Chapter 86: 6th Floor

William Oh conquered the entire Sixth Floor and never once got wet. And yes, I’m including the underwater nation of Gabben Sa’luud.

-          Jason Salazar

When all was said and done, Will had picked out three more Relics to add to his Build.

Shortsword of Perserverence

+8 Acuity

+8 Resistance

It was a pitted and worn shortsword that didn’t have any special Affixes, but it had strong stat boosts for both of his most important stats, so Will kept it.

Turtle Shield of Dissipating Force

+10 Resistance

+5 strength

Attacks blocked will be partially dissipated into the environment. Scales with Resistance.

This one was interesting because when he’d had Reggie punch it, he could feel a large portion of the strike going down into the floor through Aspect of the Immortal Serpent. Somehow it was synergizing with that Ability to deflect more damage than it should’ve, so Will kept it, despite already having an offhand weapon.

He could rotate the Wand of the Trespasser out when he decided to engage in direct combat.

And lastly, the Assassin’s Amulet. The single best boost to his attack power that he’d found. Well, Reggie found it popping open one of the pearls, but still.

Dimensional Assassin’s Amulet*

+7 Kinesthetics

+8 Strength

+5 Acuity

25% Audiovisual Dampening while trying to hide.

Close the Gap: 5 charges, teleport up to 6 feet in any direction, damage output is increased by 200% for .5 seconds.

Will really wanted to sacrifice it to the Phantom Hand, but there were a few things stopping him from doing it right away:

#1: The empty finger was still regrowing.

#2 He was more in the market for a powerful defensive item like the Turtle Shield.

#3 It filled a very similar role that the Sparkfists did, increasing damage and speed.

Finally, Will was considering what sort of item he wanted to use as a seed for upgrading if he finally figured out how to use Sourdough to bake extra affixes into Relics.

The Assassin’s Amulet was very good, and if he made it any better, it would become priceless. So, Will decided to keep it as just an external amulet for now, storing it in his Dimensional Storage so he could don it or Sacrifice it at a moment’s notice.

Will flipped through the list of Kit everyone had added to their Build from the heist.

He had to actually write down what everyone had changed in shorthand in order to keep track of it all. Their Builds were starting to mature and branch out in interesting directions, and things were starting to get complex, managing a group of eight people and three emotional outbursts.

June:

Bow of lingering wounds, Treant sacrifice (magic wood someday?) Dimensional Quiver (chains).

Reggie – Mirthful Mouthgard, Immovable Warhammer, Psychic damage converter (ring), Hobocrab sacrifice (reinforce makeshift shields/armor/objects)

Mason -  Dimensional Oyster Sacrifice, Nephir’s Relics (in bag) Staff of the Warmage, Sonic Belt. (add sonic damage to Nuker Abilities)

Alicia –  Witch’s hat, Amulet of the Evil Eye, Ring of Curse concentration, shadow Parasite Sacrifice (lethal Curses) (not used yet)

Travis -  Wings of the iber fly sacrifice(aggro boost), mouth harp amulet (aggro redirection), skunk pants, Mask of Manifestation (from Boar)

Loth -  Cuirass of the cruel tyrant (Outsource Damage), Manacles of Leadership(buff/debuff tradeoff).

Jean -  Beastmaster amulet, Headband of Mental fortitude, Gloves of Ferocity(unarmed claw attack), Cape of the Summoner, Ring of water breathing (fairly obvious).

Will -  Swift Earth Pants, Shortsword of Perserverence, Weird coin, Dimensional Assassin’s Amulet, Turtle Shield of Dissipating Force.

Will hadn’t personally witnessed all of the item’s effects, writing down a brief description from each of his Party members for the things he hadn’t seen in action or didn’t have obvious effects.

The ‘weird coin’ was a gold coin that had been affected by the dimensional oyster’s nacre and could only land on its edge no matter how it was flipped. Will just liked it, imagining himself using it to win a bet or a do a party trick.

After they finished sorting through the last of the treasure, Will left it in the hands of Thea Oilton, with instructions to fence the hot items through The Ear Collector while the rest went towards hiring support crew interested in following William Oh up The Tower.

For Will’s Party, it was finally time to move on.

In the distance, a kaiju curled around the beam of Miasma being pumped up to the sixth Floor, absorbing as much of it as possible.

The creature was vaguely humanoid, its flesh seemingly flaking away as if it couldn’t quite contain the powerful blue energy burning through it.

“Alright, everybody gets a shot off, then Alicia can test out her new Build.” Jean said. Since they were all on the same party, they probably would all be offered Doors to the next floor, but nothing was ever certain. It was best to make sure everyone got a hit in.

They snuck up close enough for Reggie to throw a rock at the thing’s ankle.

Once it bounced off, everyone else assaulted it with their best ranged attack.

The Bakers threw their own rocks, hissing through the air with outrageous energy while June shot a magic arrow and Mason hit the creature with a conflagrate.

Loth tossed off a bullet wasp, and Will released a sling bullet from his hand, burying it deep in the monster’s ankle.

The kaiju boss reared up, blearily blinking its eyes, scanning the horizon before looking down at the antlike beings nipping away at its ankles.

It gave a furious bellow and grabbed a nearby hilltop, a house-sized boulder coming away under its grip.

“Anytime, Alicia,” June said, watching the boulder raise above their heads.

The wide brimmed hat Alicia wore shaded her face, making her Blue-flame eyes glow all the more brilliantly in contrast. For an instant, that glow was magnified a hundredfold as a flash of light from her eyes lit her face and the underside of her hat brighter than the sun.

The giant gave them a confused look, the boulder slipping out of its hands and falling twenty feet away from where they stood.

The giant’s nose and eyes began to weep blood shortly before it slumped over and died, with that confused expression lingering on its face.

You are now a level 25 Resourceful Climber!

Thank you for clearing the Key Site. You may advance to the 6th Floor at your discretion.

+ 200XP

…

“…What just happened?” Reggie asked.

“I gave it a brain aneurysm.” Alicia whispered. “Don’t worry, he didn’t even feel it. There aren’t any pain receptors there.”

“So you just…make things die?” Mason asked.

“Well, it’s a sight-based curse of the Evil Eye,” Alicia whispered, tapping her eyeball amulet, “Plus two curse-boosting items,” She tapped her hat and ring.

“And because you can see their weak spots…” Will filled in the blanks by himself.

“Yes, typically you can only curse a whole person, but my eyes allow me to scale it down to just their cerebral arteries, which makes the effect much more concentrated. Add in the Witch’s Hat and the Ring of Curse Concentration…they go to sleep and never wake up.” She whispered.

“That…sounds cool…” Travis said, visibly pale.

Typically curses are resisted by Focus, Will mused to himself.

Interesting. A body-targeting attack resisted by a mental attribute. Which could be used to absolutely destroy fighter archetypes, but mages would be more resistant.

Neat. Scary…but neat.

“Be very selective about what you use that on,” Will said.

“If you used it on Mark Wyrd, you’d likely be the one to fall asleep and never wake up.” Loth said, picking up his train of thought.

“And magic Archetypes might be able to resist or counter.” Will added, nodding.

“It’s okay, there are plenty of nonlethal places to cause organ failure, like eyes, kneecaps, colons, genitals.” As she said that, Alicia glanced at Reggie and gave him a shy smile, her face eerily lit by her glowing eyes.

Will could tell that Reggie wanted to flinch, but a career of taking damage for other people made him more difficult to rattle.

Good for him.

Loth gestured at June.

“Alright, it’s a badass Ability, and we’ll likely see some good use out of it. In the meantime, let’s get ready for the next Floor. Everybody get your floaties on.” June said, leading the way by taking her floatation belt out of her backpack and beginning to inflate it.

Sure they were all superhumanly strong, but they were also wearing full kit, and strength only helped swimming to a certain extent. Reggie in his full plate, didn’t stand a chance, no matter how strong he was.

So they wore floaties.

Everyone except for Will.

“You’ve got the raft?” June asked, turning to Will.

Despite knowing it was in his backpack, Will knelt down and confirmed that it was there, making absolutely sure it hadn’t snuck out in the last few minutes before answering her question.

Naturally they couldn’t carry a whole boat through the Door, but people had been shipping wood through the doors, along with Druid Archetypes for generations.

There were boats on the 6th Floor already. Even a floating city called The Flotilla, with druid-maintained forests on the top of the ships specifically to support ship-production.

They just needed a simple inflatable raft long enough to catch the attention of the locals, or make their own boat.

Once all of them were outfitted with floaties, with Reggie’s making him almost too wide to fit through the Door, the eleven of them braced themselves and walked through their Doors as one.

Will was proud to note that he only felt the slightest tremor of anxiety as he stepped through to the next Floor.

The ground underneath him gained the slightly gelatinous, wobbly feel that water got when it interacted with Aspect of the Immortal Serpent.

And it held him up. Will scanned the horizon, marveling at the endlessly shifting hills made entirely of water.

The sun was directly overhead, and Will was gently swaying up and down as the ocean rolled under his feet, making ripples around the large hemisphere of water locked in place under his feet by Aspect.

In every direction, more water.

Loth was riding her barrel, supported by thousands of flying insects. Despite knowing they could carry it, she had still wrapped an inflated floatie snug around the oversized barrel.

Just to be safe.

Everyone else… they got a bit wet.

Will pulled the raft out and began blowing it up, Reggie grabbing on for dear life as his buoyancy was barely enough to support him.

“In retrospect,” Will said between breaths. “We should’ve… Just taken his armor off…and made it float…separately.”

Even if they were attacked, he wouldn’t be of any use in that armor.

Will chalked it up to a lack of experience on their part.

In a matter of minutes, everyone was safely inside the raft, sopping wet and shivering.

“Everyone hold on.” Loth murmured, moments before the inflatable raft began to rise above the water.

Jean’s group squawked with various levels of alarm, but the rest of them who’d experienced Loth’s makeshift flying raft on the 4th floor simply held on silently as they rose into the air, carried by thousands of insects, each capable of carrying five pounds due to one of her rings.

“I’ve taken us above the water’s surface for safety,” Loth said. “…And to get a better view.”

They floated high above the water’s surface, allowing their sight to stretch for miles in every direction.

“What is that?” Bee asked, pointed down at the water.

“What?” Will looked down at the water, not seeing anything out of the ordinary.

Alicia looked over the side, her eyes widening. She grabbed Will’s hand and motioned with his finger an outline on the water that stretched a thousand feet from end to end.

Will was just looking too small.

There was a dark shadow under the water that lazily glided through the ocean, without a care in the world.

Of course if you were that big, you wouldn’t be worried about anything, Will thought.

The sheer mass put even the kaiju of the Fifth Floor to shame.

“Is everything big on this floor too?” Will mused to himself.

“No. According to Steve’s dossier, the monsters of the Sixth Floor run the gamut from palm-sized to city-sized. We just got lucky, spotting one of these.” Loth said, peering over the edge for herself.

“What’s a ‘gamut’? Will asked.

“The complete range or scope of something,” Loth said, returning to where she was scanning the horizon for signs of The Flotilla.

“Let’s hit that brown smudge over there,” Will said, pointing. It was miles distant, and looked like a patch of flotsam. Maybe it was the floating remains of a ship that they could use to patch together a vessel so they didn’t have to rely on Loth 100% of the time.

In any case, it was something.

Loth nodded, and a moment later, everyone swayed a bit as the raft began to speed up, reaching a brisk jog as it slid across the featureless expanse.

The ‘brown smudge’ expanded further and further as they approached, becoming more and more apparent that it wasn’t just the wreckage of a single ship.

When they got close enough for Jean to see it, Will could tell it was huge. It stretched across the horizon nearly two palms wide and still far out of reach

As they approached, the sun went down, burying their quarry in darkness.

Only Will with his outlandish Acuity could make out the tiny smoldering fires glittering in the distance, each one gradually winking out as it ran out of fuel.

Whatever had happened, it was recent.

Oh, that’s not good, Will thought to himself, Switching his Phantom Hand to the Wand of the Undead Retainer.

Will shook off the hair-raising pop as the current finger disconnected and focused on summoning his minions.

50->40 Charges remaining.

The two butlers appeared beside him.

“What do you need, sir?” Stevie asked for both of them.

“Ahead of us is a patch of fresh wreckage. Go down there and scout it out for us. if there are survivors, use your discretion. We’ll arrive in person in the morning.

“Yes, sir.” Billy-bob said, bowing.

“Hold a moment,” Will said, triggering the Ability a third time.

40->35 Charge remaining.

As expected, Phantom Hand’s multiplier had crossed from 298% to above 300% when he’d hit level 25, allowing him to summon three ghost butlers, each of whom were three times stronger than they should’ve been.

Three medium power undead rather than a single low-power one barely strong enough to arrange silverware. A Remarkable boost in potency of over nine times, if one was looking at flat numbers, but in the real world, they could do things that a single spirit couldn’t do no matter how much time it had.

“Your name is Noob.” Will said as the butler was solidifying after being squirted out of the raw butler slurry on the other side.

“Oh, gods,” Noob said, sinking to his knees as the other two butlers watched him with sympathy. He looked a little different than Billy-Bob and Stevie, who had been squirted out of the same slurry of butler souls.

Its contents must’ve changed a bit in the last month.

“If you’ve got an issue with your name, ask your seniors about it. They’ll fill you in on what I want. Now get to work.” Moments later the three of them turned into ectoplasmic mist and sank through the bottom of the raft and began streaming through the air towards their assignment.

“You’re…really mean to them.” Anna pointed out.

“When we first met, they made it fairly clear that they consider working for me beneath them.” Will said with a shrug. “I intend to disabuse them of that notion.”

“Excellent use of ‘disabuse’.” Loth said.

“Thank you.”