[System Decay] Chapter 55: Beached (Patreon)

Fortress’ explanation was long-winded and dramatic. Will spent most of the explanation meditating, focusing on his senses to stay aware of the beach around him. A lot of the story was fluff, and though it was enjoyable enough to listen to, Will didn’t really need a full breakdown of how Fortress’ forefathers had horrible failed to prevent a changeling threat from obliterating key members of his race.

Lily was a lot more into it than he was. She kept asking questions about details, her eyes sparkling with joy. Will wondered if she was excited because she was a fantasy nerd like him but much more focused on the lore of the world that had hit her… or if she just enjoyed hearing about acts of brutal violence.

Over time, Fortress managed to get to the point, filling in the blanks of Will’s knowledge.

Changelings did sound like they’d be a massive pain in the ass to capture or even identify in the first place. Every race had their own set of unique traits that weren’t always explicitly mentioned by the system. Humans could absorb monster cores, elementals were heavily resistant or immune to their own elements, elves could do more with their own stats… and changelings, apparently, could copy other traits.

Their entire gimmick was, as the name suggested, morphing into another race. They couldn’t perfectly mimic them, and there was almost always some level of imperfection in how closely they copied racial abilities, but they could be anyone, anywhere. Changelings didn’t even have a true form—no disguise removal spell would find them.

Will suspected that a close inspection of their auras would reveal that they had more differences than would appear at first blush even, but he was going to have to wait until they actually encountered one to be sure. There were definitely noticeable differences between Fortress’ elemental aura and his and Lily’s human ones, which his continued training allowed him to pick out.

[Perception] advanced to Silver 0!

That had been a long time coming. The difference between bronze and silver perception wasn’t actually that great for Will—probably because the rest of his body had already adapted to silver, and this was just his final attribute locking into the same rank. It came with an increase in clarity of his aura detection, the difference like he’d had a slight prescription before and had just now gotten his eyeglasses.

“So the summary is that changelings are exactly what I expected them to be,” Will said eventually. “Is that all? Really? You made us get into cover for this?”

“I don’t mind the extra experience,” Lily said. “Or the loot, for that matter.”

“You’re a murderous sociopath,” Will replied. “I tend not to form my opinions based on people like you.”

“Sociopath? I wouldn’t say that,” Lily said, very loudly not denying the first part. “I don’t think you were listening. He told us about their weaknesses, too.”

“No, I heard those,” Will said. “They can’t keep any form for longer than twenty-four hours at silver rank, they all have the Change attribute bound to one of their elements, they take an hour to change, they can’t change into something they haven’t seen before, they can’t change into anything larger than human size at silver, and no matter the form, they have a weakness to non-magical iron weapons. Did I miss anything?”

“I keep forgetting you’re not a complete moron,” Lily said. “Can you blame me, though? You certainly look the part.”

“Yeah, I definitely can,” Will said. “I’m surprised that non-magical iron hurts them more, but that’s about it.”

That was a critical weakness in the changeling race if it held true even beyond silver. Will couldn’t imagine being a gem or even sovereign tier User and having to worry about some unformed-rank chump with a shitty iron dagger. Then again, he supposed that most people of comparable ranks would be trying to use magical weapons. He certainly would have if not for that little tidbit.

“Is there even iron on this archipelago?” Will asked. “I don’t have any in my inventory. Everything’s refined steel.”

“Same,” Lily said. “Anyone have a Miner class they’ve been hiding?”

“There will be ores beneath the surface of the island,” Fortress said, ignoring her question. “That is one option, but the most difficult segment remains.”

“Finding them,” Will said. “I got that part. I assume the other option you’re going to present us with is ‘wait until someone else gets one and then kill them.’”

“It would not necessarily have to be a kill,” the elemental allowed. “There are many paths to forcing an enemy to surrender.”

Will looked over his stat sheet again. “Yeah, no. It would be a kill.”

That was a pretty major concern for capturing a changeling, actually. Will was exceptional at putting single targets down, but doing that while keeping them alive? That was a bit trickier. Without a way to cleanse other people of corruption, the only way to keep a corrupted target alive was to hope that they had a way to resist it themselves.

He would prefer not to kill other competitors if possible, but Will had been handed a uniquely lethal set of skills.

Whatever Lily was going to say next was interrupted by the sound of a stampede outside. Auras flashed bright silver, the pressure of the magic pushing down on them so much that even Will’s less sensitive partners noticed.

Fortress looked to both of them as if to say I told you so.

“Aren’t you supposed to be someone important?” Will asked, leaning against the side of the hive. “You seem a bit petty for that.”

Though they’d collapsed the center of the hive, the ants they’d massacred had built enough of an infrastructure that there were still pockets of full cover beneath the sand that they could hide in. Not wanting to immediately face whatever was out there, all three of them stayed put.

“I was a king, once,” Fortress said, unsurprised that Will had identified him for who he was. “The southern nation of flame. However—”

“No, no, no,” Will said, shaking his head. “Stop. There’s a shit load of silver-rank monsters out there right now. Let me think. You can tell us your life story later.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Lily said. “Though yes, I would like to see what’s happening.”

Fortress fell silent, giving Will the time to expand his awareness. He didn’t have the refined senses needed to pick out exactly what type of monsters there were, but he could tell that there were at least a dozen of them.

A dozen bronze-rank monsters could be easily handled with the right skill combination—they’d proved that perfectly well with the ants just now. Silvers? That was a little dicier.

Will wanted to know why they were gathered here all of a sudden. He would have guessed that it was the magical presence and sound that his group had caused in killing the ants, but they weren’t running towards him. As a matter of fact…

“It’s like they’re running from something,” he muttered. “I wonder what—“

The answer came in the middle of his sentence. Three new auras entered the edge of his perception, one a silver and the others strong bronze. They appeared from high above the ground, dropping fast before abruptly stopping, still a fair bit above the rest.

A moment later, the earth around them rumbled so violently that Will instinctively used his hunger phantasm, conjuring dark shadows and solidifying them to prevent the reinforced, packed pebble-and-sand walls from falling in on themselves.

“What the fuck?” Lily said. “I’m getting out there.”

“No, you moron—” Will started, but she was already leaving.

The rumbling died down quickly, then began again, this time accompanied by the sound of an enormous impact reverberating throughout the beach.

Well, shit.

Fortress had a fiery red shield around him, glistening with high-silver power. He stood still without a care in the world, falling sand superheating and tinkling to the ground as glass.

Will did not want to be in the same space as Fortress, who was rapidly making the subterranean hive go from “uncomfortably warm” to “inside of an oven.”

Cursing both of them, Will sent his phantasm out above the hive, forming a short sword in the chaos outside, and teleported.

Skill: [Weapons Free]

- Spell (movement, teleportation).

- Cost: high mana (reduced to moderate mana).

- Cooldown: 12 seconds (6 seconds).

Silver

Teleport any weapon within a 120 foot radius to your hands (if you can carry it) or your inventory (if you cannot). If a target is holding the weapon, they can attempt to prevent this spell from succeeding.

You can also teleport to any weapon within a 60 foot radius.

Silver-rank addition: The previous range of this skill has been doubled.

[Warp Strike] (silver): When making an attack, you can use this skill to make your attack originate from any weapon within a 30 foot radius.

Will kept Warp Strike at the back of his mind. There were a huge number of applications he could use that with, especially when it came to applying afflictions, but for now, all he needed was to get out of here.

He reappeared fifteen feet in the air and immediately used Wind Walker to air-dash upwards, sending the hunger phantasm spiraling around to make him glide instead of fall, giving him time to assess the battlefield.

The silver-rank monster auras he’d felt were from what appeared to be mutated lion-sized rocks, stony tentacles and teeth lining their bodies.

Boulder Mimic. Level: Silver 0.

Thought your aura senses were that good, didn’t you? These mimics are capable of pretending perfectly to be a rock, concealing their auras to the point where only extremely precise aura sense or specific spells can spot them out.

As of this system message, [Mimics] have been responsible for [9] competitor deaths.

Before Will could finish mentally cussing out the system for getting snarky on him, his attention was drawn to the trio of Users that had entered the scene.

He immediately recognized Lu Jie even before fully taking the scene in. The top-ranker’s aura was distinctive and strong, if somewhat unstable. The other two were relatively unremarkable randoms that he didn’t recognize, both yet to hit silver. All three of them knelt on a disc of force that a dark-skinned man was maintaining. The other bronze, a European woman, supported their team’s strongest member with a steady stream of mana, fueling him further.

Lu Jie was the dominant User amongst the trio and indeed the entire area. The mimics were running from him, Will realized.

For the first time, he got to see Lu Jie’s skills in action. To the side of the disc were six separate portals, each of them paired in groups of two—one pointed up, one pointed down. Between each of the portals were storms of blurred movement, which Will quickly realized were boulders. From the aura that emitted from some of them that there were mimics mixed up in there too.

Will: Yo, Caiyeri. I have eyes on the global rank 1 human. Looks like he’s pulling an Aperture Labs.

Caiyeri: What in the Mother’s name is that.

Caiyeri: Talk later. Fighting now. We’ll join up after.

One of the bottom portals disappeared, dropping a boulder from the top portal at blinding speed. Sand geysered up in a wild spray, reaching high above the hovering trio. Out above the surface, the sound of impact was properly deafening, and Will protected himself with his ring of adaptive shielding as high-speed sand buffeted him.

When the dust cleared, Will gliding out of the way of Lu Jie, there was a crater where there had been a pack of mimics. In mere moments, a dozen boulder mimics had been reduced to just three.

Scratch that, Will thought, watching as a bright spear flashed through the settling sand, splitting a mimic’s stone-hard flesh apart, dark blood blossoming out of the silver-rank creature. Two.

Even if it had already been damaged, Lily’s abilities had taken it down in a single hit. That was impressive, and it made Will even more justified in being wary of her.

“Hey!” Will shouted towards Lu Jie, gliding closer to him with an air-dash. “You mind leaving the rest of these to us?”

“William,” Lu Jie greeted him, his firm voice projecting across half a hundred feet of open air despite without being raised. “The changeling is not here. You may reap the rewards of the remains, but I will be taking what is mine.”

“No arguments there,” Will said, dropping downwards and letting his phantasm spread across the battlefield.

With the increased volume of his shadow, he could spread it thin and blanket a large area with it. The mimics weren’t particularly fast, though, so he just focused his phantasm on both, marking them for death as he did..

As Will hit the ground, he drew his slayer sword, Chaos Transfer already applied to it.

“Let’s see how good this new skill is,” he muttered, slashing out and activating Weapons Free with most of his remaining mana.

Warp Strike felt odd. Will’s sword was both here and not here, transported elsewhere for a mere moment with space magic—but he felt stone under his sword, and he knew he’d struck the monster. He pushed more mana into its edge, sharpening it, and the stony flesh gave way.

[First Blood] doubled the power of your attack.

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

Critical hit!

[Slayer Sword] inflicted a level of [Corruption].

Will shrouded himself in darkness before activating The Bell Tolls with all the mana he had remaining, amplifying the damage and corruption alongside inflicting a level of wither upon the spider.

You have defeated [Boulder Mimic].

He hadn’t been managing his mana very well, using massive amounts of it to keep his air-dashes and hunger phantasm going, but killing the monster patched up all his micro-management mistakes.

[Soul]

- Bound to [Death]: You regain mana and health after killing a sapient being. You advance this attribute faster when you use a spell to kill. Your magic will be amplified in certain mental states.

The mimics were intelligent enough to count as sapient, apparently. Will wasn’t sure whether or not to be disturbed by that.

Fortress killed the last one by simply walking through it, igniting it from the inside out.

Will regathered his phantasm around him, jogging towards the corpse he’d made to loot it. He turned to thank Lu Jie for not dropping a kinetic energy weapon on them just to see the elder Chinese man waving genially as he and his party stepped through another portal.

“They must be speedrunning this place,” he said aloud. “Killing everything until they find a changeling, I guess.”

“Who are you talking to?” Lily said, leaning into his field of view. “Are you losing it?”

“Go loot your body,” Will said, annoyed. “Murderous and annoying? Pick a struggle. Please.”

Before she could think of a retort to that, a portal opened up again. Lu Jie stepped through it, his body language clearly alarmed. Both of his partners came through as well, but one of them was limping on a leg that had been mauled to shreds.

As much as Will had been tempted to see if he could get away with leaving his once would-be killer with a level of corruption, he had to give her credit—she snapped to attention almost as fast as he did.

“They were gone for fifteen seconds,” Will said. “What the—“

“Apologies,” Lu Jie said, his soft voice once again crossing the gap between them. “This will be a good test of character.”

Another portal formed under Lu Jie’s feet, sucking him and his companions in. It vanished in an instant.

The first, larger one, did not close.

As a fleshy mass started forcing its way through the space magic, barely able to fit through the portal, Will’s senses lit up as he detected a familiar gold-rank presence.

“Aw, fuck that guy,” he said.

“I’m going to rip his throat out with my teeth,” Lily hissed, conjuring her spears again.

“Fortress!” Will shouted. “You know the life elves?”

Elsewhere, sand superheated and melted as the fire elemental rose to the surface.

“I know of them, but the life kingdom is far from my home,” he called, radiant magma swirling around him. “What of them?”

“You’re about to get acquainted with them,” Will said. “It’s not going to be fun.”

The devouring gestalt pulled itself all the way through the portal, which promptly closed behind it. It was even larger than before, properly deserving of the Lev-best title of kaiju.

“Run,” Will hissed.

“Andrew’s gotten big,” Lily said. “I can’t wait to see how this turns out.”

“What?”

She leapt forward.

“Well,” Will said to himself, “I guess we can find out what happens if your group loses a person.”

Warning: a death of a party member prior to obtaining the changeling will result in an automatic failure.

“Oh, come on.”

#

Lev was now Bronze 7, having reached it after spending every waking hour training, fighting, and defending Survivor Hill, the settlement he’d founded to protect the people within. 

Shortly after Will, Caiyeri, and that massive monster had disappeared in a flash of spatial magic, the monster surges had increased in intensity. It wasn’t just monsters that were trying to break down the settlement, either.

Though it was clear that the strongest members of every group had been sent away to the trial of the champion, there was still pretty heavy interest from the remaining life elves in taking the hill. Lev wasn’t sure if they knew that Will was gone or not, but they were sending small strike forces in every now and then, probing their defenses. Lev wasn’t as ridiculously powerful as Will was, so his lightning bolts combined with the other defenders’ magic could only drive them off instead of brutally killing them, but he’d kept them from breaching the walls so far.

On average, there had been about one major attack a day, which Lev spent the majority of his resources against. The minor ones, he used as training.

He wondered if Will felt like this when he was slaughtering enemies by the dozen. Lev shivered at that thought. Will was a great friend, but Lev did not want to be anything like the cold-blooded killer that he’d become. The casual ease with which he left his victims dying painfully, the way he treated the lives of others like they were toys… Lev wasn’t sure if he could ever mimic that.

Focus, Lev, he told himself. Today’s strike was coming, and they didn’t look like the life elves. Instead of the flowing robes that the elf faction preferred, they wore tight cloaks with face-obscuring hoods, each of them emitting dark energy from their bodies.

They set him on edge in a way that Will didn’t, but unlike the life elves, they didn’t send any monsters to attack them or use skills to knock the walls down. Lev couldn’t discount the possibility that they were friendly—Survivor Hill was now nearly a hundred people strong, having expanded through collecting stragglers from broken parties. He let lightning play over his hands and body—a show of force, though he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

When they got close enough, he spoke, using the magic loudspeaker Clarissa the bronze-rank Engineer had commissioned for him.

“State your name and purpose!” he shouted. “This is the Survivor Hill settlement. We’re willing to work with you if you are—“

A massive spire of dark magic cut him off with a thundering static. As the crackling faded, the cloaked figure in the lead spoke, her voice booming far louder than Lev’s.

“Where is William Li-Brown?”