Ch 218 – Unseen Hand
"Aww, who's a good girl? Who's the best girl?" the Hoarder cooed as he scratched the top of the head of one of the Tier 1 Stone Worms that had emerged from the ground below and nuzzled her head against his hip, this particular worm noticeably larger than the dozens of others that were roaming throughout the Floor searching for more valuables hidden throughout the Floor, among their main targets.
The stone worm began to wiggle slightly beneath the scratches it was receiving, clearly enjoying the attention, and as the Hoarder continued petting it, its tail end began to visibly widen before revealing a circular opening that also began expanding. From this enlarged opening, artifacts of various sizes, rare herbs, and valuable ores came pouring out like treasure from a pirate’s chest, piling onto the cavern ground.
After several minutes of continuous scratching and watching the steady stream of loot emerge from his companion eventually die down, the Hoarder gave a knowing look at the Stone Worm, who still had a sizable bulge remaining in the middle of her body despite all she'd already expelled.
"Tiffany?" he asked while staring directly at the eyeless stone face of the worm with an arched brow. “Is there something you’re holding back from showing me?”
The Stone Worm immediately turned her head to the side in what was clearly an attempt to avoid the accusatory gaze of the Hoarder, but the moment she felt his scratching halt entirely, and his hand leaves the top of her head, her face snapped back toward him, and she pouted; well, as much as she could while showing all two hundred and nineteen of her rotating teeth.
Arching a brow at the attempt to guilt him, Tiffany could only let out a sad, defeated groan before the bulge in the middle of her body began visibly traveling downward through her length, and moments later, an unconscious male wearing wizard robes popped out of her tail opening and landed in an unceremonious heap on the cavern floor.
"You should consider yourself extremely fortunate that it was me who caught you trying to sneak a snack and not your mother," the Hoarder warned in a more serious tone as he patted the stone worm's head reassuringly before moving to kneel beside the unconscious wizard to bind both his hands and legs with enchanted restraints. “Or our asshat of a boss.”
After securing the bindings and double-checking that they were tight enough, the Hoarder grabbed the Tier 1 wizard by the back of his hood and casually tossed him high into the air.
A massive toad, easily three times the size of a hippo, caught the flying wizard midair with its long, sticky tongue. Its distended, almost translucent stomach revealed that it was already holding a large number of bound climbers from Generation 327, all rounded up by the Hoarder throughout this Floor.
Retracting its tongue with the young wizard sticking to it like glue, the young man joined the forty-eight others of his Generation’s climbers in being trapped inside the Drowser Toad’s belly.
Seeing that yet another kid had been successfully added into his collection, the Hoarder turned around to admire the absolutely massive pile of valuables he'd been collecting throughout his ‘napping spree throughout Generation 327’s Floor Twelve over the past twelve hours.
The Hoarder let out a deeply satisfied exhale through his nose as he surveyed his newly acquired hoard with obvious pleasure.
However, as he stood there admiring the fruits of his labor, he suddenly remembered he’d forgotten to check in earlier, and the realization immediately caused his happy mood to dissipate and be replaced with visible reluctance.
Reaching into one of the inner pockets of his dark leather armor, the Hoarder pulled out both a manaphone and a small metal tower-shaped fob that fit in his palm before tossing the tower onto the cavern ground.
Within seconds of hitting the stone floor, the small tower-shaped fob began rapidly growing and expanding upward until it had become a mini CFMT Tower standing twenty meters tall that just barely managed to fit inside the large cavern.
Immediately after the CFMT Tower power generator kicked to life and began to relay transmission signals, the Hoarder's manaphone began vibrating and ringing insistently in his hand.
"Does this bastard seriously have someone monitoring my communication line at all times of the day?" he muttered to himself in exasperation before reluctantly accepting the call.
"It has been twelve hours since your last report," the cold voice on the other end of the line began without any preamble. "I explicitly instructed you to provide status updates every hour without fail."
"I was too busy actively collecting up all the kids from the list, like you specifically asked me to do," the Hoarder retorted with a noticeably sour and irritated tone in his voice. “Sorry if that-”
However, his defensive attitude was immediately and violently rectified as his heart suddenly felt as though it was being physically strangled from the inside, as though an invisible hand had reached into his chest and was now tightly squeezing it.
The sensation caused him to almost collapse to his knees as his eyes widened as he let out an involuntary, pained gasp before quickly correcting his tone entirely.
"Sir— Master— I mean Sir!" he choked out meekly, all of the previous bite and attitude completely gone from his voice. “I- d-didn’t mean-!”
"How far have you progressed in completing the tasks I assigned to you?" the voice on the other end pressed coldly before releasing his invisible grip on the Hoarder's heart.
The sudden release caused the Hoarder to let out a choked gasp as he clutched at his chest, his eyes frantically darting toward the young stone worms resting nearby before he swallowed hard in relief when he saw that none of them appeared to have suffered like he just had.
"I have successfully gathered approximately one-fourth of those climbers who stepped onto Floor Twelve that were specifically listed on the capture list you provided me, and I've killed roughly double that number of climbers who were not on the protected list," the Hoarder responded while trying to keep his voice steady, before wincing visibly as he painfully admitted the next part. "And I've collected fif— I mean eighty percent of all the items and resources that were left scattered throughout this Floor by the Floor Guardian when they originally created it."
"Why have you only managed to capture one-fourth of the targets on the list?" the voice asked with clear displeasure in its tone.
The question caused the Hoarder to purse his lips as he fought desperately to prevent his tongue from lashing out.
Only after he'd managed to successfully swallow back the immediate biting retort he'd been about to deliver did the Hoarder finally reply in a more measured tone.
"Almost none of the targets remain on this Floor anymore; there's probably just a small handful still here at most," he explained while keeping his voice carefully neutral. "The vast majority of those who managed to escape my initial sweeps either tore up expensive Return Tickets to teleport back to Floor Zero, or they used various other emergency escape tools at their disposal to immediately teleport off this Floor entirely after they heard and witnessed the widespread destruction that my stone worms and I were causing while moving around and capturing those on the list you gave me."
"I see..." the voice said thoughtfully before going completely quiet and leaving the line in total silence.
Left waiting in uncomfortable silence while the call connection remained active, after approximately a minute and a half had passed without hearing anything at all from the other side of the line, the Hoarder cautiously spoke up to break the silence.
"Is that everything you needed from this report, Patriarch El-Hindi?"
The moment those words left his mouth, he immediately regretted ever asking the question as his heart was once again strangled with even more crushing strength than before, the invisible grip so powerful it dropped him straight to his hands and buried his face into the ground, contorting in agony and he let out a muted but deeply pained groan as his hands clawed at his heart from atop his armor.
"What did I explicitly tell you about keeping all transmissions clean!?" the Patriarch of the El-Hindi Noble House hissed out with barely contained fury.
"I-I'm so sorry! I d-didn't mean it!" the Hoarder desperately gasped out as the crushing grip on his heart grew progressively tighter with each passing second. "I-It just s-slipped out! P-please!"
After what felt like an absolute eternity of excruciating pain, the invisible grip on his heart finally began releasing its crushing hold and freed the organ from its torturous captivity.
The Hoarder immediately gasped out in overwhelming relief as he collapsed completely flat against the cold cavern floor while desperately sucking in air to fill his burning lungs as his heart pounded harshly against his ribs.
"T-thank you... great sir," he managed to weakly gasp out between labored breaths.
Letting out a pleased and satisfied hum at the Hoarder's proper display of subservience and gratitude, the Patriarch of the El-Hindi house issued him new orders.
"Immediately proceed to Floor Twenty-Nine – Hallelujah Falls, and bring all of the climbers you have successfully collected with you," he commanded in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument. "Once you arrive at that location, you will rendezvous with an associate of ours, a cowboy, who you will be working together with for the next phase of our overall plan."
"...Right now? You want me to leave immediately?" the Hoarder managed to gasp out in disbelief as he slowly pushed himself back up onto his knees, weakly waving his right hand outward to prevent the younger stone worms that had been birthed by his bonded partner from approaching him in their concern, knowing that their innocent attempts to help would only result in them getting hurt by the Patriarch's vindictive nature.
Who knew if this old monster had ways of observing right at this moment.
"It was simply a fortunate matter of luck that Generation 327's Twelfth Floor happened to be located relatively near to the Floor you had already teleported to after the climber carrying that tracker you followed appeared within their Floor’s boundaries, but that streak of good fortune has now completely run out," the Patriarch explained in a matter-of-fact tone.
"By this point in time, there are likely thousands if not tens of thousands of Tier 2 climbers who are actively rushing toward this Generation's Floor Twelve location with the goal of killing or capturing you, having either successfully pinpointed this exact location by sacrificing a climber to throw onto Floor Twelve to activate a tracker, or they received some other form of signal transmitted to them by an emergency teleportation device one of them might have used when they teleported away to safety."
Fuck... the Hoarder thought to himself with gritted teeth as the full implications of his current situation became crystal clear. He'd known from the very beginning that accepting this deal would eventually end badly for him, but... fuck...
"This outcome was entirely to be expected, of course, there was truly nothing that could be done to prevent it, given the circumstances," the Patriarch sighed. "But plans involving trackers to quickly find the Floors of new Generations could only be used once during peacetime, as until the Great War erupts in full every single major guild and noble house and everything in between who have Tier 2 climbers in their service will ensure that all of their people in this current Generation and the next several Generations are tagged so that they can immediately surround and control newly discovered Floors to ensure the young climbers can grow safely and eventually join them in the coming Great War as properly trained soldiers."
“Which will only last for a year and a half maximum before they won’t ever care for that and everything will be a free-for-all in collecting the invaluable resources they provide,” the Patriarch dismissed plainly.
Yeah, and I'm the one getting officially labeled with a kill-on-sight order and becoming the scapegoat for all of this, while you are scott free, the Hoarder thought bitterly to himself, cursing his past self for ever being desperate and stupid enough to make a deal with someone who would have made even the devil himself seriously hesitate before signing any contract.
"Now that you have been given your new orders and understand the situation, extract yourself from this Floor immediately and join your associate on Floor Twenty-Nine without any further delays," the Patriarch of the El-Hindi noble house commanded before abruptly ending the call.
Kneeling on the stone floor, alone to stew in the crushing realization of just how truly and completely screwed he was, the Hoarder could only shakily move to stand on both feet and make his way towards the Drowser Toad.
"Fucking asshat," he muttered venomously to himself as he clutched at his own heart.