[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 105: Rising Interest Rates (The Fun Kinds)

You have advanced to Silver 6! 2 attribute points gained.

A number of system messages scrolled past Will’s eyes, some of them less comprehensible than the others, but his language skill slowly translated them.

Not for the first time, he wondered how much Omnilingual actually lived up to its own name. He’d had a sneaking suspicion for some time that it didn’t work on languages spread by those who were significantly stronger than him. The demon’s language hadn’t transferred perfectly, and there had been a lot of mistranslation incidents with other similarly powerful beings.

Sadareth was among them, it seemed. Whatever she’d just done to him, not all of the effects were entirely clear.

The results were easy to understand, at least.

Condition: [Blessing of the Elven Mother]

User [William Li-Brown]’s actions have been recognized by [Sadareth, the Elven Mother].

- This is a permanent condition. This condition modifies your racial traits.

- Racial detection skills will identify you as [Elf] as well as [Human].

- You now have unrestricted access to elven temples.

- Your attributes align closer with your body, enabling greater performance with the same levels.

- Your body is now aligned closer to your soul.

- Your soul is now marked by this blessing.

- [REMOVED]

Will was a touch concerned about some of the bits he couldn’t comprehend yet, but for the most part, this seemed like a straight upgrade.

“I need a mirror,” Will muttered. “I hope she didn’t completely change how I look.”

Briefly poking his ears told him that those were still human, at least, which was good. Will didn’t think he would have coped too well with a goddess forcibly changing his body.

The body-soul alignment aspect was interesting, but he didn’t have a surface reflective enough to get a good idea of what he looked like. All of the weapons he regularly used either absorbed most of the light aimed at them or glowed in some fashion or another.

“Downsides of getting the edgiest power set to exist on this planet,” Will complained. He closed his eyes, then paused. “Wait. I literally have a way to look at myself. Am I stupid?”

Through Sen, he observed himself from more angles than necessary. It was just a little creepy to see his entire body like he was a 3D model, but it got the point across.

Will had never particularly paid much attention to his appearance, putting in just enough effort to keep himself presentable. Over the years, he’d picked up minor nicks and scars, with the latter increasing in frequency after he’d started regularly engaging in death-defying combat.

He hadn’t even noticed how weathered he’d been getting until now. His skin was perfectly smooth now, and there was a vibrance to it that hadn’t been there before.

“I could be a living ad for a skincare brand. Do elves even need skincare? I look kind of like Caiyeri, and I don’t think she even has a routine.”

The body-soul alignment had affected almost all aspects of him, fixing his appearance in bits and pieces in ways he had never noticed.

His eyes were no exception, although he demonic one remained the same, which made sense. In order to save the world, Will had sacrificed a piece of his soul bound to his eye, and with that part still missing, of course his body wouldn’t know how to change that.

That was his right eye. The left one had changed away from its former brown. The pupil and iris were the same color now, a void black that seemed to sparkle faintly with stars. The whites, fortunately, were unchanged.

“Now I have two anime eyes,” Will muttered. “If it weren’t for how damn cool that was, I’d be complaining.”

His attributes had gained the elven racial trait, which made them more effective than other races would be at the same ranks and levels. Will’s body, soul, and senses felt almost like they had when he had advanced to silver rank. Though the effect was significantly less pronounced than it had been then, he could still feel the way his senses were sharper. Mana seemed to flow easier through his body.

Will would have to experiment with his new trait a little more, but he wanted to take a look at the skill as well.

Skill: [Guardian Angel]

- Familiar (radiance, protection).

- Cost: extreme mana. 10,000 silver credits. 100 silver-rank Monster Cores or equivalent.

- Cooldown: none.

Silver

Warning: this skill does not summon an angel. You do not want to summon angels for the same reason you do not want to summon demons. The system takes no responsibility for the propensity of certain factions naming themselves after real, world-shaking threats.

Please ignore that the system determined the name of this skill. This skill was named based on the conceptions of your planet. The system takes no responsibility for poor cultural taste.

Summons a silver-rank humanoid avatar. This familiar is corporeal and continuous.

[Radiant Shield] - This familiar can create a protective barrier around you and your allies using its body.

The remaining skills will depend on the familiar summoned.

“Damn,” Will said. “Wish I had a bit more info than that to go off of, but I guess it works? I have no idea how this works with the Balance theme, though.”

He had the materials to summon a silver-rank familiar already. After he’d spent quite a bit of time clearing out silver-rank dungeons on his path towards the life elves, Will had killed more than enough silver-rank monsters to give him the necessary cores to summon the familiar, and the credits he’d gotten from his sponsors were valuable enough that he wasn’t going to need to even think about money for a very, very long time.

Will began activating the skill.

Just like the ritual to summon Sen, he needed to set the cores around him and ritual cast the skill. The summoning chant for this one was less evil, at least.

“Radiant realm, hear my plea. Balance that which breaks the world. For every darkness, there is a light. Shine bright upon us. Summon familiar: Guardian Angel.”

The monster cores and credits vanished, consumed in a flash of brilliant mana. Will’s newly sensitive senses were overloaded immediately, but he grounded himself with Sen, watching the swirling magic coalesce around him. It was a breathtaking sight even through his aura senses alone.

Unlike with Sen, the ritual’s magic started to coagulate in one area instead of spreading out around him, increasing in intensity until it reached a peak so bright that it confused his aura senses for a moment.

When it faded, the magic had been replaced by a human-looking man that looked like he’d come out of one of his mom’s favorite Chinese dramas. He had long, tied hair that fell to his back, and he wore a red military uniform of a country that Will had never heard of.

Belatedly, Will realized that he hadn’t processed his familiar’s most notable feature, which was the broad, feathery wings that fanned out behind him.

“Will,” the familiar said immediately, bowing with one hand on his heart. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person.”

“You know me?” Will asked, surprised. “Sick wings, by the way. Are they a racial feature?”

“Yes, native to the heavensent of Planet Tripris-9. Lovely place, though a touch hostile to anyone that breathes oxygen. I have not had the pleasure to speak with you yet, though I believe my colleague briefly sat in on your sponsorship meeting.”

Will sifted through his memory, then frowned. During the trial of the champion, he had been offered sponsorships by five people or organizations, all of them at the Lord or Lady rank. There had been one of them who’d chosen to only be identified as “Five.” He’d interfered with the sponsorship process, angering all of the other participants, and had eventually revealed himself as a Dread Executor through the utterance of order through chaos, one of the organization’s tenants.

Hadn’t someone mentioned the name afterwards?

“Ramiel,” Will said, snapping his fingers. “That was his name.”

“Indeed,” the familiar said, standing back up. “I am a fragment of Dread Executor Azathoth, though now that I am separate from him, I am functionally my own entity.”

“Azathoth?” Will tilted his head. “That’s the name of the dreaming god from the Cthulhu mythos, isn’t it? How’d you end up with that?”

“I may have wandered through your planet by mistake before. I held the name first, I assure you.” The fragment frowned. “Though perhaps saying ‘I’ is not genuine. Though Dread Executor Azathoth may see through my eyes, I am no longer him.”

“Lovely,” Will said. “So you’ve been waiting for this? Also, what should I call you? ‘Dread Executor Azathoth, or at least his fragment I guess,’ is kind of too long of a name.”

“I prefer Aza, spelled A-Z-A,” the familiar said. “I have been observing you for some time. Given your soul’s profile, it was very likely that you would be granted a familiar skill. A few pulled strings were enough to create an opportunity for myself to take a form that would be permitted to bind to you.”

“You’re very open about this,” Will said. “Let’s just ignore the fact that you’ve admitted to using extreme amounts of power to poke your way into my life and ask why? Why do this? Why tell me about it?”

“The answer is simple,” Aza said serenely. “You are interesting, corruption wielder, and I can afford to do this. I would not even count this as meddling. Gods will place a much heavier finger on the scales with regularity.”

“I’ve noticed that much,” Will said. He eyed the winged familiar suspiciously. “I kind of don’t buy your explanation.”

“As you shouldn’t. You will find your answers in time. For the time being, I will serve and observe.”

That reminded Will—this was still a familiar, Dread Executor fragment status or whatever aside. The skill had a limited amount of power, so no matter how strong Aza’s progenitor was, he was still limited to silver rank.

Will checked the skill again.

Skill: [Guardian Angel] (Summoned Familiar: Aza)

Silver

[Radiant Shield] - This familiar can create a protective barrier around you and your allies using its body.

[Restorative Body] - This familiar has life force. If its life force is entirely expended, it must be re-summoned. WARNING: You are not guaranteed to receive the same familiar upon a second summon. Familiars may choose to turn down a second summon. This familiar can expend a portion of its life force to heal you or an ally.

[Guardian’s Sacrifice] (bronze) - This familiar can absorb damage on behalf of you.

[Balancing Act] (silver) - This familiar can expend a portion of its life force to negate or lessen the effect of afflictions or demonic influence upon you.

Aza winked at Will as he read through the system message.

“This seems planned,” Will said. “A bit too convenient.”

“I told Ramiel that I was sure you would perish before gold rank,” Aza said. “He told me that the people of this planet might prove to surprise me, and you have. I have a personal investment in seeing you succeed, corruption wielder. There are those on my level and above who seek to use you. I’m just early.”

“I guess I appreciate the honesty,” Will said. “I won’t complain until you start trying to drag me down.”

“The truth is that I simply wish to experience more of the worlds,” Aza said. “But it is not untrue that I seek to use you, and you will respond better knowing that I have my own intentions.”

Will nodded, digesting this. “Well, your skillset is pretty solid for my needs. I’ve been struggling a bit on the defensive end. I still can’t wear armor, so this is a pretty good substitute. How’s your mobility?”

“You need not worry about me,” Aza said. He wasn’t looking at Will anymore, instead walking off to where one of the time-locked instances of Sen’s eyes were. “So your thousand eyes are as effective as I thought. I have not seen one of these in quite some time. Your soul reached out to a dimension that we have not accessed in a long time.”

“You can see it,” Will said. “Should I be surprised?”

“No, but I would advise that you not rely on me for perception. I find myself forgetting what a silver is even capable of. I fear I may overtax this form simply trying to see truly.”

“Oh, I have Sen for that,” Will said.

Nathan: If you were lying around jacking off, you should put your pants back on. I’m a minute out.

“Oops,” Will told Aza. “One moment.”

“I can tell,” Aza said. “Good luck with the summit.”

Will: That is quite possibly the worst way I’ve seen to say that you’re getting close.

Nathan: I can do much worse.

Will: I’m good, thanks. Should I prepare anything?

Nathan: If you’ve got goggles or something, maybe. This could be a rough transit.

Will: I’ve got skills to keep myself from suffering during travel. Don’t worry about me.

Nathan: You’re funeral.

Will: Wrong your, dumbass.

Nathan: Shit.

Nathan: Why can you not edit messages on this system?

Will snorted, closing his messages.

“You know, come to think of it, why can’t you take me?” he asked Aza. “You look like you can fly.”

“I can indeed fly,” Aza said. “That does not mean that I can lift you. I am here to be your guardian, not your soldier. My strength is limited to little more than that of an unformed-rank human’s.”

“Ah. Makes sense.”

Will saw Nathan coming through Sen before he sensed his aura. The gold-rank otherworlder left a contrail behind him, jet vapor emitting from the back of his crafted suit. He was traveling far faster than Will could hope to right now with the notable exception of his instantaneous transportation through the Beyond.

Nathan slowed to a stop over the Sentinel, then descended, miniature jets controlling the rate at which he fell.

“Hey there,” Will said, greeting him as the power-armor-clad gold-ranker alighted on the ship. “Nice to see you again.”

“And you,” Nathan replied, waving. He pointed at Aza. “Who’s that?”

“His new familiar,” Aza said. “Hello. I’m Aza. Don’t concern yourself with me. I can make my own way.”

“What he said,” Will said. “Here, let me show you the skill.”

He opened the skill window for Guardian Angel and passed it over to Nathan. The gold-ranker raised an eyebrow as he read it.

“You always have the most bullshit skills,” Nathan said. “And that’s coming from a guy who knows bullshit.”

“You nuked three asteroids out of orbit,” Will said. “You’re one to talk.”

“Whose power is literally entropy, again?”

“Fair enough. Should we get going?”

“Right. Here.” Nathan opened a hand, and a rod materialized in his hand. “Hold onto this. I have the other end of the pair. It’ll stabilize your position relative to mine as long as we don’t get hit by anything.”

“Which is certainly going to happen,” Will said. “We have never encountered any problems that might accidentally knock us out of the sky.”

“Shush. You promised to talk, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Let’s get moving first.”

Nathan nodded. “Your companion?”

Aza flapped his wings and rocketed into the sky.

“That answers that, I guess. Hold on.”

Will held on as Nathan fired the thrusters in his suit and took off. It was less jarring than Will had expected, but maybe he should have expected that. He’d fallen from orbit before, reaching speeds and accelerations far greater than what he was experiencing.

“Alright,” Will said. “What season did you stop at?”

#

Humans from all the world were entering the first global summit. The landscape had changed significantly after the otherworlders had come back, bringing in wisdom and people from other societies. No longer was the entire top 100 composed solely of core users—in fact, the balance had largely shifted.

To Yui, an otherworlder who’d been sent to the planet Selrethnir, all the leaderboard bullshit didn’t matter. She had gone from a painfully suffocating society on Earth to a dying one on the other planet just to come back to see that her homeworld was suffering the same fate.

During her time in Selrethnir, she’d learned that she was not the only one who’d been sent from Earth. She hoped she didn’t see any of the others from that planet. Not only had they been actively unhelpful in her efforts to revitalize a decaying society in the face of monster hordes and corruption cults, some of them had tried to kill her for what she was. Most of those were dead and gone now, of course, but there were a few cockroaches who had managed to escape.

A couple of the Selrethnir otherworlders weren’t evil, but she still didn’t want to see them for… various reasons.

She stood at the peak of a mountain, her senses extending far out, and she groaned in irritation when she found one soul she recognized.

“Can’t be helped,” she sighed, knowing nobody could hear her.

It was an inevitability that she would have to deal with others from her planet at some point, but she had hoped that the man she’d had a brief, messy relationship with wouldn’t be one of them.

Then the auras accompanying Nathan’s entered her perception, and she nearly forgot about that irritation entirely.

Now that is interesting, she thought.

That was the aura of someone who had fought gods and lost but had survived to tell the tale. It was the aura of someone who had seen what lay Beyond. His control was perfect for his rank. She couldn’t even tell what his class was, and her soul was an abnormal one even for a gold.

“Do you see him, my friend?” Yui whispered. “Another candidate.”

The silent sponsor did not reply, but she sensed a wave of intent pass through her.

“William Li-Brown,” she said, the western name unnatural on her tongue. “I will have to take his measure.”

She leapt off the mountain, chaos energy surrounding her, and she plummeted towards the summit.