Chapter 129: Loth’s Build

“So, who was it?” Will asked, causing Ria to glance up from where she was helping to clean up after the attack. Ria smoothed her clothes and straightened, clearing her throat as he approached.

“Who was what?” the tall young woman asked, awkwardly leaning on a nearby wagon.

“Who died?” Will clarified.

“What?” Ria frowned, cocking her head to the side. “No one died.”

“…I saw you carrying a corpse.”

“Oh! That was Reese.”

“…Ah.” Will said as his body was paralyzed by a massive wave of relief. He’d thought he’d gotten one of his own killed…

I guess he really is immortal? A combination of Abilities that caused someone to be very difficult to kill and nothing else wasn’t completely out of the question. There were stranger things…Like the fragment of Brianna’s sanity currently watching him nervously.

“Would you mind keeping out another six of you?” Will asked. “I think we may need a more firm response to attacks.”

“I don’t mind, but they’d need to eat,” Ria said with a shrug. “And I’ll need some…” her voice faded off into mumbling.

“I’ll talk to the beancounter. What was the other thing?”

“Clothes! I’ll need some clothes for them.” Ria said, her face red.

Will paused. Tangled copies didn’t emerge with clothing, and most people were polite enough to not mention it. Especially after they’d been around the Tangled long enough for the novelty to wear off…but, if they were going to be a permanent fixture, she would definitely want some clothes to feel like a person.

“…I can do that.”

Will went to Brenna and asked where he could find someone who could whip up some clothes, and as luck would have it, two of her daughters had Classes that could help.

They were more than happy to make some clothes for the girl who had delivered their sister back to them alive.

That reminds me. We’ll need to power level the civilians.

Typically that was done in as controlled a manner as possible. Similar to a bus, a more powerful individual would subdue a monster and the civilian would stab it.

It required a much more powerful individual with experience of the Floor and its foibles to powerlevel a civilian through it, and the dangers were high. If a mistake was made and a monster got out of hand, it could lash out and deposit some venomous spines in someones’ skin, and it was lights-out.

Actually, we’ve got priestesses on-hand. Should I put them to work? Will mused.

If he pushed his caravan harder, the number of injuries would go up, but the priestess’s job was soaking up those injuries, and his people would grow more powerful, faster. Those injuries would taper off as they gained more power.

Hmm.

Will caught sight of the bean-counter on the way through the camp, where he was staring at the firewood attached to the side of the wagon. The man had a severe expression fixed on his bony face as he scribbled in his ledger without even looking down.

Will peered over his shoulder and found that his penmanship was perfectly inside the lines, and clearly legible, even to Will’s weak reading skills.

4 cords dried wood, 6 cords wet wood. At current rate of consumption, will be out of firewood in six months. Recommend smaller fires. Recent fires have been larger than strictly necessary for cooking and light, in order to ‘match the vibe’, which is not a reasonable explanation for-

Will glanced away from the dry ledger and inspected the bean-counter.

Badur Jaskirit was wearing a thick, expensive suit, skinnier than Mason, and sweating profusely as he worked.

“You think about wearing lighter clothes?” Will asked.

“GAH!” Badur shouted, leaping in place an impressive height for someone without much Strength.

“You…” Badur controlled his expression when he saw who was speaking to him. “What can I do for you, my Lord?”

“Yeah, take off your outer jacket.” Will said.

Badur complied, revealing a fine silk inner shirt before he folded the jacket over his arm.

“Where shall I put it, my Lord?”

“Eh?” Will asked.

“I didn’t allocate space in my luggage for the jacket, and if I were to take more than my fair share of space in the wagon, the whole system could crumble.”

Will raised a brow and leaned around Badur to peek at the wagon’s interior…which had rather large gaps everywhere, where a single jacket could rest easily.

Will was tempted just grab the jacket and toss it into the wagon, but that wasn’t leadership.

“Would anyone be willing to give up a half inch of their wagon space for Mr. Jaskirit to store his jacket?” Will asked, loud enough that the surrounding caravaneers could hear him.

Several Climbers glanced at Will, then at the partially empty wagon, then back to Will, with raised brows.

Will shrugged and pointed at the bean counter, his hand hidden from the man by his own ledger.

“Sure, man.” One of the Climbers said, causing Badur to heave a sigh of relief, opening his ledger and immediately adjusting numbers inside.

“Make a note,” Will said, leaning over the ledger. “That you are borrowing that half-inch of storage space for the express purpose of accommodating adjusting your attire to the environment and for no other reason. You will eventually give that half-inch back.”

“Y-yes, my Lord,” Badur nodded and made a note next to the entry, then sighed in relief, folding the jacked and stuffing it in beside his luggage.

I think I just got a sense of how difficult this is going to be, Will thought with mounting dread.

“Badur, how difficult would it be to feed another six Ria?”

“Impossible. We have exactly the amount we need to make it to the Tenth Floor, with a strict safety margin.”

“What’s the safety margin?” Will asked.

“About forty percent above the minimum.” Badur responded.

“How much have we used so far?”

“Well, due to unreported fishing on the sixth floor, and the assistance of the tenants of Shimmer, we’ve used…” He flipped through his pages, eyes scanning the page with unerring speed before he looked back up at Will.

“Less than none of it.”

“So we have more food now than when you first made the calculation?” Will asked.

“Yes, my lord.”

“And we definitely can’t afford to feed six more people?”

“No, my lord.”

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“What if I were to assign certain Climbers to hunt and forage, could we afford it then?”

Badur flipped to a blank page and began scribbling numbers at a frantic pace.

“No my lord,” he finally said, looking up from his ledger.

“Why not?” Will asked, genuinely curious about how this man was still breathing if he couldn’t afford to move his lungs.

“Most meat and plant matter on the upper floors is miasmatic in nature, and will degrade into bones and Relics without being preserved by an Ability. I have such an Ability, but my Dailies are reserved for preserving Sacrifices, according to my ledger.”

“What are your dailies at?” Will asked.

“Four, my Lord.”

“What level are you?”

“Fifteen, my Lord.”

That’s low for the seventh Floor. I’m worried he might die from something sneezing on him.

“Would we be able to afford to feed six more Ria if you were level thirty?” Will asked.

Badur’s hand shook as he wrote the calculation, obviously aware of what Will was planning. He did it anyway.

“…yes, my Lord.”

He’s a good sport, at least. He was probably willing to be straight with Will because Will had approached him in the manner he preferred to engage with the world: Bureaucracy.

“Excellent. As of this moment your dailies are for preserving meat, we’ll level you and get back the dailies required to preserve Sacrifices going forward. And maybe upgrade your Abilities in the process. Roger Oilton told me about a Logistician who could retroactively change what they had stored by changing the numbers in her ledger.”

Badur’s eyes widened.

“HOW!?”

“As long as the values remained the same, it worked, as for the how…” Will shrugged before patting the bean-counter on the shoulder. “Maybe you’ll figure it out.”

“But value is relative…” Badur was muttering to himself as Will left to talk to Loth, who was messing around with something beside one of her oversized barrels.

“Wanna see something cool?” Loth asked as Will approached.

“Four more ominous words were never spoken,” Will said as he arrived beside the Hive-Wielding Saboteur, crouching down beside her. “Whatcha got?”

“Tadaaa!” Loth pulled her sleeve aside to reveal a rotund insect about the size of Will’s palm, with a butt that swelled with glowing blue miasma.

Upon seeing him, it turned away and started pulsing its butt towards Will.

“Is it…supposed to do that?” Will asked.

“Aw…it’s trying to kill you.” Loth said, petting the agitated insect.

“Huh…” Will stroked his chin, watching the little bug wiggle uselessly.

“Remember my experiments to create a tame bug that has enough miasma that it could trigger on-kill effects?” Loth asked.

“I do.”

“Well…the most problematic part of breeding these little suckers was that the miasma made them go crazy and try to kill everything that wasn’t infected with miasma.

“…You bred a useless aggressive response into them before breeding miasma into them.” Will said. “Even if they do get aggressive, it does nothing.”

“Precisely.” Loth said. “Now that I have a stable population, I can finally try out my dagger.”

Loth pulled out the wavy blade with a skull carved into the pommel and fingerbones forming the wristguard, that just screamed ‘I’m a necromancer!’ to the world.