Chapter 197: Forced Attendance

Caddock rested his chin on his fist as the bad news kept flooding in like a broken sewer main.

No.

A tidal wave of shit.

“Captain Rutherford is refusing to take his men out on patrol. He says, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘my job isn’t to get my men slaughtered.’” His lieutenant said.

“What part of it was paraphrased?” Caddock asked.

“I took out the cursing.”

“Ah.”

That was the fifth captain today to ‘request’ a safer assignment.

I think this is about as far as we can go with these people.

Morale was well and truly screwed. The outer forts had already been close to cracking with the constant pressure from the Tangled.

Seeing her swarm over the walls at the drop of a hat had given them the unfortunate realization that they were being toyed with.

A lot of the boys on the walls had died last night.

In his primary fort, things were even worse. Caddock had been aware of it, but his men had been utterly shocked by the Tangled’s ability to use their own faces against them.

More than one man had been found stuffed into a closet or under a bed while their killer had paraded around for who knew how long, sabotaging them with impunity.

And now, nobody trusted each other.

There were ways to verify each other’s identity, and Caddock’s cursemongers, contractors and logisticians had come up with clever ways to verify large groups of people for low Charge cost…but still, the seed of distrust had been sown, and wild accusations sprang up like wildfires.

Caddock tapped his fingers on his knee.

William Oh wanted to buy time. This much was clear. He wanted Caddock to painstakingly reassemble the pieces of his broken army and back off while he ran out the clock.

Caddock didn’t know for a fact that he had the timing right, but he was willing to bet he was close.

Their Nuker is out of charge. The Tangled is riddled with psychic damage. Will’s missing his kit. His illusionist has to be nearly dry as well. What does he have left? Alicia the insta-killer, her Tank isn’t going to do much. A basic scout.

…Loth the luminary.

The kobold hadn’t been heavily involved since a few early ambushes. Saving her Charge.

Jason Salazar. The prophet.

I need to deal with those three.

Loth’s weaknesses: Her insects are vulnerable to crowd control. Her traps are vulnerable to terrain disruption. Hinges don’t work if they’re melted. She also collapses if her kit is removed.

Jason is a child.

Caddock glanced back up at his lieutenant, who had seemingly been continuing his report.

“-running low on leather, and without the civilians to replace i-“

“Get me Orev and Maybin, please.” Caddock said, “Along with any of our Advanced Classers who still have the spine and wouldn’t mind the glory of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.”

“The crazy ones?”

“Yeah, the crazy ones.”

“Right away, my Lord.”

Caddock drummed his fingers.

You wanted to throw me off planning a fruitless meeting?

I’ll bring it right to you.

**William Oh**

Will and the rest of the Party backed off, hard.

Brianna wasn’t looking so good. After being hit by the cursemongers twice in two days and the extended battle to keep her out of Caddock’s hands, she was pale and poorly coordinated, her limbs shivering when she thought nobody was watching.

She needed time to recover. Physically and mentally.

“He should be cleaning up that mess for a while,” Loth said.

The lightning-quick shift between offense and defense should hopefully leave Caddock reeling just long enough for Will to get the last two days he needed before his new Relics finished overwriting the previous ones.

“Let’s get way out of Caddock’s territory. Loth can set us up a defensible position and we can actually hunt some monsters,” Will said. They needed XP and Will needed replacement gear.

The constant patrols by Caddock’s men had made the Floor unusually bare of monsters. June and Travis had found next to nothing in the two days they’d been on their own.

“There’s a monster over there…I think would be good.” Jean said, pointing.  “Ria stumbled into it when we were spreading out…yesterday.”

“Seriously, you need to sleep.” Will said.

“Too tired…to sleep.” Jean said, shaking her head.

“Loth, could you…”

“Sure.”

Flying spiders created a hammock and scooped Jean up, carrying her alongside the rest of the Party. Jean struggled feebly against the silver threads for a moment before falling asleep in seconds.

“Flying. Spiders.” Will said, watching the nightmare fuel carry a muttering Jean alongside them.

“I know, right?” Loth said with a sharp-toothed grin.

The monster Jean had pointed out was a mirage. It was a gangly creature that controlled the air around it and made natural-looking mirages, erasing its presence and ambushing unsuspecting Climbers.

Alicia pointed it out when they were within a hundred yards, and June killed it in a single strike.

Beyond that, they came across their first basilisk, a native of the tenth floor whose gaze could paralyze.

Travis took care of that one with his living illusions. They didn’t have real flesh to be paralyzed, and made swift work of the nasty beast.

The basilisk’s corpse was that of a lizard with comically large eyes that would’ve been silly if it weren’t for the way they numbed the body when looking at them, even attached to a corpse.

Alicia debated using it on her Penetrating Gaze Primary, but finally decided against it. She was holding an upgrade slot for a rumored subtype of basilisk on the 13th Floor that rotted the flesh rather than paralyzed.

They came across sand-dunes that seemed to be made of crushed ruby, and dark deposits of minerals that appear to have erupted straight out of the ground.

Running his finger along the dark mineral spikes, Will could feel the miasmatic energy pulsing through them, and couldn’t help but wonder what they were used for.

They ran into living sand-dunes, which turned out to be collections of small insects that imitated sand. Loth took a sample and fed the rest to her swarm.

They came across a desert snake the size of a house with some small control over the earth, and gemstone scales. It dropped a rather nice pair of Dunewalkers.

Dunewalkers

+5 Strength

+8 resistance

+3 Kinesthetics

Terrain Manipulation Abilities are 20% more potent.

Sand and other unsteady terrain provide more support and take less energy to traverse. Scales with Resistance.

Sand and other chafing irritants will be passively removed from the Wearer.

Will put them on and was pleasantly surprised to notice that his Map Ability was slightly improved, both detail and size, as was Aspect. Additionally, all the dust and sand he’d acquired over the last few days began to slough off on its own, prompting some envious glances.

Guess Map counts as a terrain manipulation ability.

Will wasn’t going to argue with that.

That was a good indicator that perhaps one day he could make changes on the map and see them played out in the real world.

Their first taste of real danger came when they came across a swarm of desert snappers. They were little flea-like creatures about the size of a small dog with little nubs tucked up beside their mouthparts.

They were named ‘snappers’ because of the little round nubbins at the end of their tucked in arms. They hopped toward the party with dizzying speed and unleashed punches from those blunt instruments made loud snapping noises, each strike capable of shattering the bones of anyone with less than 200 Resistance.

The party members with higher Resistance formed a circle around those with less, and warded off the initial attack, suffering severe bruising in order to prevent Alicia, June and Jason from being turned into paste.

After the initial assault, Jason insulted the entire group to death.

From the desert snappers, Will got a Shockwave ring that formed a soft-set with his current warhammer:

Ring of Echoing Thunder.

+8 Strength

+3 Resistance

+2 Focus

Shockwaves created by the wearer are 30% more powerful.

Shockwaves created by the wearer will echo, re-dealing half damage to any enemy hit by them.

Let’s see. That’s 130% original damage, then half of that…another 65%. So…195%. Nearly double damage for shockwaves?

That would be fantastic on a Build that could take advantage of it, and in the future, Will would like to combine the two with some other ingredients to make an excellent Relic, but for now he couldn’t afford to do so.

Will equipped it, hoping to find a single-glove or bangle he could wear, but the world wasn’t that convenient.

They got some pants from a Racer, a large bird that liked to dart in and peck at weakened party members with swordlike beaks before darting back out.

The pants that dropped from it were brown leather with black and white feather tassels coming from the waistband, but they didn’t have any better options.

Pants of Darting

+8 Kinesthetics

+3 Acuity

+15% Movement speed

Once per battle, user may drastically boost their movement speed for a short time. Scales with Kinesthetics.

Better than nothing, Will thought, donning them.

Will put the Homefield Advantage on, and he was nearly back up to full Kit.

Sure, it was hodgepodge and didn’t have any synergy with itself, but again…it was better than nothing.

Loth picked out a defensible valley hidden between two sandstone cliffs and riddled it with traps as they settled down for the night.

Will was counting the hours.

They’d spent the entire day travelling, and continued to retreat deep into the night.

Will could feel the two regrowing fingers on his Phantom hand were almost completely whole, beginning to tingle like limbs that had fallen asleep from laying on them.

By morning, Will would be able to change the slotted Relic from the ring of Exploding Doughmaking, to the Hammer of God.

It was going to be something to see.

As the evening wore on, Will gave his body some time to relax, laying by the fire and letting his mind flirt with sleep in the way that all Climbers eventually picked up. Hyper aware of every noise and every tremor in the ground, but ultimately relaxed and very nearly asleep.

He found some of his best thinking happened during these moments of pretend-sleep, as his mind made jumbled up nonsensical connections. Most of them were useless, but his mind was still awake enough to latch on to the good stuff.

Those boots of the Dunewalker. It’s meant to make walking across dunes less exausing, but it said ‘unsteady’ terrain takes less energy to traverse.

Does fear count as unsteady terrain? It’s slide-y and squishy, so I would bet ‘yes’.

Will had, in a moment of pure concentration managed to traverse a bridge of ‘fear’ that he had created by aligning his own fear with Kincaid’s so perfectly that they had merged.

It had been the most mentally convoluted, taxing form of teleportation that Will had ever heard of, and he’d been drained afterwards, despite it not taking any Charge.

It was also limited to fear, specifically fear he was capable of connecting to, which probably meant humanoid fear.

All the other humans on this Floor wanted to kill Will, so teleporting straight to them might not be the best idea unless all his other options were much worse.

The effect scales with Resistance. Right now my resistance is pretty damn high.

Does that mean the effort required to travel through fear would be drastically lowered? That’s a thought.

As Will was allowing his mind to wander, he felt a ripple in the miasma around them.

“Crap.” Will muttered, shooting to his feet as the rest of his Party glanced up in confusion.

Phantom Eye.

28 Charges remaining

POOF!

In an explosion of raven feathers, Caddock appeared in the center of their camp, bearing an ivory spear with a white banner attach to it, borne low, tilting towards the ground.

Will bounced the earth under his feet, leaping forward, whipping his hammer towards the enormous Paladin’s thick steel helmet.

Caddock raised the white flag with a surge of Charge just as Mason’s reflexive Conflagration spattering off of him like so much water. June’s snakes shot forward and buried themselves in the paladin’s armor, but it didn’t stop him from raising the flag perfectly straight.

Will screeched to a halt, his body betraying him mere inches away from landing a hit. He urged himself to swing, to stomp a spike of earth at the man’s shins or even go for a bite, but none of the thoughts became action, as if the signals were simply intercepted.

“You like it?” Caddock asked, the dark eyeslits in the paladin’s helmet turning towards him. “I stole this from the church on the way up. It’s called The Ivory Armistice.”

Will scanned the rest of his Party and realized that none of them were attacking anymore. One of Loth’s Bullet Wasps was angrily hovering a few feet away from the wounded Paladin.

They couldn’t attack anymore. Not until Caddock broke the truce imposed by the Relic in his hands.

Poof.

Poof.

Poof.

More of Caddock’s men appeared in explosions of feathers as Orev Harti teleported them in, taking advantage of the magically enforced ceasefire to surround them.

“William Oh.” The Paladon said, his helmet glowing where Mason’s attack had nearly melted the edges, blood dribbling from the punctures in his armor.

The metal-clad finger pointed at Will.

“You asked me to choose a meeting place for us to ‘negotiate’. "

"I choose here. And I choose now.”

As the paladin spoke, their little campsite filled with nearly a dozen Climbers, starting from the center and moving outward.

A scream of pain sounded as a man appeared inside Loth’s trapline, and the raven-feathered teleportations suddenly stopped. They’d found the end of the camp’s safe zone.

The paladin’s gaze weighed down on him for a moment before the helmet tilted slightly.

“Wait, have you been blind this whole time?”