Chapter 113: Re-equipping

***Jason Salazar***

“HGRFBLE!” Jason let out a string of consonants as he tumbled backwards and hit his head on the far wall.

“What the-,” Jason’s complaint was cut off by a metallic screech as Will’s chest full of gear slid into the white room, the metal corners of the box leaving a faint metallic trail on the otherwise pristine white surface.

Jason didn’t have time to roll out of the way, opting to scrunch himself up as the chest slid up to him, coming to a halt only a few feet away from the wall, nearly jamming his knees into his chest.

“What the Abyss?” Jason breathed a sigh of relief at not being crushed by the chest as he squeezed himself out and rose to his feet. One second it had been a friendly goodbye, and the next he was being shoved at dangerous speed, with no explanation…Why did they…

A streak of red caught Jason’s attention. There, partly underneath the chest was a human hand wearing Will’s gauntlet.

No way…

Jason squatted down and pulled out the shortsword Loth had given him, poking the gauntlet. After it didn’t leap up and try to kill him, Jason sat down and considered what it meant and what to do with it.

The conclusion he came to was that it had become unsafe back in the underground smithy: Will had seen something coming and pushed Jason through the Door, followed by his chest full of miasmatic ash.

It must’ve been Graneshian Climbers, because the natural world simply didn’t have the means to cut Will’s hand off that abruptly.

We were attacked, and they pushed me and the chest in so they didn’t get it.

Jason opened the lid of the chest, inspecting the softly glowing ash inside.

He was vaguely aware that Will’s Ability took a few weeks, so his best bet was to simply wait until the glow dwindled down to nothing.

Jason’s attention turned to the room he’d been shoved into. The Class Creation Room. A white box with three altars, about twenty feet by twenty feet, with white light seemingly coming from everywhere at once.

Exactly the way it had been described to him since he was old enough to understand words.

It was something everyone went through, so there was no great mystery to it, but Jason still found himself fascinated by the room. The omni-present light, the perfect smoothness of the walls and floor. The altars that rose seamlessly out of the ground.

Jason picked up his three Sacrifices and placed each of them in front of one of the altars, nodding in satisfaction.

Now I just need to wait for these blisters to go away, he mused, picturing how he was going to divide up the room.

That corner over there is the toilet, and I can use the chest as a table and bed so I don’t touch the ground…

All I need to do now is just wait for my feet to heal.

Jason sat down on the chest, dangling his feet over the edge, idly kicking his feet…Gods this is boring.

Jason’s gaze kept being drawn to the severed hand in the center of the room, as if the thing had some kind of invisible current dragging his gaze back to it.

Finally, his curiosity wouldn’t let him ignore it any longer and he picked up the hand, tugging it out of the gauntlet.

The hand was skin wrapped around bone, with barely any flesh to speak of, cut off about a palm’s length past the wrist.

Of course, Jason make it flip the room off first, spending half an hour or so playing with the disembodied hand. Thumb’s up, hang loose, fist, hand-spider, scepter of Power, Sacrifice…

“Behold, the Sacrifice of William Oh!” Jason shouted, holding the hand above his head, imagining himself speaking to an audience of thousands of rapt listeners.

Wait a moment…

Jason frowned, bringing the hand back down to eye level.

They wanted me to sacrifice a bit of an old priest, so it’s definitely possible. And Will said he sacrificed his own hand…so why can’t I?

Jason tapped his chin with Will’s fingers as he thought.

I already have all three Sacrifices I’d need for a Hype Man class. It would be dumb to change it out for ‘hand of orphan boy’. The stats couldn’t be good.

On the other Hand, Will was kicking plenty of ass using his own hand as a sacrifice. It must be halfway decent.

And I mean, if I use the herald sacrifices with Will’s hand instead of the Enchantress, isn’t that just a slight variation of what the Church was planning? Except I don’t have a god all up in my business.

And by all the gods, I can’t imagine anything that would make those bastards angrier than me using Will’s hand instead of their carefully prepared ‘Puppet of Granesh’.

Prophet of William Oh. I kinda like the sound of that…

The hand’s gonna rot if I wait 2 weeks. I need to decide now.

Before Jason could overthink it, he tossed the hand onto the first altar.

As soon as the hand touched the Altar, a beam of light descended on it, gradually growing in brightness until a flash nearly blinded Jason. When he blinked tears out of his eyes, the hand was gone.

Sacrifice detected…attempting to generate Class Seed… Success

Generating seed….

William Oh’s Left Hand

1 resistance, 1 focus, 1 acuity, 1 kinesthetics.

Myth, Relic.

***William Oh***

“How does an enormous suit of shiny armor keep sneaking up on us!?” Will demanded as the two of them burst out of the hole in the ground, volcanic dust following them out as the tunnel collapsed behind them.

“An Ability, obviously!” Loth said, pointing down the mountainside before sprinting at full speed.

Will joined her in a heartbeat. A moment later, shouting began to fill the mountainside around them, hunting parties orienting on the plume of volcanic dust serving as a flag marking their exit point.

“Really could use some Charge right about now!” Will shouted as the trees whipped past them. He nearly had Deca-dailies, which was supposed to be some great accomplishment, but that just meant he would have to wait three hours for his next Charge to return.

BOOM!

Will and Loth both snapped their heads to look behind them, where a gigantic armored figure emerged from the hole in the ground, hard volcanic rock flying away from him as he sprinted out of the hole.

“I don’t think we can kill that guy,” Will said, picking Loth up and running harder. Going downhill made them faster, bounding from stone outcropping to boulder, tens of feet between each one.

“Agreed,” Loth said, peering behind them. “But we can slow him down. You remember the Crawling Tar you bought a few months ago?”

“Say no more,” Will said, turning mid stride.

He’d purchased quite a few consumables from the town of Coalton on the Third Floor, holding them in his Phantom Hand’s dimensional Storage for emergencies when he was low on tricks and needed to dip into consumables to make up the difference.

This seemed like an appropriate time.

For about the space of a single cannonball, he was able to store his three fireball beads (recovered by Sourdough) the crawling tar, and the bottle of lightning.

Kinda wish I had more cannonballs, though.

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Between the one that had exploded on the paladin and the one he’d used without recovering while rescuing Jason, Will was out of them.

He still had the Clay Idol that summoned an Immortal Serpent, but that was largely dependent on the miasma of the Floor he was on. If he summoned it outside The Tower, it would only be about six feet long, and unable to do much more than distract a single enemy for a moment.

The paladin was charging through the forest behind them, plowing through trees with no discernable effort, not slowing at all as he crashed through several feet of living wood.

Will released the Crawling Tar from the Dimensional Storage, straight at the paladin’s dull armor.

The little jar burst into a cloud of glass and splatters of black goop that deposited droplets of the living tar on every inch of the man’s armor.

In a matter of seconds, leaves, tree branches, clumps of dirt and stone began to adhere to the paladin as he charged through the forest after them.

It was subtle, but their pursuer began to slow down as his weight increased and maneuverability decreased.

Their lead started growing, until Will skidded to a halt as the treeline ended, revealing two lines of staggered squads, giving each other plenty of space to engage Will as necessary. The line of soldiers wearing the colors of Granesh over their highly polished armor tensed as he came into view. A ripple that spread through the opposing army.

Weapons rattled as thousands were leveled towards him.

The vast majority of these people must be level 15, Will thought.

The 4^th Floor saw the harshest drop in survival rate. If a large organization wanted a lot of soldiers, it would be in their best interest to stop before they started dropping like flies, keeping the rank and file at level 15.

The Party leaders are probably in their thirties, though, Will thought, eyeing the commanders of the squads, wearing the golden tassels that separated them from their squad. At least a hundred of them.

Can I take on a bunch of level fifteens and a level 30 with no Charge?

Will shrugged his shoulders, relaxing his neck. He could definitely take a bunch of level fifteens, and maybe a typical level thirty. But not in those numbers.

Maybe if I had some Charge.

Will’s best move against other Climbers was stealing a critical piece of his opponent’s Kit. Typically the rings or necklace.

Unfortunately, this took Charge, and Will was tapped out. His next Charge wouldn’t come for another hour or two at best.

The army began to move: The inside circle began to close ranks and approach, one deliberate half-step at a time while the outer circle backed off, creating a wider net to catch him if he made it past.

Screw it.

“Do you have a way out?” Will asked.

“I have a way I could escape, but I don’t think it would work for both of us,” Loth said.

Works for me.

“It’s been fun,” Will said, setting Loth down. “I think…I think I’m gonna find out if I’m as dangerous as they say I am.”

Loth followed his gaze towards the approaching army, eyes widening.

“Very well. If you survive, I’ll meet you with the others on the 5^th Floor,” Loth said, spreading her arms wide and flopping backwards onto the loamy soil of the volcano’s side.

The earth began to churn beneath her as her earthshaping insects drew her underground in a matter of seconds, leaving a kobold shaped disturbance in the soil that was erased a heartbeat later.