[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 117: The Two-Minute War

[Power] advanced from Silver 2 to Silver 5.

[Speed] advanced from Silver 7 to Silver 8.

[Affinity] advanced from Silver 5 to Silver 7

[Soul] advanced from Silver 6 to Silver 9.

[Perception] advanced from Silver 1 to Silver 5.

You have 8 unused skill points.

[Decaying Touch] has advanced to gold rank.

Notice: You have reached the peak of the silver rank. You have unlocked the challenges to evolve to gold. Would you like to view them? [YES / NO]

Progress to [Eternal Throne]: [209/1000] (+133) (53 silver ranks, 8 gold ranks killed)

You have entered the top 100 of the world leaderboard. Your current position is number 33 of 702,183,912.

Special quest: Pre-Impact Leaderboard

Maintain your position on the leaderboard. Eliminate threats to it.

- Stay within the top 100 of the world leaderboard.

Reward: 1,000 gold credits per day. 14 gold-rank monster cores per day.

- Bonus: Kill others on the world leaderboard. For the duration of this quest, you can see the leaderboard ranks of everyone you encounter.

Reward: varies.

Power surged through Will, the overflow of the mana he’d received still flooding him. He’d spent most of the excess he’d gained through his Death attribute on maintaining One Foot in the Grave as well as applying lightning charges across the entire city, but he’d gotten a lot.

His phantasm still roiled through the streets, Sen’s eyes remaining hidden amongst the darkness just in case anyone else got any funny ideas.

“Corruption wielder,” Yui said again. “Will. Listen to me!”

“I would be more cautious about your tone,” Aza said mildly. “In elevated states like these, any Death-aligned User finds itself much more prone to random acts of gratuitous violence, and this one is not one to trifle with.”

The Guardian Angel familiar had come down during Will’s explosion of magic. One Foot in the Grave seemed to extend some level of protection to his familiars as well, which had given them enough resistance to the suppression field to enter its area of effect.

“I’m fine, thank you very much,” Will said, glaring at the angelic offshoot of a Dread Executor. “You don’t need to make me sound like a deranged axe murderer.”

“I would never imply that,” Aza replied. “You no longer use an axe.”

“Ha ha. To answer your question, Yui: I crossed a line.”

“Crossed a line,” she repeated.

“Yeah. One I set for myself without ever really realizing it, I think. See, I’ve been working this entire time acting like we were still human, but we’re all a little more than that, aren’t we? Those of us who’ve made it to where we are now kill without a second thought. We pretend to care about the same rules that governed us before the end, but the moment someone turns their back, they can expect a knife in it. If we’re all going to be monsters dressed up in human skin, I might as well stop pretending.”

“Bravo,” Liam said drily, completely unimpaired by the phantasm thanks to his lack of vision in the first place. “That really helps with the impression that we’re not working with the most evil person this side of the planet.”

“I would have put it differently, but I don’t entirely disagree,” Natalie said. “More to the point, could you please get this out of the way? I’d like to be able to see.”

“Oh, right,” Will said. He gestured, sending the hunger phantasm in his immediate area back into his shadow. “There. Better?”

The more powerful end of the Peace sigil-holders had all teleported themselves out before he could affect them, including whoever had been messing with the suppression field, so when he peeled back the phantasm, he saw that the sky had returned to its natural blue instead of the crimson mess it had been before.

Yui: This conversation is not over. If your other allies do not know what happened, that is alright, but I can see exactly what you did.

Will: Didn’t need to ask me what I did if you could see it then, no?

Yui: I wanted to see if you were in your own right mind. You weren’t. You appear to be so now.

Will frowned. He was pretty sure he’d been in control of his faculties the entire time. The fact that he could clearly remember every tick of the second hand of the city’s clock tower and what he was doing at the same time lent credence to that.

Then again, killing that many people had been entirely too easy. Not in the literal sense—a fair few of them had thrown up rather powerful defensive skills that he’d only managed to get through with corruption—but in how simple it had been to condemn them to death. Will wouldn’t have felt bad about doing it either way, but this time, it had felt so right.

Will recalled that his Death attribute enhanced his magic when he was in “certain mental states.” For most of the time he’d had the attribute, he hadn’t been entirely sure about what that meant, but if there was ever a frame of mind that he thought was appropriate for the boost, it had been just now.

Will: I did what I had to. Whatever Peace’s plan was for the short-term, it’s not going to work, and everyone who was actively trying to kill us is dead or gone.

Yui: That is true. You have also elevated your threat status in the eyes of every otherworlder here.

Will: Whatever. If they only started caring now, they haven’t been paying attention.

“Yo, Will!” Nathan shouted, hitting the ground right next to him. “Why didn’t you do that sooner? That was sick!”

Will just stared at him.

“Nathan…” Yui said.

“Ah, shit.”

Will sighed. “I’m going to leave you two to it. This isn’t over, not by a long shot. I have a suspicion as to where the next point of interest is going to be—the next three points, actually.”

“You’re leaving?” Natalie asked.

“Yeah, probably. There’s nothing left for me here. I don’t want to bother with politics where every single play involves someone trying to kill or capture me. Nobody seems to actually want to discuss what they’re doing, anyway. If we can’t even get that far, I don’t think any productive conversation about what the second impact even is will happen.”

“Fair,” she said. “I was thinking the same, really.”

“Where are you going?” Hua asked.

“Joining up with some others,” Will replied. “Caiyeri’s in the Mount Everest superdungeon alongside a couple people I know.”

His notifications were still exploding, he noticed, though it wasn’t just from the level-up notifications. Will did want to get around to addressing what he’d gotten from the mass murder of everyone in his way, but that could wait for a while.

Everyone and their mother seeemed to want to open a chat request with him. Will skimmed through them, though most of the messages followed the same format of demanding to know what he’d just done and then not-so-politely requesting him to come work for their nation. He ignored most of them. They were petty requests from factions that knew they couldn’t handle him.

There were a few from people that he had actually interacted with.

Regina: You know, they’re already giving this disaster a name. You’re going to be in the history books, assuming that someone ever writes another one. “The Two Minute War.” I like it. It’s very menacing. I’d say something about the ESNA’s doors being open to you, but you and I both know how things work at this level. Let’s not interfere with each other’s business.

Will still had his reservations when it came to the topic of dealing with Regina, but he was more than open to leaving her alone if she was going to do the same.

Assuming she was genuine about that. She was one of the few Users that Will genuinely had no good intel on thanks to her supernatural anti-surveillance abilities, and he got the impression that there was a lot more to her sudden reign than met the eye, especially given how organized the ESNA was.

An issue for later, hopefully. The ESNA wasn’t an enemy—yet—and he hoped they wouldn’t become one.

Lu Jie: I am aware that I have declared enmity against you before. I am henceforth fully retracting from this. I do not expect this to be honored, but even Fan Laozi respects your strength. This is not a blood debt worth fighting for. There are worthier causes for me.

The second message, on the other hand, was actually surprising. Will had seen Lu Jie continue to declare his enmity for him, and though he’d thought he could make an ally out of the Chinese silver-ranker yet, he hadn’t expected the man to retract the declaration of war himself.

Something must have changed.

Will: What happened? Besides the part where I blew up half the city, I mean. That clearly hasn’t stopped you so far.

It took a bit, but he did end up getting a response on that front.

Lu Jie: My sister. Xie-ren. Her sigil is Peace.

Will: Oh.

He hadn’t paid much attention to Lu Jie’s faction, since they weren’t a major enough player to bother with. Sure, they’d tried to assassinate them, but that just put them in the company of many, many failed attempts on his life.

Will did remember Xie-ren, though. She had been one of the top 16 in the trial of the champion, which at least spoke to some level of base competence with her magic, but she had never stood out to him. The Peace coalition had largely done their own thing during the invasion of the corruption cultists, and so long as they weren’t getting in Will’s way, he hadn’t bothered dealing with them.

He hadn’t actually considered the ramifications of Xie-ren and Lu Jie being siblings. In his defense, there had been more significant worries at hand.

Will: Is there anything I can help you with?

Lu Jie: Help? Why are you asking that? I tried to kill you.

Will: That puts you in pretty good company. If you’re not going to try to kill me or mine from here on out, you’re strong and decent enough of a person to work with. I can forgive an assassination attempt or three. I have, actually.

As a matter of fact, the “ally” he was currently planning on picking up was one that had tried to kill him three… wait, no four? Five? Okay, it was some undetermined high number of times. Will was honestly a little uncertain about his tendency to forgive some beings he found redeemable while executing others on the spot, but all he could do was use his best judgment.

Lu Jie: All I ask is that you not kill her if you find her. We grew up together. I would like to at least be able to say goodbye to her if she is truly gone.

Will: Sure thing. No promises.

Lu Jie: Of course not.

Lu Jie: Oh, a word of warning, young master. It’s about Fan Laozi, the otherworlder I work with.

Will: He wants me dead? Wouldn’t be the first one.

Lu Jie: Worse. I think he wants to learn from you.

Will: …isn’t he a gold ranker?

Lu Jie: Yes. He is rather persistent about everything.

Will: I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.

What a pain. Will had been ready for someone to try to come after him again, but for a purpose like this?

Best to wash his hands of it.

That was pretty much what he’d been planning on doing at this point anyway, so that worked for him.

“Natalie, Hua, Liam,” Will said. “I assume you three have things to do back home?”

“I do,” Natalie said. “You kind of upset what we wanted to do here, and I doubt the summit is going to function as originally intended now. I’d rather not leave home undefended for too long.”

Hua’s response was a little different. “I’m not sure. There’s not much left for me to fight for.”

“I’m going unless you’re not,” Liam told her. “Someone’s gotta look after you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means, miss. If there’s nobody to pull you back, you’re not coming home one of these days.”

“Home? What does that even mean at this point?”

Will got the impression that he’d walked into an ongoing conversation that he didn’t quite have the right to be a part of, so he cleared his throat.

“If any of you want to join me, I’m going to be hitting America for a short period of time to pick up a… friend of mine. Then, I’ll source a plane from somewhere and go to Everest.”

“I’m going,” Nathan said, practically tearing himself away from Yui’s vicinity. “I’ll just fly directly in, though. Why can’t you do that, again? I can take a few people.”

“You can take me,” Yui suggested sweetly. Her aura burned with the embers of an anger that she’d clearly mostly gotten over.

“Maybe another time,” Nathan hedged, his voice half an octave higher than usual. “You can make it there under your own power, anyway. You won’t need me for that.”

Will: Yui. Nathan won’t tell me shit about what happened between the two of you. Is it going to be a problem? I really don’t want to deal with this, but if it’s going to make you two attack each other…

Yui: Ha. A problem, maybe. Nothing lethal, though. Our separation was a mutual agreement. He had towers he wanted to climb, I had a kingdom to overthrow… I found my goals more important than his. He seems to have not gotten over it as entirely.

Will: If that’s all, then whatever. Please don’t escalate it.

Yui: We are both mature enough adults to put the fate of the world before our own priorities. I hope.

Will: I wouldn’t call Nathan mature.

Yui: In some ways, he is not. In the ways that matter, he is.

Will: If you say so.

“How are you planning on getting everyone else to North America?” Hua asked. “I don’t remember you having a long-range portal power that works for other people.”

“I’ll come back to Geneva,” Will said. “Might take a bit, depending. Are you thinking about coming?”

“We can make our own way to Everest,” Liam said. “At least, probably. Our leaders want to be relevant pretty bloody bad. I’m sure they can spare some transportation for us.”

“They were willing to send us here to do nothing, so I’m sure they’ll be alright with handing a plane off to send us to our deaths,” Hua said. “As long as it makes them look good.”

“Well, you can shoot me a chat message if you decide to go,” Will said. “I’m kind of sick of this place, though. If anyone bothers you, just tell them they’ll have to answer to me.”

With that said, he got to casting. Since he wasn’t under strict time pressure for once, he actually went through the full process of putting the pieces together for the Sanctuary ritual and activating it.

Natalie bid him farewell while he was setting it up, the only one of their group to commit to leaving. He could respect that. The world had problems, and she’d chosen to focus on the ones facing her people first.

Everyone else in his makeshift group, unfortunately even including Lily, didn’t have that. Liam, as far as Will could tell, had been abandoned by his own unit. Hua had lost the rest of her family. Yui and Nathan had both crossed out of Will’s world and back into it, losing everyone twice. Lily… well, she was enough of a murderous sociopath that Will doubted she had many friends to start with.

It wasn’t a terrible selection of people to be among, at least. Though they had no real training with each other—and indeed, not even a formal alliance—Will was pretty confident that they could take on the elite forces of essentially any major nation, the ESNA possibly excluded.

Well, other than Lily, who had tagged along only because she didn’t present enough of an active threat to any of them for him to consider killing outright.

Will wasn’t actually sure why she was still here, to be honest, but it didn’t look like she had anywhere better to be.

As the ritual completed, Will considered the one message request he hadn’t already either addressed or actively chosen to ignore.

???: Fair play. Looks like you’re finally on the board.

Before he could even start to bother trying to figure out what that meant, Will stepped into the Beyond.

Ayla was waiting for him this time, though not Nynn. Will gladly accepted the metaphysical hand she extended, anchoring himself onto the relatively luxurious sanctuary she’d created.

Her form was shifting less than usual today, which Will couldn’t tell was a good or a bad thing.

“You’ve been busy,” she said simply. There was a note of… was that pride in her voice? “Almost to gold and it hasn’t even been two months.”

“Killed a lot of people to get to this point,” Will replied grimly. “Dust hasn’t settled yet, but I’m sure not all of them deserved it.”

“Plenty of people who don’t deserve death die.” Ayla waved a pseudopod as if to dismiss his concerns, though it transformed into an arm halfway through. “Most who die during a cycle are like that, actually. I saw enough. Guilt is a waste of time for you.”

“I know,” Will said. “I figure it’s something I should hold onto, though.”

The truth was that he was struggling to find an ounce of guilt for the bodies he’d created. Justifications aside, he just… didn’t care. They were more red on an ever-increasing list of names, and at a certain point, Will couldn’t be bothered to assess the motivations of the people that had tried to kill him this time.

“It’s good to try to remain true to yourself, but you’re going to realize eventually that you abandoned any pretense of being the same person you once were a while ago, biped,” Ayla said.

“So I’ve gathered,” Will said drily. “Is there anything else you’ve got to add, or…”

“Do you think I’d waste valuable strength just to give you a pep talk?”

“Maybe?”

“Please. If you were just going to whine all day and despair about yourself, you wouldn’t have made it out of the tutorial. No, I’m here because I’m hearing reactions from the gods.”

Will raised an eyebrow. “You? I thought you were in a dead zone.”

“I have my ways,” Ayla said mildly. “It doesn’t take a genius to see that the landscape is changing.”

“How so? And more importantly, does this actually concern me?”

“Of course it concerns you,” Ayla said. “As far as I’m aware, you might have just become the single most important living being across two planets. Again.”

Will laughed, then trailed off when Ayla didn’t say anything else.

“You’re serious.”

“Yes. Now let me explain before I run out of energy and you go off and get yourself killed, okay?”

“I’m listening.”