[System Decay] Chapter 29: Surrounded By Idiots (Patreon)

Something was wrong. Will couldn’t tell if it was the sigil bothering him just for the sake of irritating him, which he wouldn’t put past the petty god that it had attached to him, but he had a nasty feeling about this.

Soon enough, he realized what it was.

Earlier, he’d heard the voices of the two men that he’d just killed, but that hadn’t been all. There had been other signs of life—birds chirping, the faint sound of twigs being crunched underfoot, the hum of ambient conversation. Now, all of that was gone.

These two weren’t the only ones in the Iron Boys. Will was one hundred percent sure of that. The people Lev, Allie, and Trevor had run into had been a higher rank than Bronze 0, which both of the guys who’d try to shoot him were.

No doubt they’d heard the shots or gotten a chat message from the dying two. Will was certain that the other Iron Boys were tracking him even now to exact revenge.

It was what he would have done, after all.

Will didn’t have perception skills that let him see anyone stealthy, but his Perception attribute itself was at a solid, flat Bronze 0. His vision was sharp enough to pick out individual leaves in the trees. If he found an intact doctor’s office to do an eye test at, he was sure he’d be able to read the very bottom row, the one that wasn’t properly visible even with his glasses on. Will’s hearing was similarly strong.

He had to assume his enemies were competent, though. Even if it very obviously hadn’t been the case against the first two, he preferred overestimating them to underestimating. Overestimating someone meant you maybe used too many resources to deal with them. Underestimating them, especially in this scenario?

That would mean death.

As soon as Will finished looting the two bodies, he ditched the place.

He found it hard to believe that he was doing this with such cavalier ease. They’d been fighting him, yes, but killing them had been… easy. Not just in the sense that their skills hadn’t been up to par with his, but in how quickly he’d been able to flip the switch to go to killing.

Was this who he was? Strip away everything that had made him who he was, everything that had bound him—was Will a killer?

He shook his head as he slunk back into the treelines, clearing it. This was absolutely not the time to be asking questions about morality. What mattered was surviving and winning.

Will continued his trail of daggers as he walked, though he found he was quickly running out of the truly cheap stuff that he’d looted from the goblins, so he spaced them out more, ensuring that each knife went under a layer of shrubbery or inside a hollow in a tree. He didn’t want his trail to backfire on him.

As it turned out, he needn’t have worried about finding them.

#

Zach and Sebastian Jones had been born together, grown together, killed their first man together, and dodged a conviction in court together.

While Zach didn’t always get along with his twin, he had a sense of attachment towards Seb that he knew would never be matched by any other. They were in this together for the long run.

Even after the end of the world, their skills reflected that. Seb’s Resonance element let him set up weak points in enemies, synergizing with Zach’s primary Disruption element to deal massive damage to anyone in their way.

With the Disruption, Sword, and Force elements, Zach’s Shieldbreaker class fit Seb’s Harmonist like a glove.

The two of them approached the fire department from the south. They’d wrapped around to get to it—nobody in the Iron Boys had any teleport powers, though that was fine, since none of them planned on ever running.

This was the new world, and they were ready to be the kings of it.

After pumping monster cores every single day, Zach and Seb were both Bronze 4 now, placing them at ninth and tenth on the regional leaderboard. The guy they were chasing was a lower rank than them and alone.

Zach smiled, baring his teeth. This prey was theirs for the taking.

As he got into position, he heard the sound of a man tripping and loudly cursing right inside the fire station.

Zach: He’s definitely in the fire department. Everyone in position?

He got a round of confirmations back, but Zach and Seb were already moving.

His brother cast a spell on his gun, an enchantment that they had both grown very familiar with.

Skill: [Embrittling Weapon]

- Spell (enchantment).

- Cost: low mana.

- Cooldown: 1 minute.

Bronze

Any attack made by the weapon gives a portion of the target a level of [Resonance].

[Resonance] - When an attack strikes this location, it deals drastically increased damage, consuming the levels of [Resonance]. This effect is doubled with force, harmony, and disruption type damage.

Not included in the skill description was the trail it gave bullets, outlining their passageway and declaring their presence. It was the weapon of a true conqueror.

Seb shot the wall with clinical efficiency, using one of his Perception-bound skills to find where the weakest points would be.

Zach lit it up, enchanting his own gun.

Skill: [Disruptive Weapon]

- Spell (enchantment).

- Cost: low mana.

- Cooldown: 1 minute.

Bronze

Attacks from this weapon deal increased disruption damage, rendering magical barriers ineffective. Attacks against rigid materials are drastically increased in power.

Though the rifles they fired were already powerful, the enchantments they added turned them from people-killers into building topplers. Zach aimed for the points that Seb had hit, indicated in his vision with bright blue targets, and the brick shattered as he dumped lead into it.

Neither of them stopped firing until they were both out of ammo.

As Zach reloaded, the building fell on itself, collapsing and burying everything beneath it.

Kyle: Did you get him?

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Zach saw a blurry figure rise from the long-cast shadow of a tree.

It ran towards him. Fast.

“What the hell?” he shouted, adjusting his aim. “There’s a monster!”

He aimed and fired—and then the monster wasn’t there anymore.

William Li-Brown, his cloaking skill no longer active, reappeared with one hand on Zach’s gun.

Will pointed at the fallen building, a metal bracer on his arm gleaming. “You guys seriously suck at this.”

Item: Miraculous Wrist Bracer

Common, bronze

Once per day while this item is equipped, you can create one of the following magical effects within 50 feet of you:

- Create a sound that lasts 3 seconds or less.

- Cause a door or window to open.

- Increase a flame’s intensity or dim it.

We’ve been had.

Zach shouted something angrily, trying to kick the man holding his gun.

An inexorable, crushing sense of doom set over him, sapping his strength, and he stopped, staring at the man in front of him.

He’d been right to call Will a monster. This, the person standing in front of him—every single instinct he’d ever had was screaming at him to run. This was no man.

“Zach!” Seb yelled. “I can’t get a shot!”

“You won’t need one,” Will said.

Something flashed in his hands, and Seb hit the ground.

A moment later, hot wet blood spilled down Zach’s throat.

They’d done everything together. It figured they’d go to their graves the same way.

He raised an arm, intent on giving one last defiant attack against the prey that had become the predator, but Will was already gone.

#

Contrary to popular opinion, Kyle was not the strongest member of the Iron Boys—at least, not with his individual power.

He did, however, have the best loot. His armor set had been a legendary drop, which was apparently something like a one in ten thousand chance to get during the tutorial. Kyle knew he deserved it, of course. That was just who he was.

Item: The Armor of the Red Knight

Legendary, bronze (growth)

Grows with its user. For their sins against the chaos defense contract, the Order of the Red Knights was exterminated to the last man millennia ago. Their equipment, however, survives.

[Gauntlets of the Red Knight] - You gain the [Decaying Touch] skill at bronze rank.

[Cuirass of the Red Knight] - Enemies that strike at you have a moderate chance of being afflicted with a level of [Corruption].

[Boots of the Red Knight] - You gain the [Corrupted Speed] skill at bronze rank.

[Helmet of the Red Knight] - You are immune to afflictions of bronze rank or lower and resist afflictions above it.

Set bonus - you gain a boost to your [Power] and [Speed] attributes while wearing the full set of armor.

With these, he’d been able to establish himself against all challengers and kill the ones who didn’t fall into line. Fear was a powerful tool of control, and the way corruption made a man die was fearsome indeed.

Now, though, that same fear had been turned on him. He was down four followers now, two of which had been a genuinely powerful force.

He’d seen a burst of violence followed by the Jones twins dropping dead, but he’d lost track of the man who’d done it immediately after. Claiming ownership of this area through the system had given him the ability to observe who was in the domain, but it didn’t tell him where.

Fuck that Dylan guy, he thought.

The sniveling coward had said that he would know how to find a group that they could kill the men and take the woman from, but all he’d had to offer was powers. He was unobservant, weak, and totally reliant on the monster cores Kyle and Andrew had been finding.

Once Kyle killed this asshole, Dylan was next on the line. Humans offered a juicy amount of experience to make up for their lack of monster cores.

“Aw, man,” an unfamiliar voice said from behind him. “I thought I’d finally be able to get some good armor, but yours doesn’t do anything special.”

Kyle whipped around to find an unarmored man with a revolver pointed straight at him.

He didn’t flinch. Others had tried guns on him before. The armor blocked it all.

“Oh?” Will said, drawing one of the AR-15s before… inventorying it again? No, that couldn’t be it. It looked like he’d turned it to ash, not put it away. “Not scared, huh?”

It didn’t matter. Kyle took a step forward. He could shoot this dickhead to death here and now, but Will had caused him too much pain, cost him too many people. This was going to hurt.

Will took a step back, but Kyle’s set bonus meant he caught up quickly.

He laid a gauntleted hand on Will, activating the armor’s given skill.

Skill: [Decaying Touch]

- Spell (affliction).

- Cost: moderate mana.

- Cooldown: none.

Bronze.

Deals necrotic damage. Inflict one level of [Corruption] on a creature or item you touch. This skill cannot stack afflictions.

Will jumped back in pain, the necrosis spreading through his veins. Kyle grinned savagely as his enemy’s aim shook, the beginnings of his inevitable, torturous death beginning to set in.

But then Will stilled, casually uncorking and drinking a health potion, and he yawned.

“Like I said. Nothing special.”

Will fanned the hammer.

At this range, he chose to use the six-shooter in its default, regular bullet mode for fear of accidentally blowing himself himself up, but even if the armor was mostly bulletproof, six shots to the face still hurt.

Kyle recoiled in pain as six hammer blows rang through his head, dazing him.

Will didn’t let up for a second, drawing his slayer sword and wailing on the helmet with its blunt end. Though he couldn’t immediately pierce it, he could dent it and concuss Kyle enough to lower his ability to resist his next skill.

Kyle didn’t even notice when his helmet disappeared, wrapped in spatial magic, but he did feel Will’s hand touch his cheek.

And then his skin was burning.

“Ooh, looks like someone doesn’t have the affliction ammunity anymore,” Will said, gasping in mock sympathy. “Sucks to suck.”

The last coherent thing Kyle knew was the sound of a church bell ringing.

Then, there was nothing but pain.

#

Kyle was still screaming when Dylan saw Will again.

The last time he’d seen Will, the bronze-rank had been fresh from a tutorial, covered in gore, and an asshole who didn’t know his place.

Dylan fixed the gun sight on him, forcing himself to keep from trembling.

All Will had was a single gun—the same one he’d shot Dylan in the balls with before.

Dylan had been listening and watching carefully, and he knew what he’d heard.

“You fired six shots, chink,” he said. “Don’t think you can threaten me with that.”

Will kept on coming, apparently not using any skills to speed himself up.

Despite how much he wanted to pull the trigger, Dylan had never killed a man before. He’d contributed, but it had never been him dealing the final blow. He wavered for just a second.

That cost him.

Will shook his head, leveling the revolver at him. “You should really be reading what your opponents can do.”

Dylan made to fire, but strange magic distorted the air in front of him, encapsulating the gun.

“Still unformed,” Will said. “I really thought you would be more of a threat.”

He fired the seventh shot in the six-shooter.

#

Will frowned. His Sharpshooter skill from using Destructive Synthesis on one of the rifles had run out just before he’d fired his last shot. The revolver had still hit center of mass, but it hadn’t been immediately lethal.

Dylan, bleeding out on the ground, managed to wheeze out a word. “…Why?”

“Seriously? All this, and you still don’t get why?” Will sighed. “I should have never given you a second chance. There’s a lot of people who deserve them, but you? You, I should have figured better.”

Dylan gurgled out something unintelligible.

“Let me put you out of your misery,” Will said. “You’re not getting a third try.”

With a quick, decisive blow, the slayer sword took Dylan’s head off.

“Five down,” he told the corpse. “How many more to go?”

The quest still hadn’t completed, so there was at least one.

…oh. Was that guy running for his life that one?

#

Andrew knew he was outmatched when he saw it. According to the local leaderboard, at Bronze 6, he was ranked fourth in the entire state. That didn’t mean he was fourth best at fighting, though. He knew better than most that rank didn’t mean everything.

He didn’t want to be here. Not anymore. Not when the most elite forces the Iron Boys had had folded to their pursuer like white-belt karate girls had when he’d fought them with years of MMA.

Andrew ran for his goddamn life, ignoring the university. Ignoring everything. All he knew was that the man there was more than human, and he wasn’t going to be his next victim.

He didn’t even notice that he was entering the kingdom of the life elves.

#

Quest complete: Liberate the university

By virtue of total eradication of its leadership, you have freed the university from its occupation. It is your choice on whether you wish to pursue the rest.

Reward: You have gained a Tablet of the Book. You have gained 1 Awakening Shard and 2 Awakening Shards of the Ghost. You have earned 100 bronze credits.

Will: That was easier than expected.

Lev: Wow. What the hell? The quest just popped.

Will: Yeah. I’m not sure what happened. I didn’t kill all of them, but the last of the group that was chasing me routed. I mean, I’ll take it.

Allie: Awesome. The rewards are really good—we might be able to make it to bronze with these.

Trevor: I’m still not sold on the idea of not using monster cores.

Lev: Remember what the helper said during the tutorial? I’d rather not poison myself. We’re making it past gold. All of us.

Will: You got information about monster cores during your tutorial? I didn’t see any during mine.

Lev: Yeah. I can tell you a little more about it when we group back up. We’re still in the middle of a dungeon right now.

Will: Alright. You finish up, then. Let’s regroup at Everdale.