[System Decay] Chapter 21: Boy Meets World (Patreon)

The monster that his system identified as an ogre was only Bronze 3. It was certainly more intimidating than the goblin children who’d been at the same rank. Will assumed it would be proportionally more difficult to slay, but it still wasn’t that high of a rank compared to literally everyone in the hell he’d just been through.

His ability to sense its power through its aura was nowhere near as refined as Caiyeri’s was, but the exercises Caiyeri and H—Ayla had put him through had given him a better sense of the danger level around him than any of his former classmates could manage.

In terms of output, the ogre’s aura was more intense than the average cave goblins, but it couldn’t hope to match up to even the chieftain of the destitute clan Will had encountered, let alone a giant cave spider or the Carrion Lord.

Long story short, poor Ung here was a perfect training dummy.

He grinned. “You’re not going to like this, dude.”

The ogre had paused just like the squad he’d landed ahead of—Allie, Lev, someone from his economics class, and one guy he’d never seen before. Everyone had reacted strongly to his appearance, which Will imagined was pretty normal when you saw someone appear out of thin air through what the system called a dimensional rift.

Now, though, he was starting to realize that there might be more to it. The Reaper class he’d ended up selecting in spite of all of his caution combined with his sigil had promised to exude dread, and it looked like that was in full effect here.

None of them besides the ogre seemed to want to kill him over it, though, so Will decided to make the most out of the moment.

Every single one of his skills had advanced to bronze rank. The ones that were already bronze had unfortunately not gone up to silver, but he knew they had the potential to go there unrestrictedly thanks to his Affinity binding.

During the transportation back to Earth, Will had gotten an influx of system notifications, but he’d pushed them all to the side. The teleportation had only taken an instant, and even he’d have a pretty rough go of it if his vision was completely blocked by text boxes.

Instead, as he started using his newly upgraded skills, intuitively grasping what they did, the boxes slid back into few for instants.

Will ran towards the ogre, Escape Artist enhancing his speed. As he approached, the monster tried to slam him into the ground, bringing its club down from up high.

In response, Will got even faster.

Skill: [Escape Artist]

- Passive (body).

- Cost: none.

- Cooldown: none.

Bronze

Your movement speed is increased at a rate inversely proportional to the amount of equipment you are wearing (maximum of 50% increase).

Bronze-rank addition: Your movement speed is increased by up to an additional 50% if you are currently being attacked.

The increase in speed should have made him lose his balance, but it came to him naturally, as if he’d always been able to run this fast. It didn’t come with an increase in perception speed, though, so Will had to put all his focus into ensuring he didn’t accidentally run into a wall.

Despite the blinding speed of the ogre’s blow, its club made contact with nothing but dirt and grass. Will drew his pistol, marking the boss for death.

Skill: [Mark for Death]

- Spell (affliction).

- Cost: moderate mana.

- Cooldown: 1 hour.

Bronze

Target any creature you can see or sense and mark them for death. During the next hour, the effectiveness of attacks and afflictions against the creature are increased, and you can track the creature through your minimap and through walls. This skill’s cooldown resets if the targeted creature dies.

[Soul Link] (bronze) - A fraction of all damage dealt to the marked creature is converted to healing for you.

Will wasn’t entirely sure about the logic behind some skills only having a bronze rank addition and others gaining seemingly distinct effects, but he presumed that it might have something to do with choice. The next time he advanced a skill through a rank, he planned to be in a less precarious situation. There was every possibility that Soul Link wasn’t the only option he could gain.

It wasn’t very helpful in this fight, where he hadn’t been hit yet, but against a massive boss, this could be very useful indeed.

Will rolled to avoid another swing of the club, leaving a muddy gunk behind on the grass. He had no idea why he’d suddenly gotten so dirty upon arriving here—wait, no, he did. Ayla had told him something about clearing impurities from his body. Was that what this was?

It felt and smelled something awful, but Will had to admit that his body felt better than ever. Will had pretty regularly gone to the gym, but right now, he felt like he was reaping the rewards of an Olympic athlete’s training routine. He’d never been in better shape.

Will rolled to a stop on one knee, took aim, and fired.

[Rebounding Shot selected.]

He noticed the tooltip an instant before the hammer slammed into the bullet and quickly readjusted his aim, sending the bullet rebounding off the dirt below before smacking into the ogre’s flesh.

[First Blood] doubled the power of your attack.

No crit, unfortunately.

Unlike the Carrion Lord, there was no forcemail armor to stop the bullet from impacting, but the ogre was durable. It bled, but it didn’t even groan in pain.

“Alright,” Will muttered. “I should stop playing with my food.”

Escape Artist combined with Wind Walker to push him forward.

Skill: [Wind Walker]

- Spell (stealth, movement).

- Cost: very low mana.

- Cooldown: none.

Bronze.

At the eye of any violent storm, there is silence. Draw upon the power of the winds to lighten your step and increase your speed.

[Zephyr’s Cloak] (bronze) - While this skill is active, you gain a slight blur effect, making you harder to see and target while moving.

He doubted the reduction to his target’s accuracy would be terribly effective here, but he didn’t need the stealth attribute. He just needed speed.

Will dodged another blow from the club and laid a hand on the ogre’s tough, leathery skin.

Skill: [Decaying Touch]

- Spell (affliction).

- Cost: moderate mana.

- Cooldown: none.

Bronze.

Deals necrotic damage. Inflict one level of [Corruption] on a creature or item you touch. This skill cannot stack afflictions.

Distorted dark power gathered at Will’s fingertips, making his skin tingle.

It did a lot more to the ogre than just tingling. Will’s hand left a dark print as the ogre flinched back, and its skin began to take on the smoky quality of a corrupted being.

“This fight is over,” Will told it. “You just don’t know it yet.”

The Bell Tolls hadn’t advanced, but it served his purposes just fine.

Skill: [The Bell Tolls]

- Spell (esoteric).

- Cost: high mana.

- Cooldown: 1 hour.

Bronze.

Cleanses all afflictions from you and targets a creature you can see. The creature cannot benefit from magical healing for the next minute. Inflicts necrotic damage scaling with the consumed afflictions and any injuries the target is suffering from.

[Withering Decay] (bronze) - Increases any affliction on the target by one level. Inflicts one level of [Wither].

As the ogre stumbled, clutching its skin and moaning in pain as its corruption worsened, Will downed a mana potion. Now that he was bronze rank, he could consume the bronze rank mana potions on a much lower cooldown—but that came with the side effect of them not restoring as much comparatively.

He only had about a third of his mana left, but he didn’t need that much to finish this.

Will put distance between him and the ogre. With two layers of corruption and one of wither, the boss was pretty much screwed, but he didn’t want to sit around and wait.

Rather than risk another backfire on the revolver, he inventoried it and took out his shadow-enchanted stealth bow. Will had enchanted a quiver of arrows with one of his electricity runes and applied cave spider venom to the whole batch, so when he loosed the arrow, it had three effects applied to it.

It didn’t hit the ogre in the eye, where he’d been aiming, but it did stick it in the face, which was good enough.

Will was tempted to use another one of his high mana skills to finish it, but he wasn’t here to show off.

He turned towards the half-admiring, half-horrified visages of the squad he’d dropped in on.

Okay. He wasn’t only here to show off.

With a heartrending, earpiercing roar, the ogre collapsed to the ground.

You have defeated Ung, Cave Ogre.

You have defeated a squad boss. Examine its body for its Vault Key.

Achievement earned: Let Me Solo Him

You have defeated a squad boss on your own. It may have been a much weaker squad boss than the ones before, but a kill is a kill.

You are the 148th User to gain to gain this achievement this cycle.

Reward: 1 gold credit.

Now that he was back on Earth, Will was grateful for the money. He assumed that other currency had lost most of its value. It would be good to have more options, and he’d learned pretty well throughout his pre-apocalypse life that if there was one thing money was good at, it was giving him more of those.

Will already had the Space and Poison elemental gems on him, but he still went to loot the body anyway.

20 bronze credits have been added to your inventory.

Ung’s Club of Skull Shattering has been added to your inventory.

Vault Key has been added to your inventory.

“Who the hell are you?” an unfamiliar voice said.

“Don’t be rude, Dylan,” a much more familiar man replied. “Will. It’s, uh, good to see you again.”

“Lev! Good to see you too,” Will said, returning the greeting with a nod. He made to go pat his friend on the shoulder, then remembered he was still covered in muddy gunk. And also the blood of a dead boss. “Are there any showers around here?”

#

As it turned out, the group of four had already been on their way to a safe zone when Will had arrived. They were harder to spot outside of the tutorials, apparently, but Lev’s party had already identified and stayed in one. It was a brief walk away, during which Will stayed a fair distance from his party.

Apparently, the combination of monster stench and sigil of a goblin god wasn’t exactly a great way to get a conversation going.

One of the party members—the only one he didn’t recognize at all, who Lev had addressed as “Dylan”—kept on looking at Will. He had a bad feeling about that, but he ignored it for the time being.

After they got to the safe zone, which mercifully had excellent showers, they regrouped just outside of it.

“Introductions are probably in order,” Will said. “In case you haven’t noticed already, I’m William Li-Brown, but only the system calls me William.”

“Do you have a stealth spell?” Allie asked, speaking up for the first time. Will had been surprised by her relative silence earlier, but she seemed to be as peppy and energetic as ever. “I can’t get a read on your profile.”

That was good to know. Will wasn’t sure how much he wanted to reveal at this moment, but he figured that it was probably better not to show people a class that had stated in its own description that it invited death to the user. While he couldn’t obfuscate his class with another, false one, he could hide it altogether.

He was sure that anyone like Caiyeri who was genuinely competent and higher powered than him would be able to find his class just fine, but these people… definitely weren’t.

“You remember me,” Allie said. “I got caught up in it with nearly everyone from school. We kind of all split ways, though. I think some of my friends are dead.”

Allison “Allie” Lawson. Unformed 12.

[Power] (Sword): Unformed 14

- Steel Ward (Unformed)

- Precision Strike (Unformed)

-

[Speed] (Wind): Unformed 16

- Tailwind Blessing (Unformed)

- Gale Step (Unformed)

-

[Affinity]: Unformed 10

[Soul] (Radiance): Unformed 13

- Solar Lance (Unformed)

- Luminous Flare (Unformed)

-

[Resistance]: Unformed 6

[Perception]: Unformed 11

- Darkvision (Unformed)

Will raised his eyebrows. Allie smiled uncertainly, unable to interpret his expression.

“We’ve been doing our best,” she said. “The system says we’re a little bit ahead of pace.”

It took everything in Will’s power not to laugh or drop his jaw. Unformed 12 was ahead of pace?

They didn’t have access to his stat sheet, so the group could only guess what he was thinking based on his reactions.

Will schooled his face. “Carry on.”

“Lev,” Lev said. “But you knew that already.”

Levy “Lev” Anderson. Unformed 12.

[Power]: Unformed 10

[Speed]: Unformed 11

[Affinity]: Unformed 8

[Soul] (Electricity): Unformed 18

- Circuit Breaker (Bronze)

- Ionize (Unformed)

-

[Resistance] (Life): Unformed 14

- Vital Guard (Unformed)

- Regrowth Shield (Unformed)

-

[Perception]: Unformed 9

He was similarly weak. Will was reasonably sure he could take both of them on with their eyes closed. Caiyeri would have laughed them out of the room if they’d asked to help her—then again, she’d almost done the same when Will had showed up, so he supposed he couldn’t judge that much.

“Trevor Garcia,” said the tall, otherwise ethnically ambiguous man who Will faintly recognized. “You were in the econometrics workshop with me, yeah?”

“I think so, yes,” Will confirmed. “Pleasure to meet you properly.”

Trevor chuckled. “As much as you can call this proper.”

Trevor Garcia. Unformed 11.

[Power] (Strength): Unformed 14

- Disarming Attack (Unformed)

- Overwhelm (Unformed)

- Improved Critical (Unformed)

[Speed]: Unformed 8

- Dash (Unformed)

[Affinity]: Unformed 7

[Soul]: Unformed 8

[Resistance]: Unformed 10

[Perception]: Unformed 11

His Affinity was shockingly low for a man who seemed to be using a magical longsword, and more to the point—he only had a single element bound. How had he survived the tutorial?

The last man was an inch or two shorter than Trevor, putting him at roughly Will’s height. He looked like he’d been in the midst of a frat party when the apocalypse had hit and never bothered to update his gear.

Will instantly disliked him, but he calmed himself. First impressions could be deceiving, and he knew by now that alliances could be powerful in the apocalypse.

“Dylan,” the stranger said, not offering a hand. He crossed his arms, sneaking a glance at Allie. “I’m basically the strongest guy here. You lift?”

Sure enough, Dylan’s muscled body did show proof of a man who had gone to the gym with more fervor than Will before the apocalypse. After fighting alongside and training with Caiyeri, though, even for only a few days, Will could see the flaws in his posture. Dylan must’ve thought himself to be tough shit, but he didn’t distribute his weight well. His center of gravity was too high, his movements too stilted. In a fight, he’d topple to a single well-placed blow.

And perhaps more importantly, he was already annoying.

“Used to,” Will said. “Though I don’t see how that matters, given that gyms aren’t really a thing anymore.”

Dylan snorted. “Of course you don’t know. I don’t like your vibe, beta. Get the fuck out of here.”

“Excuse me?” Will said. “Did you just seriously, unironically use the term ‘beta’?”

“Dylan,” Allie admonished. “Seriously?”

“Nah,” Dylan said, stepping forward to invade Will’s peronsal space, staring him down. “I figure there’s enough competition around here. I don’t want you here, ching chong.”

Will arched an eyebrow, whistling. “You’re going to go there? Tough talk from a guy who could be adopted into the Habsburgs.”

Lev snorted.

“The fuck is a Habsburg?” Dylan demanded.

“You’ve been putting up with this weirdo?” Will asked the rest of the party. “You know you don’t have to deal with people like this, right?”

The other three looked supremely uncomfortable.

“Well…” Allie trailed off.

“It’s because they need me,” Dylan said, pounding his chest. Does this guy think he’s an ape? “The chick knows she needs a real man to protect her, and the other two tagged along for the ride.”

“He’s the most durable one out of us,” Lev said, wincing. “He hasn’t been this… difficult… before. Mostly we ignore him. It hasn’t been that bad. He does what I tell him to do.”

“I do what I want,” Dylan announced. “You’ve got some good ideas sometimes, bro, but you gotta know when to make a decision.”

“You just watched me take down a squad boss,” Will said mildly. “Is it really a good idea to be antagonizing me now?”

“I did all the damage,” Dylan sneered. “You just came in and stole my kill.”

“No you didn’t,” Allie interjected.

“Sit down and shut up, bitch. I did.”

The simmering anger that had steadily, silently built in Will’s mind started to seep out of the top.

“If the spoiled child is done whining,” he said coldly, “can the rest of us get a move on?”

“Shit, I’m down,” Lev said. “I owe you a ton of favors, and I actually have the tools to deliver on them now. I dunno where you came from, but we can keep you safe while we clear out this phase.”

“Don’t you dare ignore me,” Dylan hissed, pounding his chest again. “I’m the alpha here.”

“You know that study was disproved by its own author, right?” Will said. “He spent the rest of his life trying to take it back. Turns out that when you really, really want a certain worldview to be true, you can use all the shitty, broken data you want to justify it.”

Dylan’s expression morphed from angry to confused to even more confused, then back to blissful ignorance—and anger, of course, because guys like him didn’t count anger as a feeling when they said that it was women who were too emotional.

“You wanna go?” he said, shoving Will.

The force barely registered. Will took a single step backwards to brace himself, then stopped to finally identify what the hell this guy was doing.

Dylan Dyson. Unformed 16.

[Power] (Fire): Unformed 17

- Ember Strike (Unformed)

- Cinder Ward (Unformed)

-

[Speed]: Unformed 10

[Affinity]: Unformed 6

[Soul]: Unformed 8

[Resistance] (Steel): Unformed 18

- Iron Skin (Unformed)

- Bastion Stance (Unformed)

-

[Perception]: Unformed 4

Will laughed out loud.

“You think something’s funny, asshole?” Dylan said, though his words were tinged with a bit of fear, now.”

“Yes, actually. It’s genuinely hilarious that you think you have a ghost of a chance at taking me on.” Will knew that unformed rank Users could take out those a rank above, since he’d done a ton of it himself, but with those skills? No way.

He stopped suppressing his aura.

Dylan’s eyes widened as Identify finally worked for him. Will made sure to continue covering his skills and class, but the numbers and ranks—that, he showed.

Allie audibly gasped.

“Holy shit,” Trevor said. “You’re… that’s got to be leaderboard numbers.”

Leaderboard? Will made a mental note to check the rest of the notifications he’d missed as soon as possible.

“I haven’t killed another human yet,” Will said. “But I’ve killed ninety-five creatures that were close enough. You don’t present a threat to me, and I don’t want our race to die out, but you are by far the least valuable member of this team.

“You might be wondering why, given the fact that your stats are better than everyone else’s. That’s simple. I don’t like you, and I matter more than you do right now.

“I’ll give you one chance. Leave us, and I won’t hurt you. Don’t, and you’ll regret it.”

Dylan looked to him, then to the others, finding resolve from god knew where. “No. Piss off.”

He had to know he was outclassed. Did he think that Trevor, Allie, and Lev, who were obviously only with him because he was their only choice, were going to side with him?

“Are you sure?” Will said, drawing his revolver.

He didn’t aim for a lethal point. Will hadn’t been lying—until he was forced to, he didn’t want to kill another human. Being an asshole made it really tempting, but that wasn’t a crime worth death, especially not when the number of humans remaining was dropping with every passing second.

The moment Dylan turned a hand on him, though, he would be ready. Will hadn’t practiced all that killing for nothing.

“You don’t have the balls,” Dylan said.

Will adjusted his aim and fired, selecting a mundane bullet for the first time since receiving the item. Blood spurted and Dylan screamed, hands flying to his crotch.

“No,” Will said. “You don’t have the balls.”

Trevor looked a little ill. Allie and Lev didn’t look that comfortable with it either, but they gave Will a grim nod.

Will gave Dylan the parting grace of the same swift shove that the frat boy had tried on him earlier. With his bronze rank Power and Dylan’s current state of pain, he was easily able to knock the other man over.

“He’ll be fine after a health potion or two,” Will said, “But he’ll need to pee sitting down for a while.”

“Are you just going to leave him here?” Trevor asked.

“He was about to do the same to me. Are you saying you want to stay with him? He’s got the safe zone to retreat to.”

“Hell no,” Trevor said vehemently, joining Will as the bronze rank started walking away.

Lev and Allie followed suit quietly.

“Now then,” Will said, inventorying his revolver, “I need an update. What the hell happened to our planet?”