Can't Touch This

This was where I decided to do my accumulation, watching not just with my eyes but with my expanded mana perception as the overflow from the upper floors pushed through and tumbled down into my bottom hopper-room.

Since I had already transmuted this area, I simply pulled up stone material right from the underground with thousands of MP focused in transmutation. Moments later, I transmuted this solid material to surround the first-floor 'hopper' and compress the degraded biomass against the ceiling into a loose but giant brick a few tens of yards long on any side and roughly a person tall.

Next, I briefly considered the hellacious amount of 'restricted material' and my previous processes while naturally regenerating hundreds of mana per second. This was much more than ten thousand units just by the strain on my MP to manage its dimensions. While it was resting, I needed to take the time to rest as well.

Decided to reduce its mass by processing the forbidden content through previous means, I simply transmute the granite surrounding it into an enclosed box of crude marble. Once the couple thousand MP I regenerated over those following thoughtful moments was spent, I chewed into reserves of materials and even product donations from the clan store to Devour raw materials and general potions privates offered by our recent crating members.

Ever since we started releasing demons and encouraging their sales, they starts donating all the money they were allowed to as well as all the items and materials anyone could ever need. However, even though I had racked up billions of preciously pointless contribution points I was not willing to spend this alternate currency. What if there every came a thing where something happened and I would need a lot?

However, I had enough to not only restore and even enhance my own mana pool a small amount but also enough materials Corrupt into a crude cordycep oil not unlike 'ectoplasm'. These were going to be my emergency rations pocketed all over my body.

With my expenditure rates, I was more likely to need mana than I was HP, but I was still thoughtful enough to Corrupt enough cordycep plasma using raw ingredients and whole health potions offered by the clan members to protect a few of my vitals.

These were the kind of moments when being a 'founder' offered the best benefits, allowing me to swiftly resume work by heating up the crude marble around the degraded biomass near its melting point.

Once it began loosing solidity I simply reinforced it with a few material enchantments and pressure from the surrounding granite that was now softly glowing red and better illuminating the area around me. Under this kind of heat and pressure the 'wet' biomass was burned and crushed away into what I considered a carbon after being burned in an enclosed area without oxygen for the carbon to escape into.

If there even was carbon in the content of something that came from another… dimension? I was told that it was supposed to be hell.

What I hoped would be a magically crystallized essence of some sort similar to the demon diamonds was then blindly stored into my clan store's displayed inventory. I did not even look at the unit numbers but simply slid the bar to full in the corner of my eye. The result was an astounding number of substance whose name I only saw the word 'grains' of.

That one word was a divine blue color.

It was nothing even close to the results of the demonic diamonds but the process itself was a little lacking in comparison. I simply dried it out with… water… and then cooked it under tens of tons of transmuted pressure to produce a seemingly nonadhesive substance. I did not even know what these grains looked like except that they were solid black.

I could have worked them in other ways with fancier methods and elements but then I would have probably been told no simply because I was taking too long. Plus, with my affinities, fire and alchemy was simply the easiest way to go with my mana pool.

Once this issue was finally resolved, I took a few moments to passively recover my mana before transmuting the existing materials leading into the third floor that I had blocked off. Once the biomass in the neighboring areas were hit by the spirituals blast, everything started opening up and drying out.

Outside the designated hopper area, tons and tons of the degraded biomass had accumulated. To compensate for all of this overflow I directly opened the floor and foundation to the open rock below from which I had sourced the manor's repairs. Once the room was opened up like actual floodgates the questionably bottomless pit below was soon being explored by tens of thousands of 'units' of material.

This, though, was a bridge I would not have to cross for a long time.

Deciding to take the time to rest now that I had achieved my main goal, I turn around and start making my way out of the corridors beyond the entrance area. The shadows had started moving about in greater numbers and the noises grew louder as they grew closer as well as more numerous. The displacement of degraded biomass as well as its creations had finally attracted attention.

As long as I was not there and the floor was replaced ten feet below its original position, there shot not be many problems. My main hope now that the material had been gathered was to keep it away from everybody else. This stuff was supposedly a race changer on the level of my cordyceps.

This was probably the intentional sentient mutagen plague that I had bypassed with Luck and alchemy. I was not even allowed to eat this stuff and I used to avoid eating materials to maintain slower growth. With those thoughts in mind, it only took me a few moments of jogging to return to the exposed entryway.

The elites of the clans heading by their collective wraiths were already entering and examining the building. The wraiths were only around halfway through the entryway where the biomass was original a carpet while the others stayed back within the light of their clans' mages outside.

Wraiths had no bodies and nobody had actually been exposed yet, so this was probably a smart call inspired by the lack of structural integrity throughout the manor. One that thankfully still applied to a limited exposure protocol. Everybody already had some form of face protection that could act as a solid particle mask on some level for keeping out dust.

Upon my arrival from the darkness at the far back of the building where most of the degraded material had been hosed across the floor to, the wraiths also stopped their 'investigations'. They were initially just wandering around looking at the walls and looking for large samples of bio masses.

They were already chaos entities so it probably was not an issue for them to be exposed anyway.

Once I ended up with everybody's attention, I raised a single finger up toward the mask of my helm to tell them to maintain silence before gesturing for everybody to get out. Quickly. I was making A LOT of shooing gestured at these people.

My clan were already slowly backing away when I gave the signal for silence, expecting something big and scary to be around the corner. When I waved for the retreat, they turned and retreated. Some of the other clans' elites did as well when they left, leaving their leaders and one or two guards behind.

It was almost as if they wanted to stay and 'welcome' me back in Mr. Thirteen's case, standing their with arms crossed and calmly waiting. Donna and some of her team were already hanging back with Mistress' group, but Donna and a few guards were soon left by everybody else.

I simply maintained the same brisk but professional walking pace that crossed the entryway in about five seconds. Before continuing right past everybody who had stayed behind. Never breaking stride.

Everyone was soon outside moments later gathered around the clan leaderships, which now included the outer clan leaders who were left guarding the entrance and a few dozen demons. Once we were all together, I do my best to give everybody a brief explanation by saying, "All that shit in there? Worse than the parasites that make me like this. I'm not even ALLOWED to eat it. Everybody needs to stay out here while I figure out what's going on inside. I might have opened one too many doors."

"Can we contain it?" Go asks before anybody else, probably thinking along the lines of my own plague protocols. "Are there infected inside?"

"Don't touch the dead dust and there are a lot of something I did not take the time to look at," I reply honestly. "They were about three floors up and moving through the new corridors heading down. The only things that SHOULD be here are friendlies and the enemy, so it's probably a combination of both and I need to react accordingly. Solo."

The others who all looked anxious for answers after Go hit the core of the issue were no looking unhappy for a variety of reasons. Not only were there probably dozens or hundreds of unknown enemies, they were being left out. The experience gains so far that some of them had made were really good but they had not gotten any in the last battles.

"How long is this going to take?" Little Thirteen asks suddenly, looking the most dissatisfied with the situation. "We've got a lot of people here and there's not much going on. We can't really leave all of this to you, can we? This game's content can't be exclusive to a single entity at this point."

"Well you can find other ways inside where the biomass is still alive," I reply with a shrug. "In face, I advise you to do so. Everything you find you keep, just do not use water based attacks. Try fire and lightning, see how it goes. Just look out for anything that might be a friendly NPC."

Leaving with those words alone, I look at my own companions and give them a nod before pointing from one side of the back of the entryway to the other. It was in those areas that the rest of the manor had been exposed by the initial power washing. Hopefully they got the message that I wanted some kind of defensive line in place to hold our position.

Seconds later I was quietly jogging back into the building with Cweeper and Hermes quietly whistled to my sides. I did not want them with me just because they were 'plague demigods' and resistant to any biomass tainting but because I did not actually want to be alone up ahead. Plus, they were smaller than people while all of my other familiars were fliers or giants.

Only my Acolytes suited the setting.

By the time I got back to the corridor leading up into the higher floors, the sounds were now clearly those of combat and the shadows were lower down on the seconds floor with clearer definition. Some looked almost humanoid while others were clearly… not. None of them looked friendly and all of them appeared to be fighting each other.

A quick leap and short flap of my wings brought me up to the redesigned second floor's ceiling where I could see a ruined gallery made up of several hallways and their flatted rooms in between. There were piles of rubble everywhere with only some short streaks remaining of walls on the floor and ceiling.

Those alone had been preserved by my transmutation while everything else was converted into new material or cast aside. Now, though, a few hundreds of a couple different types of entities made up of stone or bone and living biomass were at war with one another.

Some were humanoid but had disproportionate limbs and appendages or biomass enlarged heads while others were just large amorphous and monstrous creations like sea urchins of limbs or blobs with tentacles and ruined manor pieces all over their bodies. The smaller humanoid entities were, thankfully, more numerous and carried a variety of primitive and disgusting 'natural' weapons.

These figures had a clear advantage and surrounded the urchins and blobs like crowding a herd of cattle. However, this cattle was able to smash or swat dozens of humanoid figures every second almost at their leisure. They were never truly defeated as only empty HP bars appeared above any of their heads despite any damage taken or loss of limbs on the enemy side but they were stalemated into a controlled state.

If either side had a balancing factor they could easily win out against the other, and now there would probably be several access points where different sides would be chosen. All because I needed to keep the other players away from the potential ground zero I created.

So, putting my money on the creatures who were able to make actual vocalizations with humanoid forms, I flapped slowly into a light forward glide over the confrontation taking place before angling down toward the center. I was going to drop down, make a contribution, and step back to see if I managed to make a difference.

As soon as I landed in a low crouch I whipped out both Hauntings from over my shoulders and released a Force Strike combined with Quick Quake and a thousand MP on the ground with the pommels of my swords. There was no real damage distributed except to urchins supporting themselves on weakened limbs, but everything within a hundred feet of me was rippled up into the air as the ground under them almost seemed to liquefy into a loose gravel.

Once the few dozen enemies around me were unbalanced, displaced, and seated a few feet below their original positions, I stood up into a simple 360 Geist with a thousand mana feeding it as well. Twin moons of blurry spiritual energy expended outward in every direction from my position, carrying large amounts of increased True Damage and unleashing several waves of phantom blades that carried about half of that from each body that was struck.

Despite their rooting in the dense gravel around them, everything was pushed back more than ten feet in every direction as their own shocks fed through the ruined floors and walls. The building shook dangerously in its third floor corridors neighboring our location.

All of their empty health bars, though, remained empty. Their bodies, though, were scythed apart or bled out into smaller proportions in numerous locations. Out of the few hundred enemies present, a third of them were now mostly crippled and rooted in several feet of gravel while our surrounding area was at risk of collapse.

If I 'helped out' at all in any way after this, I would find myself on the first floor among the remaining squish with the third floor and second floor gallery walls tumbling in on top of me.

*