[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 162: Corruption Wielder

The angel paused in its rampage.

Its senses had grown to encompass the primitive world to which it had been summoned. Though its strength had been limited to a low enough level that it could not use its Perfect Sight upon the entirety of this world, it had maintained enough of its strength to do so on a smaller area.

It blinded itself across the world, withdrawing its senses so it could focus on what was before it.

Perception radius set: 300 units. Perception height set: 1,000 units.

It had missed the stealth skill that had cloaked the superweapon in space, and it had lost its shield because of that. It would not make that mistake again.

As an angel, magic worked differently. Rather than adhere to a set amount of skills that the system gifted, the angel itself was the one who determined what it could do. There was nothing to awaken because the angel’s entire existence was that of awakening.

Within its sphere of perception, it sensed one full being.

Gold 10. Attributes: Corruption, Space, Death, Storm, Time. Gods: The Hunger. The Crown. [???].

Active skills: One Foot in the Grave. Marked for Death. Wind Walker. Wraith Cloak. Thousand Eyes. Guardian Angel. Equilibrium Mantle. Favored Element: Light. Pages of the Past. Time in a Bottle. Hunger Phantasm. Hunger Aura. Corruption Resistance. Escape Artist.

Prepared skills: Decaying Touch. Ghostflame. The Bell Tolls. Wail of the Forgotten.

Alias: William Li-Brown. Will. Reaper. End of Days. The Dark Angel.

While the angel didn’t see things in the common languages, the information transmitted to it at all times looked something like that. It saw the user in and out. It knew where the weak points were in his defenses. Observing him for a mere fraction of a second was enough to ascertain the details of his fighting style as well as his most likely future movements.

Yet somehow, when it annihilated all matter in the space that the user was going to be in a quarter second from now, William Li-Brown was not there. The angel’s control over reality shuddered. Though it could manipulate the environment itself, there was something resisting it.

Angels were not living beings in the same sense that humans, changelings, or the hive were. They were beings of pure power, feeding upon and regurgitating positive energy. Still, this one had been created in a vessel made from the bodies of many, many humans. It felt irritation.

With a metaphorical snap of its fingers, it transmuted the oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen in the area into fluorine.

Though the system was capable of bending the laws of the universe, it was an addition atop what was already there. Physics still applied. Humans could not breathe fluorine, and the material reacted violently when exposed to water.

As the ocean surface roiled, continuously detonating in an endless series of chemical explosions, the angel attacked again. This time, rather than use its all-encompassing reality alteration—the most lethal effects of which had been sealed by that other irritant—or attempt to use one of its basic matter-destroying beam attacks, it chose to adapt. The corruption wielder possessed plausibility, and he was agile. Even with the explosions, he was somehow capable of defending himself, his Guardian Angel spreading its wings to protect him against the damage while his Equilibrium Mantle prevented him from suffocating in the gas.

But there was no outrunning a gram of antimatter. Not at the rank this man was at.

The angel transmuted a small amount of fluorine in front of the corruption wielder into antimatter. Unlike corruption, which tore away at the fabric of reality itself, antimatter was well within the purview of what an angel could do.

Antimatter and matter held the same relation that corruption and the Beyond did. They simply could not coexist. A single gram was capable of achieving the same devastation as a nuclear weapon.

Impossibly, the corruption wielder reacted. Before the reaction could go very far, he blurred, utilizing his active Time in a Bottle skill. In that same instant, a portal to the Beyond opened, then moved, darkness spilling out of it. That darkness hit the transmuted antimatter, temporarily separating it from the real matter around it, and shoved several cubic meters of matter—and the one gram that the angel had used as its attack—into a dimension it currently could not touch.

“See, the thing is,” Will said, “you can't stick corruption into the Beyond. Conveniently, antimatter isn't corruption.”

The gold-ranker had identified what the angel’s attack was as well as a defense vector in under a second. Somewhere inside the angel’s processes, it considered being impressed before discarding the human emotion as useless.

Will returned an attack, sending waves of gold-rank corruption towards the angel’s armor. The angel didn’t even bother defending against it. It was naturally weak to corruption, which meant that its defenses were almost solely targeted towards protecting it from the element. Gold-rank corruption wouldn’t even come close to putting a scratch in its armor.

It wasn’t the only attack that he brought. Death energy swirled around a halberd that grew larger and larger as the corruption wielder swung it. The angel met the edge of the blade with its fist. Neither broke, and the corruption wielder was forced to withdraw.

This was a losing fight for the human. Even if the angel was limited, its powers were far beyond what a single user could possibly accomplish. It would take several more direct hits from the orbital weapon that had destroyed its outermost layer to kill it. That, however, was not output that the corruption wielder could manage. Not even the entire army in this area attacking together could manage that, and the angel was now aware of the presence of the orbital weapon.

When it fired again, the angel caught the projectile as it entered its radius, transmuting it entirely. Nothing hit its armor but a particularly fast sheet of rain.

“You’ve got a bag of tricks yourself,” the corruption wielder said. “I do have to wonder how many more defenses you have.”

At the edge of the angel’s perception, it detected more projectiles. They did not originate from Will’s position. Allied reinforcements.

It expanded its perception larger for a moment just to confirm. Its control over the battlefield had largely ensured that the monsters it had been feeding with its presence would prevent the rest of the army from assisting its current target, but apparently, a small group had managed to break through its measures. While they were not close enough for the angel to bother immediately killing them, it added their deaths to its list of priorities. For the time being, it directed the monsters close to it to attack.

“You know, I’m still trying to figure out where the Contractor plays into this,” Will said. “But I guess that’s less important. His plan didn’t work. I’m alive. I figure he won’t be important unless I die for good. Speaking of which, you owe loyalty to him, don’t you? I know you’re an intelligent being. Ever thought of doing… I don’t know, literally anything else?”

The angel did not deign to respond. It had been created with one purpose and one purpose only. It could revert to the behavior of a typical angel afterward, but first, this being had to die.

“Yeah, I figured as much. Hey, catch.”

The corruption wielder raised a hand, then dropped it.

A second later, another one of the orbital weapons entered its perception. At roughly the same time, a platinum-ranked card filled with chaos energy entered from another edge, thrown by an elf. An array of skills had been concentrated on its location.

A coordinated attack, but ultimately a fruitless effort. The combined damage from everything might have been able to deal serious damage, but it had one of the greatest defenses throughout the known multiverse.

Unlike most of its techniques, this one was a known quantity. Observed in every angel appearance in recorded histories, every Dread Executor and Sovereign knew of its kind.

Absolute Stilling. A wave of slowing energy emerged from its body, dropping the temperature around it to absolute zero. The fluorine in the air flash-froze, and the magic wasn’t far behind. Atoms stopped moving, and so too did mana. The air would warm again, but the mana would not.

It cleansed the entire area, stilling everything—and yet the corruption wielder was still moving.

Closer analysis revealed that he had stepped into the Beyond, dodging the stilling effect. Upon return, the passive skill Equilibrium Mantle had normalized the conditions around him.

William Li-Brown smirked, halberd exchanged for a blazing red slayer sword.

“Made you look.”

He threw his sword.

Skill activation: Weapons Free.

The sword disappeared before it could reach the angel, replaced with a blinking red orb.

“Figured you had at least one more trick,” Will said. “Can’t do that twice in a row, can you?”

Analysis revealed the composition of the orb. The angel annihilated it, but breaking it only unleashed what was within.

Partial Culmination activation: Pale Fire.

When Will had received the culmination packed into an orb from the Lady of Pale Fire, he had taken a little time to examine how it worked. Unlike the true culmination, which probably would have depopulated the planet, this one was directional. It held significantly less power than the Lady-tier skill that the true Pale Fire had, but that worked perfectly fine for Will.

She had understood the assignment. Now, it was closer to single-target. It was still going to obliterate everything behind the angel as well, but nobody had made it that far except for Will.

White flame consumed everything. It was an eerie reflection of the same divine light that had scoured Will from the earth not minutes ago. This time, however, he knew exactly what it was.

He also knew it probably wasn't going to be enough to slay the angel. That was fine. Will had other plans for that.

The Contractor had deeply fucked up by not killing him when he’d had the chance. The attempt to get at him while he had been away from the planet had given Will an extremely dangerous toy to play with.

He popped the corrupted sigil out from his inventory.

Immediately, the world seemed to warp. Just being in the presence of it required him to spend plausibility to amp his Corruption Resistance. Holding it, he could feel the raw power of the thing trying to obliterate him in an entirely different way from how the angel had. The effect dropped off sharply as it went outwards, but it was still insanely powerful.

You have been afflicted with Lord-tier [Corruption].

[Corruption Resistance] resists [Corruption].

Plausibility spent to resist [Corruption].

[Guardian Angel] spent life force to resist [Corruption].

[Demonic Eye] resists [Corruption].

Levels of [Purified] are being consumed to resist [Corruption].

“Richard,” Will said. “This entire thing is your fault. Mind giving me a hand?”

For the past several months, Will had felt his humanity steadily slipping away thanks to the demon occupying his eye. He'd obtained a number of benefits from that, but Richard's very presence had been more of a curse than a blessing.

A lot of his power was like that.

This was the perfect time for the demon to prove otherwise.

And it obliged.

Demons fed on corruption in the same way that water was wet and humans breathed air. It was a fact of their existence.

Richard was all too happy to send its power forward. Will had sealed the demon within him in a contract. Neither of them could break that, but he could loosen that seal. Plausibility showed him how.

An intense blue light spilled forth from his Demonic Eye, wrapping around the corruption surrounding Will. He could sense the demon feeding, gorging itself on its natural prey.

The angel had stopped moving. It started again, abruptly sending wave upon wave of light at Will, opening itself up to the ongoing inferno that was Pale Fire’s borrowed power.

Will blocked some. He let others hit him.

12 levels of [Blessed] have been consumed to restore your life force.

He hadn't been solely fighting this demon, after all. Elsewhere, hundreds of Sen’s eyes had hunger phantasm spilling out of them, storms crossing the battlefield and corrupting everything they touched. He had used his items, acquired from sponsorships and dungeons, to create mazes with lines of force that let wounded users escape from battle. He'd used spatial grenades, rendering lines of attack unusable.

He'd been saving lives. Envoy of Mercy had been ticking up this entire time, and in an ironic twist of fate, it was Peace’s own sister whose boon was protecting Will from the goddess’ champion.

“This one's going to hurt,” Will said.

He clamped a hand around the sigil, reveling in the pain and the power that surged through him, and he activated Destructive Synthesis.

You have activated [Destructive Synthesis] on [Corrupted Sigil].

WARNING: Skill overloaded. Permanent damage to skill may occur.

Warning overridden.

Mana restored. Your mana has overflowed.

You have been afflicted with 24,871 levels of Lord-rank [Corruption].

In the same breath that Will consumed the item, he triggered Ghostflame.

You have cleansed 24,871 levels of Lord-rank [Corruption].

WARNING: Skill overloaded.

Plausibility spent to negate skill damage.

[Demonic Eye] consumed [???] levels of Lord-rank [Corruption[.

ERROR: [Destructive Synthesis] has not generated a skill.

[Demonic Eye] advanced to emerald!

[Demonic Eye] advanced to diamond!

Achievement earned: A New Kind of Warfare

You have sent a skill past the threshold to send your planet into the next stage of the cycle. If you remain present on your planet for three consecutive standard days, the system will automatically recognize this cycle as one that is ready for the next phase.

Reward: A warning.

[Ghostflame] advanced to platinum!

[Ghostflame] advanced to emerald!

[Corruption Resistance] advanced to emerald!

[Corruption Resistance] advanced to diamond!

Achievement earned: Plausibility Curse II

You were the first of your cycle to expend plausibility, but not the last. You have spent enough to elevate an attack beyond the tier of what this cycle can handle.

Reward: Another warning. You reap what you sow.

Time froze. 

Will had been in time slows before—hell, one of his signature skills did that. This was different. Rather than moving in slow motion, everything was at a complete standstill. The angel had accomplished something like that, but even the angel wasn’t moving now.

In front of him, out here in reality, Peace stepped into view.

It couldn’t be the actual goddess, Will knew—plausibility rules still applied there. This, though, was more of a warning than the system could ever give him.

“You could have died for me,” the goddess said impassively. “Your soul would have been at rest. Your name would have gone down in the annals of history as one of the multiverse’s great heroes. You would have been a contributor to true peace.”

Will couldn't speak. He couldn't move a muscle. Even his aura, which he had started to learn to utilize as a means of communication, was still. The only thing active was his perception. He didn't know if he was the only one who could see Peace right now, but it wasn't like he could look towards other people. His senses were also frozen.

Except for one thing. He would have smiled if he could.

“You understand that there is no stopping a goddess,” Peace said. “Much less one such as myself. You may win a battle. You may win again. In the end, all roads lead to me.”

As if to confirm that this wasn't a hallucination of some kind, system text scrolled across Will’s eyes.

You have been cursed by [Peace].

“Until we meet again, mortal,” Peace said. She looked at him disdainfully. “Your name will not be remembered.”

I think otherwise. Will couldn't speak or give any impressions of his emotions, which might have been better here. Otherwise, he might have revealed his hand.

He knew that this was a projection of Peace, not the real thing. Still, even the Soul Space representations of them had been perfect.

This time, however, he saw a single red line of death intersecting her throat.

With strange aeons, he thought, even death may die.

A Lovecraft quote. What a comforting thought.

Peace vanished, leaving behind nothing but the faintest trace of godly power, and time resumed.

Will had seen one crimson line in the stopped time.

Now that he could see again, the world was painted red.

Pain streaked through his body, his flesh not sufficient to contain the demon within.

[Affinity] has advanced to Platinum 0!

[Resistance] has advanced to Gold 10!

A small amount of it abated, but only a little.

That was fine. Will was no stranger to pain by this point, and he was surrounded by enough ghostflame to annihilate a city.

He advanced.

#

The angel’s armor had cracked. It had been ready to utterly annihilate somebody of this planet's power. It had not been ready for someone to borrow power as great as its own.

It did know that there was a last resort. In the event of a power as great as this, its summoner would provide it further strength.

It turned its eyes towards the man known as the Contractor.

#

Things were not going according to plan.

The Contractor had been ready to step in and utilize the angel's power to usurp the corruption wielder’s newfound strength himself. Now, that was looking impossible.

He did not have the people remaining to strengthen the angel to the point where it could handle a diamond-rank demonic item. Peace had granted him power in the event of something beyond his control, but the amount of plausibility they had leveraged was so great that there was not even a little more the goddess could use now.

It was time for Plan B.

He drew on his link to the angel, a symbiotic relationship where he got power he wouldn’t have had access to while the angel drew on his contracts. It would gain a temporary boost, and hopefully, that would be enough, but the Contractor wasn't going to rely on it.

The power he gained would be enough to get him off this planet and onto the other one. There, he could rebuild.

As he started to fly, hundreds of miles away from the battlefield, a ghostly apparition appeared right beside him.

“Leaving so soon?” asked the echo of Dread Executor Ramiel. “You still have a fight to attend to.”

#

Ghostflame tore through angel armor like a hot knife through butter. The angel was equipped to fight gold-rank ghostflame. It was almost certainly equipped to fight platinum-rank ghostflame. True damage was a weakness for its armor, but its armor was very strong.

It could not defend against ghostflame empowered by an army’s worth of sovereign-tier corruption.

Each hit cracked a layer of its flesh, lightning surging down from the sky to add insult to injury.

It gained power, fueled by the last dregs of Peace’s plausibility and the Contractor’s contracts. It lashed out, trying to do something—anything.

It gathered enough mana to attempt to activate Absolute Stilling one more time.

The corruption wielder struck out, blades and corruption and lightning and shadow striking at seemingly random points, and the stilling died.

“Not so fun to be on the other end, is it?”

#

Ramiel: I found your man.

Will: Perfect. Going to kill him, or…

Ramiel: He’s coming back to you, but he is likely to run. I cannot interfere so directly.

Will: Heard. I’ll worry about that in a bit.

One punch after the other, Will whittled the angel down. As he got through its armor, he started feeling more of its flesh.

He could sense its real body, everything it had hidden behind its protective shell.

And if he could sense it, Richard could affect it.

The demon's upgrade to emerald and then diamond hadn't fully processed yet, but even without the specific skill upgrades, Will was slicing through lines of death like they were nothing, exposing what lay beneath.

The demon leapt forward, manifesting its twisted, fractal-like form out of Will’s eye, and it dug into the angel.

You have afflicted an [Angel] of [Peace] with [Corruption].

A bell tolled, then rang again.

The angel, whose light had burned the sky, could do nothing but scream.

Will’s demon grew hungrier as he attacked, and so too did Will himself. He dug into the angel, hacking and slashing until he dug his way into its body, corrupting it from the inside out.

It gathered its strength, trying to emit a dying scream, and Will let the Hunger’s skills stream forth, consuming the lines of death that marked its voice in a Ravenous Feast.

“Go gently,” he said, “into that good night. Maybe not so good or gentle, in this case.”

Light started to emerge from the angel’s body, replaced quickly with the fuzzy darkness of corruption.

It did not get to have its dying breath.

You have defeated an [Angel] of [Peace].

You have leveled up [???] times.

Processing…

All attributes raised to a minimum of Platinum 0.

All skills raised to a minimum of platinum.

[Affinity] has advanced to Emerald 0!

Hidden requirements completed.

New attribute unlocked: [Special].

All awakening shards, Tablets, and elemental gems in your inventory have been consumed.

New attribute affixed: [Star].

Advancing to platinum rank…

Class evolution available. Normal class evolutions have been forgone.

You may choose to evolve [Reaper] into:

Class: [Dread Executor]

Elements: [Corruption] or [Chaos], any, any.

Mythic.

Requirements: carry a class that can evolve into Dread Executor. Either complete Reaper challenges at every rank from silver to Lord class OR achieve the impossible.

You are the 107th Dread Executor in recorded history. Congratulations.

Universal Ability: [To See Beyond] - Greatly enhances your affinity to the Beyond.

Universal Ability: [Dread Executor] - Your existence cannot and will not be ignored.

Universal Ability: [Hierophant] - You gain limited immunity to the effects of gods.

Skill: One customized skill of your choice for your new [Special] attribute.

“Oh.” Will said.

All the hard work, all the pain, the suffering—it had been meant for this.

“Fuck. Yes.”

#

The Contractor ran.

There was no other word for it.

The moment that Dread Executor fragment had found him, he’d known that the ball was no longer in his court. He could not afford to stay on this planet for a single second longer. With the stolen power from the dying angel, he could leave—but to where? If he left this cycle, he would surely anger Peace, who had seen him fail. He couldn’t afford to go anywhere where he wouldn’t be protected.

That meant he needed power, which meant the other planet. The Unification Front—there was a chance there. With the angel gone, they would recognize William Li-Brown as the existential threat he was and put an end to him. The Contractor could utilize that.

But what then? There was still so much to consider, so many worlds to balance. He had pulled a lot of favors to execute on this, and he had failed. By the time he was out of this cycle, there were going to be a lot of sovereign-tiers who wanted him dead.

As it turned out, he needn’t have worried.

A day into his journey, he was in deep space between the two planets. He could have gone through the superdungeon, but he knew from experience how easily trackable that was. There was no way he was going to exist on the same planet as the corruption wielder when he’d just taken down a fucking angel.

His mana was on low usage. The angel’s power was hiding him from the eyes of the gods themselves.

And yet, somehow, a single iridescent eye passed him by.

You have received a chat request from [William Li-Brown].

You cannot turn down chat requests from a Dread Executor, past or present.

Will: Found you.

#

It had been a frantic day for Will. Cleaning up in the aftermath, figuring out logistics, and—not quite saying goodbye.

He could no longer operate on Earth. The achievement he’d gotten eating that sigil had told him as much. As confident as he was in surviving any onslaught, further explanation from Nynn and Ramiel’s echo had revealed that staying would result in local monster surges changing from metal ranks and the odd platinum to platinums as the lowest with emeralds and even diamond monsters spawning in dungeons and wreaking havoc. Given how they’d just reached a point of equilibrium, he wasn’t going to do that.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t dip in from time to time, which he would. Everyone was making an effort to catch up to him, and he fully intended on stacking the odds in their favor.

For the time being, though, he was in deep space, utilizing his new skill.

Skill: [Dark Angel]

- Spell (special, movement).

- Cost: low mana.

- Cooldown: varies.

Platinum

“Even death may die.” - Dread Executor William Li-Brown, cycle [REMOVED].

Creates temporary wings that can be used to fly, accelerate in deep space, and attack as well as channel skills.

While in this state, the effects of your plausibility are drastically increased. Channeled skills gain efficiency. [Corruption]-aligned skills are more likely to hit. You also temporarily gain a [Demon] affinity.

Custom-designing a skill was incredibly powerful. Though he’d been limited in what he could do, he had also been able to give himself the ability to control Richard.

For the last hour, he’d been chasing a certain individual’s line of death. He was closing in now.

At the end of it all, the Contractor proved himself to just be a man. He wasn’t particularly specialized in fighting, and when he had no army to back him up, he was nothing compared to a platinum-ranker with a diamond-rank demon within him.

The Contractor, constant pain in Will’s side and perhaps the single strongest faction on Earth, summoner of angels, died with a very painful whimper. Will corrupted his magic, then let the vacuum of space take him before corruption could.

The remaining magic—the spoils of the Contractor’s battle—went straight into the slot in his inventory where the corrupted sigil once had been.

You have added [Angel’s Tear] to your inventory.

Unlike the corrupted sigil, it didn’t even have a listed rank. No description, either.

I’ll save that for a rainy day, Will thought.

He had solved a great deal of problems today, but there were still so many left. There were any number of sovereigns who wanted his head. Peace had just cursed him. He needed to fix Cinder Solace’s problem—maybe get her offworld too. The other planet was still colliding with Earth in just over a year.

“One thing at a time,” he told himself. “Ayla first. Then the rest.”

He’d achieved the impossible once, twice, any number of times by now. All he had to do was repeat that again and again and again. Some might have called that a ridiculous task.

To the corruption wielder, it was Tuesday.

“Wait, fuck, that’s wrong,” he muttered, checking his system clock. “It’s Thursday back on Earth.”

Dread Executor William Li-Brown set off towards Ayla Dreamer.

Unbeknownst to him, throughout the multiverse, trillions watched.

END BOOK 4

Author's note: Probably going to take a couple months off after this one. School has kicked me in the ass (I failed a class I need to graduate) and I'm very tired. I hope you enjoyed. Will pause Patreon starting in a few weeks probably. More updates to come.