[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 116: Stop Getting In My Way (Patreon)

“For a goddess of Peace, this piece of shit is really good at being violent,” Will complained.

“Gods become what they are through violence,” Yui replied, glaring at the burnt remains of what had been a hotel before several tons of TNT had been teleported into it.

Nathan: Yui’s wrong on that front, I’m pretty sure. I’ve talked to a few high priests in my time, including one that actually witnessed an ascension off planet. There are other paths to divinity.

Will sighed, looking up to the blip in the sky that he knew was Nathan. Strictly speaking, he didn’t actually need to tilt his head up to look, since he had half a dozen of Sen’s eyes circling the gold-rank otherworlder, but the annoyed gestured seemed appropriate.

Will: Dude. You’re not even out of the suppression field. If you’re going to lurk, listen in, and provide your opinions, you can do it to her face. I’m not your messenger pigeon.

Nathan: I dunno, man. We really didn’t leave off on a good note.

That got an eye roll out of Will. Since he didn’t fully trust Regina and vice versa, he’d split off from her in searching the city, which had turned out to be a good idea. Will had assembled a team of his own, consisting mostly of the people he’d grown to trust with time alongside ones he trusted slightly less but could at least be relied on in some sense or another.

That meant Natalie, Hua, Liam, Yui, Nathan, and, regrettably, Lily. The latter was still as murder-hungry as ever, but she’d mellowed out some when she’d realized that there were a plethora of acceptable targets that weren’t other humans. Will was still keeping an eye out for a knife in his back, but he was pretty sure that she was actually scared of him, which for some reason translated to increased respect from the silver-ranker.

In theory, their team was solid. Hua and Liam had started working together much more frequently in the wake of Hua’s brother’s passing, and they silently synergized with each other, with Liam acting as a sort of living radar and shield while Hua offensively disarmed traps or killed the occasional hidden monster. Natalie’s summons were good for burning through trap resources, while Yui and Nathan were just powerful gold-rankers that Will much preferred to have on his side than a dodgy silver that might try to kill him because they were just that terrified of what he was.

Lily was… well, she was there, and she hadn’t died yet, so Will could give her that much credit at least.

Unfortunately, their squad worked better on paper than in practice. Some of that was because of lingering tensions, but most was because the two strongest Users (if you didn’t count Will, which he didn’t) just refused to speak to each other.

Well, most of that was Nathan, who had still yet to say a single word to Yui since they’d grouped up together. Will wasn’t sure if they’d even spoken to each other at all this summit.

Will: I really don’t give a shit, frankly. This isn’t a game.

As far as he could tell, this hadn’t cost any lives yet, but Nathan’s inaction was getting irritating.

Now that they were actively pursuing the Peace sigil-holders, they’d had to come up with a plan of action.

Predictably, nobody had actually wanted to work together. There were enough people there who had at least some level of vested interest in Will’s continued existence that he’d been able to keep himself from getting attacked, but there were few that genuinely wished to work under him. Will hadn’t bothered trying to convince them otherwise.

As far as he was aware, the primary factions following the trail consisted of him, Supreme Commander Regina’s ESNA, and Lu Jie’s Chinese group. The latter was one of many Chinese groups that had shown up, but given the presence of a gold-rank otherworlder and its increased size, Will suspected it would soon be the largest.

Everyone else had decided that consolidating their forces after the losses and uncertainty that came with such a sudden paradigm shift.

Neither of the active factions had gotten in his way yet, at least. They were all pursuing similar goals, it seemed. All three had come to a fairly obvious conclusion.

The Peace sigil-holders clearly had a goal in coming to the summit. Part of that reason was likely because they’d wanted to link up with each other, but they had clearly wanted something else out of it.

Apart from the people they’d kidnapped, there was one target in Geneva that they could plausibly be going after: the silver-ranker’s suppression field.

There had been very few silvers who had managed to escape the effect of Pacify under their power. Will had been one. Lily had been another.

As far as he knew, the silver-rank moderator was the only person who’d left and hadn’t returned in any capacity. Will was pretty sure they were silver, at least, since to the best of his knowledge, there simply weren’t native-world gold-rankers. He was pretty near the forefront of the non-otherworld Earth population, and he was pretty sure he would’ve heard about this moderator if they’d managed to hit gold before he was out of silver.

The suppression field was proving to be more of an annoyance than Will had thought at first. Most people had potions and had periodically dipped out of Geneva itself to give themselves the opportunity to get some good mana recovery in, but the inability to recover mana wasn’t its only feature. If it had been, Destructive Synthesis and trips to the Beyond alongside his ability to refresh mana on a successful kill would have done the trick for him.

No, what was actually bothering him was how much his summons relied on ambient mana—one summon in particular. Will hadn’t realized it until he’d started trying to seriously canvas the city instead of use long-range recon skills, but Sen’s truesight was significantly hampered by a lack of magic in the air. The familiar’s range remained as terrifyingly powerful as ever, but where there was normally a sort of network formed by the connected eyes, there were just independent fragments of sight now. The reinforcement effect that he had grown to take for granted had been significantly weakened, hampering his surveillance abilities.

That meant that finding the source of the suppression field, which his temporary faction had unanimously agreed upon was likely the target of the Peace sigil-holders, was harder than it should have been. They were fairly sure it was underground, but sending Sen’s eyes down into unexplored territory had resulted in a lot of traps popping already, which proved to be disastrous for the continued maintenance of the thousand eyes. Though they were very hard to hit, once they were actually caught in the area of effect of something, each of the eyes were quite weak.

Will was already down to six hundred eyes remaining, which was a massive pain. He’d just restored Sen’s eyes, and here they were blowing them up again. It made him wonder whether it was a foregone conclusion as to who would get to the suppression field first, since the Peace sigil-holders had clearly already pre-planned the majority of this operation.

It made him feel stupid for not catching it. Sure, he’d been focusing Sen’s eyes on people that he knew would be problems, not the Peace sigil-holders, and there was no way for him to detect anything that had been set up before he’d arrived in Geneva thanks to the extradimensional nature of most of what Peace’s people were pulling, but still.

And Nathan still wasn’t coming down.

Will: For the last goddamn time. You are an ADULT. Hua is being more mature about this and she’s like a decade younger than you. Fucking come down here so we can actually get something done. Just because your taste stopped growing when you were 14 doesn’t mean your maturity should have too.

Nathan: …fine.

With a deep sigh, Will turned back to the section of city they’d been canvassing for potential secret entryways into the suppression field’s core.

“I’m going to spend some time restoring my familiar while Nathan comes back,” he announced to the gathered Users in his area, drawing a handful of monster cores out of his inventory. “Running a bit short on cores. Anyone have any—“

He cut himself off in the middle of his sentence, the demon he’d named Richard flaring with information.

“Mate, you alright?” Liam asked. “Aura seems a bit off.”

Will had only had his demonic eye for a short period of time, but he’d already grown accustomed to the crimson lines that threaded through everything. They seemed to both represent physical weak points as well as ones that were more conceptual, which was where the whole seeing weak points in skills thing came from.

Normally, every User had a few lines running through them as well as the magic surrounding them. Even the ambient mana tended to have a line or two running through the air. It was a bit off-putting, but he’d gotten used to it. In Geneva, there had been almost no free-running lines like that thanks to the suppression field.

Now, though, the morning sky lit up with scarlet sunlight. The air was so dense with trails of death that Will could barely see, even when he squeezed that eye shut.

“So, we might have a problem,” he said.

Three seconds later, the first attacker appeared.

#

Ashton had decided against returning to the convention. He’d been bored to death during that meeting, anyway. They’d promised that there would be something interesting here. A way to change humanity’s direction. That had sounded cool. Meetings were decidedly not that.

Whatever. It wasn’t like he was here to talk, anyway. That was for losers.

???: You don’t need to be so angry about having a lack of warning, you know. If you were too weak to avoid it, I would have never contacted you in the first place.

Speaking of losers.

Ashton: I don’t give a rat’s ass, fuckface. Just tell me when I’m good to go.

???: Of course. The grid is going to go up quite soon.

Ashton rolled his eyes. His benefactor had been helpful, but damn was he annoying to deal with. All this cloak-and-dagger bullshit was really getting to the gold-ranker.

“Druudrazil,” he said. “You ready?”

Always, the wyrm rumbled back. Are you sure this is what you wish for?

“Of course,” Ashton hissed. “That piece of shit embarrassed me. Nobody does that.”

He’d made sure of that on the other planet, and he’d grown to like it far too much to let something like that slide in Earth.

???: The grid will be tuned to affect specific individuals more, such as your target. You should be less affected.

Ashton: Yeah, yeah. You’ve told me this before. When do I go?

He’d sequestered Druudrazil in a mountain about twenty miles from the Geneva boundary, since there was no way the necrotic wyrm would have been allowed into the summit, but calling him had been easy. Now, they hovered five miles above the ground, waiting just outside the range of the suppression field.

Beneath him, a mana burst so massive that he could physically feel it from here rocked the city. Every light in Geneva switched off for a brief instant, then flickered back on. It was late enough in the morning that the effect wasn’t terribly dramatic, but it was a clear signal.

???: Now.

Ashton resisted the urge to send the guy a middle finger back and told Druudrazil to dive.

William Li-Brown was going to pay.

#

From the moment he activated Time in a Bottle, Will could tell there was something about this specifically aimed at him.

The lines were thick enough already, but they were substantially denser around him. When he activated the skill, too, it felt sluggish to start. Normally, it took effect almost instantly, but Will could actually see the silver-rank rocket hurtling towards them slowing in real time until it was within range of becoming an actual threat.

Hell, both Yui and Nathan moved faster than him this time, though it looked like Yui had also been somewhat affected by it. Nathan was the one to counteract the first attacker, sending a tightly focused laser beam down from a thousand feet in the air to detonate the rocket and nullify its magical payload before it could hit the scattered group.

Will focused on his aura as time finished slowing down, trying to bring his phantasm up at the same time. That skill also seemed slow to activate.

Fortunately, he wasn’t an idiot, so he didn’t waste too much time wondering what had happened. That, at least, was clear as the day had been before the Peace faction had gone and broken the sky.

Peace’s people had, in fact, found the suppression field first. It was very possible the moderator was now dead, but Will could also believe that they’d been subverted somehow. Since they’d been so focused on teleporting people away from the summit, he had reason to believe that they had a way to make use of human resources in their possession, whether that was mind control or power drain or something else.

Regardless of the details, the fact was that the suppression field had been overcharged and modified somehow. Will recalled seeing it burst into action when there had been assassination attempts during the meeting earlier. This must have been the effect it had applied writ large.

This was bad. His aura was one of the few things he could still use normally, but whatever special attribute of his Shattersoul allowed him to continue using his aura like usual didn’t apply to the rest of his skills.

What could he do here? This didn’t count as an affliction, Will could tell, because one of his Purified levels would have been consumed if it was. He had a few spare levels of both his boons from giving out health potions, though he’d spent a few from tanking traps head-on.

Well, there was always one way to stall for time.

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

You have consumed one level of [Blessed] to negate the cooldown of [Sanctuary].

That skill took much longer than he would’ve hoped for as well, but once he slipped through the portal, relief flooded through him. He could function normally in here, at least. Skills didn’t work in the Beyond, but his magic moved so much more clearly.

Will sat there for what could have been five minutes or two hours—time was difficult in the Beyond. Neither Nynn nor Ayla joined him, which he assumed was because they were still busy with whatever they were doing and didn’t have the resources to enter the Beyond, respectively.

Technically, he could just leave. It was pretty clear that Peace had had an ulterior motive in agreeing to not directly try to kill him immediately, even if the sigil-holders were starting to attack him again. Given what else had happened, Will could freely assume that they wanted him, preferably alive. For what reason, he wasn’t sure, but there were any number of reasons a goddess he’d pissed off might want him, and none of them were good.

Denying them their prize was one thing, but he was equally as sure that if he left, everyone he left behind would be stuck in a fight for their life against a large, coordinated enemy force that had a powerful suppression field backing them up.

“Can’t be helped, I guess,” Will muttered to himself. “This is going to be rough.”

He had a few tricks he could try, including one that he’d nearly forgotten about (by which he meant he’d absolutely forgotten about it and had only remembered by sifting through everything in his now very expansive inventory). Once those were out, he decided, he would run and take the important people with him. After that, everything would be up to whoever was left behind.

“Alright. Here we go.”

Stepping back into reality was like walking through molasses. Will was acutely aware of his connection to his mana growing weaker as he returned to the real world.

That pointed towards one of the theories he’d come up with during his isolation being close to correct, at least. The field took time to take full effect, though that time was on the shorter end.

Will wasn’t even going to attempt using Ravenous Feast against this. Whatever was powering the suppression field was powerful enough to manifest it across an entire city. With just a silver-ranker’s mana, he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of resisting the effect without spending a massive amount of his life force.

Then again, he was about to burn life force anyway.

Will activated Ghostflame before the field could take full effect on him, screwing with his vision even more. The skill cast his vision into monochrome but for that which could be killed, and with the combination of Ghostflame and his demonic eye, the world became nothing but black and white and gray and red and red and red.

There was a lot of red.

Time in a Bottle was still active, meaning that Will was consuming a truly massive amount of mana just to maintain his skills, but he could feel the suppression slowly leaching away.

Ghostflame’s skill description just said that it cleansed afflictions, but Will knew by now that system descriptions didn’t always carry the full story. For instance, when he’d used it to burn through layers of corruption back at the trial of the champion, the affliction hadn’t just vanished—no, when he’d gone through enough, it had simply orbited him like a cloud, not yet consumed by the skill.

The way Ghostflame and Chaos Transfer cleared afflictions, then, had to be different. Ghostflame’s burning wasn’t limited to only afflictions.

Problem: it was meant for afflictions, which meant that at continued extreme mana cost that not even Destructive Synthesis would be able to properly sustain, it couldn’t beat the suppression field back on its own.

That meant Will was going to have to try tricks number two and three.

Number two was a no-go, he found out quickly enough. Aza entered the suppression field and promptly left. The familiar’s demon-countering ability was specialized, it seemed, so even with the immense power packed into a silver-rank vessel, he couldn’t defend Will from suppression on this level.

One more trick, then. I hope this works.

What seemed like an eternity ago, he’d received an item as a reward for an achievement in the tutorial. Then, Ayla had told him to save it for later, since it would only be better the more fleshed out the rest of his skillset was.

Afterwards, he’d forgotten about it. There had been so much going on that he just hadn’t checked the boxes where he’d put a bunch of random shit in so he could fit them in his inventory, but in the Beyond, he’d gone through everything.

Item: [Tablet of the User]

Legendary

Grants you a free skill at you current rank that synergizes with your current skills and elements.

He really needed this to work.

#

“Yo,” Will said. “Hasn’t been long. How’re things on your end?”

“They have been better,” the Hunger admitted. “Peace is aware that you work against her. She is not so ignorant as to miss the link to me, but as this is not my official responsibility, she has not acted against me.”

“She’s acting against me,” Will grumped. “Any advice? Anything you can share?”

“None that do not place me in a worse position,” the god replied. “If you can escape your immediate surroundings, you are likely to survive longer.”

“Yeah, I figured, but I’m not gonna do that just yet. About my new skill. Anything you can do there?”

“A little,” Kadael replied. “None that could be miscontrued as me assisting you against another deity, of course. The tablet will drive much of that anyway.”

“Useless little shit,” Will said, though there was no venom in his words.

“Tell me that again when your silver-rank skill affixes at gold,” the god said.

“Oh, lovely. You used, what, zero point zero zero zero one percent of your power to do that? How generous of you. Tell Sadareth I said hi. I’ll try to stay alive till the next time.”

“Unfortunately, we have our faith in you,” the Hunger replied. “Do come again.”

It was strange. Their relationship was a vastly unequal one. Will had lied and cheated the Hunger out of way more power than a lesser god should have given, and he’d been tortured repeatedly, but for some reason, he respected Kadael more than most of the humans he was forced to deal with.

Well, the world had gone insane some time ago. It was about time Will caught up.

“Until we meet again,” Kadael said.

The skill affixed.

#

You have awakened a [Soul] skill at silver rank!

Achievement earned: [Full Set]

You are now one of the 37.27% of metal-tier Users that acquire a full set of skills before they perish.

This reward will be useful to you. Trust the process.

Reward: You have gained a [Tablet of the User].

Skill: [One Foot in the Grave]

- Skill (augmentation).

- Cost: extreme mana per second. Lifeforce may be substituted for mana.

- Cooldown: varies, minimum 24 hours.

Gold

“Someone’s dying today. I don’t plan on it being me.” - An anonymous King shortly before killing Dread Executor Azathoth IX and taking their mantle, cycle 1038.

The cost per second of this skill decreases the more damaged you are.

If you kill an enemy while this skill is active, your maximum mana capacity temporarily increases. If you do not kill an enemy while this skill is active, you will experience soul backlash proportional to the amount of mana and/or lifeforce expended on maintaining this skill. This backlash may be lethal.

While this skill is active, you become intangible and are immune to all conditions of gold rank or lower and resist higher-rank conditions. Your magic cannot be suppressed by means of gold-rank or lower. You also gain significant resistance to physical damage and do not feel pain.

You cannot be healed while this skill is active, even from your own skills and attributes, but you can regenerate mana.

“Oh,” Will said, dropping his Ghostflame. “Now we’re talking.”

He had had enough of this game of cat and mouse and intrigue. He’d had enough of gods using him as a piece on a board and humans trying to do the same.

Frankly, he was sick and tired of holding back. He’d let the status quo go on for too long. Maybe on some level, he’d still been stuck in the old world, where he was just a prospective cog in a machine.

It was about time he stepped up to meet his new role.

Will put one foot in the grave, and the suppression effect melted away.

If anyone wasn’t watching before, they’ll see me now.

#

Across the city of Geneva, there were multiple factions currently converging on William Li-Brown’s location.

Most of those were Peace sigil-holders—though not all, as even Peace was aware that expending every person in an attempt to catch one would be a great folly.

But they weren’t alone. Others had been informed some way or another about what was happening with the suppression field, and they saw opportunity. Otherworlders like Ashton who saw opportunity or felt like they had been wronged by one of the corruption wielder’s group took their chances, sending themselves or proxies to do their dirty work.

The Contractor’s forces, hidden both within national delegations and outside the city, joined in as well.

At the center of the city, a clock tower recorded the time as 11:02 AM.

Few people had strong enough perception abilities to make out William Li-Brown himself, but those who did saw him suddenly fluctuate, a black portal forming behind him.

Everyone looking for him felt his aura explode with malice, though. Even those miles away could sense the killing intent, even if the aura itself didn’t reach them.

Some of them backed off, thinking twice about attacking someone this obviously lethal. Ashton did not.

Druudrazil’s breath weapon was one of the few attacks that actually reached the erstwhile group, but even with the suppression field, they slapped together enough of a defense to mostly deflect the blow.

Unfortunately for most of them, they didn’t have the perception necessary to catch the time-locked Thousand Eyes within range of them. Unbound by the suppression field, they moved with ease and provided anchor points for Will’s skills to flow out from.

Dark shadow flowed out of six hundred eyes, blanketing the city and turning morning into midnight.

All of the hundred or so who had chosen to continue on their foolhardy journey received the same message at about the same time.

Will: Do you know how annoying it is to want to save the world from what’s coming just to be blocked by you pieces of shit again and again and AGAIN?

Will: I’m giving you one last chance. Stop getting in my fucking way.

His aura infused his phantasm, transferring the evil irreversibly burnt into him out over everyone it flowed over.

Blinded by shadow and panicking from the sudden realization that they’d been watched the entire time, a good portion of the attackers left.

Others, those with skills to ignore darkness or who had ignored the message altogether, did not. Ashton was one of them.

This may be unwise, Druudrazil suggested to him, a note of true fear that Ashton hadn’t seen before touching the bond between Tamer and wyrm. Retreat may be advisable.

“No,” Ashton declared, using a skill to shove shadow aside. “I deserve to win. He deserves to die. We’re going all the way to the end.”

I am going to—

“YOU’RE GOING NOWHERE! I’m your master, you dumbass, you know that—“

The wyrm turned, and Ashton ordered it to come back.

For a moment, they struggled, and in that moment, it happened.

Only the corruption wielder could see the message indicating how many had chosen to stay.

You have afflicted 45 Users with silver-rank [Corruption].

You have transferred 16 levels of gold-rank [Corruption] to 16 Users.

A bell tolled, then tolled again. Again. For nearly a minute, the sound was unending, as if the city clock had struck midnight and would not stop striking it. Lightning cracked through the dark shadows, turning Geneva into a cataclysm of noise and dark light.

From a single man’s point of view, dozens of crimson lines ignited with color as he struck them over and over.

Will: I warned you.

Ashton did not survive.

Druudrazil, buoyed by fear for its life, did. Barely.

Every gold-rank Peace sigil-holder disappeared abruptly moments before the corruption could hit them, the kidnapped targets vanishing with them. The silver-ranks did not. They did not survive.

At the end of it all, the clock read 11:04 AM.

#

Will came to a stop at the same place he’d started.

“I didn’t get them all,” he sighed, the effect of his skill coming to an end. “We’re still going to have to deal with Peace.”

You have leveled up 4 times!

“Corruption wielder,” Yui said carefully, trying to find the best words to politely address the situation. “What the fuck did you just do?”