[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 101: Another One Bites the Dust (Patreon)

Progress to [Eternal Throne]: [37/1000].

None of the elves Will had systematically annihilated so far had been gold rank. As such, each of them contributed one skull to the throne of death he was slowly building. Will didn’t want to become the type of person who could easily boast a kill count of over a thousand, but this was necessary.

They still hadn’t caught on to the tactic he was using to evade them. Some of the elves now realized that the Hunter’s Mark was returning an inaccurate signal, but they didn’t have a way to take it down, and with Sen acting as a range extender for the hunger phantasm, Will was able to keep the small dagger going at high speed, preventing the elves from disabling it. 

This was going to be the first real challenge he faced. The devouring gestalt had surrendered to him in the trial of the champion after he had baited it into an extremely corrupted area, and it had promised to target life elves in a way that only a freshly sapient newborn freak of magical genetic engineering could.

Will and the gestalt had both been advancing at similar rates. He was still reluctant to attack it, even if he could sense the fear in its aura. Though it might be scared of him, the gestalt was a full rank higher than him, and unlike the other gold-ranks he’d dealt with on the East Coast, this was much less than a perfect matchup for him.

Without the dubious benefit of the irreparably corrupted asteroids, assisted unintentionally by the pillars that the corruption cultists from Selrethnir had used to inflict permanent gold-rank afflictions in the area they’d affected, Will didn’t have a source of corruption that could permeate through its skin faster than it could shed and regenerate it.

That wasn’t to say he thought it was hopeless, but despite all appearances to the contrary, Will did like to pick his battles sometimes.

Will peered at the gestalt curiously, feeling out its aura with his own. Although the gestalt was gold rank, its aura control was sloppy. That made sense, since much of its progression had been hurried along by its ability to devour the victims that Nymlera Brooksoul had unleashed it upon and absorb their mana. In a sense, it was just like using monster cores, albeit from the other end.

Its raw power was still great, however, and Will hadn’t been able to overpower it through sheer force last time. Shattersoul made it more viable this time, but he doubted he could properly break through its defenses without also having to fight it.

There was something different about the gestalt’s aura too, though. Will wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but his memory of auras had grown increasingly eidetic with time and practice. This was off. The gestalt’s aura was there, yes, but there was a smaller, more focused portion of it that wasn’t quite the same. It sparked a sense of familiarity in him, which…

His eyes widened as he realized what—no, whose—it was.

Nymlera Brooksoul.

“She got you again, huh?”

The gestalt, which was still as monstrous as ever but looked much less intimidating after dealing with gods and demons, hissed at him, firing its trademark bone spears, its flesh warping to allow its skeleton to expand outside it and flare into whips.

Will found himself much less concerned with the gold-rank attack now than he had before. The pressure on him was still immense, and he was forced to teleport immediately and then also use Time in a Bottle to navigate between the falling spikes. Even though it cost a massive chunk of his mana just to avoid one wave of the gestalt’s attacks, Will could go through it all without fearing for his life once.

Yes, he might be at a disadvantage, but he had more control over this situation than he’d ever had before. The desperation he’d once had fighting against a being of this much power was gone.

Just for fun, Will used Identify before making his next move. He was curious.

Devouring Gestalt. Level: Gold 10.

This is a militia boss. The devouring gestalt’s kill count is too high to bother enumerating, but if it had your [Eternal Throne] blessing, it would have a second life already.

That said, it doesn’t. If you kill it, it dies, and its connection alongside it. You have correctly ascertained that the gestalt is not currently the only mind present in the body before you.

Unfortunately, its current pilot has many reasons to want you dead. Would you believe that you almost torturing her to death isn’t the number one?

No? Yeah, fair enough.

“Have you gotten worse at making quips?” Will asked. No response, of course, because the system never actually spoke to him.

Okay. He had to focus. It being a militia boss was interesting. That was the next one up from clan, right?

Boss Tiers:

A boss’ tier is determined by the minimum projected size of the party required to defeat it with some degree of difficulty.

Militia. With Users at your rank and level, a true organized effort would be required to annihilate this being. Recommended minimum party size: 100 Users.

You have not yet encountered the following boss tiers: Battalion. Army. Nation. Planet.

Will raised an eyebrow, turning himself invisible with Wraith Cloak to lower the gestalt’s ability to locate him and give him more time to read through the messages.

He still wasn’t entirely sure how the system classed bosses, but it looked like it had something to do with how disproportionate the rank was to his.

“You’re a big guy, huh?” Will asked.

The gestalt’s response was to flare its whips out towards the source of the sound, tearing trees to shreds as bone simply shredded 

In a fair fight, he was pretty sure he could kill the gestalt, but that would take a while, and he didn’t have a while. If Nymlera was the one driving this thing now, which the system had as much as confirmed, then she was aware that he was here and she knew where he was. One gold-rank, he could fight. Two, or even three? He knew he’d sensed three gold-ranks in the area, at least.

That was much less tenable.

Will considered aborting the mission as he narrowly dodged attack after attack, but he couldn’t conscience letting Nymlera go to continue her reign of terror over any human that happened to be living in this area.

It also seemed a touch sad that he’d finally worked his way to a conclusion with the gestalt only for it to lose all its progress when he’d gotten back.

The inklings of a plan formed in Will’s head.

“Mind taking a breather?” Will asked.

The gestalt’s eyes flared with dark energy, and the ground in front of Will sizzled, Death-aligned magic carving a groove in the ground.

“I’m going to assume that’s a no. Alright. You know, you could respond every now and again. Banter is so boring when only one person’s contributing. Do you know how hard it is to be funny enough for the both of us?”

Doing this was going to rely heavily on the item he’d scammed the Lord of Loss out of.

Item: [Eclipse]

Mythic, bronze (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.

This sword had gained quite a few charges now, almost entirely from life elves. He’d finished off Thalia Brooksoul with this sword alongside the five elves he’d slain here. The nice part about the charge was that it didn’t force him to pick the skill that he wanted to use until he actually spent it, which gave him an in now.

The problem came with the fact that it only activated skills at the same rank as the item. Right now, that was bronze, and that would do nothing against a gold-rank monster being manipulated by a gold-rank elf.

Fortunately, Will had a lot of monster cores.

The gestalt’s aura contradicted its actions. Even with how inhuman it was, Will could tell it was terrified. It wasn’t fighting like a scared animal, though—it operated with the clear, cold efficiency that Nymlera had demonstrated time and time again.

It was predictable, though, which gave him the space to dodge and apply monster cores to Eclipse. Will was a bit sad that he was potentially capping the future potential of this weapon, but he figured that he’d burn that bridge when he got there.

Eclipse had been on the verge of silver already, so a couple monster cores of that rank were enough to finish its progression.

[Eclipse] advanced to silver rank!

Will had collected many silver monster cores from clearing out a ton of dungeons and slaying every wandering silver monster he could find, so he was able to force it partway towards silver rank, but he didn’t have the time to put hundreds of them into this sword, not while he was playing with fire.

I’m running out of time, he realized. Sen’s eyes gave him early warning on the other elves, and they were converging on his location. Furthermore, he was on the back foot in this fight. He’d completely abandoned attacking the gestalt to focus on defensive maneuvers so that he could feed more cores into the sword.

Will was a bit loathe to use the gold-rank one he’d gotten from killing the ancient rune turtle, but then again, gold-rank monsters were increasing in frequency. It was very possible that he would be able to find enough cores to replace this in time. Besides, he couldn’t afford to spend longer on this.

The investment paid off immediately.

[Eclipse] advanced to gold rank!

Will didn’t even check the updated message before he drew on the magical property of the sword.

[Eclipse] has spent the echo of [Diana Leafdrin]. Skill selected: [Dominate Construct].

Every last one of the life elves, without fail, possessed this skill or a variant of it. Their nation was so dependent on constructs, plants, and other conjured creatures to do their dirty work for them that it was functionally mandatory.

The dark sword shone with a sickly green light. Will sensed its aura shift to that of the last elf he’d killed, mimicking it with such stunning accuracy that he almost wondered if she’d somehow restored herself from death—and then the skill spent itself and the aura faded.

[Dominate Creation] negates [Dominate Construct].

Will cursed. Of course Nymlera’s abilities would outclass some random life elf’s. She was their leader, after all.

[Eclipse] has spent the echo of [Singed Stoneriver]. Skill selected: [Dominate Creature].

[Dominate Creation] negates [Dominate Construct].

The gestalt was slowing down now. Whatever Nymlera was doing to resist Will’s attempts to break her hold, she couldn’t perfectly balance it with her ability to finely control the gestalt.

He could work with this.

[Eclipse] has spent the echo of [Sylvari Mosswhisper]. Skill selected: [Dominate Creature].

As soon as Will thrust the skill out, he followed it with a blast of hunger phantasm, obscuring himself from sight and teleporting forwards.

Sen’s gold-rank ability was utterly broken. It raised the effective range of most of his skill by an incredible amount, and so Will was able to use Weapons Free to teleport right onto the gestalt’s eyes, which apparently counted as weapons.

[Dominate Creation] negates [Dominate Construct].

“Tag. You’re it.”

You have inflicted a level of silver-rank [Corruption] on [Devouring Gestalt].

[Devouring Gestalt] has attempted to resist [Decaying Touch].

[Devouring Gestalt]’s [Corruption Resistance] (Bronze) failed to negate the effects of [Decaying Touch] (Silver).

As it had figured out on its own when he’d first corrupted it, the gestalt was capable of shedding parts of its body to eliminate the corruption, but Will worsened it before Nymlera could order it to do so.

A bell tolled, stacking further afflictions on the gestalt before it could shed the first set, and Will stabbed it with Eclipse and his slayer sword both. Though they couldn’t do that much damage since they only had silver-rank Power behind them, they were able to stack up levels of charged, causing lightning to start arcing over the gestalt’s body.

[Eclipse] has spent the echo of [Sylvari Mosswhisper]. Skill selected: [Dominate Creature].

Will increased his offensive pressure. Though the gestalt did not have many lines of death to target, there were still quite a few, including one leading away from it. Will had assumed that that was a Hunter’s Mark at first, but he now realized that he’d been dumb about that. Obviously, the massive hulking monster didn’t have a class meant for stealth hunters. This was Nymlera’s hook set into its body.

Will made sure to space his corruption around those lines specifically, worsening the corruption in an effort to eliminate the skill entirely.

He used the second-to-last life elf charge before Nymlera could break through his last usage of it.

[Eclipse] has spent the echo of [Sylvari Mosswhisper]. Skill selected: [Dominate Construct].

The gold-rank elf might have been able to counter one of his attempts to remove her from the gestalt, but it was much easier to come up with new attack vectors than it was for her to adapt to all of them simultaneously, especially when Will’s class was built around having access to the most bullshit attack vectors in the known multiverse.

He saw the crimson line flash brighter, tense, then shatter.

The gestalt stopped, corrupted flesh molting off. Its aura was more frightened than ever, but there was confusion there now too.

When Will examined its aura, there were no more traces of Nymlera.

“So,” he said, letting his amassed shadow fall to the ground. “There are nineteen silver-rank and two gold-rank life elves coming towards us. I’ve got no quarrel with you if you’ve got none with me. What say put our differences aside for a bit?”

Cowed by its fear, the gestalt was all too happy to roar in assent. Will hoped that was assent, at least. It didn’t immediately attack him, so he assumed it was.

“Silvers coming in hot,” he said. “You do your thing. I’ll do mine.”

The problem with creating an expedition meant specifically to quietly pick off bronze and silver rankers and farm them for material was that they were mostly focused on stealth. Once that stealth stopped working, which it did against the combination of Will’s powerful aura senses and Sen, they were much less useful.

“Follow the eyes,” Will said, gesturing and hoping the phantasm would understand him.

He brought a couple dozen of Sen’s eyes out of time-lock, which made them semi-tangible and, more importantly, very visible. Iridescent eyes that looked like vibrant neon paint had been splattered upon the air popped into existence over every cloaked elf in the area.

The gestalt didn’t need to be told twice. Its many legs tore up the grassy environment as it barreled towards the first of the targets.

Will got going as well. He was acutely aware of the “angel of death” moniker that had gained an uncomfortable amount of popularity amongst the Users Lev and Allie had been with, but right now, he felt that it was a much less accurate descriptor than his class title: Reaper.

Progress to [Eternal Throne]: [38/1000].

[Eclipse] gained 1 charge.

He sent out waves of hunger phantasm, obscuring his position, and had Sen’s eyes accompany them.

Progress to [Eternal Throne]: [40/1000].

[Eclipse] gained 2 charges.

Any elf who assumed that the darkness was merely a visual effect proved to be sorely mistaken, as corruption started overtaking them instantly. Though some of them had skills that could cleanse corruption, Will made it a priority to take down anyone who suffered even the slightest affliction. One wrong step for one of his enemies meant death.

[First Blood] doubled the power of your attack.

[Mark for Death] increased the power of your attack.

Critical hit!

Progress to [Eternal Throne]: [44/1000].

[Eclipse] gained 4 charges.

With his titles and his demonic eye, every single attack Will landed was a critical hit, ignoring defenses and resistances. On the rare circumstance that he didn’t manage to kill the silver on the first hit, he used Ghostflame immediately, purging all the afflictions he’d just layered on them to deal a single devastating blow that inflicted true damage to them.

Progress to [Eternal Throne]: [51/1000].

[Eclipse] gained 7 charges.

About a quarter mile away, the devouring gestalt was wreaking havoc of its own, moving its way through silver-rankers like they were made of paper.

Will could feel a level-up coming on, but he knew that the Elven Mother had something to give him and he rather preferred not to have to face her right after slaughtering dozens of her race.

For some reason, the gold-rankers were perfectly content to stay back as their allies died. Will didn’t recognize one of them, but Nymlera stayed in one place, attempting to establish remote control over the gestalt.

Will was significantly closer to the gestalt than she was, though, and he was able to keep her influence from taking root. It had been challenging to force her out, but now that she was no longer entrenched, it was much simpler to contest her and stop the domination from taking hold.

Eventually, the silver-rankers started seeing the writing on the wall and ran the fuck away—which they were a bit too late for. They might have been able to outpace Will in a marathon with their superior passives and speed stats, but in a sprint, expending high bursts of mana, he could catch up easily.

The gestalt, too, was faster than any of them could handle.

Progress to [Eternal Throne]: [54/1000].

[Eclipse] gained 3 charges.

Soon enough, there were only the two gold-rankers remaining.

Will: Can’t hide any longer.

Nymlera had been keeping her distance from the two of them for some time, and now that it was just her and her companion, Will had assumed that she would stand her ground and fight.

On the contrary, she linked auras with the other gold-ranker and they sped off.

Will sighed. This was going to be a bit awkward, but he could probably manage it.

“Hey, gestalt,” he said, flexing his aura to get the monster to notice him. “Got a proposal for you.”

The inhuman centipedal mess of flesh, bone, and eyes lumbered over to him and sat down on far too many legs.

“I’m going to guess that’s code for I’m listening. If I’m wrong, I dunno, eat me?”

It didn’t eat him, so he proceeded.

#

Nymlera and Grimle Brooksoul ran for their lives.

Grimle had reached gold some years ago now, and he had served the life elves valiantly for most of his life. He was a perfect soldier, never questioning orders, rarely having an independent thought. When Nymlera told him to run like his life depended on it, he did.

That wasn’t to say that he was a complete idiot, of course. He was intelligent enough to understand that the corruption wielder they were against could punch significantly above his rank.

He also knew that when vivid, iridescent colors started resolving themselves into eyes near him, it was a sign of enemy action.

Grimle unlinked himself from Nymlera.

“My lady,” he said. ”Watch—“

With a loud crack, space distorted in front of them, and shadow billowed out from the eyes.

It couldn’t obscure the devouring gestalt that appeared in all its horrific glory, nor could it disguise the thousand eyes staring at them.

From the darkness emerged a single silver-ranker.

“Told you,” he said. “You can’t hide.”

“You’re one silver-ranker against two golds,” Grimle said, gathering power in his aura. “Your ally is our tool.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Who are you? I guess you’re a Brooksoul, so it doesn’t matter.”

“What would it take for you to leave us alone?” Nymlera asked.

“It would have helped if you had not killed my friends several weeks ago,” Will suggested. “And then used the body parts of innocent people to make a monstrosity. No offense.”

The surprisingly coherent groan from the gestalt suggested that some offense had been taken.

“Anyway,” Will said, expression growing serious. “I figure you’re not going to want to leave me alone either.”

He held out a dark sword, which began to glow with a verdant green. Aura spread forth from it.

Nymlera and Grimle realized whose it was at the same moment.

“Thalia,” Nymlera whispered.

“YOU,” Grimle shouted, rage bubbling within him.

“Me? Yeah, what about me? Can you come up with a more original way to—“

“I WILL CRUSH YOUR BONES INTO PASTE AND PAINT A WALL WITH YOU.”

“Okay, that one’s actually new.”

Nymlera pointed her finger at the gestalt, sending a wave of domination in it, and the corruption wielder burnt precious Thalia’s aura to shreds, using it to counter.

Grimle’s vision went red.

So many of Grimle’s kind had sacrificed themselves against the two monsters in front of him. He’d lost his daughter to this bantering, arrogant waste of oxygen.

[Grimle Brooksoul] is gaining strength from the fallen!

His aura glowed with the full might of a gold-ranker.

“Alright, looks like negotiations are over,” Will said. “Gestalt. Kill ‘em.”

Darkness covered the battlefield, and then chaos reigned.