[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 66: Not Quite Human

“Wow,” Will said. “Y’know, the Hunger was a lot more intimidating than you, and that guy was kind of a soulless, petty piece of shit.”

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the Crown’s space now, but this god wasn’t even using the almighty soul-crushing power that the Hunger had.

“Besides,” Will continued, “You know that you didn’t have to accept me, right? I’m sure there are options other than yes that you can put on the system. You and the Lady of the Lake both. It’s honestly just kind of lazy, isn’t it?”

“INSOLENCE.”

“Yeah, I got that the first fifty times you said that. Seriously, you gods are pieces of work. It’s always ‘insolent mortal’ this, ‘know your place’ that. Have you ever considered that maybe you need to work on yourself? After all, you’re the one who chose me.”

Will wasn’t sure if the gods actually had any choice in who they picked, but he assumed they did. The Hunger hadn’t accepted Will as his champion immediately and had tried to squeeze a metric shitload of concessions from him, which implied that taking the sigil wasn’t enough to force the selection.

“YOU WIELD CORRUPTION.”

Will winced. “Jesus, man, do you have an indoors voice? This isn’t even a fully real space, as far as I can tell. Modulate your volume, please. Did your mom never teach you manners?”

“I WOULD ADVISE TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY, MORTAL.”

The Crown itself was an indistinct figure hidden behind layers upon layers of royal robes. Will couldn’t tell if there was even a being underneath all the clothing or if it was merely an ideological representation of the god like the Hunger’s disembodied voice had been.

He pondered for a moment on how to reply to the god. It had been a bit now, and the pressure that the god was exerting on him had been steadily ramping up, but it was nothing unmanageable.

Will decided to take the mature route. It was about time he started treating this conversation with the respect it deserved.

“Your mom took me pretty seriously last night,” he said, schooling his aura.

The wave of sheer power that exploded from the god’s body then was on the layer of the Hunger’s torture, blasting Will’s soul back, but it was only for a moment.

“Six out of ten response.” Will gathered himself back together, thankful for the long lessons the Hunger had inadverdently given him. “Look, Crown—or Vyx. What do you prefer?”

“YOU LACK RESPECT. A GOD’S TITLE IS ITS NAME.”

“Vyx it is then. So, Vyx, what have you got for me? I know this whole song and dance already. You can only cause me pain in here. Nothing you do will last, and you’ve already accepted me as one of your champions, so you’re going to have to give me a power, even if it’s shit.”

“AH, TO BE AN ARROGANT MORTAL. YOU LACK MORE THAN RESPECT, CORRUPTION WIELDER.”

The magic suffusing the entire dream-space changed. The air itself seemed to grow malice as the god’s being grew larger and more imposing. Its arrogance grew alongside it, bearing down on Will’s soul.

Having grown used to this sensation, Will let himself bend in the face of the pressure. Losing his sense of self for a bit was a fine trade-off.

He had the inkling that something was wrong, though. The god was entirely too confident in a way that didn’t just have the trademark arrogance of divinity looking down several tiers at a mere metal-tier mortal.

“YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW MUCH YOU HAVE YET TO LEARN, MORTAL. YOU ARE ONLY HUMAN.”

Power coalesced in the throne, the Crown’s godly ascendant-rank magic pooling in the dream-space.

Will’s entire soul shook with the force of it, and he was suddenly stricken with the realization that the Hunger had simply not known the limits of what he could do.

The true eye of a god began to open, bringing with in unspeakable radiance—and then, suddenly, the shaking of his soul stilled, the magic dispersing.

A new, familiar presence appeared within the space, radiating an impossible power of its own.

“First of all,” said the oily, divine voice of the Hunger, “You should be able to tell by now that this man is not quite human. Second: what exactly are you trying to do to my champion?”

“I have never been so glad to see that hates me so much,” Will said. “How’s it going? Also, not human? What?”

“Do not even get me started,” the Hunger said, sounding surprisingly human. “Mortal, you have my respect for what you are willing to do and say at your pitiful rank, but if you mouth off to me one more time, I will not stop my… colleague.”

Will noted that the god completely ignored the second question.

“COLLEAGUE? KADAEL, YOU ARE TEN THOUSAND YEARS YOUNGER THAN ME. YOU, TOO, ARE NO MORE THAN AN UPSTART.”

“Still the same tier of god as you, old friend,” the Hunger replied, the bitterness in his voice belying the words. “Ten thousand years, and still you remain stuck in your old ways.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this guy’s kinda got a point,” Will said. “Look, I’m kind of in the middle of a trial? And it looks like a whole lot of things are going wrong. Things I’m uniquely suited to deal with. Are gods supposed to interfere with this?”

“No,” the Hunger said. “Yet some have. That much is clear. Vyx, you know as well as I do that the time when we summarily executed every corruption wielder has long since passed. These are troubling times, and they call for troubling compromises.”

“Troubling compromises? That’s me, right?”

“Stay out of this, mortal.”

“VERY WELL,” Vyx said, clearly no less angry than before. “KADAEL. YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS.”

“Take that up with Peace,” the Hunger said. “Give my—our—champion his gift, and leave. You have others to attend to.”

#

Will found himself in a new waiting room, this one a grand temple center with marble pillars and towering statues of beings that he assumed were gods. He didn’t bother looking any closer.

“You know, if the tournament is really having problems, you could totally try using less space,” he suggested. “Like, look at all this. We could’ve just used the hotel from the first round—zeroth round, I guess—or the library from the second one. Where are you even pulling all the resources to do this from?”

There was no answer, of course, so Will instead surveyed the area around him. Unlike the first safe zone, there was no shop here. There were also no people here. Had he been the first one to arrive? Was there a separate temple for every competitor who’d made it out of the second challenge?

Doing some basic math, Will guessed that if everyone had been in battle royales similar to his, there would be sixty-four remaining competitors given the numbers he’d gotten earlier. 

Except that number was not accurate, since people could fail out once before they were out of the tournament altogether.

“I wonder how many people are going to end up in whatever’s next,” he wondered aloud. “At least half those people I just saw are still in the game.”

Fewer than 50% of the Users remain in the trial. You are no longer at risk of losing your sigil(s).

“Huh. That’s one question answered.”

Will waited a while longer, but nobody else came. He checked his chat. Most of the people he’d met were out of range—and oops, there came the first.

Will: Congratulations on finishing, Blurr.

Natalie: Don’t you fucking dare congratulate me. I had to kill three people we could have used. Do you know what’s happening down there?

Will: No. I haven’t been able to contact anybody back on Earth.

Natalie: Whatever spatial protections this place is using, they’re not perfect. There was a blip earlier. Not sure if you felt it. A few messages made it through during that gap in the protection.

Will: I didn’t get anything. I thought we were out of range.

Natalie: Cut the shit. You know the system isn’t telling us everything. We’re not just out of range—how can they send us this far with teleportation but not ferry a message? They’re just not letting anything in.

Will: Yeah, you’re probably right. I didn’t think about that.

Natalie: I’ve only gotten a few messages, but they all say the same thing: the world is ending.

Will: Blurr, it already did.

Natalie: Your world did, maybe. We kept it together, for some semblance of together. Something big landed in France. We don’t know what it is, but casualties are already in the hundreds of thousands. We saw similar impacts in Beijing, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney… there’s a lot.

Will: Nothing we can do about it right now. Except leave, I suppose. Are you planning on doing so?

Natalie: No. I’ve come too far to turn back now. The prizes for placing high are aces. If I can come back down with a gold or a platinum rank item, that could change a lot.

Will: Makes sense.

Natalie: You seem surprisingly sane, Will. If we’re both alive after all this is said and done, I’d like you on my side.

Will: I’ll see what I can manage.

“A blip, huh?” Will mused. “That must have been the corruption.”

Speaking of which… carefully, he took the awakening shards he’d earned from his inventory. After the execution he’d performed with Nynn’s help, he had seven awakening shards of the Beyond and six unaligned awakening shards.

Another chat request took his attention before he fused the shards together, then another. Will spent some time looking through them, catching up with the status of everyone he’d met. 

Haoyu, Hua, and Liam all taking losses was rough. The presence of a gold-rank User was strange, since the leaderboard didn’t show anyone at gold rank.

Will: You’re sure he wasn’t a corruption cultist?

Liam: Absolutely not, mate. I’m pretty sure he was looking for you.

That didn’t make matters any better. The only gold-ranks Will knew of were the corruption cultists and Nynn, and their description of the other man was nothing like the former Dread Executor he’d met.

That was a concern for later, though. For now, it was just good to hear that everyone was safe.

Caiyeri’s response made him laugh.

Caiyeri: Won my challenge. Sigil didn’t do shit. If you lost yours, I am officially killing you and stealing your god.

Will: Nah, I won. I’m sure they’d prefer having you.

Caiyeri: Of course they would.

Caiyeri: There is a small issue. The templates are still in the trials—a couple of them, at least. They messaged me.

Will: That sounds like it’d be a pleasant interaction.

Caiyeri: The original Caiyeri is still in the trial. She wants me dead.

Will: Oh.

Caiyeri: Don’t worry about it. Just letting you know the cards on the table. Deal with your own battles first. If you lose, I’m never forgiving you.

Will: I think I’ve got my shit handled.

Caiyeri: That is exactly what someone who was about to eat shit and lose would say.

Will: Nah, I’d win.

He laughed at his own joke.

Caiyeri: Do I need to remind you how that one ended up?

Will: There is no fucking way you know this one.

Caiyeri: Lev caught me up. Now go. I have better things to do, and I’m sure you do too.

Nodding despite the fact that there was no possible way she could see him, Will closed the chat and returned to the awakening shards.

You have sufficient materials to craft a [Tablet of the Beyond]. Materials to be consumed: Awakening Shard of the Beyond [x7], Awakening Shard [x6]. Would you like to craft [Tablet of the Beyond]? [YES / NO].

This was it. Everything he’d done after the tutorial had been building up to this.

Will selected yes, snatching the resultant tablet out of the air the moment it formed.

Item: [Tablet of the Beyond]

Mythic.

Despite its rarity, any User can gain access to the Beyond. Whether they are prepared to face the consequences, however, is another story.

The Beyond is [REMOVED] [REMOVED] [REMOVED]. Corruption and the Beyond go hand in hand, yet they are anathema to each other.

This tablet grants the ability to interface with the Beyond. Unlike the supermajority of skill tablets, all Tablets of the Beyond will vary on an individual basis based on the User and the cycle.

User: [William Li-Brown]. Class: [Reaper]. Executor status: [Candidate]. Affinities: [Corruption] (primary), [Death] (secondary), [Space] (secondary).

This tablet cannot be affixed to [Corruption]. [Space] is the User’s affinity with the highest aptitude for the Beyond.

Affixes an at-tier [Space] skill. Your [Space] attribute is: [Speed].

The only other mythic item Will had ever seen had been Nynn’s scythe, which had been a Prince-rank item.

This tablet was a pure black, so dark that it looked like someone had taken an eraser to the chunk of reality it occupied.

With shaking hands, Will affixed the skill.

#

Corruption. In some ways, it was the purest form of magic. It sought the same end state that all matter did: a return to chaos. Entropy.

The Administrator had taken on far too much of that power to turn back now, but it saw a path to protect the universe.

No, it thought. Not just this universe. All of them. A branching multiverse of possibilities, all hurtling towards the end—it could still them.

It was a costly path. One that had every chance to accelerate the doomed timeline, send the multiverse to an untimely death long ahead of its trillion-year lifespan.

Yet it was a hope.

The inverse of entropy.

A path Beyond.

#

Will returned to reality with a start, breathing heavily.

Visions had accompanied the first few skills he’d obtained, but they’d been replaced by frequent trips to the Hunger’s dream-space instead.

This, apparently, the system had decided was too important to not share.

What it actually meant was anybody’s guess. Corruption being a distillation or edification of entropy was unsurprising.

“Though it is sort of awesome to say I have magic that can end the universe. Multiverse?”

His real question, which related less to what the Beyond was and more as to what it could do for him, could only be answered by the skill that he’d just unlocked.

Skill: [Sanctuary]

- Ritual (dimension, Beyond).

- Cost: extreme mana, equivalent of 1,000 silver credits (first cast). Varies (subsequent casts).

- Casting Time: varies.

- Cooldown: varies.

Silver

There doesn’t have to be an end.

This ritual opens a link to your sanctuary in the Beyond. Opening a second link on either side will allow you to travel to and from the sanctuary at different points in your bounded reality.

Further effects will be revealed under the correct conditions.

This skill will not evolve until it ascends to the gem tier.

Will was flush with credits after annihilating monster after monster to summon Sen for the first time, and though the ritual to summon his familiar had taken a lot of money, he still had plenty to spare.

He got to work casting the ritual immediately. There was no telling how much time would pass until the next Main Challenge began.

#

Nynn opened his eyes in shock. He’d just managed to track down another batch of the gold-rank corruption cultists, executing them as had been his duty, but their leader had remained frustratingly difficult to catch.

He could sense the connection being opened on a level far removed from this reality.

Someone had accessed the Beyond. Not only that, they’d done it before they’d even reached a gem tier.

“This candidate may be trouble,” he murmured, closing his eyes once more.

When they opened again, his spirit was no longer with his body. To anyone who perceived him on the planet, the departure wouldn’t even be noticeable. For him, time was frozen.

He was in the Beyond.

#

Far past the moon where the Trial of the Champion was taking place, a skill-sapped Ayla sensed a connection open billions of miles away.

Holy shit, she thought. He actually did it.

Though the organization had taken everything from her, some bonds were impossible to sever. Even if she could not use her magic to do anything she had once managed as the Void Dreamer, the restrictions that Dread Executor Ramiel had removed from her no longer bound her access to the Beyond.

She closed her eyes, slipping away from this world.

For the first time in decades, she allowed herself to feel something like hope.