The Legend of William Oh-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 zone that could provide supplies and manpower to rise further up.

“Your Stronghold is getting to the age where getting some custom Classes bussed up might be the solution to your plight.” Loth replied.

Will could feel his expression sour.

“…Yeah.”

“Just don’t be a dick about it. You can do that, right?”

“Purchase children from their parents and give them powerful Classes in exchange for a lifetime of servitude? I suppose I can do that.” Will replied.

“Bah. I think you’ve got a great opportunity here. From what you told me, Attrition had the traits of fecundity, large-scale terrain control, and poison. Can you imagine what would happen if you gave that kind of Sacrifice to a farmer?”

Will’s eye twitched as he imagined a farmer with a 12-mile radius control over his fields and crops that poisoned pests. That would be quite valuable, sheerly from scale.

Attrition, Wheat gremlin, and…what, for a potent, large-scale farmer? Will grabbed a book of common Class combinations and flipped through to the farmer Classes.

It seemed like a more powerful substitute for Wheat Gremlin was Dryad at A-rank instead of C-rank, and the final two ingredients were usually some form of earth-based creature, and water-based creature.

Plant, earth, and water.

If we substitute Attrition for the Earth portion, we would need a water-based sacrifice. Will frowned, recalling the Skippers on the 9th Floor that dragged their victims into dimensional holes inside puddles of water.

Could be an interesting combo. Dryad, Skipper, Attrition. Will made a note in his Map and set the book aside, sitting back down.

“I suppose the traits that made Attrition such a menace would be just as potent when used to our benefit,” Will mused

Large-scale land control. If we could get someone to spot and control the monster spawns, or at least kill them quick enough to keep the farmers safe.

Will felt like he would need someone who could be in more than one place at a time.

Not like Brianna, exactly, he needed someone…like a ranger, with good detection skills, unlike the Tangled, able to cover huge amounts of territory without spending too much resources. If they kept hundreds of Tangled out in the fields, she would have to eat a similar amount…

And it was just poor taste to force the girl to stay outside in nature all by her lonesome.

Will frowned.

If we include the monsters as resources…what about a necromancer? They’re not technically illegal. At least when I’m the one using them. And they’re a minion-using class, so…Kincaid? I’ve got thousands of Sacrifices from that Fae locked away in my vault.

Seed of undeath, Attrition, Kincaid.

Will twitched.

That sounds like…perhaps, too powerful of a Class. And I could make a lot of them. I have thousands of both Kincaid sacrifices and Attrition sacrifices, and I can always barter or visit the 8th Floor for more Seeds of undeath.

To easy to make and too powerful by far.

But damn, would they be able to control monster spawns across a huge portion of land. Just need to figure out how to stop them from trying to kill me and take the Stronghold.

In any case, it’ll be months before that can pan out. I’ll have to discuss it with Brianna first, then if we have the go-ahead, we still have to buy sacrifices for the farmer and send the supplies outside the Tower, which will take… two months. Then two months to bus them back up…assuming the messengers don’t get robbed and the buses make it.

…yeah, I got time.

Will made another note in his map, and turned his attention back to Loth.

“So tell me about this dragon you want to kill.” Will said.

“Well, we don’t strictly have to kill her,” Loth admitted. “She was just rather reluctant to cut off a couple pounds of flesh even after I requested very politely. I offered anesthetic and a superior healing potion.”

“…And you’re still alive.” Will said.

“It wasn’t easy. I had to deploy some rather underhanded means to escape. She won’t be talkative next time I run into her, so it’ll be straight to combat.”

“She’s a black dragon on the thirteenth Floor,” Loth continued. “I won’t know for sure if she truly is an ancestor until I offer a piece of her to Trap Savant, but the odds are good.”

From what Will had heard, the 13th Floor was much like the 4th Floor, but worse. A swamp where the sun rarely showed its face, and yet the heat and humidity were stifling. The poisons and diseases that plagued the Floor were just as much magical as they were mundane.

The Floor belonged to The Rotwitch, a Lord with a very small following. It was unknown if she had a Stronghold or any vassals at all, but she did show her face at Akul to recruit Vassals with high poison-resistance, so it was possible she’d found some here and there.

Will was starting to understand the value of Lordship. The ability to summon a Door at will was outrageously good for getting through Floors that didn’t allow Climbers to pass through, and that was one of numerous Abilities.

The regenerating salt mines on the 2nd Floor were another good example. By paying enough Influence to the tower, he could label an ore deposit as a ‘resource node’, at which point it would regenerate, just like the salt mountains on the second Floor.

Stolen novel; please report.

I wonder which Lord paid for that?

Will gained Influence when his Vassals gained XP, which meant that the stronger the vassals he could acquire, the faster he could traverse and reshape the Tower to his needs.

Wonder if I could designate a river as a resource node and use it to irrigate beyond it’s normal capacity? Maybe some kind of reservoir?

It cost a hundred thousand Influence, which Will wasn’t getting anytime soon without many, many more Vassals, or significantly stronger ones…

Which brought Will’s thoughts back to commissioning a necromancer.

“You busy?” Loth asked, peering at Will’s vacant expression.

“Mind just wanders,” Will said, snapping his attention back to the black-scaled kobold. “Couldn’t you have asked for a scale?”

“I wasn’t sure it would be a full Sacrifice,” Loth said with a shrug.

Will mused for a moment. “Alright. I’ve been wanting to get back to Climbing, and I’m pretty sure this wedding is going to whet my appetite.

I just need to find the right people to foist the Stronghold off on…and more time.

“Would you be willing to cool your heels for…about six months?” Will asked. “I think I could get this place running itself by then.”

Loth looked a little miffed at being asked to wait half a year.

“You do realize that the kobold lifespan isn’t very long, correct?”

Will paused.

“…Are you an old lady now? Did I miss your adulthood?”

“No, no,” Loth said, waving him off with a chuckle. “My high level affords me a lifespan closer to a human than a Kobold, but compared to people like you…It’s still not much.

Once I have the Ancestor sacrifice….” Loth clenched her fist. “I can finally acquire a body worthy of my mind, And from there, it’s a short path to leaving all of you hairy milk-drinkers in the dust. I can’t afford to sit around and slowly rot away while the key to transcending the limit of my species lies just out of my reach…”

“I can summon Doors.” Will said.

“Then I would be happy to wait six months for you to join my Party.” Loth said with a polite bow, changing her tone in the blink of an eye, prompting a laugh from Will.

“If we were to kill this ancestor of yours, would you give other kobolds access to the Sacrifice?”

“As long as they were my Vassals.” Loth said.

That wouldn’t be too hard to convince. Kobolds seemed to worship Loth as a god, which might explain where her strong pride came from.

“…Have you spoken to The Rotwitch about the dragon?” Will asked.

“The Rotwitch doesn’t have any concerns about the matter one way or another. She can’t help either, because if she were to help-“

“It would turn the Sacrifice into sludge.” Will completed, nodding.

“She asked about you, you know.”

“…what?” Will asked, blinking.

“The Rotwitch. Apparently she’s never been…touched…like that, by a man. It left an impression.” Loth gave a sharp-toothed grin and waggled obsidian eyebrows.

“Don’t say it like that.” Will grumbled. I just poked her in the ribs once. ONCE! Lost a good chunk of my arm doing it, too!

“I’m just saying, you should probably watch out for her during the wedding. I hear the mood is amorous, and a young legend would be quite the catch-”

Anna’s hands grabbed Will’s shoulder’s possessively, causing Loth to pause in the middle of her teasing.

“I think my secretary can beat them off,” Will said, patting Anna’s hand and trying not to wince.

“I wouldn’t suggest it.” Loth said, pointing at Anna. “Of all the Lords of The Tower, The Rotwitch is the best equipped to kill Brianna in her entirety, through the ability for her poisons to transfer across Abilities. She could touch one Anna and potentially infect the main body from a different Floor. Making the Rotwitch angry at Anna would be ill-advised.”

“So what do you expect me to do about her, then?” Will asked.

“I don’t know, tell her you’re already taken? Maybe give her a dance? It’s not like you have to get married afterwards. I don’t…fully understand human courtship rituals and how much importance you people place on them.”

“And what if she doesn’t take no for an answer?” Will asked.

Loth shrugged.

“Guess you’ll have to kill her. Best way would probably be to throw a completely nonmagical rock at the back of her head.”

“…fair enough.” Will admitted. Sometimes the solutions to problems between climbers was murder. He’d try to avoid it if at all possible, though.

Will glanced up at Anna standing over his shoulder.

Probably not the best time to ask this, but…

“How would you girls feel about me sponsoring a Vassal and bussing them up here to farm and help keep the monsters under control?”

It was exactly the same thing that had been done to Brianna, and Will didn’t know how she would react.

“Fine,” Anna said with a shrug.

“It’s fine?”

“Yes. You’re bringing them up to clear land. Not to serve as disposable soldiers, toys, or the subjects of inhumane experiments. The methods to acquire them might be similar but the purpose is completely different.”

“…Oh.”

“And I see everything that goes on in this Stronghold, so I know you’re not planning anything bad.”

“…Everything?” Will asked, wincing.

Anna gave him a silent half-smile.

“…Alright then.” Will gave Anna the list of Sacrifices he’d like her to transport outside the Tower while also searching for suitable Vassals among poor and orphaned children who hadn’t yet gotten their Classes.

She could do both of these things at the same time, because there were several Brianna copies on every single Floor from the 10th down, able to transfer written and verbal messages in an instant.

The Messenger’s Guild had thrown a fit over Anna’s side business of instant messaging, but they lacked the force of arms to do anything more.

If they knew how good she was at relaying packages down the Tower, and bussing people up, they might just disband. Since she was of a single mind, there was no chance for spies to receive word of her arrival time or the contents of her package.

And if she did lose a package, everyone would know instantly who had taken it and where.

Will only had Brianna carry packages for him, because if the Messenger Guild got any more desperate, they might try something stupid.

“Also, Heath just arrived in the Stronghold.”

Will glanced up at his secretary for a frozen instant before shooting to his feet.

“That’s perfect!”

I can’t believe he made it here on his own. Heath was the former town bully of Ashwood. A dumb brute who enjoyed pushing people around, about four years older than Will. He’d chosen a heavy swordsman Build that suited his imposing frame.

Making it to the 10th Floor in your mid-20’s was a sign of some talent, regardless of certain…personality traits.

All things considered, he might make a good Sheriff. What Will needed for his frontier town was not necessarily a sense of honor or law and order, but someone who enjoyed butting heads with others, who could still be controlled. Ria could handle the ‘Law’ and ‘honor’ part. Will just needed a proper bully on a tight leash.

Hopefully a half-decade of Climbing has tempered out the worst of him. We shall see.

Will jumped out the window of his tower and landed in the street before zipping towards the outer gate.

As he ran, an Anna carrying a basket of groceries flagged Will down before he could pass her by.

“He’s in the tavern,” Anna said, pointing to the left.

Will juked hard to the left, pinching Anna as he dashed past.

‘Eeep!’ several dozen voices across the Stronghold squeaked in unison.

Didn’t see that, did you? Will thought, acknowledging that he was being slightly petty.

Will was out of her reach before she could recover, coming to a grinding halt in the unpaved road in front of the tavern, with the chart of what liquor was safe for different Resistances posted prominently outside the establishment.

Will stepped inside and spotted an Anna washing mugs behind the bar, giving him a cute glare while another one cleaned up a spill, regarding him with an identical pout.

And in the center was Heath, looming over Muriel, who seemed unimpressed by the large man’s bluster.

“And I’m telling you if that William Oh can handle Tank slayer, then I can handle i-“

“Heath!” Will shouted, striding towards the oversized man with a massive grin. “it’s so good to see you!”

“Oh, hey!” Heath said, turning his ruddy-cheeked, maliciously dim expression towards Will. “I was-“

Will used Phantom Hand to steal Heath’s Kit, then grabbed him by his belt, dragging the warrior straight into a right hook.

The Heavy Swordsman tumbled violently out of Murial’s tavern, banging the rough-hewn saloon doors on the way out.

“I’m gonna have a conversation with him. Sorry to bother you.” Will said to Muriel, putting a ten-piece on the countertop to pay for whatever trouble this had caused.

“…I thought he was a friend of yours.” Anna said, jaw slack.

“Not exactly. He’s the sort of guy who I want to have a crystal-clear understanding of the nature of our relationship before he gets any bright ideas.” Will said.

A moment later, a thought occurred to him.

"What's 'fecundity' mean?" Will mused.