Chapter 14: Promote Synergy! (Patreon)

Cloak of Misty Escape (Torso)

Provides a passive resistance to high temperature environments as wisps of vapor cool the wearer.

1 Charge: The cloak explodes into a 30-ft cloud of fog, concealing the user’s movements. Takes 30 minutes for the cloak to reform.

“This one’s good for the third floor.” Leon said. “Fifteen gold.”

“Next.” Will said. He only had fifty gold, and he wanted to see everything Leon had available before he made a decision.

“Before you move on, I’ve got something right here,” Leon said, pulling out a blackened pair of boots that seemed to have magpie wings stitched along the sides.

“Boots of Outflanking. During a combat situation, if you break line of sight with all enemies, you get a five-second triple boost to your movement speed. Fifteen gold.”

“Now right here, you’ve got a guaranteed way to break line of sight, and here you’ve got a guaranteed benefit from doing so.”

“You sound like a Setter,” Will said. Setters were con-men who sold ‘sets’ of two or more items that they claimed had synergistic effects that would provide explosive power. That begged the question: If it was such a good synergy, why didn’t they use it themselves?
Typically it was because there was a restrictive caviat that they failed to mention, such as ‘while bleeding’ or an unmentioned third item that they used as a catalyst.

Of course, this was Leon.

“I’m not looking to con you, it’s a 2-part soft-set. No tricks.”

“Alright, put them together, what else we got?” Will asked.

“Pants.” Leon said, taking out the next. “Two-point bonus to Strength. I hear tell it’s your weakest Attribute. Ten gold.”

“Next.”

“Now this is an interesting one I thought would be good for you,” Leon said, pulling out what appeared to be the finest sling Will had ever seen. Frankly a bit too fine for such a simple weapon. It had scales embossed into its cords, which were thicker than Will was used to, and the cradle depicted a shake eating its own tail.

“The Self-Loading Sling.” Leon said, putting a similarly decorated pouch beside it.

“Anything you put in this pouch will be loaded into the sling – one at a time, of course – should you wield it with the intention of using it. Since most people have two hands to load with, and this weapon doesn’t have any damage boosts, I got it for a steal.”

Will motioned Leon to come closer.

“I’ve got a way to load my sling fast,” Will whispered, “Can’t tell you what it is, but…

“Does it cost Charge?” Leon asked.

It did, actually. Loading his Phantom Hand took 1 Charge to fill up if everything was there at the same time, and it’s current volume was…not much. This was a way to save Charge and reserve his Phantom Hand for more interesting interactions.

“…Fair point. How much?”

“Two gold. It’s not particularly popular, but thought you might want a ranged option you can use one-handed.

“I’ll take it. By the way, do you have any cubes? I wanna measure the volume of an Ability before we continue.” Will asked.

“Is the Ability gonna destroy the cubes?” 

“No.”

“Then help yourself.” Leon said, grabbing a bucket from the back filled with wooden cubes stamped with different volumes before turning to Loth. The cubes had lots of splotchy discoloration and singe marks as various Climbers before him had tried different abilities on them.

Will found himself some privacy while he dug through the bucket until he assembled twenty-five cubic inches, and used Dimensional Storage on the little stack.

3/10 Charges Remaining.

Fifteen cubes vanished in one go.

Will released them, then spent his Free Point on Acuity.

2/10 Charges remaining.

Sixteen cubes vanished.

So it’s one cubic inch per point of Acuity. Will thought. Or three cubic inches per level.

That didn’t sound like a lot, but by level 40, he could store…maybe half a gallon.

So it isn’t a lot.

A thought occurred to Will, and he stood up, bringing the bucket of cubes back to Leon, who was suffering Loth’s displeasure with the stoic demeanor of a professional salesman.

“It’s sacrilege, is what it is!” Loth said, wagging a black-taloned finger at Leon.

“This cad tried to sell me a ring of Trap Detection. Even if it weren’t deeply insulting to my people, do you really think I’m not wearing any traps? What would it do, just glow all the time!?”

“Alright, calm down, my apologies. I’ve never sold to a kobold before.” Leon said, raising his hands.

“I accept discounted wares as a form of apology for insulting the rich history of my people.” Loth said, haughtily.

“Absolutely not.”

“Foo.”

“What can I get for you instead?” Leon said with a shrug, putting the insistently flashing ring back behind the counter.

“Passive boosts to allies or minions, the kind a Beastmaster might use. Small flat boosts would be better than percentages, anything that grants control of, or increases the strength of, rope or thread, boosts to Resistance, trap-laying, and debuffs. Horn and scale polish…”

“…Also, do you happen to have any Bullet Wasp larva?” Loth asked, peering up at Leon with a cocked head.

“Those live on level 8,” Leon explained, putting a can of polish on the counter along with a buffing rag, a pair of gloves, three rings and an amulet made of coarse rope.

“And?”

“No, I don’t have any Bullet Wasp Larva.”

“Some general store.” Loth groused.

“Leon, do you have any stiff wire?” Will asked as he came back.

“How long?” Leon asked, pivoting seamlessly from customer to customer.

Will motioned with his hand.

“Here you go.” Leon threw him a length of wire roughly three feet in length. Far longer than sixteen inches, but much thinner.

Will ducked into a corner of the shop where nobody was watching and used Dimensional Storage.

1/10 Charge remaining.

The wire vanished into storage.

So it’s liquid volume, huh? Not rigid. That’s a relief at least.

That meant that rounded, yet hollow objects like helmets, would be far easier to store than they might’ve been if the storage had been rigid, because the interior of the helmet didn’t count. Only the amount of water it would displace if he dipped it in a bucket.

On a whim, Will spun his Phantom Hand when he released the wire, noting that the wire had the same spin as it dropped into his hand.

Interesting. Can I choose an item’s orientation as I release it?

This required more experimentation, but Will was already nearing empty on his Charges.

“Sorry for wandering off in the middle of your demonstration,” Will said as he came back.

“No need. I know how it is when you’re young. Constantly finding new ways to use your Abilities. Sudden epiphanies, burning questions that NEED answers. Shall we continue?”

Loth was wearing the coarse rope amulet, a piece of rope creating complicated knots in his hand as he watched with a sharp-toothed grin.

“I’ll take these three,” Loth said, sliding all the gear save for two rings and the rope amulet that looked suspiciously like a noose.

Leon slid the Relics behind the counter and caught the ivory coin, making change without missing a beat.

“Boots of the Pathfinder,” Leon said, switching to Will as he pulled out another pair of boots. “These will highlight your route to any party members, so they can see where you went and follow if necessary.”

“Next.”

“Ring of accuracy, one percent and two percent correction on ranged attacks.” Leon said, pulling out two rings, each seemingly cold steel studded with emerald.

“Three gold for this one, one hundred and fifty for this one.”

Will’s brows raised.

“Why show me both if you know I can’t afford that one?”

“To show you the difference in price between one percent,” Leon said, tapping the more expensive ring.

“These rings cause ranged projectiles to bend in the direction of the intended target. The rate at which this happens is expressed by the percentage. Let’s say you had a target a hundred miles away and shot an arrow with enough force to reach.”

“Okay.”

“Well, the rate of change is 1% correction every hundred feet. How many hundred feet is in a hundred miles?”

“Doesn’t matter, it’d be 100% after ten thousand feet.” Will replied.

“Exactly.” Leon nodded. “Rings of Accuracy have a human-defined statistic known as ‘the range of total accuracy’, which you just calculated, after which point it is guaranteed to hit the intended target, regardless of the direction you fire.

“Of course, that’s really only possible with rings of accuracy with 15% correction or higher, which aren’t the sort of thing you can buy with money, but price does jump extraordinarily quick with these rings.”

“Can I get the 2% one as a congratulatory gift for finishing my Establishing Quest?” Will asked.

“Did you get MVP?” Leon asked.

“I did!” Loth said.

“You still have to pay,” Leon said, glancing at Loth.

“Foo.”

“Any other rings that increase damage dealt?” Will asked. “I had a twenty- silver Sting Ring, but it got destroyed during the Establishing Quest.”

“Lowest level Sting Ring? Why not just squirt lemon juice in their eyes?” Leon asked, bringing several cases up onto the countertop.

“I’ll have you know it was literally life-saving on multiple occasions.

“Here’s what I got for rings. These add damage, these add stats, these are a bit of both.

“Anything that adds or boosts psychic damage?”

“HAH!” Leon barked, giving Will all the answer he needed.

“Anything that boosts debuffs?” Will asked, thinking of his axe.

“No. Like rings of accuracy, those things spiral rapidly out of the price range of plebs like us. They can be used as the catalyst for powerful synergies, so even weak ones go for absurd amounts of money. If you go high enough in the tower, they begin to be rather common, though,” Leon said with a shrug.

“May I make a suggestion?” Leon said as Will was perusing the rings.

“sure.”

“The Sting Ring you took off Ben’s corpse was the ideal damage type for the first three floors. Your best bet would be to take a more expensive Sting Ring and then trade it in for a different damage type when you hit the fourth-floor swamps.”

“Oh right…you sold it to Ben,” Will mused.

“It’s fine. I don’t believe you killed him for it, any more than I believe a party of high-level adventurers would bother to take it off him.”

“Could you maybe…not tell his dad about me keeping it?”

“What happens in the Tower...” Leon said with a shrug.

“Anyway, if that Sting Ring suited you, we’ve got a fifteen-gold version that boosts Kinesthetics by one and provides a ‘moderate’ amount of bonus acid damage, and a hundred gold version that grants two Strength and ‘Great’ amount of acid damage.

“You know I can’t afford that,” Will said, even as he drooled over the possibilities.

“Shopkeep!” Loth said, sliding another ivory coin across the table. “The greater Sting Ring, please. My scout’s Strength is pitiful.”

Leon shrugged and handed the ring over to Loth, who in turn offered it to Will.

“…Thanks.” Will said, taking the ring and slipping it on, feeling the tingles spread through his body.

“…I own you now.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.” Will said, shaking his head.

“Foo. At least my party is well equipped.”

“What else you got?”

“The Earthslide Cloak,” Leon said, pulling down the rings and pulling out a cloak.

“When you’re knocked down by an enemy attack, you gain Earthslide for a few seconds, which causes you to bob under the surface of the earth, then re-emerge somewhere else based on your momentum. Makes you incredibly hard to coup de grace. Fifteen gold.”

“Interesting…”

“I also have the cudchew amulet, which…

After over two hours of shopping and comparing, Will limped out with the soft-set that Leon had recommended, the Cloak of Misty Escape, and the Boots of Outflanking. He also had the Self-loading Sling, the Greater Sting Ring, and the Pants of Strength, leaving Will with eight gold after all was said and done.

“Check this out!” Loth exclaimed, setting his barrel down. A moment later, the barrel began to scoot across the ground alongside him as he walked.

“This ring raises the carrying capacity of all my allies by five pounds. This one boosts their movement speed by two feet per second.”

Five pounds multiplied by thousands of insects…

“I see.” Will said, nodding. It was good synergy.

“In fact…”

Loth held his arms out and fell backwards onto a few dozen or so insects, so few as to be nearly invisible against the hard-packed earth. A moment later, he began to slide across the ground, held aloft by an unfeasibly small amount of insects, moving incredibly fast for an insect’s pace. Two feet per second faster, obviously.

“This will save so much weight on my back!” Loth said, giggling manically as he began to slide up the side of a building, causing several pedestrians to do a double-take.

“You may wish to buy some large crates for supplies, because you’re a one-kobold caravan now.” Reggie said as he exited the shop, adjusting the fit on some new bracers.

“I could do that!” Loth said with a gasp. “Will, we have to buy some supply crates and fill them with necessities. Trap components!”

Shaking his head, Will sat down in his wheelchair and was about to try to steer it toward the bazaar one-handed when it began sliding across the street by itself, setting a walking pace beside Loth.

“You know this won’t work for the third floor when your bugs are burning to a crisp just by touching the ground?” Will asked.

“…Foo. Maybe there’s an Environmental Resistance upgrade in Master of the Vivarium?” Loth mused.

That reminded Will…he’d reached level 5 and needed to see what kind of upgrades were available for his Primary Abilities.

He turned his attention toward his abilities.

Primary Abilities: Aspect of the Goat, Phantom Hand

Ability Upgrade Available!

Upgrades for Aspect of the Goat:

Aspect of the Uru Drake: Sacrifice an Uru Drake to grant a breath-attack, a fly speed, and boosted stats on all space-time abilities.

Aspect of the Gravity Goat: Sacrifice a Gravity Goat to strengthen the user’s footing even further, causing the user’s personal gravity to slightly shift in the direction of their footing. This allows the user to climb walls at an acute angle.

Aspect of the Immortal Serpent: Sacrifice an Immortal Serpent to allow the user to heal more completely. Scars and damage, both external and internal will fade away over time, and only a complete removal of a limb or organ will prevent this healing.

Well, there goes the hope of growing back my hand. Of course, if Will took Aspect of the Immortal Serpent, there might be another Upgrade later that upgraded it to regenerate missing limbs.

One could always hope. Will made a mental note to keep an eye open for it.

Getting a piece of Immortal Serpent to sacrifice wasn’t going to be easy or cheap. Will hadn’t even heard of them before now, so the chances were that he’d have to go get one himself, and if someone did have a sacrifice, it’d most likely be incredibly expensive.

Will kept reading down the list of viable sacrifices, but they were largely uninteresting. By and large, they were less powerful, and none of them were ‘Aspects’, like the first three. The earliest one he could hope to get was the Gravity Goat on floor 2. There were Gravity goats there.

What about upgrades to Phantom Hand?

Will cruised through, finding sacrifices that increased the hand’s speed, dimensional Storage, added passive buffs, and a few minor abilities.

Nothing that allowed it to manipulate physical objects. That seemed to be a non-starter in the Ability’s progression, much to Will’s frustration.

Eventually he landed on one that made his skin break out in a cold sweat.

Relic Focus. Sacrifice a Relic Worm to allow the ability’s Scaling to apply to any Relic effects imprinted on the Phantom Hand.

If Will was interpreting this correctly, he could boost a Relic’s effect by his Acuity?

All stats worked on a 5% basis. Each point made the corresponding aspect of one’s abilities raise by 5%

So if a Climber had 20 points in Acuity, their vision, hearing, taste, smell, and attention to detail were doubled.

Simple.

If this Ability Upgrade worked the way it sounded like it did, a ring of accuracy that provided a 2% boost would rise to a 4% boost at an Acuity of twenty.

Now, as a hypothetical, if Will found a helmet that gave him the ability to see through obstacles, and another helmet that allowed him to deal a tiny amount of fire damage to anything in line of sight…he could feed the fire damage helmet to the Phantom Hand, and keep the obstacle-piercing helmet on his head.

The Sacrificed helmet’s effect would be doubled, or tripled, or quadrupled, scaling with his Acuity as he leveled, giving him the absolutely insane ability to disintegrate anything he laid eyes on…through obstacles.

Hypothetically.

It was the kind of thing that could create an absolutely unfair synergy if he used it right. Will had never heard of a Relic Worm, but he knew where to get that information.

“To the Bazaar!” he declared, pointing the way.

“To the Bazaar!” Loth echoed, riding atop his insect barrel.

“I’m tapped out, so I’m gonna go…” Reggie said, watching them sliding away at slightly faster than walking speed on a bed of insects.