[System Decay] Chapter 39 (REVISED): Lake Monroe

NOTE: This chapter has been partially rewritten. If you would prefer not to reread the full chapter, an overview of the changes will be posted at the end. I appreciate any and all feedback on the chapter.

Lake Monroe wasn’t just a lake, which Will had expected. He had yet to see an all-underwater dungeon, though there had been that one that had been mostly submerged. They’d prepared for the eventuality of there being impassable conditions—well, Caiyeri and Azure had come prepared.

Both of them had enough potions of water breathing to last them a full dungeon, and they’d split some with Will beforehand. They had a lot of potions, most of them cheap bronze-rank stuff, so they were also set if they went into a dungeon that was on fire, thick with acid, or had unbreathable air, they would be… not set, exactly, but reasonably prepared.

Still, it was nice to know they weren’t going to need it immediately.

The sand-suck portal had shoved them through layers of dark water to bring them into a cavern where the water went up to their waists.

This was one of at least two dozen entry points, though, which was an upside—the more obscured their location was, the better.

As they’d arrived, a new system message had informed Will that this dungeon would have purpose beyond just being a place to hide from the elves chasing them.

New quest: Strange Beings Lying in Ponds

Lake Monroe, formed over 20,000 years ago, has new residents. Nh’desk, religious capital of Mhodesia, has found pieces of itself falling into your Earthen lake. Built on the skeleton of a dead god, this city now holds the sigil of an ancient Arcadian who has long since become a god within the system.

To open the path to this god, you must first defeat the guardians of his kind.

- Eliminate the guardians of the temple. [0/3]

- Obtain the sigil. [0/1]

Reward: 3 platinum credits. Awakening Shard.

Will frowned. “The system knows about Monty Python?”

“I have no idea what that is,” Caiyeri said. “I assume you got a quest? The system knows the details of your culture, just as it does of mine.”

“That would make sense.” Will remembered it making a pop culture reference or two during the tutorial, too. This was more actively discomforting, though.

“Can’t see shit,” Caiyeri said. “Giving us a light.”

Will heard something that he could only liken to Pop Rocks being crushed in a package, and then he could see again.

Azure and Caiyeri both had equipment left over from being part of their elven special forces groups, temporary magical lanterns being one of them. The light they cast was bright but limited, and it was enough to illuminate the entryway.

They were waist deep in water. Will almost jumped into full combat mode when he felt something brush past his leg, but a closer inspection under the magical light revealed that it was just kelp. Non-magical kelp, given that Identify didn’t trigger off of it.

“Get me out of this,” Caiyeri grumbled. “There’s a dry-ish rock over there.”

There was enough just enough room on the rock for all three of them to lie down on. While the water was frigid, the air outside was refreshingly warm.

“We’re in the dungeon now,” Azure said. He sounded oddly disappointed. “I haven’t been in one of these in years.”

“Well, it’s here or try your luck out there with the rest of ‘em,” Will said. “If you didn’t want to lower yourself to a dungeon, then maybe you shouldn’t have betrayed your entire nation.”

Caiyeri shifted uncomfortably.

“It’s not the betrayal,” Azure huffed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Will didn’t want to bother understanding a moody elf who was probably at least twice his age, so he just ignored the obvious conversation bait and moved on.

“We’ve been running, so I’ve definitely missed a few things,” Will said. “Now that we’re here, though…”

Carefully, he extracted the pieces of the Red Knight armor set from his inventory.

Item: The Armor of the Red Knight

Legendary, bronze (growth)

Grows with its user. For their sins against the chaos defense contract, the Order of the Red Knights was exterminated to the last man millennia ago. Their equipment, however, survives.

[Gauntlets of the Red Knight] - You gain the [Decaying Touch] skill at bronze rank.

[Cuirass of the Red Knight] - Enemies that strike at you have a moderate chance of being afflicted with a level of [Corruption].

[Boots of the Red Knight] - You gain the [Corrupted Speed] skill at bronze rank.

[Helmet of the Red Knight] - You are immune to afflictions of bronze rank or lower and resist afflictions above it.

Set bonus - you gain a boost to your [Power] and [Speed] attributes while wearing the full set of armor.

“Bronze-rank, but it’s legendary,” Will said. “Plus, it’s a growth set.”

“Mother above, you just have that?” Caiyeri asked. “I have a single legendary item, and it’s a one-time-use.”

“Well, I took it from a guy who was trying to kill me,” Will said. “Trying being the operative word, of course.”

“This armor is unclean,” Azure said, recoiling as he analyzed the item. “It’s of corrupted make.”

“Weren’t you the one telling me about how I shouldn’t care about the rules?” Caiyeri said. The two of them clearly had some history there that Will also didn’t particularly care for.

“They have rules about corruption for a reason, Seven.”

“And you’re breaking them for a reason too, Four.”

Azure sighed. “True enough. I suppose my distaste matters little. I cannot use it.”

Both Will and Azure had the Escape Artist skill, though Azure’s was at silver rank and had taken a slightly different path than Will’s had. Azure did have some equipment on, but just like Will, it was unobtrusive.

The elf’s Demolitions Specialist class was an unorthodox one, which Will was beginning to realize was something of a pattern with the abyssal elves. It emphasized setting traps and baiting enemies into them rather than active fighting, which left their makeshift trio of three without a proper brawler, someone who could tank the majority of damage and attention while the others stacked up their damage.

Caiyeri came the closest, with her Emergency Shield acting to make her a pseudo-tank in some occasions, but her armor was just standard issue clone gear. It was good chain, and though it was on the more common end of items, it was still a growth set. That growth was why Will had struggled to break through Qwayne’s armor of the same type.

These, though, would give her some more power.

“I can’t use these either,” Will said. “Caiyeri, you’re the only one who can. Wanna take them?”

“Seriously?” she said, hand hovering over it like she was worried someone would punish her for inventorying them. “People don’t just go around handing out legendary items.”

Will shrugged. “My other option is destroying them for mana and a temporary skill boost.”

Caiyeri sucked in a breath. “If you say so.”

She awkwardly got to her feet, putting the armor on piece by piece. It fit itself to her magically as she got each piece on, shaping itself into an absolutely badass mech-like set.

“It’s heavy,” Caiyeri said, testing her mobility with her fingers. She clicked her tongue. “I don’t like having the access to corruption spells.”

“You don’t need to use them,” Will said. “Just take the set bonus and the protection. Affliction immunity’s pretty great, too.”

“That’s true,” she said reluctantly. “We’ll see.”

“The quest,” Will said, changing the topic. “The temple here. It’s an Arcadian one, right?”

“It is,” Azure said. “Mhodesia. That rings a bell.”

“Any idea why there would be another sigil in here?” Will asked.

“Not every sigil has been claimed,” Azure replied. “Arcadia was a dangerous, largely unexplored planet before the system came to us. Gods know that it’s only gotten worse.”

“This temple sounds like a civilized place, though,” Will said. “You’re telling me nobody claimed the sigil before they shot your planet into mine?”

“Does it matter?” Caiyeri cut in. “It’s a fact that there’s a sigil here. If everyone gets a similar quest upon arriving here, they’ll froth at the mouth for it.”

Azure’s eyes glinted at that. Will mentally filed that away. Looks like we’ve spotted the first mouth-frother.

“That’s true,” the elf in question said. “This presents an opportunity for us. We can take a prize and deal a blow to both the life and abyss elves in one blow.”

“Whose side are you on?” Will asked. “I can’t tell. I sort of get Caiyeri, but I have no idea why you’re here.”

Azure neglected to answer. Caiyeri shook her head slightly when Will’s eyes flicked to her, so he decided to leave it at that, a degree more suspicious of the man than he’d been before.

Once they’d recovered enough energy, they decided to get moving.

Using the elves’ lights for illumination cast dark shadows over the lake cavern they were inside, allowing Will to use Wraith Cloak. The caverns weren’t just caverns, they quickly found out. After a few wrong turns that ended up in kelp-infested underwater pockets, they found a pathway that sloped upwards, sending them into shallower and shallower water until they were just walking on an incline.

It wasn’t just plant life in here. About ten minutes in, they stumbled into a dry corner littered with humanoid skeletons.

Though the alcove was dry, the bones weren’t. Glowing water clung to them, emitting enough mana for Will to detect. Caiyeri, whose senses were significantly better than his, recoiled.

“Azure,” she said. “Is this the work of a prayer?”

“It may be,” Azure said. “The Mhodesian priesthood seems to have a pattern of reaching too far. Our records on them are fuzzy after the arrival of the system.”

“A prayer?” Will asked. “These guys are dead. Not much praying happening.”

“I keep forgetting you’re dumb,” Caiyeri sighed.

“I’m ignorant. There’s a difference.”

“Sure, sure. Prayers are a type of monster that have plagued our planet for hundreds of years. They’re dangerous.”

“These don’t seem powerful,” Will said, poking at the water with his slayer sword. It parted easily.

“If you’re not careful, you’ll join them,” Caiyeri told Will.

He chuckled. “You sound like my mom telling me a story about how the mogwai would come and take me away if I didn’t eat my vegetables.”

She took affront to that, punching him in the shoulder.

“You knew your mother, hm?” Azure said. “Sometimes I wonder what that would be like.”

“I don’t worry about it too much,” Caiyeri said. “Then again, I guess you didn’t spend the entirety of your life in the corrupted cave system.”

Their bickering was interrupted by the eerily familiar sound of a monster crawling its way through a crack in the wall.

All three of them shut up, aiming their weapons towards the wall. Will activated his speed and stealth skills.

A deep croak came from within the crevice in question, and then it appeared.

In the dim light provided by the elves, Will could see the human-sized frog as it jumped out. Covered in beige spots, he nearly mistook it for the wall.

Mhodesian Death Frog. Level: Bronze 9.

After thousands of years dealing with the evolutionary pressure of living in a high-mana civilization, these frogs are savage predators. More information has been lost about these creatures than you can ever know about them, but after the arrival of the system, they have been relegated to ruins and dungeons. Beware of their withering tongue and keen senses.

Will, invisible thanks to Wraith Cloak, crept closer to the creature, slayer sword in hand.

Just as the system had promised, the frog’s senses were keen in ways other than sight. Its eyes flickered to where the invisible Will was trying to sneak closer to him, hearing his footsteps.

Instinctively, Will ducked as a dark tongue snapped out, Escape Artist boosting his speed, but the frog was even faster. It nicked his shoulder, and it stuck, pain ripping through his shoulder.

You have been afflicted with a level of [Wither].

That initial was shortly joined by a full-body sensation of shivering hurt, coursing through his veins. A sudden surge of hurt stopped Will’s retributive slash.

Shit. Wither didn’t deal that much damage on its own, but the condition was a bitch and a half to deal with.

Condition: [Wither]

- Deals slow necrotic damage over time.

- Weakens necrotic resistances. If the target does not have a resistance to necrotic damage, they gain a weakness to necrotic damage.

The barbed tongue dug into Will’s shoulder, inflicting necrotic damage upon his newfound necrotic weakness.

It started drawing itself closer, dark spots on its body igniting with deathly energy.

Will grit his teeth. You’ve handled worse. Get through this.

Before he could angle his sword arm into a clean hit, though, a bright red beam slammed into the tongue from the side, severing the inky black tongue halfway through.

“Critical hit!” Caiyeri called out.

“Thanks!” Will replied.

The mana gathering at frog’s spots was still increasing in intensity. Will didn’t want to stick around to get hit by that.

At silver rank, Chaos Transfer allowed him to cleanse himself of conditions other than corruption, so he cleared everything he was currently suffering from.

[Chaos Transfer] cleansed one level each of [Wither] and [Corruption].

He marked the frog for death. With the delay it would take to draw a weapon from his inventory, Will just sprinted in. Whatever attack it was charging up, he wasn’t going to let it.

Closing the distance took less than a second between all three of Will’s movement skills.

He cleaved it straight through the head.

[Marked for Death] increased the power of your attack.

[Slayer Sword] inflicted a level of [Wither].

[Slayer Sword] inflicted a level of [Corruption].

[Slayer Sword] inflicted a level of [Charged].

After the last fight, Will had figured out how to rename his items in the menu, so he didn’t have to keep on seeing that stupidly long name show up every time he used the sword.

His blade sank into the flesh and scraped against bone. There was magical resistance within the death frog. It wouldn’t fall in a single blow.

As Will withdrew his sword, the dark spots flared with purple-black light, emitting a dusty cloud of spores.

Not wanting to deal with that, Will immediately teleported back to Caiyeri—or, more accurately, the javelin she’d conjured.

Skill: [Lucky Strike]

- Spell (enchantment, conjuration).

- Cost: moderate mana.

- Cooldown: none.

Bronze.

Imbue a weapon with a randomly selected pair of the following enchantments: Mighty Cleave, Lightweight, Silent, Armor Breaker, Elemental Blow, Returning Weapon, Corpse Slayer, Heal Blocker, Sharp Edge, Dancing Edge, Enhanced Critical.

[Armory Jackpot] (bronze) - Instead of imbuing a weapon, you may randomly conjure one of the following weapons with a random pair of the enchantments: twin daggers, sword, warhammer, greataxe, club, javelin, whip.

“Your turn,” Will said.

“Lazy waste of breath,” Caiyeri replied in a tone that made Will think it was meant as a compliment.

I am never going to understand this lady.

As she sprinted in, slower than Will had managed thanks to her armor’s weight, Will brought out his stealth bow and took a couple of potshots with the mixture of arrows he’d acquired.

[Mark for Death] increased the power of your attacks.

[Poisoned Arrow] inflicted a level of [Poisoned].

[Poison Immunity] negated the [Poisoned] effect.

[Fire Arrow] inflicted a level of [Burning].

With the Red Knight armor set, Caiyeri would be immune to any affliction that might spread through those spores. The distraction he provided was enough for her to get in close quarters, scoring critical hit after critical hit with her luck ability.

Skill: [Rigged Dice]

- Passive (luck).

- Cost: varies.

- Cooldown: varies.

Bronze

Guarantee a magical effect that has a chance of happening, such as a critical hit or an effect trigger. This skill’s cooldown and mana cost increases the less likely the effect is. After using this effect, you will automatically fail a number of luck-based events proportionate to the unlikeliness of the event triggered.

The spores had some kind of adverse effect that extended beyond afflictions, judging from the blood spilling from Caiyeri’s end, but it wasn’t bad enough for her to withdraw.

Under the combination of the two of them going to town on the thing, it quickly bled out. It awarded him a handful of credits as well as a bronze monster core, which nobody wanted so Will took. He could probably sell it somewhere.

Throughout it all, Azure hadn’t done anything. He kind of just stood there.

“So,” Will said, thankful that his Death attribute restored his mana after every kill. “You’re the silver. Are you planning on, I don’t know, doing anything?”

“I work better as part of a plan,” Azure said. “Or to take down fortifications. Monster fighting is not my forte.”

“Christ,” Will said. “If you elf types weren’t so scared of sharing information about your skills, maybe we’d have less of a problem.”

“Hiding skills is just good practice,” Caiyeri said. “You never know when an ally might turn on you.”

“That gives me a lot of hope, coming from you,” Will said.

“You didn’t need my help anyway,” Azure said. “If your needs are dire, I will involve myself.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Will said. “Let’s keep going. Looks like the base monsters in here are weak enough to kill without too much trouble.”

They continued their way through the ruins, keeping to the places that were at least mostly above water. The frogs weren’t the only inhabitants, it turned out—there were a number of other local animals, ranging from child-sized spiders that reminded Will of the giant ones from the tutorials to something called a “gloomfang,” which mostly looked like a bat until it unhinged its jaw wider than its entire wingspam and spat a magical poison at them, which Will learned the hard way inflicted a gloom condition that very closely mirrored the despair condition that his axe inflicted.

Experience definitely ticked up a lot slower now that Will was closer to the peak of bronze, but every kill steadily got him moving forward. It was mostly him and Caiyeri contributing to the kills as they traveled along, though every now and then Azure used a thrown explosive skill to clear a room of smaller monsters that could’ve overwhelmed the pair of them.

He was starting to realize that even at the peak of bronze, the monsters here just weren’t intelligent enough to handle two high-power bronzes working together. Caiyeri hit Bronze 9 pretty early on, putting her two levels above Will.

Though he still wasn’t getting through to Azure and had no idea what the male elf actually wanted, Will and Caiyeri had established a pretty decent fighting partnership back in the tutorial, and they actually comunicated. They developed standard plans of attack.

Against the small groups of death frogs, Caiyeri went ahead to tank the attacks, her newly gifted armor protecting her from the bronze-rank withers, while Will sniped at them from the back, Mark for Death and First Blood giving him the tools he needed to turn his bronze-rank arrows into devastating, lethal attacks. The wandering golems were immune to most afflictions, but Caiyeri found that the explosive shot option on the gun, which was much easier to force with Rigged Dice than instant death, was good at disrupting them long enough for Will to finish them off with a charged-up slayer sword. Gloomfangs were pretty easy to deal with thanks to Chaos Transfer, though they were hard to hit, but once Will and Caiyeri “convinced” Azure to start acting as bait for them, they were able to lure them in and take them out with a few well-aimed shots. 

They couldn’t just farm bronze-rank monsters forever, though. This was still a dungeon, and they were getting diminishing returns on fighting the same type of beast again and again.

Caiyeri was the one to identify the boss chamber.

“There’s a pretty heavy aura coming from that building,” she said. “Silver. Since it’s not cloaking, I assume it’s a monster.”

The building in question was a ruined church or temple, tilted about twenty degrees on its side and partially submerged in water. Will remembered fighting Axl in a similar setting, though this was a much more intact specimen despite its tilt. It was a shame that they couldn’t explore it safely. Will had always had a fascination with ancient history, and this was another world’s ancient history.

Surviving came before exploration, he supposed.

“Should we go after it?” Will asked.

“It’s silver.” Caiyeri frowned. “Is this the prayer?”

“Possibly,” Azure said. “Prayers have been anywhere from the top end of bronze to the bottom of diamond. I have an analysis skill I can use to find it, but to cast it without expending mana will take a while.”

“We’ve got time to wait,” Caiyeri said. “I doubt there’s other monsters in the area.”

She took out a deck of cards.

“You can’t be serious,” Will said.

“Dead serious,” Caiyeri said. “I finally got my hands on a good deck of cards after leaving the caves, and I’ll be damned if I don’t make use of them. Have you ever played drops? I’ll teach you. One bronze buy-in.”

#

“For a game you know inside and out, you really suck at this,” Will said.

“Why do you think I play it?” Caiyeri asked, tossing in a hand that, if Will remembered the rules correctly, was quite literally the worst hand in the game—one, two, four, five, seven, all off-suit. “I have to lose some rolls to win the others.”

“Oh my god,” Will realized. “Your skills run off of gacha player logic.”

“Gacha? What’s that?”

Will eyed Caiyeri, taking in the obvious glee of her wasting two dozen bronze credits gambling in a meaningless game. “Probably better I don’t tell you.”

“Now I’m curious.”

“I’ll tell you what gacha games are if you tell me something about your world,” Will said.

“A businessman, hmm?”

“Nope, not a chance,” Will said. “I was going to be a software engineer when the world ended.”

Caiyeri frowned. “Software?”

“Oh, right. Imagine the system if it didn’t have any magic. That’s the kind of stuff I would be working on.”

“The system without magic would be a lifeless machine.”

“Yeah, that’s about it. Do you mind not throwing every hand? It gets kind of uninteresting.”

Caiyeri looked down at her cards, which she’d accidentally showed Will. Three, one, six, castle, four. Again, all off-suit.

She made a vaguely annoyed sound and put her hand down. “I prefer losing in cards to turning every shot against me into a critical hit.”

“Thought you said you liked your odds.”

Caiyeri shrugged. “Not that much. We’re getting off topic. You said you were an engineer. What purpose did you serve? Infiltration? Assault? Sapper?”

“None,” Will said. “Is that all engineers are to you?”

“All I’ve ever known is war and the system.” Caiyeri’s voice was even, but her gaze was hard, as if challenging him to disagree with her.

“All I’ve known until today was getting no sleep and showing up to the same classes and job all day, every day, not knowing what I’m doing with my life,” Will said. “I don’t know if I’d call this better, but I definitely have more freedom than I used to.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Caiyeri said. 

“I can. It sucked.”

There was an awkward silence for a bit, which Caiyeri ended up breaking by moving past that topic. “So. About Arcadia. My knowledge may be incorrect for somewhat obvious reasons.”

“Because it’s probably propaganda from a horribly biased group that wants you to be under their control forever?”

“What? No. I mean, maybe, but our planet crashed into yours, dumbass. That shook things up a bit.”

“Oh. Right.”

“As I was saying. You know I’m an abyss elf. Believe it or not, we’re not only clones.”

“Could’ve surprised me. I haven’t seen any of the others.”

Caiyeri sighed. “The bulk of the population lives… elsewhere. Thanks to the nature of our—their, I suppose—inclinations—“

“You mean the ones where you stick a bunch of clones in a corrupted cave system and hope one of them produces the banned power that people will kill you for?”

“Yes, that,” Caiyeri said drily. “That tends to get people going.”

“You have a conflict with the life elves. I assume that means there’s more types?”

“A few dozen separate societies, though the life kingdom is the one we come into conflict with the most. Apart from us elves, Arcadia’s sapients are largely elementals, goblins, and chimeras. Almost everyone is somewhere between unformed and gold, though there are a few that made it to the gem tiers.”

No wonder their world had been deemed a failure. Will wasn’t exactly a system expert, but he could guess that the supermajority of the world being stuck in the lowest third of progression would hamper their ability to be useful against corruption.

“Chimeras are monsters in our mythology,” Will said. “What are they here?”

“To put a not-so-delicate point on it, half-breeds,” Caiyeri said. “Every sapient race has their own racial traits. Now come on and tell me what a gacha game is.”

Talking about her own world seemed to be a bit of a sore point. Caiyeri sounded a dozen times more excited to talk about Will’s most embarrassing past addiction than about power politics and magic.

Honestly, that was fair.

“Okay,” Will said. “I should probably start off with the premise of a video game…”

#

“This sounds fucking amazing,” Caiyeri said.

“No, no, no, that was the exact opposite of the point,” Will said. “I literally just told you about how their marketing is a predatory tool to get you to waste all your money and time.”

“I adore wasting money,” she said. “You should show me one some time.”

“You—“ Will sighed, shoulders slumping. “Fine. If the servers are somehow still up, which they probably aren’t, I’ll show you Genshin Impact.”

“Thank you,” Caiyeri said.

“How is this the first time you’ve actually smiled?” Will asked. “How?”

“You two, quiet,” Azure said. “The ritual’s done. There’s a water prayer in this temple.”

“Okay,” Caiyeri said, all business again. “That’s within expectations. Is that all? You took an awful long time to do that.”

“It wasn’t just identifying the monster,” Azure replied, somewhat offended. “I’ve confirmed that it’s one of the guardians described in the quest.”

“That’s helpful,” Will said. “That’s a big step towards finishing the quest here. What else? I can see a but there’s more waiting.”

“Of course,” Azure said. “We are not alone.”

“They found us already?” Caiyeri hissed. “Damn it.”

“Not just the abyss,” Azure continued grimly. “There’s a human with a life elf construct as well.”

“Well, that’s every race in the area represented,” Will said. “Let’s hurry up before they beat us at our own game, yeah?”

“I agree,” Azure said. “Taking the prayer down should be trivial. I have an unassailable plan.”

“Oh, come on,” Will groaned. “You don’t say that. That’s almost as bad as saying ‘what could go wrong?’”

“What could go wrong?” Caiyeri asked.

Will sighed, head in his hands. “Let’s just get going.”

Patch Notes: Dormant sigil activated. Previously inactive quest [Strange Beings Lying in Ponds] has been assigned to users entering [Lake Monroe]. Conversations at the beginning and the end between [William Li-Brown], [Caiyeri Seven], and [Azure Four] have been expanded.