Macronomicon
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Chapter 187: Let Him Cook
🕑 Added 2025-08-20 19:42:34 +0000 UTCGoliath Armor
+10 Strength
+10 Resistance
Whenever the user heals, they temporarily gain a small amount of size that persists as long as the armor is equipped. Other Equipment worn by the User scales to match. Vastly increased size may damage the User if their Resistance is not high enough.
New equipment scales to match as it is attempted to be worn.
User and their equipment return to normal size when the armor is unequipped.
Hmm…. Will mused, inspecting the armor for the umpteenth time.
It had been one of the four rare Relics that Thea Oilton had bargained for. It had an interesting and unusual effect of making the wearer bigger based on how many wounds they had healed since donning it…and simply that.
It was…not Will’s cup of tea, to be honest. He didn’t like the idea. It lacked a certain…snappy flair that Will had realized he enjoyed, involving speed and a dazzling flourish of magic, but…
Becoming a big, slow, stupid mountain and crushing everything in his path was obviously not what Caddock was thinking he would do, and thus it was a viable strategy.
By itself, the Goliath Armor was…pretty good. But Will knew how to make it better.
Basic steps, basic steps first, Will reminded himself, turning his attention to the barrel that had been working on his new ring. He could tell that it was finally done.
On her shopping trip, Ria had found a couple extra copies of Will’s baking rings, and a hat that had similar effects. Will had poured all of them, along with some juiced-up Resistance gear, into the same barrel.
The last two weeks had been solely dedicated to making his new baking ring. It was cutting it pretty close, but Will was hoping the extra speed could let him finish the other equipment in record time.
Will popped the top off and fished around in the depleted Relic Dust for a moment before his fingers touched on metal.
Will pulled out the plain gold band and inspected it.
Ring Of Explosive Doughmaking
+8 Strength
+30 resistance
+6 Focus
+20% potency of Brewing and baking Abilities.
Creates ideal environmental conditions for brewing and baking Abilities, such as temperature, moisture, pressure, etc.
Baking and Brewing performed by the wearer is substantially hastened, without compromising quality.
Wearer creates, purifies, and mixes powdered ingredients much more quickly and thoroughly.
Scales with Resistance.
Explosive, huh? Let’s find out how Explosive.
The ring’s Resistance bonus wasn’t as high as the resistance ring, but it was more specialized, And Will was willing to bet that he could condense all the Sourdough-ing down to one day if he slotted this ring in his Phantom Hand.
Do you wish to sacrifice Ring of Explosive Doughmaking to Phantom Hand?
Will mentally checked that there was nothing inside the Dimensional Storage of the snake, before giving the mental affirmative, overwriting the Ring of Resistance.
A shudder travelled up Will’s spine as he felt his middle finger blacken and slough off. The phantom snake in turn, blackened and unraveled, replaced by what Will could only call an egg.
…oh right, it’ll take a week to regrow after overwriting one…damnit.
A week later, Will was bumping up against the time he’d decreed that they would be leaving. Thea wasn’t having any money problems anymore, since she’d purchased enough farmland and businesses to make their headquarters somewhat self-sufficient.
The people were eager to leave, though. The caravaneers had stayed in this place where they couldn’t lie over a month, where any misspoken word might lead to a lifetime of regret. It was gradually wearing on them.
On the other hand, Will had plenty of time to acquire and organize his Relics by type to make the ‘Caddock-crushing’ sets, as he called them.
At the end of the week, Will awoke to a rush of strength, and he knew without checking that the new ring was finished overwriting the previous one.
Will brought it up.
Ring Of Explosive Doughmaking
+44 Strength
+167 resistance
+33 Focus
+111% potency of Brewing and baking Abilities.
Creates perfect environmental conditions for brewing and baking Abilities, such as temperature, moisture, pressure, etc.
Baking and Brewing performed by the wearer is vastly hastened, without compromising quality.
Wearer creates, purifies, and mixes powdered ingredients vastly more quickly and thoroughly.
Scales with Resistance.
Wow. The original use of Sourdough is to retain consumeables. I wonder if…
Will took a healing potion and downed it, using Sourdough as he did so.
Sourdough
180 Charges Remaining
As usual, Will retained a little red nodule in his hand. It was bigger than usual, but nothing…
Will’s eyes widened as the nodule unfolded like a crumpled piece of paper, becoming a full-sized healing potion in a matter of seconds. Curious, Will tapped it with his fingers and shook it around a bit, even opening it and smelling the potion.
Same acrid mixture as before.
Okay, I like the ring. I like it a lot.
With the ring slotted, Will’s efficiency with Sourdough had become so high that the percentage of the original consumable item he retained had finally exceeded 100%, and the ambient Miasma was enough to reactivate it.
Sadly, it did not bud a second consumable starter to grow into a second potion. As cool as that would’ve been, The Tower didn’t like infinite glitches, so Will was stuck just retaining the same potion basically for free.
For now, anyway. Gotta be a way to increase the cost in exchange for budding another consumable. Some way to tweak how I use it. Ghoul always suggests things are less rigid than they appear. Is over-Charging an Ability possible?
Question for later.
The funny thing was, Will had so much money and space in his Dimensional Storage that he could pack pretty much as many consumables as he wanted for a long trip, rendering the ability to preserve them…an amusing parlor trick.
That money-saving aspect I was drooling over a year ago is too little, too late, Will thought with an amused snort.
But the more powerful Relic-baking aspect of Sourdough…That was still very much of interest to Will.
Will gathered together twelve Relics to create a soft set with the Goliath Armor.
Four thorns Relics, two Lifesteal, two inertia, and four ‘speed on taking damage’ Relics.
Will grabbed the first basic Thorns Relic and studied it. it was a steel collar with nasty spikes coming off of it at odd angles that surely wouldn’t be any fun to wear.
Collar of Thorns
+5 Strength
+5 Resistance
+5 Focus
12% Thorns
Well, in you go. Will thought, using his bolt-cutter to snap the collar above the barrel for his ‘thorns’ baking.
Something strange happened.
Instead of everything falling down through the funnel Will had set up, a plume dull, nonmagical Relic dust floated up and away while the glowing stuff drifted down into the barrel.
Create, purify and mix powdered ingredients, Will thought to himself. The effect from his ring was causing the impurities to simply float away, unable, or perhaps unwilling to contaminate his batch of sourdough.
This reminded him of the bowl outside the Tower that could do the same, condensing the good stuff to the center while the nonmagical dust was scraped away from the outside.
After a moment of deliberation, Will grabbed an extra Thorns relic.
I don’t think the Tower is going to let me retain more than 80% of each Relic’s potency, but I’ll bet this extra purity will make room for a fifth Relic without substantial loss.
Will destroyed three more Thorns relics and tossed them in before putting a ring in there to bake.
Why a ring? Mostly because they were portable and fit nicely into the tiny barrels. He wasn’t planning on keeping them around anyway.
Will followed that up by creating another three mixes using the other ingredients, and stacked the Goliath Armor on top of them, mentally labelling them ‘Speed titan’
Will then turned his attention to the bespoke illusion Relic he was obligated to make for Travis.
He went back to his pile of Relics and began plucking things out.
Let’s see, if higher purity allows me to use five Relics in each layer, then I’ll need…twenty of them plus the one to be baked. Ugh.
Let’s cover the basics, Will thought as he drew a handful of relics from pre-made piles. Illusion potency Relics, Focus Relics, Acuity relics…Then we need a soft-set effect.
Will scanned through the pile of Relics until he found an effect that interested him.
Eidolons created by the user gain Strength and Resistance. Scales with Focus.
Right. When he used the Wraith Vessel to grant his illusions physical bodies, they became illusion/eidolon hybrids, which gives them all the benefits and penalties of both.
For example, Travis’s illusions could now be dispelled by anti-illusion and anti-Eidolon Abilities, but they could also benefit from Relics that applied to either.
…Travis’s problem was his illusions were only as strong as the materials they copied. This could address that, Will thought, tossing the amulet in the pile.
Will didn’t really need it. Phantom Hand was plenty strong. Will kept looking, finally finding Relics with effects that made a nice little synergistic ecosystem.
Will had been going through Relics so long that he didn’t even look at the name or the sat bonuses, focusing solely on the effects.
Excess healing on the user will be consumed to re-create damaged or dispelled Illusions, starting from the least potent to the most.
Neat. That would allow an illusionist to repair their stuff by drinking a healing potion potion.
When an illusion is destroyed, the user is healed based on the Charge spent.
Cool. That would allow him to heal himself and his illusions by breaking one of them.
User may spend more Charge on an Eidolon Ability to increase its power.
There we go. Perfect. He could use that to make a powerful bodyguard or bolt of lightning that uses all of his Charge.
Travis will probably use it to make a big-titty goth girlfriend. Mark my words.
Will would probably use the combination he was looking at to dump all his Charge into making a tiny little illusion of a stick that could be easily snapped despite being a hundred times stronger, which he would put in a pocket or behind his ear. Every week or so he would make a new one.
Later, during a fight, Will could snap the stick and heal any wound or resurrect his entire illusion army. possibly both.
pretty good combo, Will thought.
Add a dash of lifesteal to allow his illusions to heal him and therefore themselves… Will thought, grabbing from the lifesteal pile and dumping a few of them in.
And there. You’ve got a decent soft-set.
Will then snapped all but five of the relics, leaving aside the most unassuming band to be the base ring, then putting the other four in the barrels full of swirling miasmatic dust.
Why the most unassuming band? Because Travis was sure to complain that it was too plain. Plain was good, though. It made it less likely to be stolen.
…And it irked Travis.
Will set the stack of bread-box sized barrels and the ring aside and turned to the other three unique Relics.
There were three left. A book, a sickle, and a bow.
The sickle reminded Will of his Cold Harvest, lost to the sands of time, so he reached for it.
It was plain and looked like beaten steel pitted by weather and neglect. The handle was plain wood that looked a little loose, like bugs or weeds could sprout out of the gap at any second.
As his fingers got closer to it, Will got a strange, squirming feeling in his chest.
This Relic is mean, isn’t it? Will thought, pausing for a moment. It gave him the same cursed feeling as Bakton’s saber.
He took a breath and picked up the sickle, inspecting it.
Sickle of Malicious Regrowth
+3 Acuity
+5 focus
Debuffs inflicted by the user that have expired or been dispelled, will leave behind ‘seeds’. These seeds will regrow into new debuffs as soon as the their host loses focus on them.
Number of seeds and their duration scales with Focus. Debuffs from seeds do not spawn further seeds.
…Holy shit. That is mean! That is like, the backbone of a Cursemonger’s Build right there.
Will dissected the description, looking for ways to exploit it.
‘As soon as their host loses focus on them.’
The way it was described implied that the enemy would be aware of the existence of these ‘seeds’, and as long as they paid close attention those seed wouldn’t be a problem, but if they stopped for an instant they would sprout.
It splits the enemy’s attention! Will realized.
It was like asking someone to fight while juggling with one hand, and the seeds were the balls.
It could be done of course, but they sure as Abyss wouldn’t be fighting at their best.
And if they dropped a ball…all their debuffs come out to play.
What can I combine that with?
Will immediately thought of Jason’s jaw-harp that attracted enemy attention.
If he got a relic that could draw enemy attention, that would be like jostling their arm while they were juggling.
All will needed after that were some Relics that specialized in applying debuffs.
It’s too bad I can’t add psychic venom to it, Will thought as he scrounged through the pile. Despite how good it was, there was no way he would destroy his set item for a soft set he was making for one fight.
Here’s one that adds bleed to any debuff applied.
Here’s one that makes debuffs contagious. Added.
Here’s one that adds paralysis. Added.
Here’s one that makes bleed stronger. Added.
Debuff potency… Added.
Try as he might, Will couldn’t find an item that applied a debuff in a way that he liked, which was critical to the soft-set he was trying to arrange.
Will frowned, resolving to put it aside until he found what he was looking for.
He turned his attention to the next unique relic, the book. It gave him the same squirming, uneasy feeling that he was beginning to associate with debuffing items.
Tome of the Stern Governess (off-hand)
+5 Acuity
+8 Focus
Active: 1 Charge
Wearer may shush a target and apply a debuff that makes it more difficult to speak. Duration and potency scale with Focus
Oh…This’ll work.
Will quickly got that batch started and set the sickle on top of the barrels, then turned to the bow. It was kind of gaudy with white wood and gold evoking lightning shapes across the arms.
Bows weren’t typically on the table due to the unreliable nature of Will’s off-hand, but as a slotted item? Absolutely.
I’ve been looking for a replacement for the Ring of Accuracy. Let’s see what you got.
Heaven’s Fury
+8 Strength
+8 Kinesthetics
+8 Acuity
4 degrees of correction.
+35% to Lightning damage inflicted by user.
Upon striking their target, projectiles fired by this bow are converted to lightning bolts, with potency based on the arrow’s potential damage on impact.
Is slotting that going to make anything I shoot or throw convert to lightning on impact? Will mused. In his experience, that was probably the case, since he benefited from the lifesteal on Cold Harvest back when he’d had it slotted.
Well, what do we have that synergizes? ‘Potential damage on impact’ is a key feature. I need to look for stuff that boosts damage. Plus the bow itself has a decent amount of correction.
Over a year ago now, the general store owner had told him that 30 degrees of correction it where rings of accuracy really began to get crazy. Like, shooting people around corners, and shooting around them to damage them from behind.
My current multiplier for items slotted in Phantom Hand is a bit over 5, and we’ll retain about 3 of those degrees, multiplied by 5…
After everything was said and done, the bow would probably have somewhere around 15 correction, which was great, but not quite ‘shoot around corners’ great.
Inspired, Will began rummaging through his accuracy rings, plucking out the ones that worked well with what he had in mind.
This one, this one…this one..should be enough.
Next, Will rifled through his rings, amulets, and ranged weapons.
Will paused on a sling.
Missiles gain speed over time.
Add it.
The next find that Will plucked out was an amulet that chained lightning damage to nearby enemies.
Bonus to the projectile’s mass over distance? Add it.
Once Will had filled up all 20 relics, he got that batch of barrels cooking.
Will turned back to the Goliath Armor and grabbed one of the barrels underneath it, shaking it around, using his senses to detect the movement of Miasma.
It was cold and dead inside.
The Relic was already done baking.
Holy…I’m gonna have this done by evening.
“Breakfast is on, you almost done?” Anna asked, peeking into Will’s tent.
“Oh yeah, just another few minutes, this is going gr-”
“William Oh, what have you done to your room!?” Anna demanded, causing will to flinch.
Will froze and glanced around his room, studying the quarter-inch of grey relic dust that covered every surface of his tent, including his bed and desk. As amazing as it had been for the purifying effect of his new ring to exclude the chaff from his experiments, those impurities had to go somewhere. In this case, his clothes, his bed, his desk, his shoes, his pillow, his chamberpot, etc.
It looked like his entire room have been covered in a fine layer of volcanic ash.
I guess I should’ve done this outside.
Comments
Spoolofwhool
Chapter releases are skipping two scheduled release dates, announced on RR
Ron Whitlatch
No chappy?
JACOB HEBERT
Isn't that what he's doing with the illusion and debuff single Relic soft sets?
dijet
With all the talk about passing down power instead of hoarding it as a lord will sure doesn't make many relics for other people, even loth. He could very easily supply each of his party members with relics that'll turn them to lords of the highest degree but he doesn't even make anything for his most trusted right hand gal.
Barge
It’s William oh. He probably just showed up out of nowhere. I mean, for all we know, he could have kidnapped granesh and forced him to take him there.
Mrfacemanlol
He could probably ride Arkesh into battle if he got big enough
StrollingEye
How did he get back through th Ghouls territory through the gate without paying a king's ransom? Did he sneak through?
Xeophyn
Would a wearable acuity/rogue archetype boost be good? I could see him making an outfit that in total adds something like 400 acuity and 200% rogue power which would immediately turn any slotted item into insanity.
RageBone
Will should also be thinking of some goodies for Brianna! A wedding ring might be too much. But something for healing, anti-charm / focus! Yeah!
Joshua Little
Thanks for the chapter.
Hell 5pawn
The fiancée is not amused.
Ethan Barrow
TFTC!! I am so dang excited for all of this!!!! I also think Travis got one hell of a deal.
Macronomicon
It's applying to effective resistance, yeah. doubling the end result would be...a little too much.
Ano Ano
I don't think his hand has grown back since he cut it off from the zombie curse.
Patron1kj6tz
Quick question. Where is the 111% boost being applied in the formula? If it's just doubling his effective resistance for the sake of skill scaling then that's straight forward enough. If his final product gets doubled in potency, then the stuff he makes is going to get really ridiculous really fast.
Cyrus McEnnis
And probably my last comment on this chapter - as the resident Javazon enthusiast I can't believe I missed the Javazon build with the bow. That used to be my favorite way to grind the Cow Level with maximum magic find in D2, it's an absolutely broken army killer. You hit one target, the lightning chains from there and doesn't stop till it runs out a targets to jump to. In an environment that enables friendly fire, could be dangerous as hell though. Although if Loth seeded some small insects through the targets, things could get nasty fast.
Revilo
How is Will's left hand going to interact with the whole Goliath build, it sounds like the system can't directly interact/reinforce the hand but at the same time it was regenerated via the serpant's immortality ability. He's gotten away with hand's relative fragility by for the most part killing his opponents before they can hurt him but if he's turning towards a thorn tank build is he just accepting the fact that he's going to have to sacrifice his left hand ? Might be worth cutting of ahead of the fight, preserving it somehow and reattaching afterwards. Feels like something Loth might point out.
Quazzy
mhm- and then slot them into phantom hand so he can swap between souped-up versions, since a single item made into a soft set loses enough potency that it doesn't quite *work* unless it's empowered by phantom hand. He's trying to mimic an entire build with a single item, after all
Diarmuid McGinnity
Well Will is destined to become the king of the tower according to Jason so that’s probably how it’d be done
Dino
Oh nooooo. I thought the shopping spree was looking for Sacrifices for the new Map primary ability. I'm a bit sad we have to wait to see where that one goes
Ral
Omg!
Lebog
So if I get this right, instead of him taking all his slots to make soft sets he will combine items to make an individual gear a soft set and have multiple soft sets on at once?
GryphonKnight
Awesome Thanks for all the very cool, suggestions fellow humans (See previous chapter comments)
GryphonKnight
> Travis will probably use it to make a big-titty goth girlfriend. Mark my words. 🤣🤣🤣 > Tome of the Stern Governess (off-hand) 📚🤫 > It looked like his entire room have been covered in a fine layer of volcanic ash. > I guess I should’ve done this outside. 🌋😬
Andrew
Thank you!
Patron1kj6tz
Does he still have that snaring ring he looted from a graneshian soldier? Chuck a rock, it gets bigger and faster on its way to it's target then explodes into a ball of lightning. Chuck a handful of gravel and you get a wall of lightning.
Cyrus McEnnis
Another realization - the Ring of Explosive Dough making. Will can manifest it and give it to Brianna while he's not using it, and she might be able to bake things that literally explode from yeasty fermentation. Explosive dwarven bread, drop scone mines, that sort of thing. And of course the fluffy buns that Will lusts after, although speed on that front is not necessarily a good thing - sometimes the time it takes for a dough to prove is integral to a fetish.
Patron1kj6tz
"Where the FUCK did William Oh get a pet kaiju?!" (deep rumbling voice): "I didn't"
Michael
It’s describing what Will would do if he had that ability
Cyrus McEnnis
It also occurs to me that a lot of really powerful relics won't be available for cash - you touched on that slightly last chapter. Buuuuut building uber-relics that have weaknesses that you know about and trading them for relics with brand new exciting exploits is absolutely something Will could do - or, perhaps, hire himself out to other Lords as a crafter. Combined with relic seeds from Jason, Will would be really well placed to exponentially increase the capability of climbers as a whole.
Gardor
Can he drink half a healing potion?
Gardor
"Will would probably use the combination he was looking at to dump all his Charge into making a tiny little illusion of a stick" "Later, during a fight, Will could snap the stick and heal any wound or resurrect his entire illusion army" Think this should be Travis
Crispined Glover Potato Snacks
Will had been going through Relics so long that he didn’t even look at the name or the sat bonuses, focusing solely on the effects. sat->stat
McIntosh Ewell
Considering pretty much all of Will's Party (except Alicia) has it in them to be Lords, I wonder if Will plans to let them leech off of his group of hangers-on or if he's gonna make them gather their own lordships. On a related note, I wonder if it's possible to create a super Lord (Emperor? Hegemon? God-King?) or Lordship (Pantheon?) by having a bunch of Lords pledge loyalty to one amongst them.
Quazzy
getting bowed down and glassed *is the point:* it makes him a bigger target so the Thorns/Lifesteal gimmick works better.
Quazzy
Would devolving into munchkinry and then using that 8-piece empowered soft set to make a new 8-piece empowered soft set be good for the story? Probably not! But it is an option.
Quazzy
If he can bake that fast, making an additional baking ring and/or resistance ring to wear physically (or even in all of his slots!) would be vv potent- and wouldn't even take that long to set up!
Hamy
Cant wait to see what caddock's reaction is gonna be to all these new broken relics.
Alan Ben Sen Clem
Some scary shit is about to happen and I'm all in for it. How big will Will get anyway? 4-stories building high or twin towers high? How much of that will be converted to strength? And what about being an enormous target that will get bowed down or glassed lol
Exrotes
Crazy idea, lightning bolt bow combined with an effect that makes missiles harder to remove once embedded. See if he can have a massive lightning bolt sticking out of someone's chest constantly fluctuating.
Kion Smith
So will can now kill people by telling them to shut up? Nice.
Macronomicon
Maybe but I'll have to stumble across a good synergy idea.
Tom C
When the big titty goth girls stop! All eyes will turn to the tower 🤣
Stanisław Drewienkowski
When she swears fielty I would imagine. Loth is sweet, but also scarily inteligent machiavelian force of sabotage. Also relics for her build might not be as common
Michael
Wouldn’t any sight-based relics have a lot of synergy with his new map? Like being able to paralyze people from anywhere the map can see them?
Scott
When is Loth going to get a custom super special relic? or 2 or 7. One that adds effects to insects as well as a buffed to hell flat attribute bonus. I'm thinking a strength and speed boost that effectively turns flying bugs into Will's cannon balls or guided missiles. so, at least 2 because she needs one for the traps too.
Macronomicon
which one are you talking about?
Macronomicon
indeed.
Not_You
Wait, infinite giant snakes? Snake army? If he can trigger it every few seconds…
Macronomicon
A set requires a circumstances that are unknown to Will and others. Will doesn't know the exact circumstances that allowed the set he made to be born. I know what those circumstances are, and he's already made another Set, but we're not gonna see it until book 5.
Not_You
Oh…he didn’t need a cool new primary to be busted as heck. Nice
Macronomicon
they have black lipstick on the 3rd Floor...so...maybe?
Farxzay
Does Will know what a goth is?
Moon Winchester
I am expecting to read the descriptions for every single artifact he makes. And I hope the ring makes it so all of the soft sets turned into hard sets. Cause that motherfucker over baked and burnt that shit and he knew how to cook.
Kris Piskorski
Is he going to make a set or a soft set for his closest crew in the future?
the void
He who controls the big titty goth girls controls the tower!!! (Tyftc)
RedInkQuill
Will gets cooking with gas, leaving everyone in the dust.
Cyrus McEnnis
The Book - there should be relics on the 9th Floor that interact with the spoken word. Ideally a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that apply spoken debuffs by sight. Because the only thing better than Will's name becoming a killing word is his sight becoming a killing gaze.
Hamy
Love the chapter name
Doggo
thanks for the chapter
Cyrus McEnnis
I didn't realize Travis was a man of such culture.
Macronomicon
We're going to make four very scary relics One goes to Travis and three to Will. I got the sickle figured out, but the other 3 I'm going to tweak over the course of tomorrow.
