Charnesa wasn’t there when Will got back to the caravan, but some of her disciples of Holdna were present, and they patched him up nicely. Will spent the rest of the evening eating recovery gruel and going through his Dimensional storage, determined to organize it and make space for more than two Potions of Greater Healing.

Honestly, I could afford a few of the Supreme ones, Will thought, resolving to buy some when he hit Akul again.

Will’s Dimensional Storage had become…rather cluttered as it grew. Back when it could only contain roughly a bowlful of objects, Will only had room to put the bare essentials in it: Couple potions, a palmful of bullets.

Now Will’s dimensional space was roughly the size of a satchel, and it also shrunk items to pack more in, provided they could fit in prior to the shrinking, which expanded its effective capacity drastically.

I think I need to do some inventory management, Will thought as he brushed his mental fingertips across the items inside.

When did I even get this? Will thought, pulling a tiny tree inside a glass ampule out of his storage. Looked like an oak.

Oh right, same place I got the Clay Idol. From that shop on the 3rd Floor. There had never been an occasion to use it so it had sat there unused for half a year.

Will pulled out the Clay Idol and set both items aside before he began digging through the rest of the stuff he’d packed away:

Three cannonballs, a couple shortswords, a roll of twine…Will left the gallon of Metallic slime in there since he didn’t have a container for it.

This would be a good place to store some of it though, Will thought. The bank here had to be pretty secure given how difficult it was to steal or mislead.

I don’t need more than one cannonball anymore since the Wraith Vessal Sacrifice, Will thought, kicking two of the heavy lumps of iron away from the pile. Same with the shortswords. Do I even need shortswords at all? It was nice to have bladed projectiles on-hand, but the shortswords had been out of necessity back when he was out of cannonballs, running from the church.

If I still want bladed projectiles, I’m starting to think Loth’s idea of that circle thingy would be good, Will thought, kicking the two swords away from the pile. They’d certainly fly better than these swords did.

Let’s see what else we have in here…

Some socks I forgot about, garrote wire, the rock I thought was cool, Flint and steel, soap, wax candy wrappers I was meaning to throw away, emergency cash in case I’m robbed…

…let’s face it, the garrote wire is pretty redundant at this point, Will though, removing it from the pile, along with the neat rock, socks and candy wrappers.

The flint and steel could stay, since he might have to start a fire at some point. And of course Will didn’t remove the cash from Dimensional Storage at all, since he didn’t want anyone to know he had it.

Old habits, Will mused.

He’d just taken great pains to prove that no one could rob him, hadn’t he?

Eh. Still. Who knows when this Lordship gig is going to dry up or turn on me,

Will thought with a wry smile. Never a bad idea to have some squirreled away for a rainy day.

Forget that Lordship was an until-you-die sort of job.

Wonder if I should get some armor made for me and whether I could fit it in the hand? based on total volume, he probably could, but why? Wills resistance was outpacing Floor difficulty.

What other things could benefit from being physically tougher than they would otherwise be, aside from armor and weapons? springs? A loaded crossbow? How would stored kinetic energy work when the Manifested material would have a higher flex strength? Would it be creating energy from nothing?

…What would be the point of storing a loaded crossbow when the Phantom hand can already throw stuff faster?

If Will was Loth, the ability to manifest critical trap components just as long as they were needed would be intriguing, but Will didn’t follow that path.

Will returned the cannonball, bottled tree, twine, flint and steel, Clay Idol.

I am gonna have to remove the metallic slime soon. It’s taking up a lot of space. When he was wearing full Kit, he had five Dimensional Storages to choose from but without it, it was pretty cramped.

Will levered himself to his feet, grabbed all the stuff he’d taken out of the Dimensional Storage and took care of it, heading over to his Sourdough Barrels.

He had dozens of them now.

Will hadn’t had time to experiment with Sourdough to his satisfaction in weeks, what with the 8th floor being as hectic as it was.

Maybe…I take some selfish time to myself in Bakton’s Keep.

Will grabbed a table, folding chair and a pair of bolt cutters and got to work.

First, Will dumped out the dozens of rings he’d gotten for cheap and added them to the pile of affix-less Relics the caravan had acquired just by travelling through the Floors.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Climbers were happy to pay part of their tax with ‘useless’ relics.

Will took out the two nodules that were all that remained of his two Greater Healing Potions, finding a small barrel about the size of his head and cutting a dozen or so Kinesthetic-only Relics in half, filling the tiny barrel partway with their ash.

Will then placed the healing potion starters inside, closed the lid, and marked the date and contents with a grease pen, setting it aside.

Then he got to the interesting part.

If I’m gonna make a composite ring specifically to enhance sourdough, I’m going to need an outrageous Resistance bonus, since all of Sourdough’s effects are derived from Resistance.

Will pored through the pile of Resistance equipment until he located the 4 items with the highest Resistance boost.

From his experiments, it seemed like four was the ideal number of items to combine with Sourdough, and when he tried to go higher, it caused the effect to weaken at an increasing rate that didn’t line up with simple averaging.

There was probably some complex math behind it, but all Will needed to know was that when a 5th item was added, effects started getting lost, and the numbers stopped increasing very fast.

Will looked at the four items: A helmet, two rings, and a belt. Each of them had the ‘Of resistance’ moniker, and only raised Resistance.

Helm of resistance, Ring of resistance, Ring of Resistance, Belt of Resistance.

8, 10, 8, 8 Resistance, respectively.

While wearing the ring of the yeast-master, Will ashed all but the +10 ring into a tiny barrel, then tossed the +10 ring in too.

Sourdough

57-52 Charge Remaining.

Then he did it two more times.

42 Charge remaining.

Will’s theory was that maybe he could create three rings with Sourdough, then recombine those three rings onto an unmodified fourth one and create something scary.

Will’s math said it might work, but he’d never tried using a modified Relic’s ashes as the base for a new one.

There were a few things holding him back: The new item would have to be unmodified, which would drag the average down, and each time Will did it, he would lose a portion of his previous gains.

Just looking at it intuitively, Will could tell that there would eventually be a point of diminishing return that would limit what he could achieve.

But…30-40 Resistance on a ring is well within the realm of possibility if this works.

If Will could get that much Resistance on a single ring, and could use modified Relic ashes on an unmodified Relic, then his plan would be this:

Get a ring with 40-ish Resistance, then use its ash as the final ingredient, mixing with the Ring of the yeast-master, the ring of leavening, and the ring of Grinding to make something outrageous.

The finished product would probably only have something like 20 Resistance, but once it was put into Phantom Hand, it would be closer to 60, which, when combined with the ring’s effects, would be a tremendous increase in Sourdough’s potency.

You know, I might benefit from making two rings with 40+ Resistance instead of just one. Put the first one into Phantom Hand, its power goes up to roughly 120. While that 120 boost is in place, then I can create the finished piece. That extra 120 Resistance would increase the finished version by a huge amount, possibly increase the Resistance bonus on the finished product from 20 to 30.

…or more? Will thought, resting on his chin. If he only made one ring now that raised his resistance by 40, then slotted it in Phantom Hand, then he could use that to make the other ring, which would probably be closer to 50-60. Assuming he waited a about a month for the first rings to finish baking twice before starting his final product.

Then he could use that as the 4th Relic when making his Sourdough ring.

Just need time, I guess. And more ‘Of Resistance’ Relics.

He’d burned through just about all of them with any respectable bonus to Resistance in one sitting and he wouldn’t know how they turned out for about two weeks.

Now the Focus Relics, Will thought, grabbing Focus Relics out of their sorted piles.

Of all the people in the Caravan, Brianna could and certainly should benefit from a massive undiluted boost to her Focus. Both from a practical and safety standpoint.

More Focus = more hands-on deck to handle an emergency or sudden spike in workload, and more Focus meant better resistance to Charm effects.

Will went to bed shortly afterwards, his thoughts waffling between excitement to see how far he could push Sourdough, and nervousness about meeting Bakton.

He’d met Bakton before, obviously, but this was different. It had stakes. Lives, entire careershung in the balance of this meeting, not just Will’s.

Eventually Will fell asleep and woke up to the tugging of the debt, prompting him to meet Bakton to honor the agreement he’d made earlier.

Will took a quick bath, shaved the half-hearted beard beginning to manifest, and put on his best clothes under his Set before heading out, letting the debt steer him.

It was like an invisible tugging sensation that didn’t have any real physical effect, but if Will were to close his eyes and just saunter aimlessly, his direction would always become the same.

It was an interesting sensation, and while he poked and prodded the feeling, Will didn’t actively fight it. He didn’t want to test the clerk’s warning.

In about an hour, Will was sitting in front of Bakton for the big caravan meeting and it was…really boring.

Rather than Will and Bakton discussing his plans for his stay in Bakton Keep, it was their logisticians conversing while furiously scribbling notes in their respective ledgers.

It made sense that the experts would be the ones handling the details, but Will hadn’t expected it. He’d been expecting some kind of high-pressure situation where Bakton raked him over hot coals.

Bakton caught Will’s gaze and winked.

“So…I think you backslid a bit, young man. Not a lot, but lack of practice and not enough partners on your level has taken a bit of a toll. I was impressed by how quickly you modified your fighting style to accomplish the goal of intimidating your opponents, once alerted to the problem. A bit brutally basic, but fine enough on such short notice.”

“You did mention you wanted to give me another lesson if I made it to this floor.” Will replied.

“That I did.” Bakton said, glancing over at where their logisticians were talking about tax rates and penalties for staying longer than expected. None of it really mattered to the two of them.

“And I already started the lesson,” Bakton said, turning his gaze back to Will. “I hear you’re booking a longer stay with us?”

“An extra month,” Will said. “To make sure everyone is level 45 before we leave.”

“I can work with that…” Bakton said, rubbing his chin. “Do you remember how I told you that combat is language?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, it’s true. At it’s most basic form, combat is a discussion between two creatures. Through their actions, one says ‘I’m going to hit you,’ the other says ‘nuh-uh, I’m going to hit you.’” Bakton said.

I guess I can see that, but why… Will thought, frowning before a thought occurred to him.

“Does that have anything to do with language on this Floor being binding?”

Bakton smiled wide, displaying a menacing grin.

“You’re quick.” Bakton said. “I appreciate a quick student. Yes, the nature of this floor creates an undercurrent in every fight that serves to objectively highlight the quality of one’s ‘I should win this fight’ argument. I settled here because this floor allows me to master combat on a level that surpasses talent.”

Interesting… Will mused, his mind following Bakton’s logic.

“So…how are you planning to teach me this…combat language?” Will asked.

“Simple. I’m going to beat you up until you can tell me a joke.” Bakton said, clasping his hands together. “And make me laugh.”

“…What?”