Chapter 248: Flushing the Worm (Patreon)

“You see that?” Will asked, gesturing at his little model of a barge.

He’d made it by enhancing the details of the physically manifested map as high as they would go, matching the map to the shape of the ship, then tagging every Climber on board with a marker on his Legend, which allowed him to watch them move about in real time.

The ‘Vincent’ tag had separated itself from the Climbers. He’d figured out either consciously or unconsciously, that Will could only teleport to people, and had placed himself where he could watch all of them at once.

This gave them an excellent opportunity to separate the worm from the Climbers.

“He’s isolating himself.” Zodiac said, nodding.

“As soon as we start pressuring him with all four of us, he’s going to blow Steve. We have to maximize the amount of time they have to react.”

“Can we just let them land on the island then, if it’s sheltered by the Key Site?” Travis asked.

Will raised his finger and paused.

“Hold that thought.”

Will moved back to his anchor butler on Giant Island, popping up beside Loth.

“Travis had a good idea.” Will said.

“He was due for one.” Loth said.

“If we can get the Climbers on the island, we might be able to give them time to use their Doors to escape.”

“That’s asking for people to get squished. You wanna move the giants first?” Loth asked. “They’re not going to be eager to abandon their homes twice in rapid succession. Although given the short time between them they might still be in the right mindset…”

“I think someone’s going to need to…‘motivate’ them to move.” Will said.

Loth’s lips peeled away from her serrated teeth. “I can do that.”

“Alright, here’s how I want it to go:” Will said, manifesting the map and explaining the basics of the plan. The barge was moving as fast as it could in the atmosphere, a brisk eighty miles an hour, which meant it was only a few minutes out.

They got to work.

On the barge, morale wasn’t so great. The Climber’s stood back to back, watching their surroundings with bloodshot eyes, as every minute or two, another attack would come from an unusual angle.

“That’s William Oh, isn’t it?”

“I got hit by William Oh! I’m gonna immortalize this bruise with a tattoo!”

“Nobody told me he could teleport!”

“No, I’m pretty sure I heard he could.”

“Why is he working with Zodiac? Shouldn’t he be helping us?”

Can’t allow them to follow that line of questioning. Vincent thought.

“Clearly William Oh been turned by the worms as well!” Vincent said, loud enough for them all to hear. “My Abilities tell me there’s a second thing living in that skull. If that’s the case, we should not hold out hope for the rest of the Tower.”

The faces of the Climbers fell, seemingly struck by the sudden realization.

“That’s right, we may very well represent the last of humanity!”  Vincent shouted “But make no mistake! There is hope! The infected will attack you, they’ll try to lie and use any trick they can to weaken your resolve, but always keep in mind! I can save them! I can remove the worm! Your friends, your family! As long as I live, we can take them all back, one at a time! And remember, we’re not fighting the real William Oh! We’re fighting the worm in his skull!”

They regained just a bit of their color as Vincent pumped his fist in front of them.

“I really don’t know why we’re going through so much effort to save your asses.” William Oh said as he shot out of the floor beside one of the Climbers.

Compared to this random assortment of dockworkers and island-hoppers, William Oh was lightning fast, flitting around and delivering brutal strikes to the nearby Climbers with the back of his axe.

Thankfully he isn’t just killing the hostages, Vincent thought, warding off a chakram aimed at his back and a tomahawk at his front. Things would be much harder if these hosts thought rationally.

He’d expected Will to show up now, at the last few seconds before they made landfall at the island. Either he had to defend the island or surrender the only defensive position against Steve’s Floor-scouring flames.

It wasn’t much of a choice.

Vincent lifted his foot to rush in when William Oh stomped the deck, a pulse of Charge emanating from his amulet.

Suddenly the ship bucked downward an instant before becoming trapped in ice as far as the eye could see, coming to a complete halt from eighty miles an hour.

The entire crew save for those inside the barge began flying through the air, tumbling wildly as they shot towards the island.

Vincent instinctively secured his footing by condensing and reinforcing the air under his feet, recoiling an instant before William Oh arrived.

He’d expected the young legend to go for a strike, but instead the young man dumped raw miasma out of his hand to pierce his flame aura and simply shoved Vincent, hard.

They’re separating me!

In an instant, he saw their aim.

The ones flying forward would land on the island in the next few seconds, and if they could hold Vincent back, they could force him to Cannibalize Steve at their leisure.

He could feel Zodiac’s telekinetic strings at the edge of his perception, rushing forward to secure the Climbers on-board.

Cannibalize.

Whatever plan they had, the only way to throw a wrench in it was to detonate Steve before they were ready for it.

These hosts would risk their own lives to save those with far less value than their own.

Seize them, Vincent instructed his fae. If he could get them tangled up fruitlessly fighting the immortal fae, they would die in flames.

In the distance, Steve seemed to glow for an instant before turning into pure white, an expanding nova of fire that expanded deceptively slowly in every direction.

It might seem slow, but it was moving at the speed of sound, and it would only take a handful of seconds to reach them.

“Pull out!” William Oh shouted to Zodiac as the ancient Lord swept in.

“Gotta get my boys!” Zodiac shouted back flying straight down through the deck into the guts of the barge.

Vincent moved to seize Zodiac with the floorboards, but William Oh disrupted his control with a tap of his toe, the two control Abilities competing for the deck long enough for Zodiac to slip past.

His fae tried to grab Zodiac, but William Oh rushed forward to tackle them as they shot towards Zodiac.

Two of them had gone for Zodiac, another two for William Oh, while the last three hunted for the illusionist among the flailing Climbers floating towards the island. In an instant, Will was tangled up with four of them.

They’re not quite close enough to be safe from the explosion. The illusionist will have to rescue them-

One of the enormous buildings exploded into some kind of net that entangled the floating Climbers and reeled them in at break-neck speed, dragging them out of the air and tucking them safely away on the island.

There’s another Lord here.

Vincent was starting to feel the pinch of being outnumbered.

“AH!”

Vincent’s attention turned to where Madelhari screamed in pain, recoiling away from the Lord, his torso seemingly eroding away, followed by the others that had been trying to seize William Oh and prevent him from leaving this Floor.

…What was that?

The young Lord’s back was turned to him and whatever he’d used against his undead had been shielded from view.

Vincent’s fists clenched in frustration, and he dismissed the wounded fae before they could take further damage.

The nova of fire was still expanding towards them.

I’ve already got the Door from clearing the Key Site. Floor 10 or floor 12? Once he made that decision, he was locked in for at least ten days.

Only seconds to make a decision.

Up or down?

In the instant before the wave of fire arrived, he spotted Doors opening in front of William Oh and the other Climbers.

…or I could just ride it out. Who said this explosion could even damage me?

A surge of feral joy seized Vincent as he gave William Oh the finger.

A glimmer of understanding flickered through Will’s eye as he turned and leveled a chunky, malformed crystal wand at Vincent, vanishing though the Door an instant before the shockwave passed through.

Vincent could feel a dense spell shoot out across the distance between them, and Neka dove in front of it, fulfilling her role as his bodyguard.

The dense shockwave of faefire flowed harmlessly around him, but it caught on the hole in Neka’s chest and the undead fae was scattered to the wind in the blink of an eye.

He glanced down at his signet, where one of the seven skulls on his ring had blackened.

“…What?”

A wellspring of rage that Vincent didn’t even know he had surged up and out of him in a primal scream.

STEAL FROM ME!? I’LL –

Vincent calmed down instantly as he dissolved his amygdala again.

Sheesh. I’ll have to be more careful going forward. He’s got some kind of wand designed to destabilize the undead. Luckily he can’t come back for some time, so-

A flicker of miasma caught his attention and Vincent dodged out of the way, shoving off of a platform of hardened air as another dense packet of miasma shot past him.

“How…the Abyss?” Vincent said as he turned to face William Oh. The young man didn’t seem to be showing any sign of Acclimation sickness.

…That’s not tasteless armor he’s wearing, it’s a creature of some kind, regulating the miasma affecting his body. That’s the only thing I can think of.

It looked a little worse for wear, too. Slightly singed from the close contact with his fae.

If I could just...

Vincent lunged forward, seizing the air around William Oh, only for it to be countered. The Lord seemed to guess his intention as he shot backwards at an unnatural speed, creating enormous distance between them with his superior speed.

Then Vincent started getting shredded with Blessed Steel chakram released from that damned miasma construct flitting around. Every second, multiple round blades tore through the air and impacted against his body at outrageous speeds, digging several inches into his flesh before vanishing in an instant, only to repeat.

Wounds began to pile up, causing him to ooze a curtain of black blood across his entire body, and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t get any closer to the one responsible for it, who could easily outrun him while simultaneously shredding him.

“IT’S POINTLESS!” Vincent shouted, his anger resurfacing.

He summoned Aria to his hand and snapped her neck in an instant, before William Oh could respond.

All his wounds closed as the healing of Cannibalize flowed back to him, while the point-blank explosion unraveled the chakram manifestations before they hit him, granting him a moment of reprieve. Enough time to finish healing.

“You simply can’t kill me.” Vincent said, growing wings and approaching William Oh “Not by any means you possess.”

He must’ve used his own Key Site to get here in the first place, then the Key Site here to leave, so he probably used Influence to make the trip a third time in short succession.

So all the Key Sites are exhausted and he has a cooldown on his ability to buy Doors for himself.

There are no Key Sites with monsters left on them on this Floor, so even if he didn’t use his Influence, he can only use it once to escape this barren floor.

If I go down to Floor Ten, I can then bounce straight down to floor seven with Influence and he can’t follow me.

It’s risky since I’m not immune to Acclimation sickness, but this annoyance will be left weeks behind.

“Really? I can’t kill you at all? Not even with this method?” William Oh pouted, brandishing the ugly wand, which looked like it had been cut from rough chunks of crystal and reassembled into a cobbled-together stalactite, the faces of the crystal meeting at just the right angles to allow the glowing miasmatic structures to chain together into a single convoluted strand.

That wand…it caused my fae to self-destruct somehow. No…not my fae, my undead. He shot it at me, too. What does it do?

Vincent’s eye twitched as he thought back to Neka’s death, torn apart by the energy in the shockwave while he’d been fine.

It removes our protection against our own faefire.

How clever.

‘The boy is one of the most adaptable Lords in The Tower. He will surely refine whatever method he used to wound Tassos in preparation for our eventual conflict.’

Aria wasn’t trying to mislead me on that. I thought the fae had some kind of grudge against William Oh, but maybe they were actually wary of him. Or maybe…both?

“Not even with that.” Vincent said, activating his Door and darting through it.

Once Vincent was gone, Travis Oilton converted the illusion of Will into a recliner and sagged back into it, drifting through space.

“Ugh…that was terrifying. All yours, guys.”