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“That is true,” Loth said, nodding.

“Black lipstick?” Bri asked, bemused. “I thought you dove into a pile of coal or something.”

“It’s a Floor specialty, actually,” Carrie said. “They sell a bunch in town for cheap, if you wanna check it out later.”

Brianna nodded, lips pursed in consideration.

“So, what are your plans?” Will asked.

“There’s an office of the bussing agency in town,” Brianna said. “I’m going to hitch a ride up to the Seventh Floor, since they’re still under contract to get me there.”

Will’s brows rose. “I would’ve thought that, since you’re basically declared dead, you could just…” Will made a ‘wind’ sound and waved his hand.

“I…can’t, I’m sorry,” Bri said, shaking her head. “Contract.”

“Oh, like a Contract with a capital ‘C,’ Contract?” Carrie asked, blinking. Contract-with-a-capital-C implied there was an Ability enforcing it. Like Will’s tomahawk, but probably meaner.

“Then I will see you on the Seventh Floor,” Will said with a shrug. “In a few months, anyway.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think you’re going to die before you get there anymore,” Bri offered.

“That does make me feel better,” Will said.

“What about you?” Loth asked, addressing Carrie.

The Eldritch Fashionista shrugged, her little black thing riding her shoulder like a parrot. “I think I’ll join some grinders, then go back down to the Second Floor and feed Summer Relics until she grows a size or two. Then we’re ready to advance to the Fourth Floor. I was less useful than I’d like…pretty much that entire time.

“Also, you can fly?” Carrie asked, shifting her gaze to Will.

“Eh.” Will waggled his hand. “The duration is nothing to write home about, but yes. More or less.”

“What about you two?” Brianna asked, putting her palms under her chin and leaning forward.

“As you can see, Loth needs some time to regrow scales,” Will said, motioning to the Saboteur.

“My entire body is hypersensitive, and it hurts to move,” Loth said from her rental wheelchair.

“Loth already maxed out her level for this floor when she…” Will lowered his voice, glancing around. “...blew up Oilton, so I’m going to grind while she recovers. Then we’re going back down to the Hunting Grounds to visit family before we try the 4th Floor.”

“Wait,” Carrie said, holding up her hand.

“Eh?” Will grunted.

“‘She’?”

“Yes?” Will said.

Carrie glanced at Loth.

Loth nodded.

A superhuman squeal emerged from Carrie’s mouth before she clapped her hands over it.

“We have to update your wardrobe,” Carrie said, pointing at Loth’s baggy burlap robe that she hid all of her trapmaking tools in.

“No, we do not,” Loth said. “Unless you can find something that can carry all of my tools.”

“Challenge fuckin’ accepted,” Carrie said, grabbing Loth’s wheelchair and steering her away from the table in spite of her protests.

“Maybe that’s why she doesn’t want people thinking she’s a girl,” Will mused, watching them leave.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine with it, if Carrie pays,” Bri said.

“True.” Will rubbed his chin for a moment before he realized that he was alone with Bri.

The black-haired Baker girl was looking at him expectantly.

“Ah, I, um, do you know what Stronghold you’ll be stationed at on the 7th Floor?” Will asked.

“I’m not allowed to say,” Bri said apologetically.

Will frowned, his nervousness at being alone with a Baker girl swept aside as his paranoia caught up with the situation. “Why can’t you say?” Will asked. “Wouldn’t a high-level infinite Baker on the Seventh Floor be a draw? Your Lord would crow about it constantly.”

“Well, first, because I don’t know where I’m going, and second, because I’m not allowed to say even if I did know,” Bri said, shrugging too casually, a bit of sweat beading on her forehead.

Will studied Bri, a black serpent of dread coiling in his guts. Something didn’t add up.

“Do you still think you’re going to be a Baker when you get where you’re going?” Will asked.

“Of course,” Bri said, her knuckles turning white around a butter knife. Her expression said ‘absolutely not’ and her body language said ‘keep talking and I’ll have to cut you.’

Pretty similar to the behavior she showed when she thought he was one of the bandits trying to kidnap her.

Does her Contract specify resisting being taken off her path to the Seventh Floor, with violence if necessary? Will chewed his lip as he thought of his next step.

“…Are you allowed to receive gifts?” Will asked.

“I guess? There’s nothing in the Contract that says I can’t.”

Will closed his hand, overlaid his Phantom Hand over his regular one, and let one of the rings he’d stolen out, revealing it in his palm with a flourish.

Ring of Total Freedom

+15 Focus

This Relic hides itself and causes Physical, Mental, energy-based, causal, and Ability-based Bindings to be slowly worn away. Aids in escaping grapples, adhesives, engulfing attacks, resisting slow debuffs, and allows the wearer to fit through significantly narrower spaces than they might’ve otherwise. Scales with Focus.

Reactive: 1 Charge.

Dive into a mental projection of the Self.

“A gift for you, then,” Will said, offering it to Brianna. “I’d feel a lot better if you wore this.”

Brianna’s eyes slowly widened as she read the description. “This Relic has to be worth more than I am.”

“It’s fine, I stole it,” Will said. “Nobody else will know you have it. Besides, I don’t exactly have the slots to burn on edge-case Relics.”

“…If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure,” Will said. “Your Contract expires when you get where you’re going, right?”

She nodded.

“Then maybe that Relic will help if you decide to quit.”

“You really think they’re gonna tie me up?” she asked, expression wry.

A flash entered Will’s mind: the Tangled, a young Climber about their age, his tortured body covered in restraints from head to toe.

Will inhaled sharply.

“What?” Bri asked.

“Just thought of something I need to buy before we head out,” Will lied. “Wear the damn ring.”

“Fine. Gods,” she sighed, slipping it onto her finger. The band faded into her skin, disguising itself.

“Wow, fifteen Focus. That’s double-dailies.”

“…Let’s go save Loth from Carrie.” Will offered his hand as he stood up. Brianna took it, her soft hand smaller than his own.

“Sounds fun,” she said with a mischievous smile.

A few minutes later, they tracked Carrie down to where she was holding different leathers in front of Loth, testing their look as Loth stared at the ceiling, seemingly desperately trying to lapse into a coma.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Will said, grabbing the handles of Loth’s chair. “We need to go shopping for barrels.”

“That’s right!” Loth said, sitting up. “I need a new barrel!” The last one had been left behind when Loth caught fire.

“I guess it’s fine,” Carrie said, almost pouting. “I’ve already picked out the design and the leather, so I suppose…”

“Excellent,” Will said before leaning down beside Loth and whispering, “Let’s get you out of here.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Please, by the gods. Save me,” Loth whispered back.

Carrie didn’t stay behind at the tailor like they’d planned, instead handing off the design to the shopkeep before chasing after them.

The four of them spent an inordinate amount of time shopping for barrels and replacements for some of the tools that Loth had lost when they’d fled Oilton. Due to her higher Strength, Loth wanted a slightly bigger barrel, which would allow her to partition off the inside into several different biomes.

It looked like a pain in the ass to carry, though, because the barrel was soon to be bigger than she was.

After their shopping, they found Travis staring into the distance at a restaurant table, looking pale, bruised, and utterly exhausted. Will was surprised the Master Decoy was still alive.

When asked how he’d managed to escape, Travis just grunted and drank his water, continuing to stare into the distance.

“Speed boost based on the number of enemies,” he muttered into his mug.

Ah. So he kited.

Travis hadn’t been fast enough to escape by himself, but by running into the territory of several different kinds of monsters and pissing them off as he tried to lose the Wyrd, he’d been able to boost his natural speed high enough to get away from all of them.

Travis was truly safer the more people were trying to kill him.

After a few hours, they all said their goodbyes. Will and Carrie agreed to go grinding together the next day while Loth healed, and Travis said he would see if he could get in contact with his family.

They all waved off Brianna as she headed off to the bussing agency, then went their separate ways, with Will pushing Loth along back to The Flotilla, only to find that they rented rooms by the hour, and Will and Loth’s room was already given away and ‘in use.’

They got an inn on the other side of town and settled in for the evening.

Now that they finally had privacy and there was nothing trying to kill them, Will and Loth could talk about a subject that was a little more…sensitive.

“So I stole a bunch of Relics out of Travis’s dad’s office,” Will said, his Phantom Hand dumping the five rings, two amulets, a bangle, and a tiny dagger out onto a table.

“So, you waited until we could get some distance from Oilton and some plausible deniability before we started wearing these?” Loth asked, spreading the pile of jewelry out on their rough wooden table.

“I think so. If ‘possible deniability’ is what it sounds like.”

“It is,” Loth said, inspecting the rings by the light of the candle.

“The Ring of Arcane Endurance,” Loth said, twirling the simple golden band between her fingers. “I’m tempted, but it’s just good, not synergistic with my Build.”

Ring of Arcane Endurance

+8 Focus

+5 Acuity

Whenever the wearer enters a new combat encounter, they receive a 1-Charge buffer to spend on Abilities.

“We could probably sell it to Mason for good money,” Will said. Nukers were constantly starved for Charge, and taking one Charge off of every encounter could make a long excursion in the higher Floors much more manageable, especially if the Nuker was comfortable just blowing up everything that attacked before the situation got too serious.

It could seriously lubricate a long Climb.

“Mmm.” Loth nodded, checking the next ring.

Ring of Regeneration

-7 Focus

User heals significantly faster, as long as the ring is equipped. Scales with Resistance.

“Oh, interesting, a daily Charge penalty,” Loth mused, wincing in pain as she tore off her Ring of the Wolf Pack, which had some scar tissue around it where the heat had seared the previous ring into the skin before it had been hastily healed.

“Ow,” Will said for his Party member, as she mostly seemed unaffected. Let no one say that kobolds had low pain tolerance.

“I’ll have to do the other one later,” Loth said, slipping the Ring of Regeneration on a different finger before pocketing the Wolf Pack.

A moment later, she was looking at the next ring.

Ring of Accuracy*

+7 Strength

4 degrees of correction.

Manhunter: When a creature is struck by a projectile from the wearer, they are drawn toward the shooter along the path of the projectile. Force scales with Strength.

“Huh.” Loth studied the Ring of Accuracy. “A mutated Ring of Accuracy.” Its stats weren’t quite as good as the one Alicia Zodiac had had on her, and no sane Scout wanted their target to get closer, so Will hadn’t put much thought into it.

“Wouldn’t this draw enemies directly onto your tracers?” Loth asked, turning back to him.

Will’s eyes widened as he imagined an enemy being drawn along the path of his sling’s projectile, being hollowed out by the curtain of fire hanging in midair.

The curtain of fire, which also dealt acid damage because of the Sting Ring.

That would ensure the tracers hit every time, and the Sting Ring would add its bonus damage twice. That’s a soft-set!

“Gimmie,” Will said, snatching the ring out of the air and pocketing it as Loth moved on to the next.

“Try this one,” Will said, sitting down across from Loth and pushing the amulet shaped like a bolt of lightning frozen in silver towards her.

“A little garish,” Loth mused, inspecting the amulet.

Amulet of Chain Casting

+5 Focus

+8 Acuity

Any single-target direct-damage Ability now has the option to be cast for quadruple Charges. If the option is taken, the Ability will then chain to up to five additional targets.

“Oooh,” Loth crooned over the amulet. “Edge-case usage, but I like it…”

“I figured you might want it, since your rope Relic got burnt up.”

“I love it,” Loth said, putting the amulet over her head and tucking the amulet under her clothes.

“What else do we have?” she asked, rubbing her fire-scarred hands together.

Will looked somewhere else. “Last two rings.”

Ring of Curse Concentration

+3 Strength

+4 Resistance

The duration of debuffs inflicted by the wearer are divided by a certain amount, while their effects are multiplied by a similar amount. Scales with Focus.

Ring of Haunting Blood

+4 Focus

+3 Kinesthetics

Whenever the wearer bleeds in combat, create wraiths out of the blood that seek out and inflict Fear on the creature that caused the blood to be shed. Scales with Acuity.

+20% potency of Blood Abilities.

“Awesome,” Will mused. “Those two synergize. Might even cause people’s hearts to stop from fear.”

“Do you want to make a Thorns Build and get yourself wounded constantly?” Loth asked.

Will’s expression soured. In order to truly maximize their effect, he’d have to let enemies hit him, which wasn’t really his style…at all. Will was not fond of pain, and those who inflicted wounds on themselves for a modest benefit were, quite frankly, idiots.

“Maybe we can sell it to Mason for Reggie,” Will said with a shrug. The guy was a Tank, so he’d be getting hit plenty as a side effect of always being up front.

“Maybe,” Loth said, sliding the rings across the table, where Will scooped them up and pocketed them. The rings were off-Build for both of them, but they were highly valuable.

Loth inspected the second amulet, a gaudy lump of gold.

Amulet of Divine Favor

+10 Focus

Heirloom Abilities gained from Deities or beings of similar power are reduced in cost by 1 Charge, to a minimum of 1.

“And we’ll give this to Steve for pre-payment,” Loth said, while Will nodded.

Last but not least, a tiny dagger and bangle.

Banking Bangle

+5 Resistance

+5 Focus

Store up to 5 Charges of an Ability, whose potency and Relic bonuses are locked in from the moment of storage.

Mentally define a situation in which the Bangle will deploy the Ability.

When the situation occurs, the Bangle will automagically deploy the Ability, regardless of the Wearer’s state. May store multiple Abilities, up to the limit of five.

“Oh, this is quite good,” Loth mused, tapping her lips.

“How so?” Will asked.

“The wording is vague enough that it doesn’t specify that the person who banks the Ability and the person who is wearing it currently have to be the same. It’s possible we could get Steve to load a heal into it with a passphrase. And even if that didn’t work, I could always load it with a Chained Bullet Wasp, set to trigger if we’re ever ambushed by three or more people.”

“…It can be used as a trap.” Will nodded in understanding.

“EXACTLY!” Loth said, giving him a sharp-toothed grin before slipping the bangle onto her wrist.

“You may sell the Gloves of Ferocity. They weren’t my style anyway,” Loth said, inspecting the five black pearls studding the gold of the bangle.

The gloves were a little singed, but they still kept their Relic status, so Will would probably do that.

Finally, they looked over the small dagger.

Holdout Dagger

+4 Kinesthetics

+7 Resistance

It is more difficult to notice the dagger for those who mean the wielder harm. In combat, apply a stacking bonus to the wielder’s Strength, Resistance, and Movement Speed based on the number of enemies.

“Should we sell this to Travis, or just keep it?” Will asked.

Loth shrugged. “I could be persuaded either way.”

“I guess it depends on whether or not I can equip it in my off-hand slot,” Will said. If he could put the small dagger on his hip and benefit from the enhancements even while it wasn’t drawn, then it would be worth keeping for himself.

Only way to find out would be to equip it and see what happened.

Will took off all his Relics except the dagger, slipping that into his belt.

He noted the bonus to Kinesthetics and Resistance, then pulled out his Tomahawk of the Serpent.

The bonuses were still there. The dagger was still in his off-hand slot, even though he could never actually wield it as an off-hand weapon.

Oh, thank the gods, Will thought, sagging in relief.

“We’re keeping it,” Will said.

“So…about that Brianna girl. How did your talk with her go once Carrie and I left? We made a little bet about what you would say to the Baker girl once we were gone.”

“Oh, Bri?” Will asked. “She’s a Tangled.”

Loth froze. “…That was not covered by the bet. Explain.”

“She’s a poor girl offered a powerful, experimental Class by a Lord, who she either doesn’t know the identity of, or is prohibited from revealing. When I first dragged her out of the palanquin, she had a big bloody clump of hair on the side of her head, which she told me was from someone else.

“It wasn’t from someone else. It’d already healed. I noticed the Tangled in Oilton were able to regrow entire limbs in a matter of seconds, so a little cut on the scalp was probably no big deal. She also has an insane amount of Strength.

“When we got stopped by those ‘bandits,’ they were strangely fixated on Brianna specifically, called her a ‘payday,’ and when I told them a Tangled had gone wild in the center of the city and caused trouble, they didn’t ask any followup questions, and instead said ‘she’s gone.’ They thought she was the one who went insane and started destroying the city. A miscommunication on our part, but it worked out well for us.”

Loth nodded. “Judging by the previous Tangled that we killed, she’s not yet been tortured to the point of insanity. We should do something,” Loth said.

“No.” Will shook his head. “If I’m right, she’s under Contract to fight back to the best of her ability if someone tries to stop her from going to the Lord. We’d have to kill her, and she’d very likely spawn another Tangled mess in the process.”

“Then what do we do?” Loth asked.

“Nothing,” Will said, his stomach sinking as he sat down. “We do nothing. My sole responsibility is to my Party, and we don’t have the power to sprint up to the Seventh Floor and rescue her once her Contract expires. Not in any shape or form. We would die.”

Loth silently processed that.

“I gave her a chance,” Will said quietly. “That was all I could do.”

“You don’t think her Contract will extend beyond her arrival on the Seventh Floor? Perhaps a term of servitude?”

Will shook his head. “She said it would expire. A normal Contract might have a term of servitude, but it would also include a clause where the Lord would be responsible for her well-being during that time.”

“Ah. The Contract would end as soon as she arrived, so they could immediately begin torturing her into a Tangled without the Lord breaking his end of the bargain.”

Will nodded, staring at the floor.

“And you didn’t tell her any of this?” Loth asked.

“I think she might suspect already, and mentioning it to her might trigger the Contract and force her to try and kill us. Keep the secret, you know?

“I really wish I hadn’t figured this out,” Will muttered into his palms. “Would’ve preferred to imagine her happy and baking nonstop on the Seventh Floor.”

Loth stood beside him, and a moment later, he felt her hand on his back.

“Being intelligent…knowing things…can be painful, but it can also provide direction in a directionless existence.”

“How so?” Will asked, glancing up at Loth.

“Let’s kill the Wyrd family.”