Ch 223 – Wishes of the Dead
Four vertical beams of light flashed atop an elevated I-shaped stone column, depositing Deacon and his Guildmates onto its northern edge opposite to four other Parties of different sizes that were also teleported atop the column.
One Party was comprised of seven elves, all wearing matching either light leather armor or robes with green or blond hair, another was the same size but made up entirely of humans mostly dressed in heavy plate and two in robes, and two other Parties were comprised of mixed races with one group containing five members and the other containing twelve, smack dab in the middle.
Deacon's head swiveled behind him upon feeling a barrage of Identifies pinging his soul from behind him.
They're pretty banged up, he mused as he took in the state of the other Parties.
Almost everyone in the column, except for his own group, was sporting bandages wrapped around various body parts and actively nursing different colored healing potions, and at least four were displaying missing limbs.
Deacon's eyes tracked over to watch a human healer holding both palms out a few inches away from a lion beastkin warrior who sat on the ground with a pained expression. Muttering a soft chant under her breath, her hands began to glow goldish blue.
Heal – she's quite proficient at it if she's able to use it to regenerate an entire arm that quickly, Deacon's mind supplied as the Healer began regrowing the warrior's entire right arm that had been sliced off from the shoulder down. From the way the bone began to nudge out of the stub and flesh began to creep forward, it would take about fifteen minutes or so before the warrior would fully grow back his arm; this was four times as fast if he had drunk a regeneration potion.
Turning to look at the other healer, a male elf, was treating an elf archer's torso that looked like they'd been shot with something poisonous based on the numerous black veins wriggling around the bullet wound. And he’s quite good at using Cure, Deacon noted with a pang of regret at the sight of just how handy it was to have a Healer on demand.
I should've been actively looking for a healer to recruit into our Party – fuck if it matters if everyone else outnumbers them 70 to 1, Deacon berated himself internally as he narrowed his eyes slightly while watching both healers at work. Bonehead's great and all, but he's stretching himself thin covering everything from providing healing, buffs, and utility that he can’t just focus on providing utility.
…I really should see about actively finding a Healer to join us, sighed Deacon.
Shooting an Identify at both healers and seeing that the human healer was level 26 and the elf healer was just behind her by a level, Deacon raised a hand in apology as both their heads snapped toward him, along with a few of their Party members who noticed their reactions.
Maybe Cabel would be willing to join – Bonehead and he looked like they got along, Deacon mused briefly while thinking of the Healer he knew from the Academy before flicking his gaze away from the four other Parties sharing the same I-shaped column as them and turning his focus to face forward toward the view beyond.
"Holy shit," Bonehead murmured beside him as all four of them stood high above an endless expanse of dunes that stretched on farther than the eye could see in every direction, with thirty-nine identical I-shaped columns spread in between every dozen or so dunes. Various Parties and groups stood atop them at different heights, though far more columns appeared to be empty, and many weren't nearly as packed as the one they were on.
"Wait, they aren't made of sand," Valorie muttered softly in confusion as she leaned her head forward slightly and narrowed her eyes to get a better look at what the dunes were actually composed of. "Those look like... are they piles of junk?" she said a bit louder in genuine confusion, causing the three beside her to frown and narrow their own eyes as they all stared more carefully at the dunes below them.
However, they were all immediately pulled out of their musings as two System Notifications appeared simultaneously in front of everyone currently present within the Floor.
[Minimum Number of Climbers Has Been Reached]
Floor Thirteen – Wishes of the Dead
You find yourself standing in a vast chamber, its floor covered in relics that form dunes so countless that a lifetime would not be enough to reach the end of them. Such relics are numerous both in type and potential — swords, crowns, staffs, wands, pens, tomes, pots, pendants, orbs, and many more — each one containing the echo of the soul of yore, be they mighty or feeble. Mages who conjured elemental storms vast enough to reduce cities to rubble, warriors who slaughtered armies with a single swipe of their blade, champions stabbed in the back by those whom they champion, crones whom weep for love lost, prophets exiled by the very deities they preach of, druids usurped by their bonded beasts in their slumber, archers who've blotted out the sun with their arrows, and countless more.
To venture on from this Floor, you must choose a single relic out of the countless that surround you and descend into the inner world of the soul within it, where you must fulfill their dying wish — be it to raise a coup, brew a potion to put a stopper upon death, avenge them, heal a thousand souls before the sun rises, witness their final moments, amass enough gold to garner the envy of a dragon, or slay a powerful foe. Do so, and the echo of that soul will bestow upon you a boon before finally passing on.
Floor Completion Criteria:
▸ Choose a relic and fulfill the lingering wish of the soul within it.
Time Remaining: 35:59:58
That’s… nasty, Deacon smirked to himself. So many people will be clawing after relics with mighty souls from just how enticing the Quest is, making them out to be.
But by the simple law of statistics and probability, most of these relics will contain feeble souls which offer shit boons, Deacon reasoned to himself as he carefully read over the full Quest description for Floor Thirteen. It’ll be rare to find a mediocre one, and almost impossible to find a mighty one.
Whatever a feeble, moderate, or mighty soul even means, he dismissed.
But people are inherently idiotic and irrational, and after reading just the first half of the Quest description mentioning mighty souls, they'll immediately start looking exclusively for relics that belonged to supposedly mighty souls with some relation to their Class and end up screwing themselves by running out of time, Deacon continued his internal analysis as he glanced around and could see the naked greed burning in the eyes of several members of the Parties near his group.
It's even more obvious that even if they did find one, the difficulty of fulfilling a dying wish of a mighty soul would scale to match the potential reward they could grant, Deacon thought with a slight shake of his head. Gaining the insight or ability to create elemental storms that could reduce a city to rubble will probably be equivalent to having to do the entire War of Kingdoms Linked Floor Questline by yourself.
It would be far more sound to search for a moderately difficult wish that still offers a decent boon that aligns well with my combat style than to waste time trying to find some needle-in-a-haystack relic that contains a mighty soul with expertise in close combat magic, warrior techniques, or ritualism, because searching through literally countless relics for that perfect match would be like searching for a needle in a mountain-sized haystack.
Coming to a firm agreement with his reasoning, Deacon was about to relay his thoughts to his Guildmates when a high-pitched shriek of horror suddenly pierced through the muffled silence that had descended upon the Floor as most were recuperating from their injuries and discussing amongst themselves.
Deacon's eyes immediately snapped to the left to locate the source and spotted a Party of three having just been teleported onto one of the previously empty I-shaped columns, a good half dozen kilometers away from their own, and within seconds, heart-wrenching sobs could be heard echoing across the vast chamber.
"The one standing in the middle is holding what looks like the severed head of who I'm pretty sure was a fourth teammate of theirs," Valorie muttered under her breath quietly enough that only the four of them could hear her, having activated her ocular skill. "And it's still actively dripping fresh blood too."
That Party must have arrived just after us, Deacon thought darkly to himself while staring at the grieving group.
"That could have very easily been us if we were a few minutes slower," Leon muttered gravely as he clenched his fists tight enough that his knuckles turned white.
"Which is why we need to finish up here fast and get moving," Deacon said while pulling their attention away from the sobbing Party and onto him. "With everything that just happened with the Hoarder, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone and their mother belonging to some noble house or major guild hooked themselves up with tracking devices to broadcast their Floor locations to their Tier 2 backers," he whispered with a scowl before subtly nudging his head toward a mage with long red hair and a staff twice her size who was wearing a green blinking chest pin displayed on her robes.
"It's only going to be a matter of time before waves of Tier 2s also start rushing toward this Floor once they finish sweeping Floor Twelve," he said just as the I-shaped column they were standing atop began slowly lowering toward the ground level while the columns that remained empty stayed at their current elevated height.
"Focus on finding mid-range difficulty relics that can either shore up a weakness you've noticed or amplify a strength over wasting time trying to find one belonging to some supposedly mighty soul that would grant you insane OP Boon, because we have no way of knowing how long we'll be trapped inside the relic's inner world once we enter it,” Deacon advised,“ because it's a complete toss-up on when those Tier 2s will reach us, and if they do; what they’ll do when they do."
Taking a moment to catch his breath, Deacon continued. "Once we all pick out our relics, we'll take turns on who delves into their chosen relics first while the rest of us keep guard outside and make sure no one tries to pull anything."
"But what if we actually manage to find a relic with an uber powerful soul that was some great archer or some other Class one of us has," Valorie immediately argued back. "Shouldn't we at least try for those if we spot them? Why give up the chance to gain something that could be invaluable?"
"If one of us ends up finding one that's a perfect fit for themselves or someone else, by all means we'll use it," Deacon answered with a firm nod. "You know your own capabilities and limits better than I do. If you genuinely believe you can complete whatever wish they have within the time limit and you think the potential boon would be worth the increased risk and difficulty, then you have my full support. You getting stronger through a powerful boon is the same as all of us getting stronger."
“Time is the devil of all of this,” he pushed to explain. “I don’t know if there would be some sort of time dilation as we enter these inner worlds – I assume so, given how one of the options was to start a coup, and another was to become uber rich, but who knows. I just don’t want us throwing what time we have on this Floor out the window, finding what is basically a one in a billion.”
With his piece said moments later, the top of the I-shaped column finally reached the bottom and settled into the marble flooring with a solid thunk.