I ask that the Dark Element of Shadow not be able to mesh with the Element of Curses on the Mortal Plane...

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I ask that the Dark Element of Poison not be able to mesh with the Element of Healing...

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I ask that the Dark Element of Undeath not be able to mesh with the Element of Chaos...

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The gargantuan Starry Heavens spinning about a completely non-Starry Valence swirled and emptied out. Ripples of reality ringing with the touch of Heaven spread out slowly and subtly, beneath the perception of anything not actually involved in the activity they were meant to prevent.

,010 Mana was vented away to power it all at a very fundamental level, unbalancing a very specific circumstance of magic.

Even the three High Emperors had no idea I was doing anything, although I doubt they would have disapproved. With an entire planar barrier between here and them, the Realm Lords didn’t know, either, and wouldn’t have known to look for it, regardless.

“Impressive,” Sama acknowledged, watching the multicolored flows of Mana stream away from the final Miracle in the series. “So now nobody can use the new trick with the Dark Elements?”

I was taking deep breaths. I had a lot of Mana, yes, but venting twenty-four thousand of it in one rush was still like suddenly feeling I’d sprinted ten miles. It was a LOT of magic!

“Technically, no, and that’s why it works. They only need to overcome a Caster Level of 71, +11 Girding. It will feel like immense resistance from the Mortal Realm, as opposed to flat-out denial.”

Only 71+11, hehe!

Sama just lifted an eyebrow. “Is there anyone on the planet who could DO that?”

“Repeated specific High Emperor-class Magic directed specifically at a single Miracle’s effect could do it eventually. If they dilute the attempt across all Dark Magic, for instance, not a chance, and that includes even the Realm Lords.

“And that would only work for one Casting. My Magic is Tenacious, and succeeding in one attempt isn’t going to unravel the magic at all.”

“Well done!” Sama complimented me, just as the Block she was carving out was completed. It lifted off the ground under geomagnetic pressure, and then was drawn towards the line of one hundred and fourteen waiting there in midair beneath the sixtieth level of the Broom Closet’s Pyramid, ready to slot in as soon as they completed at one hundred and twenty-one.

We’d stopped taking in stone from the Beast Realm, not wanting to raise the ire of the Beast Lord there, Flowing Silver High Emperor seeing the reasoning and satisfying himself with tiling the central area where the Beast Emperors met with stone from the Beast Realm, an effective way to filter the Mana in that area to a higher degree.

Instead of removing mountains from Earth, we’d started on eating away an asteroid. We set up a Portal in the appropriate area, establishing a working bubble with air and heat, and we’d simply started pulling in massive amounts of stone from the hunk of rock drifting out in the void of space. The pristine Mana imbued in the things only helped the atmosphere as we brought in cubic miles of the stuff for both general mass and more Tiling.

The Pyramid’s Empowerment was lagging behind its construction, but that was fine. Rituals were going on around the clock, with Humans swapping in with powerful Beasts to keep the Seven Star Elemental Formations running and Mana flowing smoothly into the place from the Aether beyond. There were never less than 343 of the Formations running all the time, and the amount of Mana draw coming in was simply immense from one person’s standpoint.

That Mana had to infuse a constantly-growing pocket dimension and power up the Pyramid that was stabilizing the Broom Closet.

On the flip side, the Closet was up to over a thirty-mile radius and climbing nicely. It was just that most of the Pocket was still empty space underneath us, with only a few feet of stone forming the ‘ground’. Pushing in the charged-up asteroid stone was a constant job going on 24/7, flowstoning it off of the drifting Texas-sized rock and then down and into position underneath us.

It was a constant job and wouldn’t catch up until the Pyramid was fully made and Empowered, as every mile of radius was more and more mass that had to be brought in to stabilize the place. Flowstone gushed through the Portal connected to the asteroid, was guided down to the ‘bottom’ of the space that had been fully Tiled, everything continually being retiled as the space expanded, moving older Tiles ‘down’ and opening up broad new stretches to be plated and sealed.

Flowing Silver had brought in an Ant Tribe to handle all the Tiling placements, while the Beasts with Earth Magic concentrated on making new Tiles for the Ants to pick up and haul away into place, doing so with unfailing energy and precision. The great bowl of this sphere was filling slowly and being Tiled up continually, the edges actually filling in before the center as the stone there was raised to just below whatever the current Tile edge was, making it easier for the Ants to get around.

Briggs, Sama, and I were the only ones capable of making Blocks reliably at this point, although some of the Earth mages and even a couple Beasts were getting close. The combined skills of needing to purify, stratify, temper, and then Shape the stone at computer-circuit levels of Runecraft was immensely challenging, but the Rulers attempting it were very proud and did not like watching Humans able to do something they could not. Working at such small levels was very alien to them, but they were extremely patient and willing to practice until they got it right.

That’s where we were right now, in the operating area ‘under’ the Pyramid, which was really just centered in the middle of the sphere that formed the Broom Closet around it. It naturally seemed to grow ‘up’ through the ground as we added levels, so we were working in the large space below it, adding Blocks steadily as the vines of my Roses extended down the sides of the Pyramid with its growth.

The area below did indeed look like a huge bowl, with the line of area exposed to the Aether providing enough light to wash through the miles of open space below us. The empty center rose on every side more steeply, lines of cow-sized Ants miles long scuttling along them to place Tiles, while the main feed from the ‘south’ Portal poured flowstone constantly through small streams that wound their way around the bowl. One of those fed its way up close to us, and was what we tapped for the stone to make the Pyramid.

I resumed my own carving of the Blocks behind Sama’s line, the charged stone flowing with an ease and speed she couldn’t replicate through the medium of her Shaping Scepter, but she didn’t care. Progress was progress, however long it took, and if I was twice as fast as her or more, that was what it was.

I had other Pyramids I was working on, too. The North Pole Spindle still wasn’t completed, although it was getting close. Sama and Briggs devoted all their Shaping time here, treating it as a relaxing break from the constant demands of their positions.

Which didn’t hardly mean Sama wasn’t running at least two ops in her head right now. There was a major from an old Family in Peru that had ideas about cracking down on foreign colonialists in his territory and stuff. He was causing trouble for one of the Coralost Communities that had managed to survive the littoral raids with a great deal of superb farmland and disciplined, educated farmers, a prize possession for a Family intent on expanding back into the areas abandoned by humans or ravaged by Aquatics. After due perusal of his military record, it was decided that he was going to die valiantly in pitched combat against some of the wilder Aquatic Tribes that were looking to get back up on land and hold some ground, and so that was happening right about now.

Dying valiantly in defense of the land and his fellow humans, there was a good Major Sanicho.

The shaman in Sumatra trying really hard to start a war with a neighboring tribe now that the Aquatics were busy in the oceans was going to be found dead with a wine bottle on the end of his manhood, which should put that nonsense to rest. The two tribes might have a chance at a White Mana Zone up in the mountains if they could work out their differences, and learning to speak Human was going to be a big part of it.

Little things, helping make the world a better place by giving violence back to the violent.

“We both know that’s only one small item off your list, and you’re going to be using Miracles like clockwork until they catch on.” My Mana Regen rate was totally fast enough to replace the spent Mana and keep up with the Faith I was tapping between Castings. “Putting up a block against the Huando Meshing Method was pretty clever. What’s next on the agenda?” Sama asked me, our discussion naturally having no effect whatsoever on her Shaping or other conversations.

Just like me, really. I was holding different lessons in Markspace on Wizardry, Artificing, and Alchemy, something I basically did around the clock now, along with overseeing several magitech engineering projects and reviewing a lot of the basic research being done around the Zones. Too many thoughtstreams, had to keep them busy or I’d literally have to shut them down...

“I still have a thousand miles to go on The Ice Emperor’s Vivic Braziers Ring. I have Commanders, Rulers, and Low Emperors waiting at the end of the previous day’s line to hit me up for whole stacks of Braziers when I pop up, so I have less than half of what I bring in to continue the line... which is fine.” They were there to Burn Dark Mana, it didn’t matter where they were located. “At forty-four a mile and only bringing in a thousand at a time, that’s only ten miles or so of progress, so a couple hours easy downtime a day for a few more months.

“The Spindle should be good to go in two months.” I gave it a solid eight to twelve hours a day when the Emperors were around to observe me, as I wouldn’t work on it without their oversight. As a result, they knew every inch of their completed halves of the Spindle, and a good chunk of the other half, as well. “I see you’re doing good on the expanded farms.”

There were a lot of displaced Pacific Islanders, many of whom had been crammed into refugee camps if they couldn’t fight, or were used as cannon fodder if they could. The abrupt disappearances of thousands of them were actually quite welcomed by their hosts, who were glad to be rid of them. Now they were working for Coralost raising purestrain magical Plants here.

Of course, they needed to be retrained and educated in proper farming techniques, but the Earth mages and Moles had been making a lot of dirt and soil to cover everything, and they were working on some of the best farmland with some of the highest-quality crops in the world. Given how broken the world’s agricultural systems were, we were assured of markets everywhere, if we couldn’t just use it all up ourselves.

The former refugees were enjoying a higher standard of living with an excellent chance of their kids becoming mages, so they were all for this. The islanders lived closer to nature than most civilized people did, so although sharing the area with Great Beasts was a bit surprising, they happily fit right in when they realized they didn’t have anything to worry about from the Great Beasts, as long as they treated the creatures with respect. Being very fed-up with city-dwellers, they were happy to learn how to take over the farms and do better for themselves and their kids, especially since many of them only had eaten-out wastelands to return to at this point.

“They’re adjusting well, and we just keep adding more land for them,” Sama nodded happily. “We’ll have room for millions once it’s all said and done, and that’s without adding tree houses and more layers.” Which we totally could, and were doing in the city areas. There were plenty of factories going into places in the hilled areas that separated them from the farming zones, and so apartment buildings and the like going up and down were replacing them.

Some of them extended down and out into the great emptiness of the bowl, and the apartments there were actually highly sought-after by mages. If you were stupid enough to fall over the edge, you were going to die unless you could fly, but short of that, it was actually a pretty great view.