Chương 71: Chapter 148: Dangerous for Kobolds

Will's eye's snapped open, coughing as the air hit a raw patch of throat.

"Was I screaming?" Will asked, peering up at Charnesa.

"It's normal. Looks like there was another one."

"Apparently." Will mused, glancing down at his palm, which was dimpled where his fingernails had dug into his flesh. He felt like there was a bit of film on his hand, like he'd touched some greasy food and hadn't used soap to cleanse it yet. Did the night terror evaporate? Will thought.

"These things aren't very smart, so if you go back under, if there's any more, one will latch onto you immediately. It's a lot like fishing for pike, actually, except your mind is the hook. Are you ready to go under again? It gets easier after the first. The mind develops its own defenses." Will held up a hand, buying himself a moment to ask questions.

"These night terrors, can they be Sacrificed?" Will asked. Charnesa blinked.

"I've never seen it happen, but the rule of thumb is that anything can be Sacrificed with the proper preparation.

"Seems like a good opportunity. See if you can't get Badur to use some preservation magic when I catch it." Will said, feeling the residue on his palm.

"You'd need someone with telekinetic and telepathic Abilities, some blessed glassware, and Badur's preservation techniques as well. If you had all that, we could try it." Will frowned.

"Hey Arkesh!" The ancient Immortal Serpent looked up from where he was playing cards with the older generation of civilian Party Leaders.

"Eh?"

"Do you have telepathic and telekinetic Abilities?"

"I dabble!"

"He cheats!" Brenna said.

"Not my fault you don't guard your thoughts," Arkesh groused. Will motioned for Arkesh to come over, and called Badur as well.

"Do we have any enchanted glasswear?" Will asked.

"No, but Polly can make it with an Ability." Badur replied. Polly was one of the Caravan's many artisans, whose task was to work together with the other non-combat Classes to make the Stronghold livable. In this case, glassware for the home.

"Is that the one who's sweet on you?" Will asked with a frown, thinking back to the woman who kept watching Badur kill monsters on the 7 th Floor long past when the novelty had worn off for everyone else.

"N-no!" Will, The Immortal Serpent and the Saint of Holdna all gave Badur a critical gaze.

"It is." Arkesh said before directing his gaze at Will.

"They're both interested, but waiting for the other to approach them. It happens more than you'd think." Badur went pale.

"Well, you heard him, go talk to Polly." Will said with a wry grin.

"Romance inside the tower is ill-advised." Badur mumbled, turning red and seemingly collapsing inward.

"Children are often stillborn or deformed, and it would be irresponsible of me to-""I really didn't want to step into this," Charnesa said.

"But for the sake of moving this along, there are infinite things young couples can do together that doesn't result in pregnancy, and there's only one thing that does."

"Oh, OH!" Badur said, his eyes widening as though a divine revelation had struck him. Coming from a Saint of Holdna, Will supposed it was.

"Only one?" Will asked, frowning. According to Gertrude there were at least a dozen ways to get a girl pregnant. Kissing while alone, hiding sausages, going to town together, buying a house for a girl, rolling in the hay…

"We're not having this conversation," Charnesa said, making a chopping motion with her hand.

"You, go get Polly, we're going to need enchanted ampules. You, go back to sleep."

"But-" Charnesa flicked Will on the forehead, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

The second time Will found himself inside the Trial Room, Will clawed his way out when he realized the walls weren't perfectly white, bearing some kind of black tarnish. It inspired him to scrape his way through several inches of white, faintly glowing stone with the tiny pieces of metal he'd removed from his boots. Will really knew he was onto something when the wall began to bleed black bile.

He eventually pulled himself outside the room into a void where a massive slug made of rotting faces formed the outside of the Trial room. He'd cut himself out of its belly. The creature looked over its shoulder, and for a moment, the two simply stared at each other as Will's memories flooded back. Oh right. That's what's happening. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

It twisted to reach him with its finger-lined mouth, but Will whipped a shoestring up and cinched it down around the creature's neck, tightening it until the monster's neck turned purple and shrank. In the logic of dreams, as the night terror's body shrank, it merged with Will's truncated left arm, settling in behind the tourniquet, its mouth wrapped around the stump, looking like an overly ambitious snake trying to swallow a bull's foot.

"Let me get that for you," Will said, grabbing the slug off his stump and crushing it in his hand. Will felt a strange twisting in space around his right palm.

"We get it?" Will asked, blinking his eyes open.

"Sure did." Arkesh said, holding up a tiny glass ampule with a purple and black mush inside of it. Will blinked the sand out of his eyes and took the glass container, noting the way it was sealed off from the outside air, preserving the creature's properties inside the glass. Night Terror upgrade for Phantom Hand: Adds the ability to convert physical damage dealt by the Phantom Hand into psychic damage. Nope.

Will already had a way to inflict Psychic Venom from his Kit, and he didn't feel like it was vital enough to drop an entire upgrade to guarantee he could do it without. Psychic damage was great but it wasn't critical enough to drop a Sacrifice on. Night Terror upgrade for Aspect of the Immortal Serpent: Adds 'memory seed' to Aspect of the Immortal Serpent. If the user's mind is completely erased or replaced, a memory seed will regrow, restoring the user to their state prior to being erased.

Aspect's 'complete healing' now applies to mental conditions as well as physical ones. Hmmm. It would be nice to no longer be afraid of doors and nuns, but it was a minor gripe. The ability to bounce back after the mind being overwritten was interesting, but Will could only imagine it working in an extremely fringe situation. If someone erased Will's mind, why wouldn't they just kill him as soon as he was a drooling vegetable?

The only way this would ever pay dividends was in the very unlikely scenario where someone wiped his mind and then toted him around as a trophy for the days or weeks it would take fro his mind to regrow. It would only ever help if he already lost the fight. Why burn an Upgrade slot that could be used to win a fight? That would be what Sister Gertrude would refer to as 'planning for failure'. If it had been simple resistance to psychic damage and mind control, he would've taken it. that would help in a fight.

But it wasn't. It was healing after the fact. That wasn't to say that nobody else could get some kind of benefit. Will handed the Sacrifice off to the rest of his Party to fight over. Mason and Jason seemed to be the most excited about it.

"Ready to go again?" Charnesa asked.

"We've got to keep going until there aren't any left."

"Let me get up and stretch my legs a bit first." Will said, holding up a hand. The saint nodded, standing up and getting herself something to drink while she waited. Will went over to the door leading to the stairs down to the ground floor, wondering how Loth was doing. He heard the groans of angry zombies, and frowned. We're already holding them off? How long have I been out? When Will got to the staircase, he paused, staring down at the scene beneath him.

The staircase below was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with zombies, some of them even climbing up on the railings and each other in their desperate bid to make it to the caravan… They were shuffling with a quickness, marching in lockstep, and yet, not a single one seemed to make it past the third floor from the top. Will went down a flight and figured out why that was.

The entire flight of stairs connecting to the last three floors had been simply removed, preventing the horde of zombies from making it to them at all. Instead the zombies were pushing each other into a hallway on the floor beneath them through sheer crowd-pressure. The zombies beneath glanced up at Will and- A hand dragged Will back from the ledge, breaking line of sight with the zombies.

"Don't let them see you," Loth's raspy voice said behind him. Will turned and spotted Loth. The kobold was covered head-to-toe in stone dust and looking more pleased than he'd seen her in a while.

"Why not?"

"They start mucking up their pathing if you attract their attention in the wrong spot. Let me show you where to stand." Loth guided him back up a floor and away from the staircase, towards the other side of the building, where she had cut a hole in the floor and set up one of the wooden folding chairs from the wagon.

"Whoah," Will said as he peered down. Loth had cut a hole through the window beneath them that faced the outside world and rigged the floor to tilt and tumble the zombies outside the building once a certain number of them had accumulated in the hallway. Whoosh! The floor rotated underneath the horde, dropping them outside the building, tumbling to the ground below where a tangled mess of zombies were pushing themselves back to their feet and heading back to the staircase.

Loth sat down on her wooden chair and cackled with joy, kicking her feet as another load of zombies was dropped out the side of the building.

"So…they're stuck in a loop," Will mused, peering out the window. The zombies fell thirty flights of stairs, hit the ground hard, then five minutes later, they started working their way back up the spiral staircase, only to be dropped again.

"Despite how basic this trap is, I simply can't suppress a burst of joy every time I watch it drop them. And the fact that they don't learn from their mistakes?" Loth clicked her tongue, making an 'okay' circle with her talons." Very nice. I think this Floor could be dangerous to kobolds in a different sense." Whoosh! The floor rotated again, dropping another load of zombies flailing into the purple haze hundreds of feet below them. Loth snorted, kicking her heels against the Blessed Steel beam beneath them.

"How long was I out?"

"About three hours." Loth said.

"In another fifteen hours, the pile of bodies combining with each other out there might be large enough to cause us a problem, but we're not immediately pressed for time." Will glanced out the window and saw that not every zombie they dropped got back up again. A few of them were fused by the black ichor that sustained them with the rest of the pile, creating a single ooze-like monster composed of writhing limbs and screaming faces.

"Hmm. Well, keep an eye on it." Whoosh! Loth chortled again, kicking her heels as another group of zombies was dropped. She must've been watching this happen for hours and she still hadn't gotten tired of it?

"I can see how this might be dangerous for Kobolds." Will mused.

"Ahaha, what?" Loth asked, wiping tears out of her eyes as she glanced back up at Will.

"Nevermind, enjoy yourself."

"Thanks. I think I'm going to start marking some with paint to see how fast they come back up. And because it's funny." Whoosh! Will went back up to the top and asked a Ria to go down there and keep an eye on Loth and the slowly growing mega-monster at the foot of the building. We should probably get this business taken care of before Loth decides to stay on this Floor, Will thought to himself.

In the distance, he saw the carpenter with the two priestesses hovering over him, slowly and carefully drawing the dream-parasite out of his body. Remember, you're a Lord. You're doing this to protect your people from that.

"Alright," Will said, laying back down and fluffing his pillow.

"How many more of these things do we have to fish out of the ether?"

"Idunno." The withered saint said with a shrug.

"We'll know when they stop latching on to you."

"Swell," Will said.

"Send me back in." Charnesa leaned down and tapped his head. Will found himself in a familiar memory. It wasn't losing his hand this time, The night terrors seemed to have picked up that it wouldn't work anymore after the first two. Instead, it was the memory of Loth getting burnt to a crisp and nearly dying. The only discrepancy was that the thing in his arms that he was trying desperately to get to a healer was a kobold-sized face-slug in his arms. That was a pretty big discrepancy.

In a matter of minutes he had it subdued. The next one was even worse, with Will having lunch with Slug-Brianna just before she went on to the next Floor without them. As it turned out, the number of night terrors in the area was four.