My Weapons were floating all around as I went through the final quenching on the Blade. Elder Arg had taken less than eight hours of work to complete this, and I had been his assistant the whole time, adding in another eight hours of my own to give it a foundation. He watched carefully as I worked, knowing that my actual Crafting Skill was higher, I just couldn’t form the magical foundations that he could... yet.

He hadn’t actually Empowered anything, that would have been a waste of all our times. Instead, he had worked on all the Weapons, and we’d leave it up to Naming Karma to do the work.

Soulfire, flame, acid, lightning, even vibrational sonics rippled through the blade. The orichalcum was displaying the effects of sanguinal, a weird alchemical alloy with a very specific use... it entered bodyphase with the flesh of the person whose blood it was made with, meaning it passed through them harmlessly.

To grab this Sword right now, I actually had to grip it with my Vajra, which was nothing. But withdraw the effect, and it would slide right through me.

Or, you know, it could actually sit inside me harmlessly.

There was a ripple as the psionic matrices Elder Arg had formed rippled, waiting to be filled, connecting up as he guided me mentally and I did the work in the proper order. The magical side of things I handled without a problem, and as the quenching finished, I lifted up the sword, a darker copper and black, gold-limned equivalent to Tremble and Quaver’s silver/gold and silver/black, respectively.

“Your name will be Chalice,” I said calmly and gave the metal a kiss. Magic swirled lightly, and the Sword was Named, carved into the essence of magic like stone, a smith-forged Truename.

All my Weapons and Shield hummed in greeting. Chalice wasn’t Intelligent yet, but her Name was there, and this was the equivalent of watching a baby getting born to my Weapons. Even Sparky was watching in great interest from inside the Tail...

All Weapons were limited to a gain of 1000 Karma a day, barring someone Legendary like Elder Arg, able to Infuse vast amounts. As a Battlesmith, I could pour Naming Karma into two of my own creations per day, generally one Weapon and one Armor or Shield.

However, Intelligent Weapons could generate their own Name Karma, if they could wield themselves. All of my Weapons had Flying, and so could zip about on their own, and use my base AB to attack with. However, they didn’t get any of my Dex, Strength, skill, Class, Mastery, or Feat bonuses. So, Fall, Stand, Quaver, and Tremble attacking stuff was much less effective than them working in concert with me. They were Tools; they were meant to be wielded and used.

They were also still limited to Name Karma per day; it’s just they were building their own Name, instead of me doing so.

This was important, because I had a lot of work to get Chalice’s foundation built up, which meant I wouldn’t be able to wield all of them for the next six months. I could vary the Naming Karma off, and I could sit down and do eight hours of Investing, but there were a lot of Weapons to improve.

Nine days of foundational Karma would make them Manifesting Weapons, able to generate five points of psi a day.

Thirty-five days of foundational Karma would make them Psychic Weapons, giving them an Enhancement bonus dependant on the Psychic Reserve of their wielders. As Forsaken couldn’t spend Psi, it basically meant we were always topped off on the Reserve.

But if they wielded themselves, that meant they were still going to be +II... which would stack with Soulbound, or replace it if they were not wielded, leaving them just as strong if I wasn’t around to power them all up.

It also meant that they could grow other psionic-based effects, giving them alternate Arsenal effects to work on... and Armory, possibly.

Being made a Psychic Weapon also meant that when they finished, they’d be effective Seventeens in Item form, giving them potential Skill Ranks at that level. They were already talking amongst themselves about who would take what key Skills, so they didn’t overlap.

Quaver would be harmonizing with Stand for anything important, and to get her Naming Karma, but I’d be wielding Chalice at other times, and then burning goldweight for Stand and my Tail.

Right now Chalice was just +II, Soulbound Bane/Humans. I had a LOT of work to do with her. It was going to take thirty-five days to get Psychic Weapon active, which gave me plenty of time to get Psion and Psi-Warrior Levels up. With my Stats, taking the Theurgy and getting one of them to Ten would be enough to top off Psychic Weapon to +V, and then I could start on opening Slots and powering them up.

With psionic power, instead of magic. With my Vajra being what it was, it wouldn’t be hard.

---------

Wayfair cut open a gap in space with Tremble, and Elder Arg, shrunken down to the size of a chimp, followed her through, going back to Monkey High via a shortcut through the Astral Plane.

Quaver hummed as she synched up with Stand. Stand’s whisper rising to a thrum grew more distinct as she did.

I looked at Briggs and AA, who just looked back at me, waiting. His presence was an ominous dissuader to our Jotun thralls, keeping them in line even if Wayfair wasn’t here. He had been helping out with the Leatherworking, having taken Ranks to see what all the fuss was about, and ended up being one of the primary Crafters of dragonhide equipment.

Briggs, of course, had helped out with the QL upgrades, tirelessly refining stuff for everyone. Fully set up, he was almost as fast as Elder Arg!

“Ready to go Wake up that Hole?” I asked the two of them.

Briggs, now fully six-foot-six and looking bigger than the burly, thick-boned AA who was about as tall as him, stretched out, muscles popping in a disturbingly sexy rhythm. “Damn right. We’ve got six months or so of grinding to do. Let’s be about it properly.”

Ancientaxe nodded. “Lots of Levels to gain. Psion and Caster, in addition to all the other stuff... my Brothers are cursing you for giving them so much to work towards.” His tusked grin was broad and knowing.

“Better than being bored and not knowing what the future holds,” I quipped back without pause. “Shall we?”

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

We left the giants to their own devices. If sufficiently ruthless, yeah, we could have killed them. We didn’t know what their fate would be when the Shardzone collapsed and time synched back up, and the massive area distortion all went away.

It probably wouldn’t be good. It was more than likely most things in the Shardzone would be hurled into Dream, to some other plane, or just eroded away as the time that had been concentrated here collapsed, was sucked away, and their lives with it.

We weren’t ruthless, killing those that had surrendered. However, knowing that most of them were going to die anyways meant that we could wait them out... but that would just be a waste of massive Karma. We could get in some good fighting experience, tons of loot, and we needed the Karma. So, if they were going to die... AND they wanted to fight, give them a fight!

First zone holewards was naturally the undead. The Obelisk here was already down, of course, but there were still plenty of strong undead who really needed to be laid to rest.

Brother Bonescythe was already at work here, and had actually done most of the work. What he did was set them up for us, drawing out a long line of undead, and the three of us rampaged through nigh-on fifty miles of undead nonstop, working our way towards where he was slowly and methodically grinding them down as they marched on him under the guidance of the last of the intelligent unliving.

They weren’t happy to see us coming up a newly-white road behind them...

------

“Wow! That is an inspirational poison!” I exclaimed, savoring the Pseudo-wyvern’s venom as it coursed down my throat. The normal stuff hit the constitution, creating widespread cell death and organ damage. This stuff from Outside Creation was even nastier.

“Well, that’s a given,” AA admitted, salvaging skulls. Powerful skulls saved a lot of time making Baneskulls. Resource Management 101! Aberrant and Dragon together? Yes, please! The fewer someone had to carry, the better! “What makes it so nice?”

“It’s trying to break apart the molecules, like a spatial acid, bringing false Laws along with it to bend and twist bonds. It’s like an organic disintegration effect!” I had to store it in Eplumbum just so it wouldn’t react with the container, and poison the metal!

“Sounds like it would work on just about anything.” His tone was thoughtful. Brothers were about killing stuff, not dueling honorably, after all. They had a formidable knowledge of poisons to do the job.

“It would. Replicating it from inside Creation would be something for Elder Arg to work out at this point.” The big ape didn’t have much interest in poisons, other than getting rid of them. Still, it made a nice reference point for future research. Couldn’t have a legendary quality alchemy lab without some really weird shit in it, after all...

Briggs was heaping the loot under the altar onto Haul’s container shell, joining a lot of random stuff we’d been scooping up. The naga and ophidians here seemed to like their jewelry, so we’d picked up quite a bit of it for later Burning. We would actually have melted a lot of it down, except that would have destroyed a lot of its value, so many tail-and-armbands were filling up space, stirred around a few times so the coins, beads, chains, and gems could settle between them. We mostly Burned magic Weapons during our down time, cutting down on the bulk, and nobody wanted to use a wavy-headed serpent’s-tongue Spear except a serpent man, anyways.

As for these minor Obelisks, it wasn’t a worry, as we could actually pull them down ourselves, Briggs whacking on the foundation, AA and I playing tug of war on the top. Wayfair didn’t have to stop in just for those.

AA was pretty relaxed. It was no wonder, compared to the last time he’d been doing the whole murderhobos thing.

Twelve hundred days the Brotherhood had spent running around in here. However, they had been much, much weaker when they’d started out. AA had been a 10/6 Melee Scout, with some Assassin and Ranger Levels thrown in, a fairly standard set of skills for a Void Brother. He hadn’t had any Voidbound Gear, nothing of superlative quality, and in addition, all of them had been going through the Heavy Gravity Training, two and a half years of ever-increasing gravity and slow, steady healing to offset it, making them 5g heavy grav worlders.

They hadn’t had the skills or Gear to take on truly powerful foes, yet their objective had been enough Karma to Level, to advance the Name of their Weapon, and gold enough to build up more Gear.

The heavy gravity had made it feel like they were barely making progress, forcing them to grit their teeth, advance their skills, pick their targets, build further and faster. And as their Gear improved, as their Vajra bloomed, and those precious Levels finally started coming, they started being able to kill faster, cleaner, more surely. They could advance into crowds without fear, and slaughter where once they had to run.

It was a slow and gradual process, until they came to tipping points, where suddenly all the minor chaff died with one hit, the tough stuff in two, and only the really dangerous things took three or more hits.

From then on, it was like hitting their stride, and working the kinks out of the system. Only, it had taken a long ass painful time to get there.

Once they took the Belts off... well, the world suddenly became a very easy place to move around in, indeed. Their final six months had been quite fun in their own way indeed, and this, this was even smoother.

Four hundred and fifty miles away from us loomed the hole at the center of Yle Tyorm, the pit which was probably the cause of the Doom that had seized Yle Tyorm... and which we were going to reach, hopefully to cut it off from this fallen realm forever.