Chapter 341: Opening Moves (Patreon)

Will held a tiny fae flame above his head. It was a minor cantrip he’d recently mastered, especially useful for when he wasn’t sure if he would need light or to scour someone’s flesh from their bones.

“Yep, that’s Jason.” Mason mused, his pearlescent face downturned in a deep scowl as he stared down at the mangled corpse.

Mason’s scowl didn’t cover one iota of Will’s simmering rage.

“You said you made a portal for him, and he never came out the other end?” Will asked.

“Yes.” Mason said.

“Alright, I’ll ask more in a moment. Just give me a minute alone.”

Mason nodded and portalled out.

Whoever had done this had assumed the murder would go unnoticed, because the cavern was buried deep underground without a single path to the outside world.

Without Map, Jason would’ve just vanished without explanation and no one would’ve been the wiser.

Unacceptable. Will thought, crouching down and inhaling through his nose.

Stone. Blood. Jason, faint traces of the people and places Jason hangs out. firesmoke, cider, gambling.

Will mentally filtered all of those scents out, focusing on a single unfamiliar scent.

Who are you?

He turned his attention back to his eyes. The corners of the tiny cave were littered with human bones, seemingly decomposed over thousands of years.

The remains of a magical battle hung in the air. The scattered pieces of Jason’s Abilities mixed with some fragments of unfamiliar miasmatic structures, hanging over the bones like cobwebs.

Will isolated and took pictures of the most unfamiliar fragments, adding them to his legend.

Whatever had done this smelled like a human, had been doing this for a long time, and obviously was a decently powerful wizard. Will only knew five people with teleportation, and he was one of them.

The ability to change the destination of a portal en route…maybe two. Maybe.

Loth and Ghoul.

This guy might be as good at magic as Ghoul. How the Abyss would I deal with that?

Like most things, I suppose. Will thought, his grip tightening on his tomahawk.

Sudden, overwhelming force.

Will isolated his butler’s fear of failing him and created a bridge to Stevie, manifesting beside the ghost and Mason.

“Get me everyone who interacted with Jason in the last hour. I want to know why he asked for the portal in the first place.”

Mason nodded.

In a matter of minutes, Will was sitting in front of four very nervous looking people. A young priestess of Holdna, a large warrior who had shoved Jason, a gate guard outside Mason’s Stronghold, and Sherry.

“Let’s start with the earliest.” Will said, pointing to the priestess of Holdna. “What did he say?”

“He asked if the crowd was under a debuff. He was kind of breathing hard and holding his stomach.” The priestess said. “He wasn’t under a debuff, nobody was. He was just being a panicky little brat.”

Will frowned. “Were you rude to him?”

She paled. “I mean…”

“This is not a judgement of character, I want to know exactly what happened.”

“Yeah, I blew him off, because he was pissing me off…” She frowned. “For some reason.”

“Hypothetically, if someone came up to you asking about debuffs while breathing hard and clutching their stomach, and you found that they didn’t have any debuffs on them, what would you do?”

“Check for poison.” She replied.

“And you didn’t?”

“No, sir.” She said, her voice tiny.

“Next in line.” Will said, pointing to the large Climber. “What happened.”

“The kid umm…tripped onto me and I set him back on his feet and sent him on his way.”

Will’s eyes narrowed. The big guy didn’t have the smell he was looking for, but he was definitely lying.

“If you lie to me again, I’ll break your kneecaps.” Will said.

“He tripped onto me, and I shoved him away.” The Climber said.

He tripped? Will frowned. Anybody with more than 10 kinesthetics would never trip under normal circumstances. Was Jason actually poisoned, or was there something else going on?

And why was everyone being a dick to him? That must be why he asked if there was a debuff on the crowd.

“Did you say anything to him?” Will asked.

“Something along the lines of ‘get the fuck outta here?’ The Climber squeaked. “He got a look on his face, then scurried off.”

“What kind of look?” Will asked.

“Like he’d just realized something. Sir.”

“Next.” Will said, pointing to the gate guard.

“He came running up to the gate in full kit, said he had a really bad feeling. I laughed at him. He said he was an oracle, then he flipped a coin and threatened me. I thought it was a joke?”

Will’s skin went cold.

“He was wearing full kit?”

“Yessir. The big mask with the feathers and such.”

Shit, the wizard stole the Family Gathering Set. More than that, he killed Jason with the Fmaily Gathering set on, and his buffs active. That’s a tall order.

Wait. Jason was using a coin to make decisions? He had his luck buff active. From what I know, the luck buff can make unfortunate things happen to Jason if those unfortunate things turn out better for him in the end.

So he wasn’t poisoned, tripping was a luck side-effect, and Shover here gave him the idea to go outside and tell me about his bad feeling…which got him killed.

How is that luckier?

Will’s head felt like it was heating up as he tried to figure out how death could possibly be the best outcome for Jason. Eventually he just set the thought aside, and put a ‘to be resolved’ pin in it.

“Milord, there’s an issue with the jail cells.” Badur’s voice called, grabbing Will’s attention. “There have been more violent incidents than we can handle, so we’re-“

Will frowned looking at Badur, who was approaching with a clipboard clutched to his chest in typical Badur fashion.

He looked like Badur.

Sounded like him too.

Even the Map tag will had put on him was there.

But there was a tiny waft of a very specific scent that Will was looking for.

Will tuned Badur out and turned his attention to his Map, zooming in on the underground cavern.

In the few minutes that Will had been interrogating the four people who had last seen Jason, another corpse had appeared beside Jason’s. A particularly lanky one.

“Badur, I trust that you can handle it.” Will said, putting an amiable hand on Badur’s shoulder and looking into his eyes.

He gave Badur a smile and a reassuring squeeze…

The squeeze turned into an iron grip as Phantom Hand erupted out of Badur’s chest with his heart in tow.

The surrounding Climbers yelped and leapt backwards at the sudden display of violence.

In a fraction of a second, Badur’s skin lightened as the potent illusion unraveled, revealing a pale-skinned young man with a surprised expression.

“How-“ His voice was a blood-drenched whisper as he looked up at Will. “How did you know?”

Will frowned.

He’s fishing for information? While dying?

TELL HIM NOTHING.

Will leaned in close and dropped his voice.

“Where’s your real body?” Will whispered.

The young man’s eyes widened for a moment before giving Will a bloody smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said before his eyes glazed over.

“Alright, let’s head to the Key Site.” Will said, kicking the corpse away. “We are leaving, presently.”

Jason and Badur are bad, but if we linger, this bastard is going to pick us off one at a time. Fighting someone like Ghoul on his own turf is a losing game. He even had illusions good enough to fool my eyes. If he can move my map tags, and fool my eyes, I might not even be able to pick up his real body on my map. Staying would be asking for more people to die.

It hurt…really goddamn bad, but Will wasn’t going to keep rolling the dice and losing people.

The surrounding Climbers weren’t listening, they were staring at the stranger’s corpse in the middle of their half-circle, an unfamiliar enemy that their lord had seemingly sniffed out in a matter of seconds.

“MOVE!” Will shouted, causing them to jump in place and dive into a portal created by Mason.

While they were getting themselves ready, Will located the Key Site on his map, picked everyone up and began heading for it.

At the center of the beam of concentrated miasma was a roiling…something. It was a distortion of light that looked something like a cross-section of a seashell, with graceful curves that tucked themselves in tighter and tighter spirals, disappearing into infinity.

What is tha-

It exploded outward.

**2 hours earlier**

Mason passed through the Door, and by extension, so did everyone else, Jason included.

“AAAAHH!” Jason screamed in alarm as a sudden feeling of impending doom wracked his body, causing him to fall to his hands and knees, sweat dripping from his nose onto the dirt of Mason’s inner world.

An instant later, the world went dark and the pressure changed suddenly, causing his ears to pop. The smell went from fresh outdoors, to ancient decay, with next to no oxygen.

Fuck, I’m gonna die. Jason somehow knew without a shadow of a doubt.

A voice emerged from the darkness.

“Tell me everything you know about William Oh.”

Jason blinked, unable to see in the pitch-black darkness.

“You…don’t know who William Oh is?” He replied.

“Don’t ask. Only answer. What do you know about William Oh?” the voice asked, sounding a little tense.

“…I know he’s gonna kick your ass.” Jason said with a chuckle.

**William Oh, the next morning**

“Some of the boys were talking and we thought this would be a perfect spot to drop another waystation.” Sammohan said. “The monsters are basically an afterthought, the mining is good, and we could have a working farm as fast as someone could sneeze.

“And look at that scenery.”  Sammohan finished, gesturing to the beautiful, lush valley.

“Feels like a trap.” Loth said, arms crossed, a scowl on her face. Nobody had been in a very good mood, and it seemed to have happened the moment they arrive.

The ugly feeling had lifted in a matter of seconds, but it left a lingering aftertaste and dozens of Climbers cooling off in their Stronghold’s jail cells.

The moment they had crossed over, Will had felt a lingering rage, as if someone had taken something precious from him, but he forgot who, and what.

It gave him a bad feeling about staying here.

But after that first taste, nothing had come of it, so Will was willing to hear Sammohan out. They would stay for a few days, and if nothing bad happened, they would set up a waystation.

Where would be a good place to put a waystation? Will mused, turning his attention to his Map.

…What’s this?

Will’s legend had a handful of new entries that he didn’t remember adding. They were pictures of fragments of miasmatic structures with distinct patterns that he’d never come across before.

The Abyss? How did this even get in here?

Will’s skin went cold as he recalled the sudden bad feeling he’d gotten last night when they crossed over into the 25th Floor.

Will immediately ran through his Memory Key, running a pre-programmed list of hot and cold memories to shatter any brittle mind control.

Nothing.

If someone else had the kind of invasive access to my class that it would require, why would they only take three sketches of odd miasmatic structures? That’s the sort of thing I would do. Did I get my memory wiped? How would that…maybe…

Will selected the fragmented miasmatic structures out of his legend and highlighted them on his map, turning up the brightness higher and higher, until a tiny portion of the map began to glow.

By adding depth to his search, it turned out there were a few examples of the miasma structures in question inside a lightless cavern a quarter-mile underground.

And that cavern had a familiar-looking body in it.

Will’s eye twitched.

He began copying everything down and drastically altering the settings on his Map.

“Something wrong?” Jason asked from beside him. Will’s old friend from back in the orphanage who had singlehandedly made him a legend was looking up at him with a concerned expression.

“Gonna be a pain in the ass to clear a good spot,” Will lied as he frantically added more information to his Legend.

Jason Dead. Will added a picture and the location of the cave. Taken from inside Mason without drawing alarm. Talented wizard. Shapeshifter taking his place. Already had some pictures of the traces of the culprit. Mind wipe?

“Jason I’ve been meaning to ask you a question.”

“Shoot.”

Phantom hand erupted from Jason’s chest, carrying his heart.

“…How did you know?” ‘Jason’ asked, his features melting to become someone else.

Fishing for information? While dying? I don’t believe it.

‘He might have a spare body or a way to come back to life. Does not seem to be concerned by death.’ Will wrote  in his legend.

“Where’s your real body?” Will asked as Jason’s features shifted.

“What…are you?” the young man asked before going limp.

Attempting to leave via the Key Site, Will wrote before rounding everyone up and preparing to leave.