In order to tackle a new Floor as fresh as possible, they camped out next to the recently-cleared Key Site overnight.
During the break, Will created a syringe out of the heartwood and was able to compress and create a flow of miasma using entirely physical means, which was something he’d never managed before.
Perhaps if I made a filter out of giant’s bone.
Giant’s bone was impregnated with miasmatic structures, but it was impermeable to miasma normally. Perhaps there was a way to arrange the giant’s bone in such a way that miasma could be compressed through a channel in the giant’s bone and formed into the kind of strands Will wanted.
An artificial recreation of The Devourer’s spinnerets? Could be fun.
Every day, Will uncovered more about this complex magic that permeated his world, and yet he still felt like he was barely scratching the surface.
Jorn and The Devourer of Knowledge got along, which was good, aside from Jorn shrieking in terror occasionally when she unexpectedly began speaking into his ear.
The sled composed of miasmatic structures that she was steering about was heavily reworked, and took a lot of inspiration from Will’s magic missile. There was a single spiral-shaped piece of miasma that spun rapidly inside a self-contained tube, which provided the thrust.
It wasn’t fully understood how, because it wasn’t pushing the air back or anything. It was more like it was playing with the concept of forward and back and the spin confused reality enough to make it give up.
In the morning, they packed up the camp and stowed it away in Will’s Phantom Hands before they accepted their Doors to the 15th Floor.
“Gear check: Everybody got a Supreme Healing Potion on them?” Will asked, scanning their Party.
“Yessir!” Jorn said, pumping his fist.
“I’ve something of that nature,” Loth said with a nod.
“I’ve got some self-repair strands on hand.” Devourer spoke.
“~” Steve flicked his tongue.
“The Burned Stronghold is currently not on fire.” Bree’s raven said.
“And what is the plan?” Will asked, meeting Jorn’s gaze.
“Arrive on the Fifteenth Floor, create a cordon of summons around us, follow Loth, stay together, and don’t leave until I hit level 65!” Jorn said.
Jorn was currently only level 53, on account of how quickly they blazed through Floors 11 through 14.
Before going any higher than the 15th Floor, they should spend a few days catching him up with the others.
This extra time paired well with Loth’s desire to scout out the Floor for a possible Kobold settlement.
“I’m excited to see what you can do,” Will said, nodding before he paused. “What’s your Class now, anyway? Bone Daddy?”
“Still an Abyssal Guide.” Jorn said, shaking his head.
“…You didn’t take your Class advancement?” Will asked.
“You never…told me to?” Jorn said with a wince.
“That’s true, I didn’t,” Will said, waving it off. “If that be the case, don’t do it until I tell you to, it’s dangerous to go unconscious out here.” It would’ve been a lot safer to do it back at his Stronghold, but since they were here, they might as well get him to a higher level first.
Loth had hypothesized that higher levels when taking Class Advancement might improve the outcome.
She hypothesized that because she had passed her Class Advancement Trial, she had been granted the ‘world’ suffix on her class, which made it very powerful. Will didn’t know any other people besides the two of them with World in their Class names, so he couldn’t say for sure.
But it did sound potent.
What would Jorn get if he passes? World Boner? Hah.
Will policed his thoughts and steered them back to the task at hand, so quickly that nobody noticed his wandering mind.
“Okay, everybody ready?” Will asked, to assent from the diverse crew they had assembled. “Let’s go.”
Will summoned the glowing yellow-orange Door in front of him, took a deep breath, and stepped through last, making sure everyone else was through.
The warm temperatures of a sun-dappled morning soured instantly.
The light of the sun turned a crimson red, and yet it was weak, providing little warmth. The temperature wasn’t frozen, but it was uncomfortable, like they’d stepped into one of Thea Oilton’s magical refrigerators.
The cold red light that shone down on everything showed him a picture of a ruined city. Ancient stone buildings that had fallen thousands of years ago and were in the process of being slowly swallowed up by the ever-present meat.
Will blinked. He’d heard of it, but seeing it in person was wild.
In between and around every ruined building was a pile of meat growing up the side of the building.
The sky was tinted red, which made the sun the color of blood, much like the 8th Floor’s purple sky.
The miasma around him floated with Miasmatic Structures that embodied the concept of temperature regulation and growth suppression.
There were no plants. Where there had been trees were sickening bone fascimilies with fruit-like lumps of meat hanging off of their branches.
The lumps twitched.
Everything other than the stone buildings pulsed.
Will caught the eye of Jorn and Loth, and flashed some Climber Sign.
Climb the buildings, he signed. Off the ground.
Jorn and Loth nodded, and the three of them got off the throbbing meat-floor that their feet seemed to slowly be sinking into, climbing up the side of one of the leaning buildings.
From the height of the collapsed stone structure, Will could see that they were in a city in a valley of some kind, of about the same size and development of the mega cities along The Ring outside the Tower.
Mega city is a bit misleading at this point, Will mused.
The civilization on the 8th Floor made Will’s look like a bunch of stone-flinging savages…Which he supposed they were.
“Jorn, clear some space around us.” Will whispered.Jorn nodded and began summoning swarms of undead who made a tight circle of protection around them.
“I never heard about the temperature of the Meat Locker.” Loth said with a frown.
“Well, it’s not a threat, just uncomfortable,” Will said before rethinking it. “Although for kobolds…”
“Could be a dealbreaker.” Loth mused, studying the distant mountains covered in patchy strands of meat, leaving only the barest rock untouched.
Did it grow by consuming living things? Will thought. Could explain why bare stone buildings aren’t swallowed up after thousands of years.
“That’d be a shame given the sheer amount of ‘food’ on this Floor.” Will said. “Are you unaffected?”
“Dragon blood,” Loth answered, tapping her chest.
“You know, Mirabelle said the 15th Floor is where ‘winners’ go,” Will said. Given that a dragon’s growth was directly related to how much they gorged themselves, this place might be like heaven for them, able to grow as large as they wanted just by eating the ground they walked on.
And for the kobolds…
“You’re thinking find a big dragon, kill it in self-defense, and turn it into thousands of Sacrifices for my minions?” Loth asked.
“Pretty much.” Will said, scanning the mountainous horizon like a fisherman looking for the glimmer of a fin under the water. “There’s gotta be some fat ones around here.”
Loth tapped Will on the shoulder and pointed at the bone tree with the flesh fruits hanging off of it.
Will turned his attention to the tree in time to see one of the ‘fruits’ fall off, the outer flesh peeling away to reveal something shaped like a starfish with a brain attached to the top.
It hit the ground with a wet ‘plap’, before it began to wriggle towards the source of the noise, stopping for a moment to inspect the footprints, running a slimy meat-pseudopod over the impressions with a sense of increasing indignation.
An instant later, a bone arrow pinned the creature to the ground.
It struggled for a moment before going limp. After the creature was dead, the arrow extricated itself and flew back up to orbit Jorn.
The other ‘fruits’ began to drop off, but each of the starfish was perforated by an arrow before they could present a danger to them.
Will pinched Jorn before he killed the last one.
“Yeah?” Jorn asked quietly, keeping his eye on the last starfish sliming it’s way across the pulsing meat-floor.
“Test the last one with a summon. I want to see how it attacks.” Will whispered.
It would be good to know their behavior if they were ever caught off guard or surrounded by more of them than Jorn’s arrows could handle.
“Milord,” Jorn nodded, and one of his razor lizards hopped up to the slimy starfish and began poking it.
The Starfish darkened as blood flooded to the brain it wore as a hat, and Will winced as he felt a minor headache come on. The brain wobbled a bit and a pen-sized beam of miasma shot through the razor lizard’s head, leaving no visible wound.
A moment later, the razor lizard wobbled in place before keeling over dead. The starfish tried to squirm its way onto the summon’s body and wound up confused as the summon disintegrated, leaving the starfish lashing around itself looking for where its tasty prey had gone.
In the process, it touched one of the dead starfish, recoiling at first as if it had touched something dangerous. A moment later when the dead one didn’t respond, it crawled up on top of the other starfish and ate its perforated brain.
Will watched in fascination as the brain on top of the starfish swelled with new flesh as raw brain matter and miasma flowed up into the creature, swelling its overall size drastically and darkening its color.
It appears like they do psychic damage, and they can cannibalize each other to increase their power. And fast.
The creature doubled in size, and it didn’t take long for it to happen across some of the other dead meat-starfish, eating the next one.
Its arms grew more dexterous, and its movements grew more calculated as it consumed more of its fallen brethren. It seemed like its senses were expanding at a similar rate, because the last corpse it located without even touching it, from some five feet away.
This has gone far enough, Will thought, giving Jorn the signal to end it.
Instantly, an arrow shot down from Jorn’s halo and struck the creature in the center of its swollen brain.
The brain throbbed for an instant and Will spotted a fist-width beam of malicious miasma shoot forward, tracing the arrow’s path.
Will reflexively threw up his left hand and created a rough shield of miasma between Jorn and the creature.
The beam hit the shield and plowed through it, losing much of its focus and becoming a blunt wave of psychic damage rather than a piercing beam. Most of it washed past Jorn.
Most of it.
Jorn went pale and keeled over, throwing up a mouthful of the soup they’d had for breakfast.
The meat-starfish’s brain trembled and wobbled a moment, seeming like it wanted to make another attack before deflating as bloody ooze poured out of the wound. Will made sure to chop it up into little pieces then checked back in on Jorn, dropping a potion of Supreme Healing in his mouth.
Sourdough.
The potion of Supreme healing could fix any damage that might’ve been done to his brain, but it wouldn’t reset how he felt.
“That…sucked.” Jorn gasped, trying not to retch, eyes bloodshot as he raised his face.
“Yeah, psychic damage is one of the nastier ones out there.” Will said, keeping his senses open for any sign of other starfish.
If these things could grow from cannibalism, then they would have to make sure to dispose of any corpses they made. Additionally, there was the unspoken fact that there were likely old ones who had consumed hundreds, perhaps thousands of their kin, lurking out there waiting for foolhardy Climbers to stumble across them.
I want to take one apart to see how it works. Loth signed.
…I kind of do too, Will signed back. A self-made psychic damage Ability would be a nice follow-up to his magic missile.
Ow. Jorn signed.
They preserved some sacrifices, disposed of the rest, then had Jorn’s summons spread out and clear land around them.
Whenever Jorn’s summons came across one of the bone trees, they immediately squished the meat-fruits before they could spawn those little psychic abominations.
The plan was to lay low in a relatively safe place until they had a firm grasp of what the native monsters were capable of. No fire, no lightning, and as little noise as possible, always speaking in hushed whispers or using Climber sign.
And it worked until the meat-butterflies showed up.