Mok Fan couldn’t be everywhere, of course. If the Archangels started going after targets, he wouldn’t be able to stop them all.

Happily, he didn’t need to. With the traitorous Sages removed from their positions, the nations of the world were entirely unwilling to put up with someone who was using Sages as tactical nukes to strike with impunity at who and where they wished to.

The Mage Associations utterly collapsed as the Sages who had to support them to give them validity abandoned them, gutting the offices and returning to their own lands and people... and then positioning themselves in the lands about Italy and Rome, waiting and watching each and every Sage and Archangel attached to the Church and Synod, the number of which had decreased by yet one more with the head of Salathiel popping up in a mysterious uploaded video claimed by nobody and nothing.

His very Wing-less body impaled on a pike was very demonstrative of the world’s view of him, of course.

The assorted Sages might not have been able to handle the Avatar themselves, and might struggle individually with an Archangel using their Wings, but they outnumbered the Archangels almost two to one, so those were not going to be duels.

The Synod was trying to start a world war, and the world had decided that it didn’t want to put up with their shenanigans.

Across the Mediterranean, the Sages of Coralost continued supporting Briggs and the Undead Hunters, and Pyramids collapsed every couple of days, blown apart, Sealed, and lashed with vivus.

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Few people dared to comment on the massive, roiling sandstorms that had engulfed the center of the Sahara, surges of Imperial Magic vibrating in the Elements at something going on in there.

Infinite Sands was finally moving to address the corruption in His own domain, and not liking at all what He was finding. With little effort on his part, the creatures corrupted with Dark Mana found themselves no longer immune to the Curse of the Sahara, and were trapped and could not flee from the depths of the desert, be it above or below.

It did not matter how many millions of them scuttled forth to do battle. Infinite Sands was plenty happy to kill them all, and their wild fleeing in every direction merely led them all straight back to Him eventually.

There were a lot of them, so it was keeping Him very busy, even as the Rulers not lured with Dark Elements and their Tribes joined into the killing frenzy.

-------

The Netherworld...

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Aaaaand there it was, finally.

The Awareness so disquieted by whatever was going on out here on the fringes settled into place around the Pyramid suddenly and thoroughly. It had finally noticed the way the undead in the area disappeared into the area around the Pyramid one by one, and were suddenly lost from its sight. It was akin to looking at a single ant disappearing from a golf course, and had demanded a lot of time and concentration from the Realm Lord working this, likely becoming something of an obsession.

Their last great scheme on the surface world was going awry. Infinite Sands High Emperor’s countless minions would not be unleashed upon the human population, legions of insects sweeping across the surface of the world, devouring everything in their path. Truly nothing could have held back such numbers, save Emperors themselves, and the hordes would have been protected by their own Emperors, now revealed to have numbers considerably in excess of what even Infinite Sands knew.

It did not matter now. Their billions were not leaving the desert unless they could kill a High Emperor, and they simply could not.

The Netherlords were distracted by the continuing assaults on the Pyramids, and now were delightedly watching the collapse of the Church of Light and the corralling of its Avatar by what was effectively a neutral party with great entertainment. The Champion of the Lords of Light was neutered and ineffectual, which meant the Avatar could achieve nothing in the balance of souls, even though the balance were not coming to the Netherworld.

They could tell the flow of Faith was going to the new Church of Heaven, but not where to from there. In the end, it did not concern them. There was no power equal to their own it could be feeding, so in the end it was a useless gesture, perhaps a cunning grab for power by an opportune mage, a tactic they could all appreciate, even if it was ultimately useless. Someone so inventive and driven would in all likelihood be quite open to their offers for more power, if he could leash and control the souls of humanity upon this world...

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But now, the sixth Realm Lord had found the source of the irritation. Although He was trying to be subtle, I couldn’t miss the pressure He was putting on the Astral Ward about the Pyramid, nor the increasing lock on the spatial area about this place. He was trying to do it subtly enough to not alarm me, but that naturally had not worked.

“PISS OFF,” I sent out to Him, and the encroaching pressure abruptly stilled as the startled Realm Lord realized He’d been sensed and caught.

I definitely had piqued His curiosity!

Real power condensed around the area, locking down space and making sure nothing could get in or out of the area. Whatever curiosity He’d found was going to be just between the two of us!

“REVEAL YOURSELF!” a sepulchral Voice thundered from all around, laden down with compelling magic that would have wiped clean the will of an Emperor.

I ignored it. “You’re intruding on my personal time. Go away. I’ve got no need to speak to a jumped-up godling who can’t even manage their own flow of souls properly. I’m going to finish cleaning up this colossal mess you’ve made of the border of your Realm and go away when I’m done. There’s nothing here for you to be concerned about.”

Again the shocked pause as He digested my words. He thought I was hiding, but my tone said I completely wasn’t.

I was fixing a problem and doing it on the down-low so as not to have them messing with me!

“REVEAL YOURSELF,” He repeated, but with less imperiousness and more firmness. “I KNOW YOU ARE THERE AND WILL NOT IGNORE YOU NOW. COME OUT, OR I WILL COLLAPSE THIS VEIL FORCIBLY!”

“No, you won’t, although you can enter it pretty easily. It’s keeping out your Awareness, not your power. My Domain is keeping out your power, and you don’t have the strength to collapse that.”

Again the pause to think, and a moment later, the Netherverse started to collapse on me.

I pulsed out seventeen million points of Girded High Imperial Mana and met that magic straightaway. Instead of a clashing force of neutralization, however, I Spellflared His effort, and there was a brilliant burst of light outside my Domain as a huge chunk of His own energy fed back to Him, while the rest blossomed in a roiling black and white wave of Armageddon, wiping away everything for ten miles around us in an instant.

Vivic energies roiled in the air, but the Pyramid calmly collected all the Soul Crystals out there, leaving the flames on the land free to Burn down, spitting disparate nether energies cleansed of Dark Mana and popping here and there with Elemental purity.

“Oh, wasn’t that smart,” I told Him, and started the process of moving the Pyramid, not that I actually needed to. “Well, I suppose that is the stupid way to do the job...”

I could almost hear shadowy teeth gritting. Patterns of power that crossed the entire plane vibrated, and began to shift.

The Netherlord was coming here personally!

His Awareness was still locked onto me as I moved, but given the speed the Pyramid moved at, I obviously wasn’t running away, and He was moving very quickly, indeed.

I smirked. Curiosity and a little irritation, although the feedback wouldn’t have been more than a minor sting. Still, the simple fact I’d stung Him without effort meant that this whole thing was not nearly as simple an incident as He had been expecting, and obviously He wasn’t going to be able to deal with this at a distance.

Besides, if He was here in person, He’d be able to conceal exactly what was going on from the others, in case this was important!

He arrived before I moved a relative mile, a distant spot on the endless flat plain that grew with astounding speed, the plane itself bending around Him to hurry Him on His way here. He went from a hundred miles away to on top of me in less than a minute, slamming to a halt directly in front of my path.

He was over six hundred feet tall, well higher than the top of my Pyramid, and doubtless could become much taller upon demand, as the one I’d seen in the Beast Realm had been at least half a mile in height. He was wearing a flowing black robe that billowed about Him rather dramatically, the rope on it tied off with what looked like the head of an Imperial Dragon. He had a staff in hand, a ribbed thing that looked to have been built from the spine of the same Imperial Dragon making His belt-catch, its four claws arranged at the top to form a cage around what I was pretty sure was the dragon’s crystalized heart.

He himself wasn’t human. He had jet-black skin, no flesh tones, and burning yellow eyes that promised mastery of daemonic blightfire. His hair was streaked black around spikes on his head, and His hands were long and claw-tipped, clearly not of human origin, either. The bones of His face were sharper, the eyes sunken, and His chin jutted out too far and had two more spikes protruding from it, with a mouth that was so wide I guessed that His jaw could unhinge.

No idea what species. It didn’t really matter, in the end.

Even close up, He couldn’t see through the Astral Ward at XXIV, but His perception was enough to narrow in on it instantly.

I watched Him towering there, pausing despite all His power and arrogance. It was the fear of the unknown, of surprises and threats He thought He’d left behind.

He didn’t know what He was going to be facing, and I could see the excitement there with the fear. Something to stir His blood after all these years.

He stepped forward without further words to me, determined to challenge me and what was here, holding His hand out to reach in and grab for me...

His hand paused instantly when it touched my Domain, and He stopped even as He cleared the Ward and its veiling. He made the equivalent of a blink, and then He dropped his eyes to look down at me, standing on the bare altar at the top of the Pyramid... and once again He could tell nothing about me, veiling shadows wound about me. He could tell my size and that I was the center of the Domain in front of me, which meant I had power... very dangerous power.

I just glared up at Him as He stared at me in shock. “You are in the way of my Pyramid. I am NOT going to be doing my clean-up job without my Pyramid.”

He just sort of gaped at me, caught all off-guard. “WHAT ARE YOU?” He asked, possibly too stunned to get past that. I simply had too much power in too small a shell.

“You aren’t cleared to know that. Suffice it to say I was sent here to correct the metaphysical imbalance predicated by your netherplane’s failure to send on depleted souls, before someone up the scale arrived to do it for you, an event I am absolutely certain you want to avoid.

“Now, are you going to get out of my way and let me be about my job, or are you formally refusing the services ceded to you by my superiors?” I glared at Him, hands on my hips, clearly not intimidated by Him in the slightest.

“YOU ARE POWERFUL, BUT YOU ARE NOT A REALM LORD. AND YOU PRESUME TO GIVE ORDERS TO ME?” He actually bent towards me in astonishment that I dared to have such chutzpah.

“You are formally refusing my services?” I replied instead, completely unfazed by His size.

“THE SOULS YOU HAVE BEEN DESTROYING CONTRIBUTE TO THE STRENGTH OF THIS REALM,” He finally answered after a moment of hesitation. After all, He could take violent action at any time.

“If your Awareness was more developed, you’d know otherwise. There is a gathering tension in the planar boundaries of this nether realm due to the empty weight gathered at its edges. The fraying in your planar boundaries is apparent, aetheric incursions and temporospatial storms are already starting to gather at them.” I negligently waved my arm in that direction, and He turned to look that way in consideration. Indeed, there were a great many energies seething at the boundaries of their Realm, and it was greater than it had been in the past, building over many years. They’d probably thought it was because they were getting bigger... and it was, but not properly bigger.

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