[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 115: Is Now a Bad Time (Patreon)

All remaining instances of [Blessed] and [Purified] have been consumed to restore the life force consumed by [Ravenous Feast].

Will kept a careful thousand eyes out for the people teleporting back in. There had been a couple of fatalities, though none had been people who possessed any sort of real power—two silver-rankers and all four bronze-rankers who had somehow made it into the conference.

It was a shame, but they weren’t affiliated with any nation that Will was currently terribly inclined to be friendly towards, and he had more pressing concerns than mourning strangers.

There were a few people who’d been blasted by friendly fire and were in critical condition but couldn’t move or do anything to help themselves. The stun from the united Pacify skill had been powerful enough that quite literally everyone who had taken it head on had failed to resist it. Some people could move just a little bit, it seemed, but not enough to get anything done.

Will had long since stopped relying on healing potions to put himself back together, instead using his Death attribute and Mark for Death to heal himself by annihilating his enemies. He did, however, have a good deal of health potions stored in his increasingly large inventory, and he deployed them now, dropping them into the welcoming arms of his hunger phantasm.

This was a critical point. Will wasn’t the only person still capable of moving here. When Yui had returned, she had done so alongside everyone else who had used a movement or heavy protective skill to escape Pacify. Some of them were friendly. Some were anything but. Most were strangers, which was the worst result. Those, he couldn’t properly predict.

Hopefully, the suppression field would keep them from doing anything stupid. Will had just about two-thirds of his mana pool active, but that was after restoring a fair amount from Destructive Synthesis. For anyone else who’d triggered powerful skills, the impact would have been more.

Hope wasn’t enough, though, not when Outcast made it so that Will’s still-exposed aura let everyone in the room know that he was an enemy.

Will prepared himself to chain teleports if necessary, though he wasn’t sure where he’d go from there. Since Ravenous Feast hadn’t fully nullified the sigil skill, he hadn’t gotten any of his mana or life force refunded, meaning he’d had to use the remaining boons from Envoy of Mercy to prevent himself from suffering critical damage to himself. Not worrying about dying in the next few minutes was nice and all, but it also left him without a way to negate the cast and cooldown times on Sanctuary, meaning he didn’t have access to the Beyond.

Essentially, if he wanted to run, he was going to have to do it the old fashioned way. Against a bunch of silver-rankers, he could maybe chance that, though there was always the chance that he would bump into someone capable of fighting above their rank as much as he could. Versus the gold-rank otherworlders, all of whom had survived their own trials and tribulations in worlds he could only dream of, that was much less likely.

He could sense the hostility rippling off of them in waves, though there was more than a little bit of fear mixed in. Will wondered what their perception of his aura was. His own perspective had been warped by the divinity he exposed himself to so regularly, so even the strongest gold-ranker’s felt like nothing more than a particularly irritating glare.

Granted, he still wasn’t at the level where the sheer power of his aura could overwhelm multiple gold-rankers alongside their silver-rank comrades. He had enough strength to hold his own, and he was reasonably sure that none of them would actually be able to hit him with what looked like some very nasty aura powers thanks to his inherent power and Outcast’s additional gas, but in an actual fight, there would functionally be no benefit from his aura.

One of the otherworlders—a Gold 0 Lightsoul Paladin who’d been sitting with a Brazilian contingent, not one that Will had seen before—stepped forward, glowing staff in hand. It physically hurt to look at him, though that was only with human eyes. When Will shut his one normal eye and focused on him only through Sen’s eyes and the demonic one, it was pretty easy to see what he was doing.

“Don’t even think about it,” Will said, conjuring his own scepter in the shadow of his blossoming phantasm. “Unless you want to be the one delivering healing to everyone on death’s door here.”

“Bullshit,” the gold-ranker said. “Am I going crazy? Why is nobody looking at this? He needs to be purged!”

“Bruno,” Yui warned. “Calm down.”

“Yui?” the man apparently named Bruno said. He looked around.

“This is not the time for further conflict,” Regina said. “Charlie. You’ve met Will before, yes?”

Commander Charlie, who Will had narrowly survived an assassination attempt from after breaking the scales on his measuring device, stood and saluted. “Yes, ma’am. If he wanted any of us dead, we would have known by now.”

Well, Will thought, I suppose he did apologize for bombing me. He appreciated the gesture, though he could also see what Regina was doing here. She was positioning herself as a peacemaker, taking control of the situation amicably and without forcing her own command on everything. Will could respect that, but there was something about the way that she was acting that set his instincts on edge.

“He obviously means harm!” Bruno retorted. “Look at his aura! Do you have eyes? He’s a silver-ranker. Best to put him down now before he becomes a problem.”

“The hell are you talking about, dude?” Nathan said, joining the conversation by crashing through the glass portion of the ceiling, leaving a human-sized hole in it. “I was listening in, and I gotta ask, are you trying to waste our time?”

Lily: Looks like you’ve gone and made a big mess of things again. I’m honestly kind of jealous. I wish I could do that.

Will: You didn’t get hit by the big sigil skill?

Lily: GTFO’d. I’m on the roof of the venue right now. I wish I didn’t have to spend that item, but oh well. If that dickface down there tries to kill you, I’ll backstab him for you. I owe you that much.

Will: …thanks, I guess.

While more people returned from their various methods of escape, Will went around distributing the health potions. He hadn’t consciously realized just how much soft power he’d amassed in terms of connections, but some of the most powerful people here were either taking his side or allied with his allies, and though they didn’t seem to trust him entirely, they also were not willing to let the smaller, vocal contingent of other powerful people just steamroll over him.

Once again, even with the sudden burst of skills going off, nobody wanted to be the first to make a move, which gave Will the time to actually pop potions open and alternately force-feed or just toss them at people. Silver-rank health potions could be absorbed through the skin, though they had reduced efficacy when they did so. Will reserved the latter method only for those who had been hit badly enough that it looked like trying to feed them something would be impossible or lead to them choking to death.

[Envoy of Mercy] has activated. You have gained one level of [Blessed] and [Purified] for each life you saved. 31 instances of each have been gained.

“So, about all of this,” he said, eyeing the room. Of the two hundred or so who’d been in the room, fifty had been teleported out by the Peace sigil-holders. Maybe twenty or so had escaped under their own power, leaving them with over a hundred Users who had been frozen in place by Pacify. “Does anyone have any idea how to get these guys moving again?”

“We should be pursuing,” Yui said.

“I planned on doing so in a moment, but they dropped out of sight,” Will replied. “I’m not sure where they went. Either they’re hiding from perception very effectively or they’re not here.”

He suspected it was the latter. There were certain people who were simply immune to some of his abilities, like how Regina was able to no-sell parts of Sen’s abilities, but the Thousand Eyes should have been able to see through basic security veils. It was possible that they’d split off to parts of the city that were significantly further from him and thus had less coverage, of course, but Will was inclined to believe that the group that was clearly up to something was going to try to stick closer to relevant locations.

“Then we’re going,” Yui said. “They were here for a reason. I intend to deny them access to their goals here.”

“It would be good to tend to our people first,” Regina added. “I can devote resources to tracking them, but I will not let my own die in the meantime.”

“Do you actually know how to clear this condition?” Will asked.

“No.”

He sighed. “Fantastic. Yui, I’ll come along in just a moment. Everyone else, would you do me a terrible favor and not panic?”

“Pardon?”

Will blanketed the arena in shadow.

Predictably, people panicked, but they didn’t attack him. Everyone smart enough to survive this long and also avoid the effect of an extremely powerful sigil skill at the same time was also smart enough to know that firing a skill at the person who’d just healed practically everyone in the room was a bad idea.

Will didn’t particularly care that people were dispelling portions of his phantasm, though he did get a little concerned when Bruno empowered himself enough to look like a living comet. Yui cast a skill in response, though, and that sapped enough of the light for it to only affect the phantasm and not the mass of stunned silver-rankers surrounding him.

Regina: I would appreciate a touch more warning next time—for instance, an example of what you were trying to do instead of “don’t panic.” Has telling someone not to panic ever kept them from panicking?

Will: Seems to be going fine. Can you start finding them? I don’t know what they’re up to, and I’m not terribly excited about the prospects of them pulling off another hidden plan.

Regina: There is still the matter of everyone stunned here.

Will: Don’t worry about it. I got it. Don’t panic.

Regina: …

Though he knew she probably couldn’t see her, Will flashed Regina his third-best shit-eating grin. This one was slightly more good-natured than the usual one, since he didn’t have a reason to despise her yet.

Then, he activated Chaos Transfer.

131 levels of [Pacified] have been transferred to [Demonic Blast Scepter].

Mana drained from him to complete the skill, and he sighed, sifting through his inventory to find another item that he didn’t particularly need or want.

This summit was steadily getting more annoying. Politics, intrigue, the ever-present threat of being backstabbed, an entirely new splinter faction that was looking to prove themselves as the next major threat to be dealt with… and that was before Will even started considering the fact that the second impact was still on schedule to hit in less than two years.

Regina: Impressive magic for a native. I’ll get to work.

Will didn’t reply to that. There was something ever so slightly off about her that just made him uncomfortable, and he had the nasty sensation that getting too involved with her would mean trouble for him and more than a few bodies.

“Yui,” he said aloud, knowing the gold-ranker would be listening for his voice. “I’m done here. Let’s get moving.”

I wonder how Caiyeri is doing.

#

Caiyeri, Wisteria, and Nynn had steadily gotten themselves into a bit of a rhythm. They still didn’t know the complete inner workings of the superdungeon, but they were growing somewhat accustomed to its strange topology.

It was growing slightly less claustrophobic with each progressive “floor” they cleared, which gave Caiyeri an uncomfortable sense of nostalgia. They were at the point where the twisting staircases and rooms resembled the tunnels she’d grown up to a startling degree, though it was more obviously artificial than it had been back home.

They hadn’t made it that far past the corpse of the Peace sigil-holder, and they’d decided to call a break. The three of them had come closer to death during the last monster fight than usual because Nynn had been distracted, and Caiyeri had made the executive decision to pause.

She and Wisteria had both leveled up a couple of times by now, which was good progress when they had hit some level of roadblock before. Wisteria was rapidly closing in on the border to silver-rank, which would be a great boon in their group. Having to carry a bronze-ranker through incredibly dangerous gold-rank dungeon was easier than Caiyeri had expected, but that just meant it was a step below impossible instead of simply out of the question.

A notification jarred her out of the half-trance she tended to fall into when she was focusing on recovery above all else.

Will: Hey, it’s me again. How’s it going?

She raised an eyebrow.

Caiyeri: It’s been less than an hour. Calling again so soon?

Will: Shit happened. Some death. Some politics. A little healing. Had to deal with a goddess.

Caiyeri: So business as usual. What’s different today?

Will: Organized action. If it were just some run-of-the-mill assassinations or battle, I wouldn’t bother you with it. This was maybe thirty or forty Peace sigil-holders operating together. They’ve kidnapped a bunch of our people, too. They were talking about superdungeons before everything went down.

Caiyeri: “Everything?” You did something, didn’t you.

Will: My heart. Why would you think that?

Caiyeri: I’m impressed you can ask me that question with a straight face.

Will: You can’t see me. How do you know my face is straight? Also, yes, it was definitely my fault, but they were going to do something regardless.

Caiyeri: Anyway. Is there anything I can help you with, or are you just bothering me to bother me?

Will: Is now a bad time?

Caiyeri looked around. Nynn was pacing the room, continually checking and re-checking the arcane traps he’d set up around the place. They were at the peak of gold-rank, verging on platinum, and they were powerfully obscured in a way that made them incomprehenssible to her.

Caiyeri: No. We’re taking a break. Wisteria is asleep. Nynn is… my best guess is that he’s having a crisis of faith. Didn’t you say he was on good terms with Peace?

Will: Yeah, you could say that. Are you still in the dungeon?

Caiyeri: Yes. You know that even if we tried to leave, we wouldn’t have made it out since the last time you messaged, right? We’re not that far from where we found the body.

Will: Gotcha. So, about those sigil-holders. I think there’s a pretty solid chance that they go after your superdungeon, since we can at least confirm that they don’t control that one yet. Stay on guard. There might be new entries.

Caiyeri: So you say. Do you have details on them?

Will: Some. They countered my intelligence, but I can give you a general idea of who’s going. You might want to bring Nynn in on this, too.

As the resident non-expert on gods past the Hunger and the Elven Mother, Caiyeri agreed with that assessment. She formed a new chat with Nynn, Wisteria, Will, and herself, catching them all up on the situation, as far as anyone could tell.

Nynn: This is distressing, to say the least.

Will: You don’t have a line to Peace anymore, do you? Any fragments of it?

Nynn: That is a complicated matter.

Wisteria: Oh, it’s Will! Hi!

Will: Yo. From the boat, right?

Wisteria: That’s me. How’s it been going?

Will: Well, I’ve just come to the realization that if you hide traps in pocket dimensions and tie their triggers to manual observation from a distance, you can evade detection from damn near anything. Plus, I just survived my… damn, I don’t even know which assassination attempt I’m on now. How about you?

Wisteria: About as well! Glad to see you’re thriving.

Will: Thanks, I think. Nynn, you know anything about this kind of trap? Nobody I’m with had any experience with it.

Nynn: Yes. It is a common war tactic in certain cycles. I have used it myself, though it is very resource-intensive.

Will: Well, they’ve only managed to kill a couple of no-name goons so far, so I wouldn’t say they’re very successful. Who the hell has the time and resources to put these together?

Caiyeri: I’m pretty sure you already know who.

Will: Yeah. Keep an eye out, y’all.

Nynn: I will see what I can do. Though my affiliation with Peace has faded, there are still some sparks of power. I spent a long time in her service.

Will: Do what you can. Keep me updated. I have some shit to deal with.

Wisteria: Good luck.

Will: To you all as well.

“Nynn?” Caiyeri asked.

“One moment,” the former Dread Executor said, settling into a meditative kneeling position. Mana gathered around him in a way that Caiyeri had only witnessed elsewhere from gods and one particular corruption wielder. “Path beyond paths, bonds beyond time, show me my kind. Show me peace.”

#

“We’re a long way from home,” Azure Zero said.

“There is no more home,” Caiyeri Zero replied stiffly. “You know that as well as I do.”

The new cycle had been the last shovel of dirt on the coffin of the abyssal elf nation. They had already been struggling before, relying primarily on their strike teams instead of a cohesive force. Though they had possessed some of the most powerful Users, they hadn’t been functional as a kingdom for a long time.

With the advent of a cycle that was progressing at paces exponentially outstripping Arcadia’s, the abyss had been forced to adapt or die.

Most had died.

The remainder were scattered to the winds, displaced by the trial of the champion and the disasters following. Otherworlders in the Earth cycle were coming back with far more power than they had during the Arcadian one, and to be quite frank, most of the natives from the world Azure and Caiyeri Zero knew were simply on their way to being outclassed. Yes, they could still rule over the lesser bronze-rankers that made up the majority of Earth’s population, but it had only been a month or two and there were already thousands of silver-rankers.

How long until they became gold? How long until the first human platinum-ranker emerged and launched the cycle into a phase that nobody had seen before?

Azure and Caiyeri were two of the only survivors of the abyss nation, and they’d determined that if the humans were going to take drastic measures, so were they. The latter one knew of a particularly rapidly advancing elf, a clone of her template, and she’d decided that it was about time she reduced the number of Caiyeris in the world to zero. By subsuming her clone, she knew she would be able to gain power enough to remain relevant.

Without a real goal to guide him otherwise, Azure had joined her in carving a bloody path through the world as they’d tracked down Caiyeri Seven. They had both managed to finally break the barrier to gold rank during that time, filling up the last of their skills and experience as they’d slaughtered settlement after settlement of the weak.

Now, they found themselves climbing a mountain taller than either of them had ever seen, relying on Azure’s skills to regulate the environment around them to keep them from freezing. Caiyeri had tracked her clone to this area, having tagged her with a skill during the trial of the champion.

One way or another, they were going to find her.

Their trek to the top, where the tracker had last pinged them, was interrupted by spatial magic.

Both of them took defensive positions, pushing their newly gold-rank auras out to detect and oppress whoever was coming through. The size of the portal indicated a group, though its intensity wasn’t detectable.

The first aura to come through was silver-rank, though, which meant an easy kill. Azure froze the first to emerge with a skill before she even realized what was going on, and Caiyeri teleported through her a moment later, taking her head off in one clean blow.

The second was not silver.

???: You make executing my prisoners too boring.

“Who are you?” Azure demanded, looking around. “How did you obfuscate your name?”

???: Let’s have a chat, shall we? I think we want some of the same things.

The aura wasn’t coming from a person. After the death of the silver, the next item to pass through was a gold-rank box.

A bomb.

???: I have a friend who wants this to all have a peaceful resolution, but I can see you don’t want that. To be frank, neither do I.

“You sought us out, so I presume you know what you wish for,” Caiyeri said coldly. “State your terms and identity.”

???: Terms are for deals, and I prefer to think of this as a partnership. As for identity… I’m simply someone who sees something interesting in your fate.