Chương 10: Chapter 87: That’s How You Get Crabs

William Oh's first meal on the Sixth Floor was comprised of King Crab and Flying Caviar that stretched as far as the eye can see. He ate so much expensive fish in a single sitting, that if it had been released to the public, it would've crashed the economy of The Ring.

Jason Salazar William Oh Resourceful Climber Level 25 26+ 5 Strength 75 +10 Kinesthetics 78 +27 Resistance 50 +15 Focus 96 +26 Acuity Charges: 64/64 Free Points: 0 Item Abilities: Summon Undead retainer, Heal undead, 35% eidolon potency, 45% rogue Archetype potency, 75% Ranger archetype potency, Aetherhawk, Lightning Pulse, Wet footing, Homefield Advantage(Ice), Malleable Space, 30% Trespass A/V dampening, Swift Earth.

Phantom Hand Slots: (Ring of Accuracy*) (Sickle of Cold Harvest) -(Wand of the Undead Retainer)- (Stormfists) Primary Abilities: Aspect of the Immortal Serpent, Phantom Hand* Secondary Abilities: Sourdough* In the dark half hour before the sun rose, all but a few the distant clouds caught the pre-dawn light, illuminating their tiny raft.

Most of the Party was still asleep, and Will had nothing to do but think, practicing his Memory Key and cleaning his equipment while checking his new level 25 Status, waiting for Billy-bob, Stevie, and Noob, to arrive and give them their appraisal of the situation. She's right, I am being mean to them. Aside from their attitude, the ghosts did good work. It was difficult to overstate how valuable an intelligent force that acted on your behalf with initiative and critical thinking was.

Maybe I should give them an opportunity to earn themselves more dignified names… Level 25, huh? My Strength is pitiful… I wonder if I should start diverting free points to it. Will was 2. 3 times stronger than a human without The System, while the average Climber at level 25 could expect to be at about 3. 5. The gap's going to keep getting bigger the higher I go.

Still, growing his Dimensional Storage and the ability to launch increasingly larger payloads at increasingly higher speeds was an excellent way to cultivate an answer to every problem. An answer named 'overwhelming force', which seemed to be a Lord's stock and trade. How much dimensional storage space do I have? 219 cubic inches? How many gallons is that? Not a lot. Not even one, I think.

Will had a Primary Ability Upgrade available, and he had taken several Dimensional Oyster Sacrifices with him for this exact reason. Will took out one of the Sacrifices he'd been saving for himself, holding it in his hand to determine what the upgrade to Phantom Hand would be. Dimensional Oyster Sacrifice: Phantom Hand's Dimensional Storage gains a shrinking effect, scaling with Acuity.

Items larger than Dimensional Storage's capacity cannot be placed inside, as the shrinking effect does not take place until the item is inside. How much does it scale with Acuity? Will had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't something like a flat 1% per Acuity, which would allow infinite storage at 100 Acuity. But it would definitely be a strong effect, since his Acuity was outlandishly good. So the 219 cubic inches becomes the size bottleneck, but past that, we can store a lot more than we could before. Hopefully.

Let's see what happens. With a flash of light, Will sacrificed the Dimensional Oyster, adding it's effect to Phantom hand. … Now I need to figure out how to test it's effect. Will was developing an idea for how to test it when the sun broke above the glittering horizon, revealing the patch of flotsam beneath them, and heralding the return of the ghost butlers. The other members of the Party were getting up and ready to start the day as the trio returned.

"How is it?" Will asked as Stevie floated up through the bottom of the floating raft.

"The remains of a major battle. No survivors, not even any bodies. They were either eaten or rescued already. No valuables aside from partially burnt floating wood. Anything worth anything either sank or was picked clean already. There's a few monsters beginning to make homes in the wreckage, but nothing particularly entrenched." Stevie said.

"June, take the team and get some practice against the environment, I'll work on making us a boat so we're not relying on the insects." Loth said.

"It's not gonna be trapped is it?" Will asked.

"You insult me!" Loth said, placing an offended hand on her chest.

"Of course it'll be trapped!"

"Alright," June said, making her voice heard after Loth gave the order.

"Will, you're going to take point. Mason, Reggie, and Alicia are going to stay on overwatch, while Jean's crew and I are going to follow close behind Will." June pointed at Reggie.

"Toft on me and Will." Reggie nodded.

"Keep a rope ready for us if we have to run. And don't distract Alicia." Reggie nodded. June pointed at Alicia.

"Keep an eye out for ambushes from below." Alicia nodded. June grabbed a rope from her bag and tied one end around Reggie, using their Tank as a temporary anchor point before throwing the rest over the side. She glanced down at the enormous patch of floating debris nearly a hundred feet below them, taking a deep breath before she began climbing down the rope.

Will jumped off the side of the floating raft, whistling past June before slowing his descent with Phantom Hand, landing softly on a bobbing piece of wood, his influence extending outward to solidify a large patch of water around it.

"Showoff," June scoffed as she arrived beside him, her Trailblazer Ability seemingly creating a path of denser wreckage behind her for the others to follow. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Alicia says to be careful for the things clinging to the underside of the logs!" Mason shouted down at them. Bee and Ria slid off the rope, testing their footing and glancing around.

"Let's clean out this patch," June said, motioning at the patch Loth was directing her swarm to begin picking through for useable timber. It made sense to clean it of any monster infestation before it got up to Loth. It wasn't thirty seconds after Alicia's warning that one of the monsters made its presence known. As one of the logs was being lifted into the air, a pale spider-like creature launched itself straight towards Bee's face.

The little shapeshifter squawked, flailing her hands, intercepting the crab and smacking it away through brute force, sending it spinning through the air to plop back into the water, landing between two pieces of flotsam. Will frowned as a faint popping noise began to travel through the stadium-sized patch of wreckage. They're telling each other about us. By the sheer number of popping noises, there had to be a lot of them. Let's slow the flow of enemies. Homefield Advantage. 60 Charges remaining.

The rolling ocean turned into ice, creating a solid surface between them and the swarm of monsters in a fraction of a second. Only three of the crabs got out of the water before it turned into ice, skittering towards June and Ria. Ria let out a breath and talons began to pop through her shoes, burying themselves into the chaotic mixture of ice and wood. She grunted with effort, taking a swing at the flying pale white crab, phantasmal claws extending from her hand and turning the attacking monster into chunks.

June pranced backwards, Trailblazer smoothing out the pad of ice as she drew an arrow and pinned the crab to the surface. Bee shuddered, making 'yuck' faces as she brushed herself off. Will motioned to June, then towards the east. She seemed to understand what he was saying.

"They're going to come up around the edges, let's go east so they all come up around the west side." Will nodded and began moving, his circle of frozen ground moving with him, interrupting any crabs trying to climb up the east side while behind them, the pad of ice rapidly faded away. This time it was about a dozen crabs that climbed up around the edge of the ice, three for each of them.

At least they're all coming from the same direction, Will thought, shooting a sling bullet out of the Phantom Hand, while one of June's arrows knocked another off the edge of the circle. Ten. Will and June each got off another shot while Ria and Bee moved to block them with their bodies. Eight. Bee and Ria both took out two in short order as they leapt upon them. Four. Two crabs stayed with their meatshields, and two leapt past to attack Will and June directly.

Will understood that Reggie was up there guaranteeing his survival, so he had to find the fine line between getting practice against these creatures to see what they were capable of and just annihilating them with Phantom Hand, learning nothing. Will drew the Shortsword of Perserverance, blocking the crab's flight with the blade. The pitted blade of the shortsword wobbled under the creature's assault, it's chitin absorbing the force without difficulty. Will got his first good look at it.

It was spider-like, about the size of a dog, with pale white chitin, weird moving mouth-parts, and pincers that reminded him of those bolt-cutters that Leon had in the back of his shop. The same kind he'd used to cut swords in half and render Relics down into powder… Oh, crap! Will slid the sword out of the creature's grasp an instant before it got the opportunity to lock its pincer around the blade and squeeze. He shoved the creature back and sent it tumbling with a kick.

Will quickly scanned the battle and noted dozens more crabs climbing up the sides of his iceberg. That made his decision for him. Will shot his opponent with the Phantom Hand, obliterating it, before whipping the Phantom Hand back around and annihilating a swath of the creatures before they could make themselves a problem. Once their numbers became manageable again, Will switched back to experimenting with the creature, engaging in hand-to-hand combat.

They were stronger than he was, their legs and pincers possessed of far greater power than he had in him. The only weakness was their light weight, which allowed him to kick them aside. When he snagged a piece of wood out of the ice and bashed it against the creature's shell, it grabbed the wood with its pincer and sliced through the wood as if it were made of soft cheese. Will felt scuttling through the ground beside his ankle and lifted his foot an instant before a pincer swept through the empty space.

Kick, stab, kick, stab, Will fell into a crab-killing rhythm. Falling into a rhythm can be great, but it can also make you complacent. Make you stop thinking. Never stop thinking. Never stop analyzing your situation. Crabs were pouring up to them from all around the circle of ice. Will glanced up and spotted Mason watching intently with the Staff of the Warmage, waiting for the perfect moment to drop a massive fireball directly on their heads.

"Clump up!" Will said, motioning for them to step in closer. June followed his gaze up and nodded, putting her back to his as Bee and Ria stepped in. in a matter of seconds, the entire patch of ice was covered in crabs closing in around them from every direction. An instant later, a Conflagrate erupted above them, the flash of heat immolating any crabs above the water in a heartbeat, the damage passing harmlessly over them due to the Ring of Consideration.

Probably one of the best acquisitions they'd ever gotten for Mason. The Staff of the Warmage added Acuity scaling to the size of Mason's Abilities, allowing a single casting to cover the entire iceberg and beyond, boiling the edge of the water where the monsters were climbing from as well as frying the ones on land. KRACK! The air itself split as Mason's new belt added a sonic damage after-effect to his Abilities, shredding the charred corpses of the crabs. …

along with the half-melted iceberg they were standing on. Bee and Ria shouted in alarm as the support beneath their feet collapsed and they fell into the endless ocean, slipping into the crab's home turf. June managed to react in time and scamper onto a piece of driftwood with her high Kinesthetics.

"Use ice, Mason! What exactly did you think Phase Shift was for!?" She shouted up at their Nuker, pointing at her head with a 'think' gesture while Will lunged for Ria.

"Understood, sorry!" Mason shouted from above. The water bent ominously under his feet as he tried to pull her out of the water, threatening to dunk him if he put any more weight on it.

"I'm fine, I have water-" Ria was ripped out of Will's hand and disappeared under the surface of the water. An instant later, crabs were boiling under the surface of the water, right where she'd been. Will retreated back towards June before they could get a pincer on him, aiding her retreat towards the rope hanging from above. If necessary, Will was prepared to fling her up to the raft. Bee and Ria were…

somewhat disposable, since Jean could make more, but June and Will didn't have backup bodies, and they probably couldn't keep the crabs at bay by themselves. Once they got far enough from where Ria and Bee fell through the water, Will re-upped the Homefield Advantage, creating a new patch of ice and debris to stand on. Might be time to rethink our 'practice' Will thought as crabs began boiling up the edge of the platform again.

An instant later, a strange humanoid with a fish-tail launched itself up onto the ice, scattering the crabs. She bore a wounded human in her arms who- Oh, it's just Bee and Ria. Bee shrank back to her normal size, the fish-tail disappearing even as she slashed around her with the phantom claws generated by the Gloves of ferocity. They'd chosen them for Jean to wear so that her offshoots had a weapon no matter what.

Ria caught her footing, struggling through shivers as she tore apart the crabs around her, her half-shredded body mending itself in heartbeats. A pincer caught Ria's ankle and she screamed in pain, but the wood-shearing strength of the pincer wasn't enough to break her bone. She ripped off the creature's arm before shredding its torso. A feat that will knew he couldn't replicate.

The Tangled girls seemed to enter a state of feral bliss over the next couple minutes, savagely destroying the things that hurt them until there were none left. Bee and Ria were the two with the biggest share of negative emotions, so they were the most eager to join combat. The crabs eventually slowed… then stopped, leaving Bee and Ria panting wildly as they scanned for more enemies.

"We're okay," Will said, approaching them.

"We're done for now." The two girls spotted him and seemed to come to, gathering themselves. Ria blushed and covered her partially shredded clothes with her hands. Will scanned the surroundings to make sure he was right and the fight was actually over. Total Cost of the fight: 3 Charges, a few lost arrows, and some minor wounds… already healed, Will thought as he spotted Ria tying her shirt's shoulder-strap back together, over the spot where she'd been missing a large chunk of shoulder.

Profit: Clean wood for Loth to build us a ship, Mason learned to use ice on the ocean surface, so as not to disturb out footing. Better tactics going forward. I'd call that a win. Over the next half hour, they guarded the area as gigantic pieces of wood were plucked from the water, shaped and plastered together by specially bred insects that could create a resin stronger than the wood itself, and waterproof, making it excellent for patching together their makeshift ship.

Alicia watched out for kaiju-sized threats that might approach from below while Will and June poked through the edges of the flotsam, taking care of any crabs that hadn't joined the initial swarm. One at a time they weren't that much of a problem. Bee went with Will, Ria with June, each acting as muscle for the Party's two scouts. The bones of their new ship were just starting to take shape in the sky when June called out, catching Will's attention.

"Hey, Alicia!" Will glanced up, spotting June waving at the raft high above them, her gaze fixed on the sky.

"That cloud is moving against the wind!" She shouted, pointing at the sky above and behind their floating raft that bore the rest of the Party. Will followed her gaze and spotted a cloud that subtly stood out, the sun reflecting through it just a bit differently than the surrounding clouds. Not enough to stand out unless you had high Acuity and were looking for it.

"Aw, shit," Will muttered. Alicia turned around and directed her gaze up for the first time since they'd arrived. He couldn't hear what she said, but it looked like 'oh, crap.' Gaping maws with rows of serrated teeth emerged from the cloud, seemingly realizing their cover was blown.