Macronomicon
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Chapter 85: Spoils of War Pt. 2
🕑 Added 2024-12-18 18:33:08 +0000 UTC“Punth me in the fathe.” Reggie said around the mouthguard.
“I believe you.” Will said, holding his hands up. “Just because it says it reduces damage to your nervous system doesn’t mean there won’t be any. I’m not gonna give you brain damage to test it.”
“Aw heck, I’ll do it,” Bee said, stepping forward and winding up a tiny fist.
“Wait, Bee-“
There was a small explosive sound as the shapeshifter’s fist hit the Tank’s jaw at superhuman speeds, sending the oversized young man bouncing away like a child’s soccer ball. Will winced in sympathy as Reggie finally hit the ground, limbs tangled and dirty.
A moment later, Reggie coughed and groaned, putting his arms and legs under him before staggering to his feet.
“WHOOO!” Reggie exclaimed, while Loth sighed and shook her head.
“Your jaw, skull, brain and spine are unharmed.” Alicia whispered, holding up Reggie’s arm like the victor of a particularly nasty street fight. “The rest of you…”
“Wait, I didn’t get my hips in it, lemme try agai-“ Bee began.
“Absolutely not,” Jean said, dragging her repressed anger away by the ear.
‘Jean’ was complicated. They had originally met her on the third floor under the name ‘Brianna’, where she had been the victim of a plot to engineer living weapons. The abuse she had suffered at the hands of her captors had led her to use her Ability to split to break her emotions off into manageable chunks, which led to the creation of Bee, Ria, Anna, and Jean.
Bee had gotten a little less outburst-y now that she knew what she was mad about, but she was still a bit of a wild card.
Ria had gotten quieter and less brash, seemingly still in the process of absorbing the root of her burning desire for justice, and the fact that she would never have it. Even now she sat in the corner of the warehouse, sharpening her halberd and staring into space.
Anna was more active, the chubby blonde cheerfully cooking and baking for the group, putting on a façade and keeping herself busy so she didn’t have an opportunity to think about things too deeply.
Each of them were working through feelings that had been cut out of Brianna by her tougher, older alter ego Jean, feelings that would cripple a normal person’s mind.
And they were now a part of William Oh’s Party.
Why do I do this to myself?
From Will’s understanding, their stats were identical:
Bee/Ria/Anna/Jean Baker
One Man Army Level 32
160 Strength
64 Kinesthetics
150 Resistance
10 +15 Focus
32 Acuity
Charges: 25/25
Free Points: 0
Primary Abilities: E unum Pluribus**, Regeneration**
Secondary Abilities: Shapeshifting*, Hivemind
Item Abilities: Total Freedom
The Tangled, the brainchild of a mad Lord obsessed with power, was designed to be the perfect footsoldier.
Strong, hardy, and cheap.
Strong, because she had 5 Strength growth, which was outrageous.
Hardy, because her Resistance was equal to a Tanks, and any damage she did sustain was healed in a matter of heartbeats.
All at the expense of Focus and Acuity.
Any Focus in her status was purchased with Free Points as she had no natural growth for the stat. From what Will had heard of her time spent on the seventh Floor, she’d been directed to only put seven points into Focus to achieve daily charges, and all the rest went into Resistance. The last three points into Focus had been after she escaped, determined to ward off the Handler’s control.
Finally, Tangled were cheap because they could copy themselves infinitely, and each copy gained the benefits of the original body’s Relic slots, making them insanely inexpensive to deploy en masse relative to a typical army.
Will knew they shared Relicc effects because Jean had been wearing the ring of Total Freedom, but Bee had been impossible to grapple or restrain when Will fought her, above and beyond what her shapeshifting could account for.
And all of them had more resistance to mental effects than their base stats would account for, allowing them to avoid the worst of the Handlers signal for Tangled to begin attacking the city. Again, because of the Ring of Freedom.
And from what Will had seen in Oilton, each of them could split an extra copy of themselves up to three times a day. And those copies could do the same.
There were many caveats to this, but worst case scenario, Jean could spread across the land like wildfire, exterminating all life in The Tower, if she really put her mind to it.
Thankfully she did not.
But she could.
Will did not bring this up in casual conversation. Especially not where Bee might hear him.
Tangled were cataclysms in the making. They were nearly as powerful as a Lord, save for their built-in weakness to mental attacks.
They were strong, tough, easy to transport and deploy in large numbers, and…
Can they count as two hundred residents in a settlement, bypassing one of the steps required to gain Lordship? Will thought, eyes widening.
The Tower wouldn’t let people exploit the system like that…
Will’s entire experience Climbing flashed in front of his eyes.
Okay, maybe it would.
Will glanced over at Loth, whose insects could construct fortifications and traps in a matter of minutes. If they could produce those, surely they could make houses as well. Enough to make a ‘settlement’, anyway. Get a few hundred tangled copies ‘living’ there…could he fool The Tower?
…Could I bypass the majority of the requirements?
That’s assuming a lot. Best not bank on my hairbrained idea being correct.
Even if that were the case, he still needed a dozen people willing to make him their Lord.
Will glanced around his Party. Mason and Loth had their own plans for the future, and likely wouldn’t be interested. Alicia might, given that she couldn’t become a Lord. June might become his vassal if she smelled a big paycheck.
Reggie just wanted to wait out his Contract and be done with it…although his attitude towards climbing had relaxed somewhat. Still, it couldn’t be fun being the surrogate risk-taker of the group.
Steve their Healer liaison, might swear fealty.
Travis…Travis probably wouldn’t be interested in being the vassal of someone he perceived as being lower-born than himself.
Still, in a vacuum, if Will could convince Alicia to become his Vassal, Travis might follow suit.
Jean had been Frederick Wyrd’s Vassal, giving him an extra measure of control over her until his death. She couldn’t be a Lord in her own right anymore, but would she be interested in subordinating herself to anyone ever again? Unlikely.
What does that give me? Five at best?
Will glanced back at the pile of expensive loot.
Thea was right. He needed bribes and expensive Relics to lubricate the attitudes of other Climbers toward throwing their lot in with an untested boy as a Lord.
It wasn’t like he could just get so famous that people would pop up out of the woodwork eager to…
…Or could I?
Will was an urban legend, winner of the yearly tournament and savior of the city.
They were building a statue of him on the islet in the center of the city.
I need to talk to Thea and Loth.
“Jean.” Loth said, holding out an amulet. It seemed to be made of burnished steel depicting some kind of spiked collar. “This one’s for you.”
Jean took the amulet and studied it.
“Amulet of the potent beastmaster?” Jean mused.
Amulet of the Potent Beastmaster
+10 Focus
+5 Acuity
Living creatures created, summoned, or controlled by the wearer’s Abilities receive a 10% boost to their stats.
Oh my, Will thought, brows raising as Jean listed off the item’s effects.
That extra ten percent didn’t do anything for Loth. An insect that was ten percent stronger didn’t make any noticeable difference, but Jean’s clones, whose Strength was 160?
An extra 16 points of strength, fifteen of Resistance.
That was substantial.
It also raised Focus, protecting Jean and the others from mind control.
Assuming Jean’s girls counted as ‘minions’.
Jean draped the Relic over her neck.
“So how do we know if-“ Jean began.
Screeech!
They glanced over at where Ria had accidentally driven the whetstone too hard against the edge of her halberd, causing the blade to crack and tear.
Ria calmly set the broken Halberd down and stepped away from it.
“I’m going to go lay down for a minute.” The athletic brunette murmured, walking away stiffly.
“…I’ll go talk to her,” Jean said, following after Ria.
“Hey guys, I accidentally broke your mixing bowl?” Anna said, her head popping out from the makeshift kitchen she’d been operating from.
“It works.” Will muttered.
Yikes. A hundred and seventy-six Strength. That’s what…nearly ten times human normal?
“We need to get her more mage gear, specifically Summoner and Tamer Archetypes.” Loth mused, watching Jean go. “To balance out and synergize with her Build. Can I see the ring box?”
Mason wordlessly handed over a little jewelry box filled to the brim with rings of every shape and size before returning his attention to the Dimensional Oyster Sacrifice in his hand.
“If the girls count as ‘minions’, wouldn’t the Cuirass of the Cruel Tyrant make Jean essentially unkillable?” Will asked, pointing at the ornate cuirass in Loth’s pile. Jean herself and each of her offshoots was an incredibly hardy physical specimen, only outclassed by Reggie with the application of Class-specific Abilities meant to absorb and redirect damage.
“Yes, but I saw it first,” Loth said with a toothy grin.
She glanced at where the Tangled had disappeared. “Also, do you think it’s wise to make her unkillable?”
Probably not. Will thought. Not that he planned on killing her…but who knew what the future held?
Will turned his attention to where Mason was contemplating the Dimensional Oyster.
“What’s the hold up?” Will asked. A bit insensitive, but Mason had been staring at his collection of Rings and Sacrifices for a half hour and Will was getting impatient.
“This is the single most critical decision I will ever make regarding my build:” he said. “How I integrate my shields into my style. I felt like my mind was opened when I saw Nephir combine Conflagrate with Feedback Shielding. I always thought of them as two separate abilities. Attack and defense, each handling their own role and not intruding on each other. But that was rigid thinking.”
“Okay?”
“The dimensional oyster won’t allow me to control my shields.” Mason said. “It won’t add any flexibility to my Build. It doesn’t merge the two into a unique style. All it does is make the shields have nacre buildup.”
“Nephir’s Relics didn’t help?” Will asked.
“This one makes Nuker Abilities linger until they deal all their damage to an opponent, and this one makes shields selectively permeable,” Mason said, holding up two rings. “The ability to shape his shields was from a Sacrifice, which we simply do not have here.”
“That is a problem…but who says you have to copy Nephir? I beat his ass.”
Mason shrugged. “You did, but his Build isn’t finished yet.”
“Neither is mine,” Will said with a shrug. “Neither is yours.”
“I only have two upgrade slots left for Feedback shielding. After this it will be one. If I don’t find a way to integrate my two primary Abilities, Lordship will be out of reach.”
“Okay, then don’t Sacrifice the dimensional oyster.
“But it’s such a powerful effect!” Mason protested.
“Okay, then, do Sacrifice it.” Will said with a shrug.
“But I could be locking myself out of an amazing Build like Nephir’s!” Mason said, his voice growing more plaintive.
“I’m…not sure what you want me to say here.” Will said with a shrug. “What’s the dimensional oyster do for you?”
Mason rattled off the changes Feedback Shielding would go through if he were to feed it the dimensional oyster.
Dimensional Oyster
Adds nacre to Feedback shielding. When the shielding is broken, Feedback Shielding leaves a residue that permeates the user’s tissues.
“What does that even mean?” Will asked, frowning.
“I’m…not sure.” Mason said.
“Is…’permeated tissues’ a good thing?” Will asked.
“Probably?” Mason said, shrugging. “Ability upgrades are rarely harmful, and those that are, are usually explicit about it.”
Will scratched his head, contemplating.
“Well Mason, the way I see it, every person who became a Lord did so because they were the first one to master a specific Build. They didn’t know they were going to become a Lord. Once they become rich and powerful, people start developing countermeasures to their Build, and they spend their entire career as Lords barely keeping ahead of those countermeasures. The window to follow Baron Akul just isn’t open anymore because people know how to dismantle copycats with less raw power.”
“If you wanna be a Lord, you’ve gotta do something scary: strike out on an unexplored path with no guarantees.” Will said, looking their Nuker in the eye.
Mason took a deep breath and nodded.
“You’re right. Copying Baron Akul is a losing game. Let’s see what this does.”
In a flash of light, the dimensional oyster sacrifice was gone.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Mason said, standing. “I need to go exploit this.”
Mason turned towards their Tank and waved, catching Reggie’s attention.
“Reggie, I need you to punch me!”
Loth cleared her throat, drawing Mason’s gaze to herself.
“If you truly wish to exploit your new Ability Upgrade, then you will need a higher rate of shield-breaking than two young men punching each other a few dozen times. There is no room for wasted time and effort.”
She rested a black-scaled hand on her barrel, which began to ooze biting insects like morning dew.
“You will need to break your shield tens, or even hundreds of thousands of times. Building up nacre takes years, but I think we can accelerate the process.”
“Ummm.” Mason Gulped audibly.
“Do you want to try?” She asked, eyes locked on the Nuker’s.
“…I want to be the best. So yes. I want to try.” Mason said, swallowing his discomfort at the idea of being swarmed by biting insects.
“Wear these rings.” She said, handing Mason some Thorns rings. “Reggie, we’ll need your assistance.”
“Sure,” Reggie said, trotting over and spitting out his new ‘helmet.’ A white mouthguard one might see in a sport where lost teeth were a common occurrence.
The Mirthful Mouthguard
+15 resistance
Provides extra protection for the head and nervous system, as well as against debilitating negative emotions.
Does not protect against debilitating positive emotions.
As Loth proceeded to set up a near-infinite shield-breaking loop with Mason, will turned his attention to where Alicia sat. She pulled a conical hat out of the pile, wide-rimmed, midnight blue with gold embroidery.
“Oooh,” she said, putting it on her head. A moment later she turned to Will, her expression excited.
“Do you still have the Ring of Curse Concentration?” She whispered.
Will nodded, handing it over to her.
“Thank you.” she whispered, slipping the Relic onto her finger. Will thought he saw her blue-flame eyes flicker just a bit as it settled around her finger.
She tapped the glowing blue eye nestled against her chest, staring through Will.
“I need to test this soft-set on something we don’t mind dying.” Alicia whispered.
Will’s brows rose.
Comments
Golden monkey
What does total freedom do again?
JACOB HEBERT
If the Tangled are meant to be cheap, what kind of Sacrifices do they take, and in what order? Being able to split themselves would afford rarer materials, but they still wouldn't be too expensive since each Tangled only has certain amount of clones at each level....right?
Misery
Can other intelligent races become Lords? Would be interesting to see that human infighting has killed most of their Lords, but higher up the tower other sentient races have a bunch of Lords, lol.
Nicolas Symeou
Queue "shiny" from Moana
Nate Oppy
“To be a member of Williams Ohs party is to be accepted into a newborn pantheon of budding gods.” Jason
chris
A good story gets the creative juices flowing, ya know.
Macronomicon
damn, that's pretty elaborate, and i like damn near all of it!
Dlandis
Loving the the Jean aspect of the story. Poor kid. Thanks for the timely chapter it was quite a nice thing to end my day with as I just finished ISM book one audible. They nailed the voices I already had in mind though Solaris was a bit more stern and gruff than I had pictured. Kinda had him as a Mafia adjacent for some reason. Like the non-italian extras in an old detective or sleuth type show. Loved it though.
chris
Updating my theory about Will's heritage: he isn't the however many generations grandson of Oroborus & Holdna. He is Oroborus. When Granesh Smote Oroborus he split it into many disparate parts, which we know include the Immortal Serpent, Axolotl, and Hydra, the most important part is Will. Initially born as a normalish human when O dies he reconstitutes as a baby. The last most successful iteration was Ezekyal. In order to facilitate this O built a cult of which members include Will's "Parents" and Gertrude. The "parents' job is to explain to O why he gains a high level sacrifice to give him a head start. Gertrude isn't a true nun of Granesh, but instead a true believer in O. Her job in the cult is to raise O into a good and capable person. Either the cult can't tell O any of this because it will harm his development in some way, possibly his memories will meld activating a permanent overlapping flashback like when Will fought Carrie. This is similar to Brianna's inability to hold her emotions at the same time, a coping mechanism to having too much happen to a climber that their body or mind can handle. The cult might also have been decimated by Granesh Crusaders like the one Will fought at the tourney. When O has a sufficient amount of his scattered parts, he can regain his divinity and once again be with his beloved Holdna, and kill that jealous racist prick Granesh.
The Human
But the clones who now have 176 strength can likewise create 3 clones per day
Jeff Wells
Neither the bonus nor the initial stats are based on the number of summoned, so no. They all have 160 strength because that's the strength Brianna has. They all get 176 with the 10% bonus. The only time that changes is when she levels and gets 5 (now 5.5) more strength, they all get more strength.
chris
I was re-reading and Will's speculation about loopholes and I think it connects to what Baron Akul had mused about in an earlier chapter that there are less Lords than ever before and things are getting harder than ever for climbers. I think The Tower wants to be climbed, and have as many lords as possible distributed across all of the floors. Their is some thing important about every floor having a lord. The requirements for lordship are just the minimum requirements to gain the trust from whatever intelligence that regulates the tower that you are strong enough to help regulate the tower. Now that there are less lords the Intelligence is less able to regulate the monster spawn rate and difficulty cap.
Enzo Elacqua
Honestly hit the main changes to the builds, and then just do a stat screen of the party to summarize. I like loot, but keeping track of all of this in my head will quickly get overwhelming. Maybe actually just briefly describe their new battle style instead. Something like Alicia can now selectively poison people through her arrows and vision, with some minor ability to triple her speed wherever her poison is. Sure there’s probs a bunch more to her build but I can place her archetype better that way without getting overwhelmed to the point of skimming.
Uroš
> Feedback Shielding leaves a residue that permeates the user’s tissues. So... he's turning into a pearl?
Ramapriya Rangaraju
at the very least you'd want "ex unum" because in the same way that english "a" becomes "an" before a vowel, latin "e" becomes "ex", (or rather, "ex" can't be shortened to "e") and makes it sound really weird otherwise
Emily Gurnavage
I think I agree with the sentiments that a sort of "part 3" could also just be the next fight having a bit more descriptions and explanations than usual to help show off the new builds mid-combat. Honestly how you ended this one could tie-into a chapter like that smoothly. Alicia wants to test her new soft set and needs actual enemies. So the next chapter could start just brushing over that everyone else was just as excited as her so they finalized their changes and headed out to test. We dont neeeeeed to see all that finalization. To be clear though I love these build discussion and loot sorting chapters. Whatever feels natural to write next is the real answer though. Edit: Maybe next time theres an in-depth gear changeup you can focus on the chars that potentially get missed this time and keep alternating a bit? Since the party is growing.
Emily Gurnavage
I thought the mask got destroyed?
Emily Gurnavage
Hmm. The current way *sounds* better in my opinion, but when you translate them both to English, yours does sound like a better fit. But the latin version doesn't feel as cool as the original. Hmmmmmmmm lol.
Ramapriya Rangaraju
I know you wanted to mirror the motto on the US seal for the Tangled's abilities, but unfortunately it now just sounds like latin gibberish - the "correct" way to reverse that would be something like "ex uno plures"
Andrew
Thank you!
Daniel Lee
I had to look it up but from what I understood it's basically mother-of-pearl.
LeoClashes
Nacre is a strong, iridescent, and resilient material that's made up of 95% calcium carbonate and 5% organic polymers. It's also known as mother-of-pearl. So I'm assuming it's just a permanent stackable buff to shield durability
Emily Gurnavage
Idk why you said it like that lol. They shooould be able to consume parts of Will as a sacrifice from what we know, yea. Will should also be able to benefit from it with more Immortal Serpent sacrifices since thats what he apparently is. Idk where you are gettin the idea about a sacrifice helping him to regrow his lost limb faster though? Oh, because immortal serpent being added to his one skill have the regen effect in the first place? That actually makes me wonder why he cant naturally regenerate. Maybe that ability is tied up in whatever is keeping him disguised as a normal human? I only really remember Will contemplating his lacking humanity like once, maaaaybe twice since he learned of it, and iirc he pretty much doesn't wanna think about it atm. And thats a big secret to trust with anyone at all, Loth included. Taking a few chunks out of him for the party to use as sacrifices seems way riskier than its worth. If he were an Uru Drake in disguise, then maybe, but Immortal Serpant doesn't seem powerful enough for a risk like that.
chris
Distributed computing but for anti mind control.
chris
A part 3 world be fine. but seeing them in action fighting a flock of seagull harpies on the next floor for example would do roughly the same thing, display the way the characters are stronger and different than before.
Emily Gurnavage
From Google: "Nacre is a strong, iridescent, and resilient material that forms the inner shell layer of some mollusks and the bulk of most pearls. It's also known as mother of pearl. Oysters secrete layers of nacre around a foreign object or nucleus to create a pearl" TLDR; Oyster spit
Uroš
Someone remind me what Nacre is?
Mariposa
I thought the baron took all of their equipment.
The Human
Is the 10% stacking? If the clones have 176 strength and make another clone does the 3rd generation get 17.6 instead of 16?
EDMANGO
Idk if its necessary to get to everyone's builds right away, maybe you can bring some of them up organically as the story progresses, like one item for some characters now or talks of builds now and then when there's a lull in the story in a few chapters from downtime after a fight one of them is like "do you think if I used x artfact from the pile I could have avoided y problem in the fight"
Logan
Tftc
0xFFF1
Don't worry about how many chapters this bit takes. This situation will only happen once. If Will encounter another massive pile of loot, it won't have anywhere the same narrative impact this one will. This is going to let the party hit way above their weight class for a while just off of improved synergies. They're supposed to be amazing for another few floors just from the momentum of what's happening here (under normal circumstances, which these aren't thanks to the death of two Lords) So take your time to upgrade everyone and give them specific builds in your offline notes document that you can look at whenever you give them a challenging situation, so you can take a long hard look to see if they have something creative with something in there among the whole parrt to steamroll it or not.
FossilWreckers
Someone will get Boar's mask, right? Right?
Xeophyn
Or Brianna for that matter. She'll regrow too.
Exrotes
Maybe everyone's favourite Baker can find a sacrifice that gives Hivemind a way to scale up mental resistances. Something that can force AOE mind effects to work against the cumulative Focus of her and her clones (probably with some kind of diminishing return based on number of clones) instead of each individually.
Xeophyn
Since Will is regenerating from when Will sacrificed Will's hand to Will's class, could Will sacrifice more Will to increase the power of Will's abilities and regrow the lost Will? What about Sacrificing Will to Will's party's abilities?
Beeees!
I mean, I wouldn't be mad. These crazy build defining chapters are great. Love a little breakage of systems
Eli Loeb
I love Loth
David W. Baijense
Oooo Nice work 👍 like the new build ideas
Macronomicon
Do we need a Pt. 3? Jeez, there's so many characters to address the Build of. Thanks for the items, though, they're really helping me get through this faster than I might've otherwise.
