“Thanks! I’ll be sending the bill to you. I’m down about five million dollars in ammunition expenditure doing your job for you. I’ve also got six bounties on Black Curia Deacons and the Orange Cardinal to collect,” Sama replied to the general’s tiff without batting an eye.

His eyes almost popped in disbelief. “You, you killed the Orange Cardinal?” he repeated in shock.

She gave him a lazy eyeball. “Yeah, I did. Fucker died real fast when I chopped his head off and blew him into bloodspray. I already registered my kills with the bounties at the Hunter’s Guild, so don’t even think of taking credit, General, and I’ve got the heads stashed away.”

“That is not...” he trailed off, before sighing and shaking his head. He could see plain as day that she had not a whit of magical energy... actually, that there was no magic around her at all. He couldn’t actually tell a damn magical thing about her, and her casual attitude towards as exalted a personage as an Archmage addressing her suddenly made his blood run cold.

The Orange Cardinal... shouldn’t that man be a half-Sage? And five of his Blue Deacons... shouldn’t they ALL be Archmages? Or at least Great Mages?

She... had killed them all? Herself?

“That should be General Harolds from Pennsylvania,” he said urgently, rising quickly in altitude. “I will go to him to determine our approach to this fight!”

“I’m sure it won’t get harder and harder to do what you need to the longer you delay attacking,” Sama nodded along, his rise slowing. “Wait as long as you like. Should be a really rock’em, sock’em fight by the time you get to it, instead of a relative cakewalk while the Duke is stuck in transit.”

His rising retreat from her slowed to a stop, and he grimaced badly. I could totally hear him curse, “Fucking Hag...” under his breath, and his flight turned towards the Shade Duke, the first cascade of Fire Magic materializing and starting to fall onto the Shades gathered at the edge of the Domain, while his Archmage’s power gnawed at the influence of the Domain itself.

“Lost his fighting heart ten years ago against the Jetstream Falcon Baron and never got it back,” Sama said, watching him start to pound the Shades and rain a trail of cataclysmic Fire magic on them. It was stupid and useless, as the Duke was just Summoning more in to replace what were lost. “Tell the idiot to at least cross the white fire with his kills, so the Shades are devoured, not just banished and replaced, aye?”

I waved that off to the Mick, who phrased it much more politely. The falling flames made sure to intercept that street of misty whiteness, which exploded across the carnage and infernos left behind by his spells, completely devouring the Shades, feeding them to the Land... and strengthening the Veil, which immediately contracted the Domain, if only a little.

Which, of course, our shooters and I were totally happy to take advantage of.

Single shots of vivic-tracer ammo slammed into the Shades abruptly outside the Shadow Domain, in sunlight, and vulnerable. I added some Darts to the carnage to speed things along, anything tough enough to withstand the Chains getting an additional shot or two to speed things along.

Which, with them burning vivic, ate away more of the Domain, and man, there were a lot of crowded Shades, Shadows, and Undead there, milling about and wondering if they should go wandering out into the lethal sunlight which would either weaken them very quickly or Banish them back whence they’d been Summoned.

If they were vivisized during that moment of transition, well, that was a pretty bad thing to happen to them.

---

The Archmages had finally gotten their collective heads out of their asses and the four of them here were now pummeling that Duke, who had managed to work his shoulders out of the Rift and was throwing shadowy spells in every direction, forcing them to duck and dodge and weave as they executed their spells upon it.

General Fields nearly got himself killed trying to set off the Great Compass of Void Magic, but with his target unable to actually dodge to avoid the spell, it was actually a great move.

The other two Archmages added Lightning and Light Magic at the Archmage Tier to the assault, great Swords of Light plunging from the sky to ignite Shadows and Domains, great Pillars of Judgement falling about the Shade Duke to pummel it repeatedly with Lightning while it couldn’t get away or exert its full power.

Sama said we weren’t going back in there, it was true. But as the Domain began to rapidly contract under the waning power of that Duke, we were totally happy to move forward, staying under the sunlight, the shooters working in single-shot mode coolly, picking off what was left after Chained Darts shot through them, and we politely harvested what the Underworld was willing to give us so freely.

They weren’t really a ranged attack force, and what they sent our way was hugely impeded by the sunlight and our own Light mages working defense.

Besides, what we were after was really the harvest of all the dead, under the table.

Knowing eyes noted the streams of Soul Crystals coming our way and being sucked into the Pockets of the Mick and I, the real bounty of this fight. In a true fight, at Melee range and in darkness, these Shades were terrifying opponents, far more dangerous than most Aquatics... and their Soul Crystals were likewise better. There were no Servant-class Shades or anything here, everything at least an Egg in quality, which is where our real bounty was being made.

Those Archmages playing God and wiping out scores of acres and more of these guys at a time, all such grandiose spells carefully intercepting the fields of mistflame that were definitely setting all the Shades on fire and eating at its Domain, were yielding us a nice bounty of Soul Crystals we were unashamedly looting.

Really, all our time was being paid for with the hundreds and thousands of Soul Crystals they were generating for us, bless them! Not that we’d tell them that.

I turned my head. “He’s here.”

Sama waved me off, focusing on Warlording and coordinating fire. The Gatlings that had been staying silent began to whir quietly, and now instead of Chains, streaks of whiteness began to punch through clusters of Shades, Shadows, and undead, lighting whole bunches of them on vivic fire, all of it being quietly paid for in the Soul Crystals left behind as they fed the Land.

---

The Shade Duke was getting desperate, drawing forth incredible energies of Shadow as it coalesced a great scythe in its hand and chopped its way out of the Lighting Pillars, deflected a falling Sword of Light, and nearly chopped the Wind Archmage Harold in two with the speed of its edge just as he got off a howling Hurricane of Blades on top of the creature, chopping at it with uncounted numbers of windblades as Light from above weakened its Elemental Resistance.

And that is when the Great Boar Husker, accompanied by an ear-splitting squeal of absolute outrage, barreled right through the spell, drove a massive tusk blazing with multiple flames into the chest of the Shade Duke, ripped it right up his chest and into the bottom of his skull, and then, to its immense stupefaction, dragged it right out of the Rift and threw it to the ground with an awesome crash of pure brutal porcine strength.

The Great Boar of southern Indiana then proceeded to start goring the fuck out of that Duke as the Rift it had been holding open closed with a mighty explosion. The congealed vivus dripping off its wound ignited shadowy essence, and a gouting blast of vivic flame blew up into the sky, shredding its Domain even as the source of its power was abruptly cut off.

Husker squealed again, the sound shattering any glass in the area that wasn’t already gone, and power pulsed.

Every living plant on the ground erupted at the same time for miles around, instantly forming spikes that shot up like punji stakes, punching right through all those countless Shades, Shadows, and Undead, said spikes curved and arced and burning with the exact same fires blazing on Husker’s massive tusks.

That included through the body of this Shade Duke that was writhing around and trying to turn to face the massive Boar with unnatural flexibility and an amorphous body structure.

Husker smashed the Duke’s scythe down and to the side, then ran right up on top of the sucker, coming down like a living hill with his hooves and goring the bastard right open with the force of thirty-foot glaives backed by a mountain.

His hooves churned and pushed and smashed the fucker down into all those spikes blazing vivic underneath it, like being smashed down into burning coals. He tore the fucker open, ignoring the claws trying to rip at him and his soul, his hide blazing with a Light that wasn’t his own and yet Warded him quite nicely, thank you, even as the Shadow Domain shattered and sunlight smashed down with physical force on the Shade Duke.

The utterly stupefied Archmages up in the sky just looked down at this scene in shock, watching the rampaging and infuriated Great Boar ripping that isolated and depowered Shade Duke to pieces with terrifying power and a complete lack of mercy, the burning swaths left by his tusks not reforming nor healing as they might have, and the thickness of his hide and bristling fur like golden spears defying the half-material claws trying to rake at him.

---

“We’ve got like ten minutes before the Boar claims the Soul Crystals for the Land!” Sama snarled, jolting the watching Coralost teams back to reality as the fight ran down and the ground wasn’t jumping so much. “MOVE!”

Everyone who could juice a Mage Hand Cantrip leapt into action as the spiked plants abruptly receded to the ground, and a harvest of Soul Crystals came falling down with them. The Coralost shooters streamed out in all directions to grab as many of the things as they could before the Boar pulled the rest into the ground, and the energy they held would nurture the Land instead.

---

The four Archmages were quite surprised when I popped up on Husker’s massive head, holding onto a tufted ear, and sent a Wall of Vivic Fire burning the length of the corpse, unifying all the gaping wounds on the thing and helping it burn down faster.

Husker snuffed and snorted like a great bellows, prancing around the thing, plainly able to keep fighting. He tossed severed arms and legs on top of the messy display of the main body scornfully before looking around with angry reddened eyes.

The whole damn area was on vivic fire, with occasional explosions as underground reservoirs of blood, meat, bone, and other remains of multiple cadavers were hit by the intense vivic flames permeating the ground and erupted in misty new conflagrations.

The burial mounds themselves that had started the whole mess were torn apart by magic and a massive Boar rampaging through them, the rows of defiled earth blazing and burning heartily, attracting the massive Pig’s unkind attention.

With great energy, he began to plow through them, root them up, turn them over, and send the earth flying. It was seemingly random, but in actuality right where he wanted it to end up. Whole sections of the ground caved in, blew up with vivus, and were quietly buried under tons of plowed earth, the remains of trees, and a general display of massive destructive power and flying terrain that nevertheless ended with the whole damn central area buried and trampled flat in something less than ten minutes.

There was a low thundering call from the north, and everyone turned as Babe the Blue Ox came prancing over the landscape, ahead of hundreds of mages who absolutely had no idea what to do about the appearance of the two massive Beasts coming together.

Husker charged right for Babe, and it looked like another fight was going to start, but all that happened is that the two massive Beasts bumped noses and nuzzled one another like old friends.

The sharp-eyed noted that the same kind of fires burning up around Husker’s tree-like tusks were glimmering in coppery Runic Script over Babe’s horns, too!