“Good afternoon!” Cameron Dow said with false joviality that completely ignored the fact that the severed heads of two Archmages were hanging from his belt. “I’m Cameron Dow, the target of your little truncated operation here,” he continued cheerfully, his bright green eyes holding not a shred of the humor in his voice. “Don’t bother introducing yourselves, as I’ve read all your dossiers. I know who you all are. Up, up now.”

He waved them up, and they helplessly clambered to their feet as the two Contracted Ruling Beasts watched them idly. Instead of looking more tense, the two Beasts instead seemed to have relaxed even more, as if the chance of excitement, of them fighting back, was reduced even more.

“We, we’ve surrendered,” Paulie Vinegul, the Sage of the Rhine Valley, spoke up, by default their spokesman. Despite his status, his voice cracked a bit as he looked at the head of the Red River Sage hanging from Sama’s belt, astonishment frozen forever on its features. “What, what are you planning to do to us?”

“Well, now, you’re about to find that out, aren’t you?” Cameron replied heartlessly, turning around. “Why don’t you follow us inside, and we’ll have a nice chat about your futures, or lack of them.”

The Mages, Archmages, and Sage all swallowed, but just a mild huff and the creak of the massive Dragon behind them getting to his feet was enough to send them all into motion.

The Gates of Coralost closed behind Reynard and Lord Quake, Dragon and Fox exchanging amused glances as they herded these formerly-formidable Humans into the Coralost Compound.

Really, they should have known better, but so many Humans were idiots...

-------

The Broom Closet...

The Last Immortal Pearl gleamed in front of me.

It was as tall as I was, a Soul Star Jewel in a unique form, worthy of the death of the oldest Emperor Beast on the planet. The True Emperor Mollusk had endured countless eons, many of them spent beneath the domination of The Sea Emperor, so many ages Its junior.

Unable to advance, unable to improve, unable to dominate the seas that had doubtless once been Its domain, as hands-off as It might have been. Watching as younger, more vital, stronger, more talented Tribes rose about It, and eclipsed It?

Was there any wonder It had bowed to the whispers of a truly greater power, ready to throw off the might of Its junior, and using the power of the Curse Magic, steal the status of High Emperor for Its own?

If I hadn’t been there, It might very well have succeeded, too. The Sea Emperor knew it, and had not said a word as I took the Pearl away. After all, He had treasuries full of other Pearls the Immortal Clam had made over the millennia, it was only right the last one went to Its slayer.

Flowing Silver Emperor was looking over my shoulder at the thing, His head tilted sideways as He contemplated the pearly Light gleaming within it, creating shadows of overlapping illumination.

There was a LOT of True Emperor-grade, and even High Emperor-grade, Mana inside of the thing. I could make something extremely powerful out of this thing, a truly Legendary item of fantastic power, only I did not know what.

That, and the swirling currents of the different weights of Mana inside were trying to make something percolate in my thoughts.

I had an immense Caster Level. Wizard/20 + the local Human Class at Sage/24 had raised my base Caster Level to 36, an absolutely unprecedented level of Casting refinement. It could be overcome by layering multiples of Mana onto a spell, but out of the gate, I actually had a higher Caster Level than Flowing Silver Emperor did.

Then was added on all the buffs from my Rings, Star Magery, Good, the Sublime Chord, and other Buffs, and I was actually Casting at a base of 69.

A Great Low Sage at Human/24 would be Casting at 24 normally, so my spells were almost three times as strong, right from the start.

I had Commanding Stars. An entire Sage Universe of Tier-6 Stars. That was eight times stronger than any Sage had ever had, the cost of tempering over sixteen thousand Stars just too high for them.

I’d had a Blessed Blessing of the Sun Bless my Blessing Element, courtesy of my Exchange with the Fire Phoenix Emperor. It meant that my Fire and Ice Elements, treated as one because of my Luan Firefrost Seed, were at x7, vs the max 2.5 of any other Blessing Element, and all my other Elements were at x3 from the likewise enhanced Blessing of the Stars.

All that was before the magnifying power of my Heaven Seeds (which a Sage might have of their own), or the potentially x20 power of my Sage of Heaven’s Seeds Title, which they would not.

Before the effects of the Seeds themselves, I was sitting at almost a x1600 multiplier compared to other Sages of my level. It was the Caster Level and power of a High Emperor, before applying the Seeds themselves... and my Thunderheart Formation, Holy Water Seed, and Firefrost Seed had massive multipliers built within them, as well as synergy with one another.

I had the power of Realm Lord Casting, sure, but I didn’t have the Mana or the ability to expend multiples of Mana to rival their spells. They could bury me in a spell that carried tens, hundreds, or thousands and thousands times the Mana, and just overwhelm me.

It was why I still couldn’t break the entire The Great Flood again if I needed to. I couldn’t wield enough Mana to do so!

“TELL ME WHAT YOU ARE THINKING OF, HEALER FAE,” Flowing Silver Emperor asked, His words no longer a command, even if I recognized Him as my Emperor still.

I hadn’t even had to ask. He had conceded the Broom Closet and its growing area as my Demesne, and shown me how to tie it to me, an even more profound method than Leviathan Emperor used.

Every Beast who set foot in here, and every Human who knew what to look for, instantly recognized that this was my Demesne now!... which merely made my status obvious, and didn’t functionally change much of anything that was going on here. Briggs and Sama took care of basically all the logistics as they couldn’t do anything similar, except inside an Allegiance.

That meant that Thunderbird Emperor was no longer my Emperor, and technically was my inferior. We’d quietly granted one another unlimited permission to enter the other’s domain and Demesne, and that was that.

If he called, I would come. It was as simple as that, and I could tell it pleased him greatly. Likewise, if I needed him, he would also come!

“I am considering turning this Pearl into a great Warding to cover the Broom Closet. I believe there is enough power in it to work with the Wards and the Pyramid to even conceal the presence of Emperors.”

His great sky-blue eyes glittered with understanding. It meant that this place could conceal Emperors if we needed to flee the mortal world or Beast Realm!

I did not need to do so, as the existing Wards would conceal lesser creatures and Humans just fine.

“AND WHAT ELSE?” He prodded me, knowing I was also thinking on many things. I generally let Him look through my Astral Ward XIV as He wished, as my mind fascinated Him.

“If I seek to contest with a Realm Lord, or conceivably rise to that station, I need a way to gain more Mana, and a way to Cast more Mana. I do not see the way forward at this time.”

“YOU SEEK TO EMULATE THE WAY BEASTS COMPRESS AND REFINE MANA FOR YOUR OWN USE,” He nodded slightly. “IT IS SIMILAR TO THE WAY YOU TEMPER YOUR STARS WITH SOUL CRYSTALS, BUT YOU ARE LIMITED IN THE NUMBER OF YOUR STARS,” He said thoughtfully. “EVEN THE HUMAN WITH EIGHT ELEMENTS IS THUS LIMITED IN HIS MANA,” He noted, casting a sidelong glance towards the Pyramid in the distance, which Mok Fan, Gabriel, and Ruronalee were still Meditating atop, working on purifying away the Elements which might doom them.

The young women (heh, they were as old as I was!) were almost done, at which point they were eagerly looking forward to beginning their studies in Wizardry. There were still over six months before they were expected to return.

“YOUR USE OF FALSE STARS HAS NOT SHOWN YOU A WAY FORWARD?” Flowing Silver asked, somewhat surprised.

I leaned back against the unearthly hard and soft fur of His paw, rubbing my temples. “Yes and no, Your Majesty. Yes, I can bind Mana around my Soul Essence.” I brought forth a point of Soul Essence, with a full Starry Heavens spell bound around it, representing 2401 extra Mana. “The problem is that the Essence is now bound to this usage, and cannot be used for other things.” The Tats along my feet and shins glowed tellingly, and my Mask came down as well, while the Amulet Tat scribed about my throat also gleamed. “It should not surprise Your Majesty that I like having that Essence available for those other uses, and it gets used up rapidly.”

I was only using ten Essence to support these extra spells and their Mana. I basically drew the Mana from them down first in any situation, freeing up the Essence for use in Soul Tats or Feats as needed, then put it all back later.

Twenty-four thousand Mana sounded like a lot, but I could burn through it all in fifteen seconds. It represented about three percent of my Mana Pool at this point.

His head came down on His paws to have a closer look, always curious about the other energies I was capable of wielding. Soul Essence in particular fascinated Him. “BUT THAT MANA IS NOT COMPRESSED AND REFINED. CAN YOU NOT DO SO WITH THE BASIC MANA THAT YOU HAVE?” He queried me.

“Perhaps because our Stars also affect the power of our magic, they are completely unable to tolerate denser Mana. All it does is weigh down the Stars towards the normal limit of what they can tolerate.” And was effectively useless, as using one Mana at a time per spell per Star was how our spells worked! Having a Star only able to cough up 4xMana points was effectively useless!

“BUT THAT SHOULD NOT BE A LIMIT OF YOUR FALSE STARS?” He asked reasonably.

That brought me up short. Once I was able to spin a Starry Heavens around a Soul Point, I’d basically given up, as there were no more complex spell configurations available to humans, there was only more Mana or the use of Rituals.

But... Flowing Silver was totally right. False Stars weren’t Stars, and they didn’t add to the power of the spells with Foundation Mana in them. They were just holding patterns for Mana, as it were. If I stripped out an irregular amount of Mana from the pattern, so what? It wasn’t like I was Casting from that Pattern. It was only there because it was a stable holding pattern able to contain a lot of Mana.

I had observed a LOT of Great Beasts refine their Mana, and I had even helped them with the purification and compression of it. I had Dragon Water, which was High Emperor-class compressed Mana, and I had this Pearl in front of me for samples on what needed to be accomplished at the very high end.

I was also a Typeless Mage. I didn’t need ‘pure’ Mana. I just needed to Burn it to Arcane standards, regardless of what the mixture actually was, and then simply resonate it and even it all out, filtering out any imbalances at the end.

Great Commanders used 2xMana to become Rulers. Great Rulers needed 4x. They had to compress it to 40x to become a Low Emperor, 400x for a True Emperor, and 4000x for a High Emperor!

Mana Points in a Starry Heavens, compressed 4000-fold, was 9.6 million Mana!

Even if I only used ten Soul Essence, that was 96 million Mana. Just thinking of the power behind that was mind-boggling. Releasing all that compressed Mana at once in one spell...

Yeah, that’s how you sent out something at the scale of The Great Flood!