Chapter 87: That’s How You Get Crabs

William Oh’s first meal on the Sixth Floor was comprised of King Crab and Flying Caviar that stretched as far as the eye can see. He ate so much expensive fish in a single sitting, that if it had been released to the public, it would’ve crashed the economy of The Ring.

• Jason Salazar

William Oh

Resourceful Climber Level 25

26+ 5 Strength

75 +10 Kinesthetics

78 +27 Resistance

50 +15 Focus

96 +26 Acuity

Charges: 64/64

Free Points: 0

Item Abilities: Summon Undead retainer, Heal undead, 35% eidolon potency, 45% rogue Archetype potency, 75% Ranger archetype potency, Aetherhawk, Lightning Pulse, Wet footing, Homefield Advantage(Ice), Malleable Space, 30% Trespass A/V dampening, Swift Earth.

Phantom Hand Slots: (Ring of Accuracy*) (Sickle of Cold Harvest) -(Wand of the Undead Retainer)- (Stormfists)

Primary Abilities: Aspect of the Immortal Serpent**, Phantom Hand***

Secondary Abilities: Sourdough*

In the dark half hour before the sun rose, all but a few the distant clouds caught the pre-dawn light, illuminating their tiny raft. Most of the Party was still asleep, and Will had nothing to do but think, practicing his Memory Key and cleaning his equipment while checking his new level 25 Status, waiting for Billy-bob, Stevie, and Noob, to arrive and give them their appraisal of the situation.

She’s right, I am being mean to them. Aside from their attitude, the ghosts did good work. It was difficult to overstate how valuable an intelligent force that acted on your behalf with initiative and critical thinking was.

Maybe I should give them an opportunity to earn themselves more dignified names…

Level 25, huh? My Strength is pitiful…I wonder if I should start diverting free points to it.

Will was 2.3 times stronger than a human without The System, while the average Climber at level 25 could expect to be at about 3.5.

The gap’s going to keep getting bigger the higher I go.

Still, growing his Dimensional Storage and the ability to launch increasingly larger payloads at increasingly higher speeds was an excellent way to cultivate an answer to every problem. An answer named ‘overwhelming force’, which seemed to be a Lord’s stock and trade.

How much dimensional storage space do I have? 219 cubic inches?

How many gallons is that? Not a lot. Not even one, I think.

Will had a Primary Ability Upgrade available, and he had taken several Dimensional Oyster Sacrifices with him for this exact reason. Will took out one of the Sacrifices he’d been saving for himself, holding it in his hand to determine what the upgrade to Phantom Hand would be.

Dimensional Oyster Sacrifice:

Phantom Hand’s Dimensional Storage gains a shrinking effect, scaling with Acuity.

Items larger than Dimensional Storage’s capacity cannot be placed inside, as the shrinking effect does not take place until the item is inside.

How much does it scale with Acuity?

Will had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t something like a flat 1% per Acuity, which would allow infinite storage at 100 Acuity. But it would definitely be a strong effect, since his Acuity was outlandishly good.

So the 219 cubic inches becomes the size bottleneck, but past that, we can store a lot more than we could before. Hopefully.

Let’s see what happens.

With a flash of light, Will sacrificed the Dimensional Oyster, adding it’s effect to Phantom hand.

…Now I need to figure out how to test it’s effect.

Will was developing an idea for how to test it when the sun broke above the glittering horizon, revealing the patch of flotsam beneath them, and heralding the return of the ghost butlers.

The other members of the Party were getting up and ready to start the day as the trio returned.

“How is it?” Will asked as Stevie floated up through the bottom of the floating raft.

“The remains of a major battle. No survivors, not even any bodies. They were either eaten or rescued already. No valuables aside from partially burnt floating wood. Anything worth anything either sank or was picked clean already. There’s a few monsters beginning to make homes in the wreckage, but nothing particularly entrenched.” Stevie said.

“June, take the team and get some practice against the environment, I’ll work on making us a boat so we’re not relying on the insects.” Loth said.

“It’s not gonna be trapped is it?” Will asked.

“You insult me!” Loth said, placing an offended hand on her chest. “Of course it’ll be trapped!”

“Alright,” June said, making her voice heard after Loth gave the order. “Will, you’re going to take point. Mason, Reggie, and Alicia are going to stay on overwatch, while Jean’s crew and I are going to follow close behind Will.”

June pointed at Reggie. “Toft on me and Will.”

Reggie nodded.

“Keep a rope ready for us if we have to run. And don’t distract Alicia.”

Reggie nodded.

June pointed at Alicia. “Keep an eye out for ambushes from below.”

Alicia nodded.

June grabbed a rope from her bag and tied one end around Reggie, using their Tank as a temporary anchor point before throwing the rest over the side. She glanced down at the enormous patch of floating debris nearly a hundred feet below them, taking a deep breath before she began climbing down the rope.

Will jumped off the side of the floating raft, whistling past June before slowing his descent with Phantom Hand, landing softly on a bobbing piece of wood, his influence extending outward to solidify a large patch of water around it.

“Showoff,” June scoffed as she arrived beside him, her Trailblazer Ability seemingly creating a path of denser wreckage behind her for the others to follow.

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“Alicia says to be careful for the things clinging to the underside of the logs!” Mason shouted down at them.

Bee and Ria slid off the rope, testing their footing and glancing around.

“Let’s clean out this patch,” June said, motioning at the patch Loth was directing her swarm to begin picking through for useable timber. It made sense to clean it of any monster infestation before it got up to Loth.

It wasn’t thirty seconds after Alicia’s warning that one of the monsters made its presence known.

As one of the logs was being lifted into the air, a pale spider-like creature launched itself straight towards Bee’s face.

The little shapeshifter squawked, flailing her hands, intercepting the crab and smacking it away through brute force, sending it spinning through the air to plop back into the water, landing between two pieces of flotsam.

Will frowned as a faint popping noise began to travel through the stadium-sized patch of wreckage.

They’re telling each other about us. By the sheer number of popping noises, there had to be a lot of them.

Let’s slow the flow of enemies.

Homefield Advantage.

60 Charges remaining.

The rolling ocean turned into ice, creating a solid surface between them and the swarm of monsters in a fraction of a second.

Only three of the crabs got out of the water before it turned into ice, skittering towards June and Ria.

Ria let out a breath and talons began to pop through her shoes, burying themselves into the chaotic mixture of ice and wood. She grunted with effort, taking a swing at the flying pale white crab, phantasmal claws extending from her hand and turning the attacking monster into chunks.

June pranced backwards, Trailblazer smoothing out the pad of ice as she drew an arrow and pinned the crab to the surface.

Bee shuddered, making ‘yuck’ faces as she brushed herself off.

Will motioned to June, then towards the east.

She seemed to understand what he was saying.

“They’re going to come up around the edges, let’s go east so they all come up around the west side.”

Will nodded and began moving, his circle of frozen ground moving with him, interrupting any crabs trying to climb up the east side while behind them, the pad of ice rapidly faded away.