Chương 157: Chapter 233: Complacency

Travis Oilton Master Illusionist Level 56 68 + 12 Strength 168 + 32 Resistance 168 +4 Kinesthetics 99 +117 Acuity 112 +132 Focus Primary Abilities: Center of Attention*, Taunt*, Mirage**** Secondary Abilities: Better than Real, Barrier Tertiary Abilities: Breath of Life Primary Ability Upgrade Available! Item Abilities: +45% Eidolon Potency, Resurgent illusionist*, Ghost-step, +30% range of Abilities.

"Travis?" Mabel's voice came from a few inches away from where his face was smashed into the luxurious silk sheets with thread counts that mere commoners couldn't hope to comprehend.

"Eh?" Travis groaned. Her voice was only a few inches away, but moving his head to look at her was a task reserved for heroes of legend.

"There's a man in the bedroom."

"Meh." Travis grunted into the mattress, whose material was so soft and conforming that he could plant his entire face into it without a hint of discomfort. Wait…

"ACK!" Travis reflexively flung himself out of bed, created a duplicate overlapping himself, then turned invisible. They landed on the ground and the decoy skittered side-to-side aggressively while he took some distance. Who the hell would –"How's it going Travis?" William Oh asked, staring at him past the decoy. I'm still invisible, right? Travis thought, glancing down at himself. He sure was. I covered my scent, heat, and sound, so how…

"The Abyss you doing here so early in the morning?" Travis muttered as he straightened, creating some clothes before he dismissed the invisibility.

"Don't you know it's rude to intrude on a man when he's in bed with his girlfriend?" Will glanced at Mabel for a moment and frowned.

"…You're single." Mabel gave an offended huff regarded Will an angry glower from under the sheets.

"Wait, aren't you supposed to be at the wedding right now?" Travis asked, grabbing the pitcher of water on his nightstand and rehydrating.

"A nasty bastard showed up on the eleventh Floor. I was hoping to have you go there to lend a hand."

"And why can't you do this yourself?" Travis asked.

"Acclimation sickness." Yeah, he does look a little under the weather. Travis thought.

"Why me?"

"Because Mason is on the 16 th Floor and you're here…wallowing in self-pity."

"Does this look like I'm wallowing in self-pity?" Travis asked, gesturing to the opulent surroundings. Everything was clean and tidy. Not a single empty bottle of booze or speck of dirt out of place.

"Mmmm…Yes." Will replied.

"Everything I own is lined with black opal, rich velvet and gold. My freaking shower has heated walls. I've got a dozen sexy maids who ache to please me."

"Wow, that's all really impressive." Will said.

"Right?"

"…If any of it were real." Will added, glancing at the bed. Travis paused.

"I mean…a bed is a piece of furniture you can sleep on. Even if it's an illusion, if it serves this function, and it's more comfortable than any other bed in existence, then how is it not a 'real bed'?"

"Do you have any complaints about your bed?" Will asked.

"Nope." Travis said, puffing his chest.

"My bed had a little splinter sticking out of the frame that poked the shit out of me one morning when I was getting up. If my Resistance wasn't so high it would've put a nasty splinter through the back of my leg. I spent the next hour pouring over the entire frame with a sanding cloth to make sure it didn't happen again."

"Sucks to be you." Travis said, his guts fluttering with some unknown apprehension, like an animal slowly realizing it was being cornered.

"My sheets don't fit perfectly right, and for some reason, the corner next to my head is always the first part to come untucked. It just pops off and starts crumpling up under me while I sleep, while on Brianna's side, this never happens. Even when we switch sides, my side comes untucked first. I wonder if it's because I roll in my sleep too much or something."

"What the fuck is your point?" Travis demanded, his stomach turning queasy.

"No complaints about your bed?" Will asked. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"None."

"How about your maids, or your girlfriends? Any complaints?"

"Nope."

"It doesn't have to be a big complaint. Could be the tiniest little thing. Bored with their hair color? Not enough of them, maybe? You could change them up, or make some more."

"You're one to talk," Travis muttered, the defensive feeling turning ugly and spiteful. Will had nailed him to the wall and he didn't like it.

"Hah!" Will barked a laugh.

"Shows what you know. If I could make Brianna someone who hadn't gone through everything she has, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I can't… Because she's real." Will finished, his gaze boring into Travis's.

"Uuugh…fine, tell me what the situation is." Travis said as Mabel wrapped the sheets around herself and scampered out of the room. Will gave Travis the situation, to his growing horror.

"So there's a Lord-level body-hopping parasite out there who matched an actual SET with it's ideal Class, just…wandering around, and nobody knows where it is?"

"It might be on the 12 th floor, but I suspect Zodiac might be trying to kill it by himself to steal the set."

"And what do you want me to do, steal the set first?"

"I don't really have any strong feelings about who gets the set." Will muttered.

"I was hoping you could go and reinforce Zodiac. I get the feeling the old man is out of his depth."

"And what do you expect me to do against a creature with access to fire that can literally burn through illusions?" Travis demanded. Got him.

"It burns through everything else, too, so it's not like you have it any worse than any other Class that goes up against him. Besides, you're resourceful. You can handle it." Damnit.

"Do you require this of me, milord?" Travis said, giving Will a snarky bow.

"You're not my vassal, so I can't order you…" Will said.

"I can only humbly request that you take on this mission."

"Well, I-""And you're getting fat." Will said, causing Travis's words to catch in his throat.

"…What?"

"You're using an illusion to make it look smaller, but there's a bit of paunch here." Will said, poking Travis's tummy through the illusion.

"That's a slippery slope, you know."

"I'm not getting fat!" Travis cried, slapping Will's hand and backing away.

"You're getting a little fat, sweetheart." Mabel said, ducking her head into the room.

"I still love it, though. I love everything about you. Even the way you get easily winded recently is cute."

"… Okay, maybe I'm wallowing a little bit." Travis said. Vincent Duncan Current Influence: 500"Break!" Vincent called, gesturing for his fae to go in and seize control of the battle while his Vassals took a break. Kyle and his Party stumbled away from the thick of the fighting and toppled to the ground, panting desperately. It took a good while, but he'd found the most optimal way to gain Influence, and it seemed to be to have his vassals gain XP at an industrial scale.

If his fae helped them out too much it diminished their XP per kill, sending a large portion of it to him instead. He needed to find a way for them to kill thousands of constellations in minutes without any support. Unfortunately, everyone in the Party were basic Class archetypes without any synergistic effects of note. As simple as that concept was to grasp, so many Climbers never thought beyond the most mundane applications of their Abilities. These four being an example. In short, they were stupid.

Maybe not stupid… less than clever? Plain? Unengaged with the concept of optimizing their Class despite their life depending on the choices they made. The three of them also had middling Sacrifices for their classes, and gained an average of eight Stat points per level, which didn't help either. He acted like he didn't know them in order to keep up appearances, but Vincent knew those four well. He'd spent a few years pretending to be their Party member, after all.

Climbers who got a weak start, followed by weak luck, and poor creativity. Their only virtue was stubbornness. They should not have made it to the eleventh Floor. Being chased by a living legend might've factored into their motivation. Vincent's undead acted as a filter, drawing in the innumerable monsters dwelling on Steve, and allowing only a certain number of the ones just weak enough to be defeated by the group while destroying the stronger monsters singlehandedly.

It was slower than Vincent would've liked, but he'd gotten five hundred Influence in a single day, and there was plenty that he could accomplish with that. Wish I could make it faster though. If he handed the Burning court over to one of his vassals, they could build his Influence a hundred times faster, but on the other hand, the Burning court would likely try to kill him to protect their new master.

A while later, he was approached by Kyle asking if he had any plans for the copious amount of Relics dropping from the slaughtered constellations, and to Vincent had simply shrugged and told Kyle to help himself. That had seemed to make their whole year as the four greedily gathered the relics into piles and began sorting them out between them, arguing over who got the better cut. They couldn't even decide on a simple round-robin. Are they just more talented at being backstabbers than Climbers?

As he was pondering, Vincent's thoughts were interrupted by the System dropping a notification directly into his consciousness. Floor-wide Alert! Vincent Duncan has been spotted on Floor 11. A Bounty For Vincent Duncan, the level 62 Vile Word has been posted by the Lord Zodiac. Wanted, Dead. Reasons given: Violence at my daughter's wedding. Murder of two Climbers. Bounty: 5, 000 Ivory Ten-pieces, 5, 000, 000XP, to be shared among the party that claims the bounty.

The Tower will not provide Doors or XP to the subject of the bounty until the matter is resolved. I guess three days is too much to ask. They were always going to sus him out, Vincent had just believed it would be faster, and each hour they had given him to prepare had been a blessing. Vincent glanced over at Amy, who must have inadvertently tripped the Bounty by looking at him. Anything a Climber could see, The System could see. Now everyone knew he was here.

"I suppose the time for hiding is over," Vincent said, rising to his feet and annihilating the surrounding monsters. Vincent seized control of the hundreds of undead they'd produced over the last two days and launched them into the air, then followed himself, using Necrotic Balm's fleshwarping effect to give himself massive fleshy wings, propelling himself out into the empty darkness of the sky.

His fae created skin-ropes and had the monsters grab on before flying along behind him, trailing hundreds of massive zombies, looking a bit like the herbs mom used set to dry on a windowsill. Vincent paused for a moment before he deployed a bit of venom and eroded that particular section of his brain again. No sense allowing himself to get nostalgic. Several hours later they were beginning to clear Steve's head, and…. Where did the stronghold go?

"Master, it appears that Zodiac is fleeing with his Stronghold." Aria said, pointing into the sky. In the distance, so small as to be nearly imperceptible, was seven islands connected by bridges of light, gradually moving away from them.

"You know what to do." Vincent said. The undead fae nodded and began flying forward as quickly as they could without breaking the wrist-thick tow rope dragging their payload behind them. In a matter of hours they began gaining on Zodiac's stronghold. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the wind cutting at their bodies as they pushed against the atmosphere that drifted through the void.

As they approached the islands, massive ropes of telekinetic force manifested, splaying out in a net designed to catch the hundreds of undead and trap them in place. The ones in the lead killed themselves as soon as they touched the ropes, blowing massive holes in Zodiac's net and allowing the majority of the undead to tumble through and splatter against the crystal islands as their swift speed was met by harsh stone. Boom boom boom boom!

Vincent floated in the distance, watching with his arms crossed as he waited for the secondary explosions to begin as the undead created by Cannibalize exploded again, and again. Vincent wasn't too concerned with leaving survivors. He had no way of subduing that many Climbers at once, and even with this bombardment there would still be at least a few dozen survivors. He would prefer two dozen hosts for his progeny to five hundred angry Climber with the will and the means to kill him.

Crush them first then pick through the ashes, blessing the survivors with his offspring. … Where are the secondary explosions?