Chương 114: Chapter 308: Mist Forest

"Ready?" Will asked, hefting his tomahawk. Loth and Jorn nodded. Will did the fourth check on himself and nodded as well before summoning his door. The glowing portal opened in front of each of them, and they hopped from Will's platform of hardened air straight into the seventeenth Floor. The world went white, Will's skin immediately felt clammy, and he could smell fresh water mixed with earth, rather than the saltwater of the ocean. Welcome to the 17 th Floor.

There are Key Sites in need of clearing to the south, east, northeast, and north. There was something round and slippery under Will's feet that would've caused him to slip had his passives allowed it. What the… Will blinked several times, but the omnipresent white didn't leave his eyes. He crouched down and once it was within arm's length, he could see moss-covered wood break through the thickest mist he'd ever experienced.

He was standing on an ancient gnarled branch of some kind of tree as wide as his leg, covered in vines that seemed to go on forever. According to his map, the branch he was standing on went on for a few hundred yards, connecting two distant trees together. More like a connecting pipe than a branch. Will knelt down and pressed his ear against the wood, listening to the flow of liquid through it. Where's everyone else? Will thought, checking the map. There's Loth, and there's Jorn.

Experience told him to secure Jorn first, as the kid was the more likely of the two to get killed. Will hopped off the branch and trotted across the open air towards where Jorn's tag was.

"Jorn, stay there, I'll get you down." Will called out to him as he approached.

"Got it," Jorn's voice called through the omnipresent white. Jorn's tag began scrambling away from Will at full speed. … A shock of adrenaline flooded Will's body. He put on his full speed and tackled Jorn, dodging several arrows before catching the bone shaman in the side.

"Ack!" Jorn grunted, pulling out a knife before realizing who had him.

"Will?" Jorn asked incredulously.

"Why did you run?" Will asked, pulling away but keeping his hand on Jorn. As long as they were within arm's length, they could see each other, but any further than that and things whited out.

"I heard some kind of snarling coming from your direction. Scared the shit out of me." Jorn said.

"My body moved before I realized."

"Did you say anything?" Will asked with a frown.

"Yeah, I said 'Oh shit!'" Jorn replied.

'oh shit!', became 'got it!'? So the Floor changed our words in order to separate us? that's…insidious. It implies a much higher level of cognitive ability than anything we've gone up against thus far. Not to mention this mist… The omnipresent white mist was both on the physical plane and the miasmatic one, which meant Will couldn't see any further than his fingertips in either dimension. He couldn't even see his feet when standing up straight.

"Let's get Loth. Hand." Will said, holding out his left hand.

"Seriously?" Jorn asked, looking at Will's offered hand.

"Sometimes you gotta do things you don't like to beat a Floor. This is not fun for me."

"Ugh." Jorn took Will's left hand.

"Gay."

"You fuckin'-" Will chuckled as he picked the two of them up and headed towards Loth.

"Don't make any noise," Will whispered.

"Will, Jorn? If you can hear me, I'm over here! This way!" Loth's voice cut through the mist once they got within about a hundred yards of her position on the map. Okay, if it's still altering our voices, and it's trying to get us to come closer, then what's the most likely thing that Loth actually said? Answer:'I trapped the shit out of the surrounding area, please wait for me to find you.' Will brought the two of them to a sudden halt. Jorn looked like he wanted to say something but he kept his peace.

He sent out Phantom Hand, and sure enough, miasmatic blades and insects leapt out of the surroundings and assaulted the Phantom Hand, gouging into the Phantom Hand's armor. The Phantom Hand shook the bugs off and pulled back. Loth was standing on another long branch that spanned between two enormous tree-like objects. Will wasn't sure if they were actually trees, since the branches seemed to connect each tree together in a way that he'd never heard of before. She's standing on a branch.

Can't call out to her because the Floor is distorting words and changing their meaning. Will sent the Phantom hand down to the leg-thick vine-covered branch. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Tap, tap tap-tap tap. Shave and a haircut, Will tapped into the vine before holding the Phantom hand down on the wood, feeling for a response. Shave and a haircut. Will tapped harder. Will saw Loth's tag on his map dip down as she inspected the branch below her.

Shave and a haircut. Two bits. Loth tapped back into the branch. Will took Jorn and the two of them landed on the branch. Will held his hand to his lips. Until Loth knew about the sound distortion, it was best to stay silent. Loth began picking her way towards Will and Jorn, who waited silently for her.

"GROAAAR!" A roar that seemed to trigger Will's prey response washed over the two of them, turning their legs into wobbling jelly as Loth approached. Will's hand clamped down around Jorn's as the Bone Shaman reflexively tried to bolt. An instant later, a furred humanoid beast erupted from the mist an arm's length away from Will, swinging four-inch talons towards Will's face. Will jerked backwards, reflexively solidifying the air and shoving it outwards.

The claws raked across Will's face, drawing shallower wounds than they might have otherwise done as the monster was knocked away, disappearing into the mist as it fell from the branch.

"Don't. Move." Will whispered to Jorn, feeling the dripping of his own blood in between the flaming cuts on his face. Loth's clothes came into view a moment later, followed by her face once she was within arm's length.

"I see you had a run-in with them too." Loth said, studying his face.

"Not a bad look for you, Will."

"I can't get scars." Will replied as he pulled some gauze out of his pack.

"Not even cool ones."

"Shame." Loth said.

"Where's Jorn?" Will lifted Jorn's hand out of the mist and waved with it.

"My observations thus far: This Floor has some kind of central intelligence, and it is malicious," Will said as he sopped up the blood on his face.

"It is actively changing what we hear our Party members say beyond a certain distance, probably using the mist as a medium. And it was smart enough to do a double fake-out on me." Will gestured to the scratches on his face.

"I did hear sounds coming from the wrong direction, but I didn't hear either of you say anything, so either it simply hadn't learned your voice yet or it needs you to give it your voice before it can change that to something else."

"Unknown, but it's best to assume the worse one. You wanna hold Jorn's hand or mine?" Will asked.

"I'll take yours," Loth said, taking Will's other hand. Thankfully, Will had both Phantom Hands to do things with.

"Naturally we can't stay like this indefinitely," Loth said, idly pinching the back of Will's hand as they discussed their options.

"Naturally." Will agreed.

"The Floor is trying to isolate us or trick us into harming into each other.

"I heard you tell us to come to you."

"Well, it's good you didn't," Loth said.

"What I said was 'Will, I'm under attack, I've trapped my surroundings, so keep your distance." Will nodded, before glancing at Jorn.

"…You can talk now Jorn." Jorn let out a long breath.

"This floor is freakin' spooky."

"That it is," Will said. The survival rate wasn't great for this Floor, and not much was known about it from the handful of deep Climbers. It was as close to uncharted territory as it got.

"Do you think the mist can trick your summons into harming us?" Will asked.

"Mmmaybe?" Jorn said with a shrug.

"We need some way to communicate with each other." Will said aloud as he thought. They were severely hampered all clumped together like this, but the instant they were out arm's length, the mist would start to try and separate them again. Climber-sign would be ideal if it weren't for the mist. No visual communication. Audible communication is dead too. I imagine temperature flashes are dampened by the mist as well, Will thought as he listed off the senses in his head. Maybe I could… no that would be too much.

Will thought of keeping his Phantom Hands with his party members so he could share climber sign but that was a bit clunky, and Loth wouldn't be able to talk to Jorn without passing the message through Will. What other Abilities do I have that can… hmm. Will's Map Ability seemed to be unaffected by the mist, which was a lifeline. Seems to be unaffected. Whatever is trying to kill us is already pulled a double fake-out with that monster. Why just the one? Will wondered.

The 15 th Floor had meat resources enough to flood the world with monsters. So far Will had only seen one. Loth had been fighting something, but she wasn't sure if she'd gotten a kill. At minimum they might've only come into contact with a single monster prowling the mist. One of the hallmarks of intelligence was putting in the bare minimum energy to achieve a specific result. Did the Floor have fewer monsters or was it trying to kill them as efficiently as possible by wearing them down first? Both?

Best to assume it has plenty of monsters and it's merely trying to be efficient. Will turned his attention back to his communication idea, drawing from his invention of using the map to listen in on certain terrain.

"Let me try something." Will said, moving his map tags from his Party member's chests to their lips before putting a tag on his own lips. Loth glanced down at her lips but didn't object. Manifest Map Focus 357->336"Here." Will said, handing out three manifested maps the size of a pinkie finger, distributing them to each of them, instructing them to tuck them in their ear.

"So this-""So this-" Will paused as his own voice echoed in his ear as if he were whispering into it though a tube. He toggled the maps off before re-making them.

"This one's yours, this one's yours, this one's mine," Will said, handing the new ones out to the appropriate person. The new earpieces didn't have the user's own voice channeled back to them through the tag on their lips. Manifest Map Focus 336->322 Will manifested two more maps about the size of a napkin, showing the terrain in high detail, and more specifically, where Will, Loth and Jorn were on it. Will handed the two maps over to his Party members.

"Damn." Loth muttered, squinting at Will with envy.

"That Map Primary is paying dividends."

"Keep those on you and we'll use them to keep an eye on each other and try to avoid getting separated. Now, keep in mind, this Floor is toying with us. There's a possibility that it might be able to alter the maps at some point, so don't trust it completely. If someone's words or movements seem suspicious, be suspicious." Jorn and Loth nodded.

"I'm gonna take us down to the ground. These branches are far too constraining." Will lowered the three of them down to the ground, which was a few hundred feet straight down. The ground was shallow dirt and short grass. Every few hundred feet there were trees that shot straight up into the sky that supported the web of pipe-like branches connecting them all together.

"I don't think these are actual trees." Loth said, tapping the trunk, roughly as big around as a house and covered in thick bark.

"I can't find any branches that don't connect to another tree," Will agreed. The 'trees', such as they were didn't seem to have any kind of foliage, only connecting to other trees via thigh-diameter branches that wove together invisibly in the white sky above. They decided to head east, since the majority of the Key Sites were mostly east. While walking, they tested the efficacy of Will's communication maps. First Loth would split off from the group and explore on her own, and then report back.

"I'm headed back your direction." Will heard from the map nestled into his ear.

"Wait up a moment, I need to catch up." Will heard Loth's voice from the mist, from a direction that was approximately thirty degrees off from Loth's actual position. Assuming they stopped and waited for Loth, she would overshoot them by about fifty feet. More than enough to get lost in this blinding mist. So the question is: Does the mist learn? Will was hoping the answer was 'no', but he had long since learned to rely on blind optimism. Loth rejoined the group, and took Will's hand.

A minute later, they sent out some of Jorn's summons. As it turned out, the mist could trick his summons, but only partially. Jorn was directly controlling the alpha, and the alpha was directly controlling the minions. Since the alpha knew where Jorn was at all times, it couldn't be tricked, but Jorn had to provide it with very specific instructions to make sure the smaller summons didn't get tricked into pouncing on them.

They kept Jorn's summons strictly under control, marching along beside them to ward off any more attacks from that furry bastard that'd gotten a piece of Will earlier. As the night approached, the white world gradually darkened, and Will's arm-length visibility gradually dwindled until they couldn't see a damned thing. But they could still feel the mist on their skin, clinging close and listening to every word they said like a jealous lover.