There. That was it.

I was in the middle of clearing out a circle in the Netherworld, watching The Weeping of Holy Water come from storming down from the sky and wash everything away around the Nether Pyramid here. Three thoughtstreams which had been engaged in non-stop calculation and testing of arcane dynamics slumped down and went off to get a metaphorical face full of Sustenance IX, because they had earned it.

They’d be back to help me on the rote Application stuff soon enough, grumbling the whole while.

In addition to getting in a lot of rep counts and making sure the Ruler-level failing undead died quickly, I was aiding in the mass condensation of Soul Crystals by the Pyramid that it was gathering up, as well as the storage of the massive amounts of vivus being given up by the landscape here at the edges of the local Hell.

I also needed faster Mana Renewal at this level. Skill checks working off my Stars and my Mystic Archmage Talent were one thing, but devoted spells would have been better. Cracking and shattering Soul Crystals just to get Mana back was incredibly wasteful, even if there was no end of the things down here. It wasn’t applicable in the real world, and so a weakness and a trap of habit leading to vampiric activity.

YAY!, my innovative thoughtstreams shouted out, now that they didn’t have to do Applications. Condensing Soul Crystals faster would be almost a pure Artificing check. The combination of spells plus a proper Formation would do the job. Boosting Mana Renewal could be done lots of ways, even if none of them could possibly match just butchering hordes of stuff and stealing all their vivified Mana.

Vampiric shit always came back to bite you in the arse when you couldn’t use it, because sure as Hell I knew half a dozen ways to make those trying it against me regret it horribly, and I’d been very happy to spread those tricks to everyone I taught.

The amalgamating effect should literally just be a boosted Fabrication check, since I was actually making something. Concentration just wasn’t a Skill normally used for such things, but bouncing over to it from Gemcutting, given the crystalline structure of condensed vivus, was simplicity itself.

Upgrading the Mana Renewal to work off my Syzygy instead of my Stars would be nice, and REALLY effective. As it was going now, it would take me weeks to recharge if I seriously started using Syzygy Mana, something Beast Emperors always had to deal with. I just didn’t want to strip the landscape bare of Mana while I did so.

Huh, I could make the whole planet’s Manafield Sing if I was of a mind to. That meant I had a global link to the Manafield. By dispersing my draw across an IMMENSE area, I could pull in vast amounts of Mana without really disturbing anything. It would even extend to outer space, under the mantle, or the Aether, if I was of a mind to tap it.

Mwahahahaha!, my thoughtstreams crowed, grabbing my Expert and Vizard streams to do the math on that. I was the only one in the world with a Syzygy, so it was a unique problem. Fae’s Canticle of Mana Restoration was going to be a prize Valence spell for those who finally attained Imperial Casting ability!

The four main Node Treatment spells were ready now, I had them Slotted into my Legendary Wizardry. I rarely filled those Slots, keeping them available for the Raised forms of lesser Valenced spells, as I had little reason to employ Valence X or higher effects. Nobody wanted me to start chopping off mountains and making little floating islands in the sky.

Well, maybe somebody did, but it just wasn’t a priority.

Fae’s Mana Summoning, Fae’s Mana Refinement, Fae’s Distillation of Stars, and Fae’s Tempering of Stars!

They did need to be backed by Sage-level Mana, but 2401 Mana was something I routinely regained in twenty seconds. This was not something that was going to cut into any of my reserves appreciably.

The fun came in when applying Fastcast, Echo, Paired Spell, and Mass Spell, absolutely abusing the shit out of the speed of this effect that was already abusing the speed of the effect.

Metamagic and Weirding for the win! The magic of magic was the best magic out there, bar none!

Bring in 3600 Mana and compress it around 400 existing Mana to make a rough Highpoint of Mana. Burn the 4000 Mana pure in a flash of joyous arcane Burning. Apply the Highpoint to the False Star of the Syzygy Node it came from.

Temper the Stars to all the diffuse energies you wanted it to be Attuned to as an afterthought, by far the simplest part of the process... but it took a twenty-one-part Attunement process that could take a couple minutes down to six seconds!

The Tempering of my Tier-7 and Tier-8 Stars was now considerably faster, as well.

The difference of being able to make multiple skill checks in multiple disciplines while spellcasting did slow this all down a bunch, as I could only spellcast through one thoughtstream.

Lowpoint Mana acceleration could be used out of a X Slot, XIV Valence, but was largely unnecessary, as I could breeze through a Lowpoint in eighteen seconds regardless. Likewise, my Concentration check was high enough that I could do the same with Truepoint Mana, and so I didn’t have to spend XII Slots on them. Better yet, since they were simply mental skill checks, I could keep them going and working all the bloody time, even while doing other things.

The Highpoint spells used an XVIII Valence, XIV Slot, replacing which cost 324 Mana, in addition to the 2401 Mana cost of the Sage magic backing it. Even gaining 3600 Mana and Capacity with every successful trio, it was a net loss... but not by much.

I was informed by my investigatory thoughtstreams that Mana Boosting Spells could work, but could only restore Mana of a lower Tier, i.e., using Highpoint Mana Boosting could bring in, say, 21,600 Mana net gain that could only be used for Truepoint and lesser spells. In short, Mana Boosting was a way to vastly extend your Casting life in a fight, but your highest tier of Mana required actual Mana Renewal to replace that which was spent.

I wanted it anyway, so Fae’s Mana Boosting was soon taking shape. The Math said it would only be useful when I was down below fifteen percent Mana... but at that point, I could start converting massive amounts to a lower tier of Mana, and fill my Syzygy or Stars back up with a lower Tier of Mana at great speed, restricting what I could Cast but giving me back virtually all my Capacity in the interim.

Now, to accelerate things!

I could only have one line of work going on each of the Energy Node-types. My Spell Pool Nodes were still finishing up the Truepoint Mana, simply because they had so much to do. My other Nodes were all working on Highpoint Mana while waiting for it to catch up, and once it did, I could start on Realmpoint Mana on my Channeling Nodes.

MASS Fae’s Truepoint Mana Summoning, Mana Refinement, Distillation of Stars, and Tempering of Stars!

My base Caster Level was 77.

The Heavens Weeping had long since finished its job, and the Pyramid had completed removing its vivic harvest. I was riding the Pyramid as it moved to a different location at 2 MPH, trundling along to a new area to administer release to the Damned. I didn’t have anything to do but stay very aware and vastly accelerate my Truepoint accrual.

I Fastcast the Mana Refinement and Tempering of Stars. Instead of three rounds to create one False Star, I was now creating 77 False Stars in two rounds!

Yeah, it was over five thousand Mana a cycle. I didn’t care. And then I upped it to six thousand Mana by adding Echoing to the Mix, effectively doubling the speed again.

Effectively 77 False Stars every six seconds! A full Constellation in my Syzygy in just over three minutes!

Nodes in a mere 24 hours! I would be done with my Spell Pool Truepoint Mana by tomorrow!

And then, then I could start on my first Realmpoint Mana set!... Although I still hadn’t worked out how I was going to be able to CAST a Realmpoint spell. The Orbs I had only went up to High Imperial.

I eyed my rapidly accruing Tier-7 and Tier-8 Stars, and then the Tier-9 Soul Diamond Pearls in my Pocket.

Intuition told me to hold off on those. My Commanding Stars Title had to have some real meaning, besides the fact I had completed tempering a full set of Stars to a higher Tier.

I might have to Purify away ten billion undead down here to complete a Universe of Tier-8 Stars. It was an apocalyptic level of massacre to gain a power-up.

And also... a really good reason why no Humans from this Earth had ever ascended to a Realm Lord level of power, if it was applicable.

---------

A day later...

The last of my Spell Pool’s Truepoint False Stars fell into place. Twelve seconds later, the first Highpoint Mana for the Spell Pool Nodes dropped. My whole Syzygy seemed to hum and thrum in place as all the Pools of energies therein were suddenly on the same power level. If anyone could have sensed just my Mana at this time, they would have said that a True Emperor abruptly became a High Emperor, with just that one point of Mana confirming things.

I had no reason to concentrate on one energy type now, and didn’t bother. I was going to be using up a lot of Mana, but I was going to be gaining twenty times more, so I literally did not care at this point.

I repeated the same tactic of Mass Mana Summoning and Fastcast Mana Refinement, then Mass Distillation of Stars and Fastcast Refinement of Stars. Ring Valences paid for the Metas, but on the second round of repetition the Metas were both free, and I swapped Mass and Fastcast between the spells.

They were coming out of my XX Valence, 400 Mana each plus the 2401 for Sagedom, 5600 Mana expended every round, far beyond my ability to passively recover.

It didn’t matter. Caster Level and Valences did what skill checks and excessive amounts of Mana had done on the other side, and 77 bright False Stars blinked on every twelve seconds.

I was going to be done with the Highpoint Mana in under 140 hours of work. Figure sixteen hours of work on it a day, so about eight days.

And then it would take me the same amount of time to finish all my Realmpoint Mana.

That was as opposed to years or decades doing it the ‘normal’ way.

And then, then I was going to concentrate on my base Stars, and getting them all to Eight, and see what happened to them when I started on Nine.

In the meantime, my researching thoughtstreams had completed Soul Crystal Fabrication, including the Raised versions of it, and I could easy Double Fastcast it while working on my False Stars. If I interrupted it to have to shoot something, all well and good.

Normal Fabrication worked by having all the raw materials and tools needed to make something handy, the spell working off sympathy with the tools of the trade. Cast the spell, and in six seconds a full eight hours of work, one day-long Crafting check, was completed. It worked right off the Caster’s own skill at the task, and the synergetic boosts from the tools around. While you could also use it without being in a workspace, it was much less productive when Cast that way.

Joining two Soul Crystals together normally took one round and a Concentration check to do it right, with Spellcraft Ranks required to understand what to do. There were 4800 rounds in an eight-hour day, so each such spell could instantly condense up to 9600 Soul Crystals.

The Mass Paired Echoing version of the spell did 308 times that. Three million soul crystals condensed to a higher form in an instant. Even with the numbers I had harvested, it didn’t take too many Castings of those to reduce tens or hundreds of millions of soul crystals down to a tithe of that amount, even if the larger Crystals required a very hefty Concentration check, indeed.

I, however, had no problem hitting those numbers, and furthermore, Distillation of Stars and Tempering of Stars both worked on normal Stars, turning minutes of work into seconds of work after the Crystals were processed. I simply Double Fastcast them while working on my Syzygy without much trouble.