William Oh doesn’t get ambushed.

William Oh alleviates boredom.

Will woke up with Junior’s cold crystalline scales draining the heat from his neck.

“Ack!” Will tried to pry the snake away from his neck, but Junior’s newest trick was rendering himself inert, with all the lifeless rigidity of actual crystal, so Will would have to literally snap the snake in half to get him to let go.

Will was considering doing exactly that when the sound of crunching earth and whispers reached his ears.

Will froze and took the Map earpiece out.

It was a tiny circle of manifested map that detailed a 100 yard radius strip around the rookie camp. Any sound that vibrated the terrain across that line would be transmitted directly to his ear while he slept.

It was a clever expansion of the eavesdropping application of Map that he’d created a while ago.

Another trick Will had learned: messing with the scale in such a way that any change to the terrain was reflected in drastic way on the map.

Will expanded the map from an earpiece into a proper map and watched it. The insects moving across the terrain registered as thousands of tiny sand-grain pinpricks of shifting terrain that quickly sank back into the map. The footsteps crossing the boundary made deep impressions into the three-dimensional map, creating an obvious trail of recently-changed terrain.

Will jumped out of bed, snake dangling in the wind.

No time to tuck Junior away. It would take some time for it to soften up again, and this could be an emergency.

Will padded his steps with air, gliding out of his tent and towards the sound. He went high and silently swept up behind the approaching enemies.

I suppose I should be allowing the rookies to learn instead of just-

Will paused as the ‘enemies’ came into eyeshot.

It was a boy and a girl, on the older side of the rookies, about fifteen. One of the earth mage boys and a fencer girl, holding hands as they traipsed back from the woods…by themselves and unarmed. They even came from the direction of the Maksu fort. Admittedly it was a long ways away, but still.

What…the ever-loving Abyss?

Sneaking off to flirt…That was like…the number one most popular way to die in The Tower!

This behavior had to be punished, and it wasn’t because Will was bored and lonely. Not just because of that, anyway.

But what would be the most effective way to do it? A lecture had about as much effect on the teenage brain as a gust of wind. Will knew that because a lecture wouldn’t have worked on him, either. Still wouldn’t, actually.

Perhaps…scaring the shit out of them? That might work, but Will would have to thematically tie the horror into being too far away from the rest of their Party to call for help.

So…grab the boy and drag him off into the woods? I think that would have the right effect.

It was the middle of the night, so they probably couldn’t see so well, but to Will, the stars were as bright as the noonday sun. He could easily overwhelm a rookie in the dark without them figuring out who did it.

What further ramifications would that have? If the girl shows up and reports something is attacking people in the woods, there will be a kerfluffle. That might disrupt the rest of the rookies for the attack tomorrow, which would be bad.

Will hovered directly above them, arms crossed as he attempted to narrow in on the most ideal way to teach them not to wander off on their own, when something odd happened.

The girl stooped down, picked up a rock and bashed the boy over the head with it.

The boy went down, twitching violently as his brain slowly attempted to unscramble itself.

Huh. You don’t see that every day, Will mused.

The girl gave a guttural groan and knelt down over the boy, raising the rock up with both hands, preparing to smear his brains across the desert sand.

Will snatched the rock out of her hands and restrained her with Phantom Hands while dumping a potion on the kid’s head.

The kid’s eyes snapped open and he leapt up, snarling with hands extended towards Will, fingers as rigid as talons.

Will easily slapped the scrawny kid’s hands aside.

Mind control?

Will immediately ran through his memory-key, causing the surrounding surroundings to smear as the miasmatic circuit in his mind was broken.

The snarling boy was collapsed in front of Will. Apparently Will had smacked his scrawny neck instead of his hands.

Have another potion, you poor bastard. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

This was some kind of potent friend-foe scrambler that messed with targeting. The effect was in the brain, which was why Will hadn’t seen it as a miasmatic illusion overlapping the kid.

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Will glanced up at the restrained girl, who was watching him with wide eyes, hyperventilating as she struggled against the phantom hands.

“Pardon me,” Will muttered, seizing her head and peering into it.

The miasmatic structures that made up her Class were all there, but there was some other obviously non-native membranous miasma that was connecting certain parts of her brain.

Will wasn’t confident he could remove it without doing damage, so he decided to ship her off to the priestesses. They might have a cure, or they might simply have to keep her restrained until the confusion ran its course.

Where did the mind-attack come from?

Uuuuuuuu

Will cocked his head to listen as a strange half-sound crossed his senses, like…a horn blowing?

He wasn’t hearing sound, though. He was hearing miasma. And it was coming from…

Will glanced towards the woods and spotted a miasma-laced fog bank rolling towards the camp.

I see.

The miasma roiling in the cloud had the same look and feel as the stuff in the girl’s head.

How did it get me without me noticing it? some kind of spreading effect from subject to subject?

Perhaps the primary targets got the full dose and the bystanders who came into contact with them got minor target scrambling effects.

Perhaps it would be best not to send her to camp to be restrained?

In the meantime….

Will slapped the earth mage awake. He had the distinctive half-vacant, half-confused expression of someone who’d just been recently cured of heavy brain damage.

“Lee, wake up.”

“Huh, wha-“ the earth mage groaned as he blinked his eyes.

“Make a wall around the camp please. Ten feet high. Will could do it himself, but he wanted the rookies to do most of the work on their own. That was the purpose of this quest, after all.

“A wall, I-“ He cocked his head. “What do you need a wall for?”

“Your girlfriend bashed you in the head with a rock because you guys inhaled trace amounts of that.” Will said, pointing at the living fog approaching, silently slipping across the terrain, sticking to itself and refusing to dissipate, acting more like a mucus than a vapor.

Phantom Eye

Will sent it past the fog, spotting a raiding party of Maksu trailing behind it. One of the creatures was blowing into a gilded horn, producing billowing fog as they did.

“I don’t…I don’t have enough charge to do a wall around the whole camp. Not after yesterday.”

Oh right. They’re rookies.

‘Well, you better figure out something.” Will said, tapping the kid on the shoulder. “Also, sound the alarm, we’re under attack.”

“We’re under attack!” The earth mage shouted, sprinting back to the camps, where the other rookies were scrambling out of bed.

“So we gonna squish these bastards or what?” Jason asked as he appeared beside Will, already dressed and awake.

“Well, no.” Will said, watching the maksu break through the treeline. They were concealed by the fog, only perceptible as vague swirls tracing their movement.

A mind-effecting fog that also hampers visibility covering a small army. That’s a nasty combo.

“We’re here to supervise. I want to see what the kids can do.” Will said.

“Aw, man…”

Mason stepped through a pearlescent tear in reality beside Will, peering out across the battlefield.

“Aw man, you got teleportation?” Will complained, despite being technically able to do so as well.

Mason glanced over his shoulder at the camp behind them.

With the crushing groan of moving earth, stone erupted from under the campsite, lifting high above the line of the fog.

Several small pillars combined to support a platform just big enough for the rookies to stand on it.

I see. he combined forces with the other earth mage, and they didn’t have enough to create a wall around the entire camp, so they just raised everyone out of the fog with the bare minimum. Necessity is the mother of invention.

“I assume we’re letting the rookies fight for themselves?” Mason asked.

“Or at least feel like they are.” Will replied.

ZZZZZ!

A piece of anchorite flew past the three of them and buried itself into the ground. It occurred to Will that the three of them were standing directly in the line of fire between the rookies and the raiding party of Maksu.

Mason couldn’t be wounded like that, Jason was lucky, and Will was tough.

They paid it no mind.

“Jason, could you discretely make the kids a bit luckier?”

“On it, boss.” Jason snapped a salute.

ZZZZZ

Another bullet whizzed by and a response in the form of a javelin erupted from the fog and perforated a rookie’s thigh.

The priestesses of Holdna dragged him back and began healing him, expressions harrowed.

“Mason can you figure out what’s the deal with their relics? I’m going to go organize the kids.”

“Sure.” Mason stepped into a portal and vanished.

Will flew up to the platform rising out of the lake of fog and set down.

“Tanks make a wall!” Will shouted at the tanks who were each covering their own small group. Will pointed at the leading edge of the platform.

“Here, here, here, here!” Will shouted pointing where he wanted the tanks to stand. “Create a larger safe space by standing together!”

“Priestesses who want to use your automatic crossbows, lay down and shoot from beneath them! Wait until you can see the whites of their eyes! Save half your Charge!”

“Archers use the tanks as cover! Warriors watch the pillars! Nukers….we need light! Set something on fire!”

One particularly enterprising Nuker set a tent near the frontline on fire with a dart of flame, casting an ominous glow across the living fog.

Despite it’s hellish glow, the burning tent provided much-needed light for the rookies. Their accuracy improved dramatically, as they were able to make out the top of maksu heads sprinting through the fog.

The sound of anchorite bullets piercing the air was a rapid staccato that rapidly dwindled as the young Priestesses stopped shooting to conserve Charge.

Still, by Will’s reckoning, they’d perforated about a dozen of the blue-skinned warriors and blunted the initial charge, which wasn’t bad for support Classes.

A javelin arced high out of the fog and went over the tanks, catching a warrior in the shoulder and knocking them off the platform.

The young man tumbled into the fog and Will fished him out a moment later. The Climber was snarling and thrashing madly, trying to attack anything that moved.

It took three of his Party members to hold him down, even as the chaos of battle washed over them.

I have to admit, I am slightly less bored now, Will thought as he dashed from emergency to emergency, putting out fires as fast as he could.

Ash Lee, Marksman’s representative, had stationed himself at one of the earth-pillar leading up to the platform.

Maksu began swarming up the leaning pillars, and Marksman’s representative threw himself into the fray, dispatching Maksu with ease, covering the central pillar.

Will glanced away to put the lid on some chaos that was forming as a tank shifted his feet and tripped over a wounded rookie.

When he glanced back a second later, Ash was blinking at his sword which had been cut short, his neck gushing blood as the Maksu wound up a second strike.

Will shot forwards and kicked the Maksu off the platform, its gilded sword tumbling to the ground as he yanked Ash backwards.

“Heal, please.” Will said, tossing the representative to the priestesses, his hands locked over his throat.

Will dragged a warrior over to cover Ash’s spot and retrieved the Maksu’s weapon.

The blade itself was paper-thin. Perhaps thinner. It was as light as a feather, and Will suspected it might get blown away by a strong gust of wind, if not for the handle.

Will could whip the thing around with a flick of his wrist. It weighed nothing.

Will inspected the blade.

Donovan’s Razor

This ultra-thin Relic was crafted by the Saint, Donovan. Rather than enhance the user, it enhances its own durability based on the user’s Resistance, which allows it to endure its inherent fragility.

Minor self-repair, major self-sharpening, major self-reinforcement.

One of the sharpest blades ever made.

…What saint? Will thought, eyes narrowed.