When William Oh plummeted to the deepest point of the Netherworld, his body fell into a contemplative trance that allowed him to reach enlightenment. During this state, his mind wandered beyond the bounds of this reality, into other, stranger worlds.

In this enlightened state, he witnessed the circular nature of his own existence, however briefly, and when he awoke, it drove him to take the first steps towards his True Destiny, rising back to the surface with the Axe of Kings, destined to unite all noble Houses beneath him.

-          Jason Salazar

Case file 8934: Ashwood

I should track down that merchant who suggested a healthy dose of Resistance, Will thought, his face pressed into a pool of Kaith blood. And give him a big, sloppy kiss.

Resourceful Climber, Level 4

5 Strength

15 Resistance

12 Kinesthetics

12 Acuity

8 Focus

Charges: 0/8

Free Points: 0

Primary Abilities: Aspect of the Goat, Phantom Hand

As they had been tumbling down into the emptiness, Will had spent all the free points he’d been saving on Resistance.

Resistance offered marginal protection from every kind of physical damage, and would also dictate how quickly he recovered from being paralyzed.

Hurtling through the void without any ability to slow himself down, damage reduction had seemed like a priority.

Luckily, a tangle of barbed kaith limbs slowed his fall.

Their fighting retreat above had left literal piles of dead kaith, and Will hit one straight on. His downward momentum was arrested and translated to an uncontrolled slide as the corpses gave way.

A minute later, Will was lying on his side, cheek pressed into a shallow pool of possibly greenish ichor. It was hard to tell.

The only light was the faint illumination of the glow-worms above.

Note to self: Illumination is important.

Sure, Gertrude preached it religiously during their government-mandated weekly ‘How to Be a Climber, for Orphans’ class, but Will kind of let a lot of it go in one ear and out the other, and now he would really like some more light.

‘You never know when you might get trapped in the dark. Cut off from civilization for weeks or even months at a time. Food, water, bandages, alcohol, light source, rope, cutting tool, firestarter, and tarp. I cannot tell you how many Climbers pass away from simple bad preparation.’

Okay, so I was leaning on Loth without realizing it. He’s the better Climber.

Being paralyzed at the bottom of a pit really gave Will the opportunity he needed to examine his life, the goals thereof, and how he planned on making them happen.

Obviously, I need a team to make it to the Tenth Floor.

I wonder if Loth is willing. He was pretty reliable, aside from the compulsion to watch traps go off. I definitely need better gear, and I’ve got some ideas for how to use my Phantom Hand as part of my Build, that requires the right equipment.

Light-source Relic: on the shopping list.

Bandages. Definitely.

Pemmican is fine for food, although it binds you up.

I actually like the tomahawk in practice. Works well as a hook in a pinch, focuses damage on a narrow spot, good output for a single-handed weapon. Can sub as a tool in a pinch. Might lean into that.

…I may not need armor. My Build’s going to have near-Tank durability, and I saw the way that heavy armor nearly got Reggie killed. That would give me a chest slot to use for something made of cloth. Cloth chest Relics tend to grant more mobility, meta, and Charge-based effects.

Could grant some interesting synergies.

Approximately fifteen minutes of Build-contemplation later, Will twitched his pinkie finger. His knee gave a little twitch.

SUCCESS!

“Erk,” Will exclaimed in glorious victory. His tongue and lips weren’t quite back to normal yet.

Shhh.

Will’s eyes widened as he heard the pile of kaith corpses shift.

Crap, I shouldn’t’ve made noise.

Will spun his eyes around in their sockets, limbs twitching uselessly as he tried to push himself up. He felt like he’d woken in the middle of the night, all his limbs made of lead and unresponsive to his demands.

Shhh.

Will froze as he heard the sound again.

It was ahead of him, but too far to make out in the dark.

Shhh.

Shhh.

It came into view in the dim blue light: the kaith worker that’d been carrying him. It was broken, part of its rounded exoskeleton cracked open from the fall, exposing its innards to the cave air. Its legs were a ruin, forcing it to drag itself forward on ruined nubs.

It was not long for this world.

But those mammalian eyes above the insectoid mandibles were full of malice as it dragged itself towards him.

Maybe I can play dead, Will thought, lying still, eyes staring straight ahead.

Shhh. It dragged itself closer, gaze unwavering.

No, I don’t think that’s going to work.

Shhh.

Will’s limbs twitched as he tried to move. To stand. To protect himself.

MOVE, YOU SON OF A BITCH!

…Sorry, Mom, but if the shoe fits…

Will’s arm twitched uselessly. It was a little better than it was a moment ago. Will was regaining the use of his limbs rapidly, but not quite fast enough to save himself.

Alright, what do I have?

He still had the Phantom Hand with the sling bullets in the storage.

Could that work? Will wondered, eyes widening.

Picturing it as a sling cradle, Will whipped the Phantom Hand in a circle above him and released one of the sling bullets.

The bullet came out with the right trajectory, but it didn’t have nearly the velocity Will was hoping for, arcing forward with little more speed than a hand-thrown lead marble, impacting against the approaching creature’s eye socket before bouncing off without inflicting any tangible damage.

Damnit, what are my other—

The eye socket started to smoke, and the kaith began writhing in place and shrieking weakly.

Oh, right. The Sting Ring’s effect. Take that, punk! Now I’ll just do the other eye, and—

Before Will could finish following through on his plan, a maggot-pale neck descended from high above and latched onto the shrieking kaith’s limbs, latching on with the circular jaw and beginning to engulf it.

Then another.

And another.

In a matter of minutes, dozens of the pale tube-mouths were extending down from the walls, fighting over the kaith’s body until the monster was torn apart, sliding down those maggot-white throats.

Sensing more food, the teeth-on-a-tube creatures began feasting on the pile of dead kaith surrounding him. Eventually, one would land on him.

Okay, now would be a good time to move, Will thought, putting a weak hand underneath himself.

In the time they’d spent subduing the struggling kaith, Will had regained a small fraction of his strength.

As quietly as he could, Will pushed himself to his feet, wincing in pain as the numbness began wearing off, revealing scrapes and bruises across his entire body.

An eyeless, circular mouth began questing his direction, perhaps sensing his movement or his smell.

Will silently danced around it, avoiding touching it.

The mouth-on-a-tube seemed a bit confused, whipping around until it touched a kaith corpse, then began happily engulfing it.

Will glanced across the forest of white necks descending from the cave walls, bits and pieces of raw meat creating bulges in the necks as they drew the food back to their stomachs.

I need to find a place to recover fully, before I try to scale that, Will thought.

If one of them caught his right arm, he was toast. He needed to scale the wall at full speed if he was going to make it past them.

Will knelt down and grabbed one of Loth’s glow-worms, collecting another and another as he crept along, searching for an overhang or an alcove that would offer shelter from the man-eating mouths…

Without having one of the creatures in it.

There.

Will spotted a shadow that grew deeper the closer he got to it.

His heart hammered in his chest as he limped his way toward the alcove, avoiding the feasting mouths as he moved.

There were only scant feet between them, and there wasn’t a single joint in his body that didn’t ache, but somehow, Will managed to slip between the creatures and make it to the alcove.

Will was ready to switch to his axe at a moment’s notice, but the alcove was empty. He nearly tripped as he entered, as something caught his foot. Will whirled silently and passed the glow-worm over it.

There was some kind of perfectly straight lip in the floor. In fact… Will tapped the tomahawk against the floor, making a quiet chime of steel on steel.

The floor is steel?

Sweeping the glow-worm across the floor, Will thought he might be able to make out some white paint forming lettering of some kind. Unfortunately, the entire message couldn’t be read, as it disappeared beneath seamless stone that composed the cave system.

How… What even is this? How could there be steel with paint on it beneath solid stone?

Will raised his gaze and crept forward, keeping his head on a swivel for one of those mouths that might try and grab him from behind.

The alcove turned into a tunnel, and in the distance, a faint red light began to outcompete the handful of glow-worms in his hand.

As he arrived, he saw a single strange egg of some kind radiating red light into the small room. It was placed high above, near the ceiling, and it seemed to be protected by two metal wires looped around it.

The walls seemed to be made partially of steel, and partially of stone that had coated it like some kind of creeping growth over centuries.

In the corner of the room was a skeleton.

It was about Will’s size, wearing deteriorated roughspun clothes, a wool cloak, and leather boots. There was a flawless archery armguard on its left wrist, while everything below seemed to have been gnawed off and carried away by a wild animal.

The other hand was empty; no hope for another ring.

Beside the skeleton, there was a sling and a crumbling pouch of seemingly glass marbles.

Everyone knew when you found a corpse with perfectly preserved gear on it, the gear was probably a Relic. They did not seem to deteriorate. It wasn’t entirely unheard-of to pry a perfectly preserved Relic out of a pile of corrosion and rust buried by a landslide and weathered by decades of water damage.

“I’ll carry it forward,” Will murmured, gently sliding the wrist guard off the skeleton’s arm, and slipping it over his own handless wrist.

Armguard of Tracers equipped.

When the bearer makes a ranged attack, a trail of fire hangs suspended in the air behind the projectile for ten seconds. These tracers will burn anything they come into contact with for a moderate amount of fire damage.

Well, that’s…interesting, but not unexpected. Ranged modification in the gauntlet slot.

It also reminded Will that he never got the description for his axe. He was too busy not dying.

Will pulled out his axe and focused on it.

Tomahawk of the Serpent

Passive: Creates a venomous chord as it is swung that inflicts a 3% debuff on the stats of enemies that hear it, each debuff lasts 3 seconds.

1 Charge: Unleash a 20ft radius sound-based attack that does a small amount of psychic damage on all enemies within range.

1 Charge: May be used to seal an agreement between two individuals by sharing smoke from the pipe. Anyone who willingly violates the spirit of an agreement suffers from triple the passive debuff for one month.

“That’s not bad at all,” Will mused, flipping the blade over to inspect the hole in the bowl-shaped back. It was obviously a pipe, now that he looked at it. Not just a weapon or a tool, but also a negotiation guarantor? He was fairly sure its value would be assessed somewhere in the 1000-gold or higher range, solely for the third Ability.

Which was too bad, because Will had no intention of selling it.

Much like Ben had been, Will was rather fond of his first Relic, even if it would be a better idea to sell the thing and outfit himself in cheaper Relics that gave him a complete Build.

Will sat down beside the skeleton and lifted the bony right arm it held over its stomach, revealing a man-made arrow rattling around in its pelvis.

“You got stabbed in the back, too, huh?” Will said, throwing his arm over the skeleton’s shoulder in a perhaps too-familiar way.

Will studied the arrow. It was finely made. Expensive.

“Looks like we’ve both had our share of run-ins with rich kids. Whaddya think we should do about Mason? He didn’t actively try to sabotage anything, he just got a little panicky and that distracted me. During the fight, he covered my six pretty good.”

The change in posture made the skeleton’s head tilt towards him at a rakish angle, the posture someone would adopt if they were giving someone an ‘Are you serious?’ look.

“I am serious. He didn’t do anything wrong, just yelled at me a bit before things went down, and that’s not a crime. And I can see him having years of guilt about leaving me behind.

“Years of guilt that I can monetize,” Will said with a devious grin.

“…No, that doesn’t make me the bad guy, does it?

“I know I said he didn’t do anything wrong, but he’s rich. He’ll be fine parting with some cash.”

The skeleton’s head popped off and fell into Will’s lap.

“Alright, fine, I won’t monetize it. I’ll settle for winning every argument and free drinks for life. Happy?” Will asked, holding the skull up.

The skull nodded.

“Yeah, that seems fair,” Will mused, setting the skull back where it belonged as he rose to his feet and studied the room.

There was a hatch on the ceiling, clearly labeled ‘EMERGENCY ESCAPE’ in immaculate white paint.

Against the wall was a ruddy stain where an iron ladder had dissolved into nothing.

Don’t mind if I do, Will thought.

Will bounded up and caught a bit of the rock growing out of the wall and clambered up to the ceiling, awkwardly balancing on two feet against the corner of the room as he swung himself out and grabbed the hatch’s handle.

It took a feat of sheer determination to open the hatch and swing it up, revealing a narrow tunnel that led straight up, nearly choked with stone growing from the outside in.

Will started climbing.

Two hours of sweaty, claustrophobic climbing later, Will was face-to-face with a solid stone wall.

Come on! The last thing he wanted to do was wriggle his way back through that claustrophobic mess, praying he didn’t get stuck.

With a grunt, Will grabbed the tomahawk out of his belt. There wasn’t enough room to get a full swing, so he held it by the head and slammed it against what seemed like the thinnest portion of stone covering the wall.

Will’s breath grew faster and faster as the air in the tiny tunnel turned stale and humid.

Bright little worms began to dance across his vision.

I wonder if the next one-armed Climber to come across here will use my corpse as a puppet, Will thought.

Crack!

A burst of fresh air flooded over him as the stone cracked away along the blade of his axe.

And though it was the faintest suggestion…Will smelled bread.

He redoubled his efforts, carving out a palm-sized piece of wall, peering out.

He recalled what he was looking at. Far down below him was one of the first chambers the other Climbers branched off into—Will recognized the triple stalagmite formation. He was literally paces away from the entrance, which was in turn only a few hundred feet from civilization! FOOD!

Will began furiously hacking away at the thin stone, but soon discovered it was easier to break off larger chunks by setting his feet against the thin wall, shoulders against the opposite side, and pushing with every muscle in his body, breaking off head-sized slabs and sending them tumbling below.

After two head-size chunks were dislodged, Will was able to squirm his way through the hole, and even the scrapes and bruises couldn’t slow him down as he sprinted for the entrance.

Will came to a sliding halt as he came face-to-face with the Quest Babysitter, standing above the outer rim of the cavern, making sure any kaith backsplash didn’t reach the civilians in camp.

“You look like shit. Something to report?” Nathan asked with a cocked brow.

“…Yessir,” Will said.

***Mason***

“Are they still following us?” Reggie asked, glancing over his shoulder. They’d been chased through the tunnels for what felt like an eternity at this point, and only recently did they begin to see landmarks that were familiar to them.

We’re almost back.

“I don’t think so,” Mason said, listening closely. He and June had some of the highest Acuity, which made them the eyes and ears of the group. June’s Class would probably develop some enhancements that would eventually place her ahead of him in that respect, but for now, they were evenly matched.

“That just means they’ll begin sealing off the entrance,” Mason mused. “We need to get Nathan there as soon as possible, and guide him to the tunnel so he can cut through while it’s still setting.”

Maybe if we’re fast enough…AGH!

The sight of sunlight was both most welcome and extremely painful to Mason’s dark-adjusted eyes as they stepped up into the evening-reddened sky.

“Where’s Nathan?” June asked aloud as she arrived at the edge, helping Mason and Reggie up. The Tank was well and truly spent, slumping down on the ground as soon as they were aboveground. Loth refused the hand and climbed up alone, peering back down at the cavernous hole below them with a contemplative frown.

Mason’s heart began hammering in his chest as he heard distant screaming.

Was the camp under attack?

The three of them glanced at each other before they began sprinting towards the camp, weapons and Abilities at the ready. Reggie caught his breath long enough to stumble to his feet and started trotting after them, burdened by his armor.

“GET ON THAT LINE!

“FIX THAT HARNESS, THAT’S GONNA CHOKE YOU OUT! WHERE’S YOUR WATER?! IS THAT DIRT ON YOUR BLADE?! I SWEAR TO ZALKIR, I MUST’VE KICKED ALL THE PUPPIES IN A PREVIOUS LIFE TO DESERVE YOU GREEN CLIMBERS!”

Their pace slowed as they arrived to find the camp in total chaos, but a constructive one, as Climbers were quickly assembling for an excursion under Nathan’s ‘guidance.’

The steel-haired Climber glanced up at them approaching and grunted. “Good to see you four alive. You’ll be guarding the camp. We’ve got word of where the kaith supply lines are. The fresh Climbers are coming with me. Get some rest, but don’t let down your guard.”

“Got word how?!” Mason asked before he could school his reaction.

Nathan grunted and gestured deeper in the camp, where a single figure sat in kingly repose on a camp chair, his clothes artfully torn and bloodied, with no less than five young women fussing over him as he sat.

The two Bakers stuffed his mouth with golden-brown buns, while the seamstresses cleaned and stitched myriad cuts and punctures all over his body, from his scalp to his feet.

“Oh, hey. Mason,” William Oh said around the bun he was doing his best to inhale. He took a moment to swallow. “You guys caught up. Yes, another please.”