You know why people feel hollow after they get their revenge? It’s because the invest too much emotion into the act, such that nothing can ever satisfy the anticipation they’ve built inside them.
Do you feel empty after exterminating a hive of vicious hornets threatening your children? No. At the very least, you feel like you have accomplished a meaningful task that will protect them in the future. A far cry from the emptiness faced by those who give all their emotions to revenge.
Therefore, if you wish to move on afterwards, revenge should be carried out with the same dispassion as exterminating hazardous insects.
Roll up your sleeves, turn the brim of your hat against the sun, and work up a sweat until it is done.
- Reese
Congratulations! You are now a level 69 World Traveller!
…Nice.
Far below Will’s midair perch was a complex network of underground flesh, with a thick node connected to the base of each of the mist-spewing ‘trees’.
Highlighted by the fear gushing out of it was a central node: A lump of flesh that had assumed control over the entire organism, and had enough cognizance of it’s current situation to understand how fucked it was.
The central node was a couple miles to the east, planted squarely between the available Key Sites, with narrow tendrils extending towards each of them.
Will could picture it sending its controlled monsters into the light, basting them with miasmatic power, and then instructing them to feed themselves to it. An indirect keysite infestation, and on a massive scale.
The central mass itself was oblong, about the shape of a hotdog bun, albeit the size of a tiny village. A modest footpath and a dozen homes could fit squarely on the creature’s back.
He marked it in case it could move, and once he was done cleaning the surrounding area of mist, he brought everyone back down to earth. There was still a bit of mist hazing the surroundings, but it was easy to see hundreds of yards thought it.
While the Climbers were shouting, hugging and crying, Will showed Loth his Map.
“You think you can dig this up?” Will asked. He could definitely blow it up with Hammer of God, but he wanted it to be exposed to air and begging for it’s life before it died. It was the principle of the thing.
Titan’s grasp combined with Aspect could probably do the work, but Titan’s Grasp was iffy with living things who might resist the Ability.
Titan’s Grasp wasn’t a combat Ability and had no resistance to being resisted. It was somewhat similar to Loth’s Draconic domain in the way its miasmatic threads were fluttery and exposed like down feathers, rather than hard and interlocked in the manner of Aspect and Resistance.
Loth cast an appraising eye on the map.
“That’s the thing?”
“That’s the thing,” Will said, nodding.
Loth glanced towards the east.
“Yeah, I can do it. Do you think the Climbers should be present?” Loth asked, her gaze turning back towards the celebrating Climbers.
They didn’t need to witness the creature’s death. Matter of fact, they thought it was dead already.
But…the minute they stop hugging and think about it, they’ll grow suspicious. Such a thing would have to be a raid boss, at the very least. It would be strange that there was no announcement of it’s death. And the amount of XP we got was only enough to account for all the minions the Jorn killed.
“…Probably not. But the rules of vengeance compel me to kill it with finality.
“Vengeance has rules?” Loth asked.
Will shrugged. “I just wanted to sound cool.”
“Aww,” Loth ruffled his hair. “Let’s bring the Climbers then, so they can see how cool you are.”
“It’s weird you’re as tall as me now,” Will said, brushing Loth’s hand off him before turning back to the celebrating Climbers.
“LISTEN UP!” Will shouted, tearing their attention away from each other.
“We just clipped the mist’s talons, but it’s still alive. The main body is an underground brain connected to a network of flesh. It will probably take months or years for it to regrow it’s mist-spewing towers and become as dangerous as it was before, so we could easily take our time to recover before heading back down.”
Will let that thought linger, watching their expressions darken as they contemplating leaving the thing alive.
“But you don’t want to do that, do you?” Will said. “You want to be absolutely sure this thing is dead. Well, I think I can accommodate that.”
Will gestured for them to stand closer together.
“Everybody hop.”
A moment later, the entire group was soaring up into the air again, taking everyone with them, including Jorn, the Devourer, the melted toddler and the animals.
Boop. Will idly booped the raven’s beak as they sailed through the sky to the east.
“The Burned Stronghold is a lil’ bit on fire.” Bree’s voice said.
Will’s skin went cold.
I don’t have time to drag this out.
Will brought the platform to a halt high above and half a mile distant from the creature. The very last of the thick mist had clumped together directly over the creature’s main body, revealing its location as surely as the fear that oozed out of it.
If it had a method of direct attack, Will didn’t want to experience it firsthand.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Will said to Loth.
Loth sat down and closed her eyes.
In his mental map, Will spotted thousands of hairline cuts appear along the bedrock, cutting the slab of rock protecting the monster into manageable chunks.
“I’ll remove the stone,” Will said.
Loth nodded without opening her eyes.
Titan’s Grasp.
Will mentally sent the effect through his map, feeding the Ability his intention to grasp each and every one of the stone chunks and clear them away from the creature.
Thousands of cubes of stone rose above the mist in front of their eyes, shooting away in every direction.
“Wait!” A voice loud as thunder echoed out of the Mist. Loud enough to reach them a half-mile away.
“I have your Party members, your children inside me. If you kill me they will-
“Shut it’s lying fucking mouth!” Emme shouted.
“With pleasure.”
Loth’s miasma strands rose from the ground and wrapped around the creature, and thousands of flying insects grasped onto the creature and hauled it upwards.
It resisted until Will sent his Phantom Snakes below the creature’s underside and cut the roots that anchored it to the earth and began pushing upwards from below.
“I am a necessary evil! Without me, more will suffer!” The mist reverberated as a nasty, pinkish blob began to rise above it, hauled upwards by the combined efforts of Loth and Will.
Floor-wide Alert!
The Raid Boss The Mist has been engaged on the 17th Floor!
The Mist was a Mindrend Mist-Spewer that mutated under the effects of heightened Miasma during the turning of a Coil, uncapping it’s growth like a cancerous tumor.
Over many thousands of years, the creature managed to conquer the entire Floor, dominating the monsters therin and eliminating those it could not control.
Like a child before it learns of empathy, The Mist particularly enjoys cruelty, and amuses itself by toying with its victims.
Bounty: 15000 Ivory Ten-pieces, 75,000,000XP, to be shared among the Parties that claim the bounty.
“The Tower needs me to w-“
The rest of the creature’s words were lost in a shriek of pain as Will grew the armor of a Phantom Serpent into a twenty-foot blade and began the work of gutting the creature.
He’d filleted a couple of the massive flatfish that buried themselves under the sands of the 10th Floor, so this wasn’t entirely outside his experience.
The Phantom Snake was so far distant, and the blade so thin, that the monster appeared to simply peel apart down the center as the mist around it shrieked with pain and turned blood-red.
The shrieking rapidly turned to gurgles and meaningless twitches as Will vivisected the monster in front of it’s victims.
Earl began singing a sea shanty. For a moment, the others were confused, but gradually everyone joined in, and together they kept the song going with dirtier and dirtier verses until the monster was nothing but lumps of meat.
Floor-wide Alert!
The Party of William Oh has claimed the bounty!
Many thanks to our Climbers for their efforts.
You are now a level 70 World Traveler!
Primary Ability Upgrade Available!
Secondary Ability Upgrade Available!
Tertiary Ability Upgrade Available!
The six survivors rocked back on their heels and collapsed down to a seated position, their legs incapable of supporting them anymore.
Emma heaved a long sigh, arms locked around the twisted toddler in her lap.
Earl groaned and rose to his feet.
“Mr. Oh, thank you for everything. We didn’t think we’d live, let alone live to see that damned thing killed.” He said as he clasped Will’s hand in both of his own.
“If there’s anything we can do to thank you, anything at all, please let us know. We owe you our lives. We’ll help with the-”
“I just wanted to help.” Will said, forestalling any further gratitude. “It felt like the right thing to do, and I got paid for it. No thanks needed.
“But the way you killed that monster. I know you didn’t have to pull it out of the ground and show it to us.” Earl said. “That part you did for us.”
“I’ve been a Lord for three years now,” Will said. “Maybe it’s become a habit, but when I see a problem only I can fix, I take care of it. I saw that monster was a problem, so I ‘took care of it’.
Now, I mean no disrespect meant by my sudden departure, but I’ve got an urgent problem developing at my Stronghold that I have to go ‘take care of’.”
Will summoned his Door.
“And you six don’t leave until you have at least twenty more pounds of muscle on you!” Will said, pointing at them as he leapt through the Door to the Sixteenth Floor.
Below, Pax was closing in on the Stronghold upgrade that made the citizens near-immortal.
By dominating and sending wave after wave of citizens into the Lord’s restricted areas, he had managed to map out the entire basement to his satisfaction.
Despite the dozens of lethal traps dealing outrageous amounts of damage, none of Pax’s living test dummies had been hurt since the damage had been split up to thousands of people.
They thought they were cleaning and renovating William Oh’s basement.
After the thorough search, Pax had identified a place that the civilians simply couldn’t go.
It was a nondescript corner in a storage room full of shelves. There was one shelf above and several barrels clustered around it, but after removing all the barrels and trying to climb under the corner shelf, no one was able to do so.
There was something invisible in the way.
Bastard made the damn thing invisible. Only a matter of time, now.
Only a matter of time…
Why is it taking so long?
“Why is it taking so long?” Pax demanded, turning to Badur.
“Oh, that’s because of some bureaucratic hedging I did.” Badur said. “It’s a Logistician preservative Ability that prevents wear and tear. I upgraded it to synergize with a Stronghold. Any damage dealt to objects or infrastructure I designate as ‘high value’, will take maintenance costs directly out of the city’s coffers. We’ve been losing about seven ivory ten-pieces every time they bash the thing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me!?” Pax demanded
“you didn’t ask?” badur replied with a blank stare.
He is under my control, right? Pax could still feel the thread between himself and Badur, confirming his grasp on the logistician, but…it was rapidly fraying and even though it still existed, the man’s behavior just felt wrong.
In his frustration, Pax stabbed Badur sixteen times while the Logisitician looked on in passive bemusement as the knife stopped at his skin, coming to a halt as though it had struck steel.
“…Can you cancel it?” Pax asked, recovering his composure.
“It would take a few days to do all the paperwork.” Badur replied.
“Well how long would it take for the coffers to run dry?” Karen asked.
“A few days.”
“Could you spend all the Stronghold’s money on something?” Pax asked.
“A faster way would be if a non-citizen were to destroy it with an Ability.” The Ability is a ‘preserve and maintain’ Ability for infrastructure keyed to Stronghold and its citizenship after all, not direct attacks from outside forces.”
Marksman wouldn’t want me spending all the Stronghold’s money, either.
“Karen, go blow it up.”
“But Pax…”
“I’ll send meatshields in front of you.” Pax said. “Let’s go make this happen. We don’t have any more time.”
The three of them marched into William Oh’s basement, with a retinue of citizens in front of them to take the brunt of any trap that might still be untriggered.
“All right, all of you stand around that corner there and try to focus the blast with your own bodies,” Pax gave them instructions.
Badur and the other meatshields nodded, forming a semi-circle around the invisible altar they’d covered in flour to reveal it.
Pax took a step back and let Karen do her job.
A brilliant ball of plasma formed at her fingertips as she prepared to toss the explosive Ability onto the altar.
ZZZ
There was a strange buzzing noise as the wall beside Karen came to life and a web of purple lightning caught her in the side like a wooden fly swatter, crushing her against the opposing wall, turning the Nuker into a charred bloody paste in an instant.
“Nope. I’m out.” Marv said, turning around and carefully tracing the path back out the way they came, holding one of the charmed meat shields in front of him.
“Well, that didn’t work.” Badur said. “Do you want me to spend all the Stronghold’s money real quick?”
“…Do so.” Pax said, knuckles white around Rose’s Thorn.