Chapter 29: Boot Swap

William Oh is the most unparalleled survivalist in the tower. With his one hand, he squeezes water from stones, dirt into food, courage from the spineless, and love from the heartless.

He once crossed a pit full of Gorbash Fire-spewers by hopping on one’s back, hooking its mouth with his hair and surfing through the lava all the way to the other side. Some say you can still smell his singed arm-hairs on the third floor.

-          Jason Salazar

The snails were actually harder to kill than Bri had made it seem, due to their mace-like eyeballs laden with metal deposits from a lifetime spent sucking on metal-laden rocks.

These eyeballs were the size of a man’s fist, with natural protrusions made to crumple armor, whipping around fast enough to hear them.

“Hold it still!” Loth said, riding on the snail’s extended neck, wielding Cold Harvest.

“Whaddya think I’m- agh!- doing!” Carrie demanded, the whipping eyeball dragging her feet through the soft ashen floor.

“I could help?” Bri asked.

“You’re helping by watching for more of them,” Will said, “Plus, you’re a noncombat class, so-Oh, Crap – So you’re not really cut out for it.”

“Good job you guys.” Travis said, stifling a yawn as he idly jingled his whip in the snail’s face, keeping it fixated on the same target and not doing anything unexpected. “Keep it up.”

His was the most important job, but it was also the easiest.

Loth nicked the snail’s neck, creating a massive patch of hoarfrost. It seemed as though the amount of hoarfrost created was unrelated to the amount of damage dealt…which meant they could game it quite a bit.

Real bad day for the snail.

“Hold the bag, Bri.” Loth said, motioning to the side of the snail. Bri hustled to stand on that side with the water bag.

Scrape. Loth scraped the edge of the sickle across the hoarfrost, sending a rain of tiny crystals down into the maxed bag.

Nick.

Scrape.

Nick.

Loth made a series of minor cuts along the length of the snail’s neck, harvesting each patch of hoarfrost in between. This went on for several minutes before the bag was full, and they needed to dispose of the monster.

With the snail’s neck stretched out, Loth raised Cold Harvest high and brought it down with all his might…

Getting the blade stuck a couple inches into the creature’s neck as ice kept filling the wound.

“Could I get some-“

“Here, lemme help,” Travis said, moving to help now that keeping the snail fixated was no longer necessary.

Will and Carrie grunted with effort as they got violently dragged around the ash while Travis and Loth sawed their way through the neck until the head finally fell off.

The mace-like eyeball he was holding onto went glassy and stopped trying to whip him, and Will finally was able to take a step back, rubbing the cramps out of his arms.

Panting, Loth glanced down at the severed head, then up at Will, meeting his gaze for a heartbeat before he glanced at Brianna.

“Well, looks like water has been acquired.” Will said, approaching the dissolving snail and waiting for it to dispense their prize.

Clunk. Clatter.

They tipped over the shell to reveal a mace shaped like an eyeball on the end of a stalk and a few gold pieces.

“I should’ve seen that coming,” Will mused, picking up the weapon.

Mace of Second Sight

+2 Accuity

+1 Strength

Active Ability: 1 Charge.

Second sight. The wielder may see further into the infrared spectrum allowing them to see things they may otherwise have not perceived. Lasts 1 hour.

“What’s the infrared spectrum?” Will mused.

“Of electromagnetic radiation: having a wavelength just greater than that of the red end of the visible light spectrum but less than that of microwaves. Infrared radiation has a wavelength from about 800 nm to 1 mm, and is emitted particularly by heated objects.”

“And…what does that mean?”

“I know the definition of almost all of the words contained in that sentence, but I still…” Loth shrugged, shaking his head. “It sounds like you can see…hot things?”

It sounded like an interesting ability, but no one had the Charge required to keep it up and running indefinitely, so the Active was only applicable in specific circumstances.

They wound up giving it to Bri, who was beginning to look snail-like herself, gradually acquiring a collection of snail-related plate armor over her floral dress. All of it shared the same organic smoothness and hue of the snail’s shell.

She had become ‘The Snail Knight’.

“We need to get you some pants.” Carrie mused, looking at Bri’s sabatons peeking out form under the hem of her faded floral dress.

“I was thinking the same thing.” Bri admitted, shouldering the man-sized sack of ice.

“I have a tap in my kit for getting sap from trees, but I might be able to sew it into the bag and turn it into a faucet,” Loth mused, running his clawed hands over the bag of ice.

“Best not risk putting holes in our biggest watertight container.” Carrie said. “Tight seals in fabric are not easily created in the field.”

“Mm,” Loth nodded, turning his attention back to packing up, getting the pitons he’d used to keep the snail in place dug out of the ground.

“Is this what leading a larger Party feels like?” Will asked, standing on top of a nearby rock with his hand on his hip, overseeing the group preparing to head out.

Travis looked like he wanted to say something, but Will was already packed up and ready to go, so there wasn’t really much he could complain about.

Which was exactly the way Will preferred it.

They trekked to the north, carefully avoiding combat as much as possible. It made no sense to seek out combat when they didn’t have a safe place to retreat to. Even if gaining levels would make the trip safer on average, every encounter always ran the possibility of pulling way more aggro than your team could handle…

And then you died.

The only time they stopped to fight something was when they started running low on water and could find a relatively slow or weak monster, like the snails.

They skirted around an ominously bubbling pond of inky black tar.

After Loth nearly fell into a sloping ash-pit with a menacing grasper-faced creature in the center, Will always took the lead.

He guided them around a hill that felt suspiciously hollow under his enhanced footing, avoided the dried-up spoor of flammenwulf, took them across a lava flow with an application of Home Field Advantage and a rope to tug them along, and created a manageable path up a cliff, standing at the top and helping them up one by one.

“Your class…” Travis panted between swigs of water as they rested at the top. “Is really good…at travelling. Have you considered being a messenger?”

“I suppose it is, but no, never considered it.” Will said, snacking on a carbon-covered shrub that pretended to be burnt to avoid being snacked on. He’d peeled the charred bark and underneath It tasted pleasantly astringent. Mildly poisonous. Best of all there was a little water inside it.

He hadn’t drunk any water since Carrie and Travis had seen him arrive. Will noticed them giving him odd looks now and again. It was hot, sure, but Aspect of the Goat cut it down from dangerously hot to uncomfortably hot, and the Cloak of Misty escape lowered that even further. Not to mention his high Resistance for his level.

Once he got used to the sensation of the blistering heat on his face…it wasn’t that bad.

He also got plenty of water from the local plant life. Especially their roots, where they seemed to store what little moisture they could eke out of the environment.

This possibly led their temporary members to believe he didn’t need to drink at all.

Perceived superhuman endurance suited Will just fine when dealing with those two city-slickers.

They travelled slow, backtracking several times when a particular area was impassable to everyone save Will, or filled with monsters that they stood no chance against.

After two days, they caught sight of the Key Site, blasting the neon blue light into the sky, visible for miles in every direction.

According to Travis’s fancy, expensive map, there was a Stronghold a couple days further north past the Key Site.

“Ooh, that’s pretty!” Bri said, drawing Will’s attention towards her.

She was standing in the middle of the group, pointing at a curtain of tiny motes of swirling light, ranging in color from amber to crimson, gently drifting towards them…against the wind.

“…We should run. Run…RUN, NOW!” Will shouted as they sat there staring at the motes of pretty light like a bunch of lobotomized.

The cloud moved deceptively fast. A single mote leading the pack alighted on Bri’s shoulder and burned a thumb-sized hole through the heavy plate armor she was wearing, eliciting a cry of pain and the faint hiss of boiling blood.

That got the Party moving. As one, the five of them began to sprint northwest, aiming away from…whatever the Abyss that was.

Whatever organism it was, it had them in its sights, and it followed them at a dead sprint, flowing gracefully across the land, almost as if the motes were suspended in some kind of liquid.

About a minute into the run, Carrie ran out of breath first.

“I can’t, I can’t!”  she gasped, her breathing ragged.

They hadn’t gotten much distance between themselves and the mote swarm. If she slowed down now, she was dead.

Where’s a monster to brush this thing off on when you need it? closest guaranteed spot with monsters is the Key Site…Idea.

“You’re gonna have to!” Will said, turning to Loth. “Loth, give me a rope with four handholds!”

Loth nodded and pulled out one of his spidersilk ropes. His rope amulet glimmered as he activated it, causing the rope to instantly form the knots necessary to create the four loops.

“Stop, stop!” Will said, waving for them to halt. They’d gained a few scant seconds on the creature, but they needed more speed. A lot more.

“Arms through,” Will said, grabbing Carrie’s arm and shoving it through the loop, crooking her elbow over it and clasping the arm with her other, making it nearly impossible to let go. Travis and Brianna nodded, following suit.

Loth looked down at Will’s boots, his eyes widening before he wrapped the rope around his arm several times and held on for dear life.

When everyone was on board the Will Bus, he got them underway.

Will wrapped the rope around his waist, where it tied itself into a comfortable harness thanks to Loth.

Cloak of Misty Escape

9/18 Charges remaining.

A thick cloud erupted from Will and obscured all five of them.  

Boots of outflanking active.

Amulet of the Homefield Advantage.

8/18 Charges remaining.

The ground under Will turned into a perfect surface of frictionless ice, and Will started hauling ass.

The ice rose up to fill the tread of his shoes, curling around his heel and providing perfect grip despite being nearly frictionless.

Despite moving at triple speed, it was almost impossible for Will to immediately get up to max speed while dragging three and a half people across a flat plane of ice. It was a problem of Inertia more than anything else.

Will heard screaming from behind him, and was pleased to note that none of the screams were falling behind, indicating that the plan was working.

He reached max speed just as the Boots of Outflanking cut out, diving to the ground.

“Whaddya think?” Will asked as they slid across the ice at frankly dangerous speeds, gaining tons of distance on the voracious motes of light.

“I think I want your boots and cloak. How much?” Travis said, sliding close behind him.

“Five hundred Ivory,” Will said, naming a price no one in their right mind would-

“Deal.”

“Seriously?” Will asked.

“Here,” Travis began counting out ivory ten-pieces as the hot wind whipped past them, while the ice under their butts threatened to freeze their nuts off.

“Alright, fair enough,” Will said, accepting the cash and taking off his boots and cloak, handing them over and accepting Travis’s boots in return.

Boots of the Generous Leader

+3 Strength

+1 Kinesthetics

Party members and Minions gain 5% of the user’s max natural movement speed.

“It looks like it didn’t go very deep,” Loth was saying, inspecting Bri’s shoulder. “That cuirass absorbed most of the heat. You’ll have a nice scar, but I don’t think you’ll have any permanent damage.”

“Whew,” Bri sighed, relaxing against the ice she was currently hurtling across at break-neck speed.

“You want these boots?” Will asked, offering them to the Kobold.

“Lemme see.” Loth said, taking the boots.

“Hmm…yes, I want these boots.” Loth said.

“Will you be okay with the loss of Fire resistance?” Will asked.

“I believe I’ve grown accustomed to it.” Loth said, taking his boots off and passing them to Will.

“Why do you have leadership boots anyway?” Will asked Travis. “Your Class has no use for those.”

“You ever have your parents refuse to give up on their plan for you?” Travis asked. “Who try to fit you in their little mold regardless of how they have to force it?”

“Yes and no,” Will said with a shrug.

“What do those boots do?” Carrie asked, pointing at the Ashwalkers.

“Better grip on ash and fire-related surfaces, and fire resistance.” Will said, handing them to her.

“I’ll trade you for mine,” She said. “Part of the reason I couldn’t keep running was because that ash is so tiring to run on.”

“What do yours do?” Will asked.

“They’re…weighted combat platforms,” She said, pulling them off to reveal that the sole was several inches thicker than Will had thought. This also meant Carrie was several inches shorter than he’d been lead to believe.

“Well, there’s your problem right there,” Will said, trading the shoes. “I’ll loan you the Ashwalkers until we arrive in town or one of us dies.”

“Thank you,” She said with a grateful nod as they switched boots. “This is gonna be a life-saver.”

Will inspected the boots he’d wound up with.

Weighted combat platforms.

+3 Strength

+2 Resistance

Has a solid metal sole that Adds weight to the user’s feet, enhancing kick attacks while protecting the feet.

Increase the damage of kicks and charge attacks by 25%.

When Will put them on his feet, they altered their size to match his feet, the polished black exterior turning dark brown and slightly…cloven.

“Seriously? Oops, momentum is dying,” Will said, strapping the platforms on. “Get ready to run again!”
They tensed, and a moment later, Will canceled the Homefield Advantage.

The five of them leapt to their feet and kept running, each of them showing different reactions to their new footwear.

Carrie looked like a weight had been lifted, which it obviously had, because now each of Will’s feet felt like it weighed an extra ten pounds.

Loth was moving just a bit slower, but he seemed determined to power through in exchange for the bonus to his insects.

And Travis was giggling with barely restrained glee, anxious to put his new boots to work.

Will was anxious to guy some sweet gear with the frankly ridiculous amount of pocket money Travis’s parents had obviously given him.

They were halfway past the Key Site when the curtain of hungry motes decided they weren’t worth pursuing, instead turning its attention on the monsters surrounding the Key site.

In the distance, they watched as the monsters squirmed violently and died, bursting into flames as the veil of fire settled over them, which spoke volumes about the extreme heat the motes were generating.

Creatures on the 3rd floor were generally fire-tolerant, at the very least.

“I hope that doesn’t get the next Party to visit the Key Site killed,” Will said.

It probably would, but maybe not.

“We can report it to the Exchange Hall if we get to the Stronghold fast enough,” Travis said, pulling out his map and checking it.

He oriented north northeast.

“We’re about here…so maybe one more day and we’ll hit the Stronghold.” Travis said, pointing outward.

“How much for that map?” Will asked.

“One million gold.” Travis said, tucking it back in his vest pocket.

“Boo.”

They set off again, returning to their relaxed pace, slow and cautious of the brutal environment.

“I feel like an idiot in these things,” Will muttered, clomping along, three inches taller than he was used to. Although it does feel nice to look down on Travis.