[System Decay] Chapter 53: Temptation (Patreon)

The problem with monster cores, as Will understood it, was that they would corrupt his progression over time and force him to stall out at gold. Presumably, the same issues would apply to his items, but the nice thing about those was that Will could always get more. His growth items were all rare or lower, and he doubted that those were going to be the peak of what he could get.

After some quick mental calculus, Will decided that the opportunity costs of keeping his entire external kit at bronze was lower than using his spare cores to raise them up now and having to re-gear when he hit the peak of gold.

Maybe he was getting a bit ahead of himself with assuming that he would hit gold in the first place, but he figured it was better to think of what he would do in the future now than regret it later.

The long and the short of it was that he had no qualms emptying out every last bronze monster core in his inventory and drawing his slayer sword.

“Ooh, nice sword!” Hua said. “Where’d you get it?”

“Elf group,” Will said.

“You have friendly elves where you’re at?” Haoyu asked. “Ours were in the middle of an active war with a bunch of poison elementals. Those elementals weren’t much nicer.”

“I don’t know if I’d call them friendly,” Will said. “One or two of them—er, sorry, exactly one of them decided to ally with me. I got the sword off a body.”

“Oooooh,” Hua repeated, running a hand along the edge of the blade. She didn’t seem like she wanted to steal it, and Will was pretty sure she’d regret trying more than him, so he let her. Excitable high schoolers had little enough to be happy about now. “So you’re not one of those lame wankers who says not to kill the people trying to kill you, yeah?”

“There are people like that?” Will asked. “Here? There’s no way.”

“Number 93 to get here,” Haoyu recited. “Adam Riser. Bronze 10. He had a whole spiel about how we should be trying to work together and focus on reaching a peaceful solution.”

“Hey, I’m not opposed to working together,” Hua said. “When someone’s cornering you in a dark alley and trying to chain you to a wall, though…”

Haoyu’s expression darkened. “My only regrets over the people I’ve killed are that I did it too quickly.”

“And here I thought I’d gone full edgelord,” Will said, defusing the acerbic joke with a smile. “How do you apply the cores? I’ve never used one before.”

“Really?” Hua said. “That’s odd. Your power seems really concentrated. High bronze, at least.”

Will tried not to let his composure slip. Nobody had been able to tell that he was silver so far, and he was going to hold that card for as long as he could, even if these two were nice.

“I’ve been in some pretty intense situations,” he explained. “I’m still a bit behind, but I’ve been able to keep up.”

That was, as any good lie was, not entirely false. He had been fighting for his life basically every day since he’d entered the tutorial, but that hadn’t been all. Will’s Marked For Death attribute made him advance much faster than average when he killed other Users, and Silver Forerunner had granted him even more speed in leveling up, though the title no longer applied now that he was actually at silver rank. Will hoped he’d be able to keep pace without it.

Oh, and of course, he wasn’t behind at all. If anything, given how much more refined his attributes were than the core users who forced them up, he was ahead of everyone. Not that he was going to reveal that.

“The process is pretty simple,” Haoyu said. “For yourself, just think about absorbing it real hard and a prompt will pull up. For your items, there’s a basic ritual.”

It was basic indeed, because the Fang siblings were able to help him learn it in minutes.

Would you like to add a bronze-rank monster core to [Slayer Sword]? [YES / NO]

Sure thing.

The growth item had been pushing the edge of bronze already, and though one core didn’t push it over, Will had a lot more than one core.

This wasn’t going to be viable as a mid-fight surprise to rank an item up, sadly. Though the ritual was quick, it still required drawing out a circle of some kind with chalk or a pencil or similar implement and infusing it with mana.

That said, it was startlingly effective. Will had known that he could increase the rank of his gear with credits at a prohibitive cost, but the monster cores were more efficient by far. It only took about a dozen bronze-rank ones to finish leveling the sword up.

[Slayer Sword] advanced to silver rank!

“You have a lot of cores,” Hua said, not quite able to hide the greed in her voice.

“Hmm? Yeah, I do,” Will said. “You two have been a pretty great help, and I think we can work together in the future. If I give you some of my spare cores, will you mind not killing me on sight the next time we meet?”

“If we’re not in a straight one-on-one, mate, we’d be happy to help you,” Haoyu said. “You’re the first person today who hasn’t either tried to bully us into submission or treated us like fucking royalty.”

“Language,” Hua said.

“Shouldn’t I be the one telling you that?”

Will checked the item he’d upgraded, happy that he’d at least formed one solid alliance so far.

Item: Slayer Sword (attuned)

Rare, silver (growth).

Current maximum charges: 17.

[Shimmering Edge] - This weapon requires a constant stream of mana while it is active. While it is active, the sword illuminates its surroundings and has a vastly improved cutting edge. Critical hits do more damage. You may increase the mana stream to enhance the edge.

[Radiant Burst] (bronze) - Successful strikes with the sword charge this ability. When the sword has more than 7 charges, the next hit is a critical hit. On a critical hit, you can have this sword expend all charges in a burst of radiant energy, dealing explosive damage to the target and blinding those in a small radius. The attuned User is immune to this effect.

At silver rank, you can voluntarily use [Radiant Burst] with any number of charges. You can also not choose to use it on a critical hit.

[Unstoppable] (silver) - This weapon does increased damage with each charge. This effect is enhanced if the charges were all obtained against the same type of enemy, and it is enhanced even further if all charges were obtained against the same enemy.

“Wow,” Will said. “I can see where this could come in handy.”

He could even see the dangerous appeal that it had for the Users themselves. If leveling items was this easy, why not apply it to yourself?

But Will didn’t plan on having to restart when he hit gold. He was in this to the end.

“That’s a great perk,” Haoyu said, peering at Will’s weapon. “I have a glaive with the same property. It scales so well against big bosses.”

“Sick,” Will said, testing the weight of the new weapon. He could feel the way its aura had been slightly unbalanced with the cores, and decided that if he got a truly amazing item, he wasn’t going to give it the same treatment.

Unstoppable was a great perk for fighting bosses, but Will already had ways to deal with them with corruption and his other afflictions. He’d been hoping for more properties that could help his AoE damage, but oh well. The name slayer sword didn’t exactly conjure the idea of a weapon meant to take out armies.

He used more bronze cores and a handful of silver cores to raise his jumping ring as well. That leveled quicker than his slayer sword had, a result of it being common and less complex.

The jumping ring had requested 1,500 bronze credits to give a third charge of the Jump skill, which the cores seemed to fulfill before elevating it to silver.

Item: [Jumping Ring] (corrupted) (attuned)

Common, silver (growth)

Grants the ability to use the [Jump] skill at silver rank up to four times per day.

That was a pretty simple upgrade, which was about what Will had expected. Silver-rank Jump had a massive increase in power, though, which he was super happy to see. His Wind Walker skill had been on the verge of rendering this item redundant, but now he could leap dozens of feet in the air to start off his aerial fights.

A small crowd had gathered, with a bunch of people trying very hard to not look like they were spying on Will’s item progression. Annoyed, Haoyu went out to go shoo them away as Will applied silver-rank monster cores to his last bronze-rank item. This one had barely been advanced and was more complex than the jumping ring, so his bronze-rank cores wouldn’t level it up enough.

Item: Evergreen Pendant (corrupted) (attuned)

Uncommon, silver.

Greatly increases the healing done through lifesteal. Attuning to this item also grants you the [Greater Regeneration] skill.

[Greater Regeneration] (silver) - Quickly recover while not in combat. Stabilizes you at the verge of death.

Again, not a huge buff, but it would be a great quality of life booster. Not relying on health potions after coming out of combats as much would make it easier on his credit balance to survive, giving him more money to purchase weapons and gear as needed.

Even with cores, advancing items was costly. Will was left with only a dozen or so silver cores and twice that in bronze. Spending more of them on the now silver-rank items revealed that the effect that they had on advancing them had greatly decreased, so he decided to hold to his promise instead, indicating to the Fang siblings that they could have them.

“Thanks, uh,” Hua said, clearly having forgotten that Will had never said his name, “uh, hold one…”

“Will,” he said with a smile, extending his hand. “Keep up the good work. Thanks for telling me about this. For your information, I’d like to extend a bit of my own. There’s a gold-rank monster in the trial with us. Be careful. It gets stronger with every kill. I’d advise running if you see it.”

“Got it,” Haoyu said, dark eyes working to process that information. “I appreciate the gesture. Good luck finding a good sponsor.”

Not sigil, Will noted. Haoyu could tell that he was sporting one.

That spoke to at least a bit of aura sense. Will could tell that both Fangs were sigil-holders as well, the aura that wasn’t quite theirs protruding from their core.

As he departed, his sharpened Perception caught Hua and Haoyu talking to each other.

“That guy is evil as shit,” Hua said, trying and failing to keep her voice quiet. “You saw it too, right?”

“Evil-aligned doesn’t mean anything,” Haoyu replied, similarly not quiet enough. “Remember what the good-aligned people tried to do to Chelsea? Judge him as he is, not for the aura.”

Will turned around, staring at Haoyu dead in the eyes. “I know you two aren’t dumb enough to forget the chat feature exists. I appreciate the show of confidence, but maybe be a little more subtle about it next time.”

Haoyu snorted. “Yeah, you got us. See you on the field, mate.”

Will waved, returning to Liam and Caiyeri.

“Well,” he said with a sigh. “I can go around and talk to a few more, but that’s every top-ranker in here. Jury’s out on Lu Jie, I think Blurr won’t directly act against us but won’t help, and the Fangs are just nice, resourceful kids that’re better at playing this deadly game than a lot of people will think they are.”

“The older Fang is almost your age,” Caiyeri pointed out.

“Shut it.”

“Could have told you that about the Fang siblings,” Liam said. “I never saw ‘em face to face, but they’re practically superheroes down under. They stabilized an entire region of the country basically on their own. They’re leading a big settlement there.”

“Good for them,” Will said genuinely. “I hope they do well.”

“Focus on yourself first,” Caiyeri said. “Whether or not others succeed has no bearing on whether or not you’ll come out of this alive and with a sigil.”

“Well duh,” Will said. “The same to you, though I guess you can drop out without repercussions.”

“I’m not dropping out,” she said fiercely.

“Of course you aren’t. Anyway, the two of you get any information about the next challenge?”

“Some,” Liam said. “I got in touch with some of my lads in other waiting rooms. They might not all be the same, but they’ve actually started announcing the general bent of what’s going to happen.”

“Why would the people who arrived later get information earlier?” Will asked. “Makes no sense.”

“Possibly to make up for the fact that they have much less in the way of facilities and less time to rest,” Caiyeri guessed. “The trial attempts to remain fair even when it rewards the victors. There are records from the last one, though they’re incomplete at best.”

“Well, if system chat works through waiting rooms, that means about nothing,” Will said. “What’ve we got?”

“It’s going to be a group-based treasure hunt with random groups,” Liam said. “No more info past that, sadly. My mate thinks that he finished too early to get more details.”

“Random groups,” Will said flatly. “That makes alliances incredibly important, doesn’t it?”

“Only if you’re weak,” Caiyeri said. At Will’s glare, she conceded, “Yes, it does. This makes the situation more complicated for me, but I am confident in my ability to deal with this caliber of User. You should worry about yourself.”

“You’re not going to try to repair your relationships with people?” Will asked.

“No,” Liam said. “The strong ones know what I can do. Anyone at my level is going to be put off by my death element.”

Will had never been more glad that he’d learned how to suppress his aura enough to hide his elements.

“The humans here have already made their decision on me,” Caiyeri said. “They will avoid me or I will kill them. Simple enough.”

“That’s cold,” Liam said. “Respect to you for that.”

“You two got over your beef that fast?” Will asked.

“Birds of a feather,” Liam said, shrugging.

“We made fun of you,” Caiyeri deadpanned. “Turns out that works as a bonding point across races too.”

“Wow,” Will said, hand going to his heart. “I am wounded, I tell you. Deeply, deeply wounded.”

“She tells me she’s a fan of games of chance,” Liam said. “There are three of us now, so we can actually play a game.”

“You have cards?” Will asked.

Liam slapped a pack down from his inventory. “Texas Hold’em. You know it?”

“Of course I do,” Will said. “This one, though…”

“I can learn quickly,” Caiyeri boasted.

“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” Will said.

#

“Caiyeri…” Will trailed off, looking at the mass of bronze coins in front of her. They’d picked a currency that mattered less to them now knowing that they might have to use the credits later, but still, it kind of stung to lose so much so quickly. “Are you cheating?”

“Me?” Caiyeri said innocently, pointing at herself. “No. Of course not.”

Will raised an eyebrow, activating Pages of the Past.

“Unless using Rigged Dice counts as not cheating,” Will said.

“If it helps, I was also cheating,” Liam said. His pile was considerably smaller than Caiyeri’s, but it wasn’t like Will’s, who’d been almost entirely cleaned out. “Just normally. No magic needed.”

“You two suck,” Will declared. “Aren’t you going to pay for this, Caiyeri?”

“You do not know how many games I lost at the settlement,” Caiyeri said. “I’m owed a win or two now.”

“A luck-based class, hmm?” Liam sighed. “I’d kill for something like that. My elements are useful, but by god are they a hassle when talking to other people.”

“Next life, perhaps,” Caiyeri said. “At least you don’t need a luck element to scam this moron.”

“Amen,” Liam agreed.

“Fuck both of you,” Will said. “You know, if I see you in the field, I’m going to—“

The first Main Challenge is beginning.

You have been randomly assigned into groups of three.

Your group is: [PLEASE WAIT. EXECUTOR TOKEN DETECTED. REFACTORING.]

What the hell? Will had gotten the Executor Token, which didn’t have a description or even a rank, after getting a second sigil, but it hadn’t seemed like it was going to have any relevance until now.

#

“The corruption wielder has a token,” Dread Executor Azathoth, friend of Ramiel, tenth of his name, mused. He watched, providing a guiding hand as the system changed the random conditions to ones that were most certainly not random. “I do not think he will survive the coming trial.”

“They said the same about you,” Dread Executor Ramiel replied. “Just watch, my friend.”

#

Refactoring complete. Disregard previous messages.

Your group is: [Lily Teneli], [Fortress], and [William Li-Brown].

Teleportation to Main Challenge #1 will initiate in sixty seconds.

Shit. Wasn’t this supposed to be random? Will recognized one of those names all too well.

“Don’t take stupid risks,” Will told Caiyeri. “Let’s help each other out when we can out there.”

“If it doesn’t harm me, yes,” Caiyeri said. “There’s no guarantee we will be together. Try not to die in the first thirty seconds.”

“Remember the kaiju,” Will said. “You see that, you run.”

“We’re not children,” Caiyeri said. “I know, quite possibly better than you do.”

“Good luck, everyone,” Liam interjected, a huge grin on his face. “I look forward to seeing what it’s like when you’re going all—“

Teleportation initiated.

Your destination is [Archipelago].

The main challenge will now be released.

Main Challenge #1: Catching Water

There are wild changelings loose across every arena. Untouched by the system, they are not sapient, prone to chaos exposure, and extraordinarily difficult to kill. They are even harder to take alive.

Parties that are alive and possess a living changeling after 72 hours will pass the challenge.

Difficulty: Silver

- Capture a changeling. [0/1]

Reward: 100 silver credits per changeling. Full refresh of health, mana, and stamina. Further rewards will be revealed during the challenge.

Penalty for Failure: ???

#

Deep in space, floating without a care for which planet’s orbit she was in, Ayla felt her connection to the Beyond shiver. Even without her skills functioning, even out here in the place she’d been freed into, that connection would never disappear.

Oh, gods, she thought, closing her eyes. Not this early.

She would recognize that sensation anywhere.

Otherworlders returning to their home planet.

Earth was not ready.