Briggs did give me a hairy eyeball. “How high have you taken those Succubi Levels?” he asked suspiciously.

I lifted an eyebrow. “Where did that come from?”

“You basically ordered some berserking, battle-crazed, flesh-starved super monkeys to quit chasing a fleeing foe, stop eating, and wait for us to feed them. They patiently waited for three hours for us to get back across the zone border and butcher dinos to do it. You’ve talked two Exemplar animals into basically becoming your subordinates... and an Epic Ape!

“And despite the fact that a whole bunch of Tens just became super-people, they’re all still marching to your orders with nary a lick of trouble... and you aren’t even an Exemplar yet.” His eyeball was quite hairy, indeed. “You aren’t shining like a moon among the stars like Wayfair, but damn, Sama... and I won’t even go into how the dragons aren’t even trying to dominate you.”

I wrinkled my nose, glanced around, and leaned in to whisper, “Fuzzy, you are being too observant. Allow me to think nobody noticed. The Brothers are being very polite and not saying anything. You’re popping all my delusions!”

He took a deep breath. “So... at Ten?” he asked quietly. Nobody was near enough to bug us, there were too many hundreds of tons of meat being roasted right now. It appeared all those Bloodline Investitures and Exemplar Templating also raised quite the appetite. Even the new angelic haror were indulging... with very thin cuts, proper braising, spices, and competitions over recipes.

Naturally everyone had to sample what they were cooking, even if they loved raw meat, and so it had turned into a feast and cooking contest all at once, with Wayfair merrily playing the role of master chef, taste-tester, and MC for the entertainers who inevitably set up and began to play, sing, and dance.

“Yeah. I’m using Wayfair for the Lilithi portion of the Succubi advance. I’ve been pressing it up. It’s not as expensive as you might think, since none of the magic transfers over, including the life-sucking kiss, nor am I going for permanent tail, horns, or wings. Also, the physical side got taken care of with Hag Levels, and a bunch of the mental side with Nymph, too. And no, no killing beauty,” I said, as his eyes narrowed appraisingly. Yeah, using Wayfair as the template basically meant I had a lot of synching with her Bloodline... and so with those winged, horned, and tailed ExLite angelic haror over there.

He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed, so, broad-minded fellow that he was, he opted for both. “Ah, so you don’t have to pay full price for benefits you don’t actually receive?” That was logical. “That probably includes skill points...” he added thoughtfully.

I nodded. “Yeah, you get the highest numbers, so I’m sitting on eight per Level from the Succubi Levels, and I can access the Akasha of any of the Levels... not that it’s relevant, since all Skills are Racial Skills to Soulborn.” I shrugged. “I’ve actually sealed the Akashic links so I’m not downloading any Skills. I want to save the Ranks until I pass Ten.”

He raised a bushier eyebrow. “You can do that?” He sounded amazed.

“Yeah, if you are Forsaken. It’s a spiritual link to an alien Akasha, after all. Human/3 means I can deny them that link until I want to. Still have to pay for it, of course. But I really don’t need another 48 Skill Points at the moment.”

“Given how Deep you are, I believe you. Especially with those Forsaken Caster Levels...” He sighed, thinking of how much Karma it was going to be for him to build those up. “Oh, how did the Nymph’s Druid Levels work out for you? And are you getting the Lilithi Favored Levels?”

I quirked a smile. “The Nymph Levels were very efficient for me. They took my Null Druid Levels all the way to Ten. I made an adjustment to the Lilithi Levels, working off the faith and loyalty that’s somewhat streaming in from my Marks.” He said nothing about the implications of that, just looking thoughtful. “Two Levels per Level in Lilitu. So, I’m a Four Null Shifter at the moment.”

“With lots of Slots, and an assload of Con bonuses...” he mused.

“Which I can Nog away for other benefits,” I agreed. “Have you been taking any?”

“Yes, buying up my Stats towards 18 base as I can. But I’m only a Three... and I can't access all the bonus Slots from a high Charisma yet.”

“Yeah, and you can't use the bonuses from Archsourcery or whatnot,” I told him mercilessly, and he nodded. Time, wuv, and Karma!

“You spending for the same?” he asked calmly.

“Yes. All the Slots... I’ve got no reason to save them. If I ever decide to take a Bonded Caster, they’ll have plenty to work with just off my Pool and Bonus Slots.” I harrumphed. “So much power to not use...” He gave me that hairy eyeball again, and sighed. “What?”

“Out with it. You found out something else.”

“You sure you don’t want to be depressed?”

“Is it something I wanted to know at One?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit,” he summed it up nicely. “What now?”

“Psionics.”

He closed his pale violet eyes. “Okay. Okay, Forsaken Caster Classes came out of left field. Psionics... actually makes sense.” He opened them, fixated on me. “What did you do, eat a ‘vore?”

“Some of the Mu Goop, actually.” Firecrackers in the mouth. “It was like, oh, it uses THAT energy? And there it was, right there, because I’m a sentient creature with a brain. Naturally I had psionic energy.”

He reached out and tunked on the air three inches from my face. “I thought your Vajra was stronger. What is it now? Adamant Vajra? Transcendent Vajra?”

“That’s a good name for it. It’s like two to three points of Psi to one Mana, Ki or Essence.”

“And now you’ve got how many more Classes to Level up, too?”

“Null Psion is Con based; Null Psyker is Cha-based; Null Psychic Warrior is Wis-based; and Mindblade accentuates my Sword.”

“Plus Theurgies?” he prompted.

“It turns out that psionic energy ‘fills out’ your Matrix, if you are a Caster, filling in all the empty spaces inside. If you have the Theurgy, you can sub one for the other. Great for using Metas, as you can spontaneously drain Psi to boost Spells.”

“So, you’ve got a Mindblade?” He leaned forward in interest.

“I’ve got a Vajra claw.” I held up my hand, and suddenly the killing edge of my Vajra became faintly visible around my hand, like a crystalline claw overlaying my hand, killing arcs extending from my fingers, hammering ridges on my fingers and knuckles, and razored edges along the sides. It was a standard Vajra hand, but now it was visible.

He reached out to feel it with his own Vajra, making a face as he felt the difference, like his was steel and mine was adamant. The addition of the psionic energy, and the magical energy it was tied to, effectively made a four-way Vajra at this point, melded together perfectly. I could picture the implications for Powered if they could do the same.

“So, I’m feeling magic in there. Nog?”

“Yeah, the Hands of Stone effect. Basically, very similar to Ki, stacks nicely. And with Sword is an Extension of the Fist, stacks on my sword play. You can feel the mindblade vibe in there, too, basically stacking on the Versatile UA at this point, but there’ll be additional damage dice, too, and improvements in base damage. I’ll never be able to throw it, of course, but it’s still going to get pretty nasty with time.”

The basic Unarmed progression for a Ten was d3 damage for a base Human, d4 with Improved Unarmed Strike, to d6, d8 and d10 with Monk Levels, and 2-12 with Superior UA.

Maxed Hands of Stone would increase that by one category, to 3-15, with +5 more damage on top. Mindblade/fist would increase it by three more categories; 3-18, 3-21, 4-24.

Starting with the base 2-16 of a Heavy Warsword instead... 8 die increases was 3-18, 3-21, 4-24, 4-28, 4-32, 6-36, 7-42, 8-48, 10-55. With the +5 bonus, 15-60 base damage with my Heavy Warsword.

All because of different energies stacking together in a Vajra. It took a long time to get there, but it was nearly as good as a Ten executing Forms... except they got extra damage dice, and this was base damage, so mine magnified on crits and charges...

I could see Briggs was doing the math. Endure would be sitting on 15-70 or so, or 20-75 with the bonus. Doing 45 average damage before any other bonuses... was pretty substantial.

“So much damn Karma,” he sighed. I had to agree. “So, we are going to finish eating, I assume go take down that Obelisk, and then head to the last one?”

I shook my head. “That would be very stupid. They’ll be waiting for us, and with enough dragons, even having superheroes in our employ won’t be enough.”

He cocked his head at me, thoughts moving, and glanced holewards. “You’re going to do an end run around her...”

“I imagine right now she’s calling in all her forces to guard that last major Obelisk, completely forgetting that I don’t need to topple it... I only need to topple the remaining two here that it is connected to. The flow stops regardless.”

His nostrils flared as he took a deep breath, and looked at The Map of this place as drawn by the Void Brothers during their scouting runs. “Another swamp. Drac-bloods, dragons, drakes...”

“Some of whom are going to be drawn off to defend the big one. I know our dragons are dying to get their asses kicked by a Pseudonatural dragon after their ExLite buff, too.”

He chuckled despite himself. “So, we run to the downline Obelisk, blow it, and then race to the last one... which is in that Undead Zone...” he trailed off, shaking his head.

And strangely enough, we had a whole lot of Undead Baneskulls and Tokens, and Energized Armor or Bracers of Force Armor, all ready to go. How ‘bout that?

“So, if we can sidle through fairly quietly, bring down that clockwise Obelisk, and then run to the last one... they have to cross four hundred miles to get to the Zone Barrier, do whatever Ritual they need to bring their troops across, and then run another five hundred and fifty miles to the center of the zone to try and get into position to stop us.”

“Funny how they probably don’t have Mass Gemjumps to teleport through the soup they made out of the Veil.”

“Well, what about the Wake?” he pointed up at the clear space above us. It had branched off the main thrust of the Wake while going through the middle of the zone, basically broadcasting where we were, but for some reason the number of giants investigating had been really small, fancy that. Mass slaughter does that to some.

“What about it?”

“They’ll be able to tell where we are by tracking it, unless you’re going to drop it.”

“Drop it? Why would I drop a diversion I’ve been putting in place for thousands and thousands of miles?”

“A diversion...” He grinned slowly as he looked up. “Ah. Us three are going to go in towards the Obelisk, fighting our way through, and while they are looking at us...”

“Everyone else does their job. If they are sneaky enough, the Hags won’t know what’s going on until it falls and they get the feedback. Then it’s a race to see who can get to the last one first.”

Nine hundred miles for them, possible delay at zone boundary. Square root of 900 squared plus 300 squared... merely fifty miles further at the angle, and we’d be moving at least twice as fast as they did on the ground. Sure, some flying dragons could get there faster... if they could cross the Zone. So, the probable scenario was facing some dragons and whatever riders could come with them, against our whole company of Exemplar Lite murder machines.

I wasn’t much worried about the odds. Whether they wanted it or not, the fight was going to be on the ground, and on the ground, their dragons weren’t going to be nearly as dangerous as they thought they were, even if they were also ExLites.

“So, you are giving them time to make all the wrong moves, and then going to confirm those wrong moves by giving them a giant arrow in the sky indicating exactly where we are.” He smiled despite himself. “Oh, they are going to be pissed at us...”

“I sure hope so!” I laughed cheerfully.