Chapter 126: Getting Our Bearings

Welcome to the 7^th Floor!

Miasma Acclimation: 7 days.

It is not advised to Ascend or Descend before the Miasma acclimation period has elapsed. Side effects of doing so include fever, bulging bloodshot eyes, coughing, pustules, necrosis of the extremities, paraphilia, parasitic twin growths, and Death.

There is a Stronghold to your South, and a Key Site in need of clearing to your West.

Again, it is not advised to Ascend or Descend before the Acclimation period has elapsed.

People had described ‘jungle’ to Will, but he’d never seen one, and the image he’d built in his mind was nothing like the reality.

He’d pictured dense forest, with a canopy that blocked out the unnatural moving sun.

Sure, it had that, but that didn’t do it justice. In his imagination all those trees were northern trees that stood straight and tall, with low-lying shrubbery around it.

In the jungle, the trees were violently elbowing each other for space, things were growing on top of other things, and the ‘low-lying shrubbery’ was about eight feet tall.

Someone could take a step off the path and be lost for good.

From what research Loth had done, the jungle was most dangerous at night, when the worst monsters came out of slumber.

The Floors had wildly different times, which meant proper precaution had to be taken when moving across floors that had a strong night-day element. That was why they’d crossed over in the evening, which got them to the jungle in the morning, to get as much sunlight as possible.

While the settlers were setting up base camp and wagons, Will watched for threats and contemplated his Build.

He was halfway to being a Lord, but there were certain holes in his Build that needed to be patched before he could really think of himself as one.

Twice now, he had lost a finger of Phantom Hand to another Ability. Thankfully it regrew thanks to the Hydra he’d upgraded it with…But it didn’t retain the slotted item. That had been lost forever.

Lords and their Vassals practically by definition had overwhelmingly powerful Abilities, and Phantom hand wasn’t at it’s core an offensive Ability. It was Utility. If Will was going to keep bumping up against Climbers with potent direct damage or counterspelling Abilities, pieces of Phantom Hand being destroyed would become more and more common, which would eventually expose a weakness to the wrong person and get him killed if he didn’t fix it.

Will wasn’t optimistic enough to pin all his hopes for Lordship on retaining the Family Gathering set, specifically the amulet in the Phantom Hand’s pinky finger. As it stood, it could easily be destroyed by a lucky strike, especially when fighting someone who could glass half a mountainside in the blink of an eye.

He remembered the bolt of lightning, fifteen miles distant…wider than his thumb.

Will found himself in the position where he needed to do everything he could to prevent himself from losing Phantom Hand’s slotted items, but also prepare himself to live without the set if he had to.

I need to create some powerful Relics and get them slotted so even if I lose my current set bonus I can pivot fast. They should also be relics that offer a fighting style that my current Set bonus doesn’t cover, so that they’re not JUST a backup, but also viable strategies.

…Not just powerful Relics, but self-contained soft-sets, Will realized, staring into the dense jungle.

Now that Sourdough could add one item’s affix to another (although weakened), Will could take a soft-set of two or more items that complemented each other, combine their affixes, then put them in Phantom Hand.

The boosting effect of Phantom Hand would more than compensate for any loss of power in the individual affixes.

For example, if he still had the mutated Ring of Accuracy, Bracer of Tracer-fire, and the Ring of Snaring, he could combine their effects and slot the resulting item in the hand, freeing up slots on his body, and magnifying all three effects rather than just one.

That by itself wouldn’t be quite as ridiculous as my current set, but it would be a very powerful, self-contained ranged option on the battlefield that I could switch to if the Set finger got broken or if it was more appropriate.

Also…that twenty-four hour cooldown on switching fingers needs to go.

As for which slotted Relics were good candidates to replace with more powerful options, Will had settled on the empty middle finger that used to have the Sickle of Cold harvest, and the ring-finger, which had the Stormfist Gauntlets.

Stormfist gauntlets weren’t bad, but the Relic’s bonus to speed and extra lightning damage were vastly outweighed by what the Amulet of the Coiled Serpent could do, between the Family Gathering set bonus and its inherent Abilities.

The undead butlers had their utility. They knew negotiation, cooking, taxes and tailoring, and any of a thousand other useful skills, and were capable of a higher level of independent thought compared to the semi-autonomous serpents created by his Set.

Will also had to admit that he’d grown attached to them, so severing the connection to them wasn’t something he was eager to do.

The Ring of Accuracy…I suppose if I could make a better long-range Relic, I could replace that too.

Will scanned the surrounding camp, where work was progressing at a rapid pace that both seemed chaotic and highly organized. Calls for supplies, extra hands, and insults were lobbed back and forth across the camp.

Each civilian Party had a tall young woman with black hair and an athletic build helping coordinate and provide protection, while a shorter young woman with blonde hair seemed to exist in twos and threes in every direction he looked, cheerfully providing extra hands wherever they were needed, much to the confusion of…pretty much everyone.

It was amusing watching double-takes turn into confusion then sparks of comprehension.

Ria and Anna. Fragments of a mind that had been shattered by the Lord of this Floor in his mad quest to create the perfect soldier that he could conquer the whole Tower with.

And now she was Will’s.

Bee’s probably around here somewhere… Will thought, spotting the mischievous fragment in his tent disguised as a civilian, pocketing a paperweight, likely so that she could claim to be the better phantom thief.

Will assigned a snake to follow her and steal the paperweight back as soon as she stopped paying attention to it.

Obviously I’m the better phantom thief.

Bee wasn’t…directly useful most of the time, but she came as a package deal with the other three, and she wasn’t malicious, just angry. And the benefit of the other three vastly outweighed Bee’s rebellious nature.

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Each of the three fragments were essentially created to heal mental wounds that their primary body couldn’t have survived, and they just sort of…became permanent features, like grooves worn into a road.

Their primary body, Jean, was with Loth near the center of the camp, coordinating the camp setup with the expedition’s logistics officer.

Will watched as Loth tapped a black talon on the northern side of the sketched plan of the camp, her words lost to the distance, then he glanced over as Ria’s body in the north went still for a brief instant, as though someone were speaking to her.

A moment later she turned and spoke to the civilians, gesturing for them to move a feature of the camp further away from another feature.

Three Anna wandered nearby and helped the civilians pick up their newly created wagon and placed it on the other side of their tent, more in line with where Loth wanted their starting point.

People wanted to be afraid of what they perceived as the Tangled monster in their midst, but Ria struck a heroic figure, while Anna was just plain cute. She was also in charge of delivering the daily rations of sweets and alcohol. Will figured if Ria protected them and Anna regularly bribed them with baked goods, the civilians would be less afraid of her.

And it seemed like it was working.

Will’s Party…well, it was mostly June’s Party now.

With Will staying with the caravan as the last line of defense against claim-jumpers, and Loth busy coordinating the entire group, they weren’t directly involved in the Party anymore.

June whipped Mason, Reggie, Alicia, Travis and Jason into shape, getting them ready for a day of cutting a path to the south, aiming the caravan towards the 7^th Floor Stronghold.

The Stronghold on this Floor was owned by Mark Wyrd, a young Lord with a highly specialized Thorns Build. He had…a rough relationship with Will and everyone else here, on account of his father being a petty tyrant who had caused outlandish amounts of pain and suffering to…pretty much everyone here, in some form or another.

Mark had killed his father and usurped his throne, but some grudges might be difficult to let go of…Will’s eyes wandered to Travis.

Still, Will was going straight to Mark’s Stronghold to offer a bribe and a truce, because he was going to be sending a lot of people and supplies through the 7^th Floor, and trying to sneak through was practically spitting in Mark’s face and daring him to capture large chunks of critical supplies and people.

Better to pay upfront.

Even if he didn’t accept the deal, that would be useful information. And if he doesn’t accept the bribe…guess I’ll have to kill him.

How exactly that would happen was unclear, but Will would probably start by taking away his toys and then stabbing him to death.

Will checked on the status of the ‘bribe’, which was a pair of gauntlets of bone suspended in a little keg of Relic ash. The ash didn’t seem to be glowing, and Sourdough was telling him that it was complete.

Will plucked the Relic out and studied it:

Gauntlets of Bloody Rejuvenation

+8 Resistance