I Cast Force Armor, ramped up with Mana, and Shield the same way.

These were both Force effects, and so going off at CL9. I’d tested these out multiple ways as soon as I’d been able to replace them.

Force Armor was nominally a skin-tight +4 armor effect, like wearing a suit of light mail. The Mana energized this incredibly, and I was pretty sure added a damage ablation effect to it, even as the armor was increased to +6, closer to light plate. The nine-hour duration was unchanged, but the rigid defense hovering just above my skin promised a decent defense, at least.

Shield was a minute/CL defense, stacking on top of Force Armor by interposing a mostly-invisible shield of Force between me and any attacks, at least from any one direction at a time. Again, its +4 bonus was kicked up to +6, and increased rigidity came with it. The duration wasn’t much, but I could tie it off to my Wrath, a pulse of Electrum Rainbow going through it, and renew it as long as I wasn’t drawing on anything else.

Damn, this mage-Mana stuff was so damn useful...

In short, I should be working on a 25 or so Armor Class right now, which was pretty impressive for how tough I was. Spell Power boosts and universal applicability for the win!

If I could infuse a Warlock Ward Wall into my Shield, I wondered what that would do?

But this was fine, fine. Detect Magic I fed with a Mana point gave me a clear harmony with the local Manafield, and combined with Detect Shadow, first pointed me in the right general direction, and when I drew closer, rapidly narrowed it down. Devasight and Devilsight let me see through visual concealment and Shard the bastards down, while my newly enhanced speed and the Wind Trails got me there with amazing speed.

I needed to get many more rep counts in on Wind Trails! The thought made me smile, and I shook my head as I oriented on the next Shadow creature, heading for it as lightly and easily as a passing breeze.

---

A few hours of hunting later...

It was a Shadow-tainted giant Weasel or Ferret or Mink or something, and it was really fast. It was using the Shadow Magic to take on an immaterial form, flitting from shadow to shadow under the trees at even greater speed. It was nearly undetectable, looking for fights it could take or join in on from surprise, stalking and hunting living prey like an assassin.

It was not prepared to be hit in mid-transit by a full volley of Shards.

I didn’t have the boosts to my accuracy to trust my aim, even with touch attacks. The creatures here simply moved too quickly. The no-miss variant spell went off on this guy as I waited for him to pass by. He looked like a long, sinuous shadow winding between the trees, moving nearly as fast as me on a Wind Trail.

King Cloud Moon had informed me that traveling in shadow-form made the user very susceptible to physical damage or Light attacks, and Force attacks were already good at smacking incorporeals. Since the magic allowed it, I changed the Elemental side-effect of Shardcasting/2 to Light, and let fly.

It whipped its head around and bent as if boneless. If I’d been shooting via aim, I likely would have missed with at least half of the flaming missiles, just based on its reflexes.

Instead, the rainbow of glittering Shards, trailing all sorts of colors, followed right along with its dodge, slammed home, and bit in.

I instantly noted the level of its magical resistance here was much higher than my previous victims, who were all Tier 1 or 2. This guy was at the Third Tier, maybe close to the top of it, big and strong and fast and dangerous.

Unfortunately for it, sneak attacks worked both ways, and these Mana-boosted Shards were extremely dangerous!

I couldn’t aim them to get some extra sneak-attack damage, they just hit where they were going to hit. But this was Light magic against Shadow, Force magic against incorporeals and a vulnerable Shadow-form, and all of it was complemented with all sorts of supporting Fires of various types that simply piled on and tore the Weasel completely apart.

Burning chunks of fur and gore blew in all directions as it was ripped apart, startling me with how easily I did so. I’d been able to feel the greater Magic Resistance of the thing, trying to cancel out much of the damage of my spell... but my effective Caster Level seemed to be a whole Class higher than it was prepared to deal with, even if the pure volume of magic wasn’t that much better.

I watched it Burn, and the Soul Crystal coalesce as its spirit was refined by vivus in this Manafield, not allowing the Dark Plane to claim it.

Fundamentally equal to the dead Bat...

Being able to sense the rough direction of a Tainted target was extremely useful, and my hunting had only taken minutes of travel between single infiltrating targets. I could feel the Owl King watching me and the results of my hunting, impressed with how quickly and accurately I was taking stuff down.

These Mana-boosted Shards were insane, especially once I got four refinements of the Stars in place. Most notably, the effects of the Mana Kickers weren’t applying per Spell, they were spread out and applying by the Shard!

It was a huge amount of bonus damage spread out over the Shards when I was tossing out seven of the damn things, a literal rainbow of Force missiles! My Kickers, of vivus and Banefire and Holy damage, only accumulated to ‘per spell per target’. The Manafire effect, burning blue-white with Arcane energy, was per incidence of damage, and seemed to be like +2d6 per Shard or something...

It was a lot of bonus damage, and these things were definitely qualifying as ‘neo-Undead’ to me, their very nature changing with the magical energy they were imbued with.

I’d been saving all the Soul Crystals I could, using Raised and Boosted Prestidigitation to tan a section of a Corrupted Chipmunk’s fur and weave it into a purse, using its own tendons for the thread. It had only taken a couple dozen of the Crystals to refine all of my Stars in one go; I couldn’t imagine anything with such a useful function not having great value.

Moreover, when I sorted them by sub-tier, I had realized it had taken exactly twenty-eight ‘points’ of these crystals to upgrade my Stars, four to each, and now they didn’t seem to do anything.

But these were all Servant-level creatures, according to King Cloud Moon. It stood to reason that doing the same thing with the next Class of creatures, Warrior-level creatures, ones that were semi-sapient to begin with, would enable another round of boosting and refining to my Stars.

I fetched out a Crystal in my purse, and held it up.

It wasn’t any bigger than the egg-sized one I was holding onto, but there were sparkles inside it of compressed and refined spiritual power. I brought up Mana-boosted Wrath on my hands, and touched the two Crystals together.

Heavenly and arcane power, accented with electrum Holiness, black Banefire, and unwhite vivus, crawled over the Crystals, broke them down, and forced them together in my hands, boiling away the excess impurities involved.

One Crystal was left behind after a minute or two, now with forty-three points to it. I tapped it to my forehead, but there was nothing, although it seemed close.

I eyed my seven Stars, and wondered if forty-nine ‘points’ was what I was looking for, or what.

King Cloud Moon had told me that the next Class of Human magic graduated from Novices to Adepts, where they had to break through the limitations of their own internal world of magic, turning their seven Stars of a Starcloud into the seven sets of seven Stars of a Starfield.

The total energy output of those Adept spells would be somewhere between seven and ten times stronger than having merely seven Stars. Of course, all those Stars then had to be treated, triple-refined, and then filled with Mana. After that, they had to be properly connected to one another, and the difficulty of that could only be imagined if you didn’t have a guide to do so. I could only imagine that there must have been some gifted freaks who lucked into the correct patterns, and wisely dispersed them so they wouldn’t be lost.

I also wondered if most Humans could Tier up their Stars as effectively as I was. I had my suspicions on it being no...

-------

Three kills later...

There was a trio of Shades traveling together, the residual smell of blood about them indicating they’d fought something and won. They were in spiked armor, bearing toothy clubs and axes, clearly out to enjoy themselves.

I wasn’t taking any chances, and blew the first one apart. Completely undaunted, the second pair shifted to shadow-forms and charged me, but my pre-set Wind Trails allowed me to out-distance them enough for the second flight of Radiant Shards, to be split between the two of them, four to each of them. My rough guestimation of damage was something like 16d6+18 damage each...

Charging at me as they were, they didn’t dodge, and four Boosted Shards proved to be enough to destroy the both of them.

Sludgy bits and pieces of Shadow material burned vivic on the leaf-strewn ground, the armor and weapons flaming like their excuse for flesh and bone was. I grabbed up the trio of Crystals with TK, melted them into my Egg, and lo, there it was. My Stars hummed in expectation, and the Crystal settled into an idealized internal structure, plainly not going to accept any more.

I would probably have to merge seven of these together to create the next Tier of crystals, which I promptly dubbed a Soul Gem in proper ranking fashion for these things. A Commander-level prize, probably...

Each of these Eggs required forty-nine ‘points’ of kills. I’d need seven of them, so 343 ‘points’ to get to the next tier, for just one set of seven Stars.

If I broke through to the next Class, then I was probably going to have to repeat this feat for six more sets of Stars. If I rose one more Class again, multiply by another seven?

That... was a lot of points, and a lot of creatures to kill.

It was an excuse to grind, and I had a whole dimensional incursion here to grind on. I considered why I had been dropped here, and conjectured that Mithar was fucking showing off His pre-planning aspect again.

Nobody was going to care that I was clearing off tens of thousands of undead, Fiends, or Tainted Beasts to do this. It was turning an invasive and aggressive attack by otherplanars into proper nourishment and a resource to harvest.

I was barely able to agglomerate these Crystals, so it was probably working on a Caster Level of 10 or so to accomplish it. I was pretty sure the Gem-level Soul Crystals would require a 15.

I could get there, without any doubt whatsoever. If I’d’ve taken Warlock Masteries with my Human/4, I could be another Caster Level higher today, but I wanted my Metas.

Time. I needed more time, and Karma, and the other stuff. I glanced at Zeben, gleaming with his Naming Karma for the day, and just shook my head...

=======

Fae

Female* Human/4

Vizard/3**; Wizard/1; Sorcerer/1 (Arcane Sage); Ur-Priest/1;

Theurge: Eldritch/1 (Sorc, Warlock); Arcane (Wiz/Sorc)

Strength (10): 8*

Dexterity (16): 16

Constitution (16): 18*

Intellect (18): 22 (24)

Wisdom (14): 16

Charisma (14): 16

---

Height: 5'5" Weight: 95 lbs. Hair: White (Sylune's Grace) Eyes: Silver (Warlock Sign, Blue) Age: 15

Health: 44

Soak: 36

Movement: 45’

Talent: Naturally Focused

Acquired Powers: Fire Template; Cold Template; Affinity for Fire and Cold Magic (1%/1%); Sylune’s Grace; Master Archtheurge Incarnation

Skill Points: 80 (0 Unallocated)

Paid Masteries: 19/36 possible

Paid Feats: 12/12 possible

Traits: 6 (Complete)

Favored Class Points: 24 (0 unallocated)

Mark: +1 (2) Sacred bonus to Intellect

Wrath: +2d6+4

Aegis: 10 vs. Acid, Lightning, Radiance (5 x Wrath Ranking)

Stars: 6 x 4 (28 Mana), 1 x 5 (35 Mana)

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