[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 147: T Minus One Month

Select your treasure below:

- [Gravity Manipulator] (gold)

- [Inverted Boots] (gold)

- [Topsy-Turvy Grenade] (gold) x3 + gold-rank health and mana potions (x10)

- Full reset + platinum-rank health and mana potion + 1,000 gold credits

Will whistled. The challenge dungeon rewards were on the level of late-game rewards in the trial of the champion. To be fair, he was pretty sure the latter scaled to when in the cycle the trial occurred, and he was well aware just how early this one had happened. Still, this was no small reward.

Then again, he couldn’t always assume he’d be the fastest person on the leaderboard. This room had been particularly easy for him because it had turned out that the rocks were also living organisms and therefore susceptible to corruption. There was no guarantee the rest of the rooms in this dungeon would be similarly easy.

It was also pretty doubtful that he’d be able to make it to the end of it. Gold-rank challenge dungeons got into platinum-rank difficulty pretty quickly, and though Will was reasonably sure he could cheese a win or two out against monsters not just a rank but a tier higher than him, he doubted his ability to do so for extended periods of time, especially if the difficulty was going to continue ramping up. Once it hit emerald, it was surely going to be a no-go.

He’d take the wins where he could get them, though. Will hadn’t used a lot of the loot he’d gotten since the trial of the champion—Eclipse’s ability to recycle skills from people he’d killed combined with a restriction on the amount of armor he was able to use meant that he’d largely just stuck with his one sword and assorted skills to fight.

Items had been an integral part of Will’s early fighting style, though, and he’d seen firsthand just how devastating some of them could be. It couldn’t hurt to collect a few.

Item: [Gravity Manipulator]

Very rare, gold

A common weapon in more civilized worlds. Some call this a more humane way to kill than a projectile. Ask anyone killed by a thousand-foot fall if they consider that “humane”.

Fires a gold-rank beam that can be resisted. A successful hit allows the user of this weapon to change the gravitational forces being exerted on the target by a magnitude of up to a unit that translates to roughly 21.484291 Gs for as long as the beam continues tracking the target. Resisting the beam grows easier the further the target is from the beam.

Will frowned. “Isn’t that copyrighted?”

Well, he hadn’t played the game he was pretty sure his idea of a gravity gun had come from. The appearance of the item on the system screen looked more like an Earth assault rifle than anything akin to a weapon he’d expect out of a post-apocalyptic science fiction shooter game.

Concerns about the system stealing from old games (or vice versa) aside, this was a decent weapon for someone not named William Li-Brown. The problem with this item was that—at least in this cycle—there sure were a whole lot of enemies for whom a several thousand foot fall would be no trouble at all.

Ayla: That item’s trash.

Will: Thought so. Is it usually?

Ayla: It’s usually pretty solid, but still not an amazing choice. On any other planet, that would probably be a common item, though an expensive one. Your cycle has an absurdly high rate of extreme movement skills being handed out a lot earlier than usual. Disproportionately so.

Will: Yeah, cycle’s fucked, blah blah blah, been there killed that. Let me read the rest of these.

Item: [Inverted Boots]

Very rare, gold

Mostly popular with delinquent youths and microgravity parkour champions, these boots are perfect for running on walls and/or breaking your neck trying to run on walls.

Carries a charge that steadily depletes when active. While active, the user’s personal gravity is shifted such that any surface they are running on is considered to be “down.” If the user is not currently standing on a surface, their personal gravity is shifted towards the nearest solid object.

Okay, this one was a lot neater. They were a little goofy-looking, sure, but that had never stopped Will.

Ayla: The look reminds me of Sonic.

“You can’t have played those games,” Will said. “Surely their impact on human culture wasn’t that significant.”

Ayla: We had a lot of free time to prepare for the Earth cycle. It was one of the longer gaps between them.

He thought about replying to that out loud, but judging from the amount of passive magic in here, it was reasonable to assume he was being watched.

Will: I do recall you saying you spent 75 years up there. How much of that was spent waiting for Earth?

Ayla: About 10, which is a lot more prep than we got for most of the other ones.

More disquieting information about the cycle and Ayla’s personal predicament in that respect, but nothing that Will could act on right now. He had a lingering suspicion that the system organization that had ostensibly stayed in the shadows thus far was not quite as hands-off as Ayla had claimed, but it was clear that he was nowhere near the power required to do anything about it.

Besides, he had his own fires to put out first.

The last gold-rank item was a grenade with colorful polka dots plastering so much of it that it was impossible to tell what the original color was.

Item: [Topsy-Turvy Grenade]

Very rare, gold (consumable)

Useful for making an escape or causing an incredible amount of chaos. Getting caught in the midst of one of these is typically lethal for anyone without specialized self-sustain or durability skills.

You can define a blast radius between 1 and 1,000 feet when activating this grenade, which can be detonated at range.

Gravity is fully randomized at random intervals inside the blast radius. This effect lasts for 24 hours or until dispelled.

“Really sticking with the anti-gravity theme, huh?”

As a one-time use item, it made sense why there were more of these offered than the other, permanent ones. The description certainly sounded powerful—Will himself wasn’t sure if he’d want to be caught in one of these, especially if he got caught out without his boons.

That said, he wasn’t sure this was the best choice. He was a fan of dropping grenades, and the wide range on these certainly seemed helpful, but they’d also help him exactly three times. They were an unconventional way to attack people, sure, but so was corruption.

On the other hand, it was definitely better than the gravity manipulation gun. Using the gun just sent people flying, while the grenade had a good chance of tearing someone apart if they were caught in the effect.

It was a toss-up between the boots and the grenade—the former was more generally useful and could add more dimensionality to his existing movement, but he already had a ton of options when it came to that kind of thing.

Ayla: Flip a coin or hurry up. You don’t have forever.

Will sighed. She wasn’t wrong. Though they were free for the time being, the point of the challenge dungeons was to run them quickly and run them often so that Will’s party could grind their way up their ranks.

The Contractor was still active, and every second Will had was also a second that asshole could make use of. He hadn’t heard a peep out of the man in a while, which was more cause for suspicion.

Will flipped a coin.

#

It had been a challenging few months for the Contractor, but he could not have been happier with the developments.

As with many of those who had been banished to another world and back, his skills were perfectly suited towards monitoring a great deal of land under one set of eyes. His contracts made it trivial to keep track of what was happening throughout his territory.

Ever since he had been abruptly withdrawn from his other planet when he’d been so close to greatness there, the Contractor had been pushing to re-establish himself here—and so he had.

Across just over five months back on his home planet, he had taken control of a fair chunk of the country he’d been born in. If the map of the United States from before the apocalypse had remained anywhere near accurate, roughly forty percent of the continental states were now under his control alongside large chunks of what had been Canada and some of Mexico.

There had been resistance, of course. The ESNA was the largest roadblock to total domination, but there were a number of military and governmental units who had stayed together through the tutorial and the ensuing phases of this cycle, some of them proving to require the Contractor’s personal attentions to oversee.

With the kind of patrons he had, though, said holdouts typically did not last long against what he could bring to bear. He was never unhappy to see one of those, either. Peace was always looking for new recruits.

Besides, the Contractor didn’t need the world. He just needed enough.

Even now, one part of his mind was dedicated to handling the complex interplay of his underlings, managing the logistics of running an empire. Whether or not said empire had the conditions necessary to be a great one was relatively immaterial to him; no, what mattered was that he had one.

After all, he had much bigger fish to fry.

The gold-ranker, one of a growing group of individuals who had learned how to remove themselves from the leaderboard, looked down upon the summoning circle he had wrought. Hidden from the outside world by a force so powerful that not even a sigil could peek into it without permission, Peace’s angel continued to grow. It was near completion now, and the raw power coming off of it was such that even in its unfinished state, it was only several unique parts of the Contractor’s own magic that was keeping him from simply disintegrating in its presence.

This was still just the first step. It was a massive first step, no doubt, but the real game would come afoot when this masterstroke was finally complete.

As if it had been waiting for his thoughts to get to this point, a message reached him.

[Name hidden by sponsor request]: Contractor. You presume much, reaching out when you are yet on your level.

The man in question grinned, conjuring another cigar. I have you right where I want you.

???: I know enough to tell you that your impression of me isn’t quite complete. Feel free to back out of the meeting, but I’ll have you know that you aren’t the only interested party on my list, Drowned Ghosts.

[Name hidden by sponsor request]: You should not know that title.

???: Yeah.

That was usually the breaking points for the ones he was reaching out to. 

Sure enough, the request came in within the minute.

[The Lord of Drowned Ghosts] requests a meeting. Accept? [YES / NO]

An acceptance took the Contractor through a space-time tunnel that he had grown familiar with.

Corruption wielders weren’t the only ones who knew of the Beyond.

Like most of his tier, the Lord of Drowned Ghosts was not present in person. The meeting he presented was in a venue he had created—fittingly, a small, transparent space that looked out onto a submerged cemetery—and the being that the Contractor was to speak to was nothing more than a proxy.

It was well done, of course. If it wasn’t for experience, it would have been impossible for a gold-ranker like the Contractor to even understand that the being he was facing right now wasn’t the Lord himself. It was a high gem-tier creation, but the raw force it exuded was so great that anyone without a great deal of high-tier experience wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

“Please,” the Contractor said, opening the conversation. “You don’t need to tone yourself down. I am perfectly capable of withstanding your true presence.”

The copy in front of him, a veiled seven-foot man with nearly translucent skin and glowing bones, tilted its head. Its mouth—more of a maw, really—opened.

“What makes you think,” it rasped, “that you are worthy of my full attention?”

“My backers, of course,” the Contractor said pleasantly. “And a number of facts that I’m sure you are already aware of.”

“Do enlighten me.”

“Of course,” he continued, ignoring the power of the aura pressing down on him. “You’re aware of the corruption wielder?”

That wasn’t even a question. Everyone on this planet and several others had heard of the man. How could they not? William Li-Brown was arguably not just the most influential User in the country but possibly the entire cycle. The Contractor knew enough to tell that it had been a long time since any corruption wielder had made it out of the tutorial.

“I am aware,” the copy of the Lord of Drowned Ghosts said, a hint of anger entering his voice.

“Killed one of your sponsored, didn’t he? What was it again?”

“Lance,” the copy said. “A promising one. He would have been invaluable in certain gem-tier conflicts.”

“Shame. You’re aware of his alliances, yes?”

“Unfortunately. Five others of my caliber, including the Order of the Striker. A non-aggression agreement. How do you know this?”

“Pays to have friends in high places,” the Contractor said. “Low ones, too. I’m sure not many of you thought that before this cycle.”

“You had an offer to make,” the Lord said. “If you are going to do nothing but waste my time, I suggest you make it or leave before you find your internal organs less internal than you would like.”

“If you want me to show you courtesy,” the Contractor said, putting his legs up on the table between them, “Do me the same. I’m not dealing with a simulacrum.”

A flash of magic swept through the room, and the atmosphere notably changed. The living skeleton’s flesh melted away, the bone structure seemingly walking out of its shell of flesh before regenerating everything that had dissipated. The magic pressure from its aura went from oppressive to powerful enough to stop any gold-ranker from breathing in an instant.

“There we go.” The Contractor smiled, withdrawing his legs and putting out his cigar. “Now we can do business.”

“The offer.” Even an idiot could tell that the sovereign-tier’s patience was running out.

“Of course. You might be aware by now, but a couple major gods have agreed to be my sigils for the time being.”

"Peace, Fate, and their associates. We are aware. It is an impressive feat, but nothing that far out of the ordinary. Certainly not enough to warrant you calling upon someone of my power.”

“Except I did.” The Contractor smiled, remembering to engage the right muscles in his face to make it a genuine one. “See, the corruption wielder messed up. You could say that’s because he’s made a whole lot of enemies, which he has, but that’s not it. You’re familiar with plausibility, right?”

“You do not become a Lord without this knowledge.”

“Perfect. Our little corruption wielder here tried a bit too hard to open up his power and accidentally opened up the floodgates for Peace, Fate and I to start a little project of their own. One that’ll sap up all his power.”

“You think much of yourself.”

“I know what I can do, and I know the ritual I’m using. This is a lot bigger than some half-hearted attempt at killing a gold-ranker who can punch above his weight. Have you ever been able to stop an angel?”

At the word angel, the Lord of Drowned Ghosts tensed, his aura turning lethal. “That is forbidden magic.”

“Not when it’s a god doing it,” the Contractor countered. “It also won’t stop you from entering into a contract with me. Those who began the ritual are now dead, after all. The only rulebreakers have already been punished.”

“You have answers prepared, but you have yet to explain a single reason as to why I should care.”

And so the trap was set. “That’s simple. Once the power is absorbed, my faction will be the one with the strength of that User’s power and potential, alongside an angel whose plausibility will be considered perfectly acceptable for the cycle.”

“You mean to push yourself into the gem tier,” the Lord said, quickly realizing the implications the Contractor had laid out. “You mean to launch your planet into a stage where it is ready for a new kind of warfare.”

“Something like that. Notably, the groups who formed a sort of bloc around their potential to be allied with the corruption wielder in future cycles will no longer have a reason to be together. In that case…”

“Chaos,” the Lord said. “A gold-ranker should absolutely not have this kind of detailed information.”

“You’re not the first one to see opportunity,” the Contractor said. “And let me tell you this: there’s plenty of people out there who are willing to risk a contract with someone like me.”

“So you say.”

“And so I do. I’m not asking for much. I’ve already given you a good deal just by telling you as much as I have so far. It’s an opportunity. All I’m asking for is some cooperation. When the dice fall and the corruption wielder’s bloc disappears, I want you to leave the Order of the Striker for me.”

“Ambitious, aren’t we?”

More than you will ever know. On the other planet, the Contractor had come so close to greatness. He had been on the edge of worming his way into a position typically held by diamond-rankers when he’d been thrown back.

His ambitions didn’t stop at this planet. The corruption wielder was a major player, but more than that—he was an opportunity. The Contractor knew how the game was played, and he fully intended to take himself off the board as soon as possible.

“Realistic, I’d like to say. Would you like to discuss details?”

Far below them, back on the planet, an angel’s consciousness began to stir.