The Sharks of the Seas, who numbered in the tens of thousands in this fight, all of them Commander or higher, were having a field day. With vivus a-misting in their jaws, they didn’t have to worry about being corrupted by the Dark Mana, and so they were devouring everything they could, eating machines that were nigh impossible to ever fill. Whatever they didn’t tear apart and devour drifted slowly down in the water, gradually eaten away by vivus and dotting the darkness and chaotic swirls with solemn falling stars.

I was running the execution force, too. In the past, the Krakenoids were allowed to link and guide members of allied forces, exulting in their authority and power. But The Sea Emperor had had enough of them, and Leviathan Emperor had very happily led the Whales into their domains and helped devour every remaining trace of them, competing with the Sharks and Fin-men happy to do the same.

If any of them survived, it was only in the concealed Death Zones, and they’d be seeing their fate coming soon enough.

Regardless, I had the Psychic chops to communicate with the Emperors, the mental force to make them acknowledge and obey, and the experience to coordinate them and make sure they were devastatingly effective.

Or, you know, I could farm that off to the clinically detached and ruthless expertise of a certain two Forsaken with talents in that area, and just pass on what they were telling me. Yay, thoughtstreams!

The Sea Emperor was watching it all, of course, but the complex interplay of cut-and-run, feeding frenzy, sweeping herding movements, and racing walls of destruction were chewing through the Aquatics with amazing killing power. I was fully capable of sensing and identifying every force and mind on the field, and I neutralized the enemy Psychics with great speed by throwing Emperors at them, destroying their cohesiveness even as we inflicted genocide upon their Tribes.

The trio of the Ocean-Slicing Marlin, the Eightfold Wisdom Octopus, and the Primal Tooth Hammerhead Shark Emperors were my kill squad, their job to sweep in and kill any of the Dark Imperials that was pinned in combat, or to rescue any of our Emperors on the end of multiple Imperial attacks and deal with their attackers.

The Sea Dragon Emperors were my ‘nets’, along with the other Octopus, Squid, and Jellyfish Emperors still loyal. Wrap up the enemy, hold them in place, and the kill squad could sweep in, grab them, tear off something important, and open them up for a full and devastating charge by the Ocean-Slicing Marlin Emperor, which few Beasts in all the oceans could survive if it was well-aimed... and the job of the Eightfold Wisdom and Primal Hammerhead Emperors was to set up that good shot for Him.

That wasn’t to say there weren’t deaths and slaughter, as Commanders fought Rulers and Rulers fought Emperors, were quickly overmatched, and died messily. However, that mostly happened on our end, and part of my job was to make sure the powerful of their side ran into their equals on ours, leaving our edge in the powerful to work down the lines and tear them apart.

Getting injured was fine. I had promised them that I would Bring Down the Moon and Stars after this fight, and they would be healed of all but the most grievous of injuries.

Perhaps the corrupted Aquatics believed they would come back as Undead, reanimated to be even stronger than before.

The ones dying were finding that a lot of Dark Mana and vivus in the water wasn’t going to allow for anything to be left of them to come back, and that included their spirits.

A crashing wave of Whalesong replete with Thunder announced the arrival of Leviathan and his Imperial Whales, smashing a line through the remaining Undead in our way and bulldozing a path towards the central conduit. Deepwater Pearls Emperor poured into the opening, two thousand feet of coils writhing, spiraling, and cutting like a living bandsaw. He occasionally vented Waterfire out into the face of the undead, shot through with vivus from the magic on His fangs and obliterating those in front of us, anything Ruler level or below just chaff to Him.

Hovering between the Whales was a big ol’ hunk of Sea Basalt carried on Void and Water Magic. It was nothing fancy, but more than enough stone to make a forty-stepper Pyramid of ten-foot blocks, which I could put up with thirty-seven hours of uninterrupted work.

Ship of the Ocean Nautilus Emperor dropped the Obelisk down right next to that block of stone, which was right next to the Conduit still spitting out Undead Aquatics ceaselessly. Said Undead basically popped up just in time to be obliterated. Dragon and Whales spread out around the yawning hole into nowhere, Water Magic driving currents of vivus-infused water to obliterate them methodically and tirelessly as I began to work, occasionally pitching in with Fastcast Greater Shards of my own if something larger thrust its way up out of the Conduit.

Something big coming in was a feat that became quite hard to do. A lot of vivus was starting to saturate the Veil, which was starting to harden all around and put some real pressure on the Conduit.

I ran the massive fight under the sea, and if Sama and Briggs were actually calling a lot of the shots, that was between them and me. I had twenty-two thousand Blocks to make, at the rate of six hundred an hour, and it was time to get to work.

Noble, thoughtful Staff that he was, took over the long-duration Telekinesis I was using and kept up the harvesting of Soul Crystals for miles around. After all, Emperors and Rulers were dying here, and Soul Jewels and Star Jewels were very useful things to gain. The millions of lesser Tribal creatures dying also had to Burn, and were additional harvests to be collected.

More Dragon Water, Water Seeds, and some reagents never seen on the surface world before were all extras coming in trade, of course. I had no idea if there were enough Rulers in the world to actually temper a Universe of Stars, but the hundreds I’d already harvested said I was making pretty damn good progress...

Once every six seconds, a Shaped Block of Sea Basalt flowed out of this hefty mass of stone, beginning to sparkle and crackle at the vivus in the water as it was slowly drawn out towards the line, then lines, of Blocks hovering out there in the water above that Conduit. Even the Emperors watching all this carefully didn’t look too closely at them, and the Undead all flinched and averted their eyes as they came out of the tunnel to the Netherworld.

Perhaps they realized how important the things were, but soon enough there was a powerful vivic current around the things, and the enemies coming towards me had to deal with a constant barrage of Greater Shards, which didn’t interrupt my Shaping of the Blocks at all.

---------

The Undead had stopped coming through twelve hours ago, even the least of them, the pressure on the Conduit now too great to let them pass. Dark Mana was still oozing out, but with the Obelisk here, was being consumed as rapidly as it was leaking through.

The fighting had wound down eight hours ago, the encircling Imperial forces making sure none of the Tribes’ lesser Beasts survived. Powerful currents blew tainted corpses into the vivisized waters.

Another delivery of a million vivic braziers was deposited directly into the sea overhead... which was currently completely iced over and occupied by a dozen Ice Emperors also watching around the place. Half the battlezone had been surrounded by walls of Ice containing the conflict and ensuring the Tainted had no place to flee.

The Ice Emperors were probably a bit greedy, but they weren’t stupid enough to take Braziers that The Sea Emperor had traded for. They just watched them sink into a hole in their icy shield in a misting waterfall, heading for the sea floor below.

The Braziers were rapidly distributed over hundreds of square miles of the Dark Mana-infused Land. If they didn’t clean it up right away, they started to process it all nicely.

Bring Down the Moon and Stars was actually performed above the forming Pyramid and the Conduit there, as I wasn’t going to move while I was working. Putting all those massive Kaiju into a stack for the Tears to come down on was definitely one of those sights that made me feel very small in the world, especially when I could feel the yawning emptiness leading to nowhere beneath them all, like it was waiting to leap up and suck them all in...

Not gonna happen.

Shaping cost me no Mana, so I could do that while maintaining The Sun and Moon.

Amusingly enough, the Ice Emperors were also familiar with the Healing spell, as I performed a Healer’s duty for them once a month at the Stelae in Antarctica. To them, the Tears rose up through the Ice, and they were walking on a starfield in the cold night, a grand and surreal experience for them. There were always old wounds to treat on them, and they wouldn’t miss the balmy experience if they didn’t have to.

Up above, I could feel the high-end Psychic vibes of The Sea and Ice Emperors talking. I didn’t know the subject, but had the distinct impression that a few of the very powerful Ice Emperors above who were most comfortable in the Waters would be helping out, especially the Ice Dragons and Drakes.

After all, The Ice Emperor had also dropped the ball here.

The Execution Squad had done its work well, and we’d lost no Emperors, although several had been gravely wounded and were given pride of place by those beneath the spell. In addition, I was constantly sending in pulses of Greater Healing Shards to mend the most devastating wounds of all the Rulers and Emperors, the streaking Shards flying through the falling Tears delivering pinpoint bursts of potent Healing that could aid even Emperors without much problem.

Healer Fae. The name ran through the Aquatics with a sigh and a song. They had known it before as the name of a deadly foe, a puny Human with powerful magic who had slaughtered many Aquatics, but now they knew it for what it was.

A Name conferred by a High Emperor, and for good reason!

The Sea Emperor had slain all three of His opponents, then helped clean up the rest of the field, acting quickly so as to minimize injuries among His vassals. That was not normal behavior from Him, but I had politely noted that He had a lot more battles like this to fight, and He needed His vassals as intact as possible as long as possible for all of them.

He had done His part with savage skill and enterprise thereafter. If it happened to contribute to growing confidence and morale in His leadership now that He was taking direct action, well, that wasn’t a bad thing. He was actually craptastic as a tactician and war leader like this, being much more the powerful duelist and courtier-type playing politics and mind games instead. After all, many of the Tribes under Him preyed on one another regularly, and had ancestral grudges older than some continents.

Twenty-four hours under The Moon and Stars was sufficient for just about everything that had fought here, and left just a handful of hours before I finished the rapidly-rising Pyramid below and Sealed this Conduit forever.

I had braced the area with an Interdiction, not wanting to be interrupted by a Dark Emperor poking up its head, and I likely could have shattered the Conduit completely if I wanted to, XV Valence Magic and really, really high Caster Levels being awesome at that kind of stuff.

However, that was dumb. It would merely encourage the Realm Lords to make new Conduits, instead of thinking they could just break these open and re-establish them at any time... which they most definitely could not.

Furthermore, the more of these I Sealed, the harder and harder it was for them to establish new ones. It would probably never get to the point where they couldn’t force one through, but it was going to be awfully costly for them to do so.

And... it was something I could definitely use against both sides. I just had to think on a big enough scale...

The Archmage had done it for Terra-Luna, so why couldn’t I? Heck, he had given me a perfect working sample to emulate for this purpose!

My calculations of turning all those existing Nether and Nirvanan Conduits into Veil strongpoints suddenly expanded nicely.

I already had the acknowledgement of the Great Beasts on the Land and Sea. Could I really make Great Seals that could do the job?

Moreover, did I have time enough to make them?