[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 108: Achieve the Impossible (Patreon)

Speaking with gods exhausted the soul, Will had learned from experience. He usually overwhelmed that exhaustion by simply experiencing crushing amounts of pain through his regularly scheduled torture sessions that were what amounted to soul training for him.

Now that he was on one of the rare occasions where he wasn’t training and was also in the process of affixing a skill, he could feel the passive drain on him. It was similar to the amount of effort it took to be in the Beyond, but the gods were obviously in a different space.

Wait. He definitely hadn’t felt like this when he had first came into the space like this.

“Hey,” he said. “Did you stop supporting my soul or something? What’s up with that?”

“You noticed,” the Hunger said. The god didn’t bother trying to hide his amusement. “I told you this one would be interesting, Sadareth.”

“I told you that,” the Elven Mother said. “Yes, Kadael has decided to be lazy and cut off his sigil-holder.”

Where Caiyeri’s goddess stood, the oily darkness of the Hunger’s domain was pushed back, replaced by a steadily expanding field glimmering with magic. Will could sense that Kadael was letting her in, so this was no battle of dominance.

He wondered how good their relationship was to be like this. Their respective sigil-holders had been at each other’s throats in Arcadia, yet they acted like old friends.

Would they throw him away as easily as easily as they had Axl, the mad Overlord of the Arcadian goblins?

Will scoffed internally. That’s not even a question.

“Look, between this and wanting to soul-torture me into an oblivious thrall, I’ll take this any day,” he said.

“You bring the torture on yourself,” said Kadael. “In the most literal sense, I might add.”

“I do, but don’t think I’ll forget you would’ve had me as a slave if I hadn’t resisted.”

“Such is the case with most gods,” Sadareth said. “Especially new, unestablished ones.”

Will nodded, remembering how the Elven Mother had nearly sunk her claws into Caiyeri’s soul. “Wait, Hunger is a new concept? Surely not.”

“Not every concept has a god, but in my case, the previous god lost his ascendancy,” Kadael said. “The manner of this is unimportant.”

“Unseating gods seems pretty fucking important to me, I dunno,” Will replied. “Didn’t you say our problems involved the Crown?”

“If I knew of a way to unseat gods without drawing the wrath of all divinity upon myself, I would gladly use it against that old monster,” Kadael said.

“So a way does exist.”

“You’re wasting your own soul power,” the Elven Mother pointed out.

“I have a lot to waste.”

“He has a point,” she admitted. “Kadael?”

“We are wasting time,” the Hunger said. “Keeping your soul fresh would be optimal for your continued survival.”

“I think I’m doing fine on the survival front,” Will said. “Leaderboarders aren’t really doing well at taking me down, even from ambush.”

“It only takes one lucky attempt,” Sadareth said gravely. “Trust me.”

“Fair. I’m sure everyone I’ve killed so far was also on a pretty solid undefeated streak till they met me. So! You were talking about interfering in things? I love it when my enemies have a bad day. What are we talking?”

“The Crown has grown closed off to us,” said the Hunger. “He hides from the light, and he will not emerge from his closed doors.”

“You can’t detect him?” Will asked. “Aren’t you both my sigils?”

“That does not make us linked in the way you may expect it to. By taking on multiple gods, you have become an iconoclast, which gives your soul some particular quirks that matter only to those who would attach themselves to it on our level. One of those is the separation of your sigils from your inner workings, including what other gods are doing.”

“Huh.” Will remembered getting the Iconoclast achievement when he’d gotten a second sigil for the first time, but he hadn’t really sensed any change in himself. Then again, he had known basically nothing about the soul back then. “So he’s doing something. That doesn’t tell me much. Is that really all you have?”

“Of course not,” Sadareth said. “We are gods still. The Crown has interacted with a handful of other gods in recent times. One of them held a meeting recently.”

“Gods have meetings?” Will asked, struggling not to laugh. “That may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Do you get into a suit and tie and sit around a conference table?”

“That is closer to the truth than you make it sound,” Sadareth said, amused. “Gods are simpler beings than many think. Vyx has spoken to Justice, a higher-tier god that had the wherewithal to speak to those that the Crown has directly wronged.”

“We were mortal once,” the Hunger said. “You are not alone in having drawn the ire of deities.”

“I imagine you lot are less restricted when it comes to people that are almost gods,” Will guessed. “He interfered with you a lot at the end, then?”

“Indeed,” said the Elven Mother. “We have a plethora of reasons to despise the Crown.”

“Vyx is an old enemy of mine in particular,” the Hunger continued. “Justice has discovered that Vyx has connections with Fate, sometimes known by the name of Prophecy, as well as Distortion and the Planeswalker.”

“I know two of those names.” Will frowned. “The Contractor has Fate, and I’m pretty sure Lu Jie has Distortion. Do you know if he’s in on it?”

“We are young gods yet,” Sadareth said. “Though higher-tier gods like Peace, Death, or Magic might have the plausibility to waste on looking at mortals, we do not.”

“Admitting a weakness in front of someone who is extremely prone to exploiting said weaknesses. Bold.”

“Desperate times,” Kadael said. “That is a saying on your world, I believe.”

“Yep. It’s starting to feel like every time is a desperate time, though.”

Sadareth sighed, causing a circle of flowers to bloom and immediately wilt around her.  “This cycle is abnormal. Us gods should not be playing with mortals’ lives so intimately this early.”

“I did notice that there’s another planet on its way to hit us. I’m guessing that isn’t normal?”

“An additional impact should occur either when a cycle has determined to have failed—as in the case of Arcadia, a hundred years after its beginning—or, at the very least, when a sizable contingent of the planet has made it to the gem tiers.”

“Which start at platinum, which isn’t a gem.”

“Correct. We did not design the system,” Kadael said. “Back to the topic at hand. There is reason to believe that the second impact has been hastened by this divine coalition that the Crown has become a part of.”

“Furthermore, we know they are actively working with their sigil-holders to accelerate this,” Sadareth finished. “They may seek to use you as a lever again.”

“Oh, lovely. More threats far beyond my level that want to use me. What should I do about it?”

“You still owe me a sigil,” the Hunger said. “Fate’s. This will serve a dual purpose now. There are just a few more gods you need to go after.”

“Great,” Will said drily. “Sending a silver-ranker after gods. Perfect.”

“Their sigil-holders,” the Elven Mother corrected. “Who you are positioned to take advantage of thanks to your rather unique build. You knew this already.”

“I did,” Will acknowledged. “You know, when it comes to gods, I’ve had my eye on Peace for a while. She’s supposedly a good guy, since I’m pretty sure she’s the sigil for Dr—one of the gold-ranks that fought for Earth. At the same time, she seems to have a hate-boner for me specifically.”

“Eminently possible,” Kadael said. “Peace is… a complicated issue.”

“To put it bluntly, you are on your own,” Sadareth said. “We cannot risk going against her. Not as we are now.”

Will sighed. “Lovely. So, looks like I’m checking for connections to Peace, Justice, the Crown, and Fate. I have no idea how I’m supposed to do that. You helped me find the signature of the Contractor, but I don’t intuitively understand divine power. I don’t have a good way to find what someone’s sigil is.”

“How convenient that you happen to be undergoing a skill affixation.” The Hunger’s presence, which had thus far been retracted from Will to some extent, brushed up against his soul again.

No longer was Will the bronze-rank who had only learned about the existence of souls. Mere presence alone wasn’t even enough to make him flinch anymore.

Still, he could sense the intent in that brush.

“You planned this,” he accused the god. “You set me up so I’d have to waste a skill slot on sigil shit.”

“Your soul can’t fit many more sigil skills,” Sadareth said. “The fact that you’re still functional with four is already a minor miracle in itself.”

“I had assumed you would be less shocked about this, given that you have somehow extorted us when we are three full realms of power higher than you,” the Hunger added. “I am merely returning the favor.”

“Well—“

“I am also sure that you already have a plan that somehow finds the single lever in a horribly disadvantageous situation to try to take advantage of it, so I have come with a concession prepared.”

Will raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

For once, time wasn’t on his side. He had until the skill finished affixing to finish up with this, and that wasn’t going to take very long.

To be quite honest, he had no idea how he would’ve bullshat his way out of this one. True, he could have threatened not to go after the other sigil-holders, but that was likely to result in the death of many, many innocent people. Though Will wasn’t exactly the type to stick his neck out for people that didn’t deserve it, he also wasn’t the type to stand by and let the world burn.

Basically, if the god was going to give him free stuff, he was completely open to it.

Looks like being a pain in the ass is paying off.

“Your soul is as abnormal as this cycle is,” the Hunger said. “You have built yourself into a vessel that is capable of holding magic a rank higher than you. Do you know what that means?”

“Well, I know I can hold gold-rank skills,” Will said. “Plus, the demon in my eye is gold-rank.”

“I had hoped you would avoid reminding me of that.” The Elven Mother’s voice dripped distaste—quite literally, as what appeared to be liquid poison manifested out of nothing and poisoned the grass she stood on. “Its existence hurts my eyes.”

“Correct,” the Hunger said, unperturbed. “That means that you can affix skills at gold.”

“I had assumed that tablets just picked the rank I was at, with the exception of some of the rarer ones early on that gave me access to bronze-rank skills early,” Will said. “I’ve had the thought that it would actually be better for me to hold onto some of them until I’m a higher rank so that I can affix more powerful skills.”

“You cannot advance to gold rank without all of your skills unlocked.”

“Oh.”

“The assumption that tablets only affix at your rank is generally accurate, but you have gained very precise control over your soul. I see that you have already directed the formation of a handful of your skills.”

“I have.”

“Then you should be able to shape your final two tablets as well. You can affix them into the same skill slot, increasing the rank of the skill gained as well as modifying the effects of it. With the addition of assistance from the Elven Mother and myself, you will gain the ability you need.”

“Wait, seriously? Have I been able to do this the whole time?”

“Not without damaging your soul. Now, however…”

“Hm. Alright. I suppose I’ll give it a shot.” Will could feel his time in the god’s soul-space coming to an end. He needed to focus on the skill he was gaining. “So, to summarize: find the other sigil-holders, stop their plans, figure out how to deal with the impact, and deal with the gods that you can’t.”

“That is roughly accurate,” the Elven Mother said.

“You do realize how bullshit this is, right?”

“If only there was someone in this cycle that could regularly achieve the impossible,” the Hunger said. “Oh. Wait.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Will sighed. “Let’s get on with this.”

It was impossible not to feel both gods press against his soul, but Will was intimately familiar with the gestures used between gods and mortals by now. This was much warmer than the ice-cold terror that they usually inflicted upon him.

He didn’t open his soul to them, but he did welcome their presences in shaping the two new blocks of power that he’d absorbed. It was almost immediately clear that he would have been unable to do this on his own. The sheer power that went into reshaping his skill was far greater than anything he could bring to bear. 

Maybe he could have managed crushing them together into one coherent whole, but while Will might have had the control for that, he definitely didn’t have enough gas in his soul, nor would he have exactly trusted himself to effectively create a skill from two tablets on the first go.

Even with the assistance of both of the gods—though it clearly wasn’t their full power—the skill was rough. It wasn’t quite as bad as trying to jam a square peg into a round hole, but there were inconsistencies that Will had to alternately reshape his soul and the skill for.

If anything, the Hunger had been deeply underselling how difficult this was. It made sense for it to be hard, since he had literally never heard of anyone on Earth or Arcadia using two tablets at once, but this was a different level.

The moment they finished shaping the skill, Will jarred awake in the hotel.

The couch he’d laid himself down to rest on was practically soaked through with sweat, giving further evidence to the stress he’d just put his soul through. It was a different kind of effort than what surviving another night of torture demanded.

Ultimately, it had been Corruption that they had affixed the skill to, as the combined effects of the tablet of the creator and destroyer as well as the sigil additions had been better suited for this element than his Death-bound Soul attribute.

As to the actual effects of the skill…

Will opened up his menu.

Skill: [Desecrated Bond]

- Intervention.

- Cost: high mana to extreme mana.

- Cooldown: 1 minute (Insight) to 24 hours (Weaken, Strengthen, Corrupt).

Gold

“Meddle back.” - Anonymous corruption wielder, cycle [REMOVED].

[Insight] - Detect the sigil link between a User and their god within a 300-foot radius.

[Weaken] (bronze) - Allows you to contest a sigil link with your soul. A successful contest will result in the User being cut off from their divine abilities for the next 24 hours.

[Strengthen] (bronze) - Allows you to strengthen a sigil link for 24 hours. Results may vary.

[Recharge] (silver) - All facets of this skill operate on separate cooldowns. A cooldown is reset if the target it was used on dies.

[Corrupt] (gold) - Allows you to contest a sigil with your soul. A successful contest will result in the User being permanently cut off from their sigil as the link is corrupted. This also alerts all sigil-holders of the god within 1,000 miles to your current position.

“Intervention, huh?” That was a type of skill he hadn’t seen before. It made perfect sense given what the pair of gods had said about what other interests were involved at the summit.

Also, amusingly, that quote on the skill was from him.

The only other time Will had seen a skill that directly referenced the User who had it was Nynn’s Counterspell. That man had been a Dread Executor, once upon a time, and he’d reached the Prince rank, marking him as magnitudes above where anyone on Earth was.

Will wondered what that said about himself, but he was content with just using the skill for the time being.

The summit started the morning after next, and Will was under no illusions that his enemies would wait until then to get moving.

Since they weren’t going to wait for him, he would do them the same favor.

He sent out a few messages to his allies in the area, then one to Nynn and Caiyeri, both of whom might not have been directly involved with the human summit but would probably like to know of factions that were actively trying to accelerate the second impact.

With that done, he went in for another shower to wash off the sweat. Will didn’t really have many spare clothes, but the hotel had thoughtfully stocked the wardrobe with spares.

“I’m not sure how much ‘I Survived The First Human Summit And All I Got Was This T-Shirt’ works with my look, but I suppose if there’s nothing better…”

As he showered, he sent out Sen’s eyes across the city.

Though he still hadn’t evolved Sen all the way to gold, owing largely due to his lack of silver-rank monster cores, the familiar had gained a range-extending ability that turned Will from a terror in one-on-one combat to a Big Brother-type threat.

From the relative safety of his hotel, he could use Sen to carry out his perception abilities, including his new one. Though “intervention” was a scary way to title a skill, it seemed to functionally work like a regular spell.

Will closed his eyes and enjoyed the hot water as a thousand eyes blanketed the city. He couldn’t get full coverage, of course—he simply didn’t have enough eyes to cover all of it. With Sen, though, it was pretty easy to find where the majority of the high-powered individuals in Geneva.

He activated the Insight portion of Desecrated Bond, and his mind flooded with information.

Thanks to his frequent usage of Sen, Will had gotten much better at handling this much info at once, but it was still a lot to process. There were literal thousands of sigil-holders in this city with him, even more than there had been before the trial of the champion. Had there been some kind of event to make more of them, or were there just that many who’d come back from other worlds with a sigil guiding them?

Will decided that he was going to need a while to process them, but his contemplation was interrupted when dozens of Sen’s eyes started dying off in quick succession.

Magic lanced out into thin air, targeting the points where certain sigil-holders had detected mana being used, and Sen’s eyes disintegrated into nothingness.

As they continued to die off, Will used Time in a Bottle, mentally clambering through all his eyes to find what was targeting Sen.

At first, he thought it was just all attacks from randoms who didn’t want to be targeted by perception skills, but then he realized that there was a common thread running between all of them.

The coordinated, quick violence had come from sigil-holders of the same source.

Peace.