-By the way, Fuzzy, you’re going to take Warshifter Levels, right?-

He /sighed. -Valus, what now?- He /ruminated. -That’s a Class for combat shifters, no?- Which meant we couldn’t use it, since active shapechanging was very much not a thing for us.

-You know with enough investment in that Mark of yours you can access a Succubus’ Alter Self ability, right? You get it automatically with triple Physical Marks, but you can Invest in it, too. You just have to program it with forms using blood or vivus, or accessing your bloodline. So, like, you’d be able to turn into an ape, and the form would be set until you actively changed it.-

-Really.- Beat. Oh, the implications in bed. -What about the combat benefits?-

-Ah, most are a waste, since we’re using the ability through an item, effectively. However, the bonus to Str and Con, and the Fast Healing are kind of nice.- Especially for a certain someone who wasn’t an Exemplar yet... -I tell ya, Elder Arg is really looking forward to being able to morph down to human size, or smaller.- After all, if dragons could do it, why couldn’t he? Since the big ape was Powered, he could take any form he wanted, he wasn’t limited to stored templates or anything, like us.

-And I imagine you linked them to other things?- Because I liked to try different things, right?

-The Strength and Con bonus is equivalent to your Strength and Constitution Mastery. Hey, would you look at that double duty going on there. The Fast Healing bonus is equal to your Healing Mastery and Soul Essence Invested level, if you don’t want to take the flat rate of 2.-

And it would stack with the Exemplar Lite, so potentially 10 Health of Healing per round. You wouldn’t need a Healer except for massive emergencies. Fast Healing was the dream of melee toons. Auto-filling that blood bag let us keep going and going and going...

Fighting someone like me, it would take more than one Healer to keep you alive, but I was one of them exceptions. It was more a recovery and endurance thing, not meant to save you against something big. As this (chop!) adult Mire Dragon (stab!) in front of me was finding out (Aie! Twenty goldweight more I couldn’t keep...). Should have kept a safe distance, sport...

Briggs rolled his eyes again. -And what new and wonderful psionic stuff did you discover?-

-Well, we can’t spend psi, but we can focus ambient power in our Vajra and expend that to effect.-

-That sounds promising... similar to Arcane Strike?-

-More prep time, Concentration req, stronger. It’s awesome for lower levels. Psionic-backed blows can hit like trucks.- It could actually allow a low-level Forsaken some damage boosts!

-Anything else?-

-You know that Soul Feat that gives you Health for every Soul Feat you’ve taken?-

-Oh, no shit?...- There was another one? It made sense, there was a Magical one, but generally inapplicable since just about all such abilities involved Casting or metamagic, or were outright magical, and so couldn’t be invoked by us, only by Casters.

-Yeah, Psionic Body, two Health per Psionic Feat, reinforces your body...-

-And so affected by Fast Healing.- He /inhaled again. Another massive potential Health boost incoming. -And?-

-Oh, you’re going to love this. There are some impressive psionic enchanted arms and armor...-

-You have that sickeningly ominous I-love-this broken note to your voice...- he /observed happily.

-Feeder Weapons. +III. When critting, Bodyfeeders can instead give you the damage you roll in temp Soak for ten minutes. Mindfeeders give you temporary psi points. Anti-psi, Mindcrushers can do the crit in damage to a foe’s PP instead, +II. And...- I started to /laugh, which naturally only wound him up more.

That ogre in his way was launched through the air for sixty feet, chest over a foot thinner where Endure had beat on him. -Oh, this is gonna be good...-

-Psychic Weapons and Armor. Enhancement bonus dependent on your PP Reserve. All the way up to +V... – I let him picture that... - Slotless.-

Naturally, Forsaken couldn’t spend PP, so our Reserves would always be topped.

He almost dropped Endure. “Eff me running!” he blurted out loud. Ancientaxe gave him a look as he thoughtfully lightened the loads of another couple of ogres by their heads, glanced at me and my shit-eating grin, and knew something was up.

“Do I want to know?” he asked curiously, wondering if that had been something personal.

Briggs told him curtly, and Brother Ancientaxe, hardened killer of ancient creatures whose time had come, dealt with it by almost missing splitting an incoming crok’s head. “Fuck!” he added, blinking at the suddenly dead big black-scaled, horned crocodile, before continuing on with us. “What... is that... it stacks?” he had to ask, looking at me. My education in the fine points of enchanted Weapons had been very thorough, and he had seen the difference they made.

“Yeah.”

“What’s the kicker?” Briggs groaned, totally in love with the idea of getting a +IX Weapon or Armor out of two Slots.

“Seventeen Ranks, seventy goldweight.”

Both of them shuddered again. The only one who might be able to gain Seventeen Ranks, that we knew of, was Elder Arg...

Who had just received that +4 Exemplar Lite bonus to his Intellect...

“You didn’t?!” Briggs shouted, as Endure crashed down on another incoming crok, crushing a horn and pancaking its skull. Tons of part-dragon reptile skidded forwards past him, twitching in disbelief at being dead so fast.

“He did.” After all, getting 42 bonus Skill Ranks abruptly with an Epic Cap had to go somewhere, right? His Alchemy, Spellcraft, Psicraft, and Weaponsmithing were all at 21 Ranks, and he was working on Armorsmithing with his Expert Ranks. Those eight skill points per level were just designed for Crafting Skills, after all...

Yeah, that was going to be one monkey capable of some seriously badass stuff. His people were going to make a Gorilla City that was going to be just awesome!

Because, you know, all these Ten Monkeys had just gotten an Intellect boost and could pick two more Skills with 10 Ranks, too...

Here in Power-levelingville, we call that bootstrapping a species to boo-yah status!

Having Epic-Level friends was so very, very convenient for certain things! The Check to Craft such a thing was a 37, which was something I could do in my sleep. Buuuuuut, I didn’t understand the effect, so I’d need guidance, and Elder Arg could supply that.

The seventy goldweight cost was a non-issue. I could Craft it to that value, if need be, or just engage in thirty-five days of Naming Karma.

The difference was that it would need to be in hand and currently wielded. So, not as useful for Tremble, who ran around on her own, or Quaver, who Mirrored her.

-------

As we ran and slaughtered, I was Thinking. It was a big T, because at my Stats, idle thinking just wasn’t a thing I could do.

I had Nogged my Stats to perfection, 18’s all around. That meant +4 to Strength and Intellect, +5 to Wisdom, and +7 to Charisma, bringing me up to basically the same standard as an Amazon.

This was important, because, well, I’d been taking Racial Levels, and among those Levels was included a +8 Racial bonus to Intellect, +8 to Wisdom, and a colossal +20 to Charisma, superseding my Human +2. All these Caster and Psionic Levels I’d been taking would also be boosting me even further, once I got all of them to Four and higher.

So right now, it meant I had a 44 acting Intellect.

Just needed time, and a few merchant fleets worth of Karma. Levels aren’t cheap at Ten, unless you’re lining up Mu Spores and disposing of them for the greater glory of the Land...

Still, a 44 was quite literally impossible for a person made of normal physical matter, even virtua-enchanted with magic, ki, psi, and Essence. The number of connections in my head, the sharpness and depth of my memory, and the speed and precision of my analytical ability exceeded biological matter’s constraints. I was plugged into the Akasha, had my own little nook and corner of it where transpsionic constructs formed extensions of my mind to help with all the analytics, calculations, and whatnot of my mental state. The strength and speed of those constructs directly reflected my Wisdom and Charisma Stats, which were also mind-boggling at this point.

A lot of it was based on Succubi, of course. Succubi are natural Eternals, which means no memory cap. Unlimited amounts of data retention required memory to be something more than based in the brain. My hard drive was now my soul, which didn’t have physical matter limitations.

I hadn’t even used any Stat Enhancements to my mental Stats yet. Or physicals, for that matter, other than the +4 Str off my gloves, thanks bro, aunties...

This Akashic Link was why I hadn’t suddenly downloaded over 170+ points in Skill Ranks off the Akasha from Racial Levels and Intellect increases... I literally didn’t have anything I wanted to spend them on, so I’d blocked the transfer until I could make use of them.

Naturally, that also meant that when it was time, I’d only be able to gain a Rank a day from the banked points, but oh well. Better than buying Basket Weaving. I’d leave that to Corporal Ugamba, who really did make some awesome wicker baskets...

I’d only grabbed four Skills at 10 ranks: Psicraft, Knowledge: Psionic, Crystal Carving, and Autohypnosis, all four psi-centered, and Crystal Carving actually working with my Sagedom, yay, +3 more damage! The vast majority of psionic crafting involved crystals, and Gemcutter Ranks didn’t quite cut it when dealing with psi-active stuff like that.

A 44 Int meant some supercharged thought streams... eight of them. Finding things to think about was actually a chore. I had two pretty much on meditative idle all the time, while three were monitoring the Marktell, one was handling all the math and logistics, one was handling physical chores and sensory input, and one was dreaming/calculating the future/running scenarios, borrowing the idle two at times for more brainpower.

I didn’t like some of the things I was figuring out. There were gods involved, whose entire minds were ALL like my little invisible corner of the Akasha. They played at levels above what I could think at, sure... but with a 44, I had no problem seeing otherwise invisible patterns here and there, little hints magnified by my connection to the Akasha, tiny events taking on profound meetings as Fate and Chance did this and that and tripped my Hey-Yo meters as they did.

Briggs’ and the other Sources’ Declared Fate was throwing a lot of the immediate machinations of both Profound influences and the Divine meddlers into flux, which is what Sources did so well. But it was Nulls that locked down the changes, while Voids removed them from the equation entirely, a lethal game to play. The fact I could perceive the shadows of these things now, when every Void Brother could as a matter of course, said something about their sensitivity to this stuff.

Welcome to the world of Rank G and higher Forsaken, I guess...

But there was absolutely no doubt that having all these different forces smashing into one another mucked things up a lot. Still, the greater powers were playing a higher game, and the only way to fuck them up would be to do something outside and beyond their expectations. Forsaken were great at that, since we were so hard to perceive at work.

In short, I had to do something exceptional to screw these guys over. Oh, I could probably manipulate someone else into doing it, but their survival chances were much lower, and that just wasn’t how I thought.

Sacrifice myself? Maaaaaybe. But I was definitely, definitely going to rip someone a Glorious something somewhere.

I began spinning out more scenarios based on what all the forces out there could not see.

-Estemar,- I /sent out, getting his instant attention. -I need a favor from you when you’ve got the time. It’s not urgent-urgent, but I’d like you to allocate time to it when we have downtime. It can only be done by a Paladin, so I’ll swap out time for time. Don’t argue, just hear me out...-

-------------

More and more coordinated wings of stuff were coming our way, groups of ogres and giants in companies, trying to intercept us, divert us, herd us, trap us.

It was nice of them to try, and give us so much attention and Karma and vivus to feed the hungry Wake overhead.

Dragons and their progeny fell from the skies, died. Bellowing giants and ogres, ignoring the losses of those that had come before them, let out barrels worth of blood and guts, dotted the path behind us with yet more unwhite fires. Our route didn’t change much, and we were even likelier to change course and punch through the middle of a company than we were to avoid it.

If they’d been smarter, they would have realized that we wanted vivus to extend the Wake, and not presented themselves to us like that. They couldn’t stop us from going forward, and they couldn’t catch up with us on the ground. They couldn’t get within three hundred feet of us horizontally in the air, which really limited their missile fire options, and naturally we didn’t give a fig about the magic they were tearing up the marshes and swamps with. If the fliers weren’t on the ball, we could easily break cover, get them in the Stillflight, and down they’d come to meet their ends, just so we could limit the numbers annoying us up above.

As ever, I added to the gold tally we were letting by, leaving a record for the ages about how beneficent and self-sacrificing we all were. We were well into the thousands of goldweight by now...