[System Decay] Chapter 47: Last Minute (Patreon)

Lysbeth Brooksoul was not the last scout sent towards the settlement termed by Levy Anderson as Survivor Hill, but she was the first and only one of the Brooksouls to enter it. Nymlera did not want to risk another one of her daughters, especially not the sigil holder, but she was willing to spend the lives of her footsoldiers and constructs with reckless abandon.

Will and Caiyeri dealt with them. A fair chunk of the groups that came to map out the settlement weren’t even composed of silver-ranks, which was nice. They were both capable of fighting a single silver-ranker if the deck was stacked in their favor, but a group of them would be a problem.

The abyss elves never sent a sortie, which was also nice. Caiyeri guessed that they didn’t know where she was, and that they would much rather prepare for the oncoming trial than just chase a bunch of humans down.

Killing the elven Users stacked up experience for Will, though he was still behind Lily Teneli and Kenneth McCarthy. They were both core users, if he had to guess, and that meant that they functionally had a head start on him.

Neither of them were silver yet, though. Only two people on the planet were. Lu Jie and Natalie Blurr were the world’s first humans to break through to silver rank, achieving the feat with just under forty-eight hours left to the trial.

Will asked Caiyeri what the barrier to breaking through to silver was, but she didn’t have a good answer for him.

“I have inklings,” she said, “but the Abyss Nation believes that so long as we have strong foundations, figuring things out ourselves is the best path.”

“That’s stupid as shit,” Will said. “Literally everyone knows that the best way for a rich family to raise rich kids is to cheat and give their kids a shit ton of money.  Shouldn’t the same be here?”

“Why do you think I left?” she asked. “Do you think it was just for you?”

“I sure hope it wasn’t just for me,” Will said. “I mean, I’d say your taste in men is pretty good if it was, but chasing young love never ends well. Ask Juliet.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Caiyeri said. “I had hoped to find a manual or a mentor of some kind who could assist me through the ranks. Failing that, I was going to evolve myself. My knowledge will give me an excellent base for my powers as I rise through the ranks.”

“But you don’t know how to actually advance?” Will sighed. “Alright.”

He did have a way to advance—he’d extracted it out of the Hunger during his one-sided “negotiation” with him. It was the same type of power that had granted Axl one last boost during Will’s final fight against him. 

Skill: [Desperate Stand]

- Blessing (sigil).

- Cost: none.

- Cooldown: One time use.

Diamond

Draws upon the power of the Hunger, infusing you with divine favor. Can be used to force a rank progression when at the highest level in any rank below diamond.

Will was the same level now that Axl had been back when he’d been an unformed, he realized. The rate at which he’d progressed didn’t quite feel real. In just weeks, he’d accomplished what had taken the Carrion Lord his entire life.

He wasn’t going to waste this blessing the same way Axl had, though. Silver was too low of a power level for him to use a diamond skill on reaching it.

Apart from the occasional scouts, though, Will just kept on training. The so-called monster surge would have been a good way to level up if he’d been a full rank lower, but as it was, the tutorial’s goblin gangs had been more of a threat.

Will could see why his tutorial had been considered extreme difficulty now, given that it compared to something that was still actively a threat to mid-bronzes while he’d still been unformed.

Still, it didn’t seem that difficult to handle the monsters, and sure enough, as Caiyeri’s brutal training tactics started to percolate through the settlement, the members of Survivor Hill started getting better at killing them.

The others didn’t take to her lessons as well as Will had, though, and it took him a while to figure out why.

There were a number of reasons. Firstly, there was a lot less desperation, which made sense given that they had a community of other bronze-ranks to fight alongside. Plus, the enemies weren’t a rank higher than him.

Other than that, though, it appeared that Will’s lack of time to fully commit to his martial arts background had helped. With a bit of experience and knowledge, he’d had the fundamentals of fighting philosophy down, giving him a good foundation. Others who were more proficient in that area, though, found themselves at odds with the unconventional way that Caiyeri utilized the system attributes to their fullest, which meant they had to be deprogrammed from their existent way of thinking before even attempting to learn the new techniques that the elf had to offer.

Will’s training primarily consisted of running down the strongest boss monsters in each wave and changing up his fighting style. Normally, he battled monsters from a distance, kiting them around and using quick teleports to do hit-and-runs.

That wasn’t great for training his Power or Perception, though, so Will took up melee fighting.

Against bronze-rank monsters, his bronze-rank Thunder Wraith’s Grasp was actually devastatingly effective. With a level of corruption on them, his fists gained a level of electric amplification that far outclassed anything he’d done before. Up close, without teleports, Will had to be a lot more conscious of what the enemy monsters would do.

Granted, his silver-rank ring of adaptive shielding gave him a lot more wiggle room to play with. Every time he messed up and misread an attack, he had the reactive aspect of that to deflect the damage. Will also had his Favored Element ritual set towards poison, which seemed to be the most common type of boss monster attack.

Still, learning attack patterns on the fly was great practice for his Perception stat, which rocketed up through bronze over the course of a mere few days. Pages of the Past gave him insight into what their attacks actually did, which helped, and Time in a Bottle gave him the extra breaks needed to break down what action corresponded to which attack.

The first night of uninterrupted sleep in over a week came as a surprise—though it shouldn’t have—and it was amazing. Will was so refreshed when he woke up that he wondered if the Hunger had somehow managed to lift a curse when he’d forced the god into a contract.

There was an air of tension about the settlement. Nobody else had a Champion’s Pass, nor did anybody want one. Lev had entertained the thought for a bit, but had then decided against it.

“I’m not you or this elf,” Lev had explained. “I can’t leave the village leaderless while chasing a tournament I know I can’t win.”

Will’s primary concern was that once they were gone, the life elves would make a move. Sure, Thalia would be gone alongside any other sigil-holders they had, but the main thing bugging him was the Devouring Gestalt. That freaky human-centipede-esque monster had been Silver 8 the last time he’d seen it, and it went without saying that it was going to get even stronger as it consumed more and more elves and humans.

He wasn’t a hundred percent sure why they hadn’t sent it after Survivor Hill, but he guessed that it might have come from the conspicuous disappearance of Lysbeth Brooksoul, eight bronze-rank, and two silver-rank life elf scouts.

That boded poorly, though. If there were scouts in the area, didn’t that indicate that they were going to make a push eventually? Will didn’t know whether he and Caiyeri would be able to fight the monster on even grounds, especially at their current rank, let alone the settlement without them.

His answer came on the final day.

#

Nymlera wanted to make use of the ultimate construct while she could.

They had been waiting for the beginning of this new cycle for a long, long time. She had known that the day of reckoning would eventually come, for Arcadia had failed to create any Users powerful enough to further the Contract.

There was no guarantee she would survive the Trial of the Champion, and while that was a risk she was willing to take, going to the grave without witnessing the perfection it could create would be regretful indeed.

With the quantity of bodies absorbed into the gestalt, it was going to be a fearsome force indeed. It could not exist without a pilot, and for a time, Nymlera had been that pilot.

Now, though, it would be the sacred duty of another. After her departure to the Trial of the Champion, even if she came back a victor, there would be another one of her people in control.

It wasn’t supposed to bother one as great and wise as her, but it did.

There would be an allowance for this. She could inflict one final act upon the humans before the gestalt was left to rampage under the control of another.

All of the sigil-holders would be transported to the Trial at the same time, she knew, but in the window of time immediately before, she would be able to hold control over the gestalt.

The corruption wielder was going to render his settlement defenseless. In those last seconds, Nymlera would revel in his fear as he realized that he would be able to do nothing to protect his people.

“You took my daughter from me,” she murmured. “An eye for an eye. Family for family.”

#

Even though it was a scant few days, Will got into the rhythm of working with the Survivor Hill group. For the most part, he operated alone, but he spearheaded group offensives once or twice and let others take the lead when they wanted to, spending the time practicing his jump-glide combo. 

After the first time he used the Jump skill, he attuned the ring, turning it corrupted in the hope that making it a growth item would let him use it more than once a day. It did, but the cost to level up the ring was prohibitive.

Unlike the slayer sword, which seemed to have a mind of its own, the ring had a bar that he figured out he could fill up with credits. Pouring a full thousand credits into it only gave it a single extra charge, and he didn’t have that much money to spare.

That said, two charges a day wasn’t bad at all. If things got desperate, he had emergency funds to fall back on to give it some more.

Of course, everything went tits up right at the finish line.

#

[Power] advanced to Bronze 8!

[Speed] advanced to Bronze 9!

[Perception] advanced to Bronze 6!

[Resistance] advanced to Bronze 8!

[Affinity] advanced to Bronze 7!

Will had never been more glad for the effects of his Death attribute. The ability to stay in fights for way longer than he should’ve been able to meant that he was still a monster on the battlefield long after everyone else had to tap out to restore themselves with mana and stamina potions.

And it made it particularly useful in cases like this, where an additional monster tried to mop up the tired defenders after the initial wave was done.

Except this wasn’t any monster. It was the height of the hill giant he’d just solo killed with a hefty dose of corruption and a decisive usage of The Bell Tolls, though it was longer, fleshier, and… familiar.

Will’s aura sense was growing stronger at close range, but the creature was far away enough that all he could rely on was his sight.

That was all he needed, though. The centipedal form had changed, but he would recognize that monstrosity anywhere. It had gone from a hundred legs to six primary bony ones, scuttling its lizard-like body forward.

It was much larger than it had been the last time he’d seen it, and it was clearly heavy enough that it tore a trail through the grass it dragged its body through. Standing over thirty feet tall and twice that in length, the many-armed flesh abomination could have been straight out of a 1980s creature feature.

Shit.

He checked the amount of time remaining on the trials. It had swapped to hours, minutes, and seconds after they’d hit the one day mark, and he and Caiyeri had been doing the last bit of safe training they could get before jumping headfirst into the trials.

In [23] minutes and [58] seconds, the Trial of the Champion will begin.

There are [1,560] competitors holding a sigil.

“Shit,” he repeated, out loud this time. “That’s not nearly enough time.”

Will held a hand out and looted the hill giant, using the other to open his interface and tap into the group message he had with Lev, Allie, and Trevor.

Will: Trouble on the horizon. Notify the settlement.

Trevor: On it.

Allie: Need assistance?

Will paused before typing his next thoughts out.

Assistance? Well, it was true that he didn’t want to fight this beast on his own, but looking out at the monster approaching them…

Lev: Holy hell, that’s an honest-to-god kaiju.

Lev put it better than Will would have. Its power radiated off of it so much that even without his aura senses refined enough to detect it at such a distance, he could tell that there was a magical creature in that distance from the shree distortion it had on the air around it.

Will: No. Focus on getting everyone without a combat class ready to evacuate. I have 20 minutes or so remaining. I’ll hold it off, but everything after that is going to be up to you. You need to get the hell out of here.

The one benefit of the creature being so large was that it wasn’t terribly fast. It was conceivable that with enough movement skills, the people in Survivor Hill could continue to prove the former half of the name true, if not the latter.

Lev: Shit. Yeah. Trev, Allie, let’s get moving.

Trevor: On it.

Allie: Already am.

Will tabbed out of that chat window and went to message Caiyeri.

“Look at that,” the elf said from besides him. “To think they accuse the Abyss of profaning the Mother’s words.”

Will repressed the urge to jump. He hadn’t even noticed her.

“To be fair, all they’re doing is subjecting people to fates worse than death,” Will said. “Corruption is a different beast.”

Caiyeri looked at him pointedly.

“Point taken,” he said, dipping his head. “So. What are we going to do about that?”

“What we can,” she said, conjuring the rest of her armor set and taking off.

That was answer enough. Will was half a moment behind her, quickly catching up to her with judicious use of his movement skills. He didn’t break out the jump-glide, not yet—he’d already used that combo once during the previous fight, and he didn’t want to exhaust his second Jump usage before the fight even began.

As they got closer, even Caiyeri’s grim optimism flagged. The sheer power emanating from it was an order of magnitude more overwhelming than even Axl’s had been in comparison.

Once they got within a few hundred feet of it, Will was able to use Identify.

He almost wished he couldn’t have.

Devouring Gestalt. Level: Gold 0.

This is a clan boss.

Kill count: eleven silver-rank abyss elves. Twenty-one bronze-rank life elves. Sixteen bronze-rank humans. Forty-five unformed-rank humans.

You didn’t kill it fast.

Unsolicited piece of advice: run.

“If that’s what profaning a god’s words looks like, it’d be pretty damn nice to have some heresy on our side,” Will said.

“That’s your job, not mine,” Caiyeri said. “Who defied a god, again?”

Will wasn’t even sure if the monster noticed them getting closer until its body shifted, looking directly at them. Eight protrustions on the bony tumor that could charitably be called its face scythed open, revealing pitch-black orbs the size of Will’s torso staring at them.

Fuck.

“Those are intelligent eyes,” Caiyeri called. “It won’t be a dumb beast.”

Double fuck.

The gestalt did not charge so much as it morphed, flesh rearranging around its skeleton to create massive bone whips that it hurled towards the two of them.

“Down!”

Will heeded Caiyeri’s call, using the active form of his ring of adaptive shielding to negate the bludgeoning damage that the bone would smash him with.

A whip hit the shield like a wrecking ball, sending Will tumbling into the air. He caught himself with his Hunger Phantasm, smoothing out his fall into a tactical glide back onto his feet. Will landed over a hundred feet back from the position he’d been stricken from.

Caiyeri: Retreating to you.

Her Emergency Shield had fully shattered, and she didn’t seem to want to stay within reach of the whips, which blurred back and forth faster than even Will’s enhanced vision could track.

They had barely been within range of the whips before the monster had started using them, which was the only reason they were still alive right now.

“Christ,” Will said. “This thing’s insane.”

“Even if we’re at the peak of bronze, the gestalt is still two ranks above us,” Caiyeri said. “Those are two very hard to cross barriers.”

“I have the Ghostflame skill, which does true damage,” Will said. “That’ll ignore those barriers, right?”

“Yes, but I’ve seen that skill in action before. You need to be up close to use it. Even you can’t be arrogant enough to think you can survive that.”

“I wish.” In fact, just a few moments of seeing it had convinced Will that telling the others to prepare for evacuation was a good play. He was well versed with punching above his weight class already, but this was a beast on an entirely different level.

“They—careful!” Caiyeri interrupted herself in the middle of her own sentence, snapping down on an item that sent her jerking backwards as if pulled by a rope.

Following her warning, Will leapt back as well, using his adaptive shield to protect his front.

A moment later, a deadly sharp bone spear longer than his entire body buried itself in the boulder the two of them had just been hiding behind, splitting it in two.

Will: Keep it away from the settlement. I’ll try to get a level of corruption on it. That could be the difference maker.

Caiyeri: Got it.

One of the biggest points that Caiyeri had drilled into Will—and by extension, the entirety of Survivor Hill—had been adaptability. Unlike martial arts fighters, Users had to live with the reality that they could be facing something they’d never seen before on any given day. Magic was a field as broad and deep as the ocean, and any one person could only ever shovel out a few buckets of it for themself.

Thus, they were easily capable of adapting their gameplan despite having been so reliant on the same one for the majority of the time they’d been active together. Will and Caiyeri began engaging in a deadly game of keep-away, taunting the monster into coming towards them and avoiding the settlement while staying out of range of its deadly bone-whips.

Just like Caiyeri had said earlier, though, the gestalt was no dumb beast. When they tried to lead it entirely away from the town, it just ignored them and turned towards it, prompting a despearate reroute. Will used the remaining charge on his jumping ring to propel himself into the air, forming a wing glider with the phantasm as he did.

To regain its attention, he flew straight into the area that he’d determined was the kaiju’s range.

Will promptly ate a bone-whip to the torso for it, shattering his silver-rank shield and depleting his mana to critical levels. He tumbled to the ground, breaking his fall with a quick redistribution of the phantasm. Even with all that protecting him, he felt something in his leg break. Thankfully, the pain resistance he’d honed through repeated torture sessions with the Hunger kept him from losing his composure as he downed a health potion.

He was running out of mana already, and he still hadn’t landed a single hit. Will’s Mark for Death languished on the beast, unused. Will tried firing his bow every now and again, but its reactive defenses were too strong. The bone-whips were as powerful on defense as they were on offense, knocking corrupted arrows aside before they could even get close to hitting it.

Caiyeri: Get up, Will.

Will: Trying.

With the gestalt focused on them again, Will changed tactics. As he ran, easily outpacing it but wary for the ridiculously fast spears, he sent pieces of his phantasm towards it, keeping it immaterial.

In the Flesh worked even when the phantasm wasn’t physical, and he could use touch range spells through the immaterial shadows.

Will: Give me an opening.

Caiyeri: Make good use of it.

The elf turned around, shouted an obscenity that didn’t quite translate—unless she was, in fact, just saying you are the one who reproduces with pigs—and fired six shots from the seven shooter.

Every last one of them landed on Explosive Shot, Caiyeri’s skills rigging the dice to force the random selection.

A firework of light burst into existence behind Will. While he had no illusions about the bronze-rank bullets actually being able to deal lasting damage to the gold-rank beast, it provided enough of a distraction for him to shift a pebble-sized chunk of hunger phantasm over to the gestalt and activate Decaying Touch.

You have inflicted a level of bronze-rank [Corruption] on [Devouring Gestalt].

[Devouring Gestalt]’s [Corruption Resistance] (Bronze) negated the effects of [Decaying Touch] (Bronze).

“Oh, god fucking damn it.”

Will: No good. I’d have to get a solid [Chaos Transfer] in for this to work, and I don’t think I can get anywhere near it.

Caiyeri: Was a good try.

The timer ticked down further. Will was surprised to see how long they’d already been fighting. There were now less than fifteen minutes left.

That felt like both too long and too little. On the one hand, they were barely surviving as it was. Will was quickly approaching a critical point where he’d have to take a silver-rank mana potion just to keep going, and he’d already taken a bunch of damage. On the other, they needed to buy as much time as they could for the others to leave the settlement. Even then, it might not be enough. So long as the gestalt was in the real world and looking for targets, the survivors of Survivor Hill were going to have to keep on running.

Wait. As long as the gestalt was here, and not elsewhere.

Will: I have a potentially suicidal idea.

Caiyeri: You can just say “I have an idea.” With you, they usually mean the same thing.

Will: If you don’t want to do it, you could’ve just said no.

Caiyeri: I never said no. Tell me how we’re getting ourselves killed this time.