Chapter 323: Maskar Skewers

Jorn liked to practice the bow. Not because he needed one, but because it was calming, and helped him feel closer to his father.

Maybe their lives were vastly different, maybe they would never see each other again…but it helped bridge that gap.

Currently he was practicing his aim on distant rock.

Normally shooting a rock would be a gross misuse of arrows, but the materials of his arrows practically required him to shoot rocks or else they would bury themselves so damned deep that he wouldn’t even be able to see the fletching.

The bone arrow quivered against the string, eager to leap up and do its own thing, and only begrudgingly holding still while Jorn shot it like a normal arrow for the sake of practice.

Jorn had a lot of free time as the Burned Stronghold’s monster-culling ranger. His summons did the vast majority of the work clearing the land, and June was pretty easy to get along with as his direct superior.

All he had to do was give her a brief head’s-up on where the good hunting grounds were every couple days, and she was fine.

Heath was an asshole, but the man spent most of his time dealing with other assholes.

So Jorn spent most of his days practicing his scrimshaw, his archery, or hanging out with Lily.

Jorn let the arrow fly. It hissed forward and pierced the target a few feet left of where Jorn had intended to hit.

Hmm.

With a mental nudge, the bone arrow leapt up and flew back to the bowstring, waiting for his next attempt.

“JORN!” an inhuman voice shouted into his ear.

“GAH!” Jorn flinched as he loosed, causing the bone arrow to vanish into the distance.

An instant later, the arrow came back, spinning around him defensively, looking for the source of the voice as Jorn spun around, scanning the surroundings.

“It’s me, The Devourer!” The voice spoke.

Jorn frowned, narrowing his eyes.

He couldn’t see anything with his eyes, but his Class had remarkably high Focus. He could feel a faint smudge in front of him, as though a tiny portion of the land had been darkened by a cloud.

“Devourer of…Knowledge? Didn’t you stay with Loth?” Jorn asked.

“No, I stayed with the library.” Devourer replied. “But that’s not important! There’s weird stuff happening in Will’s tower, and Steve is to blame!”

“Steve the brewer?”

“No!”

“Steve the snake?”

“Yes! There was this hole in reality and Steve investigated it when I asked him not to, and he wound up catching some of it on his tail and spreading it across the floor! It’s probably mostly fixed itself, but I can take you to where it started. Several things fell through the hole, so there’s plenty of proof of things missing. And when we have proof we can punish Steve!

I’m thinking we should sinter him into a decorative statue.” If The Devourer had fingers, Jorn was convinced she would be steepling them.

“Hold up.” Jorn said, holding up a hand. “What hole in reality?”

“There was a tear in reality in the tower. The barrier between this Floor and the next appeared to be worn and frayed.”

“Did Steve make the hole originally?” Jorn asked.

“…No.” Devourer reluctantly admitted. “But he made it worse.”

“Did he intend to make it worse?”

“Who knows with that creature.” Devourer replied. “He could be plotting our demise this very moment. How would we know?”

“Listen, Devourer. You don’t punish a goat for eating your daffodils. You fix the fence. Have you told anyone else about the hole?”

“You’re the only person who knows I exist, and therefore the quickest person to reach an understanding with.” Devourer replied.

So I’ve gotta be the one to tell everyone. Jorn thought with a groan, massaging his neck.

I knew I shouldn’t have appreciated how much free time I’ve had recently. The gods heard me and decided to punish me with more responsibility.

Well, whatever. Jorn’s job was to handle external trouble for the Burned Stronghold anyway. The world falling apart…sort of fell in that category?

“Let’s go talk to Badur and the others,” Jorn said, summoning a thunder goat and hopping on, his Leech Ability securing him to the beast in place of a saddle or reigns.

He felt a faint coldness as Devourer latched onto him, and a moment later they were on their way back to town.

RIIIIP!

Huh? Jorn felt a strange tearing sensation that seemed to travel through his body.

He reflexively checked himself for wounds, but didn’t find any.

“What was that?”

“STOP!” Devourer yelled, the faint sensation of tugging on his earlobe.

“What, what is it?” Jorn asked, bringing his flying goat to a halt.

“Look at the Burned Stronghold!”

Jorn paused and narrowed his eyes, really looking at the stronghold below them.

“I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

“It’s frozen.” Devourer said, causing Jorn to take a second glance.

There was a man loading crates onto a wagon who hadn’t moved in several seconds with a heavy crate fully outstretched, ready to be set down.

The pedestrians on the street were stopped mid-stride their front feet hanging in the air.

What the Abyss? Jorn blinked and everyone started moving again.

“What was that!?” Jorn demanded.

“I think…that was spacetime coming untethered.” Devourer said.

It can do that!? Jorn thought. “…Is it safe to go in there?”

“I’unno.” He felt Devourer shrug. “It might not matter one way or the other. would you be able to tell if your time was stopped? It might’ve happened to you already and you wouldn’t know it.”

“So it’s safe?”

“…as far as you’ll ever know.”

Jorn took a deep, steadying breath before urging his mount into action.

No sense hesitating. Lily is down there.

 **William Oh**

“Fire can’t harm me, damn you! What did you do…” Maskar quieted, his attention turning inward as he studied the wound.

“Miasma like broken glass…tearing apart my own immunity to fire.”

So he can see it too, Will thought. Or at the very least, perceive it well enough that it passed as vision.

“Have it back.” Maskar said.

The ancient red dragon engulfed his paw in tightly woven miasma, grabbed the burst of faefire erupting from his chest and compressed it down into a tiny, brilliantly glowing sphere before flicking it back at Will.

ACK! Will dodged to the left, and the sphere reacted instantly, swerving to smash into his chest.

It exploded against Will’s side. The compressed fire washed over him harmlessly, but the impact sent him reeling backwards. Maskar tried to take advantage of Will’s tumble, but was interrupted by Loth looping threads of miasma around his neck and trying to cut his miasma-form’s head off.

Why didn’t I see that? Will thought as he regained control of his flight and rejoined the battle.

The brightness of the sphere had burned Will’s retina and the brightness had concealed a tracking element imprinted in the spell itself, its size had also made it too small to read the miasma before the Ability made its way to him.

Good idea.

When he got a chance, Will would experiment with adding that to his own original Abilities.

“You like fire, try this one!” Will shouted, creating a Will’s Magic Missile.

Compared to the dragon’s projectile, it was big and clunky, being the size of a fist rather than the tip of a pinkie.

“Clumsy and slow.” Maskar said, sending out a wave of corrosive miasma that stripped the walls of the magic missile.

Without the exterior shell, the interior detonated, sending blades of dimensional energy forward, catching Maskar’s hand.

The dragon didn’t lose any fingers, but blood and severed scales tumbled to the ground below.

Will dove through the dragon’s defensive spells and landed a raking blow along the creature’s wounded arm.

“Back, pest!” Maskar shouted, filling the air with fire.

“Stevie, you can join the fight now!”

“Presently, Milord.” Stevie said.

The butler, sleeveless and currently juiced up with two powerful Relics, flew forward, catching the dragon in the face with his knee.

Stevie sank several feet into the dragon’s face with an accompanying crack as he broke the dragon’s cheekbone. Maskar reached up and swatted Stevie away, sending the lightning-infused butler tumbling back to the ground, where he cut a butler-shaped divot through the earth.

The dragon gave out a weak gout of flame and roared.

They were steadily wearing Maskar down.

“Anything else you want to try out?” Will asked as Loth arrived beside him.

“No. I tried copying the Devourer’s technique to pull the soul out, but a dragon’s miasma seems to be too entwined with their body.”

Hmm.

“I have one more thing I wanna try.”

“Go for it.”

Will mentally sorted through the storage of his Phantom Hand.

Cannonball, no.

Shortsword, no.

Chakram, no.

Clothes, food, candy, tools…

Will mentally landed on a flat spike of a crowbar that he’d store in Phantom Hand just in case he needed to pry open a door on a higher Floor with magically strengthened materials that resisted his Abilities.

It was a solid bar of Blessed Steel, about six feet long with a chisel-like point at the end.

Good for prying and if he needed something with more penetration power than the cannonball or chakram.

That’ll do.

Will manifested an eidolon copy of the crowbar, appearing in his hand.

So the question is…can I infuse a Relic into an inanimate Eidolon? The object in his hand was technically an eidolon, although it was a low-grade one, without a will of its own.

Will manifested the Sickle of Malignant Silence and held the cursed Relic’s handle to the crowbar.

The crowbar sucked up the sickle like a sponge, it’s miasmatic structure writhing as they restructured.

Will took a quick sketch.

Will pulled back and whipped his hand forward, tossing the manifested bar of Blessed Steel like a javelin.

Phantom Hands caught the heavy steel bar and accelerated it further, driving the staff-sized stake directly into the dragon’s chest.

Maskar blinked, his attention dragged away from the battle with Stevie and to the crowbar buried in his chest.

Will waited with anticipation.

For a heartbeat it seemed like the infused crowbar had no effect. Then the dragon tried to speak.

“That’s the best you can –“ The rest of his words were cut off by a spray of blood, and Will watched as malignant curses began to swarm and multiply, spreading through the fertile ground that was the dragon’s flesh.

Is that going to have a negative effect on the quality of the Sacrifices? Will wondered.

The Dragon let out a guttural growl and the curses began to be sucked towards the center of the dragon, thrashing like hapless swimmers caught in a whirlpool.

At the center of the dragon, the curses were melted down into raw miasma and Charge. No way…how is he doing that?

As Will was staring in fascination, Loth vanished from beside him and reappeared behind the dragon.

There was a bright explosion of miasma, and an instant later, Maskar’s head went flying.

“He was distracted.” Loth said as Will lowered the corpse to the ground and fished out his preservation wand.

“True, but it would’ve been nice if I could’ve had a moment to ask him how he was curing the curses.” Will said.

“I doubt he would’ve given you a straight answer.” Loth replied, tapping on her barrel. Thousands of insects flooded out and began lifting the dragon into the air.

They escorted the massive Sacrifice back to the kobolds and began divvying it out, a handful of pounds of raw flesh at a time. No need to dry the meat for storage or long-distance transport.

“No, you don’t eat it!” Loth said, slapping the meat out of another kobold’s hand as it approached their gaping maw. This was after she had repeatedly instructed them to offer it to The Tower.

Most of them managed this feat. Some of the kobolds had already had filled their Trap Savant Upgrade slots and lied about it, assuming it would never come to light, but…most of them managed to ascend Trap Savant to Draconic Domain.

Will and Loth sat and roasted dragon skewers by a fire and chatted while the kobolds went through the same process Loth had, repeatedly stuffing themselves before passing out, over and over, gradually clearing a massive patch of the city of it’s ever-present meat.

“I’m starting to see why you wanted this Floor in particular.” Will said, watching the kobolds change before his very eyes.

“There simply wasn’t any other Floor that had both dragons and enough meat to fuel the transformation en masse.” Loth said, nodding.

“Stupid human!” Snipper interrupted Will and Loth’s conversation.

“I will prove you are unsuited to be the Great One’s partner!” Snipper said, pointing an undersized spear at Will.

“Wow, listen to that.” Will mused. Full sentence with passable grammar. Loth must be pleased.

“In the dirt?” Will asked, glancing over Loth.

“Mhmm.” Loth nodded.

Will grabbed Snipper’s horns with Phantom Hands and forced his face into the ground.

“So I’ve found that if you add a bit of the sap to the marinade, the meat retains water better when you roast it.” Will said, turning his attention back to Loth and resuming their conversation.

“You think the smoke causes a reaction in the sap…or the temperature? Obviously sap is water-impermeable, but I’m curious what mechanism causes it to spread out so evenly.” Loth said.

“MMMM!” Snipper screamed into the dirt, thrashing mightily. After a few minutes he went limp and Loth gave Will a nod.

When he let go, Snipper had regained much of his hunched over posture from before the change, slinking away from the two of them.

“So she’s a kobold this time.” A familiar, masculine voice spoke. A hand reached out from Will’s periphery and took one of the sticks of roasting dragon-meat out of the fire and brought it up to a familiar face.

“I got a bit delayed, but happy fifteenth birthday, Will.”

Thomas Oh, Will’s father, and probably an Immortal Serpent said, nibbling on the skewer.

Will punched him in the face.