[System Decay] Chapter 19: New Culture, Same Shit (Patreon)

You have gained 10 silver credits and 300 bronze credits.

Broken Forcemail Armor has been added to your inventory.

Gauntlets of Strength have been added to your inventory.

Sigil of the Hunger has been added to your inventory.

Will put all eight of his free points into Perception, bringing his final attribute up to Unformed 20.

Achievement earned: A Journey of Ten Thousand Miles

Begins with this step. You have reached or gone beyond the peak of the first rank. How far will you go from here?

Reward: Awakening Shard.

“Let’s get out of here,” Caiyeri said. “Beyond the stairwells, there are other paths down, and I don’t want to be in the middle of looting when the entire army of goblins arrives.”

“Good point,” Will said. “Do you know the way to the outpost?”

“Of course,” Caiyeri said, affronted. “I know my kind.”

As they traveled through the wider, artificial-looking tunnels of the second floor, Will examined his new gear.

Item: Broken Forcemail Armor

Bronze, rare

Forged in blood and tried in battle, this armor has finally broken against the onslaught of a very lucky (and, admittedly, resourceful) pair of Users.

While active, this shield automatically activates the [Forcefield] spell when an attack targets you. The amount of power that this drains scales with the power of the attack blocked. The armor slowly regenerates mana over time, but you may charge it by passing your own mana in.

Current capacity: 0%.

[Resizing Charm] - This armor resizes itself to fit the user.

This armor is currently nonfunctional.

Item: Gauntlets of Strength

Bronze, common

Though you can find these anywhere there is violence, these bracers are an effective at any metal rank.

Increases your strength slightly.

The last one was the strangest to him. It was a token just small enough to fit into his palm. The pattern carved upon it boggled Will’s mind—he couldn’t make heads or tails of what it was supposed to be, but he got the sense that it was malicious.

Item: Sigil of the Hunger

Ascendant, legendary

[This item’s description cannot be read with [Identify] at your current rank.]

Ascendant, if he remembered correctly, was the second highest rank in the entire system. From where he was standing, he needed to break through the metal tiers, the gem tiers, and the lord tiers before he could even think of getting there.

The item reflected that. Even in his inventory, he could feel the pull of the token. When he took it out, the world paused. Caiyeri turned to look at him, then looked away. She couldn’t sense it, but the sheer weight of the item had drawn her attention somehow.

To Will, it was like the token had a gravity of its own. The level that it was at was far beyond his comprehension.

“I am definitely not eating this,” he said aloud, placing it back into his inventory.

He wasn’t going to discard it, either. Until he figured out what exactly it did, he was not going to do anything at all with it. Will would be a fool to throw away an ascendant rank item at this point in his User life.

Aside from that, the forcemail armor and gauntlets were actually human-sized. Will was going to have to figure out how to wear the gauntlets and his new miraculous wrist bracer at the same time, since they overlapped in space a bit. If he had to choose, though, the gauntlets would come out on top. Though the bracers could provide utility, he needed immediate power over a distraction.

It was a shame the armor was broken, but there was no other way that they would have been able to get through to the Carrion Lord. Even with Ghostflame dealing true damage, it wouldn’t have been enough to break through the powerful forcefield.

Will resolved to find a crafter or mechanic of some kind and get it pieced back together after he finished the tutorial.

From here, it would be smooth sailing. Hopefully.

“Have you ever actually been to this floor?” Will asked. “You didn’t give me the impression of going out much.”

“Nope,” Caiyeri replied cheerfully. “But I know it better than the back of my hand.”

“Not much to do in the outpost other than learn what’s around you, huh?”

“That, and train. I’ll still put you on your ass if you get to my level. Attributes aren’t everything.”

“You saw how much I got?”

Caiyeri snorted, raising a hand for silence. She peered around a corner, the slight glow in her eyes the only indication that she was using Thermal Sight. Once she was reasonably sure the coast was clear, she started speaking again.

“I can see everything you’re getting through the party interface,” she said. “Try looking through it. You might find some of mine.”

Just as she said, once Will found the right spot in the party section of his system, he could see what Caiyeri had gotten. For once, she wasn’t hiding it.

She’d gone up a level, reaching Bronze 5. Killing that boss had been a big help for her. There were a number of achievements that she’d earned, too, but none of them were of the same kind that Will had gotten. He suspected that this was because he was a User from this cycle, and while Caiyeri was also a User, she was a system native.

He had no problem with his advantages. Silver Forerunner was going to be an exceptionally useful title for him. Will was already doing quite well for himself. If he could double the value of his training and grind twice as hard as everyone else? Well, that question barely needed answering.

Helper: It appears that our time together is drawing to an end.

Time until tutorial failure: 9 hours, 14 minutes, 20 seconds.

“Good riddance,” Caiyeri said, the lilt in her voice defusing the acerbic words. “I’d say I’ll miss you, god in the machine, but I try not to lie.”

Helper: That statement is incorrect in so many ways.

Caiyeri grinned. “You’re right. I do love lying.”

“Where are you going to go after this?” Will asked. “That goes for both of you, I guess.”

Helper: I am not at liberty to disclose that information.

“Of course you aren’t,” Caiyeri said with a sigh. “I’m not sure. My outpost’s mission failed, and it appears that my planet’s did as well. More likely than not, I’ll be put into a strike force. With the advent of a new cycle comes dungeons, yes?”

Helper: That I can disclose. Yes.

“I’ll help my people on the surface, I think,” Caiyeri continued. “Or I’ll strike out for myself.”

“And die like an idiot?” Will asked.

“You must be rubbing off on me,” she said.

As they continued on, Will noticed that there were far fewer native creatures prone to attacking them in these tunnels. There was a possibility that this was because the tunnels in this part of the cave system really had been man-made and thus scared off the creatures, but Will doubed that, given that this entire cave system was an extreme difficulty tutorial.

Helper ended up confirming his suspicions.

Helper: A god’s sigil is a dangerous thing to be carrying around. No wonder it’s been so silent.

“The Carrion Lord was carrying a sigil?” Caiyeri asked aloud. “That explains quite a bit.”

Helper: And now Will does.

“Is it going to kill me?” Will asked. “It’s not like I have to carry it, is it?”

Helper: No. It could put you in great peril, but sigil-wielders also see great rewards. As you saw.

“Then I’m keeping it.”

Helper: As you will.

They ended up making a detour about halfway through. The elf outpost was a solid few miles from the stairwell, but when every minor monster scurried away from them, it was pretty easy to make their way through. The bosses didn’t back down, as they learned when a giant cave spider tried and failed to intercept them, but there were no little guys slowing them down.

“Is there a way to cloak this?” Will asked. “I’d rather not make myself such a big target.”

Helper: At your current level, you will not be able to conceal all the effects of the sigil. No matter how much of it you suppress, you will add an element aura that indicates danger.

“I’m fine with people knowing that I’m dangerous,” Will said. He frowned. “I can’t suppress it at all, though. At this rate, I’m not going to be able to finish the tutorial. There aren’t enough monsters showing up.”

Helper: You should be able to complete the tutorial by advancing to bronze. You are already on the brink of it. You may not even need any more experience to achieve it.

“Really?”

Helper: Really. Since you have chosen to assist the system native, I’ll hold off on showing you how to manage it until you’re at a safe point to do so. Even with the sigil, I suspect that you’re not going to want to completely expose yourself to danger when advancing.

Will thought back to how he’d crushed the Carrion Lord’s skull in while the goblin had been advancing to silver. “Yeah, definitely not.”

Helper: I can, however, teach you the basics of aura control.

“Is that safe to do while we’re traveling?”

Helper: Yes.

“Aura control is like breathing or blinking,” Caiyeri contributed. “It doesn’t take much of your attention once you get used to it.”

“You can do it?”

“Can a fish swim?” Caiyeri winked, then gestured towards herself. “Watch. Or—don’t watch. Feel.”

Suddenly, pressure spilled out from her body, pressing down on Will like a panic attack. He continued walking forward, but a weight had added itself to his shoulders.

“Oh,” he said. “Why didn’t the others feel like that?”

Helper: Most monsters have poor aura control and can neither suppress nor enforce themsleves upon reality.

“I can,” Caiyeri said. “I was born this way.”

Helper: For you, Will, it’ll be different. All it comes down to is practice. At its core, aura control is about being aware of the mana infusing your body. Meditation is key.

“It’s not the easiest thing to meditate while we’re walking and watching for monsters.”

Helper: Figure it out. I don’t have that much time to impart this to you, so I’ll go over what I can.

She and Caiyeri seemed to have figured out some kind of balance between the two of them, and they took turns explaining to him elements of the control. Caiyeri focused more on the system side of things, though.

“You absolutely cannot show the elves at that outpost your corruption element,” she said. “Just pretend your Affinity’s unbound.”

“How do I do that?”

Cloaking, as it turned out, involved a process roughly equivalent to holding your breath, just magically. It was uncomfortable to start with, but Caiyeri assured him that it would get easier with time. For now, the important part was closing his affixed elements down to outside observation.

Helper walked him through a basic set of exercises as they made their way to a marked vault on his map.

The giant cave spider he’d killed on his own had given him a vault key in the form of its eye, and despite everything Will had been through, nothing had happened to make the key less effective.

They found the vault in a skin-crawlingly adorned region of the tunnels. Though they still looked artificially created with the ninety degree edges and sharp turns, the entire rocky tunnel was saturated with sticky, nearly invisible webs.

The cave spiders that had made this place their home were gone, scared off by the sigil. Will had decided that the strong aura of danger he was giving out was probably beneficial enough to not bother wasting time on suppressing at the moment, which gave them the freedom to clear the webs without being attacked.

Thick webs wrapped around exsanguinated corpses, coppery red blood seeping into the webs around them. At least, Will assumed they were corpses, at least, since Caiyeri used a fire rune on a conjured weapon to burn a bunch of the webs away, and she said she wasn’t gaining any experience from it.

Although the webbing-wrapped tunnels set off alarm bells in his mind, there were no spiders still present, so they were able to make it to the vault without running into a fight.

Of the areas he’d looted, Will definitely spent the least amount of time in the spider’s. Just like he’d thought, the web wasn’t much more appealing to him than the monsters themselves. All of the giant cave spider’s loot had been stored within a massive cocoon of spider silk. Amongst that loot, apparently, was a nest of eggs that set Will on edge just looking at them.

Caiyeri wasn’t much more fond of that, so they looted it as quickly as possible. She took a tablet, Will took the spider’s elemental gem of poison, and then, by mutual agreement, they tossed a few oil barrels in and burned the place down.

Helper suggested waiting on finding his last element before choosing poison to bind to Perception or Resistance.

Helper: It’ll be better to have all your elements bound when you advance to bronze for your first class selection, but even if you don’t have them fully affixed, you will gain the same flexibility by having the elemental gems.

“Yeah, makes sense,” Will said. “I’ll wait on my final element yet. With the sigil, there’s no real rush.”

Helper: There is a rush. You have eight hours.

That was also true.

By the time they made it to the elven outpost, the timer had ticked down to just over six hours. Will was still five monsters short of clearing the second set of requirements for finishing the tutorial quest, but with the basic exercises for perceiving the mana flowing through his body, he could sense the pool of power waiting within his grasp.

Once he got everything he needed, he was going to be able to advance to bronze.

Just like the stairwell, the elven outpost was located in the center of a large clearing. Unlike the stairwell room, this one was boldly civilized. There was still a lack of cover, but it looked deliberate. Watchtowers dotted the area, each of them reinforced with what looked like artificial hazards and traps beneath them. There was only one way in and out, it seemed, which was the tunnel that Will and Caiyeri took.

All of it led to a single fortified building that reminded Will of a prison. Or maybe a high school. They were designed pretty similarly, so he supposed it didn’t make a difference. There were a few tinted windows set into hard concrete walls that revealed nothing within.

“Brutalist style,” Will said, looking around. “You live like this?”

“Yes. Why? What’s wrong with that?”

“Never mind. How the hell did a bunch of goblins swarm a place like this?” Will asked. “I can barely see any vents, and they all looked trapped.”

“The Carrion Lord,” Caiyeri said simply. “He shrugged off our offenses like they were nothing. I have you to thank for avenging my people.”

“Thank yourself,” Will said. “You put in a lot of work, too. Actually, scratch that—thank me as much as you want if it involves giving me loot.”

“Over your dead body,” Caiyeri replied.

Will snorted. “Okay. So that’s how the goblins got in. How do we do this?”

In lieu of a response, Caiyeri stepped forward, expanding her aura out once more.

“Outpost AC-15!” she shouted. “AC-7’s Caiyeri requests refuge and transport!”

A pause.

Then, a few seconds later, a response came from one of the watchtowers. The voice was magically amplified, though there was a distortion that made it sound charmingly like the front office in middle school.

“AC-7 Caiyeri, this is AC-15’s Anyssa. We were told AC-7 was wiped out.”

“Your information is old,” Caeyeri replied. “Everyone but me is dead.”

Another pause.

“You brought the host of Hunger to our gates,” Anyssa replied from the tower. “Our troops are mobilizing.”

“We killed the Carrion Lord,” Caiyeri said, exasperated. “Does the man next to me look like a goblin to you?”

“Hi!” Will announced, stepping in line with the elf woman.

Another pause, longer this time. Will hoped that meant she was calling the outpost’s troops off.

“AC-7 Caiyeri, this is AC-15 Lya confirming your arrival,” a second feminine voice—this one clearly older—announced. “Congratulations, and thank you. You will be suitably rewarded.”

“I have the human that actually killed him with me here,” Caiyeri said. “He saved my life. Multiple times.”

“You may bring him with you,” Lya replied. “Please make yourself at home. Do not let the guest overstay his welcome.”

#

“Are all elves like this?” Will whispered.

Helper: It depends. These are clones, though.

Caiyeri shrugged. “It depends. Ours had more interaction with the surface, and we all selected different classes. AC-15 is younger. I imagine they haven’t been properly exposed. The Caiyeri here won’t be like me.”

“Weird.”

“To a human, maybe.”

The inhuman beauty that Caiyeri sported didn’t seem to be exclusive to her. Some of the elves looked alien in a way that Will couldn’t properly appreciate, but they could all have easily made their way onto magazine covers.

“Human,” the oldest of them said. He identified himself as Rowan, which was a name Will vaguely remembered. “You are hiding your elements. What do you have to hide?”

“Sorry, I think I misheard you,” Will said. “That’s an odd way to say thank you.”

“He hasn’t seen my elements,” Caiyeri said, rolling her eyes as she lied through her teeth. “I won’t begrudge him the same.”

“If you say so, Caiyeri Seven,” Rowan said. “Please wait here. You must be tired.”

“Of course,” Caiyeri said.

Light pressure touched down on Will—not upon his body, but on a deeper level, as if someone was trying to see straight into his soul. It ran parallel to the feeling of Caiyeri’s aura, and he swatted it away as well as he could with the basic lessons.

Rowan clicked his tongue. “Humans shouldn’t be here. Has a new cycle begun?”

“It has,” Caiyeri said. “You seem unsurprised.”

“We were warned,” Rowan said. “If it truly has begun, then our world is far more damaged than we thought.”

With that, he left.

“Thanks for covering for me,” Will said. “I appreciate it.”

“You would’ve done the same for me,” Caiyeri said quietly. “You’ve honored your word, Will, and I’ve not given you any appreciation for it.”

“I’m just doing what anyone would do,” Will replied. He thought on that a little more. “What anyone should do.”

#

A number of elves came in and out afterwards, each of them bringing some food or drink or item for Caiyeri. None of them spoke to Will. He may as well not have existed to them.

After the initial affront, Will realized that he didn’t particularly care. Caiyeri had been right. Even when a mirrored copy of her came in to give her a gemstone for her efforts, the energy simply wasn’t there. Elven Outpost AC-15 was different enough from the one Caiyeri Seven had emerged from that Will didn’t particularly care to get to know any of them.

He spent the time practicing his meditation and reaching for the bronze rank. Will could comfortably wrap his hands around that well of power in his core, but he didn’t use it. Caiyeri promised him early on that she could get him an elemental gem, so he waited.

As the hours ticked on, though, he grew less sure of that. The elves reminded him of his local government in how much talking they did without actually saying anything—empty congratulations to Caiyeri, repeated questions on her purpose, and just general incompetence that almost made Will regret killing the Carrion Lord.

Will decided that as soon as his tutorial timer hit sixty minutes remaining, he was going to take hold of that power and rank up. If he didn’t, he was liable to take the second option for the quest and kill five of these elves instead.

With sixty-seven minutes left to go, however, an elf walked in and quietly knelt down before Caiyeri.

“As you were, ma’am,” the elf said, presenting her with a gilded box. “The transporter will be prepared for you in a moment.”

The second that elf left, Caiyeri handed the box over to Will. He opened it, raising an eyebrow at what laid within.

Item: Superior Elemental Gem of Time

Time is a difficult element to use. Many have speculated upon this element and the potential existence of time travel, but it has not and will not ever exist—in reality, nothing that has been done can be undone. Use this magic to manipulate the now. Think not of the past, of which there can only be one path, but the myriad branches that the future can take.

Binds the Time element to one of your attributes. Also awakens a skill at bronze rank.

Available attributes: [Resistance], and [Perception].

“Wow,” Will breathed. “Time magic? That is absolutely bonkers.”

Helper: It’s not perfect. It takes a skilled User to apply it effectively.

“Don’t rain on my parade,” Will said. “And besides, I’m a damn skilled user.”

Helper: Admittedly.

“Thanks for this, Caiyeri,” Will said. “I’m sure you could have used this well, too.

“It is the least I can do,” Caiyeri said. “I’m no fool. I may have made it out of my capture alive, but I could never have taken the Carrion Lord down alone, and my amulet would have run out eventually.”

“Well, then,” Will said. “This feels like a rather anticlimactic way to say goodbye, but…”

Time until tutorial failure: 1 hour, 4 minutes, 9 seconds.

“You’ll be able to communicate with me through the system,” Caiyeri said. “Once I escape this corrupted place, I’ll message you. You’ll know.”

Will looked at the greyed-out chat function. The tutorial had told him that it was a locked feature, so he hadn’t thought much of it, but he was about to be out of the tutorial. Out of this corruption.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said. “It was good fighting with you.”

“The same. Now go, before you’re stuck with the rest of these idiots.”

Just as he had innumerable times over the past six hours, Will reached inwards and grasped the power.

This time, he didn’t let it slip.

Advancing to bronze rank…

Quest complete: Phase 2

You completed the extreme difficulty Corrupted Fragment tutorial.

- Reach Bronze 0 [1/1]

OR

- Reach Unformed 20 [1/1]

- Kill 100 monsters [95/100]

OR

- Reach the exit [0/1]

Reward: You already have enough gems to initiate class selection. Recalculating…

For a brief instant, Will was somewhere else. Visions of uncountable stars flooded his mind, showing him fragments of other worlds. Other universes throughout the cold, cruel multiverse. He remembered the awakening visions, and for that infinitisemal instant, he experienced them.

“You have promise, William.” The voice that spoke came from everywhere but was nowhere to be seen. Its words resonated with the very core of his being. “Show me what you have.”

And then the moment was over, and he was drifting in an empty space.

A white, tiled floor materialized, then walls. Text followed soon after.

Reward recalculated. You have earned an Awakening Shard of the Beyond.

You are in the process of advancing to bronze.

Please select your class.

A moment later, a different set of lines added themselves.

Helper: You’ve got what it takes, Will. Take it all the way.

Helper: This is the last part of the apocalypse that I’ll be able to help you with.

Helper: Let’s get you a damn good class.