Sama was waiting atop the Seal she’d made, the Seal set atop a steep rock sitting off a hillside in the jungle where absolutely nothing of any importance was located. Driver Sam guided us through the coastal jungle steadily while I scanned the area for anything of any danger, but there wasn’t a lot of actual Beast life by the sea, oddly enough.

They probably didn’t like getting eaten by the Fish.

“I’d say you took your sweet time, but it was more spicey than sweet,” Sama winked at us, hopping down thirty feet with aplomb, swirling once to divert momentum as she settled to the ground.

Twenty new White Mana Zones were going up down the length of the western coast of Mexico. We hadn’t asked permission from the government, but we had approval from all the towns they were rising in. It was going to take a full generation for them to be truly productive, but the process was starting... and the schools to teach the new generation and get their brains working so they could Awaken their magic were the first things that I put up.

Magic didn’t care if you were strong, or tough, or had nimble fingers; if you could work a field all day and drink beer all night. Magic required you to be mentally strong, mentally tough, and mentally nimble. That required education, it required learning how to think, to imagine, to memorize, to analyze, to understand, and to extrapolate.

It meant their kids had to learn if they wanted the village to grow and be able to take care of itself. It was the single biggest thing they had to learn here, along with Typeless Magic that could access all the spells they might need, if their kids learned.

There were no bandit gangs harassing the coasts right now. The Coralost operator teams had removed them all explosively, freed their hostages, and had really good ideas on who and what higher-ups those small-time regional bosses were actually reporting to.

It was a chance to make some really good Karma helping people both with and without violence, and opportunities for Karma were to be seized upon! Even if their pay didn’t change at all, they could go out there, set things up, teach people the basics, and earn some good Karma for doing so.

They could also headshot banditos looking to have some fun with the peasants, and despite the lesser threat level, it was still good Karma for those who didn’t want to engage in slaughter and risk death in the Boonies.

Also, the Littoral Zone of Slaughter Shore on the Baja Peninsula was within easy Waterjump range.

I’d used Earth Magic and Shape Stone to move a lot of homes, yards, streets, plazas, and buildings around, putting up a lot of walls, running ditches, sewers, water lines, and cisterns here and there. There wasn’t widespread indoor plumbing yet, but it was coming, even if they had to make their own... and just being able to fill water into a sink without having to lug it from a well was a massive improvement for most of the families. A communal shower/bathhouse was a luxury they’d never had, either.

I had done miles and miles of farmland restructuring, evening out land worked for generations into easier plots to keep track of, changing paths, ditches, and canals for irrigation. Sometimes they got very irritated with me for messing with their land, but then they realized how much easier it was to take care of the neat rectangles than the weird convolutions of generations, and they grew more thoughtful. Helping change the soil to sustain agriculture, and getting them on proper crop rotations instead of the mass production of unwanted ‘valuable’ shit the cartels wanted them to grow was also important.

There was pushback coming, there was no doubt. But we also had eyes and recruits in multiple places watching for stuff, and, well, Sama loved dealing with the corruption of the magical and the powerful here. If they were willing to see people dead, she was willing to see them dead, and it didn’t matter how rich, powerful, or politically-connected they were. They died mysteriously, by any number of methods. Those who were extolling that the government should do something about these gringos seizing land and influence in Mexico were repeatedly found in embarrassingly inappropriate states as they died, and the numbers of the dead went up, and up, and up repeatedly.

Then the orders stopped coming down, and all was well with the world for the moment, while Cartel Families and normal Families were engaged in new grabs for power with so many power-players suddenly removed from their positions by termination retirement. It didn’t stop the assassin teams and bounty hunters from trying their luck, of course... until those issuing the contracts and bounties started getting dead again, in addition to those accepting such things. Briggs and Sama had their ways of finding out who was behind such things, after all...

But that was neither here nor there.

“Mystic Eye’s territory basically ends on the other side of that line of hills there,” Sama pointed out the green-carpeted ripples in the thick forest to us, pointing in the direction of probably the pre-eminent Magical University in the world. “Oddly enough, the frequent haunts of the Night Weavers are all on this side of those hills. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.”

“Doubtless. Dating back to the founding of the University and careful analysis of the terrain and creatures around the place, I’m sure,” I agreed with a sniff. “Do any preliminary scouting?”

Sama rolled her eyes at me. “Where would the fun in that be?” she asked cheerfully.

“No fun at all, just guaranteed kills the way Sama likes it.”

Her lethal smile popped up and was gone, just like that. “I’m sure it’s not a reaction to certain events in America, but there’s a push in Shadow Mana out from the temples that wasn’t there a year ago. The Night Weavers have started running webs through the surrounding jungle to a degree they never did before, and there’s rather a large number of them around... along with some other Shadowy things that aren’t prey, so they don’t care.”

“Please tell me you’ve been entertaining yourself with them,” I sighed, putting my hand to my forehead.

She laughed softly. “I rolled up some balls of webbing bigger than your torso off those webs. They just spun new ones in, but I’m sure it irritated them.

“As for the Phantoms and Wraiths wafting about, their tendency to stay incorporeal really isn’t wise with a Ghostcutting Weapon around.” Tremble popped up behind her and chimed Ding! Ting! happily.

“This sounds like more than a web-gathering job, Commander Rantha,” Driver Sam said carefully.

“Oh, it’s definitely more now. Ripple effects of doing Good things, inspiring pushback. In that vein...” she looked back north, “how fast can you get to Village Dos?”

Driver Sam looked at me, I nodded, and he Jaunted up to the Seal Focus sitting up there out of sight. He powered it up, spent Void Magic as he reached out to its counterpart hundreds of miles north, and Teleported out of existence here smoothly.

He’d found out, like many others, that using magic charitably was great for Karma, putting rep counts to work instead of just focusing on his own Control Skills. He’d hit Nine in Wizard, and was building Karma to spend on his Secondary Classes as he worked on moving to half-Archmage and doing the Archmage breakthrough at that time.

He’d been working the Boonies for nearly a year now, and all his Stars were at Tier 5, with a huge chunk of his Earth Magic at Tier 6. Void Magic didn’t profit nearly as much from Star investment as Earth Magic, since Void Magic was entirely based on Will for its power, and that was a different form of training.

I knew he wanted to get Tier 6 in his full Earth Element before doing the breakthrough. Slaughter Shore was going to be seeing some visits from him, that was certain.

“Any problems running overland, or you want me to haul you?” Sama asked, facing west.

“I’m sitting at about 145 base? I can run if I don’t have to Cast. Full Run Mastery, I can triple-move all day, quintuple for an hour at least.”

“Nice!” she nodded. “I’m sitting at 245.”

I just rolled my eyes. “You and your bloody base 60 movement.” I shook my head as she grinned. “I get it, your double-move is faster than my triple. But I don’t really get to run everywhere, so if it’s alright with you, I’d like to stretch my inferior lightfoot a little bit.”

“It makes a better lived-line, anyway, and gets you a better feeling for the terrain.” She shrugged. “We’ve got about thirty miles through some damn thick jungle, with a lot of Beasts and Plants around with appetites.”

“I’ve got an easy forward range of five hundred yards on Detect Non-Good,” I informed her. “They aren’t going to surprise me.”

“Good enough. We’re going to be bouncing around the terrain as needed, so, yeah, you’re going to get a lightfoot workout. Most of the dangerous stuff uses Awareness to hunt, and I’m very sensitive to that, but feed me your Divs to be on the safe side and we’ll see what’s up. I’m not going full speed, there’s far too much dangerous crap around here.”

Everything from the Jaguar Clans to dozens of Snakes, with some of the bigger Spiders, Scorpions, and Centipedes in the world, too; various Ants, Wasps, and Bees, and plenty of Avians of all kinds.

Yeah, this place was a riot of life, and yet only a shadow of the Amazon Jungle further south, which housed some of the most powerful Land Emperors in the world, including the most powerful Tree, Spider, Frog, and Ant Emperors known. Even the Medusas of Egypt didn’t mess with Queen Mother Anaconda and her babies, and if the Warlord Queen of Ants ever decided to march out of the Amazon, it was likely she could wipe any other species off of South America that she wanted to, and that included Humanity.

That didn’t include the Verme Lords of the Amazon, who definitely held back any and all Aquatic aggression from the Atlantic. Not even the most egotistical of Shark Lords dared the waters of the Amazon and the wild blood frenzies that erupted to eat everything the sea sent upriver.

But Grandfather Cloudcatcher the Emperor Tarantula wasn’t the power here, the Night Weavers were. It would take a special kind of Tarantula to test them out in the domain they’d chosen.

On the flip side, the Night Weavers used Shadow, making them Dark Creatures who not a single Emperor in the world was going to shed a tear for if they were exterminated.

---

And thus we went traipsing off overland.

Yeah, I totally could have Linejumped to our destination in a second, or zipped low over the trees while flying, but I wanted the Lived-line connection, and this was a rare chance to stretch my legs. I basically chased after Sama, scanning ahead for surprises as she led the way, mostly through the trees that grew taller and higher than trees normally had a right to.

I could tell she wasn’t doing more than trotting, reading the ground like a master and choosing our course, noting that me jumping wasn’t a problem since I could TK or Angel Walk or use Cloudstepping Sandals as needed across any gaps, so she had no fears of hopping from branch to branch lightly, or across stones, any of the rivers we crossed, and the like.

There was an Archer Fish that tried to pick me off as I followed her over one of the rivers, shooting water out like bullets that could have reduced me to a pulp.

I shifted aside in mid-air, letting them zip on by, and flicked a flight of Shards back at it, brimming with voltage. The water exploded and sent the Fish flying, convulsing and grievously wounded, and doubtless going to be a meal itself soon, judging by other ripples in the water and the Auras converging on it.

“I never ate one of those!” Sama laughed over her shoulder, ignoring the handy vines to continue bouncing off trunks and branches with lightfoot more artistic than any dancer. This wasn’t a maze to her, it was literally a walk in a park!