“Perhaps. It might even need to be a fully Enchanted Scarab. The mana demands for Scarabs are pretty hefty for VII’s, let alone VIII’s, and there’s ongoing changes and modifications going on with the manafield still, the mages are noticing as they Cast. For instance, VI’s have greater range than V’s, as well as more damage, and seem to have more Spell Penetration power.”

  “And there’d be even more with VIII’s,” Princess Kristie nodded understanding. “Enchanting a permanent Scarab? That sounds like a great idea for people who suddenly lucked into almost unlimited funding. Only need one Scarab for the rest of your life of any particular type sounds like a pretty good deal to me. What do you think the price of such a thing would be?”

  “Wondrous Item, Valance times Caster Level times a thousand, plus fifty times the cost of the Scarab’s base price.”

  “So, ridiculously expensive and taking way too long to make each one.”

  “I believe the Caster Level would also be the limit of the spell you could Cast with it, so if you’ve a Silver Scarab and don’t keep boosting the Caster Level inherent to it, you’re only going to be Casting at the equivalent of a Seven against Magic Defense and the like.”

  Briggs and Kristie both whistled. “That is one HELL of a cash sink,” Briggs nodded, running the numbers. Years of Burning Goldweight would be involved to get a full set of them Enchanted!

  “Hah! You’ve no idea. Platinum Scarabs are formed by alchemically condensing the Essence of platinum. Each Scarab is twenty goldweight!” Both of them blinked, not aware of that. “And Mana Scarabs are made from Essence of Aetherium. Thirty goldweight each!”

  Kris actually put her forehead to her hand. “And these were just spell components…” she murmured in disbelief.

  “Spell Components costing almost as much as a +III Weapon?” Briggs just sighed. “So much goddamn money moving through this place. They must have just designed the components as an additional money sink…”

  “Didn’t seem to have worked back then, but fuck, that would totally work nowadays. Even with the two Keep mines working, the cost of those Scarabs would be horrendous…” Princess Kristie mused.

  “So, the goal is to Enchant up the Pyreal and Platinum Scarabs to be permanent and totally stop that crap,” Briggs stated. “Have we got any sources of Aetherium? We need it to get the Gear Knights moving again, too.”

  Kris and I shook our heads. “The only known deposits of them are in the Direlands. Some of the Gotrok worked in the mines, but they are absolutely controlled by the virindi. All the refined Aetherium known blew out during the Fall, sign of a planar disturbance. It’s what blew the Dungeons back into reality, shattered all the Mana Scarabs, and destroyed the Gear Knights’ Aetherium cores. We can refine new stuff, but we’ve got nothing stockpiled at all,” I stated with authority. “We’ve got the Gold Primus almost completely rebuilt, but without a working Core, he’s not animating anytime soon.”

  “Odds he’s going to be a Construct and that Core is actually going to need Empowerment and Enchantment?” Briggs asked of me.

  I could only wince. “Pretty high. Making high-grade Constructs with actual souls has never been cheap. Hells, his body is probably worth thirty goldweight in materials, and that’s with just basic QL stuff. No adamantine except in a couple bearings and joints, certainly not in his armor. Stuff at the level of truesteel and the like. Build one with mithral and adamantine, chassis like that would go for fifty, seventy goldweight easy.”

  “Which we will totally do in the future, because it’s just way too fucking cool NOT to do it,” Kris stated emphatically. Briggs and I could only nod along, because yeah, that would indeed be too fucking cool not to do at some point!

  “Muldaveus has basically pulled back to the mid-Dires and those mines are his only lifeline to any virindi support at all. We can probably raid and wipe the mines, but we don’t have the manpower to secure them. I also believe they’ll be secured at least as securely as the Lightning Elemental Stone Dungeon is,” Briggs stated grimly.

  As securing their own Elemental Stone set was a big driver for everyone coming up with a Named Weapon, replicating my and the Mick’s trip to the Dungeon was one of the goals for any serious adventurer, and the danger level had, if anything, only gone up!

  “As our people gain Karma and Levels, we’ll be able to do more with what we have, but time and Karma are stopgaps we have to grow past, Fuzzy. They just need more time, exactly like we do,” Kris nudged him.

  “And here we are, going off to add more responsibility to the docket.” Briggs shook his head, but didn’t back down. “Okay, a week to get people in place and set up defenses and schedules, Investing priorities, and the like. You’ll be coming back for ingot distribution and the like regardless, and we need Lived-Lines to those islands.”

  I made a circling gesture. “We need Lived-Lines around the entirety of Dereth. The Mick already has them, he just needs to connect to the outer islands over the water. I know you two took a run out to the Caul with Master Oswald, and checked out the other small Islands there. We three need to complete a circuit of Dereth for Lived-Lining.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Roaches and Skeeters leading the way,” Briggs nodded. “Sure, let’s do that as part of this…”

  --------

  Another week passes…

  There were no living Isparians on the Singularity Caul or any of the surrounding islands anymore, everyone having vacated with great speed and energy. The Freebooter Base had been stripped and abandoned, and pointedly the Portal area had been thoroughly obliterated, just in case. The smeltery and furnaces were left untouched, but the uncontrolled golums would have to be mastered to use them, and there was the whole problem that new Shades and Virindi started popping up on the Caul to investigate the presence of Aerbax they’d sensed return there.

  The fighting that had broken out around the Caulcano indicated that none of the forces were particularly friendly to one another. It also meant we weren’t going down into there any time soon, nor did we care to investigate to see if Aerbax was still there, although we doubted it.

  Aerbax might have left behind a double like it had in the center of the Obsidian Plains, made by the System for fun times. Despite the OP being the center of power for the virindi, they didn’t even bother trying to get rid of the creature whose fortress had once floated in the air above them.

  Both of the side islands turned out to have had Cult of the Raven Hand presences, and both had been equally quickly and thoroughly abandoned. Where they’d fled was something we’d doubtless discover in the future.

  Dereth was big, but not that big.

  ---

  Our trip started in Eastham. Everyone was in no more than light armor for running, and at least for the first couple hours, nobody was riding Disks.

  Even me, but that was fine. I needed the lightfoot practice, too.

  We headed up the beaches towards the Olthoi North, and while we killed everything we came across, nothing was vivified. The beach Spawns were indicators of what was more prevalent further inland, mixed in with things of the deep like weak nefanes and niffis. They indicated the threat level of the nearby lands and what might be found there.

  It was a lot of running. Hundreds of miles went by under our heels, racing over the sands there at speeds to rival a horse, speeding along for improbable distances as ki bolstered strength, speed, and endurance to make us nearly weightless, pumping through us with serenity and the joy of pure athletic ability as we zipped along. Hours went by, lost in the zen of the moment as night fell and we continued running through the night, Masks of Clarity lighting up the darkness like day.

  It took about seven hours to reach Point Tremblant, the northernmost point on Dereth, and we even saw the fallen Exploration Marker that had once marked it for intrepid adventurers who traveled everywhere. Long abandoned farmsteads, Mansions, and collections of Cottages and Villas were visible as we ran on by, occasionally cutting down wandering golums, wisps, banderlings, reedsharks, wasps, and shreth that formed the most common Summons on the beaches.

  Three more hours brought us to the Desolation Beach Villa settlement, which had a random Deathstone Pit out along the beach nearby, and there we took a rest. I set up a Seal Focus by that Deathstone Pit as the Mick ritually set the thing to vivus, and screaming souls went quiet as they were released from their torment.

  Nearby was one of Oswald’s old forest bases, one used by the Green Hunters as a local base after the Fall.

  Also, due west was one of the most infamous and dangerous areas of Dereth, the Hoshino Fortress, raised by Emperor Geraine after he arranged for Hoshino Kei to be possessed by an entity from the Book of Eibhil. The False Hoshino had begun enslaving dead and departed Sho as powerful undead troops, and there had been quite the involved set of mighty deeds to free her from her cursed existence.

  Those deeds were repeated many times, as yet another reissued Quest put forth by the System. The difficulty was certainly no less to put the replacement False Hoshino down, even after the real one was rescued and restored to King Borelean.

  Our running wasn’t done, as the trip down the western side of the island was still ahead of us.

  The creatures gradually grew stronger and tougher as we progressed south down the northlands, passing over the inlet of the Dagger, then down to the Fingers of the unnaturally steep and sculpted fjords where the Northlands and the Direlands met.

  There were Viamontian and Hea fortresses scattered atop the single severe ridgeline that extended across the waters, cutting the Inner Sea and the ocean off from one another. Master Oswald had reported that the Viamontians once there had long since died or fled their posts, and only the Hea now secured the overland access trail there… not that the beaches weren’t also perfectly viable and the waters there fairly shallow, if not suitable for wagons and supplies.

  Regardless, we were soon past them and running down the beaches, fully in the Direlands. That meant everyone put on their light armor for the running, as the Beach Spawns spiked very abruptly in their lethality, to the point of dropping Mass Elemental Protections on everyone.

  There was a lot more running, more hectic hours passing by as we cut our way through the beach spawns instead of just smacking them as we ran on past. We were getting our daily Naming Karma if nothing else, pulling our Lived-Lines along behind us as we got eyes and earfuls of the power and variety of the creatures in the Direlands.

  It was eight hours to reach Ayan Baquar, where my Lived-Lines finally hooked up and back together. Alas, everyone else still needed to get to the Withered Beach, which meant another two hours of running through the sand, avoiding the banderlings who spilled out of Ayan to chase after us for a few miles until we simply out-distanced them without too much effort.

  ------

  Legs creaking and aching, everyone forced themselves back to their feet to receive the Salute to Aru, watching it rise over the sands and cliffs east of us. The sands where the Aetheric Tide Ravager had died were now Burned permanently white, a glaring contrast to the Summons scattered about the rest of the beach. The collapsed area of cliff was still very obvious… and the tunnel Kris and I had used had been restored, expanded, redirected, and was now a viable means to get from the beach to the top of the cliffs.

  I led everyone through the Salute, letting the gift of a new day flow through everyone and help dispel some of the lingering fatigue and aches from over six hundred miles of travel on foot in a day.

  Being able to run this whole thing in one day would have taken some real wheels on your heels back in the day.

  Happily, everyone here was long since Sustained, so two hours of downtime was equivalent to a full night’s sleep as far as rest and recovery went, and so there was only some stretching out before everyone was fully ready to go to it… and head back north to our Seal Focus for the real trip across the waters.

  Teleports can now to the far ends if so needed!... although you might still have to overland to reach areas with LL connection to them still.

  ============================

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