[System Decay] Chapter 24: Like Their Lives Depend On It

“I’m going to be blunt with you,” Will said, drying himself off as well as he could with a shop-bought towel before tossing it back into one of his inventory crates. It was slightly worse than the one he’d been using in college, but it worked well enough.

“If blunt means we don’t end on the bad side of those skills, I think I can live with that,” Trevor said.

Trevor was the only one of them who didn’t really know Will from before, though he questioned if Allie and Lev really knew him anymore. He wasn’t the same person that he’d been before he’d been thrown into this. None of them were.

Still, it was only Trevor who actually flinched when Will looked at the rest of the party. Did he think that Will was going to attack them? Unless Trevor pulled off a move as dumb and self-alienating as Dylan, Will wasn’t going to do shit to him.

“Have you seen anyone from the Iron Boys?” Will asked. “Damn, what a stupid, edgy name.”

“Their leader was with them when we got forced out of grinding the university,” Lev supplied. “His name’s Bradley or something.”

“Do you remember what his rank was?”

“Bronze 1,” Allie said, “but that was a few days ago.”

“That’s the same rank that I’m at right now,” Will said. “I can beat that easily. I have a lot of tools in my kit that let me punch over my level.”

“But we don’t,” Allie said.

“Exactly. You don’t. That’s why you need to train,” Will stressed. “During my tutorial, I found a friend who was great at pushing me to my limits, but it’s pretty clear to me that you three have barely been pushed.”

“We’ve been doing dungeons,” Lev said defensively.

“Not enough, you haven’t. Y’all have minimaps too, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Trevor confirmed.

“Dear god. Don’t call me that, man.” Will shook his head. “It’s Will, unless you try to kill me, in which case you better not call me by any name.”

“Your point is that there’s only one room till the boss,” Lev said, gathering himself. “I assume you want us to fight it without your help.”

“Yeah,” Will said. “I’ll throw in an attack if you need it to make up for the fact that you’re missing a fighter, but I want to see what you can actually do. So far, I’ve just seen you three running from a boss.”

“That’s—“ Trevor started, but Lev cut him off.

“You’re right. This dungeon’s unformed rank, so it shouldn’t be too life-threatening. Allie, Trevor, I know it hasn’t been that long, but we have new stuff to practice.”

“Yeah, alright,” Allie said. “As long as I know that you’re going to back us up if things actually look terrible.”

“Of course,” Will lied.

#

True to his word, Will did nothing for the entirety of the boss fight. The boss itself was a solo boss—a massive boar at Unformed 20 that could knock over the mossy ruins that served as cover in the final room with the sheer force of its charge.

He wished he had Caiyeri’s insight into fighting styles to tell exactly what they were doing, but the knowledge she’d imparted on him was a big help, even if it had only been a day or two.

All things considered, they weren’t actually that bad at fighting. Allie’s Tailwind Blessing and Gale Step were both skills in the vein of Wind Walker, except they were more focused on bursts of speed than a passive increase. She treated the battle like she was a professional bullfighter, waiting for the boar to charge at her before kiting it with a movement ability and using one of her damage-dealing skills. Her new Poison element saw some usage too, if the bubbling green left by her radiance-infused strikes said anything.

Lev made a lot of use of his new Twilight skill, which Will saw was named Steps of Night. It let him teleport from one heavily darkened area to another, which he made judicious use of. Circuit Breaker was his most powerful attack, a short-range spell that struck like a bolt of lightning and slowed its target. Ionize was a buff, which helped increase his damage enough

Trevor was a different story. He seemed to be struggling to control his new Water element power, and he took the only heavy hit of the battle when he traded blows with the boar—him from his sword, which did admittedly leave a bleeding gash on the boss’ face, and the boar with its tusks. Fortunately, the sharp end narrowly missed impaling him, so he was instead thrown into a stone wall with a crack that made Will think he’d severed his spine.

One bronze-rank healing potion later, Trevor was back on his feet and wincing with pain.

“Don’t get hit again,” Will warned. “At least, not that bad. And you owe me.”

“Thanks, Will,” Trevor said.

When he got back to the fight, ignoring his new power, Will could see why Trevor hadn’t died yet. His actual strikes were powerful, and in combination with his skills, every hit he landed took massive chunks out of the boss’ body.

When the boar went to charge him again, a thin green forcefield appeared around him. This time, Trevor sidestepped, and when the tusks happened to catch him, the forcefield protected him from being run through.

In the end, it took about ten minutes for them to wear the boss down until a massive triple attack finished it off.

After its death, Will learned that dungeons could have vaults inside them, which were much more convenient to get to than having to traverse an entire floor of horrific monsters in order to even find the door. He let them have the loot—no unformed rank item was going to be useful to him now, and they’d been the ones to take down the boss.

“Well done,” he congratulated them afterwards, all three of the exhausted Users panting and drinking water or potions to regain their stamina. “You’re all decent individually, but wow are you bad at working together.”

“It’s only been a few days,” Lev said, though the defensiveness was gone now. He sighed. “You’re right. We’re working on it, but it’s hard to do when a single mistake could mean death for all of us.”

“Then don’t make mistakes,” Will said. “This dungeon wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“No, but they’re not all like this,” Lev replied.

“The one with the ogre as a final boss was also an unformed dungeon,” Trevor added. “We couldn’t tell what kind of boss it would be at the beginning.”

“Can you help cover us?” Allie said. “If we could train like this, we’ll be up in no time.”

This dungeon had been almost completely useless for Will. It had taken dozens of kills to finally advance him a level, and he’d already been on the edge of leveling up from solo-killing Ung.

He liked Lev and Allie, and Trevor had been nice so far (and also, he’d given Will a copy of his econ homework once when he was running late on an assignment), but they were too weak right now to make a noticeable difference. All three of them had leveled up once or twice fighting the final boss, and he could see the potential in them, but as they were right now?

Any dungeon that was suitable for them wasn’t going to help him level up at all. Any dungeon that could present Will an actual challenge would probably get all three of them killed in instants.

There was a very small amount of experience shared from them clearing the same dungeon as a party, but it was negligible enough that Will discarded it as a useful tool for leveling.

The parallels to their pre-apocalypse research group weren’t lost on him. Him doing the hard work, and the others benefiting.

“No,” he said. “Find your own dungeons. If you can’t handle the boss, then use the chat feature and call for help. I can’t babysit you guys in this world, too. If you don’t want to figure out how to keep up, then you should have picked the other option.”

Lev grimaced. “You’re right.”

“Are you really going to let that happen?” Trevor asked nervously. “We’re not bad, but Will… sorry, guys, but Will is just not on another level.”

“It’s not about him letting it happen or not,” Will said. “I’m going to do what I do. Because I like you guys, I’m letting you call on me in an emergency, and I mean an emergency. If you call me in this for something like this boss, I’m not coming the next time. It’s kill or be killed here, and you three can’t afford to have your hands held.”

Even with Caiyeri, Will had been putting in the work from the beginning. He couldn’t train them. Not like they were right now. When he’d been unformed, he’d still been able to pull his weight against the bronze enemies. Even the three of them put together couldn’t measurably help him in a fight.

“I’m sorry for leeching off of you,” Lev said quietly. “All those years together, and—“

Will put up a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Not anymore. What matters now is that you put in the work. We got a fresh start. Don’t waste it, okay?”

Lev inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, sparks flew from lightning-infused irises. “Okay.”

#

The dungeon that they had done together had just been named “Feral Hog Dungeon,” a portal-type. When the last member of the party was gone from it, the portal closed behind them, which was a touch disappointing. Will could have used the cleared-out dungeon as a storage space.

They split up afterwards, and Will started exploring the dungeons in earnest.

The three types they’d described showed themselves in various forms around the area. A fair few of the dungeons were simply named “Forest Dungeon” and were fully present in reality, albeit some with warped spaces within. Though his sample size wasn’t that large, Will noted that slightly over half of the dungeons seemed to be portal-types, while the remainder were split between warped-space and fully-manifested, though they leaned hard towards the latter.

The fact that there were more of the portals wasn’t too surprising. The space they occupied was simply smaller than the structures required for the other two types of dungeons to. Portal-types often manifested as simple archways or doors, anywhere from a magical hole barely large enough for him to squeeze himself through headfirst through to a grand marble archway that looked like it had been purloined straight from the temple of the elven Mother.

Interestingly enough, the portal-types didn’t have any monsters roaming the areas around them, but the other two did. Will guessed that there was some kind of magic stopping the portals from letting the weaker monsters through. He wondered if there was potential for the harder bosses to force their way out of their own dungeons.

Will spent some time relaxing in the unformed rank dungeons, but he stopped doing that after clearing a couple on his own. They were horrendously, terribly underpowered, and though it was nice to revel in gratuitous violence and the superiority of his own power, they barely gave him any experience—and that was with his Silver Forerunner title pushing him forward at twice the rate a normal person at Bronze 1 would have.

Also, the loot from those dungeons just wasn’t good. Some of them had elemental gems, but those weren’t super useful to him now that he had a full set of elements, and they weren’t elements he thought he could actually integrate into any of his powersets later on—if that was even possible. He did take everything he found, but there was a disappointing lack of awakening shards and useful items.

Find the shards of the Beyond, Ayla had said. Will had two of them floating around in his inventory, but when he looked at the description, he could tell he was still far from getting the tablet.

Item: Awakening Shard of the Beyond

Legendary.

There is more to the worlds than what meets the eye.

Progress to tablet: 2/13.

You may use an unaffiliated awakening shard to form a tablet from this item, but there must be at least 7 Awakening Shards of the Beyond used in the creation.

It was a much vaguer description than anything else he had in his kit, and that worried him.

Ayla hadn’t seemed like she’d wanted to be in her position. At the end there, she’d straight-on panicked.

Will put them away. There weren’t even unaffiliated awakening shards in the unformed rank dungeons.

At least he got an achievement.

Achievement earned: Solo Leveling

You have cleared a dungeon completely solo. It may have been a rank lower than you, but make no mistake. Less than 5% of Users ever clear a dungeon alone in their lifetimes.

Reward: You have earned experience.

Level up!

Reaching Bronze 2 was a pleasant surprise that really came in clutch because Will was out of bronze-rank stamina and mana potions. The full heal that came with every level-up was terribly handy for restoring those two.

He really needed to buy more items. Apart from the safe zone where he’d deposited Dylan, he hadn’t stopped to properly rest and shop yet.

“Two more dungeons,” he told himself. “Then I’ll stop.”

For the next couple of dungeons, he ignored the sparse unformed rank dungeons in the area. The bronze-rank dungeons were easier to find, anyway. They were the most numerous here by far, and the non-portal ones were extraordinarily easy to find by virtue of the monsters they leaked.

Will made sure to stay away from Everdale, though. While he was confident in his own power, the impression the others had given him of the Iron Boys told him that they were a large group of malevolent, intelligent humans.

His reasoning for avoiding them was twofold. Will was best at sudden strike warfare against a single creature, and a group would be more difficult to deal with. More importantly, though, he wasn’t sure if he was ready to take a human life. He’d talked shit down to Dylan, but if it came down to it, he had still yet to kill another of his own species.

The worst part was that deep down, Will believed that he could do it. Somewhere deep within him, a primal part of his brain told him that he could do it without flinching.

Ignoring that part as well as the large area on the map marked as EVERDALE UNIVERSITY - currently controlled by [Iron Boys], Will traced a path of dead wildlife until he came across an an abnormally shaped meadow. The trees here were so thick that they completely obscured sight through them, but there were paths through them that were totally unobstructed.

Meadow Dungeon. Difficulty: bronze.

Native wildlife once roamed this area, but the life elf kingdom has set its tendrils into this region. Be wary. These are not the animals you know.

Will took a cautious step into the clearing, sensing an odd pressure settle on him. Compared to the effect of the sigil, it was nothing, but he could tell that he had just crossed the line into a dungeon.

The animals in question made themselves known soon after, once he’d entered into a maze of thick trees, dropping unformed-rank daggers from his inventory every so often.

A deer came prancing through the trees, leaping through thick foliage as if it wasn’t even there. By all respects, it looked and acted like a regular deer, tilting its head quizzically at Will’s presence.

Identify told him that it was just an animal, but Will could sense the bronze-rank pressure coming from within it.

He didn’t hesitate, striking out with his slayer sword.

The moment the sharpened edge made contact with the deer’s side, it let out an otherworldly screech and unhinged its jaw.

“I didn’t even know deer had jaws,” Will said, reflexively rolling back.

Black, oily tentacles spilled forth from the open maw, a volume greater than the deer’s body spilling out from within.

Will activated Weapons Free.

The teleportation that this skill offered was jerkier than what Eerie Step had given him, but it was more flexible and Will’s Space binding helped him resist the nausea that might have come.

He reappeared at one of the dropped daggers thirty feet back, watching as the tentacles slithered through the grass, smashing through the trees. Everywhere they touched, sickly black liquid stuck, and as he watched, that darkness sucked the life away from where it landed.

“Holy shit,” he said.

The tentacles slithered back into the deer’s unhinged maw almost as quickly as they had come. Soon enough, it looked just like another unintelligent animal set up to be roadkill.

Remembering that he wasn’t actually in this alone, he typed out a quick message. Information could prove invaluable here, especially when his Identify still wasn’t working properly on the obviously cloaked deer.

Will: Caiyeri. Do you know anything about the “life elves?”

The monster in a woodland cervid’s skin pranced towards him with the gleeful, uncaring joy of a serial killer approaching his target.

Will shot a bullet from the seven-shooter.

[Piercing Shot selected.]

And the deer dodged it, limbs bending in impossible directions at too many joints to let it hit the ground. The bullet whizzed straight over the damn thing.

Will inventoried his gun and put both hands on his sword.

A message pinged.

Caiyeri: Mother save me. Do not get anywhere near the life elves. For your own safety, avoid them and everything they touch at ALL COSTS.

The deer charged.