Chương 168: Chapter 244: Confluence

After Harold rallied the giants and got them in the right mindset to venture beyond Steve, Will and Loth took that evening to make plans and shoot the shit.

"…If I was going to date a giant, I'd have to limit it to eight or nine feet tall at most," Will said, laying down his maximum height limits.

"Why?" Loth asked.

"Because much bigger and your parts just don't…" Will shrugged.

"Match, anymore? And these giants are like a hundred feet tall. It's out of the question."

"I think if Harold were single, I might give it a shot."" HOW!?" Will demanded, prompting Loth to break into a cackle.

"I remember you had armor that could make you a giant. I could figure something out." Loth said. Will glanced up and checked on the progress of the Key Site. Between Loth's bugs and Will's Abilities, they were able to move the island, albeit slowly to avoid building up too much momentum. The damned thing was hard to change directions. Will's plan was to get the giants out of Steve and use the Key Site as a breakwater in the event that Void blew up Steve.

Since the Key Site absorbed all the miasma around it, Will was hoping it would make a cone-shaped empty space behind it if a magical explosion hit the entire floor. They would just have to angle it towards Steve and hide behind it and hopefully that would keep the giants alive. Still, it would be best to just kill Void outright. There were thousands of insects lifting the island, flying along behind them as they walked it back to the giant's Island.

About a year ago, Loth had brought him a dozen or so high-quality carrying-capacity Relics, and he'd fixed her up a much better ring that allowed her minions to haul an extra two hundred and fifty pounds apiece.

"Why does your flying bug have to be so big if your Packhorse ring makes it easily enough to carry you?" Will asked.

"Speed." Loth replied.

"Plus some extra leeway above two fifty if I need to carry something while flying. Good point.

"Why have you never considered cutting off your right hand and sacrificing it to your Phantom Hand?" Loth asked.

"It's fairly obvious that it'd give you another Phantom Hand. and if it doesn't the hand'll grow back anyway."

"Oh, I've considered it," Will said, studying the miasmatic structures lacing his right hand.

"But I haven't for a couple reasons. Number one, I'm terrified that it'll remove my Class effects from my right hand, the way my left is unprotected. And second; because I don't have a Primary Ability upgrade to use on it right now, anyway."

"But…" Will said, raising his left hand and creating some rough miasmatic structures from it before emitting a bit of Charge into them. 88 Charges remaining Fwoosh! A burst of light and heat appeared above his hand.

"If I ever master unstructured magic to my satisfaction, it'll probably give me the confidence to go ahead and do the other one."

"Pfft." Loth scoffed.

"What?"

"That's the kind of safety blanket thinking that keeps people from advancing. Take it from me. You are never going to master magic to your own satisfaction." Loth said, poking him with a sharp claw.

"At a certain point, you must venture into the unknown without a lifeline."

"Hmm." Will considered it. There were several stretches while he was minding his own Stronghold that were long enough for him to grow his hand back. He could've even gotten it regrown by a priest of Andover before he sacrificed it to get it back in the same day. And that would've allowed him to at least test and see what kind of upgrade it would've given him. But…

"Third reason. I'm not a fan of self-mutilation solely for the sake of power." Even if he could've found a way to do it painlessly, it felt like dangerous territory to become comfortable with.

"That's fair."

"How about you, any upgrades to the Bullet Wasp?" No new upgrades, I'm saving the last two slots for the perfect one, but I did replace the bangle of storing with some nice gloves." She said, wiggling her fingerless gloves.

"High tier target AOE with chain side-effect. Way better than that chain amulet back in the day."

"That reminds me," Will mused.

"Did you ever get your Advanced Class?"

"Nope. Gotta line up the dragon sacrifice before I do that." Will glanced down at Loth.

"And you're lecturing me about not taking the plunge?"

"It's different. It's like how Travis went off underprepared and stalled out on the 12 th Floor. I don't want that to be me. I have a plan, and am currently recruiting the party member I need for it. But you, you can cut off your own hand at any time without consequences."

"Oh there's consequences. What about the diminished sanctity of my body in my own mind?"

"Details." Loth said, waving him off. They chatted about life and Climbing, sharing theories about Miasma and Builds, never quite touching on the most hidden aspect of their Builds. Mutual respect between Climbers. Loth listened to him complain about all the crap he had to put up with as a Lord, lending a sympathetic ear while mining him for information about the Influence system, and everything that could be done with it. Likely with the intention of setting herself up to abuse it magnificently.

The chat came to an end as the giant's cobbled-together island came into view. The giants shouted and pointed at the small pyramidal island topped with a beam of miasmatic light as it floated towards them, unable to see the ant-sized human and gnat-sized kobold walking in front of it.

"You think your bugs could move that island?" Will asked, pointing at the mashed together island. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Loth scratched her chin.

"I'd have to do some math. Average depth of the island multiplied by the surface area of one of my bugs, times the mass of crystal. More or less than two-fifty?" They put the Key Site down, then Loth went off to get some measurements while Will told Harold and Mann the plan to use the Key Site as an umbrella so save them from the explosion. In a few minutes, Loth returned and gave him a thumbs-up.

She unleashed a wave of bugs from her barrel onto the island, which began stretching wider and wider, making more surface area for her minions to grab onto. Oh yeah, her minions have earth magic from the stoneshark. All the better to manipulate the battlefield and set up traps more quickly. In a matter of hours, the island was flying buttward through the enormous inner expanse of Steve.

Despite there being only two general directions anyone could go in a giant snake, actually navigating them was a bit tricky, especially with an enormous island. The were pockets of air that were smaller than others, and folds of intestine that nearly sealed the route off entirely.

If it were just Will and Loth walking by themselves, they would be able to easy traverse between them, but they had to put their heads together along with the muscle of hundreds of giants to pry open new routes for their island to fly through. Thankfully Steve isn't alive. If the snake were alive it would surely be thrashing in pain as an internal blockage suddenly began forcing itself rapidly through its guts.

A few days into the exodus, Harold called for them to halt, pointing starboard (Snake-wise), where a cluster of moldering crystal islands sat in disrepair. Having been affected by Steve's digestive tract for untold coils, they were in far worse shape than the giant island, which was regularly cleaned and maintained. The abandoned islands were covered in dark slime, jammed up against each other in a line of crumbling crystal discs crushed together at a rakish angle, seemingly having formed some kind of blockage.

"That ruin right there is the one I told you about," Harold said, pointing to the lump of partially-digested islands stacked up against each other like dead leaves in a streamlet.

"It pre-dates our history, and it looked like it belonged to little people." Will squinted. It looked like it had been exploded from inside.

"Did you…pry it apart?"

"Good eye. I lead a team every few years to excavate further into the ruin, but the process is destructive. Despite being very careful, I'm certain we're losing information. If this is our last opportunity inside Steve, I'd like to selfishly request for you to take a look inside the deepest sections and share your findings."

Will stared at the ruin for a moment and felt a faint tug, as though gravity itself had shifted in the direction of the dilapidated crystal structures embedded in the slurry of digested crystal. Will felt like he was splitting, part of him standing on the giant's floating island, part of him was walking along Steve's gut in solitude, part of him flying along to keep away from the angry giant natives, part of him leading an expedition of a hundred who'd been marooned on Steve by the betrayal of a trusted officer.

All of them were looking at the same ruin, in different states of decay. A blink, and the sensation was gone.

"Yeah, there's definitely something cool in there," Will mused to himself. There was a psychic imprint of others like him. Will was starting to get a feel for when he was treading the same ground as those who had come before. He'd done it often enough that the sensation wasn't as surprising and confusing as it'd once been.

"Wanna check it out?" Will asked, glancing down at Loth.

"Of course." Loth replied. They set the islands down and flew over to the ruins. The giants had been 'carefully' excavating the buildings piece by piece, lifting them up, inspecting them for interesting clues, then tossing aside valueless walls, floors and ceilings.

'Carefully' only amounted to so much for creatures that were forty feet tall and could easily crush an office desk underfoot. Case in point, Will thought, scanning the crushed office desk half-embedded in the digestive goop, with unreadable papers spilling out of the broken drawers. Will paused a moment then spun Map like a coin, giving himself a three-dimensional view of the complex.

"Over here." Will said, motioning for Loth to follow. The two of them through some unspoken shared distaste for walking through black goop, flew to the area Will indicated. As the last in the line of visitors, Will's version of the ruin was far less impressive than the others. Will felt a vague sense of disappointment at not being able to catch even a glimpse of the ancient civilization's greatness.

All that was left was a flattened city that had long since been picked through by generations of giants stomping on everything. Will alighted on a piece of solidified air, solidified a chunk of rubble, then popped it out of the stairwell with Phantom Hand. Sometimes it's very convenient to be a World Traveler. Will thought. It might've taken months to find the entry into the deeper recesses of the ruin, and excavating it might've taken hours, if not days.

But Will's Class was especially good at finding where he wanted to go, and then getting there. All his other Abilities that he'd turned towards fighting were mere perversions of their original function. Loth gestured, and a few dozen torchbugs flew out of her barrel and alighted on the walls of the staircase, illuminating the descent. Me first? Will signed. Loth nodded, and Will began walking down the steps, careful to not actually touch the ground.

He recalled the last time it had been just him and Loth sneaking around underground. Under the church was it? With the dead deceiver crucified inside. Will recalled how he'd gotten the idea to strengthen the water under his feet and had managed to make the surface tension of the sewage a little stronger but hadn't made it strong enough to support his weight. Now he was walking on air an inch above the half-digested muck solely to keep his boots clean. Time flies.

Will checked each of the doors and found collapsed rooms where the digestive enzymes had eroded the walls and crept in from the outside. Except for the last one. Will's hand flickered between young and old, rough and soft as he grasped the door handle and opened the door. The hallucination ended when the door refused to budge, bonking Will in the head and nearly making him lose his focus on his footing.

With a grunt of effort, Will put his shoulder into it, and the misaligned door screeched open again, revealing a pristine room sealed off from Steve's slow digestion by what appeared to be… silver? No, silver would have a darker pantina, and that's about all I know about precious metals. It sure as Abyss wasn't iron. Blessed Steel maybe? Will didn't know what it's tarnish looked like, or if it even could, so he was left wondering.

In the center of the room was a man-sized capsule with dozens of ominuous tubes hooked up to it, reminding Will of the ball of metal designed to preserve the consciousness of the elites on the 7 th Floor, whose civilization had – barely – stretched three Floors. They originated on the 9 th Floor, so the 11 th would be separated from them by two Coils, and yet they seemed to have technology reminiscent of the machine I saw on the 8 th.

Loth poked Will and pointed at a nearby desk with an ancient leatherbound journal warped by an enormous amount of time. Will's attention, on the other hand, was drawn to the far wall, where lines of ancient graffiti covered the wall. First! Ezykial The Serpent. You couldn't have been first if the ruins were here before you were. By the way, the capsule over there can embed Abilities in bones. It's probably the cause of the crystal boned-giant mutation. Please don't remove the journal from the room.

Castavelle The Paragon Fix the door! The William Oh Okay, this is weird. I've never been here before, but there's my signature. By the way, check for the eggs. It's a cloaca, not a mammal butthole, after all. Don't forget to look up. Ezykial the Serpent Greetings gentlemen. We seem to be in some kind of loop. Next confluence, let's not waste time with jokes and share information about why we're supposed to die on the 49 th Floor. I don't trust Reese. Castavelle the Paragon. Will was woozy for a moment.

There was a piece of sharp crystal in his hand, and Loth had moved, now pacing back and forth as she devoured the journal. Her coloration seemed to flicker like candlelight, between ruddy red, purple and black. Will began scratching words into the wall. 50 th Floor by my estimate. Could be a fixed event on a Floor that is going up as Coils are added. See if you can get anything out of Reese. And fix the door.

The William Oh Writing seemed to manifest underneath Will's words, scratching itself into the wall under his gaze. Look at the balls on this Will guy, just 'cuz he's a legend. Reese let slip that there's some kind of relay… Will's vision focused and it was gone. He glanced over and Loth was one color again. Whatever confluence they'd been experiencing had ended. Relay, huh? Will thought. How can we pry it out of Reese?

Will wasn't sure anymore if he was talking to people who had existed, or were going to, but it seemed like they could help each other out. I'll contribute more next time.

"So listen to this," Loth said.

"The people who lived on this Floor found a way to embed Abilities into bone by encapsulating it in crystal."

"So I've heard," Will mused.