Chapter 13
The plan that had begun to coalesce in my mind required that access to succeed, and celestials coming to the material plane to attack me made access to their home for counterattacks even more important.
So we climbed and brought a stash of silk noose teleporters along with us so we wouldn’t have to re-run the crap lower floors again.
Thus far, no enemy in the tower could harm me, nor could any of the spear and arrow traps. My stats were so far beyond the challenges of these floors that I could walk through all of them on my own with no issue.
Staying humble was going to be hard.
The floor 20 mini boss was the first to have a chest full of boss loot, and it was noticeably better than dungeon chests.
We pulled out 3 aspect tomes from that one chest alone.
In dungeons, a single aspect tome was a huge stroke of luck.
If this wasn’t a fluke, then the rumors about tower loot being substantially better than dungeons were definitely true.
We had already seen that reflected in mana crystals, but better boss chest loot was a whole new level of return for my party.
Another interesting observation: the maze floors didn’t appear to change.
That didn’t mean they wouldn’t at some point in the future, but we had done enough runs through them that we were reasonably confident we could start to send parties of followers into the tower to level on the lower floors.
They would have maps of the spawn points and traps, and eventually, we would optimize routes through the maze.
In total, we needed 24 days to reach the stairs up to the 21st floor. We hung the teleporter noose outside of the boss room on floor 20 and popped back to the Ice Temple to check in on our active projects.
As an additional bonus for a productive month, I also advanced to tier 9 of antipaladin and level 32 overall. I reviewed my options while the girls checked in on their responsibilities to the Silk and me, and I wasn’t terribly surprised to see the sacrificial virgin theme continue:
Hymen Harvester
Active Ability
Take a willing woman’s virginity and bring yourself to completion to earn 1,000 good-aligned levels. The woman dies as a result of this process. Virgin must be at least 18 to trigger this ability.
Prerequisite: Corpse Builder
Blood Drinker
One-Time Ability
Become a vampire. This cannot be undone.
Prerequisite: Blood Harvest
Paladin Hunter
Passive Ability
Intuitively sense the presence of any nearby paladins.
Prerequisite: Kill 25+ paladins.
I needed 10,000 good-aligned levels to upgrade my sovereign class with my Corpse Builder ability.
For the low, low cost of 10 virgins, I could become a dark emperor.
If I built a pipeline of willing virgins, I could easily buy all of the Corpse Builder unlocks I salivated over.
Yes, a lot of women would die, but like Invia said the other day, virgins were really bad at sex, so the loss wasn’t that substantial.
Blood Drinker was a non-option. If I weren't already undead, becoming a vampire would have been appealing.
Paladin Hunter, however, gave me pause. Prior to achieving Immunity from Holy and prior to moving my stats into the hundreds, a surprise attack from a paladin was a perpetual concern.
If Paladin Hunter detected celestials–not that the giant pillar of light beaming them down from the heavens was easy to miss–it would have been more useful.
As it was now, a paladin ambush would actually be helpful.
If they came to me, I didn’t have to go looking for them.
I skimmed through my unselected antipaladin abilities for other candidates.
I didn’t need to add Unholy to my weapon, and I didn’t need the necrotic damage provided by the Rot ability.
The same was true of spreading disease with Plague Bearer.
Agent of Chaos and Devourer both allowed me to use kills and sacrifices to bolster my strength, but the returns were minuscule compared to the daily number of Loyalty Pledges my followers earned for me.
This option caught my eye, though:
Salt the Earth
Passive Ability
Your very presence rails against the good and the holy. Wherever you tread generates a small amount of Unholy magic for the next 24 hours. A saturation of ambient Unholy magic buffs your stats and abilities.
Prerequisite: Corpse Builder
That sounded useful for Sanctuary South, and I could potentially buff it with additional point allocations, but I had discovered disappointing upgrades in the past. If I could choose, I would eliminate the decay mechanic on Unholy magic entirely, but the system decided that, not me.
After a good bit more thought, I came to the conclusion that access to good-aligned levels was a bottleneck for me.
I needed 1,100 good-aligned levels to give Invia an upgrade to her silk weapons.
1,000 allowed her to absorb the sword, but I wanted to spend the extra 100 to add at least one more ability to the weapon with Corpse Builder. Presently, I only had 846.
Four of the kingdom upgrades in Corpse Builder required 5,000 good-aligned levels each, and then, of course, there was the upgrade to dark emperor that I really, really wanted. That would cost 10,000 good-aligned levels.
I chose Hymen Harvester.
-2 to Progress to Your Fall.
Progress to Your Fall: 63 / 100 (Abaddon, King of the Abyss)
A little bit of positive feedback was nice.
I checked my character sheet:
Level: 32
Progress to Next Level: (378,083 / 13,107,200)
Class: Abyssal Sovereign, Tier 15 (984,944 / 3,276,800)
Second Class: Fighter, Tier 10
Third Class: Antipaladin, Tier 9
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Strength 101
Dexterity 85
Constitution 92
Intelligence 96
Wisdom 40
Charisma 40
Loyalty Pledges: 477
Oaths of Devotion: 20
Followers of the Silk: 273
Progress to Your Fall: 63 / 100 (Abaddon, King of the Abyss)
Active Abilities: Sense Weakness+1, Abyssal Reward for the Loyal, Safe Word+25, Rope Burn+25, Ghostly Feint+4, Unholy Smite+10, Darkness+14, Wraith+5, Abyssal Permission, Blood Feast+10, Corpse Builder, Shadows of Death+1, Hymen Harvester
Passive Abilities: Bend, Finesse+8, Improved Footing, Improved Accuracy+3, Enemy Study+1, Sense Danger, Unrelenting, Sugar Daddy, Pact of the Ice Fiend, Afterglow, Sharpen+27, Enthrall, Oath of the Silk Noose, Tactician, Silkmancer+20, Devotion Reaper+20, Intoxicate+100, On Behalf of the Viceroy, Dark Champion+2, King of Kings, Path of the Emperor, Restraint, Abyssal Gaze
Shared Abilities: Greater Touch of Ice, Touch of Abyssal Undeath
Equipment: Ring of Strength +1, Bonfire Amulet, Immunity to Poison Amulet, Ring of Legendary Obscurify, Ring of Mind Fortress, Ring of Magic Resistance, Necklace of Resistance to Holy, Bracelet of Nightsight.
I tried upgrading Hymen Harvester with stat points, but the system wouldn’t let me. That was a disappointment, but I was too happy with my progress for that minor letdown to ruin my mood.
“You work too slowly, viceroy. You lose ground to your enemy with every passing hour.”
She’s not really there. The voice was just the strange side effect of having my soul held hostage by a sorceress. Aurketzu was effectively dead.
“I saved your soul and mine from going to the underworld. Death has never been effective against me.”
Don’t engage. That only makes it worse.
“If you bring me back, I can save you from him.”
I focused on my work, hoping that would quiet the voice. The two biggest items I needed to address prior to returning to the tower climb:
First, Horpus had leads on paladin movements. I passed those to Lala and Lili so the twin rogues could learn more and report back to me. Eliminating paladins had the dual benefit of taking enemies off the board and harvesting good-aligned levels at the same time.
Second, Lord Ulric of Minsic had sent word requesting a meeting, saying it was “regarding the safety and prosperity of the kingdom’s most beautiful city” and that it was “of significant urgency.” I doubted the angeli was still walking around looking for me, yet I was hesitant to return.
Even if the chance was small, the celestial could lie in wait, and I had caused quite a bit of trouble in addition to the paladin battle, like detonating an Unholy bomb in a paladin barracks or inspiring an already difficult dungeon to become even more dangerous.
Somehow, delivering Higcliff to Horpus to be tortured and murdered became one of the smaller infractions I committed on that trip.
I sent a letter back to Lord Ulric saying that I was on my way and to expect my arrival by carriage in 15 days or so.
Since I didn’t actually need to ride a carriage to get to Minsic, I turned my attention back to the tower.
When we resumed our climb, we soon learned that that pattern of 5 themed floors culminating in a mini boss was no longer the norm.
Floors 21 to 30 were all related and were themed after the virtues of the Goddess.
That suggested to us that the intervals would be 1 boss for every 10 floors moving forward.
At any rate, the floors broke down like this:
21: Compassion – A race of rabbit people fought against the snake people from previous floors. We had to heal them and keep them alive to advance through this level.
22: Honesty – A floor of illusions, both traps and monsters.
23: Honor – A series of duels with various demon knights.
24: Humility – We had to flee battles deliberately in order to open locked doors.
25: Justice – Nothing but demons. So many fucking demons.
26: Sacrifice – We had to willingly endure injuries to open locked doors, which was an extra pain in the ass because of my constitution. My skin was impenetrable to the knives we were supposed to use for the sacrifice, but we managed.
27: Spirituality – A ton of wraiths, specters, and other undead.
28: Valor – This floor was one giant pit–a feat of magic-defying dungeon physics–with invisible platforms weaving about like a maze. Truesight enchantments made this nothing more than a long walk.
29: Chaos – A mixture of all the virtue floors prior, which was a massive headache to navigate and manage because of the variety of potential solutions any one door might have.
30: Ascension – A single floor with just the boss room, we fought a grigori who seemed maybe twice as strong as the Borja dungeon boss.
We looted another 3 aspect tomes and a few rings of +1 to various stats. On top of the boss chest, we had all the mana crystals from the hunt and a little over 1,000,000 XP to take home.
Only 70 floors–maybe–to go.