[System Decay] Chapter 32: A Complete and Total Lack of Communication

Timmel Skyspear. Bronze 8 Paladin.

Fenn Windchime. Bronze 9 Priestess.

Just like Caiyeri, both of the elves were hiding their skill lists. The system didn’t provide a description for either of them, which Will had surmised by now meant that they weren’t automatically hostile towards him and also didn’t warrant a boss description.

Idly, he wondered what qualified someone to be a boss. Against the likes of an unformed rank, he was sure that these two could serve as squad bosses, but they didn’t have a marker. How did the system decide who counted as a hostile? Why didn’t they gain a description from the system when they became enemies?

There were probably more important things to think about right now.

Will’s Time in a Bottle was active, which gave him more time to think, but time was mana with this skill and he couldn’t afford to waste any more than necessary.

Fenn, the woman, was already in the middle of casting a spell. Pages from the Past, still active in the slowed time, told him what it was.

Skill: [Life Reversal]

- Spell (evocation).

- Cost: high mana.

- Cooldown: none.

Bronze.

Fires a beam that inflicts necrotic damage and the [Wither] condition on its target.

The spell resembled a greyed-out laser beam, cut off a few feet from Fenn’s hands.

They weren’t holding back. Will briefly considered the ethics of lethal force, then decided that that was a conversation best had later.

Better to ask himself for forgiveness than not be alive to give it.

As he let go of Time in a Bottle, Will let himself hit the floor. The withering bolt of grey force tumbled over his head.

“Shit!” Lev shouted, stumbling back. “Trevor!”

Timmel raised a wooden staff to the sky, the idol on its end gathering the soft green light from the air. He inhaled, readying an incantation.

“Whispered peace, quiet the world,” Trevor said, speeding through the incantation like a mumble rapper.

Skill: [Silence]

- Spell (suppression).

- Cost: high mana.

- Duration: 1 minute.

- Cooldown: 10 minutes.

Bronze

For the duration, no sound can be created within or pass through a 50-foot sphere centered on you. All Users within the sphere are deafened, including you. This nullifies all sound-based damage.

A bronze rank skill. Will’s estimation of Trevor moved up a notch. He hadn’t paid much attention to his teammate’s skills beyond a cursory glance to see if they would pose a massive threat to Will if turned upon him, so he hadn’t caught the rank. Trevor was still unformed, but he must have been training hard on his skills or gotten good luck with tablets.

The male elf’s lips moved as he shouted, but no words came out. The light gathering at the tip of his staff dimmed, then dispersed.

He turned towards Trevor in anger, pounding the butt of his staff on the ground twice. A deadly-looking blade scythed out of the tips.

Fenn cast Life Reversal again, once again aiming it at Will.

She doesn’t need verbal components either.

Will teleported out of the way, thankful that Allie had drawn her sword. She jumped back in surprise as he appeared next to her, but thankfully didn’t attack him.

Lev didn’t seem to be able to any longer-range spells either, and he ran forward to engage in melee with the paladin. Allie charged forward as well, prioritizing the same target. The closed gates behind the two elves meant they had nowhere to run. The two-pronged attack would have a much higher chance at succeeding against a single target, but there was no guarantee that Fenn wouldn’t just zap them with a skill that was sure to inflict massive damage.

As Will dipped into Time in a Bottle again, considering the situation, he noticed that Trevor was signing something with his hands.

What that was for quickly became apparent when Will returned to normal time, throwing a dagger towards Fenn as he did so.

Just as suddenly as the sound had disappeared, the light did too. Will’s world was cast into inky darkness just as he activated Weapons Free, sending him hurtling into this situation blind and deaf.

Pages, still active, told him what he needed to know.

Skill: [Darkness]

- Spell (suppression).

- Cost: high mana.

- Duration: 1 minute.

- Cooldown: 10 minutes.

Bronze

For the duration, a 50-foot sphere around you is cast into pure darkness.

Skill: [Unobstructed Casting]

- Passive (magic).

Bronze

Enables you to cast spells without meeting their verbal requirements. Your vision is not obstructed by any of the effects of your spells create.

He must have gotten all of these from the same dungeon. They meshed too well together to not be from a set. A quick check of the party’s stat sheets told him that Trevor had bound Soul to the Suppression element, which made a lot of sense given the bent of these skills.

That brought him to a more pressing issue, which stayed even as he tried to run out of the dark bubble.

Will: I can’t fucking see.

Trevor: Uh oh.

Trevor: Behind you!

Will ducked and rolled, trusting the comment to be correct. The hair on the back of his neck raised, the light rustle of a harsh wind over his hair all the notice he had that he’d narrowly avoided death.

Not having his senses available to him was brutal. He’d gotten so used to being in control of the battlefield with his perception and movement skills that being blind and deaf ruined that.

Will drew a dagger from his inventory, frantically moving in case someone had a bead on him as the three-second timer ticked down.

As soon as the knife appeared in his hand, he tossed it, pulling on Weapons Free.

In the instant before he teleported, he sensed the shape of the battlefield. Trevor had drawn a club as he dashed in Will’s direction. That wasn’t just any club, either, but the one that Ung the squad boss ogre had wielded, which told Will that his party member’s Affinity had finally reached bronze.

Behind him, he could only assume it was Fenn whose belt was lit up with stowed daggers. Lev and Allie were both engaged in close quarters combat, Lev with a pair of gauntlets and Allie with a sword. The paladin still had his staff out, but he’d separated it into two parts, each with a wicked scytheblade on them.

Will swapped the target of his teleportation at the last second, choosing Timmel’s scythe-staff.

He couldn’t tell exactly where he appeared, so he swung his arms out in a wide circle. He found purchase on a face a moment later. One with a bronze-rank aura.

Got you.

You have inflicted a level of [Corruption] on [Timmel Skyspear].

Will felt the elf convulse beneath his hands. Then, a moment later, Timmel’s scythe found purchase in his side.

Burning pain flared as hot blood spurted out of the wound, but compared to what the Hunger had been capable of inflicting, this was child’s play.

It would also be severely lethal if he let it get worse, so Will teleported again with the last of his mana, appearing back next to Trevor. He downed a mana potion instead of a health one. The way potions worked meant he wouldn’t be able to take a strong healing potion without screwing over his ability recover mana, and he wasn’t going to be able to contribute without any mana. His Death element’s passive meant that he would heal up if he killed one of them anyway, so he just had to avoid dying until he could wear Timmel down.

That might prove to be easier said than done. Even afflicted with a level of corruption, the elf had seemed to be keeping up just fine with Allie and Lev. The rank disparity between them was as bad as the difference between Axl and Will had been. Their Silence-Darkness combo was working to keep them alive, but Will couldn’t tell if it was still working.

He still couldn’t find his way through, but he assumed that the other three were operating fine. This looked to be one of the synergies that Lev had mentioned. Lev and Allie must have individually had ways to deal with being blind and deaf.

Will didn’t yet, which proved extra true when he had to duck and cover at another chat warning from Trevor.

Focus, Will. He had told himself he would adapt and advance. This was an awful, anti-synergistic combo for him, but he would handle it all the same. It didn’t seem like Trevor could turn the skills off, anyhow, so he was going to have to resolve this himself.

Inhaling deeply, Will concentrated on the auras. He’d been able to tell that he’d hit Timmel and not one of his teammates by the feel of the magic radiating off of him.

Normally, this was accompanied with actually seeing and hearing the person at hand, which made the association of aura with location much easier, but Will found that when trying to differentiate five different auras, all of which were overlapping with each other and intermixing, he couldn’t tell who was who quite well.

Not for the first time, he regretted having to separate from Ayla and Caiyeri so early. If they’d been able to train up his breathing techniques and aura control more, his senses might’ve been able to figure out what was happening.

You’ve always learned by doing, Will, he told himself. You can do this.

Inhale. Exhale. Nobody was attacking him, and for an absurd second, Will felt as if he was relaxing in a sensory deprivation chamber. For all he knew, he’d already died and this was the void beyond.

In that void, he thought he could make out the shape of the divinity he wanted to reach one day.

The moment passed, but the moment of clarity remained. Though his senses didn’t suddenly sharpen, he found himself able to sift through the noise, identifying where one aura began to mix into another.

Fenn’s was the easiest to find. She was standing alone, occasionally firing off spells at Trevor and Allie, who were the closest to her, so she mixed the least. Will couldn’t make out the details of her being, but he could at least get a general sense of where she was.

He took a running start forward—and she whipped towards him, firing another Life Reversal. The spell didn’t travel very quickly, so at this range, he had just enough time to dodge out of the way without using Time in a Bottle.

She was targeting movement. Her aura sense was weak, or she was relying on a skill.

Will couldn’t throw stones here. He could barely tell that there were three auras dueling over where Lev, Allie, and Timmel were, let alone which one was which.

He did, however, have a much more powerful projectile to throw.

Since Fenn had to guess where he was if he wasn’t moving, Will came to a complete stop and got down on the ground, making himself small to minimize the chance she accidentally hit him with a spell.

Carefully, Will popped one of his few remaining unenchanted goblin bows from his inventory and consumed it.

Mana restored.

You have gained the [Sharpshooter] skill at bronze rank for [1 minute].

You have been inflicted with a level of [Corruption].

[Corruption Resistance] negates bronze-rank [Corruption].

Sharpshooter increased his accuracy. Will wanted to use his stealth bow, but there wasn’t really a point in being stealthy when he was already encased in darkness. On the off chance that Fenn wasn’t only using her aura senses to detect him, he used Wraith Cloak to decrease his visibility even more.

Then, he drew his trusty old seven-shooter, still useful after everything that had happened so far.

[High Caliber selected.]

[Machine Gun selected.]

[Piercing Shot selected.]

Will squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession while aiming at the general direction of the aura, hoping one of his shots would land on or close to the elf.

Sure enough, though he couldn’t hear the effects of any of the shots beyond what reverberated through his bones through the recoil of the gun, he sensed the aura he’d focused in on flicker, then fail. Her magical defenses either weren’t active amidst the darkness, or she hadn’t been able to turn them towards him.

Will: I think I got the woman.

Trevor: I’d reword that if I were you.

The bleeding gash in Will’s side started to repair itself as Fenn died.

[Soul]

- Bound to [Death]: You regain mana and health after killing a sapient being. You advance this attribute faster when you use a spell to kill. Your magic will be amplified in certain mental states.

Did this qualify as a “certain” mental state? Will couldn’t tell if his magic was functioning any differently from usual.

As he approached the ongoing melee, he realized that Lev and Allie were not faring as well as he thought. Even with every advantage on their side, Timmel was just faster, stronger, and more durable than both of them combined.

He was flagging, though. Will could make out more details as he got closer, the lines of each person’s aura separating into distinct blobs in his mind. While Timmel was better off than both Allie and Lev, whose auras were flickering dangerously faintly, the corruption had taken a toll.

Will wanted to capitalize on that with a usage of Mark for Death or The Bell Tolls, but those skills both required him to see his target, which wasn’t possible right now.

This fight was on the verge of going very, very poorly. Both of the participants on Will’s side were hurt, and they weren’t attacking in sync. At the rate they were losing energy, Timmel was going to kill them both.

Will: Lev, Allie, disengage.

Allie: Don’t have to tell me twice.

Lev didn’t respond.

Will bit down a curse—it would have been silenced anyway—and stepped forward to meet Timmel.

For the first time since he’d ranked up, he used his ultimate Death-bound skill.

Skill: [Ghostflame]

- Spell (enchantment).

- Cost: extreme mana.

- Cooldown: none.

Bronze.

“Death comes for you all. Your pitiful defenses cannot even conceive of stalling it.” - Dread Executor Cyna V, cycle 377.

Draws from your blood, afflictions, and lifeforce alongside your mana. Cleanses all afflictions from you and all creatures living or dead in a 10 foot radius. Wreathe your fists in ghostflame. Inflict true damage upon any enemies you strike.

[Phantom Pyre] - Increases the base damage of this skill for every affliction cleansed.

With only a layer of corruption, the base damage didn’t increase very far, but Ghostflame was a very, very strong skill.

Will didn’t see his world fade into monochrome. He didn’t see anything at all.

He did, however, sense the deep chill that settled into his entire body as his mana drained completely.

Timmel fought back with the force of a storm, parrying Will’s first punch and gouging his arm with a scythe, but Will wasn’t trying to fight like a trained swordsman. On the field, he was sure the paladin could outfight him. Even without his spells, he was a force to be reckoned with. In a straight combat, Will doubted he could land a single hit without taking a heavy blow in return.

Now, though, he didn’t quite care if he got hit. All that mattered was the target.

Lock in. Breathe. Focus.

Will concentrated on the bronze-rank aura, striking out at it. His blind fighting style was haphazard and sloppy, and he took more slashes to his skin than he cared to count, but that didn’t matter. Only knowing where his enemy was and attacking did.

He punched out with his Ghostflame again and again and again. Eventually, he met flesh.

Then, moments after that, bone.

Will did not stop punching even after he couldn’t sense a trace of the aura anymore.

#

Achievement earned: On the Edge

You killed a creature higher level than you while suffering from more than one affliction and while you were under 10% health.

Reward: You have earned a silver healing potion. You have earned 10 silver credits. You have earned a silver loot box.

Level up!

Lev was unconscious, but a bronze healing potion managed to stabilize both him and Allie. It had been a close thing, what with the Darkness spell keeping Will from seeing either of them, but they were both still alive, if bloodied and beat up.

The elves were both dead. Thanks to the Silence and Darkness combo, they hadn’t been able to raise the alarm.

Even after they healed up, all four of them were dead tired, Will especially. Ghostflame had taken a lot out of him when it was unformed, and that was doubly true now that he’d ranked up.

For a while, they just lay in the bloody grass, breathing hard and drinking water.

Eventually, Will found the stamina to speak again.

“You know, maybe you three should do my shopping for me.”

Lev barked out a tired laugh. “You think?”