[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 94: RTB (Patreon)

Maybe hanging from the bottom of a magical fighter jet by literally holding onto its gun hadn’t been the best idea. Will and the man he’d accidentally knocked unconscious with his phantasm had been in a rather precarious area with little cover, and it was only thanks to the last-second intervention from the pilot he’d contacted that had kept him from having to deal with the added complication of the other two planes shooting down the one he’d been hanging from.

Even getting here had been unnecessarily complicated. Will still didn’t have any true flight powers, and it had taken a series of massive air-dashes, made possible by the silver-rank boost to Wind Walker, just to get himself into range of the fighters when they’d been flying low. From there, an amped Weapons Free had allowed him to teleport himself to the gun of Amelia’s jet.

“Well, I suppose all’s well that ends well.”

Sledge Woodworth, the Bronze 10 Pilot in front of him, did not respond, most likely because he was still passed out. Will had forgotten to exclude the parachuting man from the effect of his phantasm, and it had proved to be a bit awkward when he’d nearly died.

But he hadn’t! That was the important part. Will was not going to be held accountable to his own country’s government for the death of one of their military.

Or, well, not exactly his country. The United States of America didn’t seem to exist anymore, at least not in the same way it had before. He wasn’t terribly clear on what had happened, but Hua and Casey Justin, one of the two Americans he’d met in passing shortly before the debacle at the end of the trial of the champion, both had contacts that had been able to ever so slowly pass him down the chain of command until they got to the four pilots who’d been assigned to rapid response.

Will had a lot of questions as to why there weren’t stronger fighters available to respond to one of the most densely populated cities on the continent, but that could wait until they settled down.

Amelia: We’re going to RTB. It’ll be a few minutes. Can you hold on?

Will: No looting the body?

Amelia: The cleaning crew comes after us.

Will: Then sure. I can hold on.

There were concerns associated with being taken to the base of an organization he didn’t trust, of course, but at this point in his progression, Will was reasonably confident that even if he was taken to an underground black site, it would be a much larger risk for the military than for him.

To be fair, he wasn’t actually on the leaderboard anymore. It had expanded substantially, but so had the people who were eligible for it.

World Leaderboard

Note: Eligibility for the World Leaderboard for your cycle includes all who were born on your planet. Otherworlders are eligible so long as they hail from Planet Sol-3, “Earth.”

1. Cinder Solace. Gold 5 Infernal Plaguespreader. Current sponsors: none.

2. Lance. Gold 5 Hydromancer. Current sponsors: the Lord of Drowned Ghosts.

3. Yui. Gold 4 Void Reaver. Current sponsors: Dread Executor [REMOVED].

4. Cross. Gold 4 Necromancer. Current sponsors: the Order of the Living Dead.

5. Nathan. Gold 3 Orbital Engineer. Current sponsors: none.

[View more? 5/100 currently displayed.]

Your current position on the world leaderboard is number 107 of 722,930,523.

Will was heartened to see that the rate at which humanity had lost people was beginning to slow down, though a loss of several dozen million since he’d last checked was a bit unfortunate.

There had been enough otherworlders who’d been injected into the mix to push him off the top 100, as well as people returning from the trial of the champion and making breakthroughs, that Will was no longer there. That didn’t worry him terribly, but it was a bit concerning to see how many gold-ranks had been added. In Will’s experience, human Users tended to be the most dangerous when they had a rank differential, and he remembered Natalie, Hua, and the late Haoyu telling him that a good deal of the otherworlders had been causing significant problems.

Interestingly enough, many of the gold-ranks didn’t have their full names on the leaderboard anymore, with the exception of a few names that Will was reasonably sure were chosen ones. That was a neat quirk, and it confirmed that he hadn’t been going crazy when Identifying Nathan hadn’t returned a last name.

The third-ranked User caught his attention. Void Reaver was one of the classes that could evolve into Dread Executor one day—and it was itself already a class evolution. Will had been offered Void Knight in the tutorial, with Reaver as a potential evolution. He was going to have to keep an eye out for Yui, whoever they were.

There was going to be a reward for staying in the top 100 by the time two years had passed, but Will was confident he could get there pretty easily.

Amelia: Setting us down in two. Be ready to drop off, if you’ve got a way to manage it.

Will snapped back to attention, Sen’s eyes keeping up with the supersonic jets with ease. They were traveling fairly low, he was pretty sure, given the fact that he could still make out individual people on the coast they were passing over, but that might have been his silver-rank Perception stat speaking.

He didn’t recognize the area they were in now. Will had been to NYC a couple times during college, but he’d never left the city itself, and they were over countryside now, whipping through mountain ranges that alternated between being covered by roaming monsters or looking like they’d just undergone several weeks of sustained artillery fire.

Slowly, civilization began to appear beneath them. The landscape became dotted with encampments—rough ones at first, then a scattered array of them. Refugees, it looked like.

Past that came more organized buildings, all built into mountains.

Amelia: Drop now if you can.

Will: Heard.

He let go of the gun, expanding the hunger phantasm out so that he could keep holding onto Sledge while gliding with oversized shadowy wings. Will continued following the trajectory of the jets above him, using Sen to track them.

They sharply decelerated as they all passed over a mountain ridge, revealing the military complex beyond.

From above, it was fairly spartan. Built around what appeared to be an empty volcano crater, it was dotted with a concrete expanse reminding Will of a documentary he’d seen on a max-security prison once. 

At the center of it was a short landing strip, which all three jets made a beeline towards. They moved in ways that shouldn’t have been possible at the speeds they were going, magic augmenting their maneuverability.

Will spiraled downwards. This was only his second time being this beholden to the whims of gravity, but he was growing used to it pretty quickly.

The jets actually alighted before he did. All three of them entered a death spiral towards the ground, circling each other and diving straight down. Will spent a panicked moment thinking that the first people he’d met back on Earth hated him so much that they were willing to kill themselves rather than talk to him more, but then he remembered that this was not a high school nightmare and these were trained professionals. Their jets screamed to a halt just above the landing strip, breaking off into a clean glide after losing the entirety of their momentum.

“That can’t be healthy. Do they get anti-whiplash skills too?”

Predictably, Sledge did not respond.

By the time Will hit the landing strip, the three pilots had all gotten out. Just like Sledge, they were wearing uniforms with a flag he didn’t recognize that otherwise fit the exact image he had of an American fighter pilot. Rogue and Amelia both wore aviator sunglasses, but Striker had a face-obscuring helmet that he didn’t remove.

“Pleasure to meet you all,” Will said, folding his hunger phantasm back into his body as he touched down. “Name’s Will, though I’m sure you got that already.”

With a gesture, the shadow-formed stretcher carrying the unconscious airman on it moved towards the other three.

It was a little disconcerting to look at them. Crimson lines intersected their bodies at odd angles. They weren’t enemies, but it would have been all too easy for Will to blitz them and kill all three. Time in a Bottle to keep them from reacting in time, Mark for Death, hit them hard and fast. With First Blood and a guaranteed crit from the demonic lines—no. He wasn’t going to entertain this any longer. Have a plan to kill everyone you meet was a good idea. Graphically visualize slicing them in half and afflicting them with a painful death was not.

“Striker, Rogue, Amelia?” Will asked, shaking his head free of his thoughts. “Do I have that right?”

“Telescope,” Rogue said, pointing a thumb at Amelia. “Or Telly.”

“Either is fine,” Amelia said. “I’m not as attached to the callsign as these three.”

“Rogue, Telly,” Striker hissed, holding a hand out. A moment or two later, a pistol appeared in said hand. “I don’t know why command told us he was fine, but he’s not.”

“I could have killed you in the time you took to grab your gun,” Will said. “If you want—“

He used Time in a Bottle in the middle of his sentence, cutting himself off. To give himself a return point, he dropped an unformed-rank kitchen knife he’d picked up from dungeon loot.

Skill: [Time in a Bottle]

- Spell (chronomancy).

- Cost: high mana per second.

- Cooldown: scales based on how long the skill is used.

Silver

Accelerates your perception of time, enabling you to experience twenty seconds for each second that passes outside. At high mana cost, you can increase your movement speed for one objective second, though this effect ends if you use another skill or an attack.

Thanks to the mana overflow he’d received through his Death attribute from killing the ancient rune turtle, Will had more than enough stored to pay the cost of the addition to the skill. During that one second, sped up vastly, he was easily able to walk behind the bronze-ranker and draw his own sword. He didn’t hold it in a threatening position, since he didn’t want to draw more aggro than he was already going to.

Will made a show of checking a watch he didn’t have, then sped time back up.

“—to assume I’m evil, you should at least have some idea of what an evil me actually looks like,” he finished. 

Incoherent non-words of surprise came from all three of them, and Will teleported back to the kitchen knife before they could instinctively draw on him, spreading his hands.

“Now imagine I actually stabbed you there,” Will said. “Have any of you been briefed on what I can do?”

“No,” Amelia said. She was the only one who hadn’t actually summoned a weapon. “Just that you’re strong and apparently a friendly. I would advise that you avoid antagonizing people who could very well get someone hurt if you surprise them.”

Someone, she’d said. Not you.

“Antagonizing people is a favorite hobby of mine,” Will said, nodding appreciatively as the others holstered their weapons. “You lot seem reasonable, though, so I’ll hold off on it. Do you have orders to bring me in?”

“Commander Charlie wants to speak to you,” Striker said cautiously, still eyeing him with distrust. “I don’t want to doubt orders from above, but you’re a real piece of work.”

“I get that a lot. Is commander a military title? I never really followed the scene.”

“Scene?” Striker replied, flabbergasted. “Kid, do you know what you’re talking about? This isn’t a fuckin’ roleplay website.”

“Wait, hold on, did you just call me kid? You can’t be more than ten years older than me.”

“There has been some restructuring,” Amelia said placatingly. “There is a lot to be caught up on. We aren’t the best to explain it to you.”

“The middle of the US didn’t have enough people and it turns out one of the thousand conspiracies about what’s behind the curtain were real,” Rogue said flatly. “Now there’s two shadow governments in the light, and we’re one of them.”

“Or you could just give a poor summation of it in three seconds and confuse the guy who has demonstrated that he can ambush and kill all of us,” Amelia sighed. “Will, are you okay with entering the facility? There’s going to be a brief security check. Too many assassination attempts on the provisional Supreme Commander, see.”

“Provisional Supreme Commander?” Will raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like an oxymoron. I assume that’s not who I’m meeting?”

“Nope, it’s not. Just roll with it,” Rogue said, waving him along. “C’mon. Day’s not gonna last forever.”

“One moment,” Will said. “This place isn’t super out of bounds, is it?”

“It isn’t,” Rogue said. He removed his aviators, peering over them at Will. “Whatchu doing?”

“Just casting a skill.” Somehow, Will doubted that the government—or what passed for a “shadow government,” at least—was going to enjoy him doing this, but it wasn’t like they were going to be able to stop him.

He knelt down, drawing on the few spare boons he’d gotten from saving the lives of everyone in the tournament.

Title: [Envoy of Mercy]

Legendary

Saving or sparing a life grants you stacking levels of [Blessed] and [Purified]. You can consume one level of [Blessed] to negate a cooldown to any skill you possess. You can consume one level of [Purified] to negate the cast time of a skill. You can consume one level of both boons to increase your soul, aura, and mana control.

Instances of [Blessed] and [Purified] obtained this way will automatically be consumed to restore you to full health.

The bulk of his boons had been consumed to keep him alive while under the crushing weight of over a thousand levels of corruption at once, but there were enough left in the tank to do a few tricks.

You have consumed one level of [Purified] to negate the cast time of [Sanctuary].

Skill: [Sanctuary]

- Ritual (dimension, Beyond).

- Cost: extreme mana, equivalent of 1,000 silver credits (first cast). Varies (subsequent casts).

- Casting Time: varies.

- Cooldown: varies.

Silver

There doesn’t have to be an end.

This ritual opens a link to your sanctuary in the Beyond. Opening a second link on either side will allow you to travel to and from the sanctuary at different points in your bounded reality.

Further effects will be revealed under the correct conditions.

This skill will not evolve until it ascends to the gem tier.

The “further effects” in question had unfortunately not yet revealed themselves to him, which did mean that there was still much more to explore in the positive energy plane that he’d discovered at the other end.

For now, though, all he needed to do was create a portal. The ritual completed itself quickly, pure white energy radiating out from Will and contrasting the dark phantasm he always had swirling around him at least in part, drawing out the required ritual circle for the magic to complete.

A dark portal the size of an average door opened before him.

“Holy shit, dude,” Rogue said. “What the hell is that?”

“Industry secret, I’m afraid,” Will said pleasantly. “Now, I don’t think we want to leave your commander waiting.”

“You can’t just waltz into a military complex and put down a mass of evil energy!” Striker shouted, gun manifesting in his hands.

“I’m pretty sure I just did,” Will said. “Why don’t we ask the commander about it?”

That got Striker to shut up, presumably checking his messages.

After an awkward half minute where they simply stood there, he begrudgingly put his weapons away again and started trudging towards a concrete block that looked basically the same as the rest of them.

It was around this point that Sledge finally woke up.

“Oh, took you long enough,” Will said. “Sorry about that. Here’s a couple silver-rank potions. How about we call it even, yeah?”

The pilot seemed very confused, but he accepted the proffered potions and followed the rest of his crew.

“Great!” Will gave them all a beaming smile without a trace of ugh, do I really have to deal with politics now embedded into it. “Show me the way.”

#

The security check, as it turned out, was performed by people. That shouldn’t have surprised Will, though somehow he’d still expected them to have machines of some kind.

Maybe that confusion was caused by the weird magical machines they were keeping elsewhere. He’d expected that he would be run through one of the silver or even gold-rank machines buried underground, but nope. It was just two low silver-ranks, both with a pretty decent aura power and observation skills.

There was only problem.

“Um, boss?” one of them asked.

“We’re not your bosses,” Amelia said. From the exasperation in her voice, this was not the first time they’d had to have this conversation. “What is it?”

“Our skills aren’t working.”

“They’re not going to,” Will said.

He had too many trump cards hidden in his being to give them away to a casual identification skill. His titles, his shattered soul, his loot, and of course the demonic eye… yeah, no. Until Will had a better idea of what this organization wanted out of him, he wasn’t going to reveal everything about himself to them.

“Don’t I have vouches from other important people?” Will asked. “Casey Justin—aw, fuck, he’s from the other coast, isn’t he?”

“You know Casey?” the woman who had failed to analyze him said, lighting up. “I’ve only seen him on TV, but he’s a real hero. We don’t get much of his kind around these parts.”

“For good reason,” the other security guard said.

“In passing,” Will said, ignoring the latter. “I’m gonna assume that’s not going to be enough to let me through, though.”

“No,” the second guard said. “I—“

“Let’s go,” Rogue said, walking brazenly past the impromptu security checkpoint. “We just got clearance from way higher up. Whose kid are you, dude? Nobody else gets through this fast.”

Ignoring the stuttering protests of one guard and the questions of the other, Will replied to Rogue. “Nobody important. I see I’ve drawn some attention.”

“Some attention? Some attention doesn’t get you express permission from the fucking SC.”

“SC? Supreme Commander, I’m guessing. Who isn’t going to talk to me.”

“Yeah, probably not. Still, seriously?”

“Rogue…” Sledge said warningly. He hadn’t been speaking much, but he’d gotten the general gist of what was happening through messages and generally better social intelligence than… at least one of his comrades. “Not in public.”

“Oh. Shit. Right.”

“Let’s get a move on,” Striker said.

#

As Will had surmised, Commander Charlie was not the provisional Supreme Commander. His office was one of the few rooms in the otherwise barren and industrial complex to give any attention to creature comforts. A comfortable red carpet lined the center of the oval room, and Charlie sat behind a solid mahogany table that shone with a bronze-rank aura, and there were a few other items in the room that Will could only see with Sen’s help, ranging from high bronze to high silver.

One of those other things was directly under him.

The other was in front.

Commander Charlie. Level: Silver 10.

This is an otherworlder.

Three years ago, Lt. Col. Charlie, last name not recorded, was transported to [REMOVED] by external forces alongside the rest of his unit. To their credit, despite entering an area equivalent to an extreme-difficulty tutorial, the unit only experienced 50% casualties.

He has since returned for reasons that you have yet to discover. Now, he is a key part of the ESNA, and isn’t that a mouthful?

For those of you unaware (that means you), that stands for Eastern States of New America. Asking the system about this name will not result in productive conversation. For better or worse, it was selected by committee.

Just like the other otherworlders, Charlie didn’t have a last name listed. He was a heavyset man who looked at least twice Will’s age, though he had a dignified air to him, broken up only by the fat cigar he was in the process of smoking.

Amelia winced. “Commander, could you not smoke inside? We really need the people who can purify air for Yellowstone, and it’s not easy to move them back and forth.”

“I’ll do what I please, thank you very much,” Charlie said, a faint southern twang gracing his words. “You’re the new guy.”

“New guy as in new to the area, yes. If you think I’m joining your organization, you got another thing coming.”

“Mhm? Well, ol’ SC did tell us you didn’t play well with authority.”

“I play perfectly fine with authority. I’ll deal with you like anyone else. It’s when you start trying to order me around that I have problems.”

“Very fair, very fair!” Charlie took a long drag from his cigar before crushing it in a calloused hand. The ashes vanished into his inventory. “Since you’re here, we may as well get down to business.”

He opened the hand he’d crushed the cigar with, and a palm-sized device dropped onto the table. It was a gold rank item—the only one of its kind in this entire room.

“Nice party trick,” Will said. “What is that?”

That wasn’t a necessary question, of course. Will could already tell what it was. He wanted to see if Charlie would lie to him. That would be a pretty major tone-setter for the coming conversation. Will was willing to entertain this organization in exchange for information, but if they started trying to trick him, he’d just leave. There wasn’t much stopping him.

“You don’t need to waste your time with these games,” Charlie said. “You know what this is.”

“Measures power,” Will said neutrally. Had he really been that transparent? “Gold-rank equipment. Not sure why you would do that when you could just Identify someone.”

“Ah, see, there’s the trick,” Charlie said. “Watch.”

He placed his index finger on the circular tablet, which looked like it would be a great stone to skip across a lake. Charlie closed his eyes as magic coursed from him into the stone and back, his aura fluctuating ever so slightly.

When he removed his fingers, the tablet held a variety of numbers. Will skimmed them.

It was more invasive than he’d thought it would be. Just like his stat sheet, it showed the class name, primary elements, and all affixed elements alongside level.

For the attributes, however, there was a different display.

Name: Charlie

Level: Silver 10

Class: Vanguard

Elements: [Sight] (primary), [Earth] (secondary), [Shield] (secondary), [Fire], [Gun], [Tank]

[Leveling]: B-10

[Power]: A-8

[Speed]: B-6

[Affinity]: A-9

[Soul]: A-5

[Resistance]: A-10

[Perception]: A-10

“I know you’re probably worried we’re trying to pry you apart for all your little tricks,” Charlie said. “All due respect, we’ve got enough of our own. We’ve just heard a lot about you and want to know if you’re worth our time as an ally.”

The blunt truth, or close enough to it, huh? Will could respect that, at least.

“What does this actually display?” he asked. “It doesn’t show any of the cards up my sleeve, nor does it show yours, but I don’t know what those mean.”

“You might not have figured this out yet, but stats don’t mean everything. Two people with the exact same stats, class, and skills might not be anywhere near evenly matched.”

Will had plenty of practical experience proving exactly that. “Sure. That sounds right.”

“This is an item we brought back from Vi—our other world. It shows a score that represents potential and use for abilities. Goes from F-0 at the most dogshit, core-polluted tier to A-10 up where I’m at.”

Huh. That… actually seemed pretty interesting. Will checked the object one more time, examining it both with his skills and Sen.

To be honest, he had wanted a good quantification of how powerful he actually was for some time, because he was definitely punching well above his Silver 5 rank.

“I’m game,” Will said.

“Fantastic,” Charlie said, smiling wide. He pulled another cigar out, lit it with a flame that emerged from the tip of his finger, and gestured to continue.

Will took the tablet into his hands.

Let’s see how far I’ve come.