[System Decay] Chapter 8: Would You Lose? (Patreon)

Will’s new skills didn’t seem world-breaking to start, but a bit of experimentation revealed that they were very useful indeed.

The Escape Artist passive could eventually turn out to be a problem for him if he decided to wear a bunch of armor, but all he had right now was a piece that could eventually be crafted into a chestplate and goblin leathers that didn’t fit him. Armor was a question for later.

With just his clothes on, his speed increased by a substantial amount. Running came a lot more naturally than it had just moments ago, and every step inexplicably took him further. It didn’t feel like he was covering that much more distance, but he very clearly was.

“I’ll chalk that one up to the Space attribute being weird. A subtle kind of weird, but still weird.”

On the other hand, Weapons Free was much more obviously screwing with the fabric of the world. Will tested it on his own weapons, scattering them about the vault, and found that it had a hidden passive ability that he hoped would prove to be pretty useful.

In order to teleport weapons from the area, he had to know where they were. As soon as he selected the skill, he was bombarded with information just like he got when he used the teleport dagger on an eerie vents.

To his delight, when he found an isolated, confused goblin outside of the vault, the sword it carried also lit up in his mind. The goblin, which was only at Bronze 2, was clearly lost. Judging by the similarity of the clothes it wore and the dirty leathers Will had just shoved in his inventory, it might have been from the same clan he’d carpet bombed.

On a normal day, maybe Bronze 2 would have been enough to stop his unformed rank skill, but today had not been normal at all for Will and the goblin both.

“Come to papa,” Will said, smirking at his own joke.

Weapons Free activated. Will watched from his hiding spot as blue-green energy enveloped the goblin’s sword, wrapping it in a complex set of overlapping, interweaving lines until it was completely covered.

The goblin screeched as an odd, high-pitched whine like the charge of an energy weapon rang out.

Its sword traveled through folded space, tracing a blue line in the air towards Will until it reappeared in his hand.

The goblin immediately turned around to face him.

“So it’s not only visible to me, huh? That’s a pretty hefty downside.”

He stared at the goblin. The goblin stared back at him.

Will wondered what was going through his (it looked like a he, at least) head. If he had to guess, it was most likely oh, shit, I just lost my weapon followed by oh, shit, that guy has a sword.

The goblin ran. Will gave chase.

Cave goblins were nasty, sneaky little buggers, but their main form of mobility was using their vent teleport. This area didn’t have many of those, so all it had was its legs.

Despite the name, Escape Artist was useful for more than just escaping. Will caught up to the goblin in just under five seconds, pushing himself to his limit and hitting speeds that rivaled Olympic sprinters. As he passed by it, he gave the goblin a mighty swing with its own sword, putting the entirety of his weight and strength into the motion.

He might not have been the most proficient at swordplay, but combined with his speed, the sword sliced straight through flesh, muscle, and bone.

The two halves of the goblin toppled to the ground one after the other.

[Power] advanced to Unformed 7!

“Looks like it’s necessary to intentionally focus on training up the stats.” Will had used a bunch of spells, but his Soul attribute hadn’t leveled up yet. Maybe if he tried to direct himself to use the skills more effectively?

He took a look at the sword. Just as with the rest of the goblins he’d sliced and diced his way through, there wasn’t anything magical about the sword except for the fact that it was corrupted.

“Man. I know you all have the same lame gear, but I’d really like another solid weapon.” Disappointed, Will took out the crate he’d mentally named the “Goblin Weapons Crate” and tossed it in. “Other than the dagger of the sunken world. You have way too many of those. If I find a merchant willing to buy corrupted stuff, I’ll be a rich man.”

Helper: Unlikely. Rarity of corruption resistance aside, cave goblin gear tends to use the worst steel even within the goblin clans. They’re good for arming rebellions, children, and goblins, none of which I believe are immediately relevant to you.

“C’mon, let me have my moment.”

Helper: If it helps, you’re remarkably well-equipped for someone in a tutorial zone. I am not at liberty to disclose too many details of the tutorial situation worldwide, but less than a quarter of Earth Users have bronze rank items. Less than one percent have any skill at bronze.

“Gotcha. Is there a leaderboard of some kind? Something I can look at for reference?”

Helper: Yes, actually, but it will not activate until several stages are complete.

“Oh, seriously? What does it track? Rank? Power? Kills?”

Helper: To some extent, all of them. Divine interest, notably, is crucial to that board.

“Hold on, divine? Like, you mean gods. Capital G gods?”

Helper: Your culture would likely consider them lowercase G. This is a common response from non-theistic cultures as well as theistic cultures that do not acknowledge the presence of other deities. They exist, they are powerful, and they occasionally interface with the world. For the time being, I am not at liberty to disclose more.

“You don’t seem to be at liberty to disclose a lot of things.”

Helper: That’s the nature of the system, I’m afraid.

“Sure seems like it. I really need to pick your brain about this sometime.”

Helper: You have until the end of the tutorial. Aside from a few select circumstances, I will be sent into stasis or observation until the next cycle.

“Seriously? I guess you’re named the tutorial helper, but damn. That sounds lonely.”

Helper: It’s a lonely world.

“Jesus. That went a little further than I thought it would.”

Helper: Don’t worry about me. You still have four elements to bind.

“Point taken. Only need three more gems, though. I still have this one lying around.”

Helper: Get on it.

#

The first floor was a lot larger than Will had initially thought. The system didn’t seem to want him to one hundred percent clear the place, which was nice on some level but also made the completionist part of his brain uncomfortable. The first goblin encampment had only been a microcosm of the wider cave system, and it wasn’t the only one.

Will honestly wasn’t sure how the cave system was so big. The chunk of land he’d entered from definitely hadn’t seemed this large earlier.

He asked Helper about it.

Helper: Spatial distortion magic, portal magic, some branches of creation magic—there’s a lot of possibilities. I wasn’t assigned to you until you were already in the cave, so I have no idea.

“Thanks for trying.”

Helper: Anytime.

It wasn’t just goblins in this place, either. The glowing crystals, as it turned out, were a favorite location for the cave spiders. While the giant one had caused him a ton of trouble, the regular ones were much easier to kill by magic gun or sword. At just about torso-size, they were still big enough to send him into a panic, but he cleared them out easily all the same.

Will had resolved to find a second safe zone. Since there was no hard time limit on the tutorial and he’d at least figured out how to survive in this area, he was eager to focus on grinding the monsters here as much as he could.

Thankfully, the minimap had a zoom option. Though he couldn’t see all the enemies past a certain distance, safe zones were easy to locate anywhere. Apart from the one he’d left earlier, there was a second one about half a mile away.

Will made sure to pace himself as he traveled. In a short battle, he was sure he could manage decently well with his overleveled items. The problem lay in the fact that the teleport dagger used a chunk of his still-lacking mana, as did Weapons Free and Chaos Transfer; the gun, meanwhile, took an hour to reload after it fired seven shots. Only the axe didn’t require any real cost, but that wasn’t enough on its own.

Will had to pause after every other monster because of a lack of mana. It only took a few minutes to regenerate, so it wasn’t a problem yet, but he knew it would be.

He was only winning fights because he was isolating monsters and using up a bunch of his limited resources. After five or six run-ins with spiders and one with an isolated goblin in iron armor that the system had helpfully labeled as Cave Goblin Scout, Will’s Soul increased to 6 and his Power joined it in rising once more to 8, but that still wasn’t that much when compared to the bronze rankers he was up against.

The scout was definitely not from the same group of goblins that he’d wiped out. There was a simple red brand on its armor, which itself was more complex and effective at blocking blades than anything the first clan had. Will discovered this the hard way when the axe of despair didn’t do more than dent the chainmail. Thankfully the same couldn’t be said for the leather helmet the goblin wore.

He was glad he’d gotten the jump on it. It had started chanting some spell in between the first and second strikes. Whether that was to warn its friends or turn Will’s guts inside out, the goblin hadn’t managed to get it off.

Will examined his new loot as he settled into a safe-looking alcove as far from the eerie vents as he could.

“Damn, goblins have income disparity too. Guess not even the end of the world can change that.”

The brand kind of looked like if the Target logo had been shot with a long arrow straight down the center. Apart from that, the armor looked to be a normal goblin-sized set of chainmail, so Will tossed that into the almost full Goblin Armor Crate.

That wasn’t all he got from the scout, though. It had another Awakening Shard of the Delver, but more importantly, he received an item he hadn’t seen before.

Annotated Map of Elven Outpost AC-7

This bloodstained map of an elven outpost in the Arcadian cave system has fallen into the grasp of a goblin. That’s definitely bad news for someone. Possession of this map increases the amount of detail on your minimap while in Elven Outpost AC-7 and enables you to remotely use the Identify skill there.

As it turned out, Elven Outpost AC-7 was less than a mile from the next safe zone over. That wasn’t what Will’s eyes immediatley went to, though. The annotations caught them first.

15 lost. 27 elves killed, 3 captured.

Over 100 silver credits looted.

Solo outpost? Interrogate, consume, exterminate.

Glory to the Carrion Lord.

Scribbled under the last line was a much smaller sentence that might’ve read something like “wish I could see the games.”

“I smell a side quest,” Will said.

Helper: Arcadia doesn’t exist just for the purposes of the integration. This and all the worlds still exist as their own entities. This might seem like a game to you, but I assure you, there are very real lives on the line.

“I noticed that the last three times I almost died.”

Helper: Fair.

“You know something about Arcadia. Are the elves assholes?”

Helper: Everyone is an asshole in someone else’s story.

Will thought about that for a moment. “The goblins did just immediately try to jump me.”

Helper: They did.

“And I need to level up.”

Helper: You do.

“And I need loot.”

Helper: True.

“Screw it, I’m going.”

Helper: It’s your funeral.

“You have any better ideas?”

Helper: I would have suggested them if I did. Your path to power should be directed by you, not me. How you approach this type of situation will inform the type of class and magic you should use. If I made all your decisions, I would turn you into my type of mage. You clearly aren’t pursuing the same path, so I won’t.

“Huh. That’s surprisingly reasonable of you. Thanks.”

Helper: It should not be surprising. This is literally my job.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

The elven outpost was empty on the minimap. That tracked with what the messy handwriting on the scout’s map said.

“Their camp can’t be far if there was a scout here.”

Will crept along the path that the scout had been on, carefully keeping his eyes and ears peeled for anything that might be hiding from his minimap.

[Perception] has advanced to Unformed 9!

Up ahead, he saw a gathering of red dots come into view on the map. Will paused, checking his status. Health—all green. Mana—three-quarters full. Stamina—good. He waited for his mana to return to full, then started creeping forward. There was an overlook above the cluster of dots where Will assumed the scout had been patrolling. He took up the dead goblin’s position, looking down at the

This goblin camp was a lot more put together than the last. Rather than a tiny little clearing with a handful of shoddy tents and fires haphazardly scattered together, this one was set in a relatively wide, flat area the size of a football field. “Settlement” might have been a better term than “camp,” since there were actual stone huts, fire pits, and what looked like all the trappings of basic civilization.

The bulk of the goblins—forty or fifty, maybe—were scattered in a semi-circle in what Will thought was an arena lit by eerie vents.

The attraction of the day was a massive goblin clad in glowing armor, and for once, “massive” wasn’t just relative to the other goblins. He had to be seven feet tall, his powerful frame boasting an evil-looking war hammer that was even taller than him.

“This is some bullshit timing,” Will muttered. “This is happening right now?”

The scout’s letter had said something about “the games.” In front of the massive goblin were three bloody figures. All three had their hands bound together behind them.

Two of them had their heads and most of their torso missing. Judging from the amount of blood dripping off the massive goblin, Will could guess what had happened.

The last one remaining—an elf, Will assumed—was no less bloody than the rest, but her shock of silver hair was still attached to a body, and it didn’t look like she’d been hurt yet. She raised her chin defiantly at the goblin warrior.

“You salted our lands, elf,” the goblin rumbled, his voice clear even from nearly a hundred feet away. “You massacred us. You give nothing and take everything. This is more than you deserve, but the Hunger gives the same chance to us all. Redeem yourself in glorious combat or perish like your brethren.”

Oh, shit, Will thought. They were going to kill her. He flicked his eyes from the fragile, bound elf to the monstrosity of a goblin. This was supposed to be a fair fight?

Helper was silent. Of course it was. He was too close to enemy monsters.

Will had to make a choice, and he had to make it now.

There was an obvious one to be made. There were a lot of goblins down there, and he doubted that he was going to be able to beat all of them at once.

But he did have a backup. The teleport dagger’s cooldown had been sharply reduced by his new passive skill binding. If he used up all his mana, he could flee if things went south. If he had the time, he could potentially even take the elf with him.

And more importantly, he couldn’t stand by and let this happen. Whether or not the elves or goblins were in the right, he was pretty aware of the tendencies of the goblins. He wasn’t going to worry about which ideal was correct. There was one party here that he needed to attack, and it wasn’t the defenseless elf.

Besides, he had levels to gain.

There were a number of vents right above the makeshift arena. Will leaned down and felt for it, securing the location in his mind.

This is going to go so badly. He couldn’t use Identify from this range, but that goblin looked dangerous. If he decided to go, would he lose?

That wasn’t worth thinking about. If he ran from every fight he might lose before any of them began, he would never advance, and then he really would die.

Will teleported in.

A moment later, he hit the ground with a wet thud. He’d landed with one foot smacking through the back of one of the corpses.

Up close, the goblin warrior looked even taller, his armor even more menacing.

“A champion!” the goblin laughed, taking Will’s sudden appearance in stride. “One versed with the ways of the cave. Very well, then. Fight for this elf, champion, and die alongside her.”

“A human User,” the elf woman drawled. “Looks like it’s my lucky day.”

Will snapped his head to look towards her. Despite the situation she was in, she looked almost excited. She had an amulet around her neck that had somehow not been taken and stayed clean despite the rest of her rags being covered in someone else’s blood.

“The name’s Caiyeri,” she said. “Figure you should know who you’re dying for.”

“Will,” Will replied simply. He looked to the goblin, who hefted his war hammer and looked to the skies—or the cave ceiling that blocked them, at least.

The Carrion Lord. Level: Bronze 10.

This is a squad boss.

Once a simple Cave Goblin Cleric, the Carrion Lord has prayed and preyed his way to the top of the food chain. Blessed by the Hunger, a god of goblinkind, he is durable, a quick healer, and strikes with the force of an elephant. Cross him at your own risk.

Oh. You already did.

What did I just get myself into?

“For the Hunger,” the Carrion Lord said. “Let us do battle.”

“Good luck,” Caiyeri called. “You need it.”