[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 67: What Lies Beyond

Spatial magic was quickly growing to become a friend of Will’s. He’d been teleported so many times, his Space attribute allowing him to adapt to the rigors of teleportation with even more ease.

That familiarity was exactly what told him that whatever this transportation was, it had nothing to do with the spatial mana Will knew. As far as every sense in his body told him, the ritual wasn’t even moving him, and yet the world faded out nonetheless, first shifting to the colorless sight he saw during the height of his Ghostflame before reality disappeared altogether.

The human body possessed more than just the five senses, which was crucial now because every single one of his normal senses registered nothing. No sight, no sound, no scent, no tastes, no  material to touch. All Will could rely on was his proprioception and his aura sense.

All around him, there was darkness. Will tried to say something pithy, but there was no air to transmit the sound of his words.

It reminded him eerily of what had happened when the system had arrived. He’d been thrown up into lower Earth orbit, watching as the meteorite that he now knew to be the planet of Arcadia slammed into his own. Then, though, he’d had the sight of planetary destruction to watch.

Now, there were not even stars.

Isn’t the Beyond supposed to be the opposite of entropy? Will wondered. Was the vision wrong? Did I misinterpret it?

His aura sense pinged upon a terribly small disc of silver-rank magic, teetering dangerously on the verge of dissolving into nothingness. Will recognized it as his own.

A thousand silver credits and all of his prodigious mana reserves had gone into this ritual, and yet all it had managed to produce was a disc no larger than the Frisbee he had kept in his desk drawers. Given a little more time, there wouldn’t have been anything at all.

There was no pull of gravity on his body, which made it a little odd whne he found that he could alight upon the disc with just his will, orienting himself so he was standing up relative to it.

As he touched his Sanctuary, his mind lit up. Though his eyes saw nothing, another layer of senses transmitted information to his brain, overlaying impossible colors in mind-breaking patterns all around him.

Looks like I have the right place, he thought. Will felt a sense of familiarity despite having never been here before. The vision he’d seen had instilled it within him.

That familiarity was quickly overwhelmed by sheer awe as his mortal mind tried to process the the raw power that thrummed through the Beyond like it was a living being.

Compared to the cosmic strength of even the least significant iridescent branch of unknowable magic coursing through the veins of this void, his silver-rank skill might as well have been wet tissue paper. It shook in the face of the impossible amount of energy stored in the nothingness, and Will knew with only a moment’s notice that his Sanctuary would fall apart soon.

Your [Sanctuary] is failing. You will be returned to baseline reality upon skill failure.

There was so much here, and yet Will understood so little. Ayla had told him to find the shards of the Beyond, and he finally had only to find out that he still had so much to grow in the grand scheme of things.

Then, just as the magic began its final descent into failure, one of the phantom threads that made up the weave of the Beyond connected to his disc, stabilizing it. The aura was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. A second one followed soon after, and that one came with an aura that had the same characteristic—like it was at the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn’t quite tell whose it was.

Both threads paused, warring magic pulsing through the silver-rank Sanctuary. Will couldn’t tell what rank the other magic was—hell, the only reason he could even identify it as magic and not sheer willpower was his refined aura senses and his experience sensing the unorthodox magic of the gods.

A brief communication occurred between the two magics. With a start, Will realized that he couldn’t understand what they were saying. Rather than words, it was intent that passed between them. Both of them sought to dominate, and they were at an impasse to do so without breaking his skill entirely.

Eventually, they decided on a compromise, the details of which Will’s perception was not yet advanced enough to understand. Whatever it was, though, it expanded his Sanctuary out from a disk barely large enough to stand on into a platform, followed by a dome of pure mana, iridescent magic rising to form walls.

Two humanoid forms appeared within the space, which was barely wide enough to accomodate both of them. Will couldn’t see them with his eyes, and they were mostly immaterial when he tried to touch them, but his second sight revealed their presence to him. 

One of them was an ever-changing, smoky figure whose faintly feminine form was reminiscent of one of his corrupted items in the way it kept shifting. The other’s magical representation was a pure, obsidian black. Will’s eyes didn’t see anything different, but in his aura sight, the second individual cast a striking figure against the brightness of the magic.

I know you, he thought. Will wanted to speak it, but there was still no air to translate his words.

A wave of assent passed between the two beings, and slowly, Will’s regular human senses started to get some stimulus as well. A spartan, featureless white appeared, and the aura representations of the two with him slowly appeared in reality. They grew no more like real humans, though.

Air returned to Will’s lungs. To his surprise, it didn’t really change much about how he felt. Did he not need air here?

“To be honest,” the dark man said in Nynn’s voice, “I’m surprised you didn’t suffocate.”

Guess I still need air.

One of Will’s passive skills had triggered.

Skill: [Equilibrium Mantle]

- Passive (body).

- Cost: very low mana over time.

- Cooldown: none.

Silver.

Nullifies extreme environmental conditions in a small radius around the user’s body. Drastically reduces the effect of adverse conditions.

[Harmony of Self] (silver) - Your mantle affects your internal world as much as it does the environment outside. Your body will remain in balance at all times, preventing you from suffering from illness and removing the need to breathe. This skill does not protect against external attacks.

That explained some things. It also meant that magic still worked in the Beyond, which Will should have figured out from being able to detect the others with his aura senses.

“You wield corruption,” Nynn said. “Do not use it here, no matter the cost.”

“Yeah, I gathered.” Will turned to the other figure, who was still shifting and indistinct. “Are you who I think you are?”

“I see two rank-ups weren’t enough to raise your intelligence, biped.”

It had been less than a month or so since the tutorial, yet it felt like a lifetime had passed since he’d last heard this voice. She had been different, then, obscured by the system, but the person behind it was unmistakably the same.

“H—Ayla,” Will said, still not believing it even though the proof was laid out before him.

“This isn’t actually me,” she said. “Neither are you actually you, right now.”

“That is untrue,” Nynn fired back. “The scholars who interpret the soul as the self would claim—“

“All that is a load of shit. The self is everything combined. An unbound soul dissipates. A soulless body crumples. Neither can survive without the other.”

“Yet a soul can leave its vessel and join another. It can shed the skin. That makes it clear—“

“It doesn’t matter. My time here is exceptionally limited, and I’m sure yours isn’t much better. All the way from King down to gold, hmm? That’s got to hurt.”

“You would know, Dreamer.”

Will could tell that there was a lot of unaired history between the two of them given the easy vitriol, although he couldn’t tell if it was the kind of friendly ribbing that he and Caiyeri had or genuine distaste. He guessed the latter.

“Look,” he said, interrupting their feud. “You’re going to have to skip the whole giving each other shit thing. I’d love to hear all the hot intergalactic gossip, but I’d rather hear an explanation about whatever the fuck this place is first.”

“That’s…” Nynn trailed off.

“Complicated,” Ayla finished. “You’re in the Beyond, though I’d hope you at least have the facilities to understand that.”

“I’m still alive,” Will said. “If you met half the people I did, I think you’d be slower to call me a moron.”

“No I wouldn’t. Do you want to hold yourself to the bar of drooling idiots who die before they even make it to bronze?”

Will thought of Dylan and the Iron Boys, who had proved too arrogant for their own good. “Yeah, fair point.”

“Time is not moving on the outside,” Nynn said. “Your soul has temporarily separated from your physical body and has entered the Beyond.”

“Great, it’s astral projection,” Will said. He frowned. “Wait. Why am I breathing, then?”

“Your spiritual control is garbage,” Ayla said. “Your aura’s gotten decent—congratulations on that, by the way—but you can’t separate your soul from your flesh. Since your soul still believes it’s part and parcel of your body, you have the same needs that your body would.”

“Oh, awful. This isn’t going to be something I can learn in a few days, is it?”

“It took me twenty years, and I was a prodigy.”

“A century, for me,” Nynn said.

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Will said. “Ayla, you’re a minimum-wage worker handling tutorials, and Nynn, you’re a retired Dread Executor?”

“Nynn is a sellout,” Ayla spat. “Goddess-following idiot.”

“Peace sends a hello, by the way,” Nynn said neutrally. “Your friend Dreamer here is also not currently handling tutorials. If I had to guess, she’s in a dead zone somewhere in deep space, where nothing can reach her but the Beyond.”

“You keep calling her that,” Will said. “Dreamer. The hell does that mean?”

“It’s not important to you now,” Ayla replied. “Will. A third planet is going to collide into the Arcadia-Earth combination far sooner than planned. You have a year, optimistically. Months, maybe.”

“The organization will arrive with it,” Nynn said. “This universe has been at its limits for many cycles, and this one may prove to be the breaking point.”

“You keep on throwing around all these terms. Dreamer. Organization. I don’t even know what a Dread Executor is supposed to be. Why don’t you start by explaining instead of trying to confuse me further?”

“Dread Executors are extremely powerful murderhobos that claim to have a cause,” Ayla said, annoyed.

“That’s not what you told me last time.”

“The organization isn’t up my ass and monitoring literally every word I have to say this time.”

“The symptoms of sickness are not a cause of the virus itself,” Nynn said, unperturbed by Ayla’s accusation. “They are a result of the body’s response. That Dreamer sees the symptoms and calls us the virus is an understandable response, but not an accurate one.”

The woman Will had formerly known as Helper didn’t have eyes in this aura form, but she did her best to give the impression that she was rolling them. “What he’s not telling you is that they’re also the largest group to have access to the Beyond.”

“Not the gods?” Will asked. “A place like this feels like it should be full of those shits.”

“Again, it’s complicated.”

“I suspect I’m going to hear that a lot.”

“Your suspicions are accurate.” Ayla sighed. “My connection is growing weaker. Turns out that when you get imprisoned for several decades, your powers aren’t what they used to be.”

“As much as I hate to admit it, mine are severely restricted as well,” Nynn said. “This will not hold forever. Candidate, you should continue building your connection to the Beyond. It will serve you well should you choose to walk our path.”

“And whatever you do, don’t bring anyone with a sigil in here,” Ayla added. “A base in the Beyond is great, but there are a lot of gods that won’t appreciate someone with a link to this plane.”

“I have a sigil,” Will said. “Two, actually.”

“They can’t see you in here. Your own skills lock them out of it. Other people that you bring in here, though… trust me. It doesn’t end well.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Will asked.

“It’s—“

“Complicated, I know,” Will completed, huffing out a sigh. “How do I grow this?”

“Soul control and increased power,” Ayla said. “Your soul is more primed than most to receive instruction. I’m rather curious as to what happened, openly speaking. It looks like a god tried to crush you like a bug.”

“A god tried to crush me like a bug,” Will explained. “I got better.”

“Candidate, my strength runs low,” Nynn said abruptly. “Allow me to say what I must. Cultists and otherworlders have invaded the trial and the planet alike. It is your decision as to what you will choose to do, but if you plan on seeking the path of truth, I will be hunting down those who seek to break the world further.”

“You keep calling me that,” Will said. “Candidate. I assume that means a candidate for Dread Executor, but how? I’m in an entirely separate trial. I haven’t even gotten one test.”

“You are always being tested, William Li-Brown. We are always watching.”

On that ominous note, former (and possibly present) Dread Executor Nynn’s connection dimmed, then vanished, pieces of the makeshift room disappearing with it.

“Will.”

“Ayla.”

A moment passed in which they didn’t say anything, their auras doing all the talking. Their relationship was a complicated one. Ayla had been in the puppeteer’s chair when it came Will’s fate, but she was ultimately a pawn in someone else’s game too. He had hoped to find answers when he had opened up a connection to the Beyond, but all he had received were more questions.

“I owe you an explanation or five,” she said. “I wish I could give you more, but the most important ones, you can only truly learn by doing.”

“That’s fucking great,” Will said. “Is there anything you can tell me?”

“Yes. For one, I’m sure you’ve been wondering what use the Beyond has.”

“Yeah, absolutely. So far, all it’s done is be a very expensive group chat.”

“There are a number of applications in combat, though most of them are invalidated thanks to your Corruption affinity. The utility implications are large, of course. With sufficient resources, you can bring your soul into the Beyond and move it elsewhere on your planet, forcing your physical vessel to rematerialize as well.”

“Long-distance teleportation would be a total game-changer,” Will acknowledged. “That can’t be all, though.”

“Of course not. Growing access to the Beyond will make interactions with dimensional magic feasible, and you’ll find that barriers that constrain others mean nothing to you. In a very literal sense, the Beyond connects more than one universe.”

“Pretty awesome, I’ll admit, but not immediately relevant to me.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. There are a number of elements that I do believe are genuinely irrelevant to you at this current time, and besides you can’t unlock them while you’re only at silver. The truly important aspect is that you can create an unassailable fortress here. Do you know the one place in your universe that no god can casually reach?”

“Come to think of it, the gods in my head have been awfully quiet.”

“There is nothing except the system and those who have cultivated a link to the Beyond here,” Ayla said. “Do not underestimate the value of that. Rules on the outside are little more than suggestions here. We are our souls made manifest while here, and we can change ourselves.”

“Wait,” Will said. “Are you saying that not only could I make a fortress sailing through a magical space void, but I can use it to teleport throughout the universe and give a middle finger to the gods?”

“I would have thought that you would have focused on the progression aspect more,” Ayla said, nonplussed. “You can create your own custom training in here, you know.”

“It’s been a long few weeks. I’m not exactly the biggest fan of the gods right now.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Ayla said.

“Okay, so the long and short of it is that this place is fucking awesome,” Will concluded. “When can we start?”

“I don’t have much time left,” Ayla said. “You’ll begin to feel it more too as you start spending more of your own effort to sustain your sanctuary within the Beyond. It takes a lot of effort to remain here.”

“Not much time left isn’t the same as no time at all.”

“Correct. Why don’t you show me what you’ve learned? I’d like to know how much I need to steel myself for disappointment.”

“Wow. No faith at all, huh?”

“Faith is for gods, and the gods are bastards.”

“I’ll drink to that.”