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((Triple Wednesday -- Page 2 of 3))
Moving with his iron was easier than ever. He hardly even had to think about it. He only had to know where he wanted to go and how he wanted to get there, and his iron carried him as if on the nose of a train--or in the mouth of a snake, perhaps, considering how trivial it was to weave in between piles of rock and eager slime. And the Scarf of Amordiin was certainly helping in that regard, too. Being able to sense the worms attacking before Garovel even had a chance to warn him was immensely valuable.

Another of the worms dove in mouth-first, and Hector slid out of its path on a suspended railway of iron. The opening was clear, and he took full advantage, loosing another sawblade. He had tried to evolve it another step, though, and added a second, perpendicular disc to it. So instead of splitting the worm in two, it split in four.

He didn’t let up on the pressure, either. His next work was three sawblades melded into one, and he loosed it on one of the four sections he’d just made, dicing it up even more.

Those looked small enough. He boxed all the little sludgy chunks in iron and added them to his orbital collection as he readied still more discs.

These six new boxes were clearly much more stable than the first two, Hector sensed. They weren’t shaking nearly as much and--

Yeah, the sludge was already breaking through the larger two, drilling holes into them and trying to goop its way out.

He could’ve just added more iron to the boxes to try and keep the troublemakers where they were, but he didn’t want to do that. Instead, he saw an opportunity with the next worm lunging after him.

Hector annihilated the first two boxes and allowed the sludge therein a blissful moment of freedom right as the nearest worm dove in and missed. Then a multi-sawblade sliced through all of them at once, creating a fresh new batch of collectible sludge.

That was twelve more little boxes in orbit. And after another two discs for the worm that had so graciously offered itself up to him, Hector had another batch of six on top of that, bringing him to a grand total of twenty-four boxes so far, all orbiting around him as he eased himself onto the third floor.

Even with all of that work, there was still plenty more slime sloshing around below. Math wasn’t really his forte, but from his estimation, it looked like he’d reduced its overall mass by maybe a third or so.

However, the sludge that remained seemed to be thinking twice about chasing him now.

‘Sweet Cocora,’ said Garovel. ‘Hector, that was... I’m not even sure what to...’

Hector didn’t want to be too pleased with himself. ‘It’s not over yet.’ He double-checked the boxes in orbit around him. They were trembling a little but holding, nonetheless.