Kincaid was enjoying the way the expensive lamp oil blended with the smell of fear as he inspected his newest acquisition. The flickering light made the woman’s expression of terror gain a new delicious life with every shadow-shifting movement.

“Climbers are, by and large, hardy men with a high tolerance for suffering,” Kincaid mused, inspecting his tools. “…and that’s only become more true as Coils pass. Women and children hardly ever make it up here anymore, much to my disappointment.”

“You can entertain some veteran Climbers for years before they break. That’s good and bad,” Kincaid said, picking up a hooked blade. He wasn’t going to use it on anything today, but she didn’t know that.

“A dog likes worrying a nice tough stick of rawhide, but it provides little sustenance, and when it finally snaps, it’s…disappointing. Sometimes the dog needs a nice…fatty…duck.” Kincaid said, tracing the hooked blade up to the shivering human’s shoulder-strap.

KNOCK KNOCK!

“WHAT!?” Kincaid barked, turning towards the door, spotting his manservant, Argus, peeking through the gap.

“There’s a Climber at the gate, and-“

“So? We have visitors all the time looking for handouts. Roll the dice and deal with him accordingly.”

The fae’s eyes darted to the side, a sheen of sweat on his forehead as he cleared his throat and revealed a stack of paper as thick as a man’s thumb, and bound together by wire.

“He hasn’t said a word, except to give a card with his name and intentions and this:” Kincaid’s minion handed the stack of papers over.

Kincaid sighed and snatched the papers out of Argus’s hand, reading with rapidly growing interest. A chuckle became a full-throated laugh as he paged through the dense script. The entire document amounted to a wild gamble to see which of them would die first.

As a powerful being who effectively had an unlimited lifespan, this gamble was wildly imbalanced in his favor and the terms of their treatment seemed to address this disparity

It was riddled with carve-outs and exceptions to limit the actions that could be performed on them and by them, making them into thoroughly boring employees treated so gently that they might as well be guests.

It was a bland, resigned sort of losing bet. A husband’s noble sacrifice to join his wife and soften their stay in the Abyss.

He’d seen it thirty-seven times in his long life. The first three times it was impressive and he’d accepted simply to reward the man’s bravery. Nowadays it was a statistical anomaly. A tired trope.

Boring. I would never agree to this, except…

Poring through the document, Kincaid was able to infer that they had more family and this family was staying in Bakton Keep for the forseeable future.

Naturally they would do things for their family to ensure their comfort and safety.

With the right middlemen, it promised him a voice inside Bakton Keep: A rare treasure. An opportunity to kill or curtail his rivals.

A hook to catch much bigger fish.

“Let’s do this,” Kincaid said, tucking the contract under his arm as he strode across the brocade rug towards the door. “Bring her.”

***William Oh***

He’s ahead of me. I know it, Will seethed silently as he and Jason took a break on their hunting trip.

Homefield advantage.

134 Charge remaining.

The forest floor turned to ice and the air around him became frigid, echoing the ice-caves of the 2nd Floor.

“I promise I won’t pinch you.” Will said.

Jason frowned. “What, why would you say-“

Will couldn’t feel The Debt landing. It seemed as though Homefield Advantage shoved the modified miasma of the floor away from him, at least for a heartbeat.

Hmm…

Will pinched Jason.

“Ow!” Jason slapped Will’s hand away.

Again, Will felt nothing.

“I promise I won’t pinch you.” Will said.

Still nothing…is it constantly refreshing?

“Hey, you better not-OW!” Jason screamed and tried to run as Will pinched his shoulder again, his feet slipping out from under him on the mirror-smooth ice and collapsing to the ground.

The effect isn’t just pushing the Miasma of the 9th Floor out once, it’s constantly doing it. That made sense when Will thought about it. If Will moved, the area of the amulet moved with him. It could only do that if it was constantly refreshing itself.

With all the goings on with Bakton and Eolande, certain things had been left by the wayside. Grinding his levels and this particular test being two of the things he’d been meaning to catch up on.

This mid-grade, one-gold Relic is absolutely priceless on this Floor…I need more of them.

If Will could Sourdough more of them together, could he make it have a stronger effect, or simply more storage for terrain types?

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I wouldn’t mind storing the 9th Floor’s environment to abuse the Debt mechanic, but only after having multiple slots for terrain.

It was far more beneficial in his immediate future to be able to ignore the rules of the 9th Floor at will, than it would be to bring those rules with him elsewhere.

Will added more Amulets of Homefield Advantage to his mental shopping list for when he visited Akul again.

Worst-case scenario, he just stored more amulets with different terrains in Dimensional Storage and used them on a case-by-case basis.

“What the Abyss dude!? Jason demanded, struggling to his feet.

“Sorry. Won’t do it again.” Will said, holding his hand up appeasingly.

“Better freakin’ not,” Jason muttered, grabbing a nearby ice-tree and slipping off of it and back down to the ground.

“Can you stop…whatever this is?” Jason said, struggling to stand as his limbs failed to find purchase.

“Sure,” Will said, ending the effect. He felt the Debt crash back into him, as if something had been holding back a dam. Will could feel that if he promised no more pinches and broke it, there would be extreme consequences.

That was fine, because Will had no intention to do it again.

He was after the other thing on his to-do list: grinding.

Just a few days before, a huge caravan of some other Lord-to-be passed by Bakton keep entirely and cleared the Key Site out ahead of Will’s caravan, and now they had to wait.

And from the rumor circulating in town, Will was pretty sure he knew exactly who it was.

It was infuriating, picturing that paladin jerk grabbing Will’s pristine 10th Floor land.

“Will.” Jason said, dragging Will out of his angry musing.

Will glanced down and spotted Jason pointed ahead of them, where a still pool of water seemed to lay, about five feet wide and a couple inches deep. Will could see the muddy forest floor under the water.

“There’s a skipper.” Jason said, affecting a rough, experienced voice. Jason been able to hunt for nearly a month while Will had been indisposed, and was now relishing the opportunity to know more than Will.

“In my experience-“

Will ground his knuckle into Jason’s scalp.

“Ow, ow, okay. The guide told us about them. They hide in little puddles and drag unsuspecting Climbers into a pocket-dimension entirely composed of water and wait for them to drown. According to him, they don’t actually leave their puddle so it’s best to just go around them unless you have-”

Will took Brianna’s Ring of Water-Breathing from his Phantom Hand and swapped out the ring of the Yeast-master while Jason kept speaking.

“Sounds like a good Sacrifice for our water mages,” Will said, striding forward.

“Will, what-“

As Will approached, a ripple spread across the puddle in the blink of an eye, as if someone had skipped an invisible rock across the surface of the water.

An instant later, long, slimy green leaves with wobbly edges erupted from the puddle and wrapped themselves around Will’s ankles, wrenching him off his feet.

Will took a deep breath and crossed his arms over each other so they didn’t snag on anything.

SPLOOSH!

In the space of a breath, Will was surrounded by freezing water, the light of day extinguished as he was drawn into a lightless, soundless realm outside reality, filled with pitch-black, ice-cold water.

As though he’d suddenly been thrust to the icy, abyssal bottom of the 6th Floor.

Will could feel something else. Something big, swimming around him. He could feel it’s body heat on his skin, sense the swirling currents that followed in its wake.

Right about…there.

Will extended blades from his Phantom Snakes and churned the water around him.

There!

There was resistance as his razor thin blades caught a piece of his prey.

Will sent the other snakes to tear apart that section of the water, and a moment later, Will tasted blood in the water.

A pinpoint of light manifested above Will, and he began swimming upward, dragging chunks of the creature behind him.

A moment later, Will burst out of the 2-inch puddle on the forest floor, dragging himself out as the extradimensional space shrank behind him.

A moment later, the chunks of skipper were drawn out of the puddle by Will’s snakes.

You are now a level 39 Resourceful Climber!

Finally. Levels are coming slower and slower without bosses, Will thought, climbing to his feet and wiping the water out of his hair before he took off his shirt, using two Phantom Snakes to twist the bloodied water out of it.

Didn’t even need the ring, Will thought, putting it back.

“Alright, let’s keep hunting,” Will said as Jason looked on with a slack jaw.

“R-right, moving on.” Jason said, nodding forward.

Phantom Eye

133-115 Charges remaining

Will sent sixteen Phantom Eyes up above them to map out the area. He couldn’t see every little detail through the canopy, but there was enough to mark several targets.

“There’s an iron-tusk boar that way,” Will said, pointing slightly to the left, setting off.

“How-“ Jason said, struggling to keep up with Will as the forest bent out of his way.

Will dispatched the boar by hand, picking off half a dozen other monsters outside the range of Jason’s perception and delivering them to Badur to be preserved.

As far as Jason knew, they only hunted a handful of things.

Jason was a higher level than Will by now, with better base stats, but the kid didn’t have much in the way of perception or mobility-boosting effects, or an unfair Lord-gimmick synergy, which really served to highlight the difference between them as Will murdered his way through the dangerous forest at criminal speeds.

Literally criminal, because his solo hunt spilled onto other party’s ranges, but if they had a problem, they didn’t say anything as Will paid his respect and moved away to other ranges.

They’d rented most, but not all of the hunting ranges for the day.

“Ooh, ooh!” Jason said, tapping Will’s shoulder as he strode past a cave.

“You see those things?” Jason said, pointing at rocky stalactites hanging from the ceiling a few feet into the cave entrance.

“They have a-“

The stony barnacle-looking monsters detached from the ceiling as Will bisected them without looking.

“Godsdamnit Will, those things were COOL!”

“Oh?” Jason’s indignant voice dragged Will out of his angry funk.

“They have these shiny black tongue-things, and they fling iron around with some kind of magical lodestone Ability. The older ones can manipulate armor and weapons from dead Climbers.

“Huh. They’d probably be good for our smiths…maybe it would be a good secondary Sacrifice for whatever class we make with the metallic slime,”Will mused.

“…Will, what’s bothering you?” Jason asked. “You’ve been a total buzzkill this entire hunt.”

“I wasn’t aware this was a joyride.” Will replied.

Jason fixed him with a flat stare. “You know what I mean.”

Will saw the hurt in Jason’s eyes and relented with a sigh.

“…Fine. You know that paladin that tried to kill us?”

“Yeah?”

“Rumor is he came through here with about two thousand Climbers clinging onto him like a bus. He skipped past Bakton’s Keep and got ahead of us. That’s why we’re still stuck here.”

“…Oh.” Jason said, looking down at the forest floor.

“And since he got ahead of us, he’s gonna set a trap. There’s only one Key Site available, and he knows roughly how long it takes for it to reset. He also knows roughly where our Door will drop us. if we go through that Key Site, he’ll hit us like a ton of bricks.”

Jason frowned, staring at the ground, his face scrunched up in concentration, until finally he seemed to come to an idea.

“…Do you have to take that one key site? You could clear a different one.”

“They have Fae Lords on them. That’s just about as dangerous as walking into that ambush,” Will said with a shrug. “And if we run back down and hide in a lower Floor, the paladin will use his ability to mass-produce Climbers with Advanced Classes to send assassins after us until we die.”

“Huh.” Jason said. “That is bad.”

“Yeah. Just need to decide which way to get our people killed.”

“…Flip a coin for it?” Jason asked.

“…Sure.”

“Alright, heads for going the normal way, and tails for clearing a different Key Site.” Jason said, flipping his coin.

It slipped out of his hand and landed on a nearby fallen log, standing perfectly straight up.

The two of them gawked at the coin for a moment before Jason broke his stare to look up at Will.

“Answer uncertain, try again later.”