if we were fighting, or just above my head if not.

“Let’s prep for tomorrow, and see what the Curse is going to throw at us.”