[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 159: A Bad Time

Will didn’t step through immediately. Though he was extremely tempted to do so, he was also fully aware of the fact that he alone probably wasn't enough for this. That wasn't due to a lack of power or anything—in fact, he felt stronger now than he ever had before.

However, he was at least somewhat familiar with the Contractor. Thanks to Ayla, he also knew that said User was somebody who had been playing at the same level or higher than him this entire time.

That fucker had been able to send a literal army of gold-rankers at Will and his affiliates like it was nothing. Sure, that hadn't been the Contractor directly acting, but it was undeniable that it was his influence that had led to that. Just as Will would consider anything he strong-armed the Hunger into doing as his own accomplishment, so too did he have to credit the Contractor with his ability to manipulate sovereign-tiers.

More importantly, this entire setup was meant for and made for him. The Contractor had been plotting for a very long time to specifically screw over Will, presumably for his unique properties. There was no shot in hell that he hadn't layered this place with redundancy after redundancy, preparing for the corruption wielder’s arrival.

Will was pretty sure he could brute-force his way through some of those redundancies with his newfound ability to use plausibility, but just from the raw aura of the area beyond the boundary, he could tell that it was going to be difficult to scout out even with Sen's eyes. 

The familiar seemed to be repulsed by whatever was within. While the first couple of eyes were able to move, it was like swimming through molasses. Given the fact that the effects only seemed to intensify as they moved further, Will decided to hold off on shoving them all in at once for the time being.

He didn't have the mana or quite frankly the mobility to gather everybody here himself. While he could make Beyond portals basically at will thanks to the number of credits he had gotten from his sponsors as well as his plausibility, it still cost a lot of mana. Obviously, he had a number of ways to restore that mana, but he wanted to save those for the big fight rather than wasting it on the logistics beforehand.

Besides, Regina knew how to run a country. Sort of. She at least had military transport down.

The first people to arrive other than Will’s own aerial division came about 20 minutes after his message, flying in an identical pattern to the group that had accompanied Will. One of the upgrades that the ESNA’s large number of non-combat engineer-type classes had provided toward their Air Force was an extreme amount of maneuverability, giving their planes the ability to just stop in mid-air.

Will had seen a couple of Blue Angels performances and way too many Tom Cruise movies growing up, so his mind had a very set way of how planes should work. Seeing a dozen and change of them parked mid-air, guns hot as they idled in what looked like suspended animation, was a bit mind-bending.

Kind of funny that that was what got to him more than the otherworldly boundary hiding the Contractor’s rituals.

Nobody Will was particularly close with was in that advance party, but the second group to arrive included a face Will hadn't seen in a while.

“Liam,” he greeted the sniper. “Nice to see you. You’re participating.”

“Of course I am,” the Aussie said. “I got quite a few of my skills up to gold while you were gone. Excited to try some out.”

“You realize that we're going to be running into quite possibly the single most dangerous point on this planet, right?” Will asked. “Not the best place to be trying shit out for the first time.”

Liam laughed. “Of course I do. You think I'm a moron? No bloke running this mission came in blind. The young lady's here. It’d be embarrassing if I wasn’t too.”

The last Will had checked, Hua had ranked up to gold while Liam was still sitting somewhere at the upper end of silver. Given that they were fighting against somebody who had the ability to punch above his weight class, was summoning an angel, and was already Gold Rank, he questioned the wisdom of even attending this.

Then again, Will wasn't going to helicopter parent Liam. Anyone who had stuck with him for this long knew damn well what they were getting into. If they were going to be insane, then so be it. Will needed firepower anyway—whether that came from a friend or a conscript didn’t change that much, but it certainly helped if they were willing.

The rest of them started to filter in with time, slowly filling up the airspace around the boundary. It seemed like the rest of the boundary and the associated stealthe ffect was still functioning apart from the hole Will had torn through it, because not one of the planes tried to go an inch beyond the point where the boundary was, and the ones that got close to other areas of it seemed to turn away instinctively.

After opening that hole, Will had started seeing lines in the rest of the boundary. Apparently, that one wound had been enough for Richard's eye to start observing the weak points.

Nynn was a bit late in coming, which made sense given that neither he nor the group he'd been with had access to the Beyond in any way, shape, or form.

When he arrived, he noticed the boundary immediately, his eyes scanning the entire length of it, rather than just the pieces that Will had exposed.

“It's a reality pocket,” Nynn said, turning to Will. “This isn't technology that your world should have access to.”

“I think it's been clear by now that a lot of things have happened this cycle that shouldn't have,” Will replied. “Now, imagine for a second that I'm a primitive human from the planet Earth who has no idea what the fuck a reality pocket is.”

“It is far too complex to explain to you in full, but at a high level, you can imagine it as a small, short entry into the Beyond. Think of the tunnels that we take to enter it.”

Will thought about that for a second. “So you're telling me that it's kind of like the place I stuck that bomb you ditched.”

Nynn winced at the reminder. “Yes, something like that.”

“And that interferes with sensory abilities somehow?”

“It's not the same plane of reality as ours. This boundary also has additional enchantments applied to it, which are certainly assisting its stealth.”

“Anything else?” Will asked. “We're down to basically the last hour.”

Regina: Weapon’s in position.

“And there's confirmation,” he continued. “If there are any last-minute surprises we should know about, now's the time.”

“Any surprises are not going to be ones that I'm aware of,” Nynn said. “My perception doesn't penetrate past the very entrance of the boundary.”

“Fantastic,” Will said drily. “Corruption broke the walls. Will traditional weaponry do the same?”

“It wouldn't have, but you did open the pathway. Guns and bombs will be enough now.”

“That's all I was looking for,” Will said.

It took a couple of hours to gather everybody, all in all, but Will considered it well worth his time.

There was no such thing as being too careful when dealing with someone like this. A whole bunch of gods, sponsors, and others had made that exact same mistake with Will, and he did not plan on doing the same.

Will: Fire when ready.

The order didn’t resolve itself immediately, of course. As much as Regina appreciated his presence as a force multiplier, she also wasn’t going to hand him the keys to the kingdom. The message was from him to her, who would then propagate it through her forces.

A couple of minutes later, though, the planes let loose.

Will sent a second message, this one to his allies on the ground.

Will: Hit it. Stick close to me. I’ll keep them from bombing us.

“Aza,” he called out. “We’re making a Death Star run.”

His familiar manifested next to him, aura pulsing with interest. “It's been a bit since you called on me. You've gotten a lot stronger.”

“I've called on you a few times now,” Will said, augmenting each leap with a gust of wind to propel himself forward into the breach.

“This is my first time witnessing the extent of your plausibility in person,” Aza replied. “Where am I to go?”

“Follow me,” Will said. “You’ll figure the rest out.”

Each of Will's allies plummeted from the skies, sprinted forward from the ground, or popped into existence, utilizing their unique abilities.

Even with his Thousand Eyes, Will couldn't accurately keep track of the entire battlefield. Other than the fog of war, he also had his eyes particularly concentrated in certain areas. The bulk of them were on his own teammates, but he was also attempting to brute-force them forward. The more eyes he added, the more plausibility he could apply to a group of them.

The reality pocket, as Nynn had put it, had some effects applied inside it that made it more irritating to navigate through with Sen’s eyes. Will wasn't sure whether or not that was an inherent property of the space, and he didn't want to bother asking Nynn about it—the actual mechanics of it mattered less than whether or not Will could counter it.

That did mean that he didn't have comprehensive views set up across the entire boundary. While he had a handful of eyes set at certain points to track the progress of the bombardment, he wasn't watching them as closely as he was his allies. That might have been a little selfish, but he cared about some people more than others.

Will couldn’t sense any physical differences when breaching the boundary, other than a brief sense of disorientation as he passed from baseline reality into the pocket.

Aza hung behind, just short of the boundary. Will passed plausibility and extra mana into his familiar, granting the Dread Executor fragment a few more abilities than he would have otherwise. 

Usually, the guardian angel’s primary ability was to manage the strain of the demon currently eating away at Will’s soul. Because he had devoted so much energy to stemming the demon's advance, most of the other features a guardian angel should have gained upon ranking up hadn't been applicable. With plausibility, however, it was a different story.

His wings expanded, stretching to cover a wide expanse just beyond the boundary. At several times their usual size, they were enough for Will's allies to follow him, protected from the bombardment their own air force was providing.

That air force was supposed to follow through afterward, but there were only so many users Regina could supply for the ground. While she was running a military outfit, many of the footsoldiers had been volunteers.

When it had come to her own people, she had maintained discipline, but most Users hadn't been military-trained before the apocalypse. Many, just like a good chunk of Will’s party, were opportunists, minimizing risks while maximizing power. They wouldn’t want to participate here.

Will didn't exactly go for that kind of thing, but he could certainly understand the mindset behind it. People only had one life, and everyone was more than happy to leave the dangerous work to those at the top.

That was an unfair way of looking at it, but Will was a little too occupied with fighting for the continued survival of the world to care about fairness at the moment.

While the opening area looked mostly similar to the reality before it, things started getting a little different afterward. The distance was blurry, covered by an increasingly dark aura that limited visibility. The slowness that had affected his familiar started bearing on Will as well.

Caiyeri: Eyes and ears open, everyone. This is untread territory. Stay within visual distance of someone else. If you disappear, we might have to assume you’re dead.

Will had to crack a smile at that. Compared to the cold, self-serving elf he'd known from the start, Caiyeri was a changed woman. He didn't know when it had happened, but bit by bit, she had.

She was right, though. As their surroundings grew less and less familiar, Will got the feeling that this place had a lot more to hide than just the Contractor’s ritual.

He relied on his aura sense alongside his skills, trusting that the others would be doing the same. Behind them, the sound of guns and bombs started to fade. While other jets would be entering to glass the area around them, they would be doing so slowly. While it was somewhat counterintuitive, their air support probably wasn't going to be able to do much unless users on the ground softened up the defenses first.

Their suspicions were proven right as they started to progress a little further.

Nynn: Picking up signatures. Platinums. There's a lot of them.

They hit Will's aura sense at about the same time. It was as if they’d been waiting for somebody to come in—which they probably had.

They hadn't hit a border where those monsters started appearing. Instead, Will started sensing them all around him.

Yui: We are in a minefield. Someone just woke them all up.

Will and his party weren't the only group that had made it past the border, but they were certainly the furthest in. Judging from the pattern in which the monsters around them were awakening, the ground rumbling as subterranean beasts started hurtling toward the surface, they were going to be the first to fight.

He transmitted a message back toward Regina and the other ground parties before letting inky darkness explode out of the air around him. In his immediate vicinity, he saw Dread Executor candidates taking to the skies. Liam and Hua had already drawn weapons, but now they powered them up further, recent dungeon drops having enhanced their strength. Caiyeri shuffled a deck of cards—one of the items Will had gotten from a sponsor just days prior. She’d already mastered them.

The monsters rose.

Will descended.

#

The Contractor watched over the world.

His gambit earlier had not gone as he had hoped. It had still resulted in a situation within bounds, of course, but it had been a worse deal than would have been optimal.

If all had gone correctly, the corruption wielder would have been saddled with even more power that he could not use, which would have made him a juicier target for Peace’s plan. That had gone a little sideways, but it was still fine.

The benefit of William Li-Brown now being able to use the plausibility he’d gained was that he now had a shipyard’s worth of rope to hang himself with. The moment he overstepped his boundaries, the Contractor—and Peace—could respond in kind, and the goddess knew a great deal more about plausibility than a mere gold-ranker could.

Will had breached the boundary alongside a small, elite strike force. The Contractor had not been able to monitor them all, but he had marked most of them down as small fry but for the Dread Executor candidates.

Now, as they tore through the platinum-rank ring of monsters, he found himself having to admit to some slight lapses in judgment.

They weren’t even all gold-rank. Amongst the companions that the corruption wielder had brought, there were multiple who were still at silver. Based on how effortlessly they were teaming up to eliminate platinum-ranks, the Contractor could tell they would not stay silver for long.

He had known coming into this that the monsters he had extracted from challenge dungeons for the purpose of a temporary defense would be just that—temporary. Still, he had not anticipated this.

Corruption swept over his beasts like a tidal wave, leaving them crippled and suffering in their wake. The groups attacking them focused on monsters one by one, overwhelming them with a deluge of attacks. Even if their ranks were low, they were all seemingly capable of utilizing items that swung above their rank, and enough of them piled attacks upon an already corrupted monster to prevent it from moving before one of the higher-ranked Users finished it off.

Despite being in a sea of creatures that should have logically been at least a challenge for the gold-rankers, not to mention lethal to the silvers, those Users wove through the Contractor’s defenses like they were born to them.

Behind them came the bomber jets, and against those, the monsters did prove useful. Many of them were large enough or had significant enough range on their attacks to start knocking jets out of the sky, but every dead bomber took time that the monsters didn’t have. Without fail, each time one of them made a plane explode, it died not a minute after.

The Contractor had hoped for more time. The preparations were more or less finished, and all that was left was executing his masterstroke. He had desired to execute that perfectly, but with the corruption wielder’s gang advancing as fast as they were, he had to hurry things up.

First, to buy himself some time, he sent out a wide-ranging message.

???: To all of you embedded in the ESNA, fire on the corruption wielder and his allies. If you cannot find them, fire instead on other planes.

A good deal of the people he had contracted were willing to work with him for coin and power, but they likely weren’t the type to backstab their own comrades for their employer.

Fortunately for the Contractor, he had an angel’s power on his side.

Plausibility flowed through him, a stream of raw strength from the nascent angel’s body, and he amplified his Contract skill.

Just this one time, he could exercise an unbreakable clause. The laws of plausibility meant that trying to do it again to these people would bring retribution back down upon the Contractor’s head, but William Li-Brown had acted first.

As the sound of distant explosions started reaching the Contractor’s ears, he moved, stepping out from an observation tower.

Time was running out. Even with the delay, it would be less than an hour before the corruption wielder arrived.

The Contractor looked out onto an armored, winged mannequin like creature that was almost too bright to look at. Around it, the desert had shifted, sand melting into glass before dissolving into water.

Angels were beings of chaos as much as demons were. Where a demon destroyed, an angel created, but both were as seemingly random on the surface. Here, the Contractor’s angel was creating an ocean.

“Soon, precious,” he said, reaching a hand out.

The angel raised one of its own.

#

“This is a fucking slog,” Nathan complained, stomping to kick his leg armor back into place as a couple dozen of his missiles landed on a platinum-rank trailer-truck sized crab at the same time as a lethal card from Caiyeri did.

“Better than being a bloodbath,” Will countered. “We’re making good time.”

Nynn: I can sense the angelic presence. We must be getting close. He’s been actively hiding it, but there is only so much one can do to hide an angel.

“See?”

“Less talking,” Caiyeri said, landing in a crouch next to them. Blood dripped from her hair where she’d accidentally mistimed an attack and gotten herself dirty. The rest of her outfit was pristine. “It’s bad luck.”

“Yeah, Nathan,” Will agreed, grinning. “Less talking.”

Regina had warned him about the sudden face-heel turn that a decent chunk of her people were about to commit a few minutes ago. He’d defended the group against some, but the leader of the ESNA had been playing a game of her own. More than half of the traitors had been disabled, some lethally, before they could take action against their companions. Many of the explosions behind them had been Contractor assets taking a dive.

The mood was generally high. The Contractor was pulling out all the stops, but it wasn’t proving to be enough for the sheer amount of power Will and his friends had assembled. They still had days until the angel could trigger, based on their previous estimates.

Then, all of a sudden, light flashed in the distance, and the world seemed to freeze.

The presence that only Nynn had been able to sense before suddenly exploded, burning pressure searing through the entire dimensional pocket.

Reality itself seemed to shatter under the force, and dread settled in Will’s stomach.

The light burned brighter.

Nynn: Regina. Fire your weapon on these coordinates.  Do it now!

Regina: The fuck? You’re in the target radius.

Nynn: FIRE. NOW.

The message was too little too late.

They had miscalculated.

Light seared the sky.

#

The angel came to its senses.

It knew its purpose.

The world around it was unclean, and that was the fault of one individual.

With that aberrant dead, the world would be one step closer to true Peace.