The Power of Ten, Book Five: Versatile Wizardry

His whiny chortle didn’t have any effect on my work, I just let him exult in knowing something I didn’t know, and I totally failed to press him on the point.

He was dying to tell me, too, his Tails waving about in ever more agitation as I serenely forgot about what he had said. It totally amused the messenger Birds gathered around waiting for a bundle of Torches to be assembled so they could deliver them out to battle locations all around the fighting area at this point.

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I had burned a small mound of amethyst crystals down to nothing, and made over four thousand Torches for delivery all around the Breach. Thousands more square miles of Tainted ground and burning corpses could be set on vivic fire, driving the influence of the Dark back, while the slain Shades could be truly killed and not come back.

The vivic flames themselves were only a minor annoyance to the more powerful Shades, as unless they were absolutely covered in them they could be roasted for a very long time without dying. Their Commanders and Rulers could last basically indefinitely unless totally immersed somehow, which was unlikely to happen. Flight wasn’t unusual among the Shades, especially with a Domain active, and vivic wildfires couldn’t catch them if it was dark out and they could fly...

Whatever, it was now time for me to move on to the assembly of literally hundreds of different Beasts who had gathered to get themselves fixed up by me. Juiced Lesser Restorations, accented with Vivus and Holiness, could now even mend some difficult damage to the mind and soul, if not the permanent stuff. Permanent injuries were going to require my IV’s, which were a ways off, but I had let all the Beasts know I could do that in time, too.

A lot of them were amazed to find a Human here, and even more amazed to find one with such potent, alien Healing magic that went right after all their Tainted wounds and cleaned them right out. I had Lions and Panthers and Bears and Wolves and Foxes for patients, along with great Sloths and giant Mammoths, Deer and Raccoons and Badgers, Lizards and Snakes, and even Alligators, great Frogs, Toads, and Salamanders were represented, as well as assorted Avians, mostly birds of prey, but some fantastically-colored Swallows, Parrots, Gulls, Thrushes, Terns, Crows, and Jays were here, among other things.

There was a massive Robin among them, standing fifteen feet high, the orange on his chest burning like a sun, his back a mixture of white and gold. He was one of the experts in the use of Fire Magic who’d been targeted by the Shades, an ugly swathe of black scarring his burning breast and obviously causing him great pain.

He was extremely grateful when I first Burned out the contamination that was resisting his best efforts, then healed up his injury, leaving only an eye-catching golden scar across his feathers that he regarded with an appreciation for a unique style. The Avians tended to be the most vain about their appearances of all my patients, and the gold, silver, or pure white scars that were left behind after I healed them up were quite eye-catching, and so rather prized.

Winkle had been tended to by me a couple of times, his silver fur having bright golden lines cutting through it here and there where stinking Taint had tried to eat into him from powerful Shades taking swings at him or tossing things his way. They were eye-catching highlights which earned him a lot of attention from some of the female Foxes.

So, he was in my debt as much as this ornery golden-furred Saber-tooth Tiger with a nasty cut bisecting one eye was. The old bastard took it stoically as I cleansed the wound cutting across his eye, but he bounced to his feet and roared in alarm and agitation when I healed the cut across his eye and restored his sight, leaving only a silver highlight on his fur and inside the pupil itself to mark the injury.

His Roar of amazement blew me right off my feet, Winkle’s Tails zipping over to catch me in midair deftly and shield me from the main effect of the sound, while all the other powerful Beasts all looked annoyed or suppressed as the power of the Roar bore down on them.

The Diamond-Fang Saber-tooths were also an old and powerful Beast Lineage, and among the most physically dangerous of Flowing Silver’s subjects. But being able to beat up the Silver Foxes in a direct fight wasn’t going to help them catch one, or best a Fox in a true duel, as they’d found out in the past. When Winkle turned his sapphire eyes on the old fellow, the air hummed with tension, and the excited Smilodon calmed right on down rather quickly, realizing he’d almost harmed his own healer.

“Little Human Healer, it seems I owe my sight to you,” he rumbled way down at me as Winkle deposited me back on my feet. “I, Rendtooth the Mountain Mauler, will remember this favor!” he declared with great pomposity.

“Go kill a bunch more of the bastards, and set them burning in vivus, Elder!” I replied courteously. “Now get out of the way, I’ve got more patients!”

There were rumbles of discontent all around, and the aloof Smilodon just lifted his nose and turned away, nobody daring to say anything directly to him about wasting time.

He had a half-dozen other silver scars crossing his hide, too. He’d been out there fighting, and it showed.

Winkle just watched him go, huffing despite himself before laying his head back on his paws. “Old hairball,” he muttered, nobody missing the flick of a tufted ear catching the words. I just shook my head, but the Smilodon continued on his way.

“Nice catch with the Tails. It’s like you expected him to act like a kitten,” I murmured, as I zipped around the great jasper-coated Bison who had solemnly plodded up for treatment.

Even the old Buffalo listening in snorted at that observation. He was thirty feet at the shoulder, his curving horns gleaming like polished stone, and his ‘furry hide’ was harder than steel armor, rippling with Earth Magic. He had gouges and scars all over the place, and I began bombarding him with vivic Shards to purify the contamination before moving on to actually Healing his injuries. Some of the wounds went in a yard and more, only tangentially dealt with by his natural vitality, but he was so strong he’d walked all the way here without complaint.

“So, you think you’d get no benefit from Seeds?” Winkle finally tried again as I went about my business under the eyes of all the watching Beasts.

“Wellll...” I murmured, concentrating. “Do you have access to a pair of matched Fire and Cold Seeds?” I asked him.

He looked excited at having found a weakness in me. “I might be able to procure something, little Human,” he hinted gleefully.

“Well,” I murmured, as hissing streaks of radiance smashed into oozing wounds and began to Burn them free, “if they represent a source of Fire and Cold energy, they might Awaken my Secondary Bloodline early.”

He blinked. “Your... Secondary Bloodline?” he asked uncertainly.

“I have a Void Phoenix Secondary Bloodline, according to one of my sisters. Normally that would take me months to be able to activate. If it turned on early, then I could manifest Fire and Cold energy as Healing effects, which would double or triple the speed at which I could treat all my wounded patients here.”

Suddenly I had the attention of every single Beast there. They gazed at me, and then they turned their eyes on Winkle.

He yipped once, laughing at having been outmaneuvered. “A Fire and Frost Luan of the Shiningwing Emperor have hatched their chicks. The shells of the Eggs can serve as Elemental Seeds to the Beasts who are graced with them, bearing the blessing of the Luans themselves. If not the true essence of the Luan, they are a wonderful foundation for creatures of Fire and Ice to begin their climbs!”

“Ah, well. I don’t know the Shiningwing Emperor, and I certainly don’t have any leverage to request such a thing from Him,” I replied dismissively, continuing about my cleansing task without interruption. Some of the lighter injuries were already cleaned up, so I could start pounding some actual Healing magic into the wounds. Given how much Health these big fellows had, it was a good thing I had some massive amounts of Kickers on them as Holy energy did most of the heavy lifting, and my Spell Penetration clawed away at the natural Resistance they couldn’t really put down, which ate a good chunk of the Healing away.

I had to use repeated Cures, as fast-healing Vigor-type spells weren’t going to work here anywhere near as quickly. Really, as long as I mended up the worst of the injuries, the natural vitality of the Beasts would take care of the rest. Even if they were only receiving a tenth of the Healing effect with hundreds of Health in damage, just taking care of a hundred points or so with a dozen spells was enough for them to feel inestimably better, eliminating all the worst injuries that would build up and plague them over time.

“What effect would that have on your Healing?” Winkle asked me, curious now.

“Well, I’m a decent Healer, but nowhere as good as I am a Shardcaster, right?” He’d seen me Casting Shards, so he could only nod in agreement. “The biggest impediment to me being able to take care of you big louts is you have sooooo much natural Resistance.

“I don’t know what effect the Fire and Ice effect itself would have. But being able to go from using Cure Spells to Shards would instantly at least quadruple the amount of energy output I’d have. Furthermore, it’d be Burning the injuries clean and mending them at the same time, instead of taking different spells to do the same, so I’d be doing two things at the same time, instead of one after another.

“So, conservatively speaking, eight times as fast?” I hazarded, golden lights trailing Holy fires following me and sparking over the white mists falling like odd unwhite waterfalls from inside the massive Bison’s stalwart body. The big fellow shivered a couple times, his long tail swishing as the cool fires of the vivus percolated through him like a breath of fresh wind in his blood and lungs. “Or I could completely fix you all up, instead of just dealing with the worst things and forcing you to mend up the rest on your own.”

Repeated Spell was actually something of a real godsend here when I was repeating the same spells over and over, stacking on the Spell Penetration and helping me slowly punch through their natural Resistance. I was even able to eventually overcome a Commander’s natural Resistance completely if I Cast enough spells on them in a row, but that was in the neighborhood of twenty Cures and more to do so, each spell gradually becoming more and more effective. Once I did overcome it, I could make some real progress on their injuries, as Holy Healing magic really was totally awesome once it could have full effect, instead of a tenth or less.

Of course, all that meant I needed to Weird Metas down so I could stack them on the Cure Spells, which meant hundreds of rep counts needed over and over again, but hey, that’s why I wasn’t getting paid for all of this, really.

I was getting some sort of handle on the math behind everything here, watching and sensing the magic at work on the various creatures, their boosts and Biases/Affinities and Resistances.

There was a lot of doubling multipliers at work underneath their Elemental Biases, each tier of rank doubling the raw power of the one before, while each Class of Beast ranked up the magical power by a factor of ten!

I had no ‘normal’ Humans to compare to, but I was pretty sure a triple refinement of Stars was the standard, and my Soul Crystal treatments were ‘extras’. That meant if the Novice levels of Mage spells were a base 1, then the next Tiers were x2, then x4 power. The power then jumped tenfold after reaching Adept and 49 Stars, so the new Class of spells started at x40, went to x80, and finished ‘normally’ at x160 power.

Then it increased tenfold again at the Mage level, with its 343 Stars, for x1600 power, x3200, and x6400. Archmage Level multiplied that by ten once more, for a whopping 64,000 times the power of a beginner spell, and it only continued to go up...

The big thing here was there was no real ‘Caster Level’. Contested checks basically involved throwing Mana and damage multipliers at one another, and whoever had the highest number, won. So, a normal Beast tossing fire at a Sunbreasted Robin was not only not going to do any damage to the Robin, it was going to find its fire totally suppressed and overwhelmed.

The idea of striking at the fundamental core of a spell and unraveling it with a Contested Check was completely alien to the Beasts here, and I had to wonder if it was the same way with humans in the Mortal World.

As such, everything was Casting at what was a default ‘Caster Level’, the minimum level of control needed to do the job. Boosting far, far beyond that simply was something alien to them, as they could pour in the Mana regardless of a Caster Level, so it was ‘dumb’.

What it meant for me was... Counterspelling and Dispelling Magic was a hugely powerful technique here...