Cleansing Fire

by D. L. Harrison

  Gwen smirked, “Seems they can’t see through a cloak, even with internal sensors.”

  One less worry.

  The turrets were plugged into the ship’s power, so didn’t have their own power source.

  There was another wrinkle, the huge magic crystal I could clearly feel with my aura wasn’t behind a mana shield. Or at least, if it had been that protection was successfully taken down by the grenade. There were a few smashed and burnt consoles after all. No, the crystal was inside some kind of large reactor in the shape of a column in the middle of engineering.

  I sighed, “Dan, I’d ask you to open that up, but for all I know that will blow the ship and us to high heaven.”

  Dan smirked.

  I shook my head, “Time to get this party started, I feel more of the enemy moving this way. Cassie start us off? I’ll get the turrets if your EMP doesn’t shut this place down. Dan, the doors. Go.”

  Cassie held her hands together and a coruscating and twisting lightning ball appeared, and then exploded out in a blue wave.

  Lara of course had our bonuses already running, and the mass heal. She threw a bright ball of light toward the ceiling as the room went dark. I felt myself calm slightly as everything except the reactor went dark in the room, from the consoles to the turrets. The soldiers and their weapons of course were unaffected, since they had mana shields. Still, one less complication, I’d take it.

  Still, lesson learned, if we ever did this again, we’d be using EMP bombs, instead of fire blasts.

  There were four guards, all with a mana shield of fifty thousand. So I fired off four fire blasts in quick succession with twelve thousand mana each. That was just two thousand short of digging into my emergency mana. Still, each attack did five times damage, or sixty thousand damage. Which meant their shields fizzled and they were encompassed in ten thousand points of damage.

  They were pretty much dead, but they had been alert and ready for us after that grenade, so they each got a shot off. Their weapons however only caused five thousand points of fire damage. It was almost eerie how everything in the real world seemed to be halved from in the game. I was hit twice, and Lara and Dan were hit once, our mana shields had no problem absorbing it.

  Dan took care of the two entrances to engineering, and the doors melted and became part of the walls.

  Steve dropped an area of effect raise dead. Probably no reason for it, except his talents were fairly limited on this mission and he had to do something. The three engineers and four warriors started to stir.

  We all stared at the reactor in consternation.

  “The crystal is in the middle, surrounded by power systems which draw off the mana. Any ideas?”

  We all stared as our minds churned. My comment had also been stating the obvious, they could all sense magic just as well as I could.

  “Shit, I have an idea. Steve, keep an eye on what happens with your corpses.”

  I waved the staff and cast a fire elemental, and gave it orders to burn its way through the reactor shielding and destroy the crystal. Then I teleported us the hell off the ship.

  Steve smirked as we sat down, “Guess you’re glad you brought me along.”

  I laughed, turned out he did have an important thing to do, so we didn’t have to risk our lives foolishly as Dan ripped apart the reactor. Of course, he could watch what happened, through the eyes of his undead left in engineering.

  The ship exploded ten seconds after we left.

  Steve shrugged, “Looks like the power systems shut down when he tore into them. Took him about five seconds to fatally crack the crystal.”

  I snickered, “Do you know what this means?”

  The others looked at me.

  I said, “Fire elementals are cheap to cast, their power is more based on our level. Fire elementals will also be totally immune to physical damage and plasma. If we have to do this again, there’s no need to send anyone. No fire blast bomb, no EMP bomb, just transport a gem with a master fire elemental enchantment on it, with orders to rip apart the casing and destroy the crystal.”

  I took a moment to send our mission actions and conclusions to all the other party leaders.

  Steve tilted his head, “It also means we won’t even have to get on these ships. All we need is coordinates from the probes, and I could fold them to the right spot back from Earth.”

  I nodded, “It’s probably a moot point, this race will be done terrorizing our part of the galaxy by the end of today.”

  Gwen sighed, “You were pretty greedy, didn’t even leave me one to kill.”

  The other groups started to teleport back before I could reply, and the ships started to explode in quick succession after that. I imagined they were probably worried about the reactor like we were. I just hoped the ground actions went as smoothly. When they were all back aboard, I let out a sigh of relief and teleported the ship back to Earth.

  We all looked out of the windows a bit in awe. The earth gleamed white, most of the northern and southern hemisphere was covered in snow and ice, and there was a lot of cloud cover. There was a strip of green and brown around the equator, and of course the darker blue of the ocean. The atmosphere was mostly cleared of debris after fifteen hundred years, but the ice age would still last for another fifty more as the Earth slowly warmed, before the great currents got started again and could warm up the north and south.

  Gwen said, “Nice dodge.”

  I grinned at her, and then stole a kiss.

  Reports started to come back, and I guessed we were probably all in the main probe database. The enemy fleet continued to disappear and was completely gone within five more minutes. The probes above the Earth, and above eleven other worlds marked for eventual invasion were removed as well. The planet invasion part for the seventeen star-systems started, as the other two ships on standby joined us in Earth orbit.

  Their ships vaunted power had amounted to very little, with magic on our side. It still struck me as a bit surreal, that magic was far more high tech than what humanity had achieved in the past. I just hoped the invasion went as well.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It was only fifteen minutes later when I got my answer.

  The guards around the enslaved indigenous lifeforms of the fifteen planets were taken out quite quickly. However, there were some issues going on. The planets that had outpost cities of the enemy race had much better defenses than expected.

  Plasma turrets rose out of the ground around and inside the cities, and there were a great number of warriors. It was pretty clear the turrets were meant as anti-aircraft weapons, but they could be turned against ground troops as well. Lastly, they had small shuttle type fighters, with their own plasma weapons.

  The warrior’s weapons hit at about five thousand damage, the city turrets and fighters both hit at twice that at ten thousand. The warriors and turrets had a fifty thousand mana mana-shield, and the small ships a hundred thousand. It wasn’t a whole lot, considering I had a personal mana shield of two hundred and forty-four thousand, and with the rest of my mana could cause up to five hundred thousand damage in one shot, but the attacks added up. There were a lot of soldiers, turrets, and hundreds of swarming fighters. I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t so much an enemy city, as it was an enemy military base of some kind on the planets. A quick response unit in case the local sentient species decided to rebel.

  Regardless, they were all asking for help on the seventeen worlds. Given the three thousand of us on the three ships, we had enough to send thirty-five parties to each world. Some would get a little more, and some would get a little less, since we were split up in groups of four parties.

  “Alright, we have five worlds assigned to us, the other ships have six each. Guess what that means, we got the hardest worlds since we can send forty parties or ten groups to each. That means the first twenty rows get off at the first world, so someone get ready to take over driving, because that includes me.”

  There were some nervous titters, and
a few outright belly laughs.

  I teleported the ship to the first world on the list. It was Sigma Draconis under human naming convention. The indigenous sentient species were short and tough, the gravity was one point four times Earth’s gravity. They looked like a bear and ape got busy to be honest, with fur all over their bodies and the exception of opposable thumbs. I was curious to meet one, but I doubted it would happen. We were there to take out the enemy base and none of the indigenous lifeforms were anywhere around there. We might contact them later, but the point of today’s exercise was to free them, and everyone else from those carnivorous bastards.

  Even if we did meet them, we wouldn’t have a common language. Hell, we didn’t even know their species name, or what they called their planet. In truth, it was more just curiosity than any true ambition, I had no aspirations or desires to become some first contact specialist or ambassador. Protector sounded good, kicking ass, relaxing, raising a family, and continuing to grow in power and knowledge as we visited Evolution Online on occasion.

  Still, I was curious how this crazy new life and meeting the interstellar neighbors might go. I just didn’t want to do that part of it myself.

  The ship appeared in orbit around the planet, and the first twenty rows got up and met in groups of four parties. I teleported my group, along with Carol’s, Alan’s, and Tony’s about a quarter mile out from the city. I also got my head in the game. The future, first contact, raising children with the woman I loved, spending time online to grow in power. None of it would matter if I got my ass shot off because I wasn’t paying attention.

  The gravity was heavy, but we were all strong enough to quickly adjust, even me. The sky was blue like Earth, but the plants and trees looked completely unfamiliar. We were also in a wilderness area, though there weren’t many trees within a mile of the city which sat on a plateau.

  “Meet up back here when this shit show is over, I’ll take us all directly back to Earth.”

  Carol smirked, “Or another planet, if we clean up our mess first.”

  Right, excellence would be rewarded with more dangerous work.

  I nodded, “Good point, and good luck.”

  We moved forward toward the city at a good run, the four parties fanning out. It was pretty much chaos, there were already a thousand of us there, about two hundred parties, fighting the base’s defenses. With forty more parties there was a lot of us, twelve hundred or so. Small craft screamed by overhead, and they dropped plasma attacks at several groups.

  I sent a fire blast with twenty-five thousand mana. More than enough to take out it’s hundred thousand mana shield and then some. Still, the hull of the fighter blackened but didn’t blow up.

  Cassie launched a lightning bolt at it, and then smirked when it fell out of the sky, and it exploded into a huge fireball as it hit the ground.

  Dan, Gwen, and Steve, all joined spells to take out a second one. Not bad, but there were hundreds of them buzzing around.

  I used my staff to summon the two elementals, and then sent them after the turrets. We arrived at a trench and jumped in. There were a lot of us in there, and we faced off with hundreds of the enemy as well as a whole shitload of turrets. The ships had been a lot easier to take care of.

  I sent out a pulse to get a snapshot, and unfortunately all the turrets were powered with smaller crystals, as were the buildings. There was no main crystal we could take out to take down the base’s defenses. So much for that idea. EMP wouldn’t work either, not with the turrets having mana shields of their own.

  I created a turret spell of my own, and I tossed it out of the trench. I was close enough to keep feeding it mana, and it was firing a ten thousand mana fire blast every second using detect life for targeting. The first shot took down a mana shield on a warrior, and severely hurt the shields on those nearby, the second shot finished him off. After that, the turret started working its way down the line, killing and taking down shields.

  Dan was doing something similar with fire and earth, except he was using earth to target the turrets with fire. Just the two of us were kicking ass.

  There were twelve hundred masters here, why weren’t they all dead yet?

  “What’s going on?”

  One of the others said, “Every time we try and charge the city, the ships lay down hundreds of plasma attacks while the turrets fire suppression. We’ve only lost a few so far, but we manage to retreat.

  A barrage of plasma fell around us. A lot of them hit the surface around the trench, but more than a few made it inside. Still, our mana shields absorbed those for the most part. A few unlucky ones got hit more than a few times, and even then, their armor and protection against fire saved them from death.

  My, Lara’s, and several other people with the life sphere had mass heals kick in. It only took me a few seconds to get my mana shield back up to strength.

  “Alright, ships first then. They seem the most dangerous anyway.”

  Between Dan and I, most of the turrets and warriors directly near us were dead already anyway. Did the others just not know how to fight smart?

  I let the turret spell expire, just stopped feeding it magic, and created a new one. This one targeted enemy life forms as well, I specified though that it only targeted ones that were in the sky. Sure, the ship and ship’s mana shield was in the way, but the point was my turret would hit the ship just fine, since the ship’s hull was between me and my target. It was out of range, but it wasn’t hard to pulse that detect life spell out further every second, right before it fired. Once the fire blast was within sixty feet of the craft, it would lock on and adjust if it needed to.

  With the armor, and Lara’s bonus, my intelligence was forty-five. Which made my regeneration for mana a whopping fifteen thousand one hundred fifty-two per second. That wasn’t enough to take down the ship’s shields, I decided to use twice that amount in mana damage every two seconds instead. Thirty thousand mana at master levels was a hundred and fifty thousand damage. That fifty thousand extra should be enough to take down a small fighter ship, I hoped.

  The spell was built, and I tossed it out of the trench. It would fire every two seconds, and I’d just keep feeding it fifteen thousand mana a second. I wouldn’t be able to do much else outside use my staff, but that was fine.

  The first shot made one of the fighters explode and fall to the ground.

  I smirked, when two seconds later another exploded.

  Dan said, “I don’t have that much mana, I’ll continue killing all the turrets.”

  I shrugged, “So you kill one every four of five seconds, probably worth it.”

  Dan looked at me sharply, but then figured out what I was doing when others with fire and life, or fire and earth along the line started building ship destroying turret spells. Some were powerful enough to fire every two seconds like mine was, others took three, four, or even five or six seconds between blasts. But they were all taking down the ships fast now. What Dan figured out was I was trying to be subtle about kicking them all in the pants, it didn’t take the other party leaders long to copy my strategy. We were masters of spheres and skills now, charging the enemy? What an absurd idea, and one that would get people killed.

  The others weren’t idle by any means. Gwen and Steve had teamed up, and they seemed to be killing a soldier and raising it as undead to fight on our side every few seconds. The bolts and arrows we made were quite effective at getting through the enemy’s armor.

  Cassie was firing lightning bolts, and spheres, making it easier for follow up shots to kill.

  Lara was boosting our stats, healing, and she also answered a question I’d had. One of the others died in a barrage, his body burnt beyond recognition. In fact, there was no way his brain wasn’t cooked to a crisp. Yet, she managed to resurrect him, and he seemed perfectly fine afterwards.

  Maybe there was something to Gaia’s theory about souls, otherwise how would the man still have his memories?

  It almost wasn’t fair, now that everyone was using
their heads. Hundreds of fighters were getting destroyed every few seconds, and many soldiers and turrets as well. It didn’t take all that long to clear the sky of enemy fighters at that point, and we all refocused on the ground battle after that.

  I went back to killing soldiers, and the ones targeting the ships with earth went back to killing plasma turrets. It was a surprisingly short time later that our side of the base was clear of defenses.

  Then we got up and charged into the city to clean it out. Steve’s and several others’ undead armies of enemies with plasma guns led the way, and they provided good cover.

  It quickly turned into a slaughter, as we attacked from within, and the other three flanks attacked from without. The enemy just didn’t have a chance, once we were using our heads.

  The other party leaders weren’t stupid, they were just aggressive, and caught up in the old way. They hadn’t thought it through because we’d hit master and then had immediately left the game without adjusting our strategies. Maybe it was my higher intelligence, or maybe it was the fact I was a three-sphere master with no physical fighting skills whatsoever, and I was more likely to be sneaky as a result.

  We all checked the status of the other worlds, while we returned to the ingress point to meet up with the other three parties I’d teleported. All told, it’d only taken about a half an hour to mop up.

  “Two worlds are still fighting,” Gwen said.

  I nodded, that was good news. That they’d figured out how to take the bastards out on twelve other worlds I mean, not that two were still fighting. One was the home world of the same race we’d just freed, the bear and ape love child race. The second was the original human colony, which was on Tau Ceti.

  I used internal communications to call Gaia on my overlay.

  “Gaia, assign us please, or do they have it covered already?”

  Maybe two worlds were still fighting, but I doubted they needed ten thousand masters at both locations. Then again, it couldn’t hurt, could it?