The Real Loot

By the time all the other clans and their demon subordinates were finished cleaning up the solid messes, I quickly stepped in with a magically charged whistle to call everybody's attention to me.

After everything that these players had experienced over what was roughly the last week in the game, they were all quick to respond while organizing and transporting their collective mounds of 'ingredients'. With the sheer number of demons at work along with them, the transport of these small mountains of fleshy material was actually fairly quick, simple, and easy.

They stacked the meat and bones up about fifteen feet high and then transported them on alchemy stone from the ground or other elements with the demons for physical labor. Now, though, the mounds of material were all off to the sides of the fluid field. It was finally my time to shine.

Using gestures and Zekrom's flash techniques for delivering orders, I have them finish clearing the field with room to spare while organizing my own team. Since we had already taken in a fair number of demons in our team's slots, were selectively used entities related to mana or security and everybody used two slots for them.

These familiars were Taurians for mounts as well as wraiths, geckos, and bone fiends of the largest size. The rest of our clan stored demons were all listed at ridiculous values of at least ten thousand minimum for a gecko while a greater Taurian fifty thousand. Within an hour of those listings we had started taking in massive amounts of donations for our extremely over-leveled products.

However, only a couple dozen of the few hundred people in the clan actually bought anything and that was Taurians because Merch made a clan announcement about have a clan mount standard of at least a Taurian demon.

Now, though, I was abusing Merch, Oleander, Lil, and Agnes for their magic abilities to hook up to the other members of our party who were hooked up to their familiars with psychic-magical MP links to create one massive pool worth over a million MP.

I then tapped into all of my present familiars before to create a similarly sized mana pool before being fed their pool by Oleander and Lil. With a few million MP at my disposal thanks to all of our familiars and the training of my party, I Flash Stepped out toward the center of the killing field using my own skill followed by my own Quick Step to correct my position.

[Quick Step Leveled Up]

[+50XP]

When I was in a more or less central position, I spread out my awareness as far as I could as quickly as I could with my own conscious ability. When I reached my limits of about ten feet high and over two hundred feet from my position in a few minutes of meditative concentration, I simply switched to dumping my own mana into my field of awareness.

Not only did my Quick Step skill receive a level up but so did my perception skills as my field of awareness stretched from a couple hundred feet to a few hundred yards in the space of a minute. The cost of this, of course, was close to half of my own mana. I even covered areas around the edges that were complete clean.

Once the field was set, I started spending the penultimate mana pool in the form of a telekinetic squeegee that scraped the ground smoothly from the boundaries inward. At the same time that the outside was rushing toward me as giant 'movement' walls, I dispersed a lesser version out from my position to counteract the incoming flow of materials and energy.

For a brief moment I experienced a vacuum of air and pressure that doubled the natural gravity on my body for a moment. Thanks to the design of my blood and tissues, I could store enough air to survive for incredible amounts of time after exhaling and holding my breathe so air was not a problem.

Thanks to my Strength, the doubling of gravity merely made me tense my body a bit as my character weight merely doubled and barely exceeded my character's inventory capacity.

During the brief couple seconds that this took place, the gores swept up from the ground rushed and whirled toward my now strengthening inner kinetic walls. A few tens of thousand of MP were draining per second, meaning that I only had a couple minutes in which to maintain the current gathering methods.

Bringing the outer kinetic wall to a stop by shrinking and anchoring my mana field at a position ahead of it, I manage to save just under two million MP while shrinking the mana field around the… materials. Several hundred thousand mana had just been spent, but now the once ten-foot tall mana field had shrunk down to around four-and-a-half feet tall just above the material itself.

In my personal space I now sat down and spent several minutes resting and reaching an empty-minded state while managing my own and the pool's mana regeneration. Once I was full and everybody else was back up to two million, I turned my concentration toward integrating my awareness into the materials through alchemy.

As I progressed through the mana field I worked at simply identifying known and unknown materials on a periodic level, separating organic and inorganic material. Everything inorganic was usually of a mineral or metal nature usually found in infinitesimal amounts. Here, thousands upon thousands of giants had been led to the slaughter.

Once I had everything I could directly introduce to iron filtered to the bottom at the cost of several hundred thousand MP, I used the leftover salts to thick the fluids that sat on top of those extracted solids. The mana field was also forced to rise by close to a foot in height to contain the proportions of solid and fluid despite the lessening of the fluids.

With the walk-on-salt seawater of material created, I a full million of the shared mana pool into simply electrifying the sea of material into a combination of vapors and condensed carbon solids. Under the incredibly intense pressure of the vapor build up, the mana field was expended by several feet in height and threatened to push outward from its hundred-foot donut shape.

Under similar circumstances in a reality-like situation, this carbon content would natural have bonded with any present metal contents under the intense heat and pressure of the mana field. Since alchemy allowed my to not only contain the solids and fluids but separate them, the carbon was a nearly pure organic substance which also meant that it was nearly pure carbon.

This carbon material formed into small rock sized synthetic diamonds that littered the accumulated flakes and grains of inorganic material on the ground of the mana field. However, how could these diamonds be usualy. Even though they were perfectly clear like a normal diamond that were completely black with a dark anti-light that simply made the area around them brighter while casting one another in dark shade.

With little more than five hundred thousand MP left at my disposal, I had no choice but to switch my own mana pool into the place of containment to let everybody else rest up for a minute or two.

During this time, I also started raising the height of the mana field with my own MP now that it was withing the limits of my personal range. Raising the height of the containment field allowed me to thin out the collective vapors of fluids and fats and par-liquid tissues.

However, as I was preparing to break the seal on the top to release them after raising the height to around fifteen feet, Oleander quickly stepped out and stopped me. Apparently, these concentrated matters of material were all the essential essences of the demons themselves and were almost all equally valuable.

Apparently, she wanted to keep the demonic gasses.

Since she wanted it and the shared pool was nearing a million MP, I spent a hundred thousand MP lowering the field into the ground and then transmuting the proportions of the granite under the original mana field. Once the ground had been dug out with walls taller than the solid materials and thick diamond gravel, I shrunk the containment field into a gas field and allowed the shared pool to use items for restoring themselves faster.

At two million MP on the dot, I handed control over everything to Oleander. For a moment the stress of actual control over everything was a bit much for her to bear. In the process of feeding me, she had shared the burden. Now, she had double the strain with my own mana pool on top.

When the moment passed she got to work condensing the vapors into a near-liquid, gelatinous or plasmic substance that glowed with a variety of dark like like red, blue, and purples. Oleander spent only a few hundr5ed thousand MP shy of two million condensing all of the vapors into a variety of ectoplasm.

Several minutes of regeneration and effort later, this ectoplasm was then stored in dozens of one-gallon quarts jugs with dark feldspar corks. Then the mana pool at the time was once again redirected at me. I smoothly grasped control and simply started organizing everything.

Half the jugs were set aside fore us while the transmute earthen well was divided in half as well. All of the diamonds were set aside into one side, however. Next, I divided one half into five roughly equal parts before actually weighing the dark diamonds.

The dark diamonds were already so heavy that I had to rush through the process of gathering them costing ten grand per second, but when I actually weighted them it could be said that they weighed a hundred thousand MP. The actual weight was proportionate to that number.

Into each fifth of the divided half I counted out one hundred pounds of synthetic gems five times, filling the divided portions with a few inches of diamond. Then I counted six jugs of each ectoplasm variant into each division before keeping the rest for myself. The diamond layer in my clan's half-well was also a few inches higher.

Finished dividing the loot I had created whose overlapping names were appraised to be purple and gold with divine shines, I quickly deposit my clan's half-well into our clan store.

After being prompted by units of measurements worth around a hundred thousand contribution apiece, I price them per unit at ten million while telling Go to make an announcement about restricting the very thought of buying these materials in the clan. With an epic divine name like Synthetic Chaos Mana Crystal in the mix, I needed further investigation and study before putting proper uses and prices to them.

Nobody even had time to come forward and argue against my actions even if they could have seen what I was doing. Now, though, they were bullied into accepting whatever I was willing to give them. It was the price they had to pay for making me their mascot as well as my 'bonus' for having made all of this so swiftly.

Now was the time when all the other clan leaders came together to wordlessly accept their equal shares of the materials I offered. I was sure that Mr. Thirteen at least was discontent with being given equal proportions to the outer alliance clans but his and everybody's clans were also in possession of the same materials.

I simply had the buffs and abilities to refine it into such a higher quality and concentration.

"How do you want to do this?" Little Thirteen soon asked me as the other clan leaderships gathered around my party and I. "We've got the numbers and everybody has the equipment to make this work. All we need is the situation inside."

"We'll go as our current group with the addition of Mistress' and the other two clans' elite parties for backup and support," I reply after looking quietly in the direction of the manor's walls for a few moments. "I want to study the materials on the walls as well as everything inside. If I eat it, I could probably get something good out of it.

"Go store every demon not paired with a player and then report to the closest area of manor wall," I continue quickly without looking away from the high walls. "I don't believe there are any actual gates or entrances so we'll have to make one ourselves. If it takes more than a single volley of arrows from our skeletal friends then everybody here- demon side included- will lay down a skill or spell or arrow to pave the way."

Seconds later, everybody had cleared out to organize their people while I sent my party to organize with the head priest and then Zekrom to organize the demon commanders still awaiting introductions nearby. Less than a hundred yards away. I even sent Traytar over to follow Mistress around to wait for the group binding.

She herself was a little on the… strange… side so I felt like she could find ways to handle a demon with the inclinations of Traytar. If not, oh well. She and her clan would be stuck with him.

At least they had the fringe benefit that he was assured one nuclear-level strike after having sustained not only my ultimate move but also all of the divine Soulfire training. If necessary, we could use him to blow a Fallen Monochrome and all the clans we made enemies out of right off the map. I would certainly love to see it.

I would even love to do it myself.

While the others quickly handled their business I simply grew out my wings and flew up into the air to double check the manor's walls for entrances as well as get a better look at the inside of the walls. As I expected, the manor walls had no entrances at all. This suited the premise that the walls were made to keep something inside rather than something out.

However, I could now see the lower levels of the structure and was slightly shocked with my findings. The lower outer walls of the manor's ground and second floor were all broken apart in large sections with giant person-sized vines growing out all over the internal structure. The walls of the middle floors were also broken but the dark fleshy growths were all much smaller.

Inside the first few floors there was little open room around the outsides while deeper inside I could just make out the lights of larger spaces and the distorted stony echoes of unintelligible sounds and voices. It was clear that the place was occupied by more than just the fleshy biomass but what and who was still a mystery.

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