[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 78: Sponsorship (Patreon)

Will had heard about the sponsors prior to this point. They’d been mainstays of the leaderboard since about a week or two after the apocalypse had begun, and Lev had brought them up a time or two. They’d never contacted him up until this point, so he’d largely put them at the back of his mind.

He did know that Hua and Haoyu had both benefited from their sponsors granting them credits and items that synergized well with their kits, but he hadn’t bothered really asking them about what the process entailed.

“Apparently, interplanetary travel.”

The timer was counting down quickly. Recognizing the imminent transportation to his sponsors, the system had decided not to send Will from this arena into a safe waiting area for the next round. Instead, it just confined him within the area.

“You couldn’t even leave me anything to loot?”

To be fair, that was his own fault.

Just like the other rounds, Will had nearly immediately used Destructive Synthesis on his limiter, which didn’t do much in terms of granting him skills but did take off all the checks that it placed on him to prevent him from committing to a lethal attack. He hadn’t been punished for it yet, but this time, he hadn’t used it to its fullest.

With no opponent killed, there was nothing for him to take. Will sent more of Sen’s eyes out past the arena, exploring the space around him. There wasn’t much new for him to discover, though. Focused bursts of the familiar’s truesight gave him insight into the other spatial bodies in the area.

His was the most isolated, a greater distance from the other asteroids than any of them were from each other—four or five hundred miles, maybe. Earlier, he’d crossed a distance about half of that, utilizing all of his movement skills to gain absurd amounts of momentum. Even then, it had taken him hours to find and reach Caiyeri’s dome.

The same wasn’t going to be possible here. Not with only… thirty-six seconds remaining, that was.

He scanned the entire area around him, looking for anything not nailed to the floor or sinking back into it. There was very little of note, but the prison did have a few items that he was able to teleport to and absorb into his inventory.

You have gained 192 silver credits.

Darkness Essence [x12] has been added to your inventory. Iron Essence [x12] has been added to your inventory.

Nathan had mentioned something about receiving chaos essence after the executor quest that had given Will awakening shards of the Beyond. A quick skim of it revealed that it was primarily a magical crafting element. Will, who had yet to craft anything in favor of simply stealing powerful weapons off his enemies, had no current use for that, but he was sure he could sell it for some decent cash, which he was in sore need of.

Just as he finished looting up, the timer hit zero.

Transportation to sponsor selection initiated.

Will sighed. “Damn it. You couldn’t give me at least five more m—“

Darkness.

#

After so much weirdness with the reality breaks in the tournament and his own ventures into the Beyond, Will was almost relieved to have some regular teleportation at long last.

Almost.

So far, every room he’d been brought into had looked like a ruin, as if it had been pieced together from the shards of a dozen different planets. This, however, looked like a real institution. Will was reminded of a class trip he’d taken to the UN building in San Francisco back when he’d been in high school, except all the flags and national emblems had been replaced with esoteric, colorful banners that he didn’t recognize.

Another burst of spatial magic moved him out from the entrance, landing him in what looked sort of like the set designers on Star Wars had gone and reimagined a courtroom. Will sat alone at a metal table in a large, dark room, a spotlight shining on him. Facing him in a rough semi-circle were five regions, each with a spotlight of their own. He guessed immediately that these were to be representatives of his potential sponsors.

Five of them appeared to be physically present, each of them standing far taller than Will could, but the leftmost and rightmost were cloaked in darkness that obscured their features beyond the most general silhouettes.

The remaining three sponsors were at least twenty feet tall each, which Will assumed—or maybe hoped—were either using some kind of illusion magic to project themselves in or were temporarily magically enhanced.

All three visible representatives were stunningly, dangerously attractive Users, perfected through however many decades or centuries of training and refinement. He couldn’t tell much more past the visual.

Will’s aura senses were perfectly intact, but even his long, brutal training couldn’t make up for the sheer difference in power. He had been able to overpower a gold, but that was a rank higher. These people weren’t just a rank higher. In fact, they weren’t even a tier higher.

As far as he could tell, the woman who was second from the left was the weakest, and even she was so vastly above him that he knew any serious attempt to attack her would result in a death so fast he wouldn’t even register it. She looked like a particularly pale human, but as she smiled at him, the representative revealed a mouth full of bloody, dripping fangs. The air around her was tinted red, her very existence seeming to make reality itself bleed.

“Let me guess,” Will said drily. “The Lady of Overwhelming Violence? It can’t be easy talking with a mouth that full of blood.”

She tittered, her voice surprisingly clear and deep for her slender, devilish build. “When you get to our level, Will, the rules can bend. Like, for instance, being able to speak with perpetually bleeding teeth.”

“Do you have, like, a shorter name? If you don’t, I’m calling you Love, mostly because LOV still feels wrong in my mouth.”

That got another laugh out of her. “A perfectly acceptable name. Love. How quaint.”

The next over was clad in so much armor that he was barely recognizable as humanoid underneath it all. Even the armor radiated such an intense aura that Will could barely withstand being in its presence—and he was pretty sure that the man handling it was actively suppressing its power.

That power was ever so slightly familiar, though. He’d seen a much lesser variation of it before on Hua and Haoyu’s weapons.

“Shaak’thor,” the man introduced himself simply. “I represent the Order of the Striker.”

The last of the three who’d chosen to make themselves visible still hid his face. He looked like he was attending a funeral. A dark and heavy veil draped over his body, clinging loosely to the giant and making him seem more like a walking ghost than a man. Just looking at him sent a chill up Will’s spine. He got the sensation that if he caught a glimpse of what was under the veil, he would have what could be aptly described as “a bad time.”

“The Lord of Loss,” Will completed. “And you two assholes are the mystery ones?”

“You would do well to remember your place, human,” Shaak’thor said. There was no heat in his voice, but his aura shone with killing intent. “Though I compete with them, I will brook no disrespect to my peers.”

“Oh, loosen up, ya damn corpo,” the left-side mystery figure said. “You know what you’re payin’ for. Don’t want defiance, don’t come ‘ere.”

Will couldn’t place her accent, most likely because she wasn’t from Earth, but she sounded vaguely southern. He could picture her on a rocking chair out in front of a barn, chewing on a stalk of wheat, shotgun across her lap. The image was so sudden and so intense that he wondered if her mere presence was affecting his mind.

Despite the raw power exuding from the others, Will instantly became wariest of her. She had seen fit to conceal her identity, which either meant she was embarrassed, which was unlikely, or had a reason to hide her name and power, which was almost certainly true.

“Would you care to give me a name?” he asked. “And also an explanation? I just got dragged into this whole gameshow thing here, and I’ve got better things to do.”

“Better things like breaking a fair tournament,” Shaak’thor said disapprovingly.

“Still hung up on that?” the mystery woman said. “To answer your question, you may call me…  Ash.”

“Great,” Will said. “And the explanation?”

“We will present you with our offers, one at a time,” Love said. “You may discuss the offers with us, then we may counteroffer.”

“You have turned many heads,” the Lord of Loss said.

“Jesus, dude,” Will said, hearing the Lord for the first time. “You sound like someone took a cheese grater to your throat, then ran it over gravel.”

That got a laugh out of him, which didn’t sound any more pleasant.

“There is no advancement without a setback before,” he said, expressing a view startlingly close to one of Will’s own.

“We’re not here to discuss philosophy, Tarin,” Love said. “Let us proceed with our offers.”

Will frowned, trying to parse the power dynamic here. These people seemed to treat each others as equals, and they were competing over him. What value did they get out of him? Would they even tell him if he asked? He had no way to verify whether or not they would tell him the truth, which was a problem.

What was certain was that this would benefit them in some way or another. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t have been here.

Why him? Why now? What did they gain?

Will regretted not asking Haoyu and Hua more questions. Their input on what the sponsors expected out of them would have been invaluable.

“Seeing as nobody else has put their offer forward, “ Love said, “I will begin.”

She gestured, and a single blood-red disc appeared before Will. The Lady gestured for him to look at it, so he picked it up, examining the gem-like disc.

Item: [Demonic Elemental Affix]

Rare, diamond

Changes the class of a metal-tier user to its demonic variant. Replace one of your existing elements with the [Demon] element, which is then added as a secondary element to your class (or a primary element, if the primary element was removed). All existing skills are replaced with at-rank [Demon] skills.

“And a generous credit compensation, of course,” the Lady added. “One thousand gold, with an additional hundred per User you slay.”

Will looked at the gem, then to her. “You’re joking, right?”

“Not at all.”

A diamond rank item was nothing to sneeze at, especially when it could take a non-class element, which could only take three skills, and upgrade it to one that could take four alongside being boosted by the class.

But Will remembered what the Demon element came with. He’d looked at it during the tutorial.

Element: [Demon]

Demons are beings that survive within the deep chaos. Not quite gods, not quite mortal, their magic is esoteric and unusable by mortal beings. Affixing this guarantees insanity that cannot be resisted alongside a perfect chance of total personality rewrite, but it can grant power of that which lies beyond the realm of the system.

After gaining access to the Beyond, Will had to wonder whether it was there that these strange beings resided, but whatever the case, he could not brook a mental invasion of that scale.

“Ten thousand gold credits,” Shaak’thor offered. “This, and a gold-rank weapon.”

With another gesture, the gem disappeared, replaced by a rack of every weapon under the sun—bows, spears, swords, clubs, spiked shields, even a gun or three. To Will’s disappointment, they really weren’t anything special. All of them were rare loot at best, with many of them being common, and they had no effects beyond increasing damage.

“An elemental gem that’ll make me go insane and the equivalent of a +1 weapon,” Will said. “Looking promising so far.”

“I’ve taken a trip or two around your planet,” Ash said, a playful note in her voice. “Shaak’thor here defended my honor, so I’ll do his the same. It’s worth +2, at least.”

Will got the intense impression that she was winking at him. He shuddered.

“Your interjection is noted,” Shaak’thor said icily. “That concludes the Order of the Striker’s opening offer.”

“You really don’t seem to like me,” Will noted. “Why the hell are you even here, then? You’re offering me loot that’s far above what I can get here on my own, but you clearly don’t want to sponsor me.”

“I represent my organization’s interests.”

“Ahhhh,” Will said, nodding understandingly. “The corpo. Now it all makes sense.”

“I like you, human,” Ash said.

“Of course you do,” Love replied. “Everyone does. A corruption wielder, defier of the system, iconoclast, and a sharp, bitter personality. I’m surprised nobody made a bid earlier.”

“You know why nobody did,” the Lord of Loss said. “My offer.”

A single sword sppeared, replacing the array that had faced Will before. A tablet came alongside it.

Will checked the tablet first.

Item: [Tablet of Loss]

Epic

No man can make it throughout life without loss. This tablet will ensure that you are not alone.

Affixes a skill to an attribute that is affixed to [Death] at gold rank or at the User’s current rank, whichever is higher.

He whistled. A gold-rank skill was higher than anything he had other than Corruption Resistance, which wasn’t offensive in any way, shape, or form.

Onto the sword.

Item: [Eclipse]

Mythic, unformed (growth)

Forged by the Lord of Loss himself. This weapon can be used as an arcane focus for the [Death] attribute.

[Echo of Loss] - This weapon gains a charge when a party member dies or when you kill another User. You can expend one charge to activate one appropriate skill of a deceased party member or killed User at the current rank of the weapon.

Oh. That was genuinely very, very strong.

“Wow,” Will said, looking at it appreciatively. “What’s the catch? Surely no sponsor is going to give this to me for free.”

“That much should be obvious,” the last voice said, speaking for the first time. It sounded male, but it was garbled by so many layers of disruption that it was nearly incomprehensible. 

“Who are you?” Shaak’thor asked. “I know the rest. Even the one who claims the name ‘Ash.’ We have no intelligence upon you, final bidder.”

“Who I am is unimportant. The only name that matters here is William Li-Brown.”

Will found his eyes drawn to the figure hidden in shadow. “Yes?”

“Sponsors want you for similar reasons as sigils,” Ash said, cutting in. “We earn a tidy profit off of intergalactic observers of the current cycle, a cut of which goes to you. There will also sometimes be promises of future alliance, presuming you ever make it that far.”

“Which you will,” the last voice said. Even through the distortion, its resolve was strong and steely. “We are not the only five that wished to acquire you, but we were the first to be allowed through.”

“That’s reassuring,” Will said flatly. “More people competing for a piece of my meat. Wait, no, that sounds wrong. You get the idea. Buying my body? No.”

“You are here for two reasons, Will,” the yet-unnamed voice said. “The first is that everyone here believes you have the potential to bring them to godhood. The second is that you are too dangerous, and these ladies and lords want you wearing their chains. Why do you think the trial opened you up to sponsors so abruptly, when you were closed off before?”

Will thought to the previous round of duels, where he’d realized that he, too, could brazenly cheat without consequences.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“What are you saying?” Shaak’thor asked, affronted. “Stranger, do you know how much planning you are undermining? You court death!”

“The only one any of us are courting is him.”

Will didn’t have a way out of here. Sen was time-locked, but even then, it couldn’t escape the raw power of the sponsors around him, and it was therefore sticking very close to Will’s body, which meant he had no eyes on the outside of this place. Besides, if he even lifted a finger to try corruptin his way out, he knew that five separate representatives, each of which had to be Lord or Lady tier at minimum, would wipe him out before the table even began to smoke.

The system, or perhaps the organization behind it, or perhaps even the Order of the Striker or anyone who was invested in a ‘fair trial of the champion,’ had succeeded in preventing him from cheating and artificially boosting his allies upward.

That was definitely not good. Will doubted Liam would be able to win his round, and he was also unsure about Hua and Caiyeri, both of whom had struggled in the last round. Blurr was debatably an ally, but she had a decent shot of making it through.

His words to Nymlera hadn’t been empty, though. Every setback was an opportunity.

Deep breath, he told himself. These people are only so powerful that they can crush you like a summer ant.

“You’re courting me, are you?” he asked. “Then show me what you’ve got. I’m not accepting a single offer until every last card is on the table.”

Author's note: Had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad couple of days. Please leave feedback (or encouragement LOL) if you've got any!