The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

“Uhhh...” Darren looked at his daughter in dismay. “I mean... Samantha, you’re ten years old.”

“I’m as physically fit as any hyn alive, and I can make Four at any time. If I can hit Five, these bastards don’t really stand a chance.” She glanced at him calmly. “Papa, I have never showed this side of me to you, but I am a very dangerous person, and this kind of thing is what I was literally born to do. I did not want it to come now, I wanted to wait until things progressed, and enjoy my non-violent time while I could... but I will not allow these things to harm my family, and I’m not going to just run away.

“They are either killing people and eating them, Papa, or they are stripping the freshly dead of meat. They are already going to die; it just matters who is going to kill them... and that person seems to have been decided as me.”

“The idea of letting my daughter go off to fight these things...”

“Don’t pull a manly man thing on me,” she instantly huffed back at him. “This is not killing skulkers and lone werewolves who don’t have any idea you are around. This will be a group fight, where you won’t be able to run far enough and fast enough, and they will have numbers and magic on their side. If they catch you, you will die, and I cannot cover for you.”

“Are you saying they can’t catch you?” he had to rebut.

“I can outrun Chomps in a straight line. What do you think?” she shot back.

His mouth dropped open. “I... think that is very impressive?” he had to say, looking at the dog, who just grinned back at him. “What about food, water?”

“I will take yours, and cache it. I only need a third the amount of a normal person.”

“I’ve seen you eat!” he protested, half-smiling despite himself. Her bottomless gullet was a family legend.

“You haven’t seen how many calories I burn a day, either,” she replied.

Darren was about to say something, then did some really basic math. She ate all the bloody time, so many calories and so much food, but only needed a third the amount...

His lips pursed. Just how much goddamn work did his little girl put in over a day? She was up to all hours and got up even earlier than he did...

“Papa,” she interrupted his thoughts. “I can do this, and I will do this. You need to go home, warn the family, and prepare them. Assume at this time that there is no way we can stay on the farm long-term. Take the body of the girl and burn it to ash. I am going to take the body of the man and prop him up inside here, just to draw them in. When they leave, I am going to follow them, and if they take the meat, I am going to kill all of them.”

The only beings allowed to eat human corpses were ghouls that had been licensed by and attached to a funeral home. Being eaten by a ghoul was absolutely enough to prevent one from rising as an undead, and the ghouls were contracted to grind up the bones and make sure no necromancy could Animate even those.

As it legitimized their existences and gave them a constant food supply, the ghouls lucky enough to get into such a position defended it strongly... which hardly meant they didn’t consider getting even more food, and virtually inevitably would attempt to do so, meaning they would get replaced fairly often.

The exception to that were Leng Ghouls, who would hold scrupulously to their contracts.

There were a lot of creatures that enjoyed human flesh, and a number of were-creatures were among them. Consuming human flesh was instant grounds for death for any of those species, much as they might think otherwise, and even trading in human flesh was worth a bullet in the head from most folks, as it catered to the appetites of those creatures.

Nevertheless, it went on. It was an easy source of revenue for funeral homes, especially if they were cremating the body... no need for the meat to go to waste, and there were certainly creatures that would pay well for it.

Thoughts of the rest of the family seemed to have the desired effect on her father, moving him away from the valiant father protecting the daughter who didn’t need it, to the rest of the family that did.

“Okay, let’s put him inside, then.” The corpse was currently draped over Kingly’s saddle, tied in place. The horse certainly didn’t mind being lightened of the load.

---

They propped him up in the driver’s seat, Sama on the feet and her father on the arms, setting the severed head on its lap, half-transformed and staring ahead in total disbelief that such a fate could befall a mighty werewolf like him.

Darren eyed the rifle in its mount, and Sama just shook her head. She did, however, pull the box of silver ammo out of the glove compartment, and handed it to him. He took it and stashed it away.

“Is there anything else you want?” he asked rather helplessly.

“For you to get home and set things in motion as fast as possible, Papa,” she replied firmly, keeping his eyes without effort. He slowly nodded, trying to come to terms with exactly how dangerous his daughter really was, and swung up on his horse. Kingly nickered inquiringly. “Follow Papa, you’re heading home, too.” The spirited mustang waited as her father spun around, and then flicked Yucca’s reins.

Knowing exactly where they were going, Yucca took the lead, breaking into a trot that would see them home inside two hours.

-------

Sama watched them go, sighing, until they disappeared from sight along the trail. She then turned her attention back to the truck, a grim and dangerous light coming on in her eyes.

Ten years of silent, solo training. Staying away from conflicts that could reveal how dangerous she was, except for teaching her siblings how to fight. They could all shoot, they could all use a knife or a stick. When it came time for their mandatory military service, they’d be pretty well-prepared.

Training, training, training...

Sometimes, it had been as simple as sitting out in the woods, paying attention to everything, on so many levels, remembering where stuff was, training up her Visual File to record and remember. Sometimes it had been ghosting through those woods, playing hunting games with the dogs and cats and local wildlife.

Sometimes it had been hours of meditation, getting her ki circulating through her in multiple patterns and pathways, building it up to support her Vajra. At others, hours of smithing or craftwork, starting with carving wooden Implements for junior Casters, later graduating to QL 26 and even higher Staves, Batons, Rods, and Scepters for them.

Practice, practice, practice; getting in the Skill Focus, Affinity, and Training bonuses; the Masteries to /2; add in Discipline in Training from her Melee Levels, and the crafting bonus for being an Artificer. Even with only three active Ranks, with the Class bonus and her +4 bonus from Intelligence, she’d been able to reach a +22... and that was before the +6 combined bonuses of her Tools.

+22 meant she could make something at QL 32. A Zeks-Slot item was incredibly valuable, and when she had offered up increasingly well-made Implements at auction, the gold had begun to flow in.

Dwarves had a racial bonus for working with metal that other races couldn’t match, always giving them an edge in the Quality Levels that defined everything that dealt with magic. Elves, despite all their natural affinity, didn’t have a similar bonus with wood, and instead relied on the fact some of them could get to Eight to have an edge.

However, nothing she had discovered indicated they could Assay themselves truly properly, or had the system of Leveling and Karma and training and everything all worked out. Oh, magically, yeah, they had it down, and Levels and Classes they were mostly clear with. But the ephemeral, hard to measure and sort aspects of Feats and Masteries and Skills and training them properly were a bit harder to ascertain and actually build upon properly.

Ten years of silent, steady training. She’d sold her first Implement when she was four, carving up a Masterwork Wand and selling it online with her mother. The payment in gold coins was promptly reinvested into better raw materials for more crafting, and slowly but surely, she had crafted her way into ever-increasing amounts of money.

Her mother knew she was a prodigy, and hadn’t told her father, because she was also making plenty of money for him the traditional way. Sama had laid out what she was trying to do to her mother, noted the amount of money involved, and how it just kept going up. If her father learned about it, he’d either want to stop her spending so much money on stuff, or grab a chunk for himself, slowing down the process.

A pound of gold, a hundred coins, was thirty thousand dollars. The most basic magical Weapon required a minimum of ten of those, if made by a Powered, which made up two goldweight... Four, if Invested by a Primos inefficiently.

If made by a Forsaken, it required one third of the final value, if you had the relevant crafting skill. Instead of being made up by a minor amount of Karma by the Powered, it was made up of the skill of the Craftsman.

She could turn a goldweight of raw material into three goldweight of a magical item, given the time to Craft it.

But there was a limit on this, based on Quality Level. The Crafting limit was +100 gold pieces per QL over 20, cumulative.

This meant that a QL 23 Weapon she made was worth 600 gp towards the 1000 gp a Powered needed to make it magical, or the 2000 gp a Primos needed; it cost her 200 gp in raw materials, and her time. The rest would be made up by the recipient, but it meant 400 gp, $120,000 in pure profit, for being one of the people in the world capable of making an item by hand in the proper way and QL.

It was ridiculous in dollars, which was why goldweight was used as the standard for magical stuff. A hundred and twenty thousand dollars was a lot of money... but it wasn’t even a goldweight.

A QL 27 Weapon from her was 2300 gp in Value, just over four and a half goldweight, and straight-up magical when she was finished crafting it. Three goldweight of profit, four hundred and fifty grand.

The only thing required had been to shrink her time required, effectively upping her GP/hour. Starting off with basically Masterwork items with a +15 modifier was a whopping 30 gold of work completed per week, taking weeks to complete even a basic item. Getting Shaping Tools, a Floating Forge, a Silent Anvil, and a full alchemical lab had added modifiers to her speed; first merely stacking +2’s helping to speed things up, and then straight-up cutting times in half, to a third, then a quarter normal.

Those would only improve, with Levels and time, meaning she could make money faster and faster.

It meant, among other things, that she actually did have a true Weapon.

It was time, after all, much as she might like the casual bliss of a rural life on a farm to go on.

“Tremble,” she murmured, and the Runes on the short sword lit up as she injected two Ki into it.

At the same time, she mentally clicked over two levers in her mind. She didn’t have a lot of floating Karma, after all; it was mostly directly applied to the Classes involved as she trained and practiced and whatnot.

But this was stuff assigned a long time ago, for the most part, just waiting for her to take it... years before any normal human being would bother to.

She’d been a Null at birth. Doing things years ahead of time was like a thing now.

Her Melee/4 Level clicked over, as did her Human/2. +1 Inherent bonus to Con, thank you...

Yes, she knew that her Human Level was going to get flushed into those Rantha Racial Levels when they came. It didn’t matter. She needed some skill points right now, and more Health.

Human/2 was the Obsession Level, where your drive to excel and dominate hopefully spurred you on to bigger and greater things... reaching Seven, and taking Human/3.

She already had the obsession with regaining the strength her granted memories told her she’d had, and she’d had years to dream of getting it. So not a problem to take that first step.