Chapter 214: Navigating The Big Empty

There exists on the 11^th Floor an offshoot of Ouroboros so large that the rise and fall of nations comes as quickly and easily as breathing. This creature has passively witnessed the passing of Coils with nary a blink, the whole of human civilization a mere mote of dust in its eye.

One day, William Oh passed by with a date, and the snake gave a wink and a thumb’s up.

• Jason Salazar, in an Akul Bar.

“Check this out!” Bee shouted, flagging them from a window cut into the enormous central crystal.

Will flew up and landed on the windowsill, feeling like some kind of bug as he was simply too small to see what Bee was pointing at until he traversed the windowsill, a good ten paces across.

Inside was the corpse of a giant that might be at home with the 5^th Floor kaiju.

Bones glittering with crystal and trapped miasma, large enough to build a small town in, lay scattered across the floor of this…enormous bathroom?

Pretty sure that’s a toilet. Will thought, glancing up at the raised swimming pool in the back of the room. Maybe.

Will dropped down and landed on some of the bones. The femur was the size of a massive piece of lumber, and just as easily walked across.

The bones were more interesting than anything else.

What Will knew about monsters was that their bodies rapidly dissipated into miasma, and the more magical they were, the faster it happened. Without some kind of preservation magic, even the skeleton rapidly decomposed into miasma-less ash.

So why are these bones still glittering like a decomposing monster? It didn’t seem like the creature had just died. If anything, it seemed like this had happened ages ago.

Will knelt to study the bone. Some of it looked like traditional off-white bone, with it’s porous nature…but it blended seamlessly with a strange form of quartz. Buried inside that quartz, it seemed like the blue Miasma was flickering, struggling to escape.

“…Can you see the miasma?” Will asked Bee as she alighted beside him, wings seamlessly retracting into her back.

“Yeah, it’s glowing flickers of blue,” she said, knocking on the crystalized bones.

It’s like the decomposition into miasma got trapped inside the crystal halfway through.

…What kind of crystal can trap miasma? And how did it wind up inside this creature’s body? And how can I use it to make my own Abilities? Will thought to himself as he studied the opalescent bone.

On impulse, Will moved a bit of Charge from his center to the tips of his fingers, kneeling down.

CREEEEAAK.

The bone underneath him shuddered and bent closer to Will’s hand, seemingly lusting for the Charge in his hand.

Will poked the bone.

BOOOM!

With an eruption of heat, light, and bone splinters, the rib Will was standing on exploded, sending shrapnel across the room.

…Ow.

Will hit the ceiling towering above, trailing a bit of smoke as the explosion propelled him upwards. He managed to catch himself just before gravity regained its hold on him and dragged him back down towards the floor.

“…That was energetic.” Will said, stifling a cough, flying back down to the floor.

Bee gave a sharp inhale through her teeth as she scanned Will’s body.

“What, am I wounded, or something?” Will asked, scanning himself. Sometimes it takes a moment for the body to register the pain. Usually, it starts as a vague itch.

No, underneath the ragged, partially burned silk suit was perfectly immaculate skin. The shrapnel didn’t even manage to draw blood.

“William Oh, what have you done to your clothes!?” Anna’s voice echoed through the long-abandoned giant’s stronghold.

Ah.

“Don’t worry, I thought this might happen. I’ve got some spares in my luggage. I’ll go change into-“

“You are NOT changing into something else until we actually make it to the wedding!” Anna retorted from where she was making lunch on the crystal roadside under an overhang that concealed them from the sky beyond. “BOYS!”

“Aye aye!” Brianna cried before stifling a chortle and making a silly face. Will couldn’t actually see them, given that they were outside and he was inside, but he could hear the smile just fine.

It was a relief.

“I mean, I don’t really care about the clothes, but-“ Bee shrugged.

“No, she’s right, might as well destroy these ones all the way instead of putting other clothes at risk.” Will mused, plucking at the frayed edges where the shrapnel had torn through.

“Anyway, let’s find a pinkie bone or something. I want to bring some of this stuff home and Zodiac doesn’t need to know about it.”

Will wouldn’t be surprised if this was a unique resource of the 11^th Floor. Why pay for it when he found some himself?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Best not rub it in Zodiac’s face, though.

Bee nodded and the two began scrabbling across the skeleton until they found the giant’s hand.

Will was able to fit most of the giant’s hand inside Phantom Hand, thanks to the way Dimensional Storage shrank down its contents to make room for more.

The bigger bones were simply too large to fit.

Will had been a little concerned about more explosions if he tried to store the bones, but it was fine. Whatever Charge that made his Dimensional Storage function was seemingly insulated from interacting with the outside world in any way save the storage and shrinking effects.

Insulation. Hmm.

Will’s mind stewed on the idea as he sat and ate. Even with all this ‘wedding’ and ‘politics’ nonsense going on, he still wanted to create his own Ability before the one-year mark, just to prove that he could.

What if I found a way to modify my air-spike cantrip to be more…on fire? It would be interesting, but it wouldn’t be anything more than a modified cantrip.

Will’s goal was to create a new Ability from scratch, one that required Charge to operate. Anything other than that was relying on pre-existing Miasmatic Structures created by his Class.

The way the bones reacted so energetically to Charge made it exactly the sort of thing he’d like to experiment with…

If I were back in my Stronghold.

Alas, the goals of Climbing the Tower and studying the inner workings of Miasmatic Structures were at odds with each other.

Need a travel set of tools.

Will’s mind then began to break down what size the individual pieces might need to be in order to fit inside Dimensional Storage, and how best to reassemble them quickly, even as he ate Anna’s sandwiches and soup.

We don’t exactly have forever to find the Stronghold. Will mused.

Zodiac’s stronghold is over twelve miles away, otherwise I would’ve seen it when I first scanned our surroundings. What do I do then?

Maybe…brute force?

Will took his Map and stripped everything away but fear, making that glow like the sun.

He set the map in its edge in his mind and spun it like a coin, giving him a rapidly pulsing view in every direction.

No fear anywhere within twelve miles, but that was something Will already knew.