The Legend of William Oh

Chapter 258: Young Dragons and Unicorn Pigs

Will checked his Stats.

Will stillhadn’t found a good Sacrifice for Uru Drake’s Eye. He’d been holding off on upgrading it in the hopes of fully adapting his body to Uru Drake’s Eye before upgrading it.

“Did everyone else get to level fifty-nine?” Will asked, to scattered nods.

“Okay, let’s pack up and head out. Can’t be healthy to stay here forever.” Will said.

They got their gear sorted and headed through their respective Doors.

The world turned pitch black and all sound was lost as a torrential downpour slammed down onto him.

In an instant, Will was soaked. In the distance, Will spotted Loth waving some torchbugs, their warm glow nearly scattered by the rain.

Will wove his way around a tree and joined up with Loth, followed shortly by Brianna and Travis.

Travis set up a shelter and they spent the night huddled down, watching the rain roll off the invisible barrier set up above them.

Truthfully, Will hadn’t had a strong sense of danger from Climbing in quite some time, owing to his prodigious growth. The monsters of the 12th and 13th floor were more annoyances than threats.

If Will’s sense of what was dangerous got messed up, he might eventually get some of his own people killed by accident.

They camped out under the boughs of a tree and slept, with Travis’s illusions keeping watch. Any Climber worth their salt was able to fall asleep at a moment’s notice.

Will woke up when the light began shining directly through his eyelids, flickering and swaying with the sound of the wind through the leaves.

Will peeled an eye open, unwilling to get out of his bedroll for anything less than a clear and imminent threat to their safety.

Will’s eyes opened the rest of the way as he sat up, scanning his surroundings.

Will had never been in a forest.

Not one like this, anyway.

The jungle of the 7th Floor had high underbrush and a low canopy that created an oppressive atmosphere, especially when combined with the heat and humidity.

The 9th Floor’s perfect forests were pristine, almost gaudy and too-convenient to be believed.

This one blew them both away with raw majesty.

The tree they’d made camp up against was bigger around than the orphanage Will had grown up in, and it reached up into the sky nearly as high as the dead metal towers from the 8th floor, forming a canopy that felt like a second sky.

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And through the leaves, the dappled sunlight streamed down on them. A cool breeze wafted through, carrying the smell of fresh rain.

Their camp wasn’t actually tucked up against the trunk of the tree like he’d thought, but instead had made their camp in the hollow created by a single root rising up into the air, large enough to shelter them from the sight of monsters.

A nearby spiderweb a little bigger than Will’s palm glistened with beads of water strung like jewels across the thread, reinforced with Miasmatic Structures to allow it to capture the extra-strong bugs of the 14th Floor. Will thought.

Will got…a desert.

Will shook the momentary spasm of envy off and picked his way around the spiderweb, being careful not to damage it as he climbed the tree-root.

The view up here was even better. The trees were spaced much farther apart than they’d been in the jungle, and the underbrush was nearly nonexistent, allowing Will to see for hundreds of feet before the trees eventually blocked all sight.

The trees themselves had strands of miasma flowing through their wood.

Will placed his hand on the bark and studied his Class compared to the wood.

Will thought, comparing the strands reinforcing his right hand to the ones in the tree.

Will thought, craning his neck to look straight up. Far above, birds flitted around the towering canopy, roosting far beyond the reach of most predators.

There weren’t enough Lords making enough Influence to regularly transport goods with Freight Doors. Freight doors were prohibitively expensive after a single Floor.

Will rapped his knuckles against the wood. He could tell by the feel and the density of the Resistance pattern that it was something around fifteen times stronger than normal wood.

But how to transport it?

If they could set up a Lord on every Floor in between all the other ones, they could easily arrange for a smooth flow of goods to the Strongholds that needed them.

Will’s Burned Stronghold was mostly made of stone. Not even high quality stone. What little wood they had was used for tools and toilet seats.

Sending wood to Rotwitch was doable at only 140 Influence, but the swamp’s proto-curses might corrupt or degrade the shipment, especially if it wasn’t immediately shipped further down.

Shipping it straight to the 12th Floor would cost…over ten thousand Influence.

Will thought, patting the sturdy wood.

When Will had first gotten the ability, it had been one cubic inch per point of Acuity.

With his current kit…

Will remembered a gallon was two hundred and thirty-one cubic inches, so he had roughly five gallons of storage capacity.

Once inside, each item that went in was then shrunk down do roughly 1/25th of it’s original size, allowing for more to be crammed in.

Brianna told him his new Vassal, Jorn, would be arriving soon, along with all the others they had hired to help the Stronghold. According to her, the kid fancied himself a hunter and liked making his own bows.

Will thought. Ashwood was semi-famous for its wood, so Will could probably draw on his second-hand experience to find some decent pieces.

Will fished the Veil-piercing lenses out of his vest pocket and peered at the wood closely. The lenses made the physical form of the wood fade somewhat and allowed his vision to penetrate deeper into the wood.

The miasmatic structures seemed to follow the wood grain perfectly, every knot and whorl was reflected in the magic filling it.

Will thought, making a quick sketch in his legend.

“Wow,” Brianna’s voice pulled him out of his study, her face appearing below as she climbed up the tree root, arriving beside him. “The forest is so pretty.”

“I like the canopy the best,” Will said, giving her a hand up.

They sat there together, looking up at the leaves glowing green in the morning light, the magical birds flitting from tree to tree, just enjoying the quiet of the forest.

Will took a jar of honey and crackers out of Dimensional Storage and split them with Brianna.

Their quiet appreciation of the Floor’s beauty was interrupted as a roar echoed through the forest, bouncing off the massive trees, seeming to come from everywhere at once.

A voice like thunder shouted in between roars of unbridled rage as a stampede of enormous, round, piglike monsters ran past. Each of them was roughly twice the height of a horse, with fat bodies whose hides seemed to be thick and covered in scars. They had glowing horns jutting from their noses, their eyes rounded in terror as they let out bellowing squeals of terror.

The fat unicorns were being followed – poorly – by a dragon that dwarfed them, it’s head only slightly smaller than their body.

It would give one of the city-destroying kaiju from the 5th Floor a run for their money in size and Will already knew it was much stronger.

“Hold still!”

One of the squealing unicorn-pigs jerked to the side at the last second, and the stumbling dragon whiffed his attack, his enormous jaws snapping shut a few dozen feet shy of where Will and Brianna sat.

the enormous dragon’s bulk carried him forward, slamming his face into the wood they sat against, causing the grand tree to shudder and shake, despite it’s overwhelming mass.

The dragon pulled it’s head away from the wood and rubbed its snout, which was dripping blood onto the ground. The sheer potency of the miasma contained in the dragon’s blood caused it to hiss and sputter against the forest floor.

“Agh, and now my nose is bleeding. Great. Maribelle is going to make fun of me, I just know it. What else could-“

The dragon stiffened in place as it spotted Will and Brianna, like a person might do upon realizing a spider was on the arm of their chair.

Will could see him debating squishing them.

“…Mornin’.” Will said, waving.

The dragon cleared his throat and wiped the blood from his nose, his voice deepening.

“Greetings, pitiful mortals, you are honored to be in the presence of I, Aguilion. First of his line, Breaker of Boughs, Most Talented of Talons.”

“This humble William Oh is honored, Aguilion.”

“Brianna Baker.” Brianna said with a gentle cursty.

“Travis Oilton,” an illusion of Travis said from his bedroll while his real body snuck away to somewhere safer. The dragon didn’t seem to notice.

“Loth the Luminary,” Loth called from where she’d been picking through the underbrush for new insects.

“What tribute hath thee brought to mollify this great one to spare thee thine absolute destruction?

“It means to appease the anger of.” Loth called, studying a centipede with a loupe.

“Tribute huh? How about this: We don’t fight, and don’t tell Maribelle about how poorly you were hunting.” Will said, crossing his arms.

“Wha-you can’t- I’ll obliterate yo-“

“MARIBELLE!” Will shouted at the top of his lungs, his inhuman stats causing his voice to ring through the forest. The green dragon in front of him flinched backwards, his eyes widening with growing alarm.

“What’s that shrill voice?” A voice called from the distance. “Aggy, did one of the pigs kick you in the groin again?”

“?” Will asked.

“Fine, fine,” Aguilion whispered, holding a claw over his snout in the universal sign for ‘shut up’. “If she asks, the bloody nose is from when I saved you guys from a wirehair gorilla.”

“Agreed.”