[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 61: None of Us are Good People (Patreon)

“Something is very wrong,” Will said.

“You managed to talk to a stranger without anyone dying,” Caiyeri replied. “That’s signal enough for me.”

“Very funny. That man is not from this world.”

“Neither is she,” Hua said, pointing at Caiyeri. “Her planet hit ours like a month ago.”

“Earth and Arcadia are one now,” Caiyeri said. “I am as native to this land as you are.”

“He’s from beyond this planetary system. The planet’s name is Selethnir. It’s half a galaxy away. That would be what the spatial anomaly is, I assume—him and his goons teleporting into the trial.”

“You say that like you’re sure he’s telling you the truth,” Hua said. “People lie, y’know? Like, a lot.”

“Your familiar,” Caiyeri said, cocking her head. “Is it that powerful, that quickly?”

“The Hunger had something to do with directing where the skill came from. Turns out that a crabby, desperate god in your head can actually be helpful from time to time.”

Remaining time: 6 minutes, 19 seconds.

Remaining competitors: 1,984.

“Competitor count is crumbling,” Will noted. “There are people thinking of approaching us, Ataraxis aside.”

“Ataraxis,” Caiyeri repeated. “That’s the name of the man you encountered?”

“Mhm.”

“In all honesty, I expected the number to go down faster,” Hua said. “Humanity is doing better than I expected.”

“You’ve got an incredibly cynical take on humans,” Will said, willing Sen to expand further. He’d barely gotten to experiment with the Thousand Eyes skill, so he still wasn’t sure of its capabilities.

“You just said that there’s people considering trying to take us on,” Hua said. “Am I really that wrong?”

Will considered the two full parties that were gearing up to fight them, both about a quarter of a mile away on either end. Between the six of them, there were two silvers and four bronzes. He could easily take them on, but… did he really want to? Will could kill when necessary, but he was growing a bit worried that he might be stretching the definition of necessary a bit far.

Instead of trying to kill them, he simply stopped providing extra mana to Sen, letting the familiar’s Time-Locked attribute pass. A hundred radiant eyes appeared around each of the parties. It took them a moment to notice, but when they did, the groups that had been using investigation skills on Will from afar panicked, correctly realizing that he had been watching them watch him.

To be fair, he’d only been watching them since Sen had been summoned, so that hadn’t been for very long, but they didn’t know that. All six of them fled, deciding to go after a different group.

“No,” Will said. “You’re not.”

There wasn’t much time left, but Will decided to make what use of it he could. He recalled Sen’s eyes, gathering them around him, then sent them out. 

They were quick to move and unaffected by simple, he soon found. Each eye expanded his senses, but having multiple of them in one place increased how strong his senses were. With all one thousand eyes, Will had been able to bypass Ataraxis’ aura cloaking as well as glean information about the gold-ranker’s place of origin. With just one, he couldn’t do much more than see vague shapes and hear the loudest sounds.

Sen had a slight mind of its own, which it put into action when Will wasn’t actively managing the eyes. Since Will didn’t have the enhanced perception necessary to manage a thousand individual organisms at the same time, that was greatly appreciated.

He experimented with the hunger phantasm. Although he couldn’t exert fine control over it past a certain range beyond his body and couldn’t control it at all at distances past 120 feet, there was no restriction preventing him from taking advantage of the effects of Staravation, In the Flesh, and Echo of Despair.

Manifesting the phantasm physically around an eye worked, surprisingly enough. Despite being incorporeal enough to pass through the earth, Sen’s eyes interfaced with mana like it was physical. That likely meant that the eyes could be destroyed if people directed intensive skills at it, which was good to learn now rather than later.

If he time-locked an eye, the phantasm around it would fall as if the eye had never been there. Also good to know—he could use his phantasm and its associated properties at range, but not without exposing Sen to damage.

Will spread the eyes out across the island in the time he had remaining. He knew that he could probably use the touch-range spell transference property of the phantasm to corrupt an insane amount of people here. A deep part of his mind urged him forward, to kill everyone and take their strength for themselves, but Will recognized where the bulk of that sentiment was coming from.

“Down, Hunger,” he said in the exact tone that Allie used to use with her family’s dogs. “I’m going to win, but I can win without killing the best Users that humanity has. I’d like my race to survive the year.”

Will wasn’t so far gone as to actively seek out people to kill just for the experience of it, especially when they hadn’t wronged him. He hoped that the day would never come where he started to go after innocents, and if that day came, he hoped someone stronger than him would put him down.

Sen’s eyes turned Will onto the devouring gestalt, which had been hard at work during the day Will had been grinding monsters. He’d kept it away from himself—but at what cost?

The kaiju had left a bloody trail of death behind it, which made finding it with Sen’s eyes laughably easy. Not enough of the bodies were intact enough for Will to count how many had fallen to the monster, but it easily numbered in the dozens.

Dozens dead because of me. They’d known the risks coming into the trial, but had they known the full extent of them? Will had brought this monster in, so every death was in part on him.

Even now, the gestalt was chasing down a party. It was mid-gold now, placing it head and shoulders above the bronze-ranks it was easily outspeeding. There were only three minutes left, so they would be home free if they could just survive that long, but… in the seconds that Will watched, the gestalt used a spatial skill of some kind to distort the space between it and the bronzes. It would catch up in seconds, let alone minutes.

Will was nearly a mile away. He couldn’t use any of his skills to close that distance in any reasonable time—even chaining uses of Weapons Free and using the maximum effect of Wind Walker, Escape Artist, and Wraith Cloak, there was no way he could clear the distance before the kaiju caught up.

It would be easier for him to let them die now and make the tournament easier, but he would much rather knock them out non-lethally and remain bastions in their portions of the world than have them fuel the power of the gestalt, which was already absurdly strong.

Though he didn’t have precise control over the phantasm, Will could still sense the position of all the dark shadows and use touch-range spells through them.

He cast Decaying Touch through the phantasm, and since he’d kept Sen’s eyes far enough from the kaiju to keep its powerful gold-rank aura from obliterating the pieces of the familiar, Will had a few dozen eyes he could spend, sending them towards the kaiju, placing them between the monster and the fleeing Users.

The gestalt took a moment to understand what the familiar was, but it sensed the corruption immediately. It came to a halt, staring down Sen’s eyes with a plethora of its own.

And then it turned tail and ran.

“Will?” Caiyeri asked. “Will!”

He snapped back to the present, having lost himself in the thousand facets of his own senses and all of Sen’s.

“Don’t scare me like that,” she scolded him. “You tell off your god and immediately stare off into space, you’re going to make me think that it got you.”

“You think my willpower’s that bad?” Will asked. “Wow.”

“No,” Caiyeri said, surprising him with how earnest she was. “I heard you in your sleep. I felt your aura shift. Your willpower is a force to be reckoned with. No, I was concerned that the god finally won, because you are dangerous.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, I think,” Will said. “I appreciate it. Don’t worry, though. I’m still me.”

I just saved three lives, he thought. I hope that doesn’t come back to bite me.

Time remaining: 59 seconds.

“You actually did it,” Hua said, disbelieving.

“That’s been the case for a while. Did you just realize that?”

“I thought something would have gone wrong by now,” she admitted. “That, or you’d try to steal my changeling or kill me for loot or something.”

“The situation doesn’t always have to go to shit,” Will said. “Sometimes, things just work.”

Hua gave him a tired grin. “I’m glad there’s still some people that think that way. Keep in touch after the games, Will. Caiyeri. It’s nice to see that humanity is alive and kicking. We need more people like you to keep the world running.”

“I’m not human,” Caiyeri pointed out.

“That’s besides the point. I hope I don’t see you two in the next challenge. If I can’t win, I hope one of you two does.”

“You’re good people, Hua,” Will said, giving her an ironic salute. “Until we meet again.”

“Right, then. Until we—“

Time remaining: 0 seconds.

Main Challenge 1 (Catching Water) has been completed.

You have gained 500 silver credits. You have gained an Awakening Shard of the Beyond.

[EXECUTOR TOKEN DETECTED]. You have gained a second and third Awakening Shard of the Beyond.

[1,491] Users completed this challenge.

#

Nymlera Brooksoul was, to put it lightly, vexed.

Thalia was present in the trial with her, but her daughter had avoided Nymlera for the duration. That was acceptable—she needed to learn how to lead alone, outside the shade of the tree that had raised her.

What was less acceptable was the fact that the gestalt was also present, and the abominant mind within was now alone.

She had realized that it was present when the link between her mind and the abominant’s told her that the gestalt was in the trial. Nymlera had been forced out in minutes, her will losing against the goddess who had taken residence within its reluctant sigil-holder.

It was operating of its own volition, now. The link between her mind and the subservient one was still present, so she could tell that it had been transported to a different scenario from her. Nymlera had easily completed Main Challenges 0 and 1, but if she ended up facing her own creation, she did not know if she would be able to best it.

And worse, it was a waste of decades of research. The abominant mind had been cultivated to be the grand weapon for the life elves, the first being they would be able to use to break through the metal barrier and finally reach platinum. It had been well on its way already, but the corruption wielding human’s interference had ruined that.

Never mind that it had been her who had interfered with Will, of course.

Time remaining: 0 seconds.

Main Challenge 1 (Catching Water) has been completed.

You have gained 1,700 silver credits.

[1,491] Users completed this challenge.

The transition out of the challenge was seamless and instant. In one moment, Nymlera was tearing the throat out of an insolent human who had dared to challenge her trio for their rightfully earned prizes. In the next, she stood in the aisles of an unending library, blood still dripping from her hands.

You have been randomly placed into a safe zone.

Attacking another competitor within this safe zone will result in immediate disqualification.

For a moment, she thought she saw a shimmering eye the size of her head flash through the shelves, but it disappeared from her visual and aura senses instantly.

She closed her eyes, focusing on the connection to the gestalt. Though she knew that the sigil would still block true control over the abominant mind, influencing it would do much to keep it on the side of the life elves. Given enough time, she could possibly even drive the influence of the sigil away, reestablishing her own domain over it.

“I was wondering what the other competitors from my state were,” an irritatingly familiar voice said. “Silver 10. A lot lower than I’d expected, but I guess it makes sense that you’d lose control over your weapon.”

Nymlera opened her eyes, tamping down on the desire to kill the man before her. She could not afford instant failure. The Mother would abandon her if she dropped out of the trial so early, and no matter how much value she could gain out of William Li-Brown’s death, the sigil was more important.

“You,” she said politely, letting her peak-silver aura drown out the boy’s. “It will be a pleasure to take you apart.”

“Ooh, scary,” Will said flatly. “Y’know, I was willing to consider working with you, even considering that you used to own the gestalt, but I guess not. You’ll have to deal with the consequences of your actions yourself.”

Nymlera raised an eyebrow. “You are withstanding my aura. You have potential, child, but your impudence cannot go unpunished.”

“I’m supposed to be threatened by this aura?” Will asked. “You better hope that you don’t see me again.”

What was that supposed to mean?

Nymlera did not get to ask that question before Will was simply gone.

#

“Bloody arseholes,” Natalie Blurr muttered, taking sight of the library around her. 

She dusted herself off, relaxing only when the system message told her that she was safe from the effects of other Users.

Her party, if you could even call them that, had been no help at all when the devouring gestalt had started tearing its way through the island she’d been on. In fact, once they’d realized that it was primarily aiming for her, they’d not only abandoned her but done their level best to redirect the gold-rank monster away from themselves and at her.

It had only been Lu Jie’s appearance that had given her the breathing room to find a changeling of her own, regretfully enabling her teammates to pass as well. Even then, she’d lost Wellington, one of her primary summons, and nearly completely lost a second one. She’d spent a lot of resources on summoning them, and wasting them because of a teammate’s treachery was such a waste.

Natalie was disappointed but not surprised. If people weren’t all fucking cowards, London wouldn’t have devolved into as much of a shitshow as it had. Though the PM and the old government ostensibly still held control, it was people like Natalie and her organization who were distributing supplies and protecting the people, not the government that now ruled from behind walls it never crossed.

A flicker of motion caught her eye, and she tensed. It disappeared an instant later, but she knew her senses well.

As such, she was wholly unsurprised when a familiar man appeared right in front of her. She shoved him away with enough force that a system message appeared.

Warning: do not engage other Users in violence. You have not crossed the threshold, but you came close.

“Whoops,” William Li-Brown, corruption wielder and freshly a major threat in Natalie’s eyes, said, collecting himself. “Something told me you weren’t going to be happy if I used my shadows to teleport in, so I just picked your knives. They’re really close to you.”

“William,” she said, relaxing. “It’s a pleasure to see you.”

“That’s not what you said last time,” he said. “And it’s Will.”

“Last time, I thought you were a talentless chaser,” she said. “You talked your talk, then you backed it up.”

“You saw that too?” Will asked. “Damn. Is it really just my sigil that isn’t showing me information about the competitors?”

“Quite possibly.” Her sigil had told her about him, but it had been Giant, her smallest summon, tagging along with the gestalt that had fed her information. She’d seen Will put a monster a full rank above both of them on the ropes seemingly without trying.

Honestly, it was terrifying. With someone like him on her side, the more violent gangs wouldn’t even want to come out of their safe zones.

“You still look like you want to tear my guts out.”

Of course she was. Nobody with the amount of power that people like Natalie and Will had could be trusted with it. Absolute power corrupted absolutely—she’d seen more than enough evidence for that.

Instead of saying that, though, she said, “You spend every single waking second trying to keep a community like mine alive when a bunch of insane purists who want to butcher everyone who doesn’t look and act like them is trying to take your capital and try meeting strangers without wanting to kill them.”

“We had a group like that. They’re gone now.”

“Well, I’m fucking happy for you, I really am, but they’re not so easy to uproot where I’m at.” Despite her words, she knew she sounded pissed. Keeping her voice under control was hard these days.

“They’re going to be alright without you?” Will asked. “That sounds like an undertaking and a half.”

“They’ll be fine.” Even now, Natalie wasn’t quite capable of sounding convincing even to herself. “Now, I’m going to ask this one more time. What do you want?”

“The last time I spoke to you, you told me that people like us shouldn’t be running the world, but I’m pretty sure that whether you like it or not, that’s going to be the way of things. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.”

“It’s not.” She studied the American carefully. 

His features were indistinct, hidden by the shadows that constantly pulsed around him. She couldn’t read him very well, and though she’d grown to understand the auras that every magical User emitted, his was a mystery. All she could tell was that he was silver, and that wasn’t an obvious thing. Last time, she’d thought he was bronze, but she was growing less sure that her perception had been correct that time. “Are you trying to take the States for yourself?”

“Fuck no,” Will said. “You think I want to run a country? I just want the world to be in one piece, and I want to know who’s going to be taking part in that.”

“If all goes well, I won’t be,” Natalie replied. "Once the world settles down.”

“You know just as well as me that nothing is settling down in the near future. Probably ever.”

She sighed. “And?”

“You seem to have a good head on your shoulders. I’d like to see how your part of the world is holding up when this is finished. See the world. Help people where I can.”

“Something tells me that nothing I say is going to change that,” Natalie said. “You want a connection. That’s it?”

“And an agreement,” he said. “If we face each other, it’ll be to the down. You have people to protect. I won’t kill you if I win. I hope you can do the same for me.”

You have received a friend request from [William Li-Brown].

She had no reason to trust him. With how secretive he was about his own powers and motivations, in fact, she had every reason to assume the worst.

But distrust didn’t mean she couldn’t use him, and after seeing him in action, there was one thing she was sure of.

However suspicious William Li-Brown was as an ally, she wanted nothing less than to have him as an enemy.

“I accept.”

Moments after the connection went through, system messages appeared in front of both of them.

Main Challenge #2: Free for All

[1,491] Users remain. Due to spatial anomalies and the introduction of [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [REDACTED] to the Trial, this number must be quickly culled.

You will be placed into a random arena with a random number of other Users. To win, you must be the last conscious User who has not admitted defeat.

Users who have already failed a challenge can and will be placed with Users who have not.

Difficulty: Varies

- Be the last one standing. [0/1]

Reward: 1,000 bronze credits. Full refresh of health, mana, and stamina.

Penalty for Failure: ???

Time until challenge start: [1 hour]

#

For Will, however, the message was just a bit different.

“Two more shards of the Beyond,” Will muttered. “That’ll get me enough to make a tablet.”

He recalled Ayla’s last words during the tutorial, urging him to get a tablet of the Beyond. The system was unwilling to cough up information on it, nor was anyone he spoke to—which only promised more power for what lay down that path.

Will could only guess, but given the fact that it was the rankless token of the Dread Executor that was triggering all these changes… it was looking good.

“Pardon?” Natalie asked.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Good luck. I hope we don’t have to face each other in the next challenge.”

He teleported away.

“Bloody hell,” Natalie said after he’d left. “And here I thought Americans were supposed to be direct.”