Macronomicon
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Chapter 182: Cancer Excised
🕑 Added 2025-08-08 17:22:37 +0000 UTC…
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Birdsong echoed across the clearing, and the sun was beginning to flirt with the horizon. The massive lump of glass was still smoldering off to the side, faintly cracking as the outside cooled off faster than the inside.
It had been quiet for quite some time.
One second Will was there, and the next he’d vanished, the only indication he’d been there were some footprints in the earth leading toward the pit radiating enormous amounts of heat from its edges.
It was easy to forget that Will was a rogue archetype until he vanished like that.
Does he have an Ability for it or was that really from a Relic? Travis couldn’t help but suspect that Will had something even more outrageous than the ‘bespoke’ Relics he offered to the Party.
“So…you think he’s still alive?” Travis asked the cute Fae lord standing beside him, looking for a topic of conversation. Travis didn’t know the first thing about raising a daughter, so that one had been a bust.
BOOM!
The earth to the right of the pit exploded outward, revealing Will flying upwards, a cancerous mass the size of a building behind him, being torn out of the ground like a stubborn weed.
“…Yes.” Onacona replied, her tone dry.
“Travis!” Will’s voice projected from the distance.
“EH!?” Travis held a hand up to his ear to indicate he’d heard him.
“Get the rest of the caravan! They need to take turns stabbing this guy!”
“On it!” Travis shouted, conjuring a flying carpet and setting off.
**William Oh**
Will watched Travis fly back to Bakton Keep and nodded to himself. Sure, Travis didn’t fly very fast, and Will was going to have to keep Kincaid company for a few minutes, but that wasn’t too much of a problem. He flew decently fast, and he could likely carry more people at once than Will could.
Kincaid would keep for now.
Four of Will’s five snakes had their armor changed into chains brimming with fishhooks, which they used to catch the abomination’s flesh and drag his fat ass out of his comfortable little temple of self-worship.
Will hauled Kincaid up and up, nearly a mile above the earth…where the others couldn’t hear them.
“This is pointless. Kill me or not, you are doomed to failure. Such is your lot. Nothing you do has meaning.” Kincaid groaned as Will hung him in the sky and settled down in front of the meaty face emerging from the grotesquely distended stomach.
“Mean words are the last resort of the impotent,” Will said, matching the sentient stomach’s glare.
“It is simply the truth.”
“Maybe so.” Will said. “But I felt your fear: You’re afraid of disappearing, your legacy ground to nothing by the relentless turning of the Coil, afraid of becoming an afterthought to a hero who will in turn be rendered nameless by time.”
“…What of it?” Kincaid asked.
“Help me. Share your knowledge of the previous Coils. Instead of dying a footnote, your legacy will be that of the great sage who granted Wiliam Oh secret knowledge that he used to surpass every hero who came before. Kincaid, the sage, whose heart was pure and knowledge unrivaled.”
“A Lie.”
“A legend. Your heart is pure evil, and your knowledge is sure to be unrivaled in certain aspects. Legends are more a reflection of the people who tell them than the subject themselves. believe me. I know.”
Will raised a finger.
“But. Your name will be applied to this fake version of you, and your ‘deeds’ will be admired and emulated by Climbers for endless coils. Your name will outlast either of these two.” Will gestured to the two other fae Lords below them.
Will offered his hand.
“Share with me the darkest secrets you’ve acquired over your long life. Exceed your rivals in death.”
A rumbling laugh shook the air around him.
“Is that your offer? I share the world’s deepest secrets and you will tell pretty lies after you’ve killed me?”
“I know a really good hype man,” Will said.
“…Deal.”
A fleshy pseudopod reached out and wrapped around Will’s hand.
They shook on it.
“What kills my peers at the end of each Coil?” Will asked.
“The Tower itself.” Kincaid said. “I don’t know the specifics, but I overheard one of your incarnations mention Reese pushing him to find a way to reach something that was protected by the Tower.”
“And you think that killed him?” Will asked.
“All the power that you have used to humble me is borrowed. You can no more use it to defy the Tower than you could piss backwards, human. Your predecessors and their cohort overflowed with that borrowed power, which made them all the more feeble when it was taken away from them. It is the only thing that I could imagine stopping you dead in your tracks so many times. The Tower itself.”
“You mentioned Reese.” Will said. “Tell me about him.”
“Ah yes, the immortal. It’s rumored that he is ancient beyond measure. Older than me by far. Maybe even older than you. Who knows? Like you, his life is tied to The Tower somehow, and the only way for him to achieve the sweet release of death is to shut it down. The ‘advice’ he gives you is all in service to this one goal.”
“What do you mean by ‘shut it down’?” Will asked. “That…would kill everyone, wouldn’t it?”
“That is one way of looking at it, sure.” Kincaid gave an ugly grin.
“The people who made you: They discovered a lot about The Tower. Give me the highlights. What is it?”
“In the course of their attempts to decode miasma and the dimensional effects of the tower itself, there were a few radical scientists who believed the tower’s nesting properties to be a form of shelter from the gods themselves. A way of insulating humanity from beings whose power defies all laws of nature, each Coil adding a Floor and retreating further and further away from a reality where monsters beyond human understanding reside, whose mere attention would cause your body to warp and crumble like a burning hair from sheer miasmatic energy.
What you might call gods.
Naturally, these scientists were scorned and imprisoned because such theories fly in the face of Tek’tut’kanlay’s divine mandate. The ones who made me could not see the pattern, nor even conceive of it. But the longer I live the more the hypothesis seems to hold some weight.
Why do you think Key Sites on every Floor are pumping a beam of Miasma up? They are pumps bailing out a sinking arc. In the long run, we are all doomed. Whether that is three or a thousand Coils from now. Sooner or later, the Tower will collapse under its own weight and this little panic-room of a world will flood with miasma and finally…come to an end.”
Will’s eyebrows rose.
“That’s a lot to process. What’s at the top of The Tower?”
“My guess? Humanity’s origin. An abandoned world so thoroughly corrupted by miasma that no living thing could set foot there without immediately mutating into a monster, or simply bursting into flames.
It isn’t completely abandoned. The gods exist, batting our enclosure around for their amusement like a group of toddlers wrestling over an ant-farm. Making bets, picking favorites, and giving them sugar when they please.”
“So it’s just the gods at the top of The Tower?” Will asked.
“BAHAHAHAHAH!” Kincaid bellowed with laughter.
“No. ‘The gods’ are the six or so creatures of limitless power who bother to amuse themselves with humans at all. There’s no reason to believe that there aren’t billions of creatures of similar or greater power strewn across that world who simply don’t care one way or another.
“So there’s billions of gods at the top of the Tower, and only six actually care?”
“That’s what I believe.”
“Anyone ever make it to the top?” Will asked.
“I’ve heard of a few. They exchange a few words with the gods before they are forced to scurry back to the land of mortals, forever altered by the experience.”
“Why are they forced to scurry back?” Will asked.
“My theory? Borrowed power.” Kincaid said with a scoff. “You borrow power from The Tower, and The Tower borrows power from Miasma, which is itself the reality-warping exhalation of these godlike beings.
Theres no perfect analogy, but picture yourself as an ant attacking a human with sharpened toenail clippings borrowed from a spider, who is stealing them from another human’ trash bin. These sharpened toenail clippings might work well against other ants, but against a human? Not so much. Humans have steel, and boots, and clothing.
And if by some miracle, the toenail clippings were to cause some damage, the human would ask his friend to stop throwing his toenails in the garbage, and suddenly, you’re out.”
Will processed that for a moment.
“How do I get my own?”
“Your own…what?”
“Toenails. Miasma. Magic.” Will said.
“That’s…not possible.”
“They have it,” Will said with a shrug.
“Because they are beings of unfathomable power from beyond existence itself.”
“Is Ouroboros one of the gods toying with us?” Will asked.
“I believe so.”
“I have it on good authority that I’m his grandson.”
“…What?”
“Arkesh the mind-conqueror said that my father is an original molt from Orouboros.” Will said. “Could that give me the toehold I need to create my own miasma?”
A rumbling laugh spread through the corpulent mass of flesh, and it lasted a good long while, culminating in hoarse wheezing as Kincaid hurt himself.
“Boy…You know your friend Travis, with the annoying illusions?”
Will nodded.
“If one of his illusions had a child, would that child be Travis’s grandson? Hmm?”
“I…don’t know.”
“Food for thought.”
Definitely, Will thought, his mind spinning from all the new questions these answers had brought.
If Will was going to survive his prophesied doom, he would need to find a way to retain power even without The System.
Will’s left hand twitched at the thought.
Come to think of it, why hasn’t my hand mutated from the miasma? Will wondered, running his thumb over his index finger.
It mutated from the 8th Floor, but nothing else. the undead miasma had treated it poorly, but regular old Miasma didn’t seem to have any harmful effects on his unprotected hand.
Typically, it was a Climber’s Class that helped protect their bodies from Miasma. His left hand didn’t have those benefits.
Through extensive testing, Will knew that his left hand simply didn’t register to The Tower. As far as The Tower was concerned, it didn’t exist.
A blind spot.
Is there a way to enhance it that doesn’t require The System?
…Can I make my own System?
It seemed like a terrifically arrogant question to ask, given that The Tower and it’s System had been created by the gods themselves, but-
No…if Kincaid is right, the tower itself was made by humans. And if it was made by humans, those humans would by definition, be without access to the System. They wouldn’t have had stats or Abilities. They would have been as weak and slow as civilians.
If they could do it…why couldn’t I?
Who was to say Will couldn’t use a powerful tool to create an even more powerful tool?
If Kincaid was right, then eventually, Reese would start pestering him to climb further, aiming for some…thing that would kill him.
Something Reese knew would kill him, but pressured him to do it anyway. And each time, Will’s predecessor had gone willingly. It wasn’t as if anyone else had the power to force him.
‘Man, it never goes well when he knows this stuff.’ Reese had said.
What could possibly convince me to go willingly to my death on the 50th Floor? That’s a pretty short list.
#1: the extinction of all life in The Tower
#2: A never-ending convention of cute baker-girls.
…And that’s about it. After searching himself long and hard, Will could see himself possibly being convinced to travel up there and sacrifice himself if everyone he knew and loved would die, but otherwise, he’d rather live.
Will made a mental note to prepare himself for the 50th Floor before Reese came to him with a proclamation of The Tower’s collapse.
Will would have to act surprised.
Will already had a few ideas rattling around in his head from this…enlightening conversation. But they would take time to act on. Quite possibly a great deal of time.
And I’ve got the perfect cover to take that time: establishing a Stronghold.
“Ah, it seems our conversation comes to a close.” Kincaid said.
Phantom Eye
108 Charges remaining.
Will swung his gaze over to where the entire caravan was riding towards them on flying carpets.
“Yeah, back to it, I guess.” Will said.
“Where was I? Oh right.”
Kincaid’s stomach-mouth distended outwards as dozens of minions were disgorged from inside him.
The fae’s mouth made an unsettling cracking noise as the jaw broke open to allow the dozens of fae to storm straight into Will’s face, each of them bearing an ivory badge and cancerous wings.
Will danced backwards, unwilling to let the minions touch him. If Kincaid had granted them the Dimensional Stomach Ability, then getting caught in it was a death sentence.
Will grabbed Kincaid with his snakes and shot both of them straight down, far faster than the minions could keep up.
Bone arrows, beams of crimson light, and fleshy nets shot after them, but Will and Kincaid outpaced or avoided all of them, hitting the ground in explosion of earth.
Will’s snakes left Kincaid groaning in the crater his bulk had made, and raced back up into the sky, mincing the flying minions above.
Will created a building-sized umbrella of solid air to protect himself and his caravan, in case the chunks raining down had some kind of disease or curse, or reassembled themselves somehow.
Kincaid groaned, trying to push himself back up with a cancerous pseudopod.
“Worth a shot. I never said I’d let you kill me.”
“I know.” Will said quietly. “You were a black-hearted monster and it’s going to burn me up inside to say nice things about you. But I appreciate the secrets.”
“And I appreciate the pretty lies.”
Will turned to the arriving caravan “Everybody arrange yourselves by Party and take a shot, just like we practiced.”
Comments
Brian
I'm an optical engineer, so the idea of Will's cantrip death ray got me pretty excited. Which, since I'm an engineer, means I started doing some math. So, in case you were wondering if such a thing could actually work, here's the numbers: I will assume a perfect lens that captures all of the light and focuses it to a spot size of our choosing. The question is then: How large a spot can we make with a lens that is a mile across, and still melt stone at a reasonable rate? I chose to assume that the stone is granite, with a specific heat of 790 J/kg*K, density of 2650 kg/m3, and melting point of 1260 C. I looked at limestone, but it decomposes into quicklime and carbon dioxide at about 850C, and then the quicklime doesn't melt until 2570C. So Limestone would be more difficult to melt. The average solar irradiance at the top of the atmosphere is 1360 W/m2, and granite absorbs about 70% of the light that hits it (albedo of 30-35%). I multiplied the 3 granite specs above together to get the Joules needed to melt a cubic meter of granite, then divided by 70% of the solar energy in a 1 mile radius to get 0.344 sec/m3, which means the beam can melt about 3 cubic meters per second. That sounds pretty good, but what it means is that if the beam is castle sized, let's say 100m in diameter, then it will only melt about 95 micrometers per second, and a 30m tall castle would take about 87 hours to melt to the ground. A 10m beam would take about 52 minutes to melt a 30m wall to the ground. Focusing the beam to smaller diameters increases the melt rate, but would, of course, no longer cover much of the wall. Note that energy scales with area of the lens, or square of the lens diameter, so a 10 mile diameter lens would melt 30m of stone in a 10m dia in about 30 sec. But maybe the tower's sun is much brighter. Or something.
dijet
I feel like I didn't really understand everything Kincaid said but oh well. So far I've been under the impression this is some sort of simulation due to reeves comments on admin controls and immunities,. When will creates his own system by finding a way to infinitely create miasma from his relics somehow (at least that's the only way I can think of it happening) I wonder what hell be the god of if anything.
MTGamer
Perry cameo?
MTGamer
People climb the tower in a bid to absorb enough of it to come close enough to chat with these gods. ISM, hello..!
Shaoraka
Maybe they use it up ? As in, their magic and their bodies drink up miasma without giving it back after death ?
VISHV POWER
Why tower gives power to people ? Like why even climb the tower ? If it is just miasma pump them empowering people with miasma and letting them residency at base not increase miasma when they die in ring 0 ?
unmellow the gamer
That is true because it is growing back his hand inspite of it not being recognized by the tower. Hmm.
unmellow the gamer
Now that I think about it... Fear and respect are the same.... Lots of stories have gods gathering power directly from their worship too...
Mrfacemanlol
The seed of undeath sacrifice for aspect of the immortal serpent is probably exactly what he needs to produce his own miasma
Patron1kj6tz
Will can currently see miasma with uru eye, an upgrade that enhances his ability to *understand* what he's looking at sounds not only feasible but also like the first (second?) step to directly manipulating miasma. As for PRODUCING his own miasma, that actually seems more like something he should look to Aspect for. Since it allows him to regrow his hand that means it's directly altering the way his body works on a fundamental level.
Andrew Gonzalez
So it's a reverse tower climber; they're at the top going towards the bottom which leads to the actual outside world. Interesting
SunderGoldmane
I dont think the gods themselves are down that deep in the tower. But there folowers are. Maybe they could hypothetically get there? But as i see it it would be like a diver holding there breath while having multiple deadly cases of “the bends” from decompression. They probably wouldnt have much power left to do anything at that level. As i understand it miasma is like atmosphere to them.
SunderGoldmane
They way i understand cantrips is like waves coming off you while you swim in a big pool of water. Where skills are more like using different shaped buckets to fling the water outside the pool in different shapes. But the room the pool is in is air tight and all the water slopes back into the pool eventually. So if he wanted to make his own magic then i think hed have to make his own miasma. The undead miasma is different from tower miasma so it CAN be done. But how to do it is not coming to me.
SunderGoldmane
The knowledge suck was a chance. His skill says harvest with a chance to uproot. The uprooting and forgetting is not the normal function.
Gorane
I mean it would make sense that Kincaid has some info about Wills party via spys and stuff
Joshua Little
Thanks for the chapter.
Cyrus McEnnis
Sooooo - Will's a character inside a video game that's being played by Macro "Orobuoros" Nomicon. And he has to fight his creator to escape the bindings of narrative causality that surround everything but his hand. Is it wrong I'm rooting for the character to destroy the author?
Ethan Barrow
TFTC!! I can't wait for him to be known as the harbinger that could actually keep two hands going.
Tom C
He is the Neo to the Matrix. The part of a n equation that won’t resolve!
Patron1kj6tz
My current understanding is that miasma levels outside the tower are constantly going up and as such more effort is needed to keep the ring (floor 0) clear of miasma. I remember a Granesh priest thinking about records showing that the number of climbers surviving their trials has been going down throughout currently recorded (less than 1000 years) history. This implies that monsters are get stronger over a coil, presumably from miasma levels going up. -IMPORTANT QUESTION ABOUT CAUSE AND EFFECT- Does creating a new floor cause monsters to flood the ring, like wildlife being displaced or key sites shutting down during the creation of a new floor? OR Does miasma pass some critical threshold pushing monsters in the ring and then a new floor is created to compensate? If the latter is true AND the process isn't fully automatic, it's possible that Oh alts all die ensuring the creation of a new floor.
Patron1kj6tz
The "stars" being made by gods is just an assumption on humanities part as far as I'm aware. It's possible (borderline probable) that they were made by original humans, possibly restocked at some point(s) along the line by sufficiently advanced societies.
Trey
wait. if will says some nice lies about kincaid and it is picked up as a legend or whatever… can jason just turn that legend into a crystal and suck the knowledge of kincaid out of the world? it burns me up that such a monster would get even pretty lies told about him but if those pretty lies end up coalescing into something that can be used as a weapon or item and then all those pretty lies are forgotten? heheheh i like that idea 😈
Sce7tm
While I like the Travis illusion grandchild metaphor, and think it definitely worth keeping, the way Kincaid brings him up here feels a bit too familiar. As far as we're aware the first time kincaid even became aware of Travis's existence was seconds before when Will shouts for him to get the rest of the caravan. Maybe worth rephrasing? Maybe something like "That subordinate of yours that weilds illusions..." or something similar.
Hell 5pawn
Yesss lore dump let's gooo!
Flounder
Both systems use stats that scale on a 5% basis…
vVip3rzzz
Nah… cause there’s like no chance that’s the system in the tower is… Perry’s system? Right. Perry who happened to be on a world with a handful of gods that played pretend as people. Played with people, like the handful of gods in this universe. Is this cope that one day I’ll get to read more about what happened to Perry, yes. Am I sorry? No. Do I miss him? GOD IT HURTS SO MUCH.
Emily Gurnavage
That was such an amazing end to this fight. Perfect.
Doggo
what if will and his previous incarnations are created as a sort of clean up and recycle system. on his way up the tower will kills a lot of anomalies and gathers insane amounts of miasma to fuel his levels and abilities the tower takes all the power and creates a new coil a sort lf clean up and recycle sysyem
Trey
i’m trying to break down how to even begin the process of will making his own magic and i’m drawing a blank so far. all his power is borrowed. can he make it not borrowed? fueled by something other than miasma? do cantrips use miasma? are the attributes to a climber’s body miasma that is constantly working or are their bodies just permanently altered by the miasma? i’m excited for experimentation on this and hearing loth and will talk about it!
RedInkQuill
Kincaids truth is like acid. Eating away at the wool over his eyes. Will his left hand become the basis of his own power?
Moon Winchester
I feel like the dimensional stomach effect would be great for the nuker with the dimensional oyster already making his internals and infinite dimension and I feel like this will just make it better
Ranger Science
Huh. Is the Tower “just” Snow Piercer?
The Arcane Emperor
I think Will can cross scenario 2 off the list, Anna is already practically a never-ending convention of cute baker girls.
Macronomicon
I could give a watsonian explanation and say he was trying to keep the variables down so that caravan members didn't get swept up in the fight and make things complicated...but truthfully, i just forgot that would be needed.
Josiah
If the gods are that powerful and humans made the tower to hide from them, they wouldn't be on the last floor right? They'd be outside the tower at the actual original world of humanity.
Gardor
Seems like Will should have brought the caravan with him to watch the show from the beginning. Tyftc
Stanisław Drewienkowski
Hmmm, so The Tower is a giant vaccum cleaner, slowly getting overfilled at the top floors, and in the process making lower floors livable. But in that case what is the Ring, it has stars made by Gods, and Gods created the tower to store Miasma, so the Ring had to come first. And yet it is a small area. Or perhaps a shelter in a larger world, and unpolluted by Miasma only because Tower constantly sucks in any traces keeping the perimeter clean.
SunderGoldmane
I imagine a day maybe ten years from now where all of macs books tie i to the same universe nicely.
Nyroe
So there are billions of readers out there and only six editors and only one or two writers.
Andrew
Thank you!
Doggo
thanks for the chapter
Enzo Elacqua
I feel like all ur stories are likely all in the same universe/multiverse, which makes it all the more frustrating not knowing the ending of the earlier ones
valor
Waaaaaaaa tyftc
Macronomicon
Author's note: lotta exposition in this one. I also cleaned up the fear-traversal a bit in the last chapter. you can check it out if you want. I THINK it's better, but who knows?
