Briggs pulled out Beat with a screech of protesting metal, and his Hammer thumped in happiness. Behind the impassive surface of his mask, Briggs sighed to himself.

His Oath was discharged! It was a both a huge wave of accomplishment washing over him, and a knot of tension released. Dingdingding... Quest Karma coming in, Glory Award on the way...

In truth, he didn’t really care about this fight. Beating on cyborgs had lost its allure, although the satisfaction of crushing machines stuck with him. It was just, since Sama had come, his eyes had turned to bigger and better things.

There was a Warpzone out there filled with creatures who basically existed to be killed... in both his eyes and in the eyes of the deities of the Warp, and the Gods of Creation.

And he just so happened to be in need of a lot of Karma for them Rantha Hagspawn Levels.

He grunted as he stepped away from Maunat with a casual salute. Sure, the cyborg was going to resent him, all those he’d beaten had... but it didn’t matter. He would go through what ceremony there was, grasp the trophy, and in a week, drop out of the League and go on to other things... probably shocking the hell out of a lot of people, especially the sponsors eager to throw money at him for endorsements.

Sama should be back from her big run by then. They could celebrate together, then suit up, and do what they needed to do.

Grind!

============

I came sweeping in from the south, wingskating over the ground.

Flying would have doubled my speed and more, but would have completely obviated the reason I was doing this. I had used this long period of running something close to twenty thousand miles on foot to really work on my lightfoot.

My Mark IV Vajra was deep and thick, enough to defy the Warp, but anything that extended past the four inches outside my skin was beyond its protection, and invited some severe consequences.

Therefore, the solution was to extend my skin... of which a person’s hair is a part of.

The Wings that I could bring up in all their ectoplasmic glory out of my Tats were almost nine feet long, giving me a wingspan of exactly three times my height. Thus, all I had to do was weave my hair into the wings, and they were perfectly safe from Warp interference.

The same went true for the Tails I brought up. Weave my hair into them, and they were perfectly viable. All of them were as long as I was tall, but could snap out to twice that distance on the attack, meaning my hair had to be fifteen or so feet long to accommodate them. Fast Healing was good for multiple things, as it turned out, and being able to Compress my hair was a freaking godsend. I mean, there’s goddess hair, and then there was the freaking carpet extending off my head...

The Waveskating Steps, fluid and pure lightfoot that worked on any terrain; Rising and Racing Winds, the fastest, freest, and lightest; Hotfoot, the lightfoot of the chase; and Moon Walker misdirective and elusive lightfoot. Wed them all to Cloudstepping Sandals, overfunding the ki, and use Phoenix Wings for propulsion while skimming across the ground... yeah, okay, it was damn fun skimming the ground at 100 mph like some flatland skier, wings spread out to the side and shining with Vajra power driving me forwards steadily, while my Vajra parted the air frictionlessly to get rid of air resistance.

There was nothing moving overland that could catch me, nor could most of the things that were flying. The things that were flying got their own surprises.

The Cloudstepping Sandals from my Tats took care of lift. The Phoenix Wings could take care of propulsion... but the main thing they were designed to do was Cloak me in an aura of flames designed to burn anything nearby, like, oh, swarms, or oozes trying to envelop me, or basically anything trying to pile on me.

Well, I was wearing shin guards, which weren’t really designed as armor. They were compressed jets.

I didn’t wear footwear because of my lightfoot, and the fact my soles were tougher than steel and cleaner than shoes, anyways. Shinguards were a luxury, as they contributed nothing to my armor with my Nog Goldskin. But, I could plug the jets into the microfusion generator in my Masspack, and suddenly have rocket propulsion.

If I channeled the flames from my Phoenix Cloak into them, they were even faster!

Way far away from anyone watching, I had spent significant airtime with this. This kind of tactic would absolutely not work for someone else not in power armor, because the sheer force of the jets would rip off a normal person’s legs with the slightest imbalance or conflict in force vectors between the jets, or send them into uncontrollable death spirals.

With a Might of 56ish, it was not a problem for me. I could leg press over thirty tons, so keeping a pair of fusion-powered jets molded to my ankles wasn’t an issue. I was immune to the heat, too, so it didn’t matter how hot they burned, and as long as they were close to me, they shared in my Vajra’s fire resistance, meaning they basically didn’t get hot or overheat, and could be run overclocked without an issue.

Technology can be a whole lot of fun, and when you can meld it with ki, Essence, Soul and magic, well, DAMN FUN isn’t a bad way to describe things...

---

Vanguard Base was up and hopping.

The key thing was naturally getting up a field to keep out the alkaline dust, and give people a place to rest and recover, and store their shit. It was on the very edge of the plateau, just before technology konked out, so a careful flier could come in at a landing zone a safe distance away to shuttle people back and forth.

They had started building it when two Vanguard teams reached it. Now they were up to five, and keeping the area within fifty miles busily clear of stuff, clearing out passes and canyons and mountainsides of nasty surprises, while shuttling team members in and out (and their nexals and valuable body part trophies).

Of course, there wasn’t enough activity on just this one stretch for five teams, so they were both taking turns and working on expanding the zone temporarily. Naturally, the key thing they were waiting for was for me to come back, and Briggs and I had to spearhead what was past the wall.

Once we had that, the vanguard teams were going to follow, and the grind would begin.

I skimmed in close to the edge of the zone, and finally linked up with my lived-line where I started the whole trip. I surveyed the local barrier closely, and turned back to Vanguard Base, hauling a Disk piled with valuable stuff. I had made caches of my winnings in places marked on the Map, for recovery if and when we ever zoomed out that way... and since they included Sand Wurm teeth and bunches of nexals, were worth the trip.

The teams whooped and cheered to see me coming in, having seen me streak past along the border zone and quickly hoofing it back to the base to greet me when I returned. I waved at all of them as I skated on in, wings flaring to brake me smoothly before dissipating into ectoplasm.

Briggs was waiting there, too. I met his pale violet eyes and smiled toothily, as I’d kept him quite happy with Emma while I was gone, and we’d talked over what should be done when it came time.

Our only regret at this point was not having a Void Brother along. With one, we could have punched a permanent hole into this zone and let reality in. Without one, we could make a hole, but reality would not be able to expand beyond the path we made, and we’d have to give it some reinforcement to endure.

Still, something was better than nothing.

Being quite fair, Briggs had done the same as everyone else, and walked to Vanguard Base, albeit alone and non-stop, save for minor entertainment along the way. He had also picked a nominally impassable route to get there, and boy, did he disturb a bunch of things on the way that thought little two-legs couldn’t get there.

While his Power Armor was intact, most of the offensive systems had been stowed in his Masspack, simply because they wouldn’t be too useful here. He had been reinforcing the thing with psionic circuitry for some time, to make sure the base defenses and strength enhancements worked here, and his plasma horn would work even in a low-tech zone now, albeit requiring a considerable amount of time to charge up.

Beat, of course, wouldn’t be affected at all, nor his Shield, Drum.

Of course, if we did enter an area where tech worked, he could bring out some hefty firepower, although he was going to be largely energy-based, as we didn’t have unlimited ammunition for the heavy firepower, and would have to hoard any explosives we did bring along... or make Runebombs of our own, hehehe...

My resting consisted of off-loading my spoils, grabbing some consumables and raw materials I might need, eating my celebratory cake for being the first fool to circumnavigate the whole damn continent on foot, and then trotting with Briggs towards our destiny, while a whole lotta people were looking out my eyes in anticipation.

------

We drove a stake into the ground, hooked a cable to it, and faced the ephemeral, roiling wall of sand and dimensional chaff starting about ten feet away from us.

The cable was so we arrived at the same spot in case some opportunistic force decided to try and separate us. It probably wasn’t going to happen, but those who followed us wanted to follow us, not be sent all over the place.

Don’t let hackneyed plotting separate you, was our motto.

Briggs blew his Interdiction first, slamming the burning edge of his Source field into the mess, driving it in and back visibly, clearing up the view some as dimensions hardened instead of fluxed, and my Interdiction followed to solidify the whole thing in place and keep it that way.

The collection of Warped mutants waiting on the other side there looked properly astonished when that happened, obviously not expecting anything to come from this direction. They looked very much the worse for the wear, and as various frog heads, goat heads, sheep heads, cow heads, dog heads, rat heads and various worse things looked our way, Briggs and I shared a glance, and charged ahead.

Creatures instinctively react in fear to two things: size/strength, and speed. That which is big and powerful, and that which is fast.

Briggs and I came in fast. Actually, the Vanguard teams waiting behind us hooted and ranged out ahead for those who had slugthrowers, as the mutants ahead of us opened up with crude guns with large bores and horrible aim.

I went golden, Briggs just did his thing, and a few .60+ caliber rounds rang off our armor as we closed in, the DR backing it meaning we ended up being just shy of totally invulnerable to what they were shooting.

Their big guys grabbed massive direaxes and direswords in the demonic patterns, jagged, spikey things so unbalanced there was no way they could possibly be wielded, and yet they were swung with vim and vigor as they charged to meet us.

Sun Shots zipped past us even before we met, sending shooters twisting and falling as their chests were blown apart. Some of the brutes in the way inherited glowing rounds and went falling as limbs or lots of blood went spraying.

My Arakne Arms folded out to take Faith, my Tails grew in eyeblinks of whipping motion, riding high as Banefire spikes spun to take aim, Paten was in my off-Arakne hand, and Chalice flowed into her full Sword form, not merely a Focus, as I came in behind a burning wall of point-blank missile fire.

Oh, oh, this felt so cathartic...