“Sorry for the long run, Babe. I thought there might be more than one Shade Ruler getting through, as I didn’t know how far the Ritual had gone,” I apologized. “It looks like Sama got it before the Ritual hit the halfway mark.”

Babe’s low rumble was matched with a huff from Husker. “Yeah, she’s a nasty one,” I agreed cheerfully.

Husker squealed and grunted, looking east and flicking his long ears. Babe turned his head that way, too, and rather helplessly, so did everyone else around, wondering what was going on.

Babe inclined his head, Husker bounced once eagerly. Side by side, the two massive Beasts started east at a purposeful trot.

The four Archmages swept down to where I was still riding on Husker, followed urgently by their elite teams. “Lady Fae!” called out General Parton from Tennessee. “What’s going on? Where are these two Beasts headed?”

“There’s another Dark Source nearby in the hills of western Pennsylvania. It’s not as big as this one was going to be, but they don’t like it, and they want to close it!” I replied in a Voice which everyone for a mile around could hear. “Would you like to come along and burn it out with them? You can ride along if you like.”

The startled Archmages looked at one another, and for a moment, child-like glee flashed in their eyes.

It wasn’t impossible to ride a Ruler-class Beast, as some Dragons and rare Contracted Beasts could hit that level... but half-Emperors like these two? On a friendly basis, not as rivals or pets or anything like that? None of these four were Summoners, or had alternative resources to gain Contracted companions otherwise.

“All forces, climb aboard the Blue Ox and the Great Boar!” the generals called out, and the elite flying troops, be it by Wings or Elements, zipped over eagerly to land on the broad backs of the two massive Totem Beasts of mid-America.

“How far to this center of corruption, Lady Fae?” General Parton asked, her platinum-blonde hair fritzing about her. She was the best Lightning-wielder of the four Generals here.

“About a hundred and fifty miles. Should be there in about fifteen minutes.” The astute mages could see the landscape flowing past, and realized an ongoing and subtle Dimensional Magic was being used. Looking behind them, there were no tracks or destroyed vegetation to indicate that the Boar or the Ox had passed by at all, making the wise consider just how good these two creatures were at moving around quickly and stealthily.

“You seem to be on good terms with them,” General Parton asked with a careful smile.

“Me and Babe are good friends. Husker is like the mean uncle who’ll do anything for a buddy.” The Boar snorted aloofly at that, obviously able to hear everything with me holding onto his ear.

“I could not help but notice his tusks are... quite eye-catching now,” General Fields observed with some careful diplomacy.

Husker lifted his snout quite proudly, displaying the massive things, easily thirty feet long, for them to admire more closely!

“Coralost has been doing some work with him and Babe. They don’t normally like to use the magic this way, but against Shades and Undead, huh, all bets are off!”

Husker squealed shortly, and Babe whuffed in agreement, the copper Runes over his horns flashing.

“Wait!” General Fields blurted out. “Are they going to know we are coming?” he asked urgently.

“That’s a definite maybe? But these two figure they can handle whatever comes up, while you scorch that hole shut and wipe up any chaff around.”

There was just something about the way the Blue Ox’s horns gleamed at that moment that made the generals and other mages along for the ride shiver to see. The sudden surge of magic rising from the two Beasts might have done it, too.

And I was there to supply more vivus.

Two Rifts with one stone. The Kryzaniak assassin clan’s holding we’d learned about back then was going to probably explode as it was seized from the other side as a way to gain another Underworld clawhold in the wake of this catastrophic failing, and now, it was going to burn.

So much for a training area for fighting Shades and Shadows, but that was just too bad. We’d have to negotiate for doing that elsewhere, not in the American heartlands...

---

“She drew ‘em off. Great! Let’s get that skull and Soul Jewel and then act all innocent and debrief the incoming troops,” Sama pointed, and the Coralost crew hurried to get their sweet haul with grins on their faces before the reinforcements got there.

It was turning out to be a pretty damn good day, all things considered!

-------

A couple days later...

“Mwahahahaha!” Sama kissed the tally of expended ammunition, explosives, Healing Potions, and other expenditures, and handed it off to be sent off to the Ohio National Guard. “They owe us 5.4 million, and they are eager to pay it after seeing how much vivus cleaned up the whole area for them. Usually areas with that much Dark Mana showing up are contaminated by it for years, but they can’t find a trace of it.

“They want to buy vivic ammunition, and I told ‘em no dice until they pay for our expenditures. This represents the start of a nice full military contract!”

“And silly us, just as we are building more White Mana Zones,” I murmured from over on the couch.

It wasn’t the money that she loved. It was being able to put Typeless people to work, justify paying them well, and really improving their lives. My firehose of an income stream was providing the money to fund a lot of stuff, but it didn’t actually employ a lot of people. It was me letting Coralost use my money, rich bitch that I now was.

An ammunition contract nobody else could satisfy was good, steady work for everyone involved, and would fuel a lot of private dreams.

“You got worries about releasing firearms?” I asked her, half my brain turned off to deal with a massive headache from a lot of spellcasting.

“Without ammo, the firearms are useless, and have limited applications. The firearms can actually be replicated by the ambitious. The ammo needs a Typeless Zone, or it’ll detonate in front of the alchemist mixing it,” she cackled in glee. “Trust us, there’s a LOT of research going on trying to make explosives in normal circumstances, and even things like C4 and Semtex, which should be totally stable without detonators to start them off, have a very, very distressing tendency to go boom at the slightest excuse. Fire Mana just loves them too much.”

That wasn’t too different from Terra-Luna, although any explosive stuff there also went boom the veritable second you left a White Mana Zone, so their crystalline gunpowder wouldn’t have worked, regardless.

Their secret here was Fire-Energized Red Garnet, which had a heat suppression ability. It was only a points-worth, enough to completely defy, say, a candle or a match, sparks from a fire, or any form of sunburn, and only to stuff it was integrated into. But that meant random Fire Mana wouldn’t set the thing off. The spark of a primer and ignition? Yeah, that would override it and start the gunpowder burning.

One little grain of Energized Red Garnet per bullet was enough to ensure they didn’t go off, as long as it was placed in the powder while the substance was inert. It would just barely counteract the effect of ambient Fire Mana, but a hot, directed chemical ignition from a primer would completely overwhelm it and send the bullet on its way.

The Gritworks the two of them had set up had both extremely fine crushers, sifters, and grain-dispensers in closely-watched assembly lines, AND Cantrip-using Casters to allocate the fine glittery sand that was the heart of their ammunition. While nobody outside the Allegiance talked about the process, any of our people who used the firearms was actually encouraged to make their own ammunition, whether they got into the actual gunsmithing or not, and learn the basics of making their own firearm if need be.

Taking a few turns in the Gritworks was a good way to pick up some spare change. We went through a LOT of ammo, and it was totally true that one’s own magic worked better with the firearms and ammo you made yourself.

Spark was a Cantrip, meaning it could be used endlessly. Shots fired using Spark meant no trigger action was required whatsoever to ignite the primer. There were tens of thousands of rounds fired using Spark-guns that showcased the higher accuracy. It was like only +1, +2 if using your own rounds... but that could easily mean the difference between a hit or a whiff, so all the shooters wanted to graduate to Spark-guns, which meant they had to make the things themselves, or, if they were lucky, Sama or Briggs would make one for them.

As if those two didn’t have enough on their plates. Still, just seeing a QL 40 firearm made by someone with 15+ Ranks in Gunsmithing was totally drool-worthy, and that was without them doing any artistic embellishments to make it magical from the start!

The Skill Ranks required to get that good demanded more Classing and expansion of your mind, too, which only helped spur the gaining of more Wizard or Artificer Levels. True Snipers grabbed Expert Levels to make their firearms and ammo, Archer Levels to shoot them, and Artificer Levels to bind them tight, turning them into extremely deadly long-range weapons, even if their owners would never manage the willpower to break Adept.

Not that increasing that Willpower in the Phobos Stand wasn’t another of the things we were doing.

“Nice hole you made there.”

The sound was off, but I opened an eye to look at the TV, where an opportunistic flying Adept equipped with one of the new Coralost Cameras had gotten a really good shot of the gaping hole in the ground spewing unwhite flames as it ate away at the Rift closing below it.

Glenn Gottweil had earned some nice money for his footage, and lots of offers to start covering magical events as a stringer. Nice civilian use for Air Magic, after all.

No, the Rift wasn’t closed. There was a bouncing stony ring floating in the center of the Rift, managing the vivus and keeping the flow steady to what the Rift was pumping out, turning the whole crater white as the vivus dissipated into the surrounding hills and forest of the northern Appalachians.

“I didn’t do jack shit for that,” I admitted. “The Rift was a thousand feet down. We had to crack a hill open, then blow it apart all the way down to get to the bloody thing. I just made that big stone Ring there and did a lot of chewing through the flood of Shades that came streaming out to entertain us.”

“A few Commander-Level Shades, no elders. Pssh.” She’d watched some vids of the fights as some powerful Underworld Shades came out to fight and contest with the Archmages and Mages handy, as well as the two Great Beasts. Predictably, they couldn’t handle all the brute force and firepower, and fed the Land after a spectacular show. “You sure keeping that thing open was a good idea?”

“It’s only ten feet wide now, nothing major can pass through. If something big tries, the intensity of the vivic feed can spike a hundred times, and literally burn off the hand of a Ruler reaching through. An Emperor simply won’t fit.

“The planet has at least four thousand years of drawing Dark Mana in from the Underworld to offset, plus all the Dark Mana users active today. That thing could burn for a century and only slow down the pace. It’s maybe equal to about five thousand Vivic Eternal Lights burning.”

Sama glanced over at me, her lips pursed thoughtfully. “I know the Dark Mana is not a good thing. I don’t know the math behind what you just said.”

“Ah. Well, one such brazier with one such flame eats about as much Dark Mana a day as a normal Novice Dark Magic wielder could put out.”

Sama inclined her head. “There... are basically no Novice Dark mages. It’s an Advanced Element, you almost always get it as an Adept or higher.”

“Which increases the cost by ten or more, as per standard ranking multipliers.”