“Travis.”

Travis’s eyes snapped open, the light of early morning peeking over the edge of the raft edge beside his head. “Shit.”

“Indeed.” Loth said, from where she loomed above him. “The rest of the Party forgot you existed when they went exploring this morning. Do you have some kind of mnemonic camouflage Ability upgrade? And do you perhaps use it to avoid taking watch at night?”

Oh, right, she has the highest Focus in the Party.

Travis Oilton

Master Decoy Level 25

38 +15 Strength

75 +17 Kinesthetics

75 + 27 Resistance

25 +15 Focus

37 +12 Acuity

Charges: 40/40

Free Points: 0

Primary Abilities: Center of Attention*(Mnemonic Camouflage)**, Taunt**,

Secondary Abilities: Mirage*

Item Abilities: +55% Charm Potency(75% shirtless), Luring Noise, Stinky Escape, Outflanking, Holdout Dagger(Last Stand), Defensive Blade of Agronosh, Leeching Charm

“…No?” Travis said, sitting up and cancelling the effect.

“You use it to dodge enemy engagement, not chores you find unpleasant.” Loth tutted at him. “I wouldn’t even know you had it if you didn’t abuse it. One of these days, we’re going to leave you behind somewhere you don’t want to get left behind.”

“Okay, mom,” Travis said with a yawn and a stretch. “My Build is perfect for getting left behind, so-“

“Your build is perfect for gaining, surviving, redirecting, and losing enemy attention. Nothing else. If we leave you behind in a cavern filled with poisonous gas, you have the same chance of survival as everyone else. Less, even.”

Loth cocked her head, glancing between him and the flotsam below, where Will was presumably out scouting the dangerous wreckage.

“How are you so normal?” She mused.

“Don’t compare me to Will.” Travis said reflexively before biting his tongue. Typically Travis would disparage William Oh at length, but the attitude towards him among the rest of the Party was something approaching…Worship.

And it wasn’t hard to see why. Their Party leader seemed to consistently luck into riches and support beyond measure, and as long as that wealth and support continued to trickle down to Travis…Best not stick his foot in his mouth.

“In most cases normal is good.” Loth said, her gaze returning to Travis. “It’s abnormality that demands explanation.”

“So you agree that he’s a freak.” Travis said, shoving the covers aside and rolling to his feet.

“Yes. The kind that conquers The Tower.” Loth stuck her tongue out at him. “Are you foolish enough to expect a normal person to succeed where all others have failed?”

“…Fair.” Travis said, yawning and rubbing his eyes. He was still pissed that only Will got to fight Frederick Wyrd shortly before the opportunity to avenge Oilton was snatched away forever by an ambitious assassin, but his rational mind knew Travis wouldn’t have survived it if he’d been the one facing his father’s killer.

Nothing rational about it, Travis thought, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he studied the skeleton of a ship hovering in midair, supported by thousands of tiny flying insects, while tight chains of worms held together by spidersilk were carried back and forth, painting resin across exposed wood that had been shaped by highly disciplined termites.

Like everything else Loth does, this is going to be over the top. Like life’s a test, and she’s trying to impress the teacher for extra credit.

“Hey, Alicia!” Travis heard June’s distant voice and glanced over at where Alicia was leaning over the side of the raft, scanning the ocean below.

“That cloud is moving against the wind!” Came June’s muffled voice from beyond the edge of the raft, and Alicia craned her neck, turning to look up and behind.

Travis followed her gaze, and wished he hadn’t.

The cloud looming above them exploded with flying sharks…So many flying sharks.

It was still a few hundred feet distant, but the cloud formation was…so big. Mason spotted a…coral-like solid formation generating the cloud cover that was being ripped away by explosions and flying sharks.

Mason lifted his staff and immediately dumped at least fifty Charge into Conflagration, as the cloud formation immediately became riddled with explosions that caused dead sharks and broken Cloud Coral to rain out of the sky.

And more were coming.

Alicia rushed over to her bow and yanked it out of her pack while Reggie paled and made religious symbols across his chest.

“I’m landing us!” Loth shouted a moment before the floating raft lurched under them, descending at an angle, down and away from the fake cloud.

The sharks approaching them filled the sky and the shimmering sunlight reflecting off their silvery backs made a strangely hypnotic pattern…

Like light on the bottom of the pond I swam in as a kid…

PAIN!

“OW!” Travis shouted as Loth clawed his leg.

“Partner with Mason!” she shouted, pointing at their Nuker as she hustled past, pulling Reggie out of the same stupor and instructing him to hold on tight.

Travis nodded and moved over to Mason, who was scowling as the sharks began to spread out from their home, making it harder and harder to catch a decent amount of them in a single explosion.

“On my decoy.” Travis said before putting the mouth harp hanging around his neck between his teeth.

Mirage

39 Charge remaining.

Luring noise

38 Charge remaining.

Two mirror images split off from Mason. Each of them had the ability to draw enemy aggro independently, ever since they had been upgraded with the Iber fly Sacrifice.

But only if they were being looked at.

That was where the Luring noise came in.

As he plucked it and ran Charge through, Travis directed his first mirage to sprint out into the open air.

The decoy was made of light, so gravity didn’t exactly have a hold on it, and the sharks weren’t smart enough to know a person shouldn’t be able to sprint at full speed across air.

The mouth harp gave an annoying twang, and the shark’s attention was directed toward the mirage. The illusion’s aggro effect did the rest.

In a matter of seconds, hundreds of massive sharks diverted their course and swarmed around the image of Travis sprinting away from the boat at full speed.

An instant later, Mason dropped a Conflagrate on the decoy and dropped all the sharks into the ocean, where they belonged, erasing a sizeable chunk of the approaching horde in a single strike.

A moment later, a rain of arrows devastated another swath of the beady-eyed monsters.

Then the sharks were on them.

Loth slammed her foot down onto the floor of the raft, and poles that Travis didn’t even know about snapped up, with spidersilk rope held taut between them, creating a physical barrier between their soft, squishy bodies and the swarm of razor-toothed sharks.

The raft began to shake and spin violently, being sent into a spin as sharks weighing more than their entire team battered up against the cage, gnawing against every part of the raft they could get their mouths on.

POP!

That can’t be good.

“Where do you want the next one!?” Travis said, holding onto the edge of the raft for dear life as they spun.

“Fifty feet that way!” Mason said, pointing.

Travis’s decoy sprinted through the spidersilk net, and with another Charge through the mouth harp, it became the center of attention.

For a brief second, nothing was attacking the raft, and they stabilized, the sharks creating a swirling cone around his mirage, rather than their raft.

“Hold o-“ Loth’s words were cut off as they impacted the ocean.

Crash!

The floor of the raft tried to jam his shins up through his lungs, and it nearly succeeded.

…

“Can you do this!?” Travis heard Loth as he opened his eyes. Judging by the size of the ripples spreading around them, he’d only lost a second or so.

“I don’t want to. But I think I can,” Jean said, nodding.

Travis coughed, withdrawing his knee from his rib and looking around. Mason was dangling from Loth’s safety cage, the energy of the landing trampolining him halfway through the spidersilk strung tight enough to cut flesh.

Mason should’ve been gravely wounded, but after dropping so many blasts on the sharks, his shield was humming with energy. Will could drop one of his cannonballs on him and he’d shrug it off.

Travis stood and grabbed Mason’s ankle, dragging the dazed Nuker back inside the spidersilk cage.

Reggie was helping Alicia back to her feet on the other side of the raft when the spidersilk cage sprung open around them, creating an opening directly above them, where the sky sharks swarmed.

The cage bloomed like a flower, the poles spreading out to create a much wider surface for them to stand on, extending twenty feet or so beyond the edge of the raft.

Jean’s age faded away as copy after copy split from her, sprinting away to take positions on the web-based platform.

That is Brianna, isn’t it? Travis hadn’t seen it himself, and when others informed him of the situation, it had seemed outlandish, but here it was in front of him.

The last remaining monsters swam through the air towards them, jaws gaping, eager to take the unguarded meat-prize for themselves.

Through sheer safety in numbers, the core group at the center of the raft was spared the worst of the assault. The two dozen Jeans lining the outer edge of the platform were attacked first by the opportunistic creatures looking to score an easy meal.

They weren’t easy meals.

One by one, their Tangled companion tore the creatures apart with her bare hands, tearing jaws away from mouths, slicing apart faces and stomachs with magically enlarged claws, leaving behind nothing but rapidly dissolving carnage.

“It’s clearing up,” Mason said, tapping his arm and pointing at the sky above. The concentration of sharks in the sky had become noticeably thinner, and they seemed less eager to rush to their deaths. “We’re on the other side of it, now. Set me up with three more decoys and the rest will be a snap for Alicia to mop up.”

Travis nodded, and over the next thirty seconds, they made three more decoys before exploding them, each group of sharks noticeably smaller than the last.

Meanwhile, Alicia did a quick-switch into her archer kit, setting aside her curse-boosting ring, hat and amulet.

“Can’t you use the rain of arrows with the Evil Eye?” Travis asked.

“Need an upgrade for it.” Alicia whispered, shaking her head. “but once I do…”

Twang!

Alicia shot straight above them, her arrow sailing high above the sharks before splitting into three dozen, each arrow taking aim at a specific shark that was more difficult to lure into a trap than it’s cousins.

Each of them took an arrow to the brain, sending them tumbling down to the water below.

The last of the sharks were returning to the cloud coral, their stomachs gorged on the flesh of their kin. What little they could get before it dissolved into Miasma.

How are we going to get Loot from these things? Travis thought to himself, scanning the surrounding water, littered with the rapidly sinking, dissolving bloody remains of hundreds, if not thousands of sharks the size of a wagon.

I can only imagine how much loot has sunk to the bottom of the ocean on the sixth Floor. if there even is a bottom to it.

In the distance, he spotted Will sprinting across the surface of the water towards them, following the trail of bloody shark chunks that they’d left behind in left in their wild escape from the swarm.

“Will! Get out of there, you idiot!” Loth said, waving at Will to move aside.

What is she shouting for…oh.

A fish-mouth the size of an amphitheater emerged from the water, gulping up the massive trail of dead sharks, catching Will in the process.

An instant later, the mouth and their Party Leader were gone.

Loth sighed, hands on her hips.

“He’ll probably be fine.” She glanced over at the bones of the ship she’d been building, tapping a black claw against her chin. “We’re gonna need a bigger boat, though.”

“I hate this Floor, I hate this Floor, I hate this Floor…” Reggie muttered to himself, rocking in place.