NOVPUBWill was still shaking off the fog of sleep as his body shot to its feet.
Three big blinks and Will was back, orienting on the sound of combat.
It wasn’t coming from the brush-cutting vanguard, but the rear.
Something smart enough to attack from behind, but dumb enough to think they could get away with it.
Climbers? Will thought, spinning and juking around his bedding atop the wagon, leaping off the wagon and sprinting through the air, creating a staircase upwards to give himself height.
Two Ria were faced off against six men with ragged armor, warding them off with claws while a third Ria took the opportunity to split into more reinforcements, forming a wall of flesh between the attackers and the civilians.
The parties guarding the sides of the caravan were then attacked in the moment of distraction as they turned to look at the sound.
BOOM!
Nukers joined the fray as an explosion caught half of one of Will’s combat Parties. Their amor diminished the damage, but they retreated behind a wagon to heal rather than suffer another blast, leaving that side of the camp uncontested.
A flood of Climbers emerged from the woods, aiming for the wagons and the civilians therein.
Mason jumped up on top of a wagon wielding his Staff of the Warmage, and in a flash of superheated air, the flood of climbers driving towards them was dispersed.
Something’s wrong. Will realized, running through his Memory Key.
That wasn’t it. The assault continued unabated, with none of the typical smearing of broken mind-control. Whatever was happening was really happening.
Will saw a mote of flame rise in the shadow of the jungle and send his middle snake to slap it out of the Nuker’s hand.
The resulting flash of light highlighted three more Nukers and at least a dozen more Climbers of various Classes charging stoically forward through the shadowed underbrush, completely heedless of the fact that there was a Tangled replicating in the center of the camp, and that their bretheren had been slapped down by a powerful Nuker.
That would give most people pause.
Matter of fact…Are they the same people, too?
Will took a close look and sure enough, some of the Climbers charging suicidally in shared faces with others.
Tangled?
Then Will spotted it.
One of the attacking Climbers was skewered by the party that had taken shelter behind the wagon. Once Mason had told them it was clear, they charged forward, slamming into the approaching enemies with the force of an avalanche, impaling them on their weapons.
The mortally wounded Climber unraveled into pale, glittering dust and Miasma.
“The Abyss are they?” Will muttered. They were obviously the creation of some Ability or other, but-
BOOM!
Will’s caravan of thought was hijacked for an instant as the opposing Nukers got a shot through, and Mason countered with the opposite element, creating an explosion of superheated steam about halfway between the two.
But they’re using Abilities.
Aside from Tangled, Will had never seen a summoned creature using Abilities of a Climber. Tangled could do it because they were flesh-and-blood, and they only had the one Ability.
Will heard a shriek from the vanguard as Alicia scrambled backwards, Reggie guarding her retreat with his tower shield against multiple Abilities the bounced off of it in rapid succession.
“..can’t see them!” Will faintly made out her voice in the midst of the battle.
So they’re definitely not real. Is there a real one? A summoner?
Will dashed over to where Alicia was backing away from the fighting, her expression haunted as the people around her fought invisible enemies.
“Alicia!” Will said as he landed beside her.
“Y-Yes!” She replied, forgetting her shy whisper in the midst of combat.
“Can you scan the surrounding and pick out a summoner?” Will asked.
She glanced up at him and nodded.
“Try not to die Reggie!” Will shouted, looping a snake around Alicia and flying her over to the vantage point atop the central wagon, where Mason was unleashing blast after blast to cover their ground-based guards.
“The Abyss do you think I am!?” the Tank’s voice faded with distance as he shoved three of the attackers back with a feral roar, opening space for the rest of the vanguard to step forward and impale the attackers.
“Tell me what you see!” Will said to Alicia, gesturing to the surrounding chaos.
Alicia could see through the fake Climbers, through the woods, through the smoke and explosions rocking the entire camp.
She wobbled in place for a second, adjusting to the sudden acceleration and finding herself in a different place. Once she got her bearings, Alicia did a quick spin, her eyes wide and glowing brilliant blue.
“No summoner. There are three civilians being dragged through the forest. That way.” She said, pointing to the rear-right of the caravan.
Will was running before she finished the word ‘that’.
He sped past Ria and tapped the Tangled on the shoulder as he passed. “Push this way!” he shouted to her, dozens of feet ahead before he finished his sentence.
Will dove through the line of expressionless Climbers attacking them, his footsteps sending out rings of churning earth higher than a man that scattered the dolls aside, clearing the way for Ria to fill the gap with more of herself.
Will caught up to the kidnapped settlers in a heartbeat, driving his tomahawk through one illusion before throwing it at a second. Will’s phantom snake yanked the blade out of the man’s dissolving skull and buried it in another, freeing the third civilian.
Will glanced down, his skin going cold as he recognized one of Eolande’s sisters, a horrifying puncture wound in the center of her chest, clearly lethal. Eyes staring.
It’s only been a handful of seconds, Will thought, kneeling down. The body didn’t just instantly shut down.
“Get the others!” He said as several Ria rushed past him, tossing her some spare healing potions.
Sourdough.
82 Charges remaining.
Will dumped half the greater healing potion into her mouth, the rest on the puncture wound.
The staring eyes blinked and a wretched gasp of air filled the air as the girl came back to consciousness, clawing at her still-healing chest.
“Get her to the healers,” Will said, keeping her hands away from the wound long enough for Ria to pick her up and sprint back to the caravan with the young girl, along with another two kidnappees. One of which was a mangled corpse, not breathing like the other two.
Who is…was that?
Think about it later.
Will stood up and looked in the direction the summoned Climbers had been dragging their victims. The summoner didn’t seem to care if they were alive or dead. Wore valuable relics or not.
It’s not Mark Wyrd, or any Climber for that matter. People have value to people. Relics too. If a Lord’s men or any other human Climber were attacking, they would conduct a raid in a businesslike way. Attack the strongest member of the caravan for a minute or two, offer a deal if they won, rob us, take a few slaves.
Even if they accidentally killed some civilians they would just leave them where they died to loot on the way out.
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These things just wanted the bodies. The meat.
This was not human.
With that in mind…Will glanced up in the direction the civilians had been being dragged.
Is this thing clever enough to drag its food to it in a roundabout way? I doubt it. I’ll bet it drew a straight line.
“Ware to the rear!” Mason’s voice cut through the jungle, prompting Will to look over his shoulder, spotting a rush of bodies as the summoned Eidolons redirected their aggression away from the tight lines that were defending the caravan, to rush towards where Will and Ria had made a seemingly weak protrusion in their formation.
…Or is it a knee-jerk reaction because I figured them out? Will thought, glancing into the dark jungle, following the imaginary line.
Will broke into a sprint forward, and the summoned Climber’s faces showed emotion for the first time since they’d begun the assault, their lips peeling back in feral snarls as they charged after him, only to meet Ria’s claws as she literally bloomed outward in every direction.
Ria was living up to both her ideal of heroism, and her Class’s reputation as a monster, flooding the battlefield with some three hundred of the statuesque, nigh-indestructable young woman, each of whom used phantom claws from the Relic Jean was wearing to great effect, protecting the innocent and helpless with savage ferocity.
Seeing the person she’d used to be in each of them. Seeing Frederick Wyrd in every face she tore off.
And I thought Bee had anger issues. Ria had purpose. A terrible will to right wrongs that could no longer be righted. And that could eat away at someone.
I should probably talk to her after this, Will thought, glancing behind him.
The illusory humans began to blink out of existence behind him, even ones that hadn’t been torn apart by Ria’s claws.
They’re repositioning.
Will dropped into a slide, the air above him turning into a skin-melting furnace as a Nuker tried to get the drop on him.
Will kicked the ground, sending up wave of earth that crushed the offending eidolon against a tree before throwing his axe at the most distant summon, burying it in his chest.
Will caught the closest summon’s sword-arm and drove his own weapon through his face while a phantom snake bit deep into the neck of one trying to strike him from behind, yanking it backwards just enough to cause its swing to go wide while Psychic Venom tried to find a hold on the non-living creature.
Another of his phantom snakes grabbed Will’s axe and began laying into the enemies on the sides, creating a straight pathway of unwounded summons charging toward him, with a cluster ahead, seemingly climbing out of the ground to assault him.
Will whipped his foot forward, creating a ripple of earth with a leading edge at knee-height, with a crest that pushed and a trough that pulled.
It was designed to break legs.
There was an echoing of broken legs, that sounded something like a smattering of applause. A handful of the nimbler-looking summons jumped over the earth wave while the others dissolved into moonlight and miasma.
Will’s axe hissed through the air and buried itself into the back of a head while Will threw his dagger at the other.
One of his phantom snakes stopped the nimble summon’s reflexive block, holding its arm out of the way, allowing the shiny stone dagger to sink into the eidolon’s hollow flesh, then the snake grabbing the dagger with its tail and slashing the final blocker.
The eidolons that were climbing out of the ground…were emerging beside a patch of white flowers with a wilted look.
Will made the ground churn violently with a single stomp, causing the pale flower’s roots to be torn asunder…and the surrounding enemies dissolved into pale motes of light and Miasma.
You are now a level 31 Resourceful Climber!
Will scanned the surroundings.
The sound of battle had cut off as quickly as it had come. There were a handful of moans of pain, but even those were fading as the priestesses of Holdna emerged from the wagons to heal.
All Will could hear was hushed conversation as people anxiously waited for the other shoe to drop.
Will knelt to examine the plant.
It was pale, completely devoid of the green color he’d come to associate with plants. The petals of the flower started white near the base and turned clear by the end, giving a sense of ghostliness.
Will caught a glimmer of something shiny in the earth near its base and poked it with the tip of his axe. It was a piece of metal buried in the earth.
Frowning, Will pried on it and unburied a Relic, in the form of a golden circlet…along with the skull it’d been attached to.
The pale flower’s equally pale roots worked their way down into the skull, where the monster had devoured everything inside.
And this is a monster…Will thought.
He understood it’s intentions with the bodies now: Seedbeds for the next generation of flowers.
Will glanced up and spotted at least a dozen of the uprooted plants, each of which was perched atop a conspicuous lump that no doubt belonged to something that was once alive.
These things must spread like a sickness, Will thought. One would find purchase on a dead creature, then create an eidolon of that creature. That creature would go out and kill another creature, drag it back and feed the growth of more flowers.
As the flowers grew in strength and number, they could take tougher prey. Eventually they might snag a Party of Climbers.
Maybe they were weak from another battle, maybe they just weren’t that good, maybe other Climbers robbed them and left them for dead. However it happened, the flowers now had access to Abilities and more advanced tactics, which would allow them to take even bigger targets.
Like a caravan cutting through the jungle.
A plant that summons eidolons, huh?
Will checked his potential Upgrades for Phantom Hand, the upgrade from the flower at the top of the list.
Wraith Vessel upgrade for Phantom Hand:
Adds a toggleable ability to create a physical manifestation* of any item inside the Phantom Hand’s Dimensional Storage.
-14 Focus: Phantom Hand creates a physical manifestation* of a stored item.
* The physical manifestation has mass similar to the original item, but does not undergo chemical reactions, nor can it have magical effects or be consumed. It appears in the phantom Hand’s space with the Phantom Hand’s speed in an orientation decided by the user. It counts as an Eidolon. Its durability is a certain fraction of the original’s, scaling with Acuity, and if it is substantially deformed or broken into pieces, it will expire, returning the Focus investment.
The item may be dismissed at will.
Will frowned.
Could that fraction be…more than 100%?
No, this is pretty good, even if I can’t raise the durability above 100%.
Will’s trick with shooting cannonballs at people always required that he then spend a Charge to recover it, which wasn’t always possible. With a toggleable ability, he could give up 14 Focus for a fraction of a second, then dismiss the projectile once it had done its job. Basically free. Giving up that much Charge regen for that amount of time was effectively nothing.
The cost was effectively 2 Charge per day, but divide that by the number of seconds in a day…yeah, basically nothing.
It did make him more mentally vulnerable for a fraction of a second, though. Or however long he had an item out. That was Will’s choice to make and could be mitigated by simply not using the Ability when he was in danger of a mental whammy.
It would be stupid to have six items summoned constantly, but one at a time for a couple fractions of a second wasn’t such a big risk…
Will could tell he was waffling.
Hmm…no magical effects.
That was a sticking point for Will. If he could grab a single Relic and start shooting people with fully functional Relics rather than cannonballs, he would dive in with both feet. He needed some kind of upgrade to the cannonball trick as more tanks and Nukers in the higher Floors could splash them off their defenses.
The problem with just using real Relics as ammunition was that they were expensive and Will didn’t want to just throw Relics at people and expect them to give them back. If they were anything like some of the Climbers he fought, they might just snatch control of the Relic away and use it against him.
The ability to dismiss it was a solid positive.
If it allows over 100% durability, then I would take it, but it doesn’t specify.
If it allowed magical effects, I would take it…but it doesn’t.
Psychic Venom on my projectiles because they count as Eidolons is nice, but if the other two things are a ‘no’, then how useful would it be in the long run?
Will knelt beside the plant for a quiet minute, thinking.
The deciding factor was Will’s experience fighting the Wraith Vessel’s summons.
Will had seen them use Abilities. That strongly suggested to Will that he could find a Sacrifice that would erase the ‘no magical effects’ clause in the ability’s details. The original plant could make it’s summons use magic, after all.
Wil suspected that limitation was a cap created by the System to prevent too much power in a single Upgrade. Another might very well bust through it.
Even if the gamble came out against Will, he could invest in nonmagical ammunition with more penetrating power than a cannonball, and that could keep him going another ten Floors at least.
Will held the ghostly plant up to The Tower.
Do you wish to Sacrifice Wraith Vessel to Phantom Hand?
Yes.
There was a flash of light as the Tower took the Sacrifice out of his hand, and Will’s snakes shuddered as the Ability was rewritten.
Phantom Hand has been upgraded. Review the description for changes.
Phantom Hand****
Passive
Active: 1 charge.
Toggle: 14 Focus
Gain the use of an ethereal Phantom Hand. Access a tiny amount of dimensional storage with a Charge. Items inside the Dimensional Storage shrink, scaling with Acuity.
Create a physical manifestation* of a stored item for the Toggle cost.
Sacrifice a stored Relic to apply its effect to one of five slots. Only one slot can be active at a time. Switching to another slot causes the previous one to be inactive for 24 hours, and overwriting a slot causes the slot to be inactive for a week.
Easy way to test this out, Will thought.
Will stored a twig inside Dimensional Storage, then triggered the toggle, copying it before bringing out the original, bending the two between his fingers.
The copy was harder to bend.
I do have a lot of Acuity.
“You’re giving a real evil chuckle, you know?” Loth said, peering over his shoulder.
“The copy is stronger,” Will said, showing her the two twigs.
Loth glanced at the identical twigs in his hand, then down to the pale flowers, then back up at him, scaly brow raised. He could tell she was putting everything together from that one statement, which was why it was so much easier to talk to her sometimes.
A moment later, a sharp-toothed grin accompanied a raspy chuckle as Loth bent down to inspect one of the flowers, rubbing her chin.
“I’m jealous. I don’t have enough Upgrades left in Master of the Vivarium to accommodate this Sacrifice without disrupting my Build plan.” She said, rolling the pale white flower over between pitch black talons.
Will thought back to the Sacrifice rarity pyramid he’d seen displayed to him in the merchant’s shop.
Uru Drake Sacrifices were considered S rank, with nine upgrade slots on a primary spawned from them. When he performed the Qualitative upgrade to Aspect of the Goat, its limit had increased from two to six.
This was not normal for most people.
Most people had to deal with a cap between two and four upgrades on their Primary Abilities, owing to the more common C and B-tier Sacrifices.
Loth would eventually just…no longer be able to keep up.
“What’s your Build looking like nowadays anyway?” Will asked.
He could see the number of times an Ability was upgraded in his Party member list, but he couldn’t open the description of their Abilities, only see the number of upgrades, indicated by the * symbol beside the Ability.
She’d upgraded Master of the Vivarium five times already.
At Will’s question, Loth simply glanced up at him and winked.
