Chapter 253: Hookers, Blow & A Pinkie Toe (Patreon)

Killing people was never pleasant. They squirmed and struggled and did everything they possibly could to survive. Void was no different.

After Will took the ring, Vincent shifted to full evasion.

Or…he tried. A burst of flame erupted from Void, and he shot away from Will and the Floor below, not even trying to reach the ground anymore, just trying to get away.

Will pinned him down with the Phantom Snakes and yanked the other ring off.

The flames he was using to navigate sputtered out as he lost his set bonus.

The rest of Void’s kit vanished in a matter of seconds.

59 Charges remaining

‘Not yet, take money! Guide to treasure-’ Void desperately signed before Will cut off his limbs.

In a matter of seconds, Void was reduced to a floating cluster of flesh-chunks.

Bastard. Why couldn’t you have just been hardcore to the very end? Obviously it was a ploy to make Will reconsider killing him, but that wasn’t gonna happen. All it did was make him feel like a jerk.

Would he have spared me if I surrendered? Probably. in this specific situation, Will had been flanked by Lords, and Void had been focused on escape, probably looking for a peace offering as a newly established Lord. Sparing Will would’ve been a good step towards being accepted by the other Lords.

In any other circumstance, Will seriously doubted Void would’ve given killing him a second thought.

Will floated there and thought for a moment, studying the lazily spinning pieces of his opponent.

I’d like to get some fire out here and reduce this corpse to ash, but I don’t think fire would burn up here. Mason isn’t available either.

He might not be dead, but I don’t really have anything on me that can annihilate the corpse. I guess this is where a simple self-made fire Ability might come in handy.

A tap on Will’s shoulder startled him into nearly bisecting Ghoul. The mummified Lord had matched Will’s spin and appeared to be stationary while the world below twirled.

‘Hunt over?’ Ghoul signed.

Will nodded.

Ghoul held out a hand and a massive circle of miasma unleashed a beam of energy that reduced the floating chunks of Void to dust.

‘Thanks.’ Will signed.

Ghoul gave him a salute before Will turned and headed back down to the Floor below.

Once he was completely sure Will gone, Ghoul turned his attention back to the cloud of dust.

A huge tangle of miasmatic structures flooded out of him, wrapping around the area with tendrils anchoring into spacetime itself. Charge began to pulse through it, slowly at first, as if tentatively checking the strength of the spell, before the pulsing began to increase in speed, forcibly wrenching the shred of spacetime in a direction that had no name.

The dust of Void returned to pieces, then the pieces stuck themselves back together.

Ghoul released his hold on reality and Void flinched, seemingly confused about Will’s sudden disappearance before his gaze landed on Ghoul.

‘Any conflict you had with him has been resolved.’ Ghoul signed. ‘You are uniquely suited for my Stronghold. Become mine Vassal or refuse, and I will return you to dust.’

Void rolled his eyes. ‘I was this close to being free.’ He signed.

‘Alas, you’re too useful to be free. I’ll pay you generously. Weekends off and two weeks of paid vacation a year.’

‘That’s not even enough time to get to the 5th Floor and back.’

‘…I’ll let you save up your weekends. And if you clear a livable space on the 8th Floor, we’ll get some hookers and blow.’

‘…my Lord.’ Void signed, bowing. It was a little awkward in space, but he made it work.

Down on the surface, Will landed beside Loth.

“He dead?” She asked.

Void’s tag blinked on his map for a brief instant before it disappeared again.

“I thought so?” Will said, checking with Phantom Eye.

Void was alive again, and he and Ghoul were talking about…hookers and blow?

“…No. Ghoul is recruiting Void in ‘secret’.”

“Ah. That makes sense.”

“Well, it’s not my problem.” Will said with a shrug. “I said was gonna kill him and I did. Not much I can do about what happens after. He doesn’t have the set anymore, either.”

“That’s very forward thinking of you,” Loth said.

Will was a little upset that Ghoul tried to keep it a secret from him, but perhaps it was simply to maintain plausible deniability between Lords. Will didn’t think Ghoul was doing it to hurt Will, so he let it lie for now.

Hookers and blow? Will scoffed and shook his head, turning his attention to other matters.

“Now that the wedding’s over, let’s talk about that dragon you need a Sacrifice from.” Will said.

“Spoken as if you won’t be flooded with cleanup work. Plus your Abby is dead.” Loth said, pointing a single black talon at his waist.

“Ah, shit,” Will groaned. He was going to have to spend two weeks acclimating after skipping two Floors, and Amanda Wyrd hated him.

He couldn’t exactly lurk around the Floor with his presence unexplained. He was a Lord, and doing something like that was overtly hostile. He would have to go announce that he was here and acclimating at the very least.

He hadn’t noticed during the fight with Void, but Abby had long since died and stopped moderating his Miasma. Will peeled the enormous dead insect off his body with a shudder.

Mark Wyrd was on the upper Floors, still fighting his way back down, the other side of the net they had created to catch the norworm, but Amanda Wyrd had gone straight back to her home on the 7th Floor.

It was just as awkward as Will had expected, but Brianna was a lifesaver. After he announced to the Stronghold that he was acclimating on the Floor, Brianna simply kept Will and Amanda from running into each other for the two weeks he was forced to stay on the Floor.

And nobody got real hurt.

Once Will was back in his own Stronghold, Loth’s prediction was proven accurate as he was forced to deal with the fallout of the Norworm. Everyone…EVERYONE had to get tested multiple times, and the results recorded and logged with the Exchange Hall.

A portion of Zodiac’s stronghold chose to stay on the 10th Floor for the ‘easy’ work of killing desert monsters and mining, which caused a population boom in the Burned Stronghold.

And once again, everyone almost starved.

There was a bit of friction over Will poaching Zodiac’s Climbers, but Zodiac was eventually able to get his Stronghold limping forward again, at great cost to his personal wealth and reputation.

Once things settled down, Will, Loth, Brianna, and Travis formed a Party and set out for the 14th Floor.

The 11th Floor was old hat at this point, but the 12th Floor was…less fun.

The entire Floor was composed of narrow stone hallways and small rooms. The walls ranged between carved stone blocks and rough cave walls, but the entire thing was underground. No light, no sound, no movement, and claustrophobic as the Abyss.

Will’s 16 mile map didn’t show an ‘above ground’ in any direction, so Will didn’t even try looking for one. The only thing that existed was more stone in every direction.

At least it wasn’t cold like the 11th Floor.

To further confuse things, up and down shifted unexpectedly depending on the Floor’s ‘mood’. Will’s Map was invaluable for navigating the labyrinthine tunnels, but he hated every second of it.

The monsters were mainly ambush predators. Creatures that disguised themselves as stone walls or swam through the earth attacked from unexpected angles while the Climbers were forced to wait for them by the cramped nature of the halls.

This is probably where the landshark Sacrifice Loth bought came from.

Sure enough, Travis nearly got eaten by a landshark popping out of the floor. After that, the illusionist walked everywhere on an illusory red carpet that unrolled under him wherever he went.

Kind of stupid-looking, but it worked.

They used Will’s map to find the Key Site, Loth excavating between tunnels where they ran into dead ends. It was slow going and tedious, but Will could only imagine how bad it’d been for the first Climbers to ever come across it. Without an earth mage or someone capable of mapping like Will, a Climber could easily get worn down by the ever-present threat of serrated jaws lunging out of the walls at any time.

They made their way through without incident. Brianna picked up a couple levels, but Will, Travis and Loth were all ahead of the level curve for the Floor.

They made it to the Key Site, which was infested with strange stonelike mites that jumped with the force of an Advanced Classer’s punch.

Loth did most of the heavy lifting clearing them out, while the others cleaned up.

Once they had the Door, they rested up before they hit the 13th Floor.

The 13th Floor was…gloomy, in a piercing kind of way.

The blacks were blacker, the greens greener. The sun was a dim white, the sky black, clouds a strange grey.

Did the colors get messed up somehow? Will thought.

It was a swamp like the 4th floor, but rather than humid, it felt…angry. The 4th Floor thrummed with life, but the 13th Floor seemed to bear a grudge. A malevolent will.

The miasma floating around them didn’t have the uniformity that previous Floors had. The omnipresent fog of miasma clumped and flowed, forming strange biological shapes that drifted in the air around them, twitching as Loth, Travis and the others walked through them, tearing them apart with their Classes.

Will watched as floating gossamer strands of naturally occurring miamatic structures caught on and accumulated around his friends like cobwebs, slowly adhering to the miasmatic structures flowing through their Classes, wherever they could attach.

They can’t feel it.

“Hold up.” Will said as the cobwebs around his Party grew thick enough that he had a hard time seeing their face.

Will tore the miasmatic strands away from them, and their slowly paling coloration improved drastically.

“Make a bird or something and fly it around yourself.” Will said to Travis. “The Floor’s got cobweb-like things floating around in the air and they’re getting stuck to you guys.”

“I think they’re proto-curses,” Loth said.

“Eh?”

“The cobwebs you’re seeing. I’ll bet the miasma in the air is forming the building blocks of debuffs that drift through the air. I’ll call them proto-curses. By themselves, they’re not much, but when they stick to a body, they combine into some nasty effects. The common belief is that simply spending time on the 3rd Floor causes horrible disease, and the recommendation is to pass through as quickly as possible, but it seems that’s not the case.”

Travis did as Will asked and made some illusory birds to fly around them as they walked. It was the same principle as swinging a broom in front of yourself to clear cobwebs while moving through a basement.

It worked well, although the birds only lasted a couple hours before the cobwebs overwhelmed the illusions.

That was fine, they weren’t planning on staying here too long anyway.

That night, they greeted the Rotwitch and then moved on in the morning. She seemed to be doing well.

The next day, they reached the home of the black dragon.

Proto-curses formed a whirlwind that nearly obscured Will’s sight to the creature’s den, a hundred yards outside their destination. The den itself was a mouth of earth that yawned above the vibrant green muck.

‘Stop.’ Will motioned. “Did your party get sick before you arrived at the dragon’s den?” Will asked, craning his neck to study the dome of roiling miasmatic structures staring back at him with something akin to awareness.

The whirlwind around the dragon’s den felt him…and it was hungry, like a starved prisoner reaching through the bars of its cage.

“Yes. We got a bad feeling and our strength rapidly fled as we approached the dragon’s den. Can you see something?” Loth asked.

“It’s got some kind of effect that controls the miasma around it.”

I wonder if my Class considers it an environmental effect.

Will reached out with his right hand.

Aspect of the Immortal Serpent seemed to have an effect. The curses tried to sink into him, but they balled up and rolled off as though he were made of oiled canvas.

“Let me go see if I can talk this out. Help me out if it gets dangerous.” Will said, motioning for them to wait before he took a deep breath and dove into the vortex of swirling miasma.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT, MORSEL!?” A voice shook the world, causing the water of the swamp to vibrate into excited droplets as a massive black head emerged from the den, followed by shoulders and a pair of massive wings that couldn’t have possibly fit inside the den.

Will took a deep breath.

“I’d like to request about this much flesh, as a Sacrifice.” Will said, holding up his hands before slowly reaching into his bags and pulling out the potions they’d brought for the exchange. “I’ve got numbing agent and a several potions that should ensure no harm done. And of course, payment to be negotiated.”

“WHAT ARROGANCE! WHAT INSOLENCE!” The dragon roared, nearly bowling Will over. “JUST LIKE THE DEFORMED MUTANT SPAWN, YOU BELIEVE YOURSELF ENTITLED TO MY FLESH, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!?”

“William Oh, ma’am.” Will said.

“HAH, THAT’S-“  The dragon paused and peered down at him. “That’s…oh.”

“…so like…just a pinkie should work, right?” The dragon asked, holding out a pinkie the size of Will’s arm.