[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 79: How the Tables Turn (Patreon)

“Cards on the table,” Ash said. “You’re a bit of an asshole, Five.”

“Five?” Will asked.

“The fifth in the order we can see,” she explained. “I figure you’re the type who likes to put names to faces.”

“Ash is definitely not your name, and I can’t see either of your faces. I’ll take a descriptor, though. I keep thinking of him as ‘the last voice’ or ‘mysterious guy number two.’ Five works.”

“I’ll take mysterious guy number one,” Ash said, amused.

“Five is acceptable,” Five said.

“Seeing as our mysterious fifth doesn’t seem to want to put his cards on the table, I suppose it’s my turn,” Ash said. “Here we are.”

The items offered by the Lord of Loss vanished, replaced by a handful of small bottles in a rack. To the untrained eye, they looked exactly like the spice drawer that Will’s mom had kept at home.

To the trained eye, however… they still looked exactly like spices. They didn’t even emit an aura.

Identifying them, however, was a different matter. That revealed their true power.

Item: [Powder of Everlasting Strength]

Legendary, platinum

Increases the [Power] attribute by an amount proportional to the amount consumed, up to a maximum of one full rank above the User’s rank or Platinum 10, whichever is lower.

There were similar powders for each of the other attributes, all of which had essentially the same description.

“The items may seem underwhelming, so the final addition to the offer is one thousand diamond credits,” Ash said. That provoked a surprised look from Shaak’thor and a whistle from Love. “You would be one of the first that my branch of the organization chooses to sponsor.”

That statement got him on edge once again. Will had heard of the cult-like group that called themselves the organization, as if there was no other ordered team of Users that could be worthy of the title, and nothing he’d heard had been good. His understanding of them was admittedly murky, but he was sure that their interest in him could not be a positive thing.

“One thousand diamond is a fair sum,” the Lord of Loss acknowledged. “I cannot match those terms.”

Will did the math. Each rank of credits was worth ten of those before them, so a thousand diamond became ten k of emerald became a hundred k of platinum became a million gold became ten million silver.

That was, indeed, a “fair sum.” It was far too much to waste on a silver. Will was sure that they had tons of cash themselves, given their current tiers, but there was no way that investment was proportionate to how much he was worth right now.

“One thousand diamond may solve your monetary problems for the near future,” Love said, a bloody grin stretching her face, “but all it takes is one unlucky battle for you to lose all of that. Better take the odds on killing the shit out of everything in your way.”

“You remind me of Lily Teneli,” Will said. “I think you might vibe with her more.”

“I’m already sponsoring her.”

“Of course you are.”

The Lord of Loss looked up, gaze somehow piercing through the thick, dark veil he wore. “The Lady of Overwhelming Violence—“

“Love,” Will interrupted. “We’ve been over this. Overwhelming Violence is a stupid name.”

“I resent that.”

“You want me to lose my mind so you can have a fun time watching me. I resent that.”

“Fair.”

“Love, as you say. She is not incorrect in her assessment, but her prize for you is insufficient. You recognize this.”

“Both of y’all are missing that he can simply buy the pieces to craft a better item himself,” Ash said neutrally. “Just a thought.”

Shaak’thor didn’t have much to add, but he did extoll the virtues of the Order of the Striker a couple of times as they bickered.

Five remained silent through the entire affair, not even putting forth an initial offer.

With the other four potential sponsors arguing and modifying their offers in ways that Will really didn’t care that much about, he looked at the cloudy darkness that shrouded Five’s body.

Even though the shadow barely moved, Will got the impression that the mysterious sponsor who’d spoken only to interrupt the others was staring straight at him, peering past his eyes deep into his soul. Not even Ash made him feel as nakedly exposed as Five did, and the latter had barely said a word.

“What are you going to do?” Five whispered. The other four didn’t even seem to hear him, which made Will suspect he was using magic within the confines of this area.

What was he going to do? There were four compelling offers being made here. Even Love’s could be viable if she gave him something other than a demonic stone, which could be negotiated for.

And yet, accepting any one of these deals felt like failure. There was something missing here. There had to be. Like Five had said, the timing on this was suspect. The offers, too, seemed wildly out of range of what a silver-ranker should expect. Not even Hua and Haoyu, both of whom had been in the global top 5, had been gifted anything like this.

Will had always disagreed with his parents on a lot of things, but one lesson that they’d drilled into him from childhood had stuck.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

He sorted through the system messages that had popped up, which had been pushed aside by the arrival of the sponsors, searching for an answer.

As it turned out, the way the four bickering sponsor candidates had structured this had pushed Will into thinking he had far fewer options than he actually did. He could examine the prizes they planned on giving him at any time, read their full offers as they made them, and most importantly, choose to accept or reject them.

He spent some time reading through them. There was a list of rules that pertained to this as well, which he was glad to see, given that he had almost committed to a plan that would violate them.

The following are grounds for immediate and severe punishment as well as locking you from gaining a sponsor.

- Attempting to teleport into a different part of this building.

- Attempting to destroy the items offered to you.

- Consuming the items offered to you without accepting a sponsor first.

- Attacking a sponsor.

The list stretched on, addressing a number of minor points with less severe punishments—though some of those felt unnecessary. In what world was Will going to even think about pulling his pants down and quote-unquote “defecating on a sponsor-offered prize?”

That aside, there were a few notable exceptions.

Notably, he was not forbidden from using his skills.

Will was reminded of Caiyeri telling him that all his plans were suicidal ones right before he’d yanked the gestalt into the trial. That had only been days ago, but it felt like a lifetime.

Now, as he plotted a way out of this particular pickle, he wondered if she was right.

Oh well. In for a penny, in for ten million silver credits.

“You four,” Will said with as much authority as he could project. It was much more than any standard silver-ranker should’ve been able to manage, but to the sovereign tiers sizing him up like he was a piece of meat, he must have just seemed like a particularly noisy ant. “Have you decided on your offers?”

The problem with the contracts they were all offering, as Five had alluded to, was that they all wanted to control him. None of the four who’d offered him a sponsorship were willing to do so without heavily restrictive terms. It wouldn’t have been as bad as what the Hunger had initially wanted out of him, but it wasn’t much better.

Love wanted him to minimize ties to the Hunger, cut off Vyx entirely, and follow her commands so long as they didn’t directly interfere with his goals—except in the case of killing a certain target, in which case he was always to comply.

That was the least restrictive of them.

Haoyu and Hua had never mentioned being under such a strict set of rules as the one Shaak’thor was currently offering Will. He supposed the magical NDA in there would have stopped them from sharing, but he also suspected that they weren’t restricted from using an entire attribute.

“As you might see,” Ash said, amused, “We are still discussing which of us can create the strongest offer.”

“None of you,” Will said.

“What?” Shaak’thor said angrily. “Do you know how much of a reward you turn your nose up at? Any Striker would have killed to be in your position when we were first sponsored!”

“Then I guess those Strikers, as you call them, never passed the fourth grade. Unlike you, I can read, and I can tell what’s going on here. Sucker me into a deal, slap some incredible restrictions on me, and bam! You’ve got yourself a brand new toy and weapon. William Li-Brown, corruption wielder of this cycle, all yours. Now doesn’t that sound fucking nice!”

At his outburst, an uncomfortable silence fell over the four sponsors who’d offered, broken up by a harsh, distorted sound.

Will realized that the noise was coming from Five. He was laughing.

Although he didn’t trust Five much more than any of the others, he had to admit that the still-unknown man had disrupted this negotiation fairly handily. Whoever Five was, he either had a vested interest in breaking these sponsorships apart or was genuinely keeping an eye out for Will.

Somehow, he doubted it was the latter.

Will selected a system screen that he’d been neglecting thanks to the sheer aura pressure that the sponsors gave. If it weren’t for his repeated torture sessions—er, his training regimen—with the Hunger, he was sure he would have been barely capable of stringing two thoughts together right now, let alone realize that he’d been missing out on a bunch of information.

It was a dirty negotiation tactic from the other side, using their sheer power to make him gloss over a lot of details, but he wasn’t going to fall for it.

He couldn’t destroy the merchandise, nor could he use it, but the system rules really weren’t that airtight. Then again, he supposed there wasn’t much in the way of defacement that the average User could do to affect the sponsor prizes, but still. It was a bit of an unfortunate lack of foresight by whoever had designed this system. Had they never had a corruption wielder in here before?

Whether or not they had, Will was living proof that checking for edge cases was important.

The rules applied both ways. None of the sponsors would be able to attack him as he passed his hands over each and every item.

As he did, he applied a Decaying Touch to each, corrupting them. That got another reaction out of the sponsors. Love and Loss both seemed surprised, though the latter seemed more interested now than he had at any other point, while the former giggled. Ash’s expression was unreadable, and Shaak’thor was genuinely furious.

“Oh, my bad,” Will said innocently. “Looks like someone got corruption all over your nice little gifts. That’s a shame.”

“YOU,” Shaak’thor roared.

“Me! I don’t know why people keep on telling me that I’m me. You is such an unoriginal way to get angry at someone, man. Like, could you at least drop a real death threat or three?” Will gave the representative of the Order of the Striker a lopsided grin, which only pissed him off more.

“Do explain yourself,” Ash said. Her voice was interested but sharp, and Will suddenly got the impression that she had a sword out and pointed at her.

As much as she had known that he was a bit of an unconventional User coming in, this had still pissed her off. Navigating this poorly would end up with all of these people as his enemies, which would be a bit suboptimal.

“You’re scared of me,” Will said. “That seemed laughable to me, given the vast gap in rank difference, but at this point, that’s the only thing that makes sense. You’re putting entirely too much effort into alternately showing me the carrot and the stick. I’m a silver rank. The only things special about me are that I have two sigils—and I’m definitely not unique in that—and, more importantly, I wield corruption.”

The mere word seemed to have an effect on them, with Shaak’thor visibly flinching back.

Will grinned viciously, pressing onward. “You took me out of the trial because you’re worried about me interfering with those you sponsored, aren’t you? Shaak’thor, your org has at least one person still in this trial, and by your own admission, Love, you’ve got one too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ash and Loss here had their own.”

“Guilty as charged,” Ash said. Loss remained silent.

“See, here’s the thing. Just by calling me here, you’re giving your people an advantage, so I figure that you really don’t want me to deal with them. Or to deal with you. So instead of all of you making me godawful deals, why don’t I make you one?”

Five’s harsh laughter finally came to an end, but distorted mirth still infused his voice when he spoke. “This is not the direction I expected you to take, corruption wielder, but it is an interesting one indeed. My time here is done. Good luck. Order through chaos, Will.”

Peace through dread, Will completed mentally. Had that been a Dread Executor?

The cloak of shadow around Five dropped, revealing a startled, disoriented dark-skinned woman who was perpetually aflame, her aura burning bright in a supernova around her.

“Where—how—Ramiel,” she hissed. “That piece of shit.”

“Pale Fire,” Ash said. “I did not expect you to be our fifth.”

“This was part of the plan, usurper,” the Lady of Pale Fire, sponsor of global second rank Osiris Adebayo, hissed. “I was waylaid.”

“Oh, fantastic,” Will sighed. “I had a whole monologue prepared, but there goes that guy, stealing my thunder. Let me explain how this is going to go, alright?”

#

“Okay,” Will said, an exhaustive explanation later. “Are we up to speed?”

“Yes,” the Lady of Pale Fire said unhappily. She seemed gladder now that she hadn’t been in the game for the entire time, forced to watch as Will corrupted the shit out of the rewards she would have offered him.

“Fantastic,” Will said. “Then here we go. Evil monologue time! I really do like these. They don’t tell you how good they are until you start doing them, you know? I totally get why the Bond villains all end up in a tragic but entirely predictable loss. They’re so much fun.”

“Do get to it,” Ash said.

“Right. You all have champions remaining in the fight, which is reason number one that you’re worried about me. You know that I can interfere in the trial, which is something that has previously been limited to only you—and the cultists, I guess. That’s not the only reason, though.

“See, as strong as all of you are, as good as your aura control has become, I can see you flinching away at my corruption. For it to be that bad to disrupt your peace, I can tell that it can affect you, one way or another. You don’t want me near your champions—“

“Not champions,” the Lady of Pale Fire interjected. “That’s for sigils. We just call them beneficiaries.”

“Oh, come on, lady. I’m trying to monologue here. Do the heroes usually interrupt a villain in the middle of the climactic speech? No!”

“Do us all a favor and slit your throat. You would be more pleasant to listen to.”

Will graciously ignored that, continuing onwards. 

“Anyway. You don’t want me near your beneficiaries—“

“Thank you.”

“—And you don’t want me near yourselves, either. To that end, you’ve devised a couple of insanely insidious contracts and bribes. See, the thing is, you almost got me. Have some more reasonable ones, and I might’ve just straight up agreed, but you fucked up by getting greedy.

“So in return, I’m going to do the same. All these rewards I just corrupted? I have the feeling that you don’t really want them anymore, so I’m putting them all on the negotiation table. I’ll take them off your hands for you. Plus, I won’t kill your beneficiaries with corruption or interfere in their rounds, nor will I attack you unless I know that you’re going after me first. Pretty heavy win all around, no?”

Will tapped another button on the system screen, propagating a new contract outwards.

A wave of discontent rippled through them.

“Your other option,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “is that I decline everything and leave. Didn’t think I would notice that was an option, would you? Thought you could blind me with your power and all these prizes? You’re going to have to pay the goddamn piper for that, you know. Or maybe your champions will. I’m sure they’ll be pleased to get a faceful of corruption the moment I locate them back on the outside.”

“No,” Ash said immediately. She sighed, and Will withdrew his perception from her, not allowing her to influence his mind further. “You will do none of that. We can do business.”

A predatory grin every bit as feral as Caiyeri’s spread across Will’s lips. “Good. Let’s get started.”