Chapter 336: Rendezvous

With a growl, Will turned his attention away from the group as a whole and narrowed it down to just Sammohan and the monsters lunging in towards the heart beating above him.

Will mentally slammed a ripple through the terrain around Sammohan as the monsters leapt forward, catching them in the chest and shoving them back, tumbling and flailing with razor-sharp limbs as they righted themselves.

Damn.

The biggest weakness of Aspect of the Immortal Serpent’s ability to control the terrain was that it was not a designated ‘offensive’ Ability, which meant its damage scaling was garbage.

The terrain got harder as Will’s Ability to compress it got stronger, but by this Floor, simple ‘hardness’ was no longer enough to penetrate creature’s defenses, who had inborn magic that could nullify impact, weaken the ‘concept’ of damage, and other insanities.

Just hitting them with a spike of compressed earth no longer cut it.

Still enough to buy time, though.

Titan’s Grasp was strictly a non-offensive Ability with zero damage scaling,but he was able to shove, trip, and drag them around a little bit, keeping the monsters tangled up with each other, buying precious seconds as Jorn’s summons cut through the island full of monsters separating the two platforms.

“Sonofabitch,” Sammohan muttered, reaching into his satchel with a shaking hand and downing a potion.

“You gonna live?” Will asked.

“You reckon this stuff is worth anything?” Sammohan mused, studying the strange glowing material beneath his hands.

Well, he’s still greedy, so he’s probably gonna make it.

Will could tell as the splotch of fear-of-death began to recede back into Sammohan.

Will might’ve been able to teleport directly to him, but he wasn’t confident that he could’ve quickly and accurately teleported to Sammohan specifically. Fear of death was pretty generic. Everyone currently fighting for their life had some to some extent, and while the shades of fear were slightly different on his map, they were close enough to cause some confusion.

Instead of trying to teleport and possibly wasting his time showing up next to Beth or Jorn, Will had decided to simply buy time for Jorn’s summons to arrive.

Over the course of several tense minutes, Will shoved the flood of monsters back over and over until Jorn’s minions managed to cut through and surround Sammohan.

That gave Will a moment to breathe and turn his attention back to the rest of the Party.

The current situation: Not great, but not terrible.

Mason had deployed guards from Will’s Stronghold, who were holding the line with their liquid metal Abilities as the islands around them continued to attach, growing the platforms around them in an almost snowflake pattern.

Mason’s island was rapidly becoming too big to move, so Will had to change his expectations and instead nudge his own platform closer and attempt to build a bridge between them using the modest telekinetic power of Titan’s Grasp.

Jorn was doing fine, but his attention was split so many ways that Will didn’t think he could handle much more before he started making mistakes, and one mistake would be deadly.

Loth’s defenses were being hammered, but she was turned away from the stream of monsters being thrashed by traps and consumed by giant insects, instead dedicating all of her focus to the pedestal with the heart atop it.

Beth was being supported by three of Will’s fae and a handful of butlers. Since Will had the Wand of Burning Spirits slotted, each of them had a potent corrosive fire aura that weakened and charred the monster’s flesh along with their passive miasmatic defenses, making them easy pickings for Beth’s slugger by the time they closed in.

Will turned his full attention to Loth, whose island had been drifting away from the others. He’d prioritized rescuing those he considered helpless.

Their islands were beginning to become too large for Will to move with Titan’s grasp, too overladen with other platforms spilling out floods of monsters. The way they were locked together was strong, and Will didn’t feel he could tear them apart without risking a magical backlash of some kind.

The solution was simple enough:

Build a bridge between islands using the free-floating monster-filled platforms.

First let’s nudge Loth’s island back my direction, then build a bridge between Beth and Jorn.

Just that one bridge linked Will->Beth->Jorn->Sammohan, creating a massive floating cluster, leaving only Loth and Mason unaccounted for.

Loth, I’m sending you towards Mason.” Will said, preparing to nudge her that direction.

“No need. I’ve almost got it.” Loth said. “The trap in the pedestal is designed to reset when we die, I’m trying to find a way to trick it into thinking I’m dead by muffling the signal between it and my Class.

Muffle a signal? I’ve studied that.

Will turned his attention back to the pedestal and took a close look at the guts of the machine. He could see the miasmatic structures, but trying to follow all the strands to find the one in question would take him several minutes, Loth was far ahead of him in that respect, as she had dedicated her entire focus to untangling the spell.

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“Can you show me where the life detection resides?” Will asked, bringing Loth and her pedestal up on his map and expanding it in his mind until they were both triple size.

A stiff thread of miasma extended from Loth’s black claw, piercing the pedestal and weaving around the densely packed miasma to land on a particular strand, more complex than the detection portion in his Magic Missile, but carrying several similarities that he was able to notice now that he had it pointed out to him.

Let’s try this.

Will found the matching part in the spaghetti of miasma in his own pedestal and used Titan’s grasp to create the anti-traceback sleeve that he’d learned from the Choker of the Stolen Voice.

A switch flipped in the internal structure of the pedestal and the giant heart on Will’s pedestal stopped beating and faded to nothing as the miasma unraveled.

“Loth, use-“

Boom!

The sound of thunder echoed through the isohedron of twisted space as the connection between Will’s platform and the nearby island was cut off, causing Will’s inner ear to pop as the air pressure shifted.

The monsters that had been rushing forward to destroy the damage-linked heart eidolon on top of the pedestal were milling around in confusion, unsure of what to do now that their life’s purpose had seemingly been fulfilled.

This made them easy prey for Will’s summons, who began pushing them back to the edge of the platform, pinning them against the immoveable wall of twisted spacetime.

It’s resetting, Will thought. It made sense that the platforms had the ability to reset, otherwise they would’ve already been clustered together when he arrived.

Definitely man-made, though, Will thought, wondering if he’d come across any complaints from himself, his skin going cold at the sudden realization that an earlier version of himself was the most likely suspect.

Am I gonna have to slap myself? Will wondered before turning his attention back to Loth.

“There’s a form of sheathing for miasmatic Structures that nullifies the miasma and prevents it from being read by the System. Here’s the building block.” Will said before using Titan’s Grasp to take a pencil and paper out of Loth’s gear and draw the basic piece of the sheath and the finished form, which looked a bit like a knitted sock.

“Got it.” Loth said.

“As soon as you finish it, your island will detach from the others, so be aware,” Will said.

Loth nodded and finished the sheathing, disabling the life-detector.

The pedestal, not sensing any life in the area, went dormant. Immediately, the triangular gate between the isohedrons snapped shut and the other platforms began floating free.

“Will, this is getting a little hairy over here!” Mason said, bringing Will’s attention back to him.

A platform had attached to one of the faces above them and now monsters were pouring down towards them like a waterfall of razor-sharp talons and snarling teeth.

“Can you make it to them?” Will asked Loth.

“Now that I’m not chained here by the need to defend the pedestal, of course,” Loth replied, hefting her barrel with a quick exhale.

A moment later she hopped through a shimmering twist in spacetime and arrived beside Mason.

I envy that flexibility, Will mused as Loth arrived beside Mason and unleashed a wave of carnivorous insects that forced the waterfall of monsters back onto their platform.

“You there,” Will said through the map, poking one of the nameless butlers supporting the priestess of Holdna. They were now separated from Will’s platform because disabling the trap had also detached the platforms.

Thankfully he had butlers over there already.

“Yes, milord?”

“Be afraid of taxes.”

“Yes, milord. A most fearful thing.” The butler said before he began radiating the intense fear of spending all day crunching numbers only to find a single error that forced him to scrap the entire day and start again from the beginning.

One of his favorite things about the butlers was their higher brain function and collective experience drawn from a raw butler slurry that existed somewhere in the afterlife. They were as intelligent and decisive as an adult human, albeit weak for a summon.

Recently he’d discovered that they could feel fear and act as highly specific anchor points for his fear-jumping cantrip.

Will drew in his Phantom Hands then matched the butler’s fear of taxes within himself, creating a bridge connecting them before traversing it.

A moment later, Will and his Phantom Hands emerged out of thin air beside Beth.

“GAH!” Beth flinched as Will manifested out of thick, goopy fear.

Not that she can actually see that part. Still true, though.

“Get ready.”

“Ready for wha-AAAAAA!”

Will picked up Beth with the Phantom Hand and began sprinting through the air towards Jorn’s platform, leaving Will’s summons behind, where they closed ranks and defended her exposed heart.

Once they passed through the monster-infested platforms and landed inside Jorn’s safe-zone, Will set Beth down and turned his attention to her pedestal.

“Wait, what about my-“

A moment later, there was a distant echo of thunder as her platform went dormant and detached.

“Jorn, get ready.”

“Ready for –“

Will grabbed Jorn with his other Phantom Hand and sprinted through the air, flying above the reach of the wave of monsters.

The three of them shot through to Sammohan’s platform, with Will closing the door behind them, stranding both his own summons and a portion of Jorn’s.

When he arrived at the miner’s location, he set the two of them down and turned off the pedestal.

Boom.

The thunder of the pressure shifting in their massive isohedron echoed across the platform while the monsters turned aimless.

“Jorn, resummon and sweep the rest of the platform, I’m gonna move us over to back up Mason.

“On it.” Jorn nodded and summoned several groups of monsters, sending them crashing against the remains of the ones that had nearly killed Sammohan.

And we’re on our way, Will thought as their speed began to pick up in the direction he wanted.

“Sammohan, let me see your wounds.” Will said, turning his attention back to the massive miner. Ever since Jorn had taken transmutative damage on the 15^th Floor, he was deeply suspicious of any and all wounds, healed or not.

Sammohan shrugged and held out his arms, showing off the faint patches where the potion had sealed his wounds.

The recently healed wounds didn’t seem to have any foreign miasmatic structures in them, so Will gave him a thumbs-up and turned his attention back to Mason.

“We’re coming in from above.” Will said.

As soon as they got close to the platform attached above Mason’s, Will re-activated the pedestal.

An instant later, a beating heart manifested above the pedestal and the two isohedrons snapped together with a thunderous rumble.

Will threw Beth over his shoulder, snatched up Jorn and carried the three of them over the edge of the platform, flying straight down.

Will landed a handful of heartbeats later, disabling Sammohan’s pedestal along with Mason’s. In response, the cluster of platforms detached from each other and began to gradually drift away while the formerly bloodthirsty monsters began to mill around aimlessly.

A few minutes later, the entire Party was able to sit back and catch their breath.

“…This is a great place to level.” Loth said into the silence. “You think it was designed with us in mind?”

“…Probably.” Will admitted. “Doesn’t mean I like it.” Still wanna slap somebody. If Will and Loth didn’t have experience tinkering with magic, the whole party would’ve likely been trapped with unending, ever increasing waves of monsters until they died.

“Great place to level? Does that mean what I think that means?” Sammohan asked, his anemic face breaking into a grin.

“Yeah, we’re gonna stay here a few days.” Will said.

“Boys! Break out the pickaxes, we’re gonna see what these floors are made of!” Sammohan called towards Mason.

“Only on other platforms!” Will shouted after him.