William Oh was disappointed by a Floor once.
That Floor no longer exists.
- Jason Salazar.
Overnight, the Entity sent a raid of brown-furred humanoid monsters at them, attempting to overwhelm the tiny village and pick off Loth. Or perhaps it just felt the need to clear this little petri dish and start over entirely.
In any case, it likely didn’t go how The Entity intended, because Will and the others only learned about the attack the next day.
Although Will did feel a faint grinding sensation through the earth over the course of the night.
“The steakbugs are eating good.” Loth said in the morning, sitting peering down into a vat dug into the bedrock below, filled to the brim with thick steakbugs eating rapidly dissolving ground meat as quickly as they could.
“Hmm… How long do you think it’ll take to nurse them back to health?” Will asked.
“Civilians would take months. These Climbers are in their high sixties. They should only take a week or so.”
Will glanced around. The emaciated men and women were still rail thin, but their complexions had improved drastically from a single steak-bug apiece.
I don’t have a week, Will thought with a scowl.
“That’s only if we feed them normally, correct? What if we overfeed them?”
“It’s not good for starving people to overeat, but…they all have high Resistance to deal with the shock to their system. Could work.” Loth replied.
Will gathered together Earl and the others and gave them the plan:
“We can’t stay here for longer than a day.” Will said. “Loth is going to leave enough steakbugs here for you guys to regain your muscle, and I am going to kill the mist and get us all a Door. Do me a favor and do not use the door before you are absolutely ready to do so.”
“How are you planning to do that, milord?” Emma asked.
“Join my Party.” Will said, sending them all an invite.
Emma Velvet has joined the Party.
Earl Velvet has joined the Party.
Neeraj Rahimat has joined the Party
Ronan Smith has joined the Party
Brent ‘fuck the mist’ Eagle has joined the Party
Harlow Angelique has joined the Party
“DEAR GODS! How are your stats so high!?” Earl demanded.
“You two are married?” Will asked, ignoring Earl’s outburst.
“The System can officiate weddings and do name changes.” Brent ‘fuck the mist’ said.
“Yeah I can see that,” Will replied.
“More importantly, how are you…like that!?” Emma said, pointing at Will.
“Lord secret.” Will waved it off. He could tell them, but that information becoming public would eventually mean more people trying to kill him. It was a shame, because the Phantom Hand with the Relic Slot upgrade was truly outrageously good and everyone should have one.
Not sure if regular people would want to cut off a limb to get it, though.
As he mused, Will walked over to the edge of the clear area, facing the mist.
Since Loth had trapped the area, Will had total confidence that nothing would burst through and attack him. This was an excellent opportunity to strengthen his resolve and lay out the fate the Mist had in store for it.
“Mist, are you listening?” Will asked.
“Will, the one that’s with you is a fake, I’m trapped in some kind of cave underground, you have to save me!” Jorn’s voice carried through the mist.
“Good, you’re listening. If the only thing you did was kill Climbers and eat them, You and I, we wouldn’t really have a problem. You’re a monster, they decided to be here. That’s fair. That’s the game we play. But when you trapped them here and ate their children…that, I cannot abide.”
“I suppose to you, one human is the same as any other human, regardless of size and how they came to be here. But there is one glaring difference. Choice. Those children did not choose to be here, which makes your act of killing them particularly egregious in my eyes.”
“Which is why I now choose to scour you from this Floor. Contemplate that.”
An eerie silence hung between Will and the mist pressing against the Key Site’s area.
“…Good luck.” Will’s voice called through the mist before breaking into raucous laughter.
“AHAHAHAHA!”
Another voice joined the laughter, followed by another, and another, as though a chorus of dead Climbers were just out of sight, mocking Will.
Excellent. Will thought as he returned to the group.
“Why did you give the damned thing a warning?” Earl asked, his eyes bloodshot, knuckles white.
“…I want the mist to understand what’s happening to it.” Will replied evenly, meeting Earl’s gaze. “I don’t want confusion. I don’t want anger. I want fear.”
“He may not act like it most of the time, but Will’s got a mean streak too.” Loth called from her perch above the breeding pit.
Earl’s lips twitched as he took in Will’s words, going from a scowl to a feral grin.
“Yeah. I hope it’s fuckin’ afraid.”
“Not yet,” Will said, tweaking his map’s settings. “But it will be.”
Which weapon of mass destruction do I want to go with? Will thought. He didn’t know enough about The Entity to be able to predict the outcome if he used the Sickle of Malignant Silence. It may very well work perfectly, or it might not work at all, or it might spread.
What about Hammer of God? Will mused. It was a good option, but it was a bit…splashy.
Will snapped his fingers as he realized the first move he wanted to make.
As far as opening moves, this was cheap, effective, and not ‘splashy’.
He currently had the ring of Explosive Doughmaking slotted, so he slotted the Dimensional Coiled Serpent Amulet, sending shivers up his spine as the ten fingers of his two Phantom Hands split into ten serpents.
He checked his stats for the first time since he’d spent his Upgrade Slots back in the Burned Stronghold.
William Oh
World Traveler Level 68
69 + 359 Strength
207 + 231 Resistance
204 + 342 Kinesthetics
268 + 165 Acuity
136 + 196 Focus
Charges: 284/332
Free Points: 0
Non-stat Item Abilities: +30% Move/Attk, Scaling Move SpeedX2 (Kin/Res), +65% Dimensional Potency, +85% Rogue Potency, 50% A/V reduction, Ghostwalk, +40% All-radius, Homeland Advantage, +85% Detection Radius, Scaling Rogue Cooldown, 25% All Dmg Mitigation, Scaling Ranger Ability linger, +90% Ranger Potency, +40% Terrain potency, Scaling footing boost, Freedom of movement: Terrain.
Phantom Hand Slots: (Hammer of God) (Ring of Explosive Doughmaking) (Wand of the Undead Retainer) (Sickle of Malignant Silence) -(Dimensional Coiled Serpent Amulet)-
Primary Abilities: Aspect of the Immortal Serpent*, Phantom Hand(x7), Map***
Secondary Abilities: Sourdough* Uru Drake’s Eye
Tertiary Abilities: Phantom Eye
Tertiary Ability Upgrade Available!
…My Strength is really bad. Will mused. It was completely patched over by his kit, but with nothing on and nothing slotted, he was only as strong as four and a half adult men.
“It’s what, eight in the morning?” Will mused, looking up at the slice of brightening sky above.
“Yeah, somewhere around there.” Earl replied, nodding.
“I want you six to come with me. I want you to see and understand that this thing can be beaten. I want it to sink in that if you leave this Floor before you’re ready and die, I will be very disappointed in you.”
“Yessir.”
The six Climbers hammered on their Climber faces and congregated by the edge of the mist, nervously fingering their primary and secondary weapons, much of which seemed to be broken or missing.
“No,” Will said, shaking his head. “We’re not going that way.”
“But…” Earl pointed at the mist before glancing around. “Which way…were you planning on going?”
“Here, stand together.” Will said, gesturing for them to stand closer together.
“Now, everyone do a little hop.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep, like this.” Will said, demonstrating by bouncing a few inches off the ground. “Ready? One, two…three.”
They all hopped in the air and Will solidified a platform beneath them with a snake.
“Whoa!” cries of surprise rippled through the six Climbers as they found a platform of hardened air suddenly below them.
Both Will and the platform began to rise as the snake below it lifted the seven of them straight up.
“I see.” Earl said, giving Will an appraising look. “World Traveler. You’re especially good at traversing The Tower.”
“That do be the case,” Will replied with a smile as they rapidly gained speed. In a matter of seconds they were above the mist.
“How do you become a Lord with a noncombat Class like that?” the heretofore silent Neeraj asked as the dawn’s light spilled over the rolling hills of mist punctuated by beams of blue rising into the sky.
The ‘trees’ that Will and Loth had suspected of not being trees were jutting out of the white mist, gushing mist from holes in the top of their trunk, looking something like breathing tubes.
Will met the dusky-skinned man’s gaze.
“How did I become a Lord? I’ll show you.”
Will turned his attention to his mental map of the surrounding lands
When he first burned Kincaid’s castle to the ground, he didn’t have nearly the same potency as he did now, being forced to make his entire lens out of multiple snakes holding the pressurized air in the right configuration.
With the Map that allows my Abilities to originate wherever I want, and the vastly increased potency…
This is going to be interesting to say the least.
First up…
A slanted, building-sized column of air with an inverted pyramid in its bottom was created above the four Key Sites, slamming down from above, cutting a channel through the mist and trapping any monsters atop the Key Site itself.
Four enormous lenses formed, catching the slanted morning sun, narrowing the morning sun down to a beam that caught the side of the Key Sites. The columns of air trapped the heat inside and in a matter of minutes, there was nothing alive atop them.
Thank you for clearing the Key Site. You may
Thank you for clearing the Key Si
Thank you for-
Thank you for clearing the Key Site. You may advance to the 18th Floor or descend to the 16th Floor at your leisure.
+ 240000 XP
“What…the…f-”
Will mentally grasped dozens of areas across his Map, limited only by the number of lenses he could focus on at one.
Above them, dozens of Fresnel lenses appeared, hundreds of feet wide and slanted drastically to catch the morning sun.
At the end of each of their focal points: one of the enormous trees flooding the landscape with mist.
The outer layer of mist was burned away quickly and the exterior of the tree was turned to burned charcoal in a matter of seconds.
But it was slower than Will would like.
Now that he was enacting it, he was starting to see the flaws in using lenses to burn the mist away.
The deeper layers of mist acted as shielding for the trees, and even when it was burned away, more mist would fill in from the sides. And charcoal was relatively good at insulating from heat, so while the exterior of the trees were charred, the vast majority of the inside was still alive, just wounded.
Hmm the pace leaves something to be desired. At the current rate, Will would be at this for hours for each batch of trees he wanted to bring down.
The Climbers screaming in delight beside him didn’t seem to care about that, solely invested in seeing the mist scoured away.
Too thick to bring the trees down with terrain spikes..or are they? The Family Gathering boosts Aspect drastically.
Will plucked the Map, mentally stomping beside one of the trees, creating a ripple-blade of earth that he compressed to the highest level he could manage, strengthening the bedrock as it jutted out of the earth.
I remember back when I first made this cantrip, thinking this might one day be enough to break someone’s ankle.
The tower-sized blade of stone tore through the side of the mist-spewing tree with a crunch that even the mist couldn’t muffle, cutting completely through the base.
On his map, Will watched as the tree broke off of it’s shattered trunk, toppling over until its fall was arrested by the hundreds of branches creating a lattice between itself and the other trees.
Will knocked them down too, until the satisfying sound of the branches snapping under the strain echoed above the mist.
“YES!” Emma shouted right beside Will’s ear.
Will turned his attention to the massive lenses above.
I need something a little more like a wide mop to clean up the Mist. Even with the trees knocked down there was still an enormous amount of mist flooding from every direction. Will needed something wider to clean it up.
Will turned his attention to the eastmost portion of his map, releasing the smaller, pinpoint lenses and turning his focus towards created a single long Fresnel lens that concentrated sunlight in a line, reinforcing it with six of his snakes until it was six miles long.
He began slowly dragging the mop of light from east to west, going with the direction of the sun, burning away the mist in a six mile-wide swath, revealing burnt grass and lightly charred humanoid monsters. Unlike the mist itself, the monster of the 17th Floor were tough enough to resist brief exposure to the concentrated sunlight.
Those aren’t my responsibility. Will thought as the monsters fled the suddenly exposed scorched earth, looking like ticks abandoning a suddenly shaved dog.
Below them, Jorn’s phantoms flooded the newly cleansed area, butchering the hands and feet of The Entity as they attempted to flee to safety
Deep underground, Will spotted a growing bloom of fear on his Map.
…There you are.