Chapter 98 - Tier Seven

  We made much better time heading back to the cemetery than we had on road back to the base. I’d had to keep Sue at a steady but slower than maximum pace, in order to make sure we didn’t jostle Kara too much. Now I was free to just let Sue take the road at top speed. I’d tied myself on the dinosaur’s back, and Hope loped alongside us without any trouble keeping up.

  The ride gave me time to think about how best to approach this. I had every intention of finishing off the ants. That was happening. No question about it. But at the same time, I wanted to play this smart. I was far stronger than any of the ants individually. Even the queen was far weaker. Still, there were a lot of them, and as we’d seen from the zombies, huge numbers of low tier monsters were still a serious threat, even to higher tier people.

  By the time we arrived I had a decent course of action in mind. Surprise wasn’t going to be on the table no matter what I did. The ants would have scouts out and about even at night, and for all I knew they’d feel Sue’s footsteps through the soil even before they could see us. Since a sneak attack was out of the question, it made sense to prepare myself as best I could before launching the assault.

  I was down to just one skeleton juggernaut; I felt it off in the distance, standing by, patrolling the area and looking for more undead to kill. It was too far to send new orders, but the fact that there had been two when I left, and now there was only one, told me they’d run into some more undead—or perhaps ants attacked them? But they’d been doing a lot of killing.

  My first step should be gathering all of the loot from the undead we’d wiped out. I had Sue come in cautiously, skirting the ant hill with as much distance as we could manage. We stopped inside the southern end of the cemetery, and I slid down from Sue. This time, it wasn’t my dino who was coming to the rescue.

  I turned to Hope. “It’s too dark, so I can’t see shit out here, girl. I need your help. Remember when you dragged the skeletons back to me, before? I need you to do that for me again. Go around the whole area and gather all the dead skeletons. At least their heads, but get whole bodies when you can, okay?”

  Hope gave a soft woof and took off like a shot. She came back a moment later, an old skull in her mouth. She dropped it in front of me.

  “Good girl! Now go get all the others!” I told her. She ran off again, and I tapped the skull. A clear tier one Intellect crystal popped into my hand.

  I ordered the juggernaut to attend me as well. As soon as it lumbered over, I gave it the same order I had given Hope—go get dead undead bodies. It staggered off and returned a few minutes later carrying most of a skeleton under each arm.

  All of this would have been a hell of a lot easier in daylight, but I wasn’t willing to wait. Time mattered. The mall creature was growing stronger. If I wasn’t doing the same, faster, then it would remain forever ahead of me. I had to keep moving, or catching up would be impossible.

  Once I had a few skeleton bodies to work with, I created another tier three juggernaut and sent it out after more bodies. The good news was, there were a lot of dead enemies around, so not only was I collecting a heaping pile of crystals, I also had a growing pool of bones to work from when it came to rebuilding my fighting force. Soon I had half a dozen juggernauts combing the overgrown grass, looking for skeletons to drag back to me.

  I let them work while I started sorting through the crystals I’d gotten. The grey stone I’d gotten from one of the ants interested me. It was a passive power, not something we had to activate, so in a lot of ways it was more like a stat crystal than a skill or spell. Once socketed, it would be ‘always on.’ The power was Natural Armor, and it apparently made you harder to injure. Tougher skin, tougher bones. I figured it would synch well with a high Stamina. I wasn’t willing to dump my Flight stone to add it, though, at least not while it was still at tier one.

  There were also a dozen green crystals from the time in the ant nest. I had stones for Entangle, Stoneskin, Charm Animal, and one interesting crystal called Healing Infusion. From what I could tell of the latter one, it was similar to the Alchemy skill, but more limited. With Healing Infusion you could turn something into a healing potion or snack. So a cookie could become a healing cookie, or something like that anyway. To get more details, I’d need to use the thing, and again—Flight just felt more pertinent.

  It might be a good skill for Kara, though. I slipped it back into my pocket.

  On top of the other stones, there were also eighteen clear stones for assorted stats. It wasn’t enough to rank me up—not yet, anyway. But it was a terrific start.

  Even after having made half a dozen undead to assist Hope in gathering the bodies of the creatures we’d slain, it still took hours to bring them all to me. I checked my watch. It was a little after two in the morning, and by all rights I ought to have been exhausted, but…that was Stamina for you. With enough of it, I wondered if I’d still need to sleep at all.

  Of the ants, there was no sign. Soon after I arrived, the few giant ants who’d been out patrolling the area vanished back into their nest, and no more came out to replace them. They were holed up in there, probably getting ready to defend if I went in after them again. Sue loomed over me, an intimidating presence at the best of times, and the ants had already seen how hard the dinosaur’s Fireballs hit. They clearly weren’t going to come after me, which meant I needed to go back down there after them, instead.

  The idea didn’t thrill me. There were a lot of small tunnels through that space. Some of them were probably too small for even Hope to wriggle her way through. Killing every ant in the complex might be out of the question, but I had a sense that wasn’t necessary anyway. The queen was the one laying all of those eggs. Kill her, and the eggs stopped. Torch the eggs too, and the colony would be toast.

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  Easy enough, but I still wanted to be as strong as possible before I went back in there, so I waited while my undead continued gathering all the slain skeletons. To pass the time, I raised four fire skeletons to join the six juggernauts. Once we were in the ant nest, I had a feeling that a wall of heavy tanks would matter more than the ranged attackers. I needed minions with the ability to soak hits and survive waves of attackers more than I needed burst damage.

  I also collected the crystals and began sorting them into piles, so it would be easier to figure out what I wanted to do with them. My hope was that I’d tier up at least one or two skills from all of this, and it looked promising. We’d killed a lot of undead here.

  Finally, the undead were returning to me without carrying anything. They’d scoured the entire cemetery, searching out more bodies, but they weren’t finding anything else. I’d hit the limit at last.

  But what a limit it was! This place was at least twice the size of the graveyard where I’d done my first serious growth spurt, and it showed in the number of undead. I’d killed scores of the things before Kara and Sue crashed into the ant nest, and the fighting force I’d left topside had done for the rest of them, more slowly, but just as sure. All told, I’d gathered two hundred and ten crystals from the undead, to add to the other stones I’d won from the ants.

  It was insane. I stared at the pile of magic crystals. That pile represented wealth and power, in this new world. It was awesome, amazing, and I could hardly wait to bring Kara back her share of the loot. Because that was definitely happening, even if she wasn’t going to be around for the finale.

  I had one hundred and twenty nine black stones. There were twenty-two Control Undead, twenty-seven Animate Dead, sixteen Drain Life, eight Augment Undead, two Health to Mana, three Contagion, four Curse, six Phantom Step, five Darkness, seven Heal Undead, seven Shadow Walk, fourteen Harm, and eight NightVision.

  That left eighty-one clear stones from the undead plus the eighteen from the ants, for a total of ninety-nine clear crystals. The breakdown there was far more even. I had eighteen Strength, seventeen Agility, fourteen Stamina, nineteen Will, nineteen Intellect, and twelve Charisma.

  The counting done, I started slotting stones. I’d save what I could for Kara, but my primary focus right now had to be growing as strong as possible. If I was going to take on the ant nest solo, I needed to bring everything I had to bear.

  Control Undead went up to tier six. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot I could do with that skill for the time being. Without undead to Control, it wasn’t that awesome a skill, although it did earn me Hope and Sue, which was a lot. Once I went against the mall horde again, though, it would pay big dividends.

  Augment Undead went up to tier five. Health to Mana progressed to tier three, which ought to be a nice boost. Heal Undead went up to tier five, opening a new slot. Drain Life went up to tier six. I was certain I could do some serious damage with that spell now. I even had a few spare Drain Life stones left, which I planned to give to Kara.

  The biggest deal was Animate Dead, which went up to tier seven—just barely, but I had enough, with one stone left over. That was an enormous boost in power. Now, I could Animate up to sixty-four tiers worth of undead, and I had a ton of material to work with in the graveyard.

  The other major shift was in my stats. I didn’t have quite enough new crystals to rank up most of my higher stats, but I did have enough to bring Strength up to tier five. That opened up a new slot for a clear stone, and since I really only had two options left—Intellect and Charisma—the decision of which to use was pretty easy. I slotted Intellect and was delighted to see that I had enough stones to immediately rank Intellect to tier five!

  The rush I felt, implanted that stone, made me regret not doing it sooner. I suddenly understood so much more about my spells and powers. A lot made sense intellectually that I’d been guessing at intuitively until now. Among other things, I realized that my spells were now quite a lot stronger. My Drain would hit harder, and my Heal Undead was more powerful too.

  Ranking Intellect to five of course opened yet another slot. I wondered about what to put there. Should I add Charisma, and begin boosting that, too? The idea still left a bad taste in my mouth. Instead, I decided to see whether I could add a second stone of a type I already had. I combined a bunch of the Will stones together to make another tier five crystal, and tried to socket it.

  It worked.

  My mind felt more clear than it had ever been. My resolve, too, was so strong it almost felt like I was a different person. It took a few minutes for the sensations to settle down, and I sat, meditating, until they did.

  I’d accomplished so much here. I was tier seven now, and had so many tier five and six stones that I was starting to have trouble keeping track of them all. There was still two spots left open for black stones. I waffled over which stones to add, and finally decided on Contagion, to help crush the ants in masses, and NightVision, so I could actually see down in their tunnels. I wanted to save most of the NightVision stones for Kara, but I could afford to take two, merge them, and insert them temporarily. I’d take them out later, so she could have them. For now, being able to see in the dark would be a boon I couldn’t refuse.

  Magical Stones

  Point 1: Black Stone (Tier 6) - Control Undead

  Point 1, Second Ring: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Augment Undead

  Point 1, Third Ring: Black Stone (Tier 3) - Contagion

  +

  Point 2: Black Stone (Tier 7) - Animate Dead

  Point 2, Second Ring: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Heal Undead

  Point 2, Third Ring: Black Stone (Tier 2) - NightVision

  +

  Point 3: Black Stone (Tier 6) - Drain Life

  Point 3, Second Ring: (Tier 3) - Health to Mana

  +

  Point 4: Clear Stone (Tier 6) - Will

  Point 4, Second Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 6) - Agility

  Point 4, Third Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Stamina

  Point 4, Fourth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Strength

  Point 4, Fifth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Intellect

  Point 4, Sixth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Will

  Point 4, Seventh Ring:

  +

  Point 5: Yellow Stone (Tier 2) - Flight

  Spare Stones

  Black: Animate Dead x1, Augment Undead x5, Contagion, Control Undead x22, Curse (Tier 3), Curse x2, Darkness x5, Drain Life x4, Harm (Tier 2), Harm x15, Heal Undead x2, NightVision x6, Phantom Step x6, Shadow Walk x7

  Clear: Strength x6, Agility x1, Stamina x14, Intellect x7, Will x3, Charisma (Tier 4), Charisma (Tier 3), Charisma x12

  Green: Entangle (Tier 2), Entangle x3, Stoneskin (Tier 2), Stoneskin x4, Charm Animal x2, Healing Infusion (Tier 2)

  Gray: Natural Armor (Tier 2)

  Brown: Alchemy (x2)

  Control Stone (x1)

  It was enough. Really, I thought it was more than enough. There was still one slot open for another stat crystal, and I had enough Charisma stones to rank it up to tier five instantly, but the idea bothered me too much. I’d think about it, but Charisma wasn’t going to help me beat ants, anyway, right?

  I rose as my thoughts calmed and prepared myself for the assault on the ant nest. It was time. That queen was going down!