Chương 52: Chapter 129: Loth’s Build

"So, who was it?" Will asked, causing Ria to glance up from where she was helping to clean up after the attack. Ria smoothed her clothes and straightened, clearing her throat as he approached.

"Who was what?" the tall young woman asked, awkwardly leaning on a nearby wagon.

"Who died?" Will clarified.

"What?" Ria frowned, cocking her head to the side.

"No one died."

"…I saw you carrying a corpse."

"Oh! That was Reese."

"…Ah." Will said as his body was paralyzed by a massive wave of relief. He'd thought he'd gotten one of his own killed… I guess he really is immortal? A combination of Abilities that caused someone to be very difficult to kill and nothing else wasn't completely out of the question. There were stranger things…Like the fragment of Brianna's sanity currently watching him nervously.

"Would you mind keeping out another six of you?" Will asked.

"I think we may need a more firm response to attacks."

"I don't mind, but they'd need to eat," Ria said with a shrug.

"And I'll need some…" her voice faded off into mumbling.

"I'll talk to the beancounter. What was the other thing?"

"Clothes! I'll need some clothes for them." Ria said, her face red. Will paused. Tangled copies didn't emerge with clothing, and most people were polite enough to not mention it. Especially after they'd been around the Tangled long enough for the novelty to wear off…but, if they were going to be a permanent fixture, she would definitely want some clothes to feel like a person.

"… I can do that." Will went to Brenna and asked where he could find someone who could whip up some clothes, and as luck would have it, two of her daughters had Classes that could help. They were more than happy to make some clothes for the girl who had delivered their sister back to them alive. That reminds me. We'll need to power level the civilians. Typically that was done in as controlled a manner as possible. Similar to a bus, a more powerful individual would subdue a monster and the civilian would stab it.

It required a much more powerful individual with experience of the Floor and its foibles to powerlevel a civilian through it, and the dangers were high. If a mistake was made and a monster got out of hand, it could lash out and deposit some venomous spines in someones' skin, and it was lights-out. Actually, we've got priestesses on-hand. Should I put them to work? Will mused.

If he pushed his caravan harder, the number of injuries would go up, but the priestess's job was soaking up those injuries, and his people would grow more powerful, faster. Those injuries would taper off as they gained more power. Hmm. Will caught sight of the bean-counter on the way through the camp, where he was staring at the firewood attached to the side of the wagon. The man had a severe expression fixed on his bony face as he scribbled in his ledger without even looking down.

Will peered over his shoulder and found that his penmanship was perfectly inside the lines, and clearly legible, even to Will's weak reading skills. 4 cords dried wood, 6 cords wet wood. At current rate of consumption, will be out of firewood in six months. Recommend smaller fires. Recent fires have been larger than strictly necessary for cooking and light, in order to 'match the vibe', which is not a reasonable explanation for- Will glanced away from the dry ledger and inspected the bean-counter.

Badur Jaskirit was wearing a thick, expensive suit, skinnier than Mason, and sweating profusely as he worked.

"You think about wearing lighter clothes?" Will asked.

"GAH!" Badur shouted, leaping in place an impressive height for someone without much Strength.

"You…" Badur controlled his expression when he saw who was speaking to him.

"What can I do for you, my Lord?"

"Yeah, take off your outer jacket." Will said. Badur complied, revealing a fine silk inner shirt before he folded the jacket over his arm.

"Where shall I put it, my Lord?"

"Eh?" Will asked.

"I didn't allocate space in my luggage for the jacket, and if I were to take more than my fair share of space in the wagon, the whole system could crumble." Will raised a brow and leaned around Badur to peek at the wagon's interior…which had rather large gaps everywhere, where a single jacket could rest easily. Will was tempted just grab the jacket and toss it into the wagon, but that wasn't leadership.

"Would anyone be willing to give up a half inch of their wagon space for Mr. Jaskirit to store his jacket?" Will asked, loud enough that the surrounding caravaneers could hear him. Several Climbers glanced at Will, then at the partially empty wagon, then back to Will, with raised brows. Will shrugged and pointed at the bean counter, his hand hidden from the man by his own ledger.

"Sure, man." One of the Climbers said, causing Badur to heave a sigh of relief, opening his ledger and immediately adjusting numbers inside.

"Make a note," Will said, leaning over the ledger.

"That you are borrowing that half-inch of storage space for the express purpose of accommodating adjusting your attire to the environment and for no other reason. You will eventually give that half-inch back."

"Y-yes, my Lord," Badur nodded and made a note next to the entry, then sighed in relief, folding the jacked and stuffing it in beside his luggage. I think I just got a sense of how difficult this is going to be, Will thought with mounting dread.

"Badur, how difficult would it be to feed another six Ria?"

"Impossible. We have exactly the amount we need to make it to the Tenth Floor, with a strict safety margin."

"What's the safety margin?" Will asked.

"About forty percent above the minimum." Badur responded.

"How much have we used so far?"

"Well, due to unreported fishing on the sixth floor, and the assistance of the tenants of Shimmer, we've used…" He flipped through his pages, eyes scanning the page with unerring speed before he looked back up at Will.

"Less than none of it."

"So we have more food now than when you first made the calculation?" Will asked.

"Yes, my lord."

"And we definitely can't afford to feed six more people?"

"No, my lord." Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"What if I were to assign certain Climbers to hunt and forage, could we afford it then?" Badur flipped to a blank page and began scribbling numbers at a frantic pace.

"No my lord," he finally said, looking up from his ledger.

"Why not?" Will asked, genuinely curious about how this man was still breathing if he couldn't afford to move his lungs.

"Most meat and plant matter on the upper floors is miasmatic in nature, and will degrade into bones and Relics without being preserved by an Ability. I have such an Ability, but my Dailies are reserved for preserving Sacrifices, according to my ledger."

"What are your dailies at?" Will asked.

"Four, my Lord."

"What level are you?"

"Fifteen, my Lord." That's low for the seventh Floor. I'm worried he might die from something sneezing on him.

"Would we be able to afford to feed six more Ria if you were level thirty?" Will asked. Badur's hand shook as he wrote the calculation, obviously aware of what Will was planning. He did it anyway.

"…yes, my Lord." He's a good sport, at least. He was probably willing to be straight with Will because Will had approached him in the manner he preferred to engage with the world: Bureaucracy.

"Excellent. As of this moment your dailies are for preserving meat, we'll level you and get back the dailies required to preserve Sacrifices going forward. And maybe upgrade your Abilities in the process. Roger Oilton told me about a Logistician who could retroactively change what they had stored by changing the numbers in her ledger." Badur's eyes widened.

"HOW!?"

"As long as the values remained the same, it worked, as for the how…" Will shrugged before patting the bean-counter on the shoulder.

"Maybe you'll figure it out."

"But value is relative…" Badur was muttering to himself as Will left to talk to Loth, who was messing around with something beside one of her oversized barrels.

"Wanna see something cool?" Loth asked as Will approached.

"Four more ominous words were never spoken," Will said as he arrived beside the Hive-Wielding Saboteur, crouching down beside her.

"Whatcha got?"

"Tadaaa!" Loth pulled her sleeve aside to reveal a rotund insect about the size of Will's palm, with a butt that swelled with glowing blue miasma. Upon seeing him, it turned away and started pulsing its butt towards Will.

"Is it... supposed to do that?" Will asked.

"Aw…it's trying to kill you." Loth said, petting the agitated insect.

"Huh…" Will stroked his chin, watching the little bug wiggle uselessly.

"Remember my experiments to create a tame bug that has enough miasma that it could trigger on-kill effects?" Loth asked.

"I do."

"Well…the most problematic part of breeding these little suckers was that the miasma made them go crazy and try to kill everything that wasn't infected with miasma.

"…You bred a useless aggressive response into them before breeding miasma into them." Will said.

"Even if they do get aggressive, it does nothing."

"Precisely." Loth said.

"Now that I have a stable population, I can finally try out my dagger." Loth pulled out the wavy blade with a skull carved into the pommel and fingerbones forming the wristguard, that just screamed 'I'm a necromancer!' to the world. They'd bought it some time ago on the fifth Floor, and its strength relative to the other things they'd found had rapidly dwindled… especially when measured against the increasing difficulty of the floors. But as Loth would say: It's a proof of concept.

Will inspected the dagger as Loth raised it above the hapless bug. Dagger of eternal Servitude +4 Strength +3 Kinesthetics On kill: Consumes corpse to create a permanent bone maksu to serve the wielder. Capable of simple tasks, but prefer combat. Bone Maksu are sustained by the dagger. Maximum 3 bone Maksu. The little bug died instantly, its miasma drawn into the dagger as the body crumbled into ash. Will felt something similar to Charge emerge from the dagger and go into the ground.

A moment later, the ground began to shake. Loth tossed the rapidly crumbling ash aside as a bone maksu pulled itself out of the ground, silently staring at the two of them.

"Excellent." Loth said, inspecting the maksu.

"Free labor is always appreciated." She motioned the maksu to come closer with a single black claw.

"Give this pile one good stir every three hours." She said, handing the skeleton a shovel and pointing it to an extra-wide wide barrel filled with rotting food scraps. The undead stood there with the shovel, silently staring at the barrel filled with bugs gorging themselves on the caravan's waste. Bones, peels, gristle. There was nothing they wouldn't eat.

"Starting now." Loth clarified. The maksu shoved the shovel under the pile and folded it once, then went back to passively staring at the barrel.

"Not as bright as your butlers." Loth mused.

"I feel as though my Monocle of the Overlord is the only thing that allows it to understand abstract concepts like 'three' and 'hours'." She tapped the gold circle resting on her eye. Monocle of the Overlord. +7 Focus +7 Acuity Grants minions a profound sense of purpose, increasing their speed by 15%.

Bestows a small portion of the bearer's problem-solving ability and will upon their underlings, allowing them to adapt, problem solve, and coordinate with each other more fluidly, even when outside the bearer's direct control. Having experienced decisive minions who could work without supervision, Will finally understood how valuable that Relic was.

"To be fair, the butler's intelligence was their selling point." Will said. Loth nodded, turning back to Will.

"You asked about my Build." She said, locking her yellow gaze on his.

"…Yeah?" Will said, a bit intimidated.

"I did not know about Qualitative Upgrades until after one was performed for you." Loth said, bringing up the event where Aspect of the goat had been replaced with Aspect of the Immortal Serpent by adding a higher quality Sacrifice to the Skill. There had been several highly unique reasons why Will had been able to do that. His Immortal Serpent sacrifice (himself) had been low quality, as had his Gravity Goat Sacrifice, causing Aspect of the goat to be a low-grade skill with only one upgrade.

This gave him the ability to basically overwrite his old skill with one as it would've been if he'd given a high-quality Sacrifice from the beginning.

"Unusual you didn't know about that." Will mused. Loth was typically the one who knew everything.

"It wasn't common knowledge in my clan, nor was it a particularly common practice in the human lands, being discarded as an overly risky practice."

"I looked it up after it happened for you," Loth said.

"My second primary, Trap savant only has two upgrade slots. One of which is full already." Two upgrade slots? Did Loth use a low-quality Sacrifice, or…

"It was a piece of my grandmother." Loth explained.

"Every kobold gets access to Trap Savant because every kobold uses a piece of an ancestor who had it." Will cocked his head.

"She got to level fifteen and was considered quite the heroic figure in my little clan." Loth explained further.

"Ah." A sacrifice from a level fifteen was almost worse than none at all.

"Then how did you…" get an A-tier sacrifice for your bugs? Will cut himself off, realizing that the story around how she acquired something that rare might be…intense. Loth smirked, seemingly reading his unspoken words, but not bothering to answer them.

"I believe I may be able to perform a Qualitative Upgrade on the Trap Savant Ability."

"What do you need?" Will asked.

"I either need to discover what Sacrifice originally gave my ancestors Trap Savant…or find a Progenitor." Will raised a brow.

"Kobolds didn't spring fully formed from Ouroboros's blood like the stories might've suggested. They have a distinct lineage from a series of dragons, who adapted to the low-miasma by growing smaller…and stupider, pushing down into the lower Floors where there was no competition from other dragons. This process repeated over and over again until…" She motioned to herself.

"They devolved into a species so bereft of magic that we have to rely on The Tower to grant us Abilities." Loth pointed up.

"They don't die from old age, you know? Somewhere up above us is a dragon that is a direct ancestor of mine. I want it."

"You want to kill one of your direct ancestors?" Will asked, cocking a brow.

"Honestly I would just settle for a pound of flesh, but I don't think it will part with it willingly."

"Probably not," Will said, itching his left hand before shrugging.

"We can put that on the 'to do' list. Is there anything I can do for you now? I'm planning on power-leveling Badur this evening to improve our food situation enough to support six more Tangled.

"It's good that you mention that," Loth said, bringing him over to a wagon where she pulled out a small case with three relics: An amulet, Circlet, and ring.

"I'd like you to enhance my Cuirass of the Cruel Tyrant…if you don't mind." She said. Will reached in and plucked out the necklace, inspecting it. Necklace of the Cruel Tyrant. +7 Focus +7 Resistance A certain amount of damage done to you is done to your minions first. Scales with Focus.

"It's the same effect." Will said, realizing why even as he said it. Will's Sourdough added part of the stats together and averaged the rest. If she was combining 4 items, and only two of them had the 'cruel tyrant' Ability, then the 'averaging' portion would be rather weak. Then what are the other two? Will thought, pulling out a golden circlet.

Circlet of the Bloody Prince +5 Focus +3 Resistance +3 Acuity Whenever you kill a minion, all Allies gain a small boost to Strength and Resistance for the duration of combat or until an hour passes. Blinking, Will checked the third item. Ring of the Lash +6 Kinesthetics +4 Focus +3 Strength Whenever you kill a minion, all allies gain a boost to Kinesthetics, Movement Speed, and Damage for the duration of combat or until an hour passes. Will glanced up at the smiling Loth.

"Let me get this straight." Will said as he combined all the effects in his mind.

"Yeah?"

"You get hit."

"Yes."

"The damage gets magically offloaded to your bugs""Yes."

"It counts as coming from you because the effect comes from your armor."

"Yes. I tested that, actually."

"Then all your minions get boosted for the rest of combat, making them more powerful. because 'you' killed some of them."

"Yes."

"And if you got hit for the same damage again, less bugs would have to die to cover it, because the survivors all got their Resistance boosted."

"Yes." Will frowned, a thought occurring to him.

"…What's the difference between an ally and a minion?" Loth's sawtooth smile widened.

"You're a scary girl, you know that?" Will said, patting Loth on the head.

"Not as scary as I'm gonna be." Loth said, steepling her black claws.