[System Decay] Chapter 35: Nobody's a Hero

Critical hit!

Caiyeri let her conjured warhammer dissipate, grimacing at the mess she’d just made of the life elf construct. A result of decades of genetic and magical engineering, the fauna that roamed the state that the opposing elf kingdom were all threats to any living beings in their area. The myriad destructive spells that could be placed within literally any animal, no matter the size, meant that they had to slaughter every potential threat, slowing the speed at which they attacked.

Even a single city of the Life Kingdom’s was too large for Caiyeri’s nation to overwhelm in one night—especially if they weren’t deploying any of their heaviest hitters. Though communication between the pieces of the Abyss nation’s clone forces weren’t the best, Caiyeri had put two and two together to tell that there were two other teams deployed here for a total of ninety or so Abyss elves.

So far, Group Two had only lost a single man. Wynn Two, a Bronze 10 Assassin, had fallen for a life elf illusion, chasing a mimicry of the group’s voices deep into life territory. He’d greyed out on the party chat menu soon after.

The others, however, likely weren’t faring so well. Group Two was the second-oldest batch of the current generation of clones, the youngest of them half a decade older than Caiyeri. She was the lowest-ranked of the bunch at Bronze 8, and that was after leveling up twice thanks to a particularly resilient set of constructs that hadn’t been able to deal much damage. Though the rest of Group Two were giving her opportunities to solo grind monsters and level, they were clearly irritated by how far behind she was.

Most of them were at least mid-silver already, with Rowan, their leader, only a single level from gold. Aside from Caiyeri, there were only two other bronze-rankers, one of whom was already dead.

Caiyeri Two had been a healer, not an attacker, and certainly not one who relied primarily on luck. As her replacement, Caiyeri could feel the strain of expectations placed on her, but she just couldn’t live up to who they wanted her to be.

Even with her and, to a lesser extent, Azure Four, slowing them down, their group of thirty (well, twenty-nine now) tore through the life elf outposts with clinical efficiency, demolishing at least three a day. The life elves were tricky with their positioning. More than half of the bases they found were in underground locations, many of them having been converted from long-since cleared dungeons.

Caiyeri herself wasn’t completely sure what the mechanics were for migrating a kingdom from Arcadia to this new planet, but it wasn’t her job to be sure about it. Lystri Two, who was far more reserved than the Seven version of him Caiyeri had known, took point on that front, mapping out the location and comparing it to the region that they had had a general idea of before. That was made more complicated by the fact that this was clearly an expansion of force that hadn’t been fully realized before the impact with Earth, but again, not Caiyeri’s job.

What her job actually comprised of was largely just being there. She filled in the gaps—despite the diverging arcs each clone group had taken, they had all been trained by the same teachers. Although she couldn’t do everything her predecessor had, she could still fight.

For now, they were picking and choosing tactical fights. Bronze-rank ones, largely. Group Two was a much more careful group than Seven and even Fifteen, who’d been new to the cave system and therefore much more cautious. By only fighting bronze-rankers and immediately fleeing when even a single silver-ranker showed up, they ensured the absolute minimum loss of life, which made Caiyeri wonder how they’d lost her predecessor and Azure before.

Maybe they hadn’t. Her role here couldn’t only just be that. If it was, the higher-ups would have selected a Caiyeri more suited to it. Out of the dozens of clone groups out there, there was surely another one that could spare a silver-rank healer.

Caiyeri Zero had told her the secondary mission, which this clone was starting to suspect was in fact the primary. During the days where Caiyeri Seven had spoken with Will, the two of them had avoided sharing too much about the details of their ventures, command had started poking her progressively more to identify his location. He was near, they knew, but nobody had specific enough tracking skills to find him.

He had a sigil they wanted. Caiyeri hadn’t been alive to witness any sigil-holders before the Carrion Lord, but she suspected that whatever next step happened in the grander scheme of things, it was going to involve that.

“Wrap this up quickly,” Rowan Two ordered. “Then torch it. They’re growing wiser to our strategies. There wasn’t anything of value here.”

“The life elves are consolidating,” Azure murmured.

“We have reason to believe that the life elves are gathering their silvers,” Rowan continued. “Groups Ten and Eleven have sustained heavy losses. Our next task is to disrupt the locations they’ve attempted to break, allowing them to return, and obtaining our secondary objectives along the way.”

He looked meaningfully at Caiyeri, then Azure. “Wrap it up!”

Caiyeri: You’re still here. It’s been eight days.

Azure: I’m waiting for a window.

Caiyeri: What window? It’s chaos out here. You could just pretend to get lost like Wynn did.

Azure: No. They know how to find me. Nothing they’ve ordered me to do so far has been so bad that I’m willing to exit early.

Caiyeri: What secondary objective do you even have?

Azure: That’s a secret.

Caiyeri: Mother above, you’re annoying.

Azure: I get that a lot.

As the other elves started conjuring oil through skills or inventory to burn the bodies around them, Caiyeri turned to her other chat window.

Will: I think I’ve already joined. There’s about a dozen dead elves in what I’m pretty sure used to be called the Meadow Dungeon. My Identify is telling me now that it’s a [Tree of the South] now. There’s a silver-rank guarding it. Thalia Brooksoul, Priestess of Life.

Caiyeri: I’m assuming you haven’t fought her, seeing that you’re still here.

Will: You have too little faith in me.

Caiyeri: Too much, maybe. Instinct told me that you’d try to give it a shot.

Will: Well, you were right to think twice. I ran the hell away. I have two low bronzes and an unformed with me. No shot in hell we’re taking a clan boss down at this stage.

Will: Now can you tell me what’s happening? I get that you’re going for the life elves. I assume that’s the choice of your nation, though if you can give me any insight, that’d be lovely.

Caiyeri paused. He’d just divulged more information in a few messages than she had in over a week. Her job here was to find him and kill him, and as an elf, her duty was to serve.

But she was an elf of the abyss. Part of the philosophy of their nation was to work with everything they had. Orders from above were supposed to be absolute, but she’d run a bit too far afield to blindly accept that. Azure Four seemed to be the same.

Will had saved her life multiple times. The higher-ups in the nation had trained her well, but in her time of need, they had abandoned her and her outpost. She wasn’t going to be content continuing to serve as their weapon.

As she started typing out a response, she sent one to Azure as well.

Caiyeri: Your window’s coming. Be ready when you see it.

#

Will looked at his chat window, processing the message Caiyeri had just sent him. In it, she’d detailed the information of her task here. She was to bring a bunch of silver-rank elves to him, kill him, and take his stuff. She suspected that the sigil he was holding was the reason the abyss elves wanted him dead, though it was also entirely possible that it was just because he’d survived an extreme-difficulty tutorial.”

“Fantastic. The life elves want me for my body, and the abyss ones want me for you,” Will muttered, tapping the palm-sized sigil. “Can’t imagine why they’d want that.”

He imagined that the god was laughing on the other side of that connection.

Thalia hadn’t noticed them, thank all that was holy. Will was beginning to suspect that she might not be able to notice much at all. The area around her was still brimming with magic, and it was clear from the way magic trailed off from the tree to her body that she was utilizing it as some sort of power booster, but despite all that, she hadn’t even turned to look at them.

Will: I appreciate the clarity, but I would much rather you didn’t try to kill me.

Caiyeri: I owe you, and I’d prefer not to be used as a pawn by the superiors who got everyone I grew up with killed and fed to goblins, but I’m still a bronze. I can’t exactly stop them from finding you.

Will: I appreciate it anyway. You know that your utility on this mission is gone, right? If they brought you along, it was definitely so that you could exploit your existing connection with me so you could bait me into a false sense of safety and kill me.

Caiyeri: What’s to say I’m not doing that right now?

Will: That you’re aware of it at all, I guess. We were pretty good at not killing each other before. Let’s stick with that relationship now.

Caiyeri: There’s another person I might be able to swing into helping, but he’s only at the very bottom of silver. Azure Four. I don’t know his class.

Will: Don’t bother if he’s not bothering. The more moving parts are in a plan, the higher its chance of failing.

Caiyeri: Do you have a plan?

That was a good question.

For one, he was definitely going to have to strike it out alone.

“Lev,” Will said aloud, confident in speaking now that they were much further away from Thalia’s tree. “Allie. Trevor.”

“That’s an ominous tone of voice,” Allie said.

“I’m being followed,” Will said. “Not at this moment, not right now, but a group of silvers is trying to hunt me down and kill me.”

“Oh, shit.” All traces of levity were gone from Allie’s voice now. “You’re sure?”

“Dead sure,” Will said, showing her the sigil. “Try to identify this.”

She did. Her eyes went wide. “Holy shit. That’s, like, a god-tier item.”

“It is. They want this from me. And now that I’ve showed you it, maybe you want it from me too. The thing is, I know I can beat you. I don’t know if I can beat the people following me. I do know that I can’t do it while trying to protect you three.”

“We can help you,” Lev asserted.

“You might think you can,” Will said. “I might even be wrong, and you prove that you really can. But you’re going to have to do it from a distance. Keep yourself safe, guys. I chose this location to save you, and I don’t want to have to do it again at the cost of my own life. Don’t interfere, level up, and find your own path. I’ll keep in touch, but I’m going alone.”

Lev reached a hand out, as if that would keep him rooted in place. “Will, wait—“

But Will had already turned invisible, sticking to the shadows as he crept away.

They’d been holding him back, but they could push each other forward. He just wasn’t meant to be in their party.

Will: I’ve got a semblance of a plan. How strictly do you have to stick with the elves?

Caiyeri: If I’m doing a scouting mission, I can bring the numbers down to three. We always have at least that many.

Will: Okay. Won’t that involve taking a silver?

Caiyeri: Yes, which is why I haven’t suggested it yet.

Will: I hate to be the one adding more moving parts into the plan, but if you can swing that maybe-sympathizer onto your group, we can try to 3v1 the last elf.

Caiyeri: That’s a horrible plan. You’d be asking two of us to kill one of our own.

Will: Do you have anything better?

There was silence for a while after. Will started navigating his way around the area, looking for a good dungeon he could grind through. If he was being chased by silvers, he was going to need to level faster.

Caiyeri: I’ll try to get him in on it.

#

A mile under the earth, Nymlera Brooksoul opened her eyes.

Gold rank was a difficult rank to advance to. With the sigil of the Mother, it could have been a much easier task, but Nymlera saw life for what it was. Elves could live a long time. Their decisions now would compound into massive ramifications later down the line. She would not taint herself with monster cores, and she would not taint the Mother’s grace by requesting a desperate power-up while she was alive.

At Silver 10, she represented the peak of her rank, but there were yet impurities to purge. Had she been an impatient youngster like many of those beneath her, she could have long since been at gold, but where were those impudents now? Stuck midway through their rank, realizing that monsters could only take them so far.

With the power of the Mother by her side, she could defeat the sloppy golds. Rank disparity mattered less when her form was so perfect, her network spread so wide.

Her children raised their heads, the daughters of life protecting the entrances to her great kingdom beneath recognizing that their matriarch had awakened.

Nymlera’s meditation had been interrupted earlier than expected. The cycle had begun, she knew, but the fortune brought to her doorstep was a pleasant surprise.

She was not the only sigil-holder here, her children not the only ones blessed by the Mother. The abyss, of course, sought to steal from their betters, to break the natural order of the world, but life would always persist in the face of chaos. To live was to defy death, and Nymlera had lived for a very long time.

“Take the champion of the Hunger,” she said softly, her voice radiating through her network of roots. “Return him to the Mother. When the time is right, strike. Show the heretics what our lady truly wishes for us.”

She rose. Gold rank would have to be achieved in the fire of battle instead of the peace of the underground.

There was a war to be had.

#

Despite initial concerns that they would see through her gambit, the rest of Group Two was all too happy to let Azure and Caiyeri go. They’d made it more than clear enough that the two of them were outsiders, only here to fill in the numbers for them.

The third member of their scouting party was a Silver 1. Qwayne Two was a Champion of Chaos, his skillset overlapping with Caiyeri’s. Although he had no natural immunity to corruption like Will did, his attacks all had slight chances of inflicting the condition upon his enemies, making him a deadly force to work with for hunting down prey. Marking them once would mean that they wouldn’t be able to run.

Caiyeri dearly hoped that power wouldn’t be turned against her.

“I have the human’s trust,” she told the other two, lying as naturally as she breathed. “I can lead you straight to him.”

They navigated their way around the life elf kingdom, avoiding confrontation as much as they could. Qwayne’s skill, Pass Without Trace, allowed them to stealthily skulk through the shadows as a group, preventing them from being spotted so long as they didn’t make too much sound or fire off an attack.

It would be perfect for an ambush, but in the act of pretending to double-cross Will, she was actually crossing the elves. She passed along every detail to him, building a plan together.

For a moment, she wondered if she was going too far. She’d known Qwayne Seven, once. They had been close friends. Betraying a man with his face…

Caiyeri found that she couldn’t find it in herself to care. She’d been trained to be a heartless killer, just like the rest of them. While abyss clones were loyal, corruption and inaccessbility had kept command from exercising control over them beyond holding the possibility of their corruption over them like a leash. They might have reinforced it after she’d returned, but her loyalties were to herself first. No amount of indoctrination could override her experiences, and she suspected that something about the corruption she’d been constantly exposed to had changed her in a way that made her incompatible to the archaic methods that they still used.

Her choice was made.

“He’s in a dungeon right now,” she said. “A subspace-class. He’s alone in it, so it’s most certainly not at capacity. I’ll enter first and lower his guard. Follow me in immediately after.”

“Works for me,” Qwayne said, fiddling with his knife. “He’s a bronze, mm?”

“Mid-bronze, yeah,” Caiyeri said.

“Easy pickings. I could go in first, if you’re worried.”

Caiyeri shook her head. “You know what we do here.”

“Minimum risk,” Qwayne piped in.

She entered first, stepping through the inky mess of arcane magic.

It was dark in this dungeon, enough that she had to wait a few moments for her elven eyesight to adjust to the lack of light. There were signs that there had been monsters here, blood tracked over hard stone floor and corpses dissolving on walls, but no sign of a human.

Fear settled in the pit of her stomach. It was a bad idea to be in here. It was an even worse idea to betray the abyss elves. She would die in this dungeon if she went forward with this plan. She would die if she took a step forward.

Calm yourself. She recognized the crushing dread from a man who still couldn’t fully control his aura.

“Are you ready?” she asked aloud.

“Always,” Will whispered, right behind her. She shrieked, jumping forward and instinctively conjuring her sword.

“Count yourself lucky I’m a forgiving woman!” she shouted. “Mother knows I could’ve taken your head off there!”

Will snorted. “You should see the look on your face.”

Caiyeri sighed, crossing her arms. “You’re still alive.”

“And another elf soon won’t be. Let’s get this done.”

Will vanished from sight once more.

Caiyeri: All clear. Enter at will.

#

Qwayne entered the dungeon and immediately caught the stench of a foreign god.

Mother protect me, he prayed, a charm on his wrist protecting him from the fear aura that the sigil-holder exuded.

“I’m a friend of your friend,” he announced in as friendly a voice as he could. “You’re a new User yet, and you need resources, mm? Why don’t you come back with us? We can train someone as promising as you.”

“Likely story,” a voice said from behind him.

A hand laid itself upon his exposed chin, lightly brushing it from behind, and Qwayne’s entire existence suddenly felt wrong.

He roared in anger.

“Fight’s on,” Will said.