[System Decay] Chapter 40: Take Me to Church, I'll Worship Like an Unmanned Drone Does (Patreon)

This is a significant, full-scale rewrite of the previous chapters. Even if you read the pre-rewrite chapters, I would highly recommend reading this. Events deviate heavily.

“Follow the instructions as quickly as you can,” Azure said for what felt like the five hundredth time. “My detection ritual tells me that there are at least two dozen other sapients delving the dungeon with us.”

“We heard you twice the first time,” Will said. “You’re doing most of the work here, anyway.”

Though it was tilted, the inside of the temple was surprisingly intact. Will had to admit that he wanted to spend some time admiring the complex diagrams and runic text that decorated the walls, but they were here for a very specific reason.

At the heart of the temple were a series of concentric limestone rings, growing progressively thicker and taller as they made it to the center. Azure, whose forte was in preparing locations and bombarding fortified positions, started setting up, casting a landmine-style detonation-type skill on the outermost wall.

Will and Caiyeri got themselves into position, leaping up to a ring and balancing on the edge before throwing themselves to the next. Caiyeri’s catlike agility outpaced Will’s, but at least he didn’t fall. The area between the walls was laden with deadly-looking spikes. Everything contained within the rings had some form of dryness enchantment cast on them, according to Azure, but that wouldn’t be too relevant to Will’s part.

He arrived on top of the innermost ring a few seconds behind Caiyeri. Each ring had been about five feet taller than the last, making each jump more treacherous, and the last was a good thirty feet high, looking down onto a circle that was at least twice as wide.

It was completely occupied by the monster.

Water Prayer. Level: Silver 4.

This is a squad boss.

Faith is a powerful tool when combined with mana. Once upon a time, a water prayer could be created when enough priests fervently wished for rain. Their wishes, however, were only powerful in the realms of man. The corruption that lays beyond infected their prayers.

Now, temples that produced rain across the once-proud kingdom of Mhodesia serve a more important purpose—containing the corrupted prayers within.

Formerly harbingers of life, these prayers were sealed and prohibited from making contact with their element. Touching water makes them more volatile, easier to damage but with extraordinary lethality. In its current state, the water prayer is inert, less capable of killing you but similarly impossible to budge by creatures of its power level or below.

Back in high school, Will had gone with his friends at the time to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. One of the exhibits there, “Into the Deep,” had included a display of plants and animals that survived in the most extreme of conditions. One of them had been something called a basket star, which looked like kind of like a bleached-out sea star with dead, branching anemone-like limbs that had more bony extrusions from them.

This looked sort of like that. A massive, dead starfish with tentacles. It sent an eerie chill up Will’s spine. On some level deep down, he knew he was looking at a being that should not exist in his world.

Then again, it was also a dead starfish with tentacles. Lots of sharp and bony tentacles.

“I think I’ve seen a video that started like this,” Will said.

“Like your games?” Caiyeri asked curiously. “Could you show me those, too?”

“Absolutely not.”

Will’s preparation for the oncoming bossfight was twofold. First, he had to check if his basic skills worked on it.

“One corrupted arrow, coming right up,” he muttered. 

His Evergreen Pendant, an item that he often forgot about when it wasn’t actively healing him, was a constant source of corruption thanks to the corrupted attunement he’d given it. It worked out great with Chaos Transfer, giving him a constant source of self-inflicted afflictions to give his arrow.

Will fired the corrupted arrow down at the bone-white flesh. It bounced off like the skin was solid steel.

“Are you sure you cast the spell?” Caiyeri asked.

“Wanna poke yourself with the arrow and find out?”

“Absolutely not.”

Second phase: Decaying Touch. Will teleported down to his arrow with Weapons Free, laying a hand on the flesh of the prayer.

The skin was rough and hard to the touch. If Will didn’t know better, he would assume it was a rock.

[Decaying Touch] must be used on a living creature or an inanimate item in your possession.

So the skin wasn’t considered alive, then. They’d assumed that and planned around it, but that did make this harder.

Will teleported back up, using Caiyeri’s conjured sword as an anchor.

“Nothing?” she asked.

“I’d like to see you do any better.”

“I’m here to keep you safe, not to kill the monster,” Caiyeri said. “I’ll remind you I’m still Bronze 9.”

“And I’m seven,” Will pointed out. “I’m below you.”

“Point taken, but you’re a dirty cheater.”

“I—“ Will thought of his corruption binding, which, while not yet explicitly forbidden by humankind, had been a pretty big supervillain sign to his friends—and, more importantly, bumped up his affinity by a full stage. “Yeah, fair.”

“In position,” Azure called. “Ready?”

Will applied an additional Chaos Transfer to each of a full quiver of arrows, imbuing them with silver-rank corruption.

“Whenever you are.”

#

“This is annoying,” Lily muttered to herself. “Don’t you think this is annoying?”

The thing that had once been Andrew grunted in something that might have been affirmation.

Water blocked her best tracking skills, especially this water. There was something about this lake—heavy mana enrichment? That definitely hadn’t been there before the end of the world. She would know, this had been one of her favorite places to summer back then.

“I’m losing his trail,” Lily grumped.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Lily had used her Eye of the Hunt skill to follow Will into Lake Monroe, and thanks to another one of her skills, Hunter’s Intuition, she’d found out that there had been others following her.

She’d caught their scent in the dungeon. Even though the entrance she’d taken was evidently far enough from Will’s that the water had washed away most of his mana trace, she could tell that the elves following her were in here too.

And there was a new scent. The one associated with the quest.

Water prayers. A sigil.

“You know,” she said, looking at the reward of a sigil, “I think there might be more interesting prey than just humans. What say we go bag ourselves some monsters? Maybe an elf or two along the way?”

Ex-Andrew grunted. Lily chose to assume that meant “yes.”

#

The entrances to the dungeon had to have been randomized. Rowan Two had entered Lake Monroe with the majority of his team, and he was down to just three others with him now.

After reading and dismissing the quest notice, he sent an announcement through the guild chat. Since it was a party of more than ten, responses would be limited at best, but the important part was that his message got through.

Rowan: The traitors are likely looking for the sigil. Find the guardians and look for the sigil if you cannot find the former. Kill every unaffiliated sapient on sight.

“Lystri,” he said, wading through the knee-deep water. “Do you have eyes on the nearest guardian?”

“Yes,” the elf said, trying to kneel but realizing that the water didn’t quite allow for that. “It’s a water prayer. There are people nearby it.”

“Then make haste,” Rowan said. “We may be able to find them.”

“They killed Qwayne,” Lystri said, hesitation clear in his voice.

“They did,” Rowan said, anger shining through his. “We will make them pay for that. Go. Don’t make me ask again.”

#

The plan was simple.

While Caiyeri and Will were chatting, Azure clambered on and around the walls, setting explosive traps. The nearest of them was a bit closer to Will than he was comfortable with, but oh well.

Azure counted down from three, then began activating his detonations.

It wasn’t just raw explosive power he offered. In fact, the landmine traps he laid on the walls were relatively weak, only weakening them instead of knocking them down. Will almost lost his footing on the opposite side of the innermost ring from the explosion, but it wasn’t that bad.

These, Azure had called the bait charges.

The actual signal to begin the fight came a second later. Another one of Azure’s detonation spells triggered, this one swapping the positions of two chunks of matter within a certain range. Azure selected a portion of the lake water in the fallen part of the temple and a chunk of air above the prayer’s starfish-like head.

Dozens of gallons of water splashed onto the water prayer, and as Will watched, blue water spread over its skin like wildfire, color soaking into every part of the prayer.

As it did, Will put his part of the plan into motion.

Killing so many goblins in the tutorial had proved to be extraordinarily fruitful. With the stealth bow in hand and a couple of spare goblin bows providing him the Sharpshooter skill via Destructive Synthesis, Will’s shots flew straight and true towards the center of the prayer’s body as he marked it for death.

[First Blood] doubled the power of your attack.

[Mark for Death] increased the power of your attack.

[Arrow] inflicted a level of [Corruption].

[Arrow] inflicted a level of [Charged].

Will immediately worsened the afflictions with a usage of The Bell Tolls, worsening corruption like he always did.

Smoky, charged distortion began to spread from the impact point—then, a quarter second later, the prayer acted out, flailing its limbs as it got its first taste of water in over a century.

Water prayers, Azure had stated, would go straight for the nearest body of water the moment they were awakened by their native element. With the walls around it preventing it from sensing the water in the lake, it would naturally aim for the water-filled humans.

Caiyeri tackled Will off the side of the wall as tentacled limbs slammed into it. Both of them went into free fall. Will felt his arm hit the wall, then his knees, then his nose, and then he fell into Caiyeri’s armored body, narrowly avoiding the spikes and quite possibly breaking his spine.

The elf’s skill, registering in Will’s mind as he instinctively used Pages of the Past, saved them both.

Skill: [Fortituous Dodge]

- Spell (luck, perception).

- Cost: high mana.

- Cooldown: 30 minutes.

Bronze

Gain exceptional understanding of your surroundings and a slight amount of telekinesis, allowing you to simulate the effects of extreme luck in a pinch.

That was the only reason he hadn’t been impaled in five places and was instead awkwardly wedged between Caiyeri’s armor, the blunt side of a spike, and a wall.

Ankle and arm are definitely both broken. A bronze-rank healing potion wouldn’t immediately fix that, but it didn’t need to.

Skill: [Mark for Death]

- Spell (affliction).

- Cost: moderate mana.

- Cooldown: 1 hour.

Bronze

Target any creature you can see or sense and mark them for death. During the next hour, the effectiveness of attacks and afflictions against the creature are increased, and you can track the creature through your minimap and through walls. This skill’s cooldown resets if the targeted creature dies.

[Soul Link] (bronze) - A fraction of all damage dealt to the marked creature is converted to healing for you.

Soul Link healed Will’s bones back to usability as he started clambering up the now much-shakier wall.

As he and Caiyeri got back atop the wall, they heard the rumbling crash of the remaining walls going down.

The point of the explosions Azure had created was not to kill anything but instead to weaken the walls enough for the water prayer to smash through them accidentally—without killing Will and Caiyeri in the process—and sense the lake that lay beyond.

It was dragging itself forward with alarming speed, but that alarm was within expectations.

Azure: Anyone want to add any more afflictions? It’s bleeding bad, but it’ll heal once it hits the water.

Will: No it won’t. We literally went over this like four times. Have you read [Corruption]?

Azure: You can read that?

“We can’t read afflictions we can’t use,” Caiyeri explained out loud.

Condition: [Corruption]

- All incoming damage is drastically increased.

- Continually applies chaos damage, which increases proportionally to the time the target has been corrupted.

- All attributes are reduced.

- Target cannot be magically healed.

Will had kind of been taking it for granted, but it really was a powerful condition.

A thunderous splash told them that the boss had made it to the water.

The next indication was the sudden glow above them. Will had been relying on the lights provided by the elves, and now—oh dear.

That was water. An entire temple full of mana-rich water about to crash on them.

“Do it!” Will shouted. “Just go!”

Azure yelled out an incantation from where he was hiding, pressed up against a wall that the prayer had neglected.

This was his ultimate skill, the equivalent to Will’s Ghostflame. It had been a show of good faith for him to reveal that he even had it.

Skill: [All or Nothing]

- Spell (detonation).

- Cost: extreme mana and stamina.

- Cooldown: none.

Silver

If you’ve spent everything and haven’t yet won, you’ve already lost.

Drains you entirely of mana and stamina. Creates a devastating explosion centered on its user that you are immune to. The power and range of this explosion scales linearly with the amount of mana spent. The damage that a target takes is increased by the following factors:

- Number of current afflictions

- Severity of current afflictions

- Levels below you

- Damage taken

A target that would not die thanks to the effects of this explosion instead takes no damage.

According to Azure, the monster would rapidly scale up in power as it gained more water, but it would also open itself up to attacks. This, right now, was their ideal moment to strike.

Even hanging behind a wall, Will’s vision went white as a wave of force rippled outwards, obliterating everything in its path. With corruption, wither, and charged all contributing to the incredible base power of the silver-rank skill, combined with its inability to heal the stacking chaos damage, the explosion was enough.

Your party has defeated [Awakened Water Prayer].

Will’s vision cleared just in time to see the conjured water crash down on them all.

Caiyeri activated her Emergency Shield, blocking the force of the downpour from crushing her, but Will wasn’t close enough. His ring of adaptive shielding triggered, giving him a forward-facing shield that could repel damage of up to silver-rank, but this wave of force wasn’t coming from above him.

To his surprise, though, Will wasn’t immediately swept away. In fact, all he felt was a heavy pressure on his shoulders. It was annoying, but it was little worse than being caught outside in a thunderstorm.

Skill: [Equilibrium Mantle]

- Passive (body).

- Cost: very low mana over time.

- Cooldown: none.

Bronze.

Nullifies extreme environmental conditions in a small radius around the user’s body. Drastically reduces the effect of adverse conditions.

Despite himself, Will grinned. I knew that was going to come in handy.

Caiyeri: Water breathing potions! Take them if you haven’t!

Azure: Already did.

Will only realized that he could still comfortably breathe underwater when the message came.

Will: Looks like I have a skill that means I don’t need to.

Caiyeri: Of course you do. Cheater.

Will: Somebody’s jealous LOL

Caiyeri: What did you just type?

Will: Oh, right, you don’t speak English.

Caiyeri: That just looks like three characters.

Will: Don’t worry about it.

Azure: Cut it out. The water hasn’t stopped.

What’s that supposed to mean?

Will looked up, then around at the now completely flooded temple. The completely flooded temple whose doors they’d opened wide. It wasn’t draining.

Will: Hm. This could be a bit annoying.

#

“Why aren’t we going in?” Lystri asked.

“You know why,” Rowan said. “Were you trained for underwater combat?”

“Mm. True.”

“Group Two was always meant as a life elf response force,” Rowan said. “Four or Nine would be better at handling themselves against a water prayer, but that isn’t our domain. We’ll wait for them to finish fighting the prayer, then surprise them when they leave, weakened.”

“That doesn’t strike me as very honorable,” Anyssa said.

“You and your misguided ideals,” Rowan sighed, shaking his head. “You know how it is. Say it with me.”

“There is no honor for the dead,” Anyssa said unhappily. “Fine.”

Rowan turned his attention to the doors, stretching his senses. It was Lystri who was their pathfinder, but Rowan’s magical perception had been heavily enhanced and trained with time. All of his senses had been.

The magic was nothing he didn’t expect. Two silver auras, one from a monster and one from a traitor. Two bronze auras, both from people who would be tortured until they were so dead not even a Lord could revive them.

It was through sound that he realized something was wrong. Faintly at first, he heard a sound that he thought was white noise. Roiling cosmic radiation or corruption, perhaps.

When the torrent of raging water burst out the gates of the temple, though, he realized how wrong he was.

The wave hit him like a battering ram, and it didn’t stop. He had the presence of mind to down a water breathing potion even as he was sent hurtling backwards into the cave tunnels.

Praise the Mother, Rowan thought, feeling true fear for the first time in years. This was a mistake.

#

The water around Lily’s feet hadn’t even gone up to her ankle, but it was starting to rise quickly.

“Huh,” she said. “This is a change of pace.”

She checked the quest.

- Eliminate the guardians of the temple. [1/3]

“Interesting,” she said. “Any thoughts, Andrew?”

“The abyss,” Andrew said, surprisingly coherent despite the groaning undertone. “Now is our time of opportunity. Now is the time of the hunt.”

Lily checked her minimap. There were red dots nearby.

Prey.

“A Hunter’s gotta do what a Hunter’s gotta do,” she said.

#

[Power] advanced to Bronze 3!

[Speed] advanced to Bronze 4!

[Affinity] advanced to Bronze 5!

[Soul] advanced to Bronze 7!

[Perception] advanced to Bronze 2!

300 silver credits have been added to your inventory.

Tablet of the Prayer has been added to your inventory.

Silver Monster Core has been added to your inventory.

Untranslated Texts have been added to your inventory.

Will: This prayer thing has great loot. Like, really good.

Azure: I have 47 minutes until I run out of air. Just because the torrent washed our ambushers away doesn’t mean we’re out of trouble.

Will: You can just take another potion, can’t you?

Azure: Not the point.

Caiyeri: No, he’s got a point. Although I will say I’d like to get somewhere drier. I can’t cast a spell if I can’t speak the incantation.

Will: Okay. Just give me a second. I’d like to affix this while it’s still safe.

Of his skills, there was only one category that had only one skill. The Tablet of the Prayer was a rare, though its description was vague.

Hopefully it would have some synergy with Balance or Perception.

Steeling himself, Will selected the option to affix the skill.

#

“You again,” the Hunger said.

“Me again,” Will said. He smirked. “Let’s have a conversation.”

“A conversation,” the Hunger said, disbelieving.

“Yeah,” Will replied. “Circumstances are changing, old man. I’ve got the upper hand now. Let me tell you why.”