The Legend of William Oh

Chapter 172: I Am The Bear

Jason SalazarAfter a long hunt, Will reached level 40 and took a break, sitting on the roof of the highest tower of Bakton Keep and observing the stunning beauty of the 9th Floor, keenly aware of how this immaculate garden Floor was rooted in the rot of a dying society.

Between the Harbinger Relic Seed, and Will’s Amulet of Homefield Advantage, Will had a significant edge that other people never had.

Will just had no understanding of the scope of the problem. Was he fighting a bear with a knife instead of barehanded? A significant advantage, but still dead meat.

He’d wanted to come back with his Advanced Class and have a much better chance of defeating the monster. That’s what he’d told everyone and what his plan hinged on, and now this

Will stroked his chin, itching a bit at the wiry hairs starting to replace peach fuzz.

All things considered: Will was willing to bet more likely.

Will paused.

His fight against Sammohan, and his lessons with Bakton flickered behind his eyes.

Will groaned, dropping his head into his hands.

He’d gone full circle in his plan to kill Kincaid and free his imprisoned Climbers, from enlisting the help of Bakton and the other fae lords, all the way back around to just doing it himself while everyone else watched.

Will pulled the 2nd generation Sourdough ring out of his pocket an turned it over between his fingers.

That was a .

But according to Loth, it was about…5% lower than it should’ve been if her math was right.

Which meant The Tower was probably taxing some of the potential in subsequent generations, and that tax would probably continue going up until it was unsustainable.

The Tower abhorred infinite combos.

That made Sourdough good, even if there was a limiting factor.

Will thought, storing the Ring in Phantom Hand.

The empty middle snake twitched as the Ring of resistance was imprinted on it, the sensation travelling up his phantom middle finger.

Once the sensation faded, Will turned his attention to the newly imprinted Relic.

Eyes wide, Will changed his slotted relic from the Dimensional Coiled Serpent to the ring of resistance and brought up his Status.

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Will mused, mentally adding up the Resistance column.

Will sat and thought about it for a moment.

That more than doubled the potency of Aspect of the Immortal Serpent, which hinged entirely on Resistance, as well as providing a significant boost to Sourdough.

And it made him hard to kill with conventional weaponry. Not that he wasn’t already, but with this ring slotted, he was practically molded out of Blessed Steel…

Will glanced up at the sky, where The Tower’s unnatural sun was dipping towards the horizon.

To test this, Will had one of his Phantom Snakes grab a bit of air, creating a platform, then he paced from the center to the edge of the effect.

Bigger than the main castle by a wide margin and nearly bigger than the entire keep.

Will had already been creating watchtower-sized columns while wearing his Set. Add this ring in…

Will took one of his Sacrifices out of his Dimensional Storage.

Will silently said goodbye to lifesteal on his Phantom Hand.

Will held still as shivers went through his body, long since used to the sensation of slotting in an Upgrade.

Will glanced through and spotted all the changes. The two at the bottom were easy enough, but it took him a moment to realize that ‘safe purchase’ had been replaced with ‘strong purchase’, owing to the increased potency of dimensional effects granted by the Sacrifice.

Will repeated his experiment from earlier and paced out four hundred and twenty paces to the edge of the effect.

Will wondered. With his set on, making lenses out of air was easy. He’d have to take the set off to really feel the difference.

Will made sure he didn’t have anything crucial in his snakes, and that nobody was actively trying to kill him, then stored the set, the five snakes rejoining into a single left hand.

Will held out his right hand and grasped the air, solidifying a hemisphere roughly thirty feet across.

Then he did like he’d practiced and compressed it down from the edges inward until it was twenty feet across.

It was easier than it had ever been while practicing with Ghoul, it was bigger. The warping effects of Aspect had been greatly enhanced.

Will tapped the hemisphere of solidified air with his toe. It felt solid. Sturdier than his air-constructs had ever been before.

Will wondered.

Ghoul had said when Will first broached the subject in Akul.

Will released the lens, then took a step off the side of the building, heart hammering.

He took that fateful step, and a sliver of the roof extended outward to meet his foot.

Will sighed and trudged out a good twelve feet, the roof tiles warping a mind-bending distance out to meet his feet until he reached the edge of his range.

Will took another step out into open air.

A platform of air appeared beneath his foot. It wobbled in place a bit as Will put his weight on it, and it felt like he was stepping on the back of something chewy, like that squid the travelling merchant had shared with him.

Or that puck of glue that Gertrude had forgotten about in the closet.

Will dropped a heel kick on the surface and it cracked beneath him, nearly dropping him into the streets below before he hastily re-solidified the platform.

But…he was one step closer.

Will thought.

A couple minutes later, Will stepped foot into Sammohan’s gambling hall, and noted a marked difference from the atmosphere it had been in only three weeks ago.

All the tables and gambling paraphernalia had been tossed aside, replaced with massive piles of mining equipment and supplies that dominated the center of the barn-like building.

Some of it looked professionally made, while others looked like it’d been slapped together at the last minute, or patched from various supplies.

One sifter had one side replaced with an arm-thick branch with the bark still on and couple of nails to hold the screen.

The thing that he found the most interesting was spotting Badur pacing through the building, his pen scribbling across his ledger at inhuman speeds as he surveyed the goods.

Out the back of the building, through an open door, Will could make out a few of his own carpenters and blacksmiths making even mining equipment, happy to have something to do.

Sammohan himself was huddled together with three other Climbers, discussing plans for ‘mining the ever-loving shit’ out of the mineral-rich desert wasteland of the 10th Floor around Will’s Stronghold, wherever he decided to place it.

All-told, everyone was busy, working away at their respective tasks with feverish energy that bordered on manic. Like men suddenly unburdened of a lifetime of frustration.

In any case, they didn’t seem to notice Will in their midst.

“Ahem,” Will cleared his throat.

The buzz of conversation faded away to nothing as the entire crew of bandits-turned-prospectors caught sight of him and collectively held their breath.

A foglike substance rolled off of the men and spilled across the floor. It didn’t have a color that Will could describe, more a feeling. A quickening of the heart. The sensation of danger and rapidly approaching loss.

Will bent down and tried to scoop some fear up, only for it to form slimy strands and pull itself out of his hand. It had a strange feel to it, like that same glue puck while it was being cooked down out of bone and hide by Gertrude.

Like all the other kids in the orphanage, Will had taken a turn stirring the damn stuff and Gertrude had added some white powder that made it gloopy, stringy, and damn difficult to stir.

This had a similar strange feel. Slippery, like ooze, but with a certain ropelike tensile strength, like it didn’t want to separate from the person giving it off.

Will put a foot on the fear closest to him, and one of the former bandits froze and gave a sharp inhale, his whole body shuddering, as though someone had just walked over his grave.

Will lifted his foot back up.

“Hey there, Mr. Oh,” Sammohan said nervously. “Whaddya need?”

“Already got it.” Will said, turning on his heel and heading for the door before he paused at the entrance.

Not communicating properly with people he would be working with could lead to problems further down the line.

He should be more open with them.

“I came to touch your fear.” Will called over his shoulder as he left. “It’s stringy. Not sure if that’s a health issue, or what. May wanna have that checked.”

“…He can’t lie, right?” Will heard Sammohan ask Badur before the door closed.