Chương 217: Chapter 293: Miasmatic First Aid

"I probably shouldn't've listened to that," Will mused, tumbling slowly in midair as he pondered his options. Will trusted Loth… but she was also the strongest Climber he knew. Completely trusting someone just wasn't something he could do anymore, especially if they had the means to kill him. Being a Lord meant people were constantly trying to kill him. No, before that, even. Ever since Ben…

The interference set up by Loth had posed a problem for an instant, but a little bit of redirecting light had allowed him to read the vibrations off a nearby leaf. And now, because I couldn't mind my own damn business… I'm picturing Loth in an apron baking bread. Will thought, brow furrowed, spinning faster, allowing the world to flip around him as he scowled with his arms crossed. The image was… not bad, actually. UGH! Now I'm all messed up knowing that Loth still has a thing for me.

Okay, options: Option one: pretend I didn't hear anything. Cringe whenever I'm around Loth and become weird and avoidant, like a bitch. Obviously this is unacceptable. Option two: admit to listening in on the conversation immediately and incur Loth's temporary ire so I don't have to walk on eggshells indefinitely. This will eventually lead to a difficult conversation, but it's better than being a pussy. Option two it is. Will had long since become desensitized to fighting Climbers to the death.

Coming clean about invading a friend's privacy was only slightly worse than potentially being murdered. Floor-wide Alert! A neutral monster has defeated The Devourer of Worlds. The Bounty has been retracted. Floor-Wide announcement! A new Raid boss has spawned: The Devourer of Knowledge. … What? Will's map began blinking wildly with fear. WILL COME IMMEDIATELY. The map in Will's head blinked with script written by Loth. Will shelved his pondering and put on some speed.

Will tore through the air, arriving in a gust of wind ready to finally kill the spider, but the scene in front of him brought him to a sudden halt.

"What um…what's going on here?" Will asked as he watched The Devourer of Worlds battling Steve Junior. The Devourer was spinning dozens of lethal strands of Miasma around Steve, whose crystalline flesh was simply encapsulating them rather than being subjected to the magic's effects.

"Steve killed the Devourer and the Devourer is pissed about it."

"I suppose I would be too," Will said, watching as The Devourer changed tactics, grabbing nearby rocks and branches and flinging them at Steve, causing the snake to writhe in discomfort, moving away as quickly as he could.

"She's getting a bit smaller. She seems to be using up her brain trying to kill Steve." Loth could only perceive the outline through interference with her domain, whereas Will saw in color and detail. The Devourer's form seemed to be rapidly unravelling from a few loose ends near the center, and the constant spitting of miasmatic structures wasn't helping anything, because it was jostling The Devourer around.

"It's actually unravelling from the point where it was connected to the spider." Will said.

"The strands it's using to attack were always meant to be fired, they're stored in some kind of pouch near the back." Loth glanced up at him with a contemplative look.

"If we never come across an Uru drake could I get one of your eyes?" Loth asked.

"If one gets gouged out, I'll save it for you," Will said.

"We need to break this up." Loth said.

"That poor little girl is gonna die… more, if she keeps thrashing around without properly soldering her dangly bits." There's a sentence I never thought I'd hear. Will raised his hand.

"Before we do that I'd like to mention that it ate a dozen people and some dragons."

"Will, that was the spider," Loth replied with an innocent look.

"Just checking. I'll move Steve, you talk her down." Will swooped forward, aiming for Steve. Steve was practically cocooned with wounding miasma, so Will was forced to stop and cut his way through it before he could carry him off. Loth placed herself between Will and The Devourer.

"Devourer, there's some strands near your center that are unraveling. They need to be fixed before it causes permanent-""I DON'T CARE!" A scream unbound by the limitations of a body vibrated the very world, the vibrations washing over them with enough power to kill a civilian.

"Remember, there's so much more to life than revenge! Although admittedly revenge is pretty sweet!" Loth said.

"But you won't get your revenge if you don't tend to yourself first. You are dying right now!" Loth said. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. You convincing this thing to be more methodical in its efforts to kill my test-dummy snake? Will thought as he created a blade of miasma and cut away the lethal strands.

"I…What? I'm dying?" The Devourer asked.

"I don't…You're saying things that aren't correct!"

"Knowingly saying things that aren't correct is called lying." Loth replied.

"YOU'RE LYING!" The Devourer said, sending a net of lethal miasma at Loth, driving her back.

"Why can't she see it!?" Loth demanded. Will picked up Steve and flung him into the distance. The crystal snake manifested a dragon-wing's lift-creating miasma on his stomach and righted himself, recovering his poise and gliding away. So he can still do that, Will thought. Will turned his attention to The Devourer of Knowledge.

There were three long strands hanging near its center that looked as though they had been caked shut with miasma, while there was one more spot closer to the center that was currently unravelling, spreading into the webbing itself.

"I think it might be a blind spot related to her eyes." Will said, tapping his nose.

"Can't see your own nose unless you think about it."

"Ah." Loth turned to Will and bent her knees so that she'd be shorter, clasping her hands together and blinking her eyelids rapidly as she looked up at him.

"Don't do that, that's weird," Will said.

"Help me fix it? I'll make you a new Devourer Sacrifice. I can tame a few of those curse funnelwebs and move them up to this floor and carefully mutate them, but this…" Loth gestured to the thrashing miasmatic construct.

"This is a miracle. A work of art, and I wanna be friends with it." Will crossed his arms and spun in place. Ugh. Loth doesn't have many friends at all. Just from what I heard it's probably just me. I shouldn't've heard that conversation at all, but what's done is done.

"I listened to your talk with The Devourer," Will came clean.

"I see." Loth said, eyes narrowing.

"I'll help you save your new friend who matches your stubborn will. But seriously, if she continues hunting Climbers, I have to kill her."

"That's fair." Loth "I'll make sure she doesn't get caught." Will grabbed Loth's onyx horn and gave her a noogie.

"You mean you'll make sure she doesn't do it!"

"Okaaaay!" Loth cried, batting at Will's hands. A heartbeat later, they were in motion.

"Devourer, you have to let us help you!" Loth said, waving her arms to get her attention focused on Loth.

"You ants are trying to kill me! The whole reason you talked to me was to make me think you were safe! Your words are poison, and…why can't I see out of one eye?" The Devourer asked, her voice turning plaintive.

"Let's try this," Loth said, exhaling a swift breath. Will felt a surge of Charge dump out of Loth and into the ground. An instant later, she raised a hand curled into a claw. A massive clawed hand composed of miasma rose from the ground beneath The Devourer, carefully pinning the funnel web in place with Its miasma strand spewers trapped against the palm. The thumb of the hand pried the upper portion of The Devourer's web back, giving Will a clear view of the damage.

Will could see the tiny connections of blessing and curse miasma popping by the thousands as the unraveling travelled through them, the tiny imbalance allowing the two opposing forces to meet and destroy each other. Will copied the caked strands of miasma he saw closing the hanging strands and coated his left hand in his best approximation of it. Miasma glue, as it were.

Will passed his hand through the wound, the miasma in his hand practically jumping off and attaching itself to the unravelling strands, caking the small hollowed out portion of The Devourer's visual cortex in glue. Will took a step back and took a deep breath.

"Is she safe now?" Loth asked.

"No idea." Will said, eyes narrowed. The Devourer's inner workings were so dense that he couldn't see all the way through them, especially with that fuzzy coating n the outside.

"If we got it fast enough, maybe. Otherwise there might be pockets inside that are going to continue unravelling until she's dead." Now we just wait and see. Will sat down and waited while Loth took the initiative and talked The Devourer down. The sun arced overhead and began to set while Loth gracefully guided the conversation from screaming and revenge to philosophy and the meaning of life. The manic energy of the patterns on display in Devourer slowly calmed down and were reigned in.

"I saw the announcement! You've avenged my brother!" Maribelle asked as she arrived beside Will, unable to see Loth's conversation partner.

"Strange that a new raid boss with a similar name was created a moment later." Maribelle said as she settled down beside Will.

"Yep, definitely odd." Will replied noncommittally.

"I don't see any signs of battle," Maribelle said, scanning the clearing.

"What sort of monster was it?"

"It was a spider." Will said.

"A what?" Maribelle asked.

"Lil' bitty spider.

'bout this big." Will said, holding his thumb and forefinger apart.

"What's a spider?" Will blinked for a moment before realizing that spiders might be so small that dragons literally never gave them a single thought over the course of thousands of years.

"Let me get one." Will wrangled up a spider and showed Maribelle.

"That killed my brother?" Maribelle asked, scowling, her lips peeling away from her man-sized teeth.

"Not this one, obviously," Will said, tossing it aside before Maribelle could think of breathing fire on it and by extension Will.

"It got a strong mutation by chance that made it exceptionally powerful."

"So It became giant and towered over the treetops?" Maribelle asked.

"No…it was about the same size." Will said. Maribelle blinked.

"The same size as the dragons?"

"The same size as the spider I showed you."

"Then… how?"

"This might be difficult to believe, but power and size do not always go hand in hand." Will said. Maribelle's eyes narrowed.

"Coming from any other person I might've accused you of making that up, but you seem to speak from experience, William Oh."

"By the way, who is Loth talking to?"

"A powerful disembodied ghost." Will replied, omitting the fact that it was, for all intents and purposes, the very same creature that had eaten her brother. It was only a separate entity on a technicality. A technicality that Loth was more than willing to abuse if it meant she got a new friend. When Maribelle is gone and she's calmed down, I'd like to ask Devourer about Maribelle's brother. Will wrote in Miasma.

More than anything, Maribelle wanted closure, so Will needed to at least identify which pile of ash was her brother's and make her a charm from it or something. Loth wasn't facing them, but she could feel the words being written on the backdrop of her domain, so she made a scaly hand giving a thumbs up appear right in front of Will. Wait. An ominous thought crossed Will's mind.

My current hypothesis for the creation of a Set is when a large number of same-species intelligent monsters die bound together by a common bond or theme. The half immortal serpents killed by the church. The Fae in Kincaid's castle. The dragons in Mother's family? A large extended family of Dragons hunted by an invisible monster as they prepared to flee to a lower Floor. That's a bond.

"You twitched like you just realized something big." Loth called over her shoulder.

"…nu-uh," Will denied it.

"Maribelle, I'm going to do an advanced Miasma technique that should allow me to find your brother's corpse, but you'll need to get some distance so you don't foul it up."

"Okay." Maribelle said, boosting herself up into the air and flying out of earshot. Will approached the miasmatic web that seemed to have stopped panicking.

"Devourer. There was a green dragon about half the height of the one that just left. Where did it get eaten?"

"I never saw a green dragon that size." Devourer replied.

"What? But you ate dragons."

"Sure, just not a green one half that one's height."

"Then who the Abyss kidnapped Aguillion?" Will demanded. Loth's golden eyes widened.

"You twitched like you realized something big," Will said, pointing at Loth.

"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," Loth said with a sly grin.