Chapter 338: Sharp leaves

With the stated goal of getting everyone with a Class up to level 75, bare minimum, they spent two months making that happen.

They took off their Abbys to reset the bugs tolerance levels, and got to work.

At first, the going was slow, because even though monsters were flooding in, there were physical limits to the amount that could fit through any one bottleneck.

That and there were nearly five thousand citizens waiting for their turn to man a chokepoint, and not all of them had the Abilities that would allow them to slaughter the monsters.

Will had to lend the Coiled Dimensional Serpent Amulet, Hammer of God and the Wand of Burning Spirits to a few of the weaker ones, but once equipped with the manifested Relics, even the weakest Logistician was able to hold a single chokepoint for hours, making their level skyrocket…up to level 70.

After that, things slowed down drastically.

It seemed as though the amount of XP needed to the next level was increasing exponentially, while the difficulty and XP gain of the floors was increasing linearly…and the benefits of leveling were showing diminishing returns.

It was a tight squeeze built into the fabric of the world itself, and anybody who blindly followed that path would find themselves getting wrung out sooner than later.

What Will really wanted were the Ability upgrades for himself, his guards and farmers.

And since they were setting up the infrastructure to speed Climbers to level 75, why not include the masons, seamstresses, carpenters, candy-makers, etc.

No sense not getting the most out of something you’ve built.

Over time, they got more auto-slugger Relics, which sped up the process, and as time went by, they managed to expand the connected platforms to increase the speed of the monster-hunting.

In the early days, Will and Loth spent most of their time decoding the pedestal and turning it into something that could be operated by someone other than the two of them.

The 23^rd Floor was possibly one of the safest if a person could manipulate the pedestals.

They found a way to stick together a slowflake pattern of cleaned platforms all linked to a single pedestal, disabled the ability for other isohedrons to attach to the upper faces, made a setup to control each spoke of the snowflake individually and generally made the pedestal idiot proof.

Generally.

Stupidity is mostly weeded out by the 10^th Floor, but they’d imported thousands of people up to Floors far beyond their capability, so there were no guarantees.

But they tried their best.

Once Will and his Party hit level seventy-five, he turned more of his attention to setting up a waypoint.

They needed one farmer volunteer, along with at least a hundred more civilians who wanted to keep the place running while they were waiting for others to pass through.

It was a thankless, dangerous request, because the 23^rd Floor was so isolated from the 10^th Floor that the odds of making it back without the help of a Lord were…slim.

A young man who grew grains, trees and berries, one of the steakbug breeders, and several dozen craftsmen stepped up to create a waystation.

Will had great respect for their suicidal belief that he would come through for them. But even though Will didn’t expect to survive, there were other people who could benefit from a Waystation on the 23^rd Floor.

They imported a bit of soil from inside Mason, then reserved a handful of isolated platforms inside the snowflake for farming, creating massive amounts of wood from small amounts of soil and then chopping them up and decomposing them back down into soil, creating more soil from nothing but air and Charge.

A few weeks later, there was a genuine fortress in the center of the snowflake of linked-up isohedrons, enough to provide support for an entire Stronghold, should it eventually become one.

Will briefly considered going for level eighty, until he spotted a slowly unravelling hole in the dimensional fabric separating the Floors glowing like the sun in his Map, a dozen miles distant from Snowflake fortress.

Damn.

Will didn’t want to be hurried, but the Tower was unzipping, and it was chasing after them. maybe it would take years for those holes between Floors to present a problem, or maybe something nasty would slip through and kill everyone tomorrow.

Best not fuck around.

Once everything was sorted to his satisfaction, Will took everyone out on a separate platform in search of a Key Site, locating a floating island with one of the pyramids in its center, rather than a pedestal.

Unlike the creepy hospital, the monster infesting the Key Site was a variation of the dominant species of mindless monsters, so they had no compunctions about killing it and getting off this Floor.

Will glanced back at the waystation; a hundred people left behind on the off-chance that they would be able to help out in the future.

Best of luck, he thought, stepping through the Door.

Welcome to the 24^th Floor.

There is a Key Site in need of Clearing to your northwest, northeast, north, and east.

So…North? Will thought, putting that information into the back of his mind and reaching out with all his senses for any danger.

Just as he’d learned, he held his breath and squinted his eyes to prevent anything from being driven into them.

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The world looked like a jungle made from stone and glass. Stone trees jutted out of the ground with glass leaves scatting in every direction, forming a dense canopy above them.

Glass grass and bushes jutted out everywhere, leaving no space for anyone to step without shattering it. The sheer density reminded Will of the 7^th Floor jungle, albeit made of razor-sharp glass.

Merely walking through the Door had landed Will inside a large bush.

Will felt an ich on his hand and looked, mentally preparing himself for a giant stained-glass creepy-crawly.

It turned out to not be one of those. Instead, Will’s fingers were lacerated and bleeding from a half-dozen tiny cuts where it had brushed against the bushes.

The cuts had been so thin that he didn’t even notice it until his own movement disturbed the cuts.

What the Abyss is Resistance even doing? Will groused, turning his attention to the glass leaves.

Will was fascinated by the way the natural miasma in the leaves ran through the glass veins down into the edge of the leaf, narrowing down to a point beyond what he could see with his enhances senses.

At the very edge was a mirage-like ripple where the miasma from both sides of the leaf collided and ceased to exist.

Damn. That’s a sharp leaf.

“Don’t move!” Will commanded everyone as soon as they began dropping into the Floor thirty seconds after Will.

“The environment is extremely sharp. Don’t move if you can help it until we clear an open space to move around.”

“I have a leaf in my liver. It’s fine.” Sammohan said, carefully breaking off the branch embedded in his torso and drinking another potion.

Those are expensive, damnit.

“My feet were mangled, but I managed to find a clear spot and heal them.” Beth said.

“I’m a little fucked up.” Jorn said, his legs and ass perforated by dozens of spikes of grass where he’d fallen down. Thankfully he hadn’t fallen onto his back nor had he tried to struggle so the bleeding wasn’t bad and his vitals were safe.

“Okay, stay there.” Will said, turning his attention to Mason. “Mason, can those leaves reach your internal organs?”

“…No, they can’t.” Mason replied a moment later after passing his palm over a leaf.

“Can you back up Jorn? You’re the closest.”

“Which way?” Mason asked.

Will used Titan’s grasp through his Map to pick up a fallen stone twig and point towards Jorn.

Mason threw out a hand and flames shot forward, melting the surrounding stone and leaves, clearing a path for the pearlescent Nuker to walk.

“Walking on melted glass doesn’t damage anything?” Will asked.

“Would a patch of white-hot glass the size of two feet substantially affect the heat of a city?” Mason replied, continuing to carve his way through the razor-jungle.

I guess not, Will thought with a shrug.

“You still alive, Loth?” Will asked, as he began to head towards Beth.

Loth was crouched very still, surrounded by a thicket of razorblades.

“Of course.” Loth responded. “lost a bit of horn, an eye, and a couple fingers, but this foliage is fascinating. The miasma in the air seems to have a latent effect. I’m not sure what the effect is, but I’d bet my other eye that it’s bad news when combined with the environment.”

“No bet.” Will said. “I’ll use one of my regrowing potions on you when we meet up, so try to stay calm.”

“You like my eyes that much?” Loth asked, obviously not too injured to flirt.

“Hah! They are pretty, I’ll admit it.” Will said as he forged through the lacerating jungle.

The branches full of magically sharp glass leaves bowed out of the way as Will passed through, and he took a moment to kiss his Ring of Traversal, which was responsible for most of his ease-of-movement.

Environmental resistance to movement across all terrains lowered. Scales with Resistance.

Will had a LOT of Resistance, so the effect was pronounced. Typically he used the ring to increase his supersonic speed by decreasing drag, but in this instance, it warped branches away from him so they didn’t slow him down.

Without the Relic, Will would’ve had to manually carve his path through the bushes like Mason, and likely would’ve had more severe injuries, like the others.

Instead, thanks to Aspect of the Immortal Serpent and the Ring of Traversal, Will was able to walk through this nasty environment at a leisurely pace, heading straight for where Beth had taken shelter in the roots of one of the petrified trees.

“Beth, there’s a half-dozen little monsters weaving through the leaves, and they’re heading towards you.” Will said, watching the creatures roughly the size and shape of a weasel head towards the priestess.

“Got it.

Crack, crack, crack, crack!

A moment later, Will caught the sound of anchorite breaking the sound barrier. The weasels disappeared from his map, and Will turned his attention to the others.

Loth had fended off a few of them herself, Sammohan seemed to be safe, and Jorn was moments away from being rescued by Mason.

A minute later, Will arrived at Beth’s location.

The young priestess was sitting up against the tree with her feet splayed out in front of her, her auto-slugger set up and scanning the surrounding foliage while she cleaned the blood out of her boots.

Over the course of the months that they had been creating the waystation, they had easily found enough Relics for Will to Sourdough some sluggers together, and the one Beth was currently using was a nasty piece of work that brought her combat potential more in-line with the current Floor.

Still, her defense against environmental damage wasn’t as robust as Will’s.

How am I supposed to get her out of here without…

Will’s gaze dropped down to the amulet around his neck.

Amulet of the Homeland Advantage

+8 Strength

+8 Resistance

+8 Kinesthetics

+8 Acuity

+8 Focus

Active: 1 Charge.

Load a terrain into the Amulet for a charge, summon that terrain around the wearer for another. This does not consume the terrain. Up to three terrains may be loaded into the amulet.

Area scales with Resistance

+40% area of Abilities.

Terrains:

2^nd Floor: Ice field

9^th Floor: Fae Wild

…Why didn’t I use this on the sandstorm Floor? Will scowled. It’d been too long since he needed it and lack of practice had made him default to other Abilities first.

1022 -> 1020 Charges remaining.

A wave of miasma erupted from the amulet in a wave. In a blink, the surrounding trees became living, non-murderous trees, the grass became nonlethal, and the air filled with the special Debt-miasma of the 9^th Floor.

“Be careful with your words.” Will said aloud to Beth while his focus was elsewhere. “There’s Debt here now.”

I like this terrain for the third slot. It was some of the most aggressive terrain he’d come across, and he could easily imagine using it to turn someone into hamburger…so Will loaded it as the third type.

24^th Floor: Razor Jungle

“Sammohan’s that way.” Will said, pointing. “Let’s go pick him up an-“

Will’s speech was interrupted as Beth rose to her feet, dusted herself off and took a single step forward, surging forward at outrageous speed before her foot tangled on a root and sent her tumbling forward.

“What…was that?” Will asked, catching up with Beth a moment later.

“Will, are you still listening?” Loth’s voice echoed through his map, her speech slightly off, as if her lips were numb and she were speaking very carefully.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I figured out what the environmental effect is.” Loth said.

“Shoot.”

“Every time you kill a monster, it gives you a buff to your speed and a debuff to your effective kinesthetics and Acuity.”

“I see.” Will said, his gaze landing on Beth, who was levering herself to her feet with a confused expression.

If Will hadn’t changed the terrain, she would’ve been minced just then.

“The reason I bring this up,” Loth continued, “-is because I killed a lot of monsters and tried to take a step. I can’t see or feel anything. I’m still able to speak so I’m definitely still alive, but I have no idea what’s happening to my body right now and would appreciate assistance.”

“But if you can’t hear, then how-“

“Will, are you listening? I’m repeating this in case you didn’t hear the first one.”

“Shit!” Will picked up Beth and started running.