[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 91: True Power (Patreon)

The trial of the champion had begun with 2,938 members. During the course of the tournament, there had been one single addition in the form of Nathan, but there had also been a few hundred who’d died either during the tournament or in the inevitable disasters after.

All told, there were somewhere around 2,500 competitors remaining, give or take a few dozen.

Of those, the majority were Earth-based Users, which meant humans. Almost without exception, the humans here had drawn heavily on monster cores, poisoning themselves in the long run in exchange for enough power to survive the initial phases of the apocalypse.

In doing so, they had dirtied their souls. For many, that was a compromise they were willing to strike. This cycle was growing more difficult at paces that challenged even the Arcadians, many of whom were system natives. To most humans, frequent and extreme consumption of monster cores was the only way they could survive the increasingly lethal monsters breaking free from dungeons, and that was before considering the early return of the otherworlders to come to Earth.

Ataraxis knew all this. A human himself, he knew the potential the race possessed. They would stop at nothing to build up their strength. After so many cycles lying in wait, watching it steadily slip from the rails that the Administrator had placed it on, he had finally decided to act when he had seen the fate that would befall Earth.

He was not the only one moving for hegemony over this planet, but he was the first to have seen the signs and the first to arrive.

Culmination. It was a power that only those who had reached the rank of Lord or Lady could achieve. A sovereign tier’s strength was expressed not just in control over their subjects but over the fabric of reality itself. The sum total of their power—their Culmination—could take on many forms. It took the right conditions, the right User, and the right sacrifice, but they were the ultimate form of mortal magic.

Ataraxis’ aura supernovaed in size, exploding out to encompass not just the Dread Executor but also the planets that the sect was invading even now.

Needles multiplied, splitting from each other until a hundred became two thousand, four hundred and sixty-six. One for each User still active.

They shot forth, trailing magic behind them. It was not corruption that empowered them but space and demon magic. Ataraxis was not a corruption wielder himself, even if he wished to be.

Mana burned hot and bright, making each arm-length needle glow like a shooting star, tracing tracks of white purity behind them.

They rained down upon their targets, traveling too quickly for anyone to avoid. Ataraxis could not use the true extent of his Culmination, for that would be too great a violation of plausibility, but the purification was all he needed. The deaths could come later.

Each needle painted a pure white pillar behind them as they struck their targets through thousands of miles of empty space. From where Ataraxis stood, it painted the portrait of a goddess’ tears.

Whether she cried for those who would know the high priest’s mercy or out of joy for the lasting peace this would bring, Ataraxis did not know, nor did he care.

At gold rank, the man once named Dread Executor Nynn was not quick enough to react to the Culmination. A needle pierced him through the heart, but without its full strength, it wasn’t a lethal blow. It was, however, enough to stun the gold-rank long enomugh to keep him from doing everything.

There was nothing anybody else could do to stop it. For a scant few—mainly system natives who had grown up in another cycle alongside a handful of humans who had gone strictly without cores—all that happened was a powerful stunning effect. In order to maintain the Lord rank ability to shatter defensive skills, Ataraxis had foregone the element that would have killed the other Users on a failed resistance.

Instead, for those, it just dealt damage. Enough to leave them on death’s door, yes, but without an additional push, they would not die.

The true targets for this were those who had imbued themselves with cores.

For those, the nail pierced into their soul. A soul attack would have been easy, had Ataraxis chosen to attempt one, but to do that in this cycle would have been such a flagrant violation of plausibility that it would kill even him nearly immediately.

His Culmination did not destroy souls, however. It purified.

Core pollution twisted, cleansing itself from thousands of souls, flowing back into Ataraxis.

Those souls would collapse without those cores if he just left it as was, of course. They had built themselves atop a foundation, and removing it, no matter how flawed it was, would result in everything relying on it to fall.

Tears of Absolute Purification purified in one simple way. It filled in the gaps.

Corruption slid into place.

“What have you done?” Nynn breathed, slowly regaining his ability to move.

“Simple,” Ataraxis said, his senses closing off as the pillars disconnected from him, cooling down after the massive amp they had provided to him. “The first step.”

Even with the assistance of a goddess, the pillars could only break seals as powerful as the ones on Ataraxis one time. That part of their abilities was broken now, having expended their one and only charge.

Of course, that wasn’t all the pillars could do.

Out in deep space, the only reason Users could hear each other was because of their environmental skills. Neither of them could hear the deep grinding that each of the three pillars were emitting, but Ataraxis knew what was happening.

“You knocked us down to three pillars,” he said. “I truly am impressed. Your destruction will not be as thorough as I had hoped.”

The intact pillars were over a thousand miles from each other at least, but the dark connection between them formed instantly, three long, blood-red threads of raw mana linking them across space.

They had prepared this ritual for years. It had taken the sect over a decade of continued effort to engrave this.

At last, it was beginning.

Magic filled the empty triangle, opening a path into that which lay Beyond.

All the while, two thousand people began to suffer the most painful death known through the multiverse.

#

Darkness. Stillness.

You have been afflicted with the [Stunned] condition at Lord rank.

Will had to break through, but it was impossible to move. His very soul refused to respond.

Unfortunately, his Time affixed attribute gave him a perfect sense of timing. Will was stunned for exactly sixty-six seconds before he was able to regain even the slightest semblance of control over himself.

He had resisted gods before, but then, he’d always known that it would end—and of course, he had never actually managed to defeat one of them with his aura. Throwing off the stunned condition when it was two tiers higher than him took everything he had, and even then it was just to force his soul to move again so he could use Chaos Transfer, sending the affliction into Eclipse.

The moment he could move again, Will leapt towards the Users nearest to him. Sen’s eyes had been exempted from the awe-inspiring attack that had just annihilated the entire coordinated defense they’d been putting up.

What had that been? Sen’s sight had been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of power behind it—but that didn’t matter right now.

Through Sen, Will could also tell just how devastated their counteroffensive had been by that one blow.

Damn it. He’d been expecting something strong to come, but even with Ingrid warning them about what they would be getting into, nothing had prepared him for this.

Around him, every single one of the people on his side had been stunned, and nineteen out of twenty of them had been deeply afflicted with corruption, so much so that they were mere minutes from simply collapsing dead. Somehow, in the time that they’d been stunned, they hadn’t been overrun by the cultists.

Will soon realized that this was because they were instead focusing on the active ritual, all of their magic flowing into the pillar and being amplified by it, creating a positive feedback loop that fed itself until their ritual would complete.

As Will used Time in a Bottle to consider his next move more carefully, he sent Sen’s eyes out.

The corruption cultists weren’t completely ignoring them. A few miles in front of them, the portal that the cultist army had flooded out of was now connected to the other two by thick threads of mana so dense that Will could see the crimson path with his naked eyes.

Sen’s sight, however, caught the thinner threads connecting each of the corrupted, stunned Users to the ongoing ritual. One of those threads, he realized, emerged from himself.

The cultists were going to use the corrupted Users as ritual material. Given how much power had just been used to initiate this, Will was sure that the corruption was part and parcel of the ritual requirements.

He had to shut that down. Around him, two thousand people were dying, and there was only one person who could reasonably purge that.

Will dropped his Time in a Bottle and surged forward, activating Ghostflame.

16 levels of [Corruption] cleansed. 16 levels of [Stunned] cleansed.

[Envoy of Mercy] has activated. You have gained one level of [Blessed] and [Purified] for each life you saved. 16 instances of each have been gained.

Sixteen down, he thought, barely taking the time to observe the Users around him coming back to their senses in disarrayed confusion. Still almost two thousand to go.

He could cleanse their corruption when he was near them at the cost of his own life-force. Envoy of Mercy mitigated that, of course, which made his primary concern his mana and his actual ability to get to people.

You have consumed [Silver Maximum Attribute Potion]. [Speed] raised to Silver 10.

#

Once Dread Executor, now just Nynn, a gold-rank User stared down another gold-rank. Neither of them were being truly honest to others about how terrifyingly powerful they were in actuality, but Ataraxis had hid it better. He had avoided Nynn’s notice for centuries, if this act of power was anything to go by. Any sovereign tier who dealt with corruption would have been constantly monitored if even a hint of it had reached his ears.

“You strain plausibility,” he said softly, allowing his scythe to manifest. “That you have not broken it is a wonder.”

“I know exactly how far I can stretch the pale, old friend,” Ataraxis replied, hands spread. “You are running out of tricks, Executor. The process has begun. You cannot kill me in a way that matters.”

“I don’t even know who you are,” Nynn replied, energy coursing through his scythe.

Far away from him, he sensed the only moving human in the area. The aura felt like that of an angel’s, commanding but broken. There was a casual arrogance in it that was reminiscent of the Emperor-ranks who were almost gods in their own right, but it came with a strange, oddly human kindness.

The angel burned as it flew, searing the afflictions from those alongside of it.

Even from this distance, Nynn could sense the alignment of the candidate with divinity.

Envoy of Mercy.

“You cannot abandon this post, can you?” Ataraxis said, drawing Nynn’s attention. “I have been watching for quite a while, Executor. You no longer have the raw strength to defeat me. Even if you did, this ritual is too entrenched for you to interrupt. You have lost, Executor. What will you do? Cull this planet like you have so many others?”

“You know I am no Dread Executor,” Nynn replied. “Not anymore.”

Dreadscythe Nynn, his namesake, was one of a very limited few links he’d kept. For the time being, he was no Executor, but given time and his existing link, he could be once again.

The further charged his scythe was, the shorter that would be. If he emptied it entirely, it could be decades. Centuries, even. It was possible he would see true death before he joined the ranks once more, and he would be lost forever.

“So you are not,” Ataraxis said. “Your lack of true power proves that well enough.”

But it had been longer than centuries since the last time any Dread Executor, past or present, had done anything less than their absolute utmost to keep the worlds from falling to pieces. It was an evil, sometimes, but it was a necessary one. The last time one of Nynn’s kind had truly failed, a galaxy had gone with them.

“Five centuries,” he whispered. Five centuries, at a guess. He had just enough left in the scythe for one grand gesture, and then it would be so long before he would even have a chance at regaining his position.

He could have only ever made one choice.

Nynn was very specialized in what he did. He wasn’t a ritualist, a spy, a spatial magic user—any of those paths would have led him down a very different direction in life. Ataraxis was right. There was nothing he could do to stop the rituals, even at his maximum power.

“Allow me to give you a piece of advice,” Nynn said. “One old monster to another.”

Ataraxis cocked his head, clearly amused. “By all means.”

“We are most dangerous when backed into corners.”

Iif he couldn’t break the ritual, couldn’t understand the magic behind the portals, couldn’t stop the demon being summoned… he could still carry out the task he had shaped himself for.

“Culmination. Final Execution.”

#

91 levels of [Corruption] cleansed. 91 levels of [Stunned] cleansed.

[Envoy of Mercy] has activated. You have gained one level of [Blessed] and [Purified] for each life you saved. 91 instances of each have been gained.

Will was losing the battle against time. People were dying before he could get to them, even at his accelerated speed. He cast aside the burgeoning sense of guilt that he hadn’t used the gold-rank potion. By necessity, he was saving it for later. Their collective failure to stop the demon gate from spawning meant that priorities had shifted once more. Burning resources now would mean an inability to deal with the massive presence gradually manifesting overhead.

Still, every time he got to a crowd of Users only to find that the bronze-ranks were already dead or dying, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of pain. He’d cleansed nearly five hundred people over the course of a minute, using his hunger phantasm, Sen, and all his movement skills to hyper-accelerate his movement. He flickered Ghostflame on and off, periodically using mana potions to top himself up. Envoy of Mercy was the only thing keeping his life force from draining entirely, burning the levels of Blessed and Purified almost as fast as he gained them.

It was only going to get worse. The corruption was steadily worsening with time. The skill that had drawn from all three pillars was lingering, and even if its strength was nothing like what it had been initially, the stunning was only beginning to wear off for the most powerful of them. People were dropping like flies.

Will didn’t think. He just ran. There was nothing else he could do, not now. Fighting against the one who’d activated this skill wasn’t his responsibility. Sen’s eyes already showed him whose it was.

Far off in the distance, Nynn used a skill, and the universe seemed to grind to a halt.

The stars in the sky winked out. For a moment, Will’s Ghostflame flickered to nothingness, every single light source fading.

A chill ran through Will’s spine. He looked to the skies, and a long, thin line divided it in two.

This was true power.

#

Lev and the rest of the survivors from the settlement had been on the run for weeks now. After the cultists had stormed their way through it, their defenses had been quickly overrun by monsters and opportunistic murderers.

One or two of their combined dozens were on the path to silver rank soon, but without monster cores, it was nearly impossible for them to hold their ground against the elves constantly trying to poke holes in their defences.

For some time, the pressure had been lessened by the presence of a truly terrifying gold-rank monster that attacked the life elves far more frequently than their group, but they had decided to haul ass towards one of the coasts anyway. According to passersby that they’d added to their group, civilization was at least somewhat intact there.

It was the middle of the day, and they’d been granted a brief respite. It looked like they’d left the functional operating zone of the life elves, at least for the time being.

They were taking a rare lunch break when, for a single second that seemed to stretch on for hours, the sky abruptly plunged into absolute darkness. There was no eclipse, nothing blocking the sun—just totality.

Then it passed, and the only sign that anything had passed was that the sun felt a little colder on their faces. Their perception of the world, which had already seemed so dangerous, had been shaken once more.

Lev’s entire ragtag group had fallen silent, and they remained quiet in the wake of the event, looking around at each other with wide eyes.

When they continued on, it was in an awed silence. They didn’t know what had happened, nor could they, but each and every one of them could tell that this was a power beyond their world.

#

Needles tingling with corrupted energy drifted into deep space with neither rhyme nor reason, their owner gone.

Nynn did not waste time double-checking the chunk of reality he had briefly torn to shreds, nor did he lament the fact that his Dreadscythe no longer held enough power for him to be anything more than the gold-rank he was right now.

His Culmination was exactly what it said. Final. Ataraxis would not come back from this. On a fundamental level, everything that made the cultist what he was—his atoms, his soul, his magic—had been eliminated.

The wheel that he had begun turning, however, was still spinning. Though his Culmination was now gone, the effects it had inflicted upon the people here were still there, and there was only one person equipped to handle that.

And of course, on top of all of that, a mid-tier demon. Should that summon complete, not even saving his Culmination would stop it. The world would be lost in hours, if not minutes.

Nynn was no expert in ritual magic, but even he could see the naked lines of magic connecting the Users who’d been stunned by Ataraxis’ ultimate skill.

The late high priest had initiated the summoning step with his Culmination, creating the corruption that was necessary to summon a demon from the Beyond. It was a work of genius ritualism that Nynn had never seen the likes of before.

On this planet, there were only two others qualified to handle corruption. Of those, exactly one of them actually possessed the element.

Without hesitation, Nynn teleported towards William Li-Brown.