Chapter 182: Cancer Excised

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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.”