Macronomicon

Chapter 221: The Guest List

Once upon a time, William Oh went to a party where dozens of young women of fine lineage were presented to him by their mothers.

William Oh didn’t take any of the young women as lovers, but their mothers were left blushing and weak in the knee.
- Jason Salazar

“So are we running or what?” Bess asked, flopping into her cot after a long day of being harassed by William Oh. The barrier mage had a habit of using her Charge on any little thing, but right now...

Chapter 220: Master Exploder

William Oh once tried to give a fellow Climber some friendly advice. He showed the man a few of his techniques, to help the man learn his own Abilities better.

Unfortunately this had the opposite effect, because as soon as Will finished giving his demonstration, the man’s head exploded.

-          Jason Salazar, level 50 Prophet of Ouroboros

“So Mr. Fontaine, you and your Party will be in charge of organizing the smooth entran...

Chapter 219: Hello Again

“Welcome to my Stronghold, William Oh.” Zodiac said, spreading his arms. “I am Zodiac.”

He wasn’t…quite what Will was expecting.

Wow, Alicia’s dad is ancient.

Zodiac had pristine white robes, deep wrinkles, long hair and beard. His eyes were just regular pale blue, not glowing like his daughter. Maybe in the past he had been blonde, but the color had long since been washed out of his hair by time.

He looked rather gaunt, but intense. Like a man w...

Chapter 218: Checkmate, Father-in-Law

“Another tank slayer!” A familiar voice cut through the chatter. Will and Brianna glanced at each other and then scanned the bustling surroundings.

“There.” Will said, pointing with his pastry before shoving the rest of it in his mouth.

Hunched over at his seat was a handsome blonde who made the table look like it was made for a child’s toy set.

In front of him were two empty shotglasses with a recognizable film of tank slayer on them, and he was calling for a thir...

Chapter 217: Politics

Will and Brianna walked alongside Carrie while she described the current situation.

The long and short of it was this: All the most profitable resource nodes and cities on the first ten Floors of the Tower were monopolized by Lords who had been around so long that they had formed a tight-knit group who supported each other and whose mere influence would wither the growth of any other Lord in a nearby Floor. The so-called ‘old blood’.

The new Lords who had come to power over th...

Chapter 216: It Gets Worse

Once upon a time, William Oh went to a wedding and emerged the sole survivor.

-          Alex Jaidayal, level 52 Crystal Farmer

The market was small and tired, especially compared to Akul and Bakton Keep. There was none of the energy of hawkers and elbow-nudging crunch of excited Climbers looking to buy their next Kit.

Instead it was mostly rough men sitting on crates and consuming their drug of choice while waiting for t...

Chapter 215: Zodiac Stronghold

Will and Brianna landed on top of a building on one of the outer islands, where they simply stood and admired the network of light-bridges keeping the islands bound together.

“How do you suppose those bridges of light work?” Will mused.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Brianna replied with a shrug.

“Where the hell did you two come from!?” A voice caught their attention, where a man was leaning out a window, hanging long johns out to dry on a pole.

Will sile...

Chapter 214: Navigating The Big Empty

There exists on the 11th Floor an offshoot of Ouroboros so large that the rise and fall of nations comes as quickly and easily as breathing. This creature has passively witnessed the passing of Coils with nary a blink, the whole of human civilization a mere mote of dust in its eye.

One day, William Oh passed by with a date, and the snake gave a wink and a thumb’s up.

-          Jason Salazar, in an Akul Bar....

Chapter 213: The 11th Floor

Author’s Note:

I retconned a few things in the last chapter. Most notably was the very end of the last chapter. I forgot the wedding was only a few days away, and it would be nearly 6 months before Will could see any progress on his Necromancer project, so I changed Heath’s bootcamp to be shorter, and the next on Will’s to do list to be ‘going to the wedding’ rather than ‘deal with the monsters’.

Also, I was kind of missing the little legends at the beginning of cha...

Chapter 212: The New Hire

“So that’s what I’m hoping you can do for me.” Will said.

“Why don’t you get your Tangled girlfriend to do it?” Heath asked.

“Long story short: Doesn’t look the part. ” Will replied.

“I mean, she could.” Heath said with an upside-down shrug. “She’s a shapeshifter, right?”

“Well, let me ask you this.” Will said, “would you wanna look like you?”

Heath erupted in a guffaw. “Fuck you, I’m the peak p...

Chapter 211: The Talent of Being a Jerk

“I need a way of controlling monster spawns to a reasonable degree and holding large swaths of land.” Will said. “If I can make it safe enough, I can get some farmers their Advanced classes and they can work miracles on the soil.”

That would allow them to produce a surplus and launch civilization further up the Tower.

Will didn’t want to spend the rest of his life on the 10th Floor. This was meant to be his springboard that allowed him to Climb further. A safe z...

Chapter 210: An Invitation

A few months went by, and the cactus syrup and pulque gradually began flowing again, and they were finally able to relax. The mood in the Stronghold turned completely around once they weren’t starving, and since most of the less invested Climbers had left for the lower Floors, they didn’t have to share as much as they might’ve.

Will had to finance a couple emergency trips down to buy flour and sugar in bulk, which cost a decent chunk of Influence, but nobody actually found out how...

Chapter 209: Prize Catch

Will closed his eyes and mouth so he didn’t get foamed earth in them. who knew how bad it would be once it solidified?

The creature had no less than five independent mouths on the end of tentacle-like protrusions. From the brief glimpse of it’s body that Will had seen while it was breaching, the stomach was…

That way, Will thought, trusting his internal sense of direction, using Phantom Hand and his tomahawk to keep himself attached to the monster’s slimy skin, an...

Chapter 208: Just Like Fishing

“They started it.” Bee said, hands held up in faux innocence as will observed the scorched-out building.

“They started the fire?” Will asked.

“Yeah, one of them slammed into the lamp and FWOOSH!”

“Why did he slam into the lamp?” Will asked, already knowing the answer.

“Dunno.” Bee shrugged, averting her eyes.

Will tousled her hair in the way he knew she didn’t like. The tiny thief crossed her arms and pouted but didn’t say anythin...

Chapter 207: Evening Before the Hunt

The sun was beating down as hard as it ever did on this Floor, easily warded off by Will’s Resistance as he stood out in the wilderness, accompanied by Ghoul and Brianna.

Here goes nothing.

Will slipped the fingerless glove over his left hand, the missing fingers nubs inside the glove itself.

“Here we go.” Will muttered, kneeling down and beginning the three-part combo.

Will placed his right hand on the ground, triggering Aspect and solidifying the earth...

Chapter 206: Caught Stealing

**Thaddeus Thompson, Level 43 Swift Hand Fighter**

“C’mon Tad, it’ll be fine.” Monroe said, casting nervous glances around the sewer directly below the Lord’s tower.

“Every morning, the Tangled has to un-split to eat breakfast so all of her copies are full, yeah?”

“I guess?” Tad said, not understanding where Monroe was going with that.

“So there’s a short period of time every morning when the Lord has to have an actual person wat...

Chapter 205: Progress

“This is godsdamned highway robbery is what it is! Do you have any idea how valuable this is even one floor up or down!?” Sammohan demanded, shaking a bag of sand in the merchant’s face.

“But you’re not one floor up or down.” The general store owner said, leaning on the bar separating the front from the back. “You’re on the tenth Floor, and unfortunately, we’re experiencing a food shortage. I could, however, give you a nice discount on rock salt.”

The ...

Chapter 204: Terrain Dive

10th Floor, day 37

Our supplies continue to erode at a prodigious rate. We’ve finally narrowed the cause to a Raid Boss known as ‘Attrition’. Efforts to find this raid boss have proven to be fruitless, as it seems to leverage superior manueverability and senses to become impossible to catch.

Who knows? Maybe the creature is actually strong in battle too? We haven’t even caught sight of it.

The prospect of challenging the 11th Floor while starvin...