“Hah. Hah,” The leader of the Hunt half-laughed, half-panted as he pointed his saber at Loth. He was looking pretty ragged after being battered around by traps for the last few minutes.

I wonder if that saber will be any good for my Build, Loth wondered idly as she absentmindedly maneuvered the fae closer to his demise.

Her insects were loving the environment, burrowing through the ground with lightning speed, dragging wires and blades through their tunnels to set up traps where none had existed heartbeats before.

“You…kobolds. You couldn’t have done this by yourself. You, bottom-feeding scum, have to rely on INSECTS to help you!”

He’s trying to spread the credit for fighting him across me and my insects? Ah, he’s going to try and seize control of them.

“My insects are carefully cultivated tools and the catalyst through which my Abilities are used.” Loth said, maintaining a neutral tone. “Do not ascribe them nonexistent traits, like the ability to ‘help’ me with anything.”

Now cap it with a statement that brings the balance back to neutral.

“I understand your frustration and forgive your frustrated words.”

“GAH!” the fae bellowed in frustration.

Loth was fairly certain that any of the other fae would’ve succumbed by now. Either the one in front of her was significantly stronger than the others, or the ivory badge on his chest was doing a lot of work behind the scenes.

I wonder if that will be any good for my build, Loth thought, eyeing the badge. She’d heard everything that Will had pried out of that minor fae. If that lord had a natural Ability that was able to buff minions, he might be an excellent capstone for her Master of the Vivarium skill…assuming she could get more upgrade slots after she got her class advancement.

As the battle progressed, Loth had noticed the ground itself had begun to react more sluggishly to her insects. Likely he’d found a way to exert a certain level of control over it.

Ever since she noticed, she had been leading him in a widening spiral pattern, trying to prevent herself from spending too much time on ground her opponent had claimed for himself.

The fae lunged forward aiming for a quick thrust with his saber.

Loth slid backwards, gliding across a newly created trap, which armed itself as she passed. The fae’s leading foot sank into the earth an instant before Blessed Steel spikes erupted out of the walls of the punji trap and perforated his leg.

“You shameless cheat!” The fae shouted, flailing wildly at Loth as he attempted to pry himself free.

“’Cheating’ only exists in the context of things that have rules. A battle to the death is outside the bounds of such conventions.” Loth said.

The fae’s eye twitched for an instant as he stared at Loth. A moment later, he tore his leg free of the punji trap.

I’m going to have to recollect all of those blades. They were expensive.

One of the problems with being reliant on traps was that the more powerful her prey became, the more expensive and voluminous the gear she would have to transport from Floor to floor. she had just recently upgraded from steel to Blessed steel for the pointy bits.

That somewhat limited the ‘freestyle’ nature of her trapmaking.

My webbing is getting stronger every floor, but stabby bits are a concern…If I could just take sharpened materials from the Floors I was on, that would cut down my expenses and carry weight significantly…

Note: Find a way to bake potency into Floor-native materials such that they will damage Floor-native fauna.

“Listen when I’m speaking!” The Fae shouted, swinging his saber down across Loth’s body in a vicious swing that should’ve bisected her from shoulder to hip.

Loth offloaded the damage to her soakers, who died by the dozens. As a result of their deaths, Loth’s entire array of insects gained a potent boost.

“I don’t owe an enemy my attention, so please, don’t interrupt when I’m thinking.” Loth shot back. Naturally she wouldn’t apologize, as that would cause a cascade of ‘bad stuff’, so instead, she added a weight of her own to the Floor’s scale, rebalancing the Debt in an instant as she maneuvered her insects for the next exchange.

Loth savored the fae’s sour expression as he realized that he would never outmaneuver her with words.

“How vexing. Very well…My Lord Kincaid has granted me his Favor. Some of the effects you have already felt. Some you are ABOUT TO!”

The Fae’s voice deepened as he began to swell, his skin distending as his body gained mass, lumpy, cancerous limbs erupting from his body.

Loth craned her neck to watch as the fae began towering over her.

“The lord of Flesh can turn Debt into raw muscle. Watch as I tap into his Ability and leverage every favor I am owed to increase my strength!”

Muscle? More like mass, Loth thought, eyeing the quickly expanding creature. Sure, a massive lump of flesh would probably hit harder and be tougher to kill, but that was about it.

“Seems kinda basic.” Loth replied, arms crossed. The only response from her opponent was a wordless howl. Then again, I can see why a Lord of the Fae wouldn’t trust his backstabbing minions with a more valuable Ability. I shouldn’t underestimate their leader just because this one’s kind of lame.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

As the creature gained size, Loth felt her insects underground subtly speed up as they encountered less resistance from the earth itself.

I wonder if he has no control over what Debt he collects in order to fuel this Ability, loth mused, rubbing her chin as she decided how to handle this.

She had a couple seconds to think while the creature rapidly swelled.

Now that the ground is a little less restricted I could open up a pit trap and simply bury this thing, but it probably wouldn’t stay down.

Since he seems to be activating a trump card that relies entirely on dealing physical damage…

“No damage absorption Ability is infinite.” The mutated fae said, pointing down at her from it’s new height. “I will crush your petty traps and your petty body until it sticks.”

“You’re right. It’s not infinite,” Loth said, arms crossed, bringing her modified Cuirass to the forefront of her mind.

Cuirass of the Blood Lord

+10 Resistance

+3 kinesthetics

+1 Acuity

+14 Focus

Damage done to you is done to your minions first. Scales with Focus.

Whenever you kill a minion, all allies gain a boost to Strength, Resistance, Kinesthetics, Movement Speed, and Damage for the duration of combat or until an hour passes.

Yeah, that’ll work.

The Fae brought down a massive fist that should’ve caved in her skull and crushed her spine.

Another several dozen damage soakers died, while the rest got stronger.

The monstrosity bellowed with rage and unleashed a flurry of blows, each absorbed by her Cuirass and redirected to her bugs. Each attack killed less and less of her minions as all of them rapidly got stronger.

Assuming all those attacks are doing roughly the same amount of damage…I can graph the speed at which my insects are gaining additional toughness.

As the massive fists continue to rain down on her, their force absorbed by her tough beetles, Loth hastily recorded how many of them died with each strike, eager to collect data.

Oh, this will be interesting.

117, 110, 107, 103, 100, 97, 95, 93, 91, 89, 88.

Seems like diminishing returns. I’ll have to figure out the formula based on these numbers but that can come later.

Once Loth had the data, she instructed her minions to peel the fae out of his flesh shell.

“…I’m going to skin you now.”

Thousands of beetles and wasps erupted from the surrounding forest.

The process of skinning the fae was interesting to watch. This was her insect’s first real test after being buffed by the Cuirass, and Loth had to say, they did not disappoint.

Each individual buff from a slain minion was almost nonexistent, but the sum total was staggering, allowing her bugs to individually apply force on par with that of an adult Climber.

And she had hundreds of thousands of them left.

A high-pitched shriek of pain warmed Loth’s heart as her insects nipped mutated arms, legs, and lumps of flesh, crawling underneath armored skin and peeling it away.

The thing I find most interesting though, is the word ‘damage’ on the Cuirass’s description. Typically increased Strength equates to increased damage, but the cuirass has separate clauses for each.

As Loth watched carefully, she noted that the bugs were nipping off limbs faster than they should, and she figured it out.

Ah, they’re increasing the depth of the wounds by a small margin. It effectively increases the size of their mandibles, rather than the strength they can bring to bear. That’s very helpful.

Once the fae was a skinless, limbless nugget, she approached.

“’lease.” The creature whispered, unable to beg quite as effectively without lips. “Ill e in ur et.” ‘I’ll be in your debt.’

“Shhh…” Loth hushed the dying creature.

“You have given us an excellent Hunt,” She said, snuffing the creature out. “But it was no less than our due.”

Loth glanced up and saw Ria watching her with wide eyes and a pale face.

“…What?”

***William Oh***

I hope the rest of the Caravan isn’t afraid of Loth, Will thought, holding the severed head aloft as he inspected it. Fae had longer tongues than people and when they were limp they tended to spool out of their mouths.

What will this give me?

Greater Fae upgrade for Aspect of the Immortal Serpent:

User can taste Debt in food. User can feel Debt more intuitively in the spoken word and actions.

Wouldn’t that only work on this Floor? Will wondered, switching to his other Primary.

Greater Fae upgrade for Phantom Hand:

Phantom Hand may store and release words and phrases spoken within earshot in Dimensional Storage. These words and phrases carry the weight of the speaker, and may be used to incur or resolve Debt.

Huh, Will mused for a moment. “Interesting, but not really what I was hoping for.” The badge Will had been interested in evaporated at the same moment that the huntmaster died, and this fellow’s Sacrifices mostly affected language-dependent effects.

It wasn’t something Will was interested in, but Will would bet that Jason could do something with with a Greater Fae sacrifice, especially with Withering Repudiation, given that the Ability was highly language-dependent.

Just not sure if I want to give it to him before he’s figured himself out.

Will was beginning to consider the danger of feeding potent Sacrifices to Jason’s Abilities willy-nilly. Didn’t matter how powerful the Abilities were if the kid using them was unreliable.

Maybe we should leave him in Akul…no, there’s too many Graneshians in Akul. And every Floor below, for that matter.

…My Stronghold could work?

Will wasn’t sure it was a good idea to get Jason his Advanced class before he’d even gotten all his Sacrifices and Abilities sorted out.

“Alas, poor Francisco.” Reese said, peering over Will’s shoulder at the severed head. “I knew him well.”

“Eh?” Will grunted, glancing back at the emaciated wanderer they’d picked up on the 6th Floor.

“Yeah, his face is a little messed up, but I remember him. He was like, only up to here the last time I came through here,” Reese said, motioning to his chest. “Looks like he grew a bit between now and then. Nice job killing him. Almost trophy size, that one.”

“Trophy size?”

“The Fae on this Floor remind me of Northern Pike. Evil, voracious bastards always looking for a chance to eat each other and grow. All the same even if they look a bit different. Spent a coil trapped on this Floor. Not fun.”

“Do you know where the Fae came from?” Will asked. He’d never come across intelligent monsters before. “Why they are…the way they are?”

“Sure, same place the undead from the floor below came from.” Reese replied. “At it’s height, Ketulkitnah spanned three Floors. This Floor was the first one they ever inhabited, and as they moved down between Coils, the highest Floor: this one: became a place where the aristocracy, the powerful men and women of society would gather together to wheel and deal.

That’s why this Floor is the way it is, Ketulkitnah high society modified the Floor to eliminate wasteful bureaucracy by making verbal agreements between power-players binding, so political and economic arrangements could be done at the speed of speech. No notaries, lawyers, no guardrails, just pure cunning against cunning. Needless to say, it didn’t turn out well for them.”

Will cocked his head. “I don’t see any of the huge buildings from the Eighth Floor.

“That’s because they’re an eyesore, and once you get to a certain point, real opulence is open land carefully designed to look like wilderness. But prettier.”

Reese spread his hands and twirled to indicate the ‘wilderness’.

“Huh.” Will grunted looking around the environment. The whole place did look…remarkably picturesque.

“Helpful rule of thumb to know if a Floor’s environment was engineered or not: have you seen any mosquitos?”

“…No.”

Reese shrugged. “There you go.” A moment later the emaciated immortal walked off.