[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 95: Understandable, Really (Patreon)

The item was an interesting one. It was gold-rank, but it wasn’t as flashy as Will had expected a gold-rank item to be.

Then again, he supposed that to some people out there in the cosmos, gold-rank items were to them as regular unformed-rank equipment was to him. It made sense that there would be some more mundane, less combat-focused items.

Touching it put him into a state where he was suddenly and acutely aware of his soul, as if he’d been knocked out of his body. It was quite similar to the process that the gods took when they hijacked his dreams, but to a much lesser extent. Will was still in his own body, and his senses were still accessible to him.

He could feel the stone’s magic pouring into him. Obviously, he’d double and triple-checked to make sure it wasn’t anything harmful, but even if it had stricken him with an affliction, Will still had plentiful access to Ghostflame, which would easily clear it.

Threads of investigative mana slipped through his soul. To Will’s surprise, he could now somewhat accurately perceive how that magic was working. As it turned out, there were a plethora of benefits to experiencing a mind-melting amount of soul torture. Whether or not those outweighed the effects of enduring the worst pain known to mankind was a different question, but in the moment, Will was grateful to himself for picking the path of most resistance.

Though he couldn’t yet manipulate the magic that searched him, he could understand what it was doing.

The item did seem to get a little confused when it came to him, which Will assumed was because his soul was not the simple, single core that most people had and was instead a mess of shattered components that were connected by thin strands of energy. The Crown, whose sigil Will was still holding onto, had killed his soul for a minute or two when Will had dared to trespass into his dream territory. The aftereffects were a major part of his arsenal now.

Title: [Shattersoul]

Legendary

Granted only to those who have had their soul broken and survived the process.

All aspects of your soul are unaffected by rank differences and bypass skill-based immunities and resistances. The range at which you can project your aura vastly increases, as does its strength. You are immune to soul attacks made at your rank or lower, and you have resistance to soul attacks made above your rank.

This didn’t qualify as a soul attack, he was pretty sure, but there was definitely a rank difference between him and the item that should have made this easier. Unfortunately, that did mean that it was taking longer.

The text started scrolling out much slower than it had for Charlie. Will could sense it slowly crawling around his soul, extracting information and engraving it on the surface of the tablet.

Name: William Li-Brown

Level: Silver 5

That part was simple enough. Both drew from roughly the same part of his soul.

Will sensed the item prying into different places. If his process followed Charlie’s, the next would be his class.

If he tried, he was sure that he could block the magic out. Did he want to?

After a moment of contemplation, he decided against it. His class wasn’t a terrible secret. Besides, they were already expecting him to be dark and edgy after how he’d shown up. A suspicious class would probably make them less aggressive towards him than actively denying the display would be.

Class: Reaper

Charlie whistled at that. “Haven’t seen that one yet.”

“Is it on the register?” Amelia asked.

“Nope. We’ll have to put it on.”

Elements: [Corruption] (primary), [Death] (secondary), [Space] (secondary), [Storm], [Balance], [Time]

“Holy shit,” Rogue said. “No wonder you look so evil.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Striker said, annoyed. “Do you think anyone with these elements would be anything but?”

“Stand down, soldier,” Charlie said. “Don’tcha know SC’s elements? Elements don’t make people evil. People make people evil. Trust me. I’ve seen it.”

The energy from the item started acting in ways that Will was less familiar with. He didn’t stop it. It wasn’t harmful, he could tell that much.

[Leveling]: C-6

…huh. That was lower than he’d expected it to be. Will had been gaining levels pretty quickly, he felt.

That caught Charlie’s attention, though. He leaned across the desk, looking at the figure twice and rubbing his eyes as if he was seeing it wrong.

“You haven’t used monster cores,” Charlie said.

“Would it have showed it if I did?” Will asked. He felt distant from his own body, but he was still easily capable of speaking.

“Yep. Tells you what your level is functionally at afterwards. You level slower than average, but you’re still at the level of a leaderboarder? Without cores? What the hell are you?”

“Someone who got dealt a slightly shittier hand in some ways and a much better one in others,” Will replied.

“You must have gone through hell to level this fast,” Charlie said. “Cigar?”

“No, but thanks.”

The magic continued slithering its way through Will’s soul, this time searching for his attributes. Since this soul was so unlike a normal one, the item couldn’t follow the template it usually did. Instead, it took the path of least resistance, finding his least developed attribute first.

[Resistance]: A-1

That was his Balance attribute. It made sense that it was on the lower end, though it was still quite high. Will could be happy with that, especially since that element only involved two of his tertiary defensive skills: Equilibrium Mantle and Favored Element, the latter of which he hadn’t been using as much recently.

“That’s strange,” Charlie said, inventorying his cigar. His voice was focused now, much less casual than it had been before.

“Should we be concerned, sir?” Amelia asked.

“Only if you piss this guy off,” Charlie said. “I only know two others who fuck with the machine like this.”

Will shrugged, filing the information down for later. There were more people with shattered souls like him? Charlie’s words certainly seemed to imply that, though it was also possible they were screwing with it some other way.

Either way, it was good to keep in mind that there were others who could either screw with technology or their own soul. Will was almost uniquely powerful, but there was a difference between unique and almost unique that had been driven in very clearly by the corruption cultists.

[Power]: A-7

That was Will’s Storm attribute, comprised of Wind Walker as well as two synergistic lightning-based skills. It was sharply higher than his Resistance, which was good to see.

“Impressive,” Charlie said. “A-7 is leaderboard territory. I haven’t seen anyone outside our top-rankers who have attributes that rank that high on this scaler.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Will said impassively, not letting his aura betray any emotion. It was pretty exciting to know he was still up there even after the influx of otherworlders, though.

[Perception]: A-10

Time. Will had been using Pages of the Past less often after he’d gotten better at using his aura, but Time in a Bottle and especially Thousand Eyes had been absolutely key in his strategy. It made sense that it would be higher, given how actively he had relied on this skill. The passive effect of having perfect timing was pretty solid, too.

Charlie didn’t say anything this time, but Will could see the marked increase in interest in his aura. The otherworlder himself had two A-10 rank attributes, so he must have had some idea of how powerful that made Will.

[Speed]: A-10

Also somewhat expected, given that Space was bound to this attribute. Escape Artist, Weapons Free, Wraith Cloak, and Sanctuary were all heavily-used skills, and the ability to reduce teleportation cooldowns and ignore spatial distortions had been quietly critical.

Will sensed the agitation in the four pilots who were still standing at attention, having not been dismissed. He wondered what the purpose of them still being here was. Surely they weren’t that important. They were only bronze-rank, after all.

Then again, he’d been bronze not too long ago either. He figured that they were still in the upper quartile of User power. Maybe they were actually important and more than grunts.

Whatever. That wasn’t his concern.

The only person whose reaction mattered here was Charlie’s. He must have realized by now that Will’s attributes were being read in increasing order, which meant that the rest of his were all A-10.

[Soul]: 

Letters and numbers appeared, then started ticking upwards rapidly. A similar, faster process had occurred for the others, but this one seemed abnormal. Will could sense the magic taking measure of his broken soul. It was a pretty simple item, all things considered, not designed for someone as complex as him.

A line of text scrolled across the tablet.

User [William Li-Brown]’s [Soul] attribute cannot be accurately measured within the limits of this scale. Approximating based on available data.

Will had nothing better to say to that than, “Huh. That’s weird.”

[Soul]: S-0

He raised an eyebrow. Sure, he’d killed a lot of stuff, which must have increased the Death attribute, and he’d used all of Mark for Death, Ghostflame, and The Bell Tolls without reservation, but that seemed a touch high, didn’t it?

Charlie stood up abruptly, almost knocking the table over in his haste.

“S?”

But the item wasn’t done.

User [William Li-Brown]’s [Sigil] affinity cannot be accurately measured within the limits of this scale. Approximating based on available data. Sigils recorded: [Kadael, the Hunger] and [Vyx, the Crown].

“Oh, lovely,” Will said. “Did not realize that was going to be revealed. Oh well.”

[Sigil]: S-3

“WHAT?” Charlie shouted. He seemed to realize where he was a moment later and calmed down, a bit sheepishly. “You four. Dismissed. Do not report on this.”

The four pilots chorused their assent, saluting, and left. From their auras, Will concluded that at least three of them couldn’t have been happier to leave the room.

“Maybe I should have toned down my aura some,” Will muttered. “Or showered. I can’t imagine ‘atmospheric ash’ and ‘rune turtle gore’ is pleasant to be around.”

Charlie did not respond, still looking at the scale in shock.

The item had one more attribute to look through.

[Affinity]:

Ah. This could get a little awkward. This was his corruption affixation.

Somehow, the magic that searched through his soul seemed scared, like it didn’t want to touch this part of his soul. It hesitated, swirling around the only part of Will that it hadn’t examined yet.

You’ve already been invasive as hell, Will thought. Why not finish the job?

Annoyed at the wait, Will decided to take matters into his own hands. He manipulated his soul, trapping the investigative thread within with ease.

With nowhere else to go, it fed into his last attribute.

User [William Li-Brown]’s [Affinity] attribute cannot be accurately measured within the limits of this scale. Approximating based on available data.

The letter and number started whirring again, tearing up the ranks before settling on… oh. It wasn’t settling.

Will was pretty sure the left letter was trying to hold to S, but it kept on vibrating like it was trying to split into two. The number was still going insane as well, ticking upwards without end.

“Is that supposed to happen?” Will asked innocuously.

“None of this is!” Charlie exclaimed, flabbergasted.

The tablet began vibrating with the force of its changing text—then, all of a sudden, it stopped with an audible crack.

The text it had been displaying disappeared, spiderwebbing lines creeping through the tablet like it was a window someone had thrown a baseball at.

Despite the text no longer updating, the smooth stone continued vibrating.

“Take your hands off,” Charlie said. “Take it—“

The stone cracked in two, then fell into two neat halves, each of them looking more like a map of California’s earthquake faults than anything else. Will watched as the split pieces rested on a table for a moment before promptly beginning to segment further, breaking down into dust.

He stared at the broken scale. Charlie stared at the broken scale.

“Well,” Will said. “Now you know what you’re buying. I think this is the part where I tell you the price.”

Charlie stared at Will. Will blinked slowly, staring back.

“WHAT THE FUCK—”

#

The past day or so had been extremely hectic aboard the Sentinel. In the wake of the top 16 Users clearing out damn near every silver-rank dungeon in the area alongside Will killing the gargantuan gold-rank leviathan terrorizing the depths, the bronze-rank crew had managed to return to a routine, and they’d pushed themselves to advance faster and harder, knowing that there was every possibility that the dungeons would come back.

What they hadn’t been ready for was for former Dread Executor Nynn to use the dying energy of the trial of the champion to teleport all of the surviving competitors down from the falling asteroids to the “isolation point,” which just so happened to not exactly be isolated.

With just over a thousand survivors, there were far too many Users for a single research ship to hold, even a large one.

Fortunately, not every participant in the trial of the champion had been a primary combat class. While nobody had the kind of materials necessary to build proper lodgings, there was enough to at least create an impromptu raft city off the edge of the ship.

Unfortunately, none of them had a movement skill powerful enough to make their way through the thousand-mile voyage to land. Nynn could take himself and perhaps one or two souls through the Beyond, but this was no longer his fight. His task was done here. Besides, he needed at least a day to rest. The amount of damage his soul had taken by ferrying Will to and fro during the final fight in deep space wasn’t irrecoverable, but it was dangerously close to the precipice.

During the day that had passed, most of the Users grew to accept their new reality. Until they leveled up to the point where they could develop skills that would either allow them to survive a very long ocean-bound journey through waters that were infested with monsters of all kinds or a portal power long enough to reach land, they were stuck here.

Many of them had banded into parties—some pre-formed, others hastily creating a new party from scratch—and gone off to clear what dungeons they could find. Some had already failed to venture back.

Dangerous adventures weren’t the only trouble brewing at the gates of the expansive, bobbing rafts attached to the ship. Even a day had been enough for tensions to start escalating. Despite their temporary cooperation, many of the sigil-holders and Champion’s Pass owners who’d made their way into the tournament had pre-existing conflicts with each other. Organizations and factions of all kinds had formed after the apocalypse had struck, and grudges that had gone on pause were back in full force.

Seated on the edge of the Sentinel, Caiyeri watched two groups of three bronze-ranks squaring up against each other impassively. She didn’t plan on intervening.

Caiyeri: There are going to be casualties within the week for certain. Earlier than that is possible as well.

Will: That’s really awkward. Who’s got beef?

Caiyeri: Everyone. If I tried to find out, we would be here all day.

Will: Hold on a second. Doing some shit right now.

A few minutes passed.

Will: How’s Hua?

Caiyeri: Managing. She seems numb to loss. Both her and Liam went to clear a bronze-rank dungeon.

Will: Liam’s alive? Thank fuck.

Caiyeri: Mostly blind, but yes.

Will: Damn. I’ll have to catch up more when I come.

Caiyeri: You’re coming here? How and when?

“Look behind you.”

Caiyeri did not jump, because she was not an easily terrified child. She also definitely did not yelp in surprise, and anyone who reported otherwise would receive a bullet to the face.

“Will,” she said, recollecting herself from what had absolutely not been a moment of sheer terror. “Mother’s grace, how did you get here?”

“Sheer power,” Will said. “Jesus, there’s a lot of people here. I figured there’d be a bunch, but… hey. Makes all the more sense for what I’m going to do.”

“Which is?”

“Hope that nobody here hates the ESNA enough to bomb their ships when I bring them over,” Will said. “I brought a silver-ranker over. He’s only tried to kill me once, and I’m pretty sure he handles logistics. I think? They really need to give more detailed titles than ‘Commander,’ I swear.”

“Tried to kill you once, did he?” Caiyeri asked, raising an eyebrow. At this point, she was so used to his bullshit that she barely batted an eye at that. “How did that go?”

“It was understandable, really. He panicked because he saw that my powers were a touch broken, then he tried to trigger the explosives under me, but I disarmed those with Sen and the hunger phantasm while we were talking earlier. After that, we got to actually negotiating. Did you know how utterly fucked the eastern seaboard is right now?”

“I don’t know what the eastern seaboard is,” Caiyeri said. “What is he offering you that kept you from killing him?”

“Oh, come on. I don’t kill people just because they try to kill me once.”

Caiyeri affixed her… friend? friend sounded right—with her best are you fucking kidding me stare.

“Only when they threaten me afterwards!” Will protested. “This guy apologized and everything. I think I’m in their top ten threats list now, but he promised not to attack me.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“He offered you something. You wouldn’t be so light-hearted about this affair if there was no reason not to kill him.”

“Maybe he did,” Will admitted. “I figured that with everyone stuck in one place, things might powder keg up and explode. He’s here to survey the place and figure out how quickly he can airlift everyone back to their respective countries.”

“That happened suspiciously quickly,” Caiyeri said.

“Well, I also killed a gold-rank city-eating monster on the way.”

“Just on the way. Of course.” She shook her head. “Every time I think you’ve run out of surprises, you pull out another one. What’s next? Are you, perhaps, being deployed to another location that desperately needs help? Another gold-rank?”

Will looked at her sheepishly. “Um… maybe? There’s a bigass necrotic wyrm currently occupying most of what used to be DC, and it’s acting in a way that implies it’s being controlled, I think.”

She sighed. “You want me to come with you, don’t you?”

“There might be a sticking point with the portal, but yeah,” Will said. “I figure having someone consistent on my team would be good. I’m not as good at dealing with the little guys, and if a gold-rank isn’t a perfect matchup for me, I’ll struggle hard.”

“How soon?” Caiyeri asked.

“Five minutes ago, ideally. I said I could get help, but they wouldn’t take it from anyone who was affiliated with a nation other than the ESNA, so that leaves basically you.”

“Your first choice by process of elimination,” Caiyeri said drily. “That makes me feel valued.”

“Look, are you in or out? There’ll definitely be good loot. Plus, I can probably swing a visit to Vegas, though we’ll have to be airdropped in since that’s not ESNA territory.”

“Vegas? I think that’s—“ Caiyeri’s eyes lit up. “Wait, is that the gambling city?”

Will nodded.

“Then hurry up, will you? Why are we wasting time standing around waiting for something to happen?”

“That about-face was scarily fast. Alright. With me.”

They passed by a slightly disoriented, clearly seasick (or possibly spacesick) Commander Charlie on their way back to Will’s portal.

“Good looks, Charlie,” Will said. “If I’m not back by tomorrow, you can probably assume I’m dead.”

“Don’t fuck this up, Will,” Charlie said, gathering himself long enough to speak. “I like you, and it’ll take at least two days to clear out space to mobilize a personal jet for me. See you soon.”

“See ya.”

Caiyeri barely gave Charlie a second glance as she passed by him. He was a higher level than her, yes, but that meant little. She had seen another otherworlder that was significantly more impressive than him before, though the gold-rank Nathan was off clearing fires in other parts of the world, having been one of the only ones who could actually leave Point Nemo.

“This might get a bit dicey,” Will said, stopping them in front of a dark, swirling portal that Caiyeri remembered as the one he’d disappeared into for a week during the trial of the champion. He looked up. “Hey, Sadareth, would you mind averting your eyes?”

Will extended an arm, which Caiyeri interlinked with hers.

“Ready?” Will asked. At Caiyeri’s nod, he said, “Three, two—“

He jumped forward, tossing both of them into the Beyond.