[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 152: How Many Enemies

Will popped out of the Beyond into yet another unfamiliar setting. He was getting pretty used to that, honestly. It wasn’t surprising that they’d taken him to somewhere he didn’t know already. The last couple of times he’d visited a sponsor had been when they’d been filing complaints against him for hunting their foremost Users, and those had been in private quarters far off-planet.

He would have expected something like the first incident where he’d met them all in something like a courtroom with them all using representatives of their true selves rather than actually showing up, but that had been during the trial of the champion. There were presumably regions of the galaxy set aside specifically for that purpose, since the other people who’d gotten sponsored during the same event reported similar meetings.

Will wondered how people who had been sponsored before or after the tournament had dealt with things for a moment before realizing that most people had received one or two offers at most. They would have been able to get teleported from one location to the next or only have to go once. Will, on the other hand, had received five at once during the same event. That was presumably something that really only happened during the tournament.

The long and the short of it was that he was now in a less ominous location than he’d been either of the last times. That wasn’t saying much, to be fair, but he was grateful for the change in atmosphere. This place looked more like an extremely extravagant break room meant for people significantly more powerful and richer than him. Made out of something that looked like polished marble but definitely wasn’t, it certainly would have been an eighth wonder of the world on Earth had it originated there. Granted, it wouldn’t have quite suited that list given the buffet tables actively in use laden with food that carried gem-rank magic in it, but even Will could appreciate the architecture.

Or at least, he thought he could. He was sure that if Lev had been here, he’d be losing his mind over it, but in terms of power, Lev wasn’t even near the ballpark that Will had to deal with these days. The last Will had checked on his college friend, he’d been at the very start of silver rank. That was respectable given the cirumstances, but he probably would have melted if he’d been brought here. Will and his group were all on the edge of gold or, in a couple cases, already well into the rank. More than that, they were used to dealing with forces far beyond human comprehension.

Five of those very forces were in this room with him. Contrary to their previous appearances, they had all chosen to manifest humanoid representations of roughly human proportions. That had to be an intentional choice given how each and every one of them had chosen to portray themselves as domineering before. Had they misread Will as someone who would lash out less against authority if they weren’t as visually overpowering? Did this just expend less effort on their part compared to the high-concept large-scale projections they’d been using otherwise?

Hard to tell. Either way, it would be less annoying talking to people his size than to faceless forty-foot tall projections. Will chose to take it as

Today’s representative from the Order of the Striker looked like nothing more than a mild-mannered accountant, complete with a pair of glasses that Will’s senses told him were diamond-level artifacts. He greeted Will with a polite nod. A completely non-magical sticker on his suit said that his name was Steve. Why that sticker was there when he was clearly suppressing an aura far stronger than Will’s was anyone’s guess.

The Lady of Overwhelming Violence—Love, as Will had shortened—was a bit more presentable than she had been last time. When he’d first met her, her mouth had been full of blood, only stained fangs visible through the mess. Her aura still had the reality-bleed effect to it, but she’d cleaned up some. Her eyes were a deep, rich crimson that rivaled Will’s own demonic light, and rather than blood dripping off of her body, she simply had a halo of the stuff, constantly shifting as she moved.

Seeing her was a bit of a shock that Steve wasn’t. The Order of the Striker had always sent somewhat unimpressive representatives, so he hadn’t felt much from that end, though Steve was a bit of a funny change of pace.

When he’d met Love for the first time, it had been part of his first experience with meeting the top end of what mortals had to offer. There was an uncertainty when it came to mortals that wasn’t there with gods. Gods, at least, embodied a certain concept. They were predictable within the bounds of that. Mortals were not so confined, and those lives seemed more in reach of Will than the prospect of godhood.

Love hadn’t exactly scared him—there was little that could scare Will when he regularly did what he did—but she had been a stark reminder in the level of power he didn’t yet have. Her aura had been reminder enough that even between mortals, there were gaps that seemed overwhelming.

Now, a contracted demon and many, many attempts on his life later, Will could accept this as part of his “normal.” Her level of power didn’t seem quite as far away when he had Richard living inside his head, ready to tear out of his skull and end the world at any moment. It couldn’t be as prominent when he could see the weaknesses in her body and magic. Even if this wasn’t her in actuality, he could tell exactly how mortal she was.

The lines of death did not discriminate between metal and sovereign.

The Lord of Loss’ human incarnation was roughly the same as his other one had been, pale and thin and mostly covered by a dark veil.

“Hey, thanks for the sword, Loss,” he said. “Big fan of it. Really putting in the returns.”

That seemed to agitate the man, which made more sense when Will remembered he’d basically scammed the Lord of Loss into giving him the item in the first place. Poor guy hadn’t even received anything for that gem of a growth item.

The Lady of Pale Fire, sponsor of the late Osiris Adebayo, had been his least involved sponsor to date. Dread Executor Ramiel had taken her spot for the bulk of the first meeting, which meant Will knew the least about her other than the fact that she had hated him for a while. She was, as the name suggested, pale and fiery. Quite literally. Her hair was either actively on fire or made of fire. Will couldn’t be bothered to ask which.

Ash was the last of the five sponsors that Will had initially gotten his game-changing loot from during the trial. She was the only one who’d kept her identity hidden, and she had minimized contact with him after he’d taken her skill up powders. They’d been crucially useful in keeping the corruption nuke from going off in the Beyond, but there had been no direct communication there.

Her humanoid form would have looked just as normal as Steve’s if it hadn’t been for one slight detail.

She looked exactly like Caiyeri Seven.

Someone’s been watching, Will thought. There were a few details that were different on closer inspection—her aura, obviously, and her ears were more human than elf—but it was scarily accurate. There was a message in this, he was sure.

Will chose to ignore it. He was far too deep into this shit to let a basic mind game like this mess with him. He was tempted to tell her that she should have tried to at least replicate the elf’s natural aura if she was going to try to mess with him, but that would be a reaction. He wasn’t planning on giving any of these fuckers anything more than he wanted to give them.

“I’d say it’s lovely to meet you all again, but my parents didn’t raise a liar,” he said. “What did you bring me here for?”

“Don’t play coy, boy,” Ash said, amused. She hadn’t tried to mimic Caiyeri’s voice, either—she still had the same vaguely southern drawl she’d had the first time they’d met. “You called us, not the other way ‘round.”

“Is that so?” Will asked.

“I recognize that you want control over the conversation,” Ash replied drily, “but you don’t need that here. Haven’t you seen that clear by now?”

“Guess so.” Will shrugged, looking across the rest of the room. 

Their auras still threatened an incredible amount of power, but they didn’t seem to be entirely comfortable in these representations with the exception of Steve, who was currently carefully unwrapping a muffin to keep crumbs from getting on his tie. These were beings who had grown so used to being something more than mortal. While they weren’t gods, not quite, Will understood by now that it was a stretch to classify sovereign-tier beings in the same class as a regular human pre-system.

He decided to join Steve. There was an open buffet-looking thing here, after all. Whoever was running the place had very helpfully set up an array of foodstuffs that would be edible by anyone from unformed to emperor. Will selected a platinum-ranked pastry that somewhat resembled a macaron. It was delicious, of course, but it was tasty in a plastic-wrapped bag of M&Ms way and not the kind he had been missing for a while.

Cooking probably wasn’t much of a concern to anyone at this rank if they didn’t have a class specially suited to it. The real benefit of this was the mana, anyway, surging through his veins like he’d just pumped three Monsters.

“I would advise you take this seriously,” Love said. She didn’t seem very happy with him, but that was a fair step above where she’d been at the end of last time. “This wasn’t cheap, you know.”

“I’m well aware,” Will said through a mouth full of macaron. He swallowed before continuing. “I wouldn’t be wasting your time if I wasn’t having any fun with it. Anyway, I did do this for a reason.”

Ash hadn’t been wrong. Tilting the balance of power in his favor by knocking the game board over, so to speak, was his favorite method of dealing with beings greater than him. He’d done so against these five before, but that didn’t mean it was still in his favor.

“As I’m sure you’re aware,” Will said, pocketing a few more items from the buffet table into his inventory as he spoke, “Someone is interfering with my dungeons.”

“It’s a sponsor group blockade,” Steve explained, adjusting his glasses. “A number of others with claims upon the same cycle have gathered enough votes to influence the mechanisms of said cycle.”

“Thank you.” Will sighed, exasperated. “See how easy that was? I didn’t even need to threaten anybody for this?”

“I was informed by my superiors that appeasement within reasonable bounds was the policy,” Steve said. “I’m not paid enough to put personal feelings or threats into it.”

“You could have asked,” the Lady of Pale Fire said.

“No, I couldn’t have. You would’ve gotten pissed because the User you actually liked sacrificed himself to save seven hundred million people. Ash has done her level best to not talk to me at all. Love here doesn’t even tell Lily Teneli anything, and that’s one of the Users she chose to sponsor. Don’t even get me started on old bones here.”

“I have a name,” the Lord of Loss gravelled.

“Yeah, but it’s a fucking lame one and the abbreviation is the same as League of Legends, which I absolutely can’t stomach. I’m here because I want answers, you lot of dipshits. And Steve.”

The representative from the Order of the Striker might’ve cracked a grin at that, but he returned to his business demeanor quickly. “Answers, you say.”

“The Contractor is my primary concern right now,” Will said. “Let me amend that. My primary concern is Peace, but she’s working through a gold-ranker by the name of the Contractor. Said Contractor is playing the same game you are. I haven’t had a chance to partake in a while, and I’m starting to realize I’m behind.”

“Impossible,” Pale Fire scoffed. “You mean to claim that the coalition is the work of a gold-ranker? These are Ladies and Princesses. A gold-ranker is little more than an ant to us.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m a lot more than an ant to you. The Contractor seems to be similar.”

“It’s not impossible,” Steve noted. “The coalition has, in fact, been a subject of interest. There has been some change in activity in intergalactic skirmishes between certain factions that suggests there is a coalition forming specifically to counter our group.”

“Your group,” Will said, turning the words over in his head. “I’m going to take it that you don’t mean the Order of the Striker.”

“No,” Steve confirmed. “The organization that I represent along with the houses that the others here lead have become grouped under one umbrella.”

“Me,” Will guessed.

“You,” the Lord of Loss rasped. His voice, as always, was to Will’s ears as fresh dog shit would have been to his mouth. “I have been tempted to cancel our contract many a time, painful as it would be.”

“Who’s on the other side?” Will asked. “The Contractor sure as hell is going to be making use of every connection his ass has to fuck me and mine over.”

“Who?” Ash barked out a harsh laugh. “Do you know how many enemies you have, boy?”

“I’ve got enough.”

This was somewhat valuable information, at least. Intentionally or not, they’d revealed once again that this entire thing was centered on him.

It wasn’t just him, of course. That much was pretty obvious. Will didn’t only have his corruption going for him—after all, even if the element was banned, there were other corruption wielders out there.

It was the fact that his class was meant for people who would become Dread Executors and he hadn’t fallen victim to its ridiculously high mortality rate. It was the demon he’d captured in his eye. It was the gods he’d grown connected to.

Will was growing a bit sick of being a piece on the board, but he could at least try to give himself a promotion.

“Great,” he said aloud. “Then let’s see. I’m sure you’re all aware of Peace’s hate-boner for me. There’s… something like five weeks until that particular problem pops.”

“Seems likely,” Ash said.

“Now, I’m not a gambling man,” Will started.

“This is incorrect,” Steve interjected. He opened a holographic screen midair and displayed it to Will, showing him a spreadsheet with half a dozen charts and a ton of what appeared to be video footage attached to it. “We have you on record either gambling and proclaiming your fondness for games of chance eighty-seven separate times.”

“Okay, I might be a bit of a gambling man,” Will conceded. “I guess that makes it more characteristic for me to put a bet here: the second the Contractor’s plan goes through, the coalition that’s set up against you is going to take action against your group. There’s something stopping them right now, isn’t there?”

“So you think you can play the game,” Love sneered.

“I don’t think I can. I know I have to. It’s not just my life on the line here.”

“You seem to think that you’re something particularly special,” she fired back. “Do you know how difficult it would be to break a contract?”

“I was under the impression that breaking a contract you made would come with a great deal of backlash.” Will tilted his head. “Was I wrong?”

There was a brief, awkward silence.

“You are not incorrect,” Steve said.

“Thank you, Steve.”

“That said,” he continued, “the backlash is not insurmountable from our side, especially as sponsors. There are many records of sponsors dropping Users at a critical moment or otherwise manipulating them into a lethal spot.”

“Less thank you, Steve, but I do appreciate it.”

“It would be like scraping a knee,” Love said. “Barely an inconvenience.”

Will ignored her. “Hey, Steve, can I actually eat those muffins? They look better than the shit you’ve got for plats and golds.”

“You could,” Steve said. “Other than some minor gastric discomfort, most of the excess mana would just be dispersed into your aura and then outwards.”

“Dope. Can you throw me one?”

Steve shrugged, then gestured. A muffin shot into the air from the buffet plate, arcing towards Will. It landed perfectly in his open hand.

“Corruption wielder,” Love hissed. “We are talking.”

“Oh, what was that?” Will asked. “Not used to getting the same amount of respect you give? That’s a shame. Anyway. What was that?”

“I was telling you about—“

“Right, skinning a knee, yada yada yada. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not exactly the most informed on what’s going on. You aren’t willing to tell me why the coalition hasn’t attacked yet, and I’m not sure why you do what you do, but I can tell you what I’ve observed so far.”

“Do tell,” Ash said, leaning forward over a table in a way that seemed more wild predator than human.

Will repressed the urge to shiver at that. She was the only one of them that still managed to unsettle him. It was very possible that this was because she was the only one whose identity he didn’t have a solid grasp on, but she also just kept acting in this inexplicably off manner.

He gathered himself together. Will hadn’t come this far to get distracted by someone who was just a bit weird.

“You corroborate the claims that you can ditch the sponsorship at any time,” Will said. “You’ve also confirmed the fact that there’s a coalition that’s aligned against you, almost certainly because they have inside information from the Contractor about whatever arcane bullshit Peace’s ritual is going to pull off.

“Despite all of that, you’re still here. Doing that tells me that either you gain more from having me in your good graces despite the mass of forces, in which case you should really be increasing the amount of investment you have in me, or you’re lying. In which case I’m going to milk you again.”

“Let’s assume the latter,” Ash said, a twinkle in her elf-like eyes. “How exactly would you do that?”

“The latter still proves that I have value to you,” Will said. “Also, I’m not sure how much of your real power is here, but I’m sure it would still be inconvenient for you lot to watch me eat this sigil.”

“That might be true.” Ash stretched. “Or it might not be. Are you willing to try?”

“I’m willing to bet that you’re not lying to me,” Will countered. “A show of trust, if you will.”

Pale Fire laughed derisively at that. “As if a mortal’s trust matters to us.”

“It’s not my trust that I think matters,” Will said. “It’s what I mean to you. And I’m serious. We all know I’m going to be walking into a death trap soon. Do you think you’re the only people on your level planning for that? I’m sure each of you are secretly—or not-so-secretly, in bones’ case—planning on taking advantage of the chaos and making use of my power once Peace kills me, but you’d be a fucking moron to think that the Contractor, who is working with the goddess herself, hasn’t contacted the sponsors he’s working with to position them much, much better.”

“If I may humbly state my opinion,” Steve said, raising a hand. “As an individual, of course, not representing the views of the Order of the Striker.”

“Go ahead,” Will said. “You’re the only normal person here.”

“He is anything but normal,” Pale Fire said.

“You might be a bit out of touch,” Will sniped back. “Steve. You were talking?”

“I was,” Steve said, nodding appreciatively. “I do not believe we have a reason to lie. It is clear that all organizations stand to benefit from you. At the same time, the scale we operate on is greater than a cycle-bound being like you might be used to. The amount of resources one organization or being can devote to a single User is limited given the circumstances.”

“Fair play, but it sounds like you do need me.” Will crossed his arms. “And even if you think you can eat the consequences of me dying, I can assure you that it’s not going to go like you want. You know what happens if I die, right?”

“Maybe some of us want to see a demon burn down y’all and your world,” Ash suggested.

“You would’ve tried harder to kill me if you actually did,” Will dismissed. “You might be interested in a demon’s fire, but I get the idea you like having someone steering that flame for you.”

“I knew I liked you.”

“And here we are again.” Will rolled his eyes. “You know, for all this talk about liking me, I’m not seeing a lot of material getting thrown my way. It’s like when you get hospitalized for overwork and people send you thoughts and prayers instead of, I don’t know, food?”

“That sounds oddly specific,” Love said, apparently forgetting to be pissed at him in the moment. From the way her aura pulsated unfavorably when she looked at Pale Fire, it might have been something to do with how much Will was irritating someone she didn’t like. “You want resources.”

“Obviously I want resources,” Will said. “And I can already tell we’re going to have a back and forth where I threaten to blow us all up with this corrupted sigil and you call me an insignificant worm, blah blah blah. Can we skip to the part where you just figure out what you’re willing to part with when your back is to the wall? I’ll even let you try some soul torture if you want.”

Pale Fire didn’t even wait for him to finish his sentence before blowing her aura out. She was the one with the least experience with Will, having only interacted with him at the tail end of the sponsor meeting and for a brief moment when he’d been trying to save Osiris at the end of the trial of the champion.

That surprised him. Not her blasting him full-force with the aura of a Lady—that, he’d expected from at least one person. As the one least accustomed to his shenanigans, it made sense that it would be her that made the attempt.

No, the point that almost made him lose his focus was the fact that it barely hurt. He could tell she was vastly more powerful than him, yes, but…

Shattersoul. Outcast. His own experiences, night after night of clashing his soul against literal gods—it was all coming together to make that vast imbalance in power seem much more surmountable. A winnable fight? No. At the same time, though, it was almost entirely painless. The torture she had almost certainly been going for amounted to nothing.

Pale Fire’s eyes widened, her aura wavering as she realized that she wasn’t getting through.

In that waver, Will spotted an opportunity.

Any reasonable person would have assumed it was impossible. Bridging the gap between two full tiers, even with special instruction and training from a god itself? That was ridiculous. Even a single rank up was hard; this was suicide.

Will was no reasonable person. He focused his soul on that crack and pushed.

And something broke.

It wasn’t major. Will wasn’t going to reach the central soul of a Lady, even if this wasn’t her full form. But he could make a statement.

Pale Fire’s aura instantly collapsed in on her, defending her soul with the ironclad surety of a sovereign, but it was too late. They had all seen it.

Ash tilted her head back in a wild, unrestrained laugh. The Lord of Loss made a sound too, one that sounded something like glass nails on a chalkboard.

“A gold-ranker affecting a Lady,” Will said. Keep the momentum on my side. “You know what you’re buying. Now can you fucking pay?”

“I think,” Ash said, stopping to hack out another laugh. “We can do business.”