[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 148: Vs Platinum

“That is just fucking absurd,” Commander Charlie said.

It had been less than two hours since William Li-Brown and his party had entered the Boston Challenge Dungeon. During that time, the viewership for these specific nine people had quadrupled. More than half the city was tuned in just to watch them go, and the chat rooms were lively with speculation, betting, and general chatter about what was going on. Charlie himself had partaken in some, mostly since Regina seemed to have been focused on a conversation with the dark fellow who’d showed up out of nowhere.

Mattias: I’m telling you, that Yui chick is crazy underrated. She walks into a room, looks around for a while, and it just stops working. Like what?

John: If you want to talk underrated, literally nobody’s talking about Wisteria.

Mattias: That’s because she’s doing the same thing but worse.

Charlie: They have similar powersets, but Wisteria is making much better use of items. 

Not all of them were going for record times, either. Charlie had been confused at first, but it had become increasingly clear that a few of Will’s party members were treating this less as a competition and more as training grounds. The aforementioned pair were amongst those. While Yui had attained a record on one room and top five placements in six others, she also seemed to be experimenting more than anything.

So far, the leaders were Will, Caiyeri, and the gold-rank devouring gestalt under the name of Jessie. The corruption wielder had four record times, Caiyeri two, and Jessie three. Expectations had been higher for the otherworlder by the name of Nathan thanks to his high position on the leaderboard, but it had quickly become apparent that he was only extremely effective at great ranges. In the lesser confines of the challenge dungeon, it was taking him longer to clear them out, though he never came close to defeat.

That said, Nathan was still on the eighth room. After an hour or two of clearing the dungeon, during which even the most hardened individuals would have to take breaks, the three furthest ahead were tied—the exact same who held the most speed records.

Caiyeri’s methods were interesting. Charlie suspected she had some kind of chance-related precognition skill given how she always seemed to just barely avoid every attack, somehow in the right place at the right time. Even if it was skill-related, her fighting style was beautiful to watch. Despite being the same rank as Charlie, she moved like she came from an entirely different system of magic. If they had to get into a hand-to-hand fight, he was almost a hundred percent sure he’d lose. It was genuinely inspiring to watch.

Jessie, on the other hand, fought exactly like how he expected a massive eldritch monster the size of a dump truck to fight—with judicious amounts of overwhelming violence. While Caiyeri was clearing rooms with a lethal efficiency, Jessie was obliterating them. Instead of taking the time to try to assess what was necessary to clear a room out, it simply bowled through everything. Bones sprayed out with the absorbed powers of what the reports on this being said were literal thousands of beings who’d been consumed and turned into fuel for the gestalt.

Not that Charlie quite considered it a User like the rest. Though it might have become aligned with humanity—a select few humans, at least—it was transparently clear that the gestalt was a monster. It was a peak gold rank, but the amount of raw power it possessed was higher than many of the platinum ranks in the early parts of the advanced section of this dungeon. He was glad that the corruption wielder had it under control, but that was tempered with the fact that said corruption wielder was basically carrying several living superweapons around with him.

Of course, he himself was one of those very superweapons. William Li-Brown was the furthest ahead in the dungeon by a single room. He’d just finished the fourteenth room—five gold-rank squad bosses and a single clan boss. That had taken about nine minutes, but he’d burned a lot of resources for it. Charlie had watched in quiet awe and terror as the corruption wielder had turned into a living wraith, filling the expansive dungeon room with a shadowy storm where lightning never stopped striking and the sound of bells tolling never ceased. He’d used the same legendary skill combination during the Two Minute War, but now… now it was on a different level entirely.

Charlie dearly hoped they would never have to fight each other.

This next room, though, was the one that would truly test Will. Room 15 was the most frequent run killer. Gold rank solos who were exceptional dungeon runners—like Charlie himself—were often capable of taking down squad and clan bosses on their own. From here on out, though, the challenge started ramping up greatly.

Commander Charlie and tens of thousands around the city leaned in to watch what would happen next.

First platinum room, he thought. What are you going to do?

#

[Power] advanced to Gold 4!

[Speed] advanced to Gold 5!

[Soul] advanced to Gold 5!

[Resistance] advanced to Gold 6!

[Perception] advanced to Gold 3!

Level up!

You have advanced to Gold 2. One attribute point awarded. Lifeforce restored.

That last room had been rough. Will could have been patient and taken more time, but that kind of thinking could be saved for outside the dungeon. His life hadn’t been at risk for most of the last part, anyway. A combination of a number of skills had made it pretty manageable to just brute force his way through.

Now that he was gold rank, his Storm attribute was finally starting to show its true potential. Wind Walker and Thunder Wraith’s Grasp were a deadly combination, especially with the upgrades to Abyssal Tempest.

Skill: [Abyssal Tempest]

- Spell (augmentation, evocation).

- Cost: moderate mana per second.

- Cooldown: 1 minute.

Gold

This is a channeled skill. The cooldown for this skill will begin when you stop using it.

Increases your [Power] attribute sharply. This effect increases the longer you use the skill, which also increases the mana cost. This effect is also dramatically increased when attacking an enemy that has been afflicted with [Charged].

[Abyssal Fury] (bronze) - While this skill is being channeled, you gain a resistance to elemental damage. You also deal increased damage to enemies afflicted with [Charged], even if you are using another skill.

[Thundershock] (silver) - When you hit a target that is afflicted with [Charged], lightning strikes that target and deals damage in a small radius. This bolt spreads to any nearby enemy that is also afflicted with [Charged]. Any enemy caught in the radius of each attack is inflicted with a stacking level of [Charged].

[Unending Storm] (gold) - When you hit a target while this skill is active, you afflict them with an additional level of [Charged].

Will had been tempted to use One Foot in the Grave to render himself immune to the crisscrossing weave of unblockable, invisible force that the statue-like bossess in the previous room had constructed, but he had decided against burning a twenty-four hour cooldown so early. Instead, he’d avoided them with judicious uses of Wraith Cloak, creating darkness for himself so he could phase through thin attacks.

He was quickly reaching a part of the dungeon where corruption alone wasn’t going to take enemies down before they could get him—their defenses had been layered, and corrupting one layer had just led to them shedding it once it ate through it all.

That was where a skill he hadn’t used in a while had come in.

Skill: [Ghostflame]

- Spell (enchantment).

- Cost: extreme mana.

- Cooldown: none.

Gold.

Draws from your blood, afflictions, and lifeforce alongside your mana. Cleanses all afflictions from you and all creatures living or dead in a 10 foot radius. Wreathe your fists in ghostflame. Inflict true damage upon any enemies you strike.

[Phantom Pyre] - Increases the base damage of this skill for every affliction cleansed.

[To Strike the Soul] (silver) - The damage inflicted by this skill ignores barriers of silver-rank or lower. Damage cannot be lessened or negated by skills of the rank of this skill or below.

[Blazing Specter] (gold) - You can spend lifeforce to infuse your aura with the ghostflame, allowing you to shape your attack with more precision as well as augment it with any applicable aura powers.

That had been what had rendered the fight to be closer than it should have. Will didn’t have any spare levels of his boons lying around, which meant that the lifeforce cost hadn’t immediately been refunded. It had been devastatingly effective, igniting the corruption-imbued storm with silver flame that annihilated all that it touched, but it hadn’t come without cost.

Ayla: Using a trump card this early is supremely stupid.

Will: I got bored. Besides, I got a reset. Even if I lose more lifeforce, I can get myself restored. There’s always people to save.

Ayla: Not while you’re in here there aren’t. You better hope nobody ambushes you when you step out.

Will: I could take most of the world like this. I have a few cards up my sleeve that don’t work against monsters but do on humans.

Ayla: Pride before the fall.

Will: If you say so. The loot was worth it, I’d say.

Said loot was currently attached to his slayer sword. He would’ve put it on Eclipse, but that sword didn’t seem to accept augmentations in any form.

Item: [Gem of the Forbidden Vault]

Epic, gold (augmentation)

A critical component of any respectable metal-ranker’s security system. You can attach this to any weapon that accepts augmentations. 

Grants [Force Weave] at gold rank to any item this is attached to on a 1-minute cooldown.

[Force Weave] - Project an invisible line of force up to 100 feet long. This line lasts for 1 hour, until dispelled, or until there are more than ten lines active at the same time.

Though Will wasn’t a hundred percent sure how he wanted to use this, but it had been devastatingly effective against him. It was fantastic in small spaces, and he was already envisioning creating a cloud of darkness and making a Resident Evil-style laser grid death trap but invisible.

He could theorycraft later, though. Will had some more fighting to do for the time being.

Now entering Room [15]. Room selected: [Darktide Temple].

[Darktide Temple] has been cleared [19] times out of [1,842] attempts. The current fastest clear time is [1 hour, 17 minutes, 48.283 seconds] by [Regina].

The median clear time is [3 hours, 25 minutes, 29.388 seconds].

Will raised his eyebrows at that as he continued through the passage between rooms. The other rooms so far had gradually been increasing in median clear time, but even the fourteenth room had averaged somewhere around twenty minutes. Three hours was a sharp jump up from anything else—and the number of clears was also drastically lower. Few people had made it this far.

Will: Anything I should know about this next room?

Ayla: You should try to level up again before you die. This room’s platinum, and it’s not a great fit for you.

Will: Oh, hell yeah. I’ve been waiting to fight an actual platinum-ranker for ages.

Ayla: If nothing else, it’ll be good practice, I suppose.

The next room came into focus, assembling itself in the space around Will as he entered. Lines of death crisscrossed the area as a run-down temple that reminded him of the places where he’d first gotten his sigils—the broken temple of the Hunger and the ancient, abandoned temple that had held water prayers within.

It was larger than any room in either of those had been, though, pillars rising to provide cover in the football field-sized expanse, and the single monster that resided in the center of the area seemed to reflect that.

Reward for clearing room 15: 10 platinum credits. Challenge Ore x1.

Clear condition: Survive for [3 hours] and make it to the gate OR ignite all [12] Darktide Torches OR kill the [Darktide Guardian].

Clearing with a time faster than the median also grants your choice of a basic platinum-rank item. Clearing with a time faster than the current fastest clear time grants a platinum-rank treasure.

“Oh, fuck off,” Will said, looking up to see a monster that easily dwarfed even Jessie. “Why is it always spiders?”

#

“The corruption wielder is fighting one of the big bosses,” Regina muttered.

Charlie started. Despite his senses, he had never been able to tell when she was coming closer. That probably had something to do with the fact that not a single one of her subordinates, direct or otherwise, knew her skills or even her class—but he trusted her anyway, and she was grateful for that.

“Darktide Guardian,” Charlie agreed. From the fervent murmurs sweeping the observation room, a chunk of the people watching had noticed, too. “This one’s… Tennessee?”

“Yes,” Regina said. “I do hope for his success.”

Since this was a gold-rank challenge dungeon, there were alternate progression conditions aside from simply killing a boss starting from room 15. While the previous rooms had set numbers—Antigrav would always be a room 1, On Bloody Tides was always room 12, and so forth—any of the major boss rooms after room 15 seemed to be interchangeable.

Some of the variations of post-room 15 instances were easier than others, and both Regina and Charlie had multiple platinum-rank boss kills to their name.

The Darktide Guardian was not one of them. There were nineteen clears of this room, and every last one of them had been through one of the alternate conditions. If this had just been some dungeon, that wouldn’t have been a terrible concern, but Regina had realized some time ago that these special instance dungeons were nothing near normal.

While most dungeons formed naturally and held monsters that had been generated or placed into the dungeon, the “big boss” rooms that were only composed of a single monster in the challenge dungeons teleported in real beings from other parts of the world—or, potentially, other worlds entirely.

Regina knew this because some of those bosses existed on her territory. The Darktide Guardian, for instance, had first showed up about half a month before the first time it had been sighted in the challenge dungeon. It wasn’t aggressive to anyone that wasn’t on its territory, but it had taken a major city in Tennessee for its own, killing thousands and displacing tens of thousands.

Even she wasn’t sure of the implications of a dungeon like this, having not encountered them on the other world, but she always hoped for dungeon runners to kill these bosses. They seemed to generate spontaneously in the outside world, and though none of them had been actively aggressive yet, they were chewing away at the territory she’d spent so much time building.

The ESNA at large, of course, did not know this. Her information control was good enough to do that.

If all went well, her people would never need to know.

There’s more riding on you than you think, corruption wielder.

She wondered idly how he felt. The Darktide Guardian’s temple had a number of unique properties that made the fight even harder than it would have been already, some of which were direct counters to pretty much any heavy magic-focused User—such as, for instance, William Li-Brown.

Regina watched her screen closely, searching for an insight into the most dangerous man alive.

#

“You didn’t tell me it was going to be a goddamn spider!” Will complained, hurtling himself aside as a laser scythed through the ancient tile he’d just been standing on.

In the corner of his vision, the boss’ description was still scrolling.

Darktide Guardian. Level: Platinum 4.

This is a battalion boss.

The Darktide is a now-extinct race who once populated a small solar system cluster. Though now eliminated by the confluence of many gods taking advantage of a plausibility storm, the remnants of their civilization remain strewn across the stars.

This guardian is one of those remnants. Formerly the hallowed guardians of diamond-rank treasures, they have been reduced to a shadow of what they once were. Spider-shaped and building-sized, don’t let their cute exterior fool you. These beings are not spiders.

Stop thinking that they’re spiders.

One additional notable fact about the Darktide: they hated magic. Like, despised it. Even their artifacts were mostly just mechanical augmentations. 94.58% of their magic was designed explicitly to counter other magic.

If you have a primarily martial class, congratulations. You are more suited towards surviving the Darktide Guardian. You might even have a shot at killing it.

Oh. You don’t. Try not to breathe in the fog.

The “fog,” as the system described it, was an all-permeating red mist that suffused the entire room. Will had sensed it spread. Equilibrium Mantle did some work in preventing it from enveloping him entirely, but the effects were still pretty clear.

Will’s aura senses—not Sen, who was inactive at the moment—alerted him to the spider boss’ hostile intent, and he leapt again, rolling as he hit the ground and hitting it at a dead sprint as another laser carved through half the room at head height, somehow not damaging the pillars.

The mist thickened again.

Just in case anything had changed, Will tried calling Sen’s eyes back up to give him a better idea of what he was up against.

[Thousand Eyes] is restricted by the effect of a platinum-rank [Antimagic Fog].

Shit. Still no change.

As far as Will could tell, his passive skills were totally fine, but a good deal of his other skills just stopped working once they got more than a few feet out from his body.

This was untenable. Though the guardian’s movements were somewhat predictable, it was getting faster. The fog seemed to charge it up more, and if it wasn’t just his imagination, the attacks were getting stronger too.

Will was used to being on the back foot, but he hated having to only defend.

Well, if I die, I get out in one piece. Then again, he didn’t know how it interacted with Eternal Throne. It would suck to burn his one acquired resurrection here.

Whatever. Will wasn’t going to let this thing keep toying around with him, nor was he going to bother with the puzzle this room wanted him to do.

Lines of death became crystal clear to him as he focused on the eye born from a demon.

His aura pulsed, a wave of killing intent shaped by angry gods, and for just a moment, the massive technically-not-a-spider hesitated.

Will’s eye flashed bright blue.

“I don’t need magic to kill you,” he snarled, manifesting a sword in one hand and a grenade in the other. “Let’s dance.”