Savage Awakening 556. Shard Farming (I)

The next morning, after they did their daily clean-up, Kain came up to him with a scroll in hand.

“What’s up?” said Zane.

Kain looked like he was about to say something. Then he paused and considered Zane again.

“That was quite the effort back there.”

Zane had just run through the starfield—a wilder run than he usually did. He ended up punching as much as he slashed, always taking on five or six Astroliths at once. He took more shots, but it felt good to fight brutally. He ended up wrestling down two of the Boss Astroliths with his chains, then crushing them with hammer blows. It was a little less efficient than slashing, but right now he wanted to get his hands on something. He was still brimming with energy.

“Stressful night,” Zane explained. “Don’t worry about it. I think all that rock smashing took the edge off a little… what did you have to say?”

Kain looked like he might ask more for a second. But he ended up just offering his scroll to Zane.

“Non-aggression pact, for this one night,” said Kain, as he read it over. “It’s a soul contract. The rest of the details simply outline the territories we’ve agreed are ours. We’re under no obligation to help each other, simply not to harm each other, and to defend our territories to the best of our abilities.”

“Sure, that works.” He pocketed the scroll. “I’ll need to review it with my lawyer, though.”

“I’d expect nothing less. Just make certain you return before dusk falls. That is, when the crystals begin to dim.”

Zane nodded. “Will do.”

“Will you be ready to fight tonight? The end-of-season shower may be the most rewarding night of the year, but it is also its most dangerous… it’s best attempted in peak condition.”

“Yeah, I’ll be good,” said Zane. At first, he wasn’t sure what Kain meant, but the man was glancing at his clenched fists, which he unclenched. He felt pretty calm right now, actually. Just very focused. He felt there was a current of tension going through his body, but he didn’t mind that. “I do best when I’m a little amped up,” he informed Kain.

“Very well, then.” Kain turned to consider the base of the mountain. Zane followed his line of sight. Clustered there, just outside of Mount X proper—just out of range of the worst of the embers—were a line of ragged tents.

“It’s been a calmer season than usual,” said Kain. “Fewer folk have tried to fight up Mount X than any other year I’ve been here, save for the very first ones, when expeditions to the Pure Yang were rare.”

“I haven’t had much trouble either,” said Zane. He’d only seen two other guys since he’d gotten up here, late at night while he was deep in Skill practice. They’d backed away pretty quickly after they saw what he was doing with his Slashes. It’d been a pretty chill time; he’d kind of expected more skirmishes.

“I’m typically forced to fend off thirty or forty over the course of the season,” said Kain. “And a small army would gather there, at the base, on end-of-season night. Ready to contest the mountain.”

There were only a handful this time, though.

A corner of Kain’s mouth quirked. “I expect you’ve got something to do with it.”

“I do?”

“It seems they think we’ve allied,” said Kain. He paused. “If you sign that contract, in a way, I suppose they wouldn’t be wrong. For the night, at any rate… if it keeps more of them off the mountain, all the better.”

Zane supposed that made sense. “What changed your mind about that, by the way?”

“Making a non-aggression pact?”

“Yeah.”

Kain shrugged. “With that contract in place, there’s very little risk to me. It simply allows me to expand my territory.”

“We’re still kind of teaming up, though.” It wasn’t a true team, but still—he didn’t think the Kain of just a few months ago would’ve done it.

Kain seemed amused. “I didn’t know you very well back then.”

“…And you know me well now?”

As far as he was aware, all they’d done was some chores side by side for a few months. He hadn’t told the guy all that much.

“I feel I have a sense for what matters.” Kain shrugged. “There are many men in this world who try to be difficult to read. Most will try to hide their intentions, whether behind slick smiles, or half-truths, or simple, bald-faced lies… you are not that kind of man. You’d make a poor actor.”

“Hey.” He was a bit offended by that. That was just empirically wrong. His previous efforts in Astra had gone quite well, in his opinion.

He decided he’d let it slide.

Before he left, Kain gave him one final warning.

“This world gives no great rewards without great dangers. You should expect quantities of monsters like you’ve never seen. The sky will erupt with meteors… and for the first time, Shard Bosses will grace this realm.”

Zane nodded. “You mentioned them before.” At the time, though, Kain hadn’t explained.

“They fall with each Shard, and they make the true last line of defense between this land and its greatest treasures… naturally, they’re also far more challenging than anything else you’ll face here. Most are half-step T1. Some—very rarely—are even stronger than that.”

He considered that. He wasn’t sure how he’d match up against a full T1 just yet… he always thought he’d need at least a few more slashes chained to feel confident taking on that level. But if one landed on his side of the mountain, he’d probably have a go at it.

“What exactly is a half-step T1 Empyrean, by the way?”

“It simply means they haven’t yet broken through to Tier 1 Empyrean, in terms of levels. They have some other bottleneck that prevents them, usually in Law. But what makes them dangerous is this: they do have all the shards they’d need to break through to Tier 1.”

Zane’s eyes narrowed. This was what made him unsure about his chances against some T1s. Against T0s, he could count on having a decisive Destruction advantage.

But here…

“You’re saying they have at least a half-plate worth of shards.” That meant at least 8 shards of Destruction or Creation.

“That’s right,” said Kain.

A huge part of what made it so challenging to jump Empyrean tiers was the ballooning Shard requirements. At T1, 8 shards was the minimum. T2 was 32, T3 was 128, and you had to have a whopping 512 shards just to break through to T4.

There were those that far surpassed those minimum requirements at each tier. Zane was pretty sure Noughtfire wasn’t T4, and he still had over 900 shards.

Zane was pretty sure he could still handle half-step T1 just fine. But it was hard to tell without fighting them.

He supposed they’d have to see.

Just a few hours to go now.

***

He made a pit stop out of Astra and sent the contract to Reina. He’d had a Scryer’s Guild mailbox installed just outside his Galaxy Gear station, but there wasn’t time to do it by mail.

So he crushed one of Reina’s “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency” gifts—an inscribed piece of parchment that was actually a Divine Profound one-time-use voice charm.

She sent her own back in just two hours, signing off on the contract. He was good to go.

It was hard to concentrate on Law for the rest of that day. Kain left a little early to finish setting up runes on his side of the mountain. Zane finished up with two daylight hours to spare, too, and took the rest of the time to patrol his mountain, taking stock of the valley below.

Armies massed beneath. There was no one left in their camps. Fleets of dragons prowled their territory—something like eighty Empyreans in total. He could make out the strongest of them, the black-scaled Jaxarys and the silver-scaled Karagas, examining what looked to be a giant map of Pure Yang Lands, both in half-dragon form. It seemed common for these dragons to fight in that form—keeping the maneuverability of a more human-like frame, but still having the wings, claws, and scales of a dragon.

The human-beast coalitions seemed a little more on edge to them. There were about a hundred in total, but they were still clearly much weaker in terms of firepower. You could tell just by the way they were arranged—mostly on the edges, in the less desirable, more mountainous terrain, taking defensive postures. There were a handful of straggler humans stationed pretty close to his side of the mountain. None of his Stone Axes, he was pleased to see—just a line of loose cultivators, all T0s.

He didn’t see them as any real threat. As far as he was concerned, they were free to try to challenge him if they wanted. It’d give him a chance to show them he meant business. Then he expected the challenges would dry up quickly enough.

Right now, he was mostly focused on the sky, which was darkening fast. The cracks that lit up this world were visibly dimming.

The moment Zane broke through to True God, right near the start of the War, he wanted to immediately make a difference at the highest levels of combat.

He wanted to be able to seriously wound Malzareth’s forces instantly and build from there. He didn’t want to have to back down from anything it threw at him, especially if he was fighting with Reina at his side. He didn’t know if it was arrogance to think he could do that. He didn’t particularly care—that was the goal fixed in his mind anyway.

To achieve that kind of instant strength, he needed a war chest. Something he could tap the moment he broke through to True God. He was already building that by stacking Store Credits, but if he could stack a few plates’ worth of shards, it’d make a massive difference. Progression, especially in these wars, he’d realized—especially with the potentially snowballing System Store rewards—was all about momentum. Getting off to a great start.

His sights were already set on the peak. If Noughtfire was working on over 900 shards, he suspected that might be a good benchmark for the elite of the elite at Empyrean. He had a long way to go before he came anywhere close to matching that.

But tonight, he had the chance to put a dent in that gap.

Even if he couldn’t use it right now, in just a few decades he knew it’d pay off massively.

He stood there, took a deep breath, and let the weight of it all—the expectations he was placing on himself—settle in his mind. He found it quite grounding.

Then he got the notification.

Special Event: “Shard Shower” is now in progress.

The Vault of the Heavens opens, and the finest treasures of the Pure Yang fall like rain.

Countdown: 8:00:00

The skies exploded with light.

Over a hundred meteors tore up the sky; nearly all of them weren’t shard meteors.

But a few were. Most crashed for the valley below, and the reaction was immediate. A fleet of black dragons took flight and raced for a creation meteor—a meteor thicker than any Zane had seen in all his months here. Just by its aura, he knew it had to have at least two shards in it.

There was a minor human kingdom stationed closer, though, and they quickly started duking it out; he saw a flurry of T1-level spells clashing mid-air. More shard meteors lit up the sky, falling all over the valley…

He tore his attention from all that and focused on his own patch of sky. His own fight would start soon enough. Seconds later, a full thirty-odd meteors thudded down his stretch of Mount X. Astroliths groaned to life, their cannons and craws pre-loaded with starfire beams, ready to fire.

But the true prize came right behind them.

A meteor blazing so white it hurt to look at shattered reality as it crashed through the atmosphere, driving a huge void furrow halfway across the sky. It landed with a THUD.

And the creature within stood up.

Shard Boss: Maker Astrolith

Essence Level 724

It was twenty bulky feet of cracked meteor steel. A steel that was a nearly black silver, welded together by starfire. This thing easily dwarfed even the starfield’s bosses. Thick white plates armored it, crackling with Creation… but its most distinctive feature was the massive prow rising from its back. This unblemished hulk of stainless, mirror-bright steel, ending at a single gleaming point.

Zane had started charging before the meteor had even landed. 

The nice thing about these meteors was he knew just when and where they’d land.

As far as he was concerned, that was all free prep time. And with his tools, Zane could do quite a bit with some prep time.

By the time it raised its head, he was already barreling down the mountain, three steps into an Overlord Annihilation Charge. His first stacking skill.

His axes lit up with Red Giant, a Red Giant flickering with fragments of Starfire Law. The beginnings of his second stacking skill—Star-crushing Slashes—slicking the edges…

He’d never really stacked two stacking Skills like this before. Mostly because of just how insanely energy- and physique- intensive it’d be. It was the kind of thing he could only do once, before he’d need quite a bit of recovery-time. 

But if he did this right…he was hoping that was all he’d need. 

Let’s make this fast.