Chapter 161: Obstacles to Progress

Will heard Jason’s footsteps, heartbeat and breathing approach. He was excited about something. He was also carrying something composed of dense miasma in his hand.

“Will, check this out!” Jason shouted as he jumped up on top of the rattling wagon

“Whatcha got?” Will asked, glancing over.

“There’s a Myth on this Floor, and I caught it!” Jason said, brandishing what looked like a tear-shaped opaline gemstone about the size of a coin. Will could easily picture it slotting onto a sword, cuirass, belt, or whatever. it was just small and pretty enough to basically fit anywhere without being too out of place.

Will accepted the object and peered at it intently, waiting for The System to provide further detail.

Harbinger Relic Seed.

The condensed myth of the Harbinger, who has seven times brought about the downfall of the Fae. When applied to a Relic, this seed creates an affix that enhances Focus, contract magic and gives bonuses against the fae. Affix starts minor, grows as the myth of the Relic does. Cannot be removed.

“What do you think!?”

“It’s awesome. Priceless even. You could probably name your price if you sold it to the Lord of this Floor.”

“You’re not gonna…use it?” Jason asked, wilting as though Will had attacked him personally.

“I don’t plan on spending a lot of time on this Floor. All the benefits are helpful in one way or another, but I’m reluctant to put that on any of my Set items. I’m not sure how they would react to being modified a second time.

Lord Bakton though, he could use something like this to push the Fae Lords off their entrenched positions and open this Floor up for Climber habitation. It could become the new Akul. He would get much better use out of it, simply because he lives here full-time.” Will said, handing it back.

“One of our jobs as Climbers is to look at the bigger picture and see if there’s a way to drop a ladder down after us so that other Climbers can follow.”

“Hmm…I see.” Jason said, pursing his lips.

“Whatcha thinkin?” Will asked.

“The Eighth Floor is a death trap. This place couldn’t become the new Akul as long as the 8^th Floor acts as a barrier. If I went to Akul and started a rumor about someone who cleared the entire undead Floor, I wonder if I could make a series of Relic Seeds that would either allow people to stay on that floor semi-permanently, or clean it up a bit, make it less dangerous.”

“If you could, that would redefine the Tower. Might as well give it a shot when we get to Bakton’s Stronghold.” Will said. “There’s a few thousand people there at any given time. It’s one of the hubs of trade between the extreme floors and the lower floors.”

Nobody wanted to travel through the 8^th Floor if they didn’t have to, so some ambitious merchants made fortunes buying ultra-rare Relics and Sacrifices at Bakton’s Stronghold from high level Climbers in exchange for food and supplies, then taking on the risk of transporting the goods down to Akul themselves.

That meant they might be able to get some damn good deals on Relics and Sacrifices on their way through Bakton’s Stronghold.

If the chokepoint of the 8^th Floor is opened up, and this becomes the new Akul, that would increase the flow of people to my Stronghold drastically.

The amount of money and manpower it would require to make the passage up to the Ninth Floor safe…Will wasn’t sure it even existed.

It was the random Shuffling of Climbers as they took doors from Floor to Floor that made things unpredictable. Unpredictable meant dangerous.

And the fact that the only travel between Floors is restricted behind Key Site clearing. That’s a major roadblock.

If people could freely travel up and down, like they could in the first 5 Floors, humans could actually get a toehold. It seemed like the design of the Tower was to deliberately filter people out, creating unnatural choke-points.

If anyone could figure out a way to bypass the Key Sites, why not the civilization that had designed the last two floors? That had corrupted the Miasma of the 8^th and 9^th Floor?

Will tucked the Relic Seed in his Dimensional Storage for safekeeping and let Jason go about his business, seeing him off before climbing down off the wagon and going over to where Reese was.

“Hey Reese,” Will said, approaching the emaciated immortal sailor. The man was starting to actually put on some weight eating the daily rations.

“Eh?” Reese glanced up from where he was giving a demonstration on how to filter clay from mud.

“How come nobody ever made a Relic that can create a Door between Floors and stuck it on top of a Key Site?”

“It’s been attempted, but The Tower makes a quest to destroy it.”

“Why?” Will asked. “It would allow supplies and Climbers to travel up and down in huge quantities.”

“A few reasons.” Reese said, ticking off his fingers.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Reason number one: The Tower is stupid. It’s not capable of a great deal of adaptive thinking, so it can’t reason that allowing Climbers to block one Key Site to power a portal would be a benefit on average due to an improvement in infrastructure which would allow humans to clear deeper Key Sites that they currently struggle with.

Reason number two: an unregulated, Climber-made Door would probably lack some of the safeguards that the Tower has, which might allow pathogens from Floors like the previous one to spread. Imagine every floor being a barren wasteland filled with undead.

“And reason number three: The amount of technological advancement required to create these Doors require a couple days, at least, which makes it very rare that a society ever figures out how to do it in the first place. The people from the last Floor were close, but they self-destructed before they could pull it off.”

“Coils, I think you mean.” Will said.

“Yeah, that.” Reese said, snapping his fingers.

“…Is there a way to poke holes between Floors?” Will asked, thinking back to the merchant route between the 1^st and 5^th Floors. Giant holes in the sky.

“Absolutely not,” Reese said, shaking his head vigorously. “Not only is that impossible, Such a thing would be catastrophic.”

“There’s a series of holes between the First and Fifth Floor.” Will said. “Merchant caravans use them.”

“Buuuuh….” Reese’s eyes went wide. “That’s…not…good. When did that happen!?”

“I’unno.” Will shrugged. He didn’t know, but he suspected it was during the last Coil, while Reese was trapped in his coffin.