The Legend of William Oh

Chapter 296: Helping Hands

Will thought, rubbing his temple.The only problem with that was if Will solved his Marksman problem with murder, he would have to solve his problems by killing them. It wasn’t like the other Lords would take that kind of violence lying down.

Zodiac wouldn’t, anyway. Amanda Wyrd would have an excuse to convince her husband that Will was evil and Carrie might rethink her neutral position if she knew Will would kill other Lords the moment they became inconvenient for him, and would drag along the rest of her little cabal.

Will considered. The same was true if Marksman directly attacked Will. Ghoul was not one to be trifled with and Zodiac would be just as pissed that his grandchildren wouldn’t be able to consolidate their territory.

The most obvious way to come after Will was whoever possessed the Burning Court set.

But Will knew about that. He knew how to deal with them, too.

Marksman wanted to put Will in a proxy fight where he would lose no matter the outcome. That had been his tactic with the Establishing Quest. It wasn’t a bad strategy, objectively, just a dick move.

Will thought, kicking his heels off the side of his Stronghold’s walls.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Will’s mind spun like a combination lock, keeping himself and the burning court set in play while mixing and matching every possible combination of other factors.

Will thought, freezing when he added Carrie’s note about Marksman messing with Relic stealing builds to the combination.

With that, everything else fell into place.

If, rather than mitigating the downsides of the set, marksman instead ramped them up into a truly cursed set, he could turn any Climber into a Will-seeking missile.

If Marksman created a Class capable of rapidly putting Relics someone against their will, then he could deploy that person to the 10th Floor, then force-equip the Burning court set on anyone.

If the anti-Will effect was sped up enough, it might even cause one of Will’s Vassals to go mad and attack him, forcing him to kill them.

There were too many targets that Marksman could choose, which would stretch Will thin if he tried to protect them all. So instead, he had to do two things:

With one of Loth’s Abby, Will could get there and back in significantly less time than the…six months it would usually take.

Acclimation explained why Will’s parents were still missing, even seven years after the last time he saw them. it added up quickly on round trips to the upper floors.

“What are you thinking about?” Brianna asked, sitting down beside Will.

“Punching my dad.”

“I can get behind that,” Brianna said with a nod. “I’d probably punch mine if I ever saw him again.”

“He’d die.” Will said.

“…yep.” The look on Brianna’s face showed that she wasn’t kidding.

She caught him staring and brightened.

“You look like you’re scheming something. Let me in on it.”

“I need you to buy some Relics in Akul that match certain requirements and relay them up here without anyone else finding out about it,” Will said.

“Just give me a list.”

Will gave her a list of the affixes he was looking for, then went and consulted Badur about upgrades to The Stronghold, checking his Influence against the prices as he went.

Jorn had found his stride, averaging nearly a thousand Influence a day. It added up quickly as the days of administering the Stronghold bled together.

Will didn’t have a deal to create a resource node for Maribelle, so he could afford to move that hundred thousand Influence and purchase some much-needed upgrades to The Stronghold.

Since Will was expecting an infiltration from Marksman, he purchased the Security Gate upgrade.

Will purchased sixteen Security Gates with the traffic tracking upgrade as well as the Town Hall paperwork upgrade.

He placed those sixteen Security gates in unexpected places around the Stronghold, such as the entrance to the tavern, in, Climber field office, the door to his room, a couple narrow alleyways, and his Vaults.

Since they were zones, the outward appearance of the areas didn’t change one bit, merely passively tracking foot traffic through them and reporting it to the town hall.

All will had to do was ask the Town Hall to flag any movement from a Vassal of Marksman.

Will doubted that Marksman would trust the Burning Court set to anyone that wasn’t under his direct control.

Will then designated Badur and his apprentice’s offices as the Town Hall.

Will bought all the available upgrades and assigned Badur as the Administrator, while his apprentices were the Clerks.

Will turned his attention to the last upgrade he had in mind.

Will decided not to tell anyone and place the Altars somewhere nobody would see them being created.

If everyone noticed the affixes being placed on them, then fine, he’d tell everyone to avoid confusion, but if the affixes weren’t revealed in his citizen’s Status pages, then it would be better if they went unnoticed.

The less people who knew of their existence, the less people who could let the information slip to Will’s enemies.

In the quiet basement of his tower, a pair of skeletal hands rose out of the ground, their elongated fingers curled into half-claws, seemingly waiting for Will to place something in their grasp.

Will mused to himself.