Chapter 154: Fear is a Terrain

Will has felt Fear before.

How could he not? He was physically shoving its face into a toilet.

• Jason Salazar

Loth drew an oval lens shape with a flat back. Then using a straightedge, she cut horizontal lines all the way back to the center of the lens.

Then she meticulously re-drew each arc of the oval-shaped lens between the lines, laying nearly flush against the flat back of the lens, before erasing the original oval shape, leaving a strange sawtooth-looking pattern.

“This…is a Fresnel lens. It’s a stripped-down version of a spherical lens. It has a few distinct advantages, namely it saves a tremendous amount of space and weight, it also solves issues with spherical warping, which makes it good for transferring images.

Some disadvantages are that these images may have a small loss of fidelity based on how tight these concentric circles are, and it may experience a small loss of efficiency, because some light will be lost in the creases, but both of these problems are negligible with a well-constructed lens.”

“Have you umm… used one of these before?” Will asked.

“Never in my life.” Loth said. “I only read about it in my dictionary, tried to make one in my youth, before realizing that I simply did not have access to the means to create one. I mean, where on earth was I supposed to get a massive slab of clear glass? And then cut it to exacting measurements? Maybe if I knew someone with a Glassmaking class and a very high level. But practically? It was always out of my reach.”

“I’m not sure I’m getting it.” Will said, studying

“Each segment here, has the same angle that the original lens did, I just cut out all the material in the middle that wasn’t doing anything. The angle is all that’s important.”

“How would that look from the front?” Will asked.

Loth drew a series of concentric circles and assigned a number to each layer, matching it to the side-view of the lens.

Okay…

Will tried and failed.

He simplified and tried a lens with only three rings, and still failed. The odd shape of the lens strained both his control and his imagination. Until now, with a relatively symmetrical back and front, Will had been able to brace the two sides of compression against each other, but with all those zig-zag sawteeth…it kept unravelling.

It didn’t seem impossible, but it also didn’t seem like the sort of thing Will could master in a single afternoon.

“This is something I’m going to have to practice for a while.” Will admitted. Even as he said that, he was planning on ways to turn that practice into a game. He could make simple shapes of compressed air as he travelled, slowly increasing their complexity until this ‘frenelle’ lens was simple by comparison.

“Makes sense.” Loth mused, nodding.

At the end of a long day of experimentation Will’s favorite new cantrip was a modification to his air-shield that make him seem just a few inches off-center, which created two layers of defense with a single motion.

The refraction needed to make it happen was a simple slab of denser air, tilted in a specific way without any complex shapes. Will could also make himself seem just a little closer than he actually was by adding an imperceptible bulge to the shield.

Anyone who was paying extra-close attention wouldn’t be fooled, but in combat, when the fight was determined in fractions of a second based on half-glimpsed flashes of movement, extra-close attention was at a premium. Mistaking your opponent’s location for an eyeblink could get you killed.

The next day, they changed focus to theory of pressure and sound.

Will figured out a way to pop eardrums reliably by rapidly compressing a column of air right beside his opponent’s ear…as long as they weren’t moving. It wasn’t much more than simply clapping your hands over someone’s ears, but doing it purely through the application of his passives…that was a challenge.

With enough practice, Will could see himself eventually being able to use these cantrips at a moment’s notice, but he would have to practice all of them until they became second nature.

The thing that stuck with Will was the way these techniques seemed to be primarily designed to work on other Climbers.

Slimes didn’t have eardrums. Swarms of rats had too many. Giant monsters were simply too big, and environmental effects didn’t have senses to fool.

Most monsters didn’t really care if you were a couple inches one direction or another, they attacked with their whole body, which meant disguising your position by a couple inches didn’t really change anything. You still got tackled or swallowed whole.

But creatures who attack with a single sharp object like a sword or spear…like a Climber…a couple inches off changed a kill to a miss.

A Lord’s primary job is to enforce their will on other Climbers, through whatever means they can. It would make sense that some of their their techniques would focus on the weaknesses of the human body.

It was funny to think that a standard Climber might be better than a Lord at fighting monsters. Most Lords were perceived as unassailable, and many of them were tremendous at fighting monsters as a side-effect of their sheer overwhelming power, but Will seemed to be the type that was better against people than monsters.

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Will spent the next four days without incident practicing variations of his new cantrips, lensing air in a variety of ways for fun and to advance his intuitive understanding of how light behaved.Will alternated between lenses and air compression, creating miniature explosions in midair through rapid compression as he slammed two cylinders of hardened air into each other.

While he did this, the other Parties looted the surrounding buildings.

They didn’t get much: The XP for zombies was awful, they didn’t create Loot on death, and the land had long since been picked clean by generations of Climbers. The fact that they weren’t integrated into The Tower was the likely culprit for both of these problems

The Eighth Floor was truly dead.

Over the four days, the ghost butlers created another dozen Seed of Undeath, discretely delivering them to Will.

At first, Will hadn’t checked how they would upgrade his Primaries because he was pressed for time and he didn’t have the Upgrade slots available to worry about them, but once Will was alone at night, he had the time to check.

Will pulled out the Seed of Undeath and determined their Upgrade effects on his Abilities.

Seed of Undeath

A Synthetic Sacrifice, it is the refined essence of thousands of undead. The ambrosia that the god-king Tek’tut’kanlay consumed to fuel his immortality and that of his court.

Adds Undeath, Regeneration, and lifesteal abilities to the aspirant’s class choices. Provides 1 Str, 2 Res, 2 Foc/level. Unknown to all but a few.

First, Lets see what it does to Aspect.

Seed of Undeath upgrade for Aspect of the Immortal Serpent:

Modifies the ‘complete healing’ portion of Aspect of the Immortal Serpent to be significantly faster.

Adds a passive boost to Lifesteal effects wielded by the user.

This Ability will gradually replace damaged tissues with superior flesh.

Will did a double-take on that last part: ‘superior flesh’. That sounds like a great way to slowly become an undead without realizing it. Or maybe in this case…an undead Immortal Serpent?