[System Decay] Chapter 57: Finders Keepers (Patreon)

“Good to see you, Caiyeri.”

“Never thought I’d live to see the day those words came out of your mouth.”

The elf woman’s hair had been singed, her helmet not enough to protect it against whatever monsters she’d had to deal with. She was also dripping wet, a result of her group emerging straight from the ocean

“Your teammates?” Will asked, indicating the two men with her. One of them was bronze, the other silver. The second one didn’t quite look human, and his eyes were hidden behind a blank mask.

“The bronze is a sigil-holder. The silver is a Champion’s Pass entrant from the far east. He doesn’t talk much. Or at all.”

“Heya,” the bronze, a slight American man with thick glasses, said nervously. “I’m, um, I’m Vincent. My sigil is—“

Will felt a massive presence brush against his soul.

“You might not want to reveal who that is,” Will advised. “Sounds like whoever it is, they don’t like you blabbering about your powers when we’re not forbidden from killing each other.”

From behind him, Lily spoke up. “Can I—“

“No. Unless you want to try catching a changeling yourself?”

The Hunter had inadverdently revealed enough of her weaknesses to Will that he knew she would be boned if she tried. Her tracking skills all relied on her having knowledge of her target, and while they could make her a devastating force against someone she’d faced before, Lily had never consciously fought a changeling.

She settled down.

Caiyeri looked pointedly at Will’s companion.

“Not my fault,” Will sighed. “The random number generator up there has got to hate me.”

“What can I say? You should have rigged the cards better.”

Will’s head snapped up, his eyes boring into Caiyeri’s. “Did you—“

“No, dumbass. I can’t affect the trial with a mere silver-rank skill. We’re a few tiers too low to try.”

“Seems like you rolled a pretty decent team anyway. You made it through all the silvers in the water just fine, at least.”

“The bronze guy’s sigil let us get through the water more easily,” Caiyeri said, jabbing a finger towards Vincent.

“I have a name, you know…” the diminutive man trailed off.

“You gotta stand up for yourself, Vincent,” Will told him. “Caiyeri’s a handful to deal with. If you let her steamroll over you, you’re going to be the first dead in your group.”

“What are you implying about me?” Caiyeri said, giving him her best beatific I’m-going-to-murder-you-in-your-sleep smile.

“That you’re a natural leader and a strong personality,” Will said. “And that your bronze is a better resource than your silver.”

“What makes you say that?” The particular tone of Caiyeri’s voice told Will that he was right, but she was going to be intentionally difficult about this.

“His sigil is related to the ocean, duh. That’s how you three survived making it to this island without getting hit by a bunch of silver-rank sharks. Any idiot could figure that out with basic aura senses.”

Behind him, he heard Lily whisper, “Could you tell what he had?”

Fortress replied noncommittally.

Maybe not just any idiot…

“An ocean sigil for a sea-based setting,” Will finished. “That sounds pretty damn useful to me.”

“You haven’t looked at what the silver can do, have you?”

“Of course I have. Varix Altaea, one of the guys that got in here through the Champion’s Pass from our region. Elf-air elemental chimera. A half-breed. Silver 1, but a core user. Some kind of tracking skill, probably, but that doesn’t matter if he’s not talking.”

“He’s completely useless!” Caiyeri complained, making sure her teammate was in earshot.

“Prove your worth before asking me to help you,” Varix growled, speaking for the first time.

“Oh, look,” Will said. “The quiet guy speaks.”

“I don’t like him,” Lily interjected, stepping forward. “Can I—“

“No.” Will’s voice overlapped Caiyeri’s.

“Aw, you two make a cute couple.”

“Shut up,” Will said. “The adults are talking.”

To punctuate his point, he drew the phantasm out around her, shrouding her conversation in darkness.

“Ooooh, spooky,” Lily said.

“I will fail this challenge to corrupt you. Are you sure want that?”

She shut up.

“And you, Varix. This whole edgelord, ‘earn my respect’ thing you’ve got going? You’re not him, my man. Give it up.”

Varix, whose skin was a shade lighter than any human could be, sneered at Will behind his mask. He drew a sword, which Will noticed had reached silver without the usage of any monster cores from how stable its aura was. “Do you seriously believe—“

Will activated Weapons Free, teleporting himself right in front of the half-breed. The chimera looked human from a distance, but up close, it was clear that he was even further from human than the elves were. Though his body was shaped the same, Varix’s skin looked hard, as if he’d been made from glass instead of flesh.

Surprised, Varix wasn’t able to react quickly enough to fight off Will’s aura, and the abrupt stamina drop didn’t help him as Will used his silver-rank strength in combination with a physical manifestation of his phantasm to wrench the sword away.

Item: [Whisper Blade]

Rare, silver (growth)

Forged in the heart of a silent volcano and sharpened for ten years against the sacred bones of the dead deity, this blade is a tracker’s best friend.

[Silent Strike] - This blade has the [Quiet] attribute.

[Adaptive Edge] - This blade’s damage increases with each successive hit against the same type of monster.

[Pathfinder] (silver) - Every successful hit against an opponent sends out a subtle, sonic pulse that maps the immediate area. It also marks the opponent, giving the user the ability to track the marked enemy at distances up to 100 miles for the next 24 hours.

“Adaptive Edge is pretty similar to the Unstoppable attribute on my own sword,” Will mused aloud. “Pathfinder is what actually interests me. Not quite worth being my main weapon, since it competes for the same slots as my skills, but it could be useful if I ate it with Destructive Synthesis.”

Only then did Varix finally properly react to Will teleporting in, panicking and striking out with his aura—but Will was already gone, his cooldown resetting quickly enough for him to teleport back to the patch of manifested phantasm in the area he’d just come from.

He ran a hand along the edge of the whisper blade. “And to answer your question, yes, I seriously believe I don’t need your respect. After all, you haven’t earned mine. Aren’t you supposed to be a silver? Where’s your reaction time? Don’t tell me that you’re a race that’s not even suited to using monster cores and you crutched on them anyway.”

Will could tell from the uneven aura that Varix had, in fact, dabbled in cores at least a little.

He tossed the weapon back, using his phantasm to carry it along and sending it back to Varix.

“I’ll give it back this time, but if you don’t start using your tracking skills as soon as you can, I’m melting that down for scrap and mana.”

“You’ve gotten better at negotiating with people,” Caiyeri said approvingly.

“Dear god, now you think I’m doing things right? I’m going to have to reevaluate how I’m doing things…”

Will kept an eye on the back corner of Caiyeri’s entourage, noting the terror that was growing over Varix’s expression.

“Hey,” he told the glass-like man. “Time’s not unlimited here. Thought a pass into the tournament was going to be enough, did you? Well, it’s not, and you’re not anywhere near the top of the food chain here, so get moving.”

“Where did all this come from?” Caiyeri asked. “You weren’t this decisive earlier. Or this angry, for that matter.”

“Things change a lot when I’m trying to work with edgy, incompetent losers,” Will said.

“Ah. You’re finally understanding what working with you was like when you started out.”

Will tried to picture someone like Varix trying to save his life and cringed. “Surely I wasn’t this bad.”

“Not quite, but you were getting up there. At least you were willing to fight.”

Slowly but surely, Varix’s will eroded, and his aura started to shift, a skill directing it.

Will used Pages of the Past, the skill feeding Varix’s information to him.

He paused.

“Your skill is literally called Find Creature,” he said. “You can find any creature of any type within this range? What the fuck was stopping you from doing this before?”

Varix, who had seemed so calm and collected earlier, cringed back.

Will teleported again, uncaring about the mana cost. Sending a message here was just as important as saving mana for a later fight—possibly more.

He leaned into Varix’s personal space. Though the chimera was nearly half a foot taller than Will, he shrunk back against the pressure of Will’s aura, cowering.

“You were scared, weren’t you?” Will asked vindictively. “Faced reality and realized you didn’t want to deal with other silvers?”

Varix didn’t say anything, closing his eyes and pretending like he was being absorbed by his skills.

“He’s not worth your time,” Caiyeri said. “Don’t bother.”

“He’s not, but he’s the only one with a tracking skill worth a damn,” Will said. “Hey, y’know what? Lily!”

The murderer who’d gained a scary amount of respect for him after seeing his abilities hopped to his side in an instant.

Caiyeri glared at her.

“What is it?” Lily taunted. “You’re all twisted up after I tried to kill you one time? I wasn’t even directly targeting you! That’s like saying hi.”

“Don’t shoot her, please,” Will said, noting how Caiyeri’s fingers twitched towards her side, where Will could see the seven-shooter was holstered. “I’d much rather not fail the challenge now. She’s all yours once we get a changeling, though.”

“I’m going to remember you said that,” Lily said.

“Well, that actually has something to do with what I called you over for. I was just going to tell you that if Varix stops using his skill to help us, you can do whatever you want to him.”

“You’re aware I need to pass too, yes?” Caiyeri said flatly.

“Yeah. This is more motivation for him than for you.”

Sure enough, Lily sized up the chimera like he was a particularly tasty dessert, which did nothing for his worries.

“Now or never, Varix,” Will said. “God, your name is dumb. I’m putting something else on your gravestone for sure.”

“I-I found one,” the chimera stammered out. “There are changelings on this island. T-they’re hiding further inland.”

Where the gestalt went. Great.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Will said brightly. “Lead the way, Varix. Just remember, one slip and this lovely murderhobo here gets her fill.”

“You’re making me want to shoot her more,” Caiyeri said. “Stop that.”

#

The worst part of their journey towards finding the changelings wasn’t locating them. It wasn’t the constant attack from low-level monsters—Will handled those with chained uses of Thunder Wraith’s Grasp, shocking entire chunks of tall-grass meadow into burning ash. It wasn’t even their constant wariness for the gold-rank kaiju.

No, it was the fact that apart from Caiyeri, the only person who was willing to talk was fucking Lily Teneli, the woman who’d tried to hunt Will for sport (and, admittedly, his sigil) just days prior. Fortress had gone suspiciously silent after expositing his entire backstory to Lily, the bronze-rank sigil-holder Vernon—no, Vincent—was wracked with anxiety, and Varix was so scared of the threats Will had made that he wouldn’t say a word unless spoken to.

Which left a deranged, dangerous hunter as their only conversation partner.

“I really like the sound elves make when you open them up,” she said as Fortress ignited an entire field on fire to catch the small but agile swarms of bronze-rank vermin buried within them. “You don’t scream like normal people. It’s more of, like, a bird cry? It’s sort of beautiful, and if you hear it, you know the kill is going to get more XP.”

Caiyeri looked at her, then Will.

Caiyeri: Can I kill her?

Will: Just wait until after we meet the clear condition, please.

Caiyeri: Fine. Not a moment longer.

Staying clear of the devouring gestalt proved to be remarkably easy. When they saw it on the horizon, Will sent his phantasm out as far as it would go. The kaiju’s aura senses were even more sensitive than his were, and when it felt the magic of his phantasm, which it now knew could transfer silver-rank corruption straight into its body, it fled.

Caiyeri raised an eyebrow at that. Rather than discuss their powers out loud, she sent him a chat.

Caiyeri: What did you do to that thing? It looks smaller.

Will: Its [Corruption Resistance] is still bronze. I gave it a dose of silver-rank corruption, made it worse, and it shed a bunch of organs and ran.

Caiyeri: …Wow.

Will: Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Well, hopefully not. If I’m stuck here all week, we have problems.

After a couple of hours of skill-assisted walking, Varix led them to a small mountain in the center of the island. Rather than the grassy meadows that characterized the hills across the rest of this particular island, this one was nearly entirely barren.

As they reached the peak, some two thousand feet above the ground, they saw that this mountain’s top had been blown off at some point. There was a massive crater at its peak, and a lake had formed within it. Bronze, silver, and even a handful of gold-rank auras emanated from within. The crater lake stretched several hundred feet across the top of the mountain.

“In there,” Varix said unsteadily, still pale from fear. “The changelings are in the water.”

Will and Caiyeri shared a look.

“Again?” they both said, exasperated.

#

“That’s them,” said Hua Fang. “Are you sure about this?”

“Of course,” said Rowan Zero. “One of those is of my people. She will be forced to turn the changeling over.”

“I don’t know,” Hua said uncertainly. She was silver rank, just like the other two with her, but… “Didn’t you see what happened earlier? He fought a huuuge gold, and the gold frickin’ ran from him!”

“The human’s not a concern,” Rowan said. “I will deal with him myself.”

“I agree with Rowan,” the creepy core-abusing whackjob who called himself Alan Baker said. He leaned against a rock, literally playing with fire as his summoned familiar danced through the air. “You’re outvoted, sweetie.”

Hua resisted the urge to spit in his face.

You’re disgusting, she thought. But you have enough power for this challenge, at least.

She was glad she’d decided not to reveal her powers to this group, at least, but they were right. She was outvoted, and this was a team challenge.

“Fine,” she said reluctantly. “Let’s go find him.”

#

“Activate skill: Identify.”

“You don’t need to use that to tell what this place is, dude,” a new face said.

The settlement that Nathan was now in front of was the third one he’d encountered that had been damaged in some way or another. There were clear marks of corruption everywhere he went.

Two things were certain.

One: this was Earth. The same planet he’d been sent away from, no matter how hard that was to believe. It resembled Selethnir more than the planet he remembered at this point, but it was unmistakably home.

Two: the corruption cultists were here.

Three: they were looking for the same target he was. At every opportunity, they’d used violence and coercion to threaten links to the corruption wielder William Li-Brown.

Four: he was bad at numbering lists.

Nathan paused, looking at his identify.

“You named this place Survivor Hill? You know you were just asking for trouble, right?”

“I’m sorry, who are you again?” The bronze-rank man that Nathan’s system identified as “Lev Anderson” asked.

“I’m here to fix some mistakes,” he said, snapping his fingers.

Broken walls put themselves back into place, fallen buildings restoring themselves with a moment of telekinesis.

“You can’t fix the dead,” Lev said quietly, looking sadly at the settlement he’d founded.

“No,” Nathan said, “but I can avenge them. Where is the person who did this?”

“They’re all chasing the same guy. He’s not here, so fuck off if you’re looking for him too. Will went off to some tournament or another. Teleported out of here days ago.”

“Thank you,” Nathan said, turning to leave.

“Hey!” Lev called. “Hey, you! Who the hell are you? How are you so powerful? Why weren’t you here before?”

Why are you so weak? Nathan didn’t voice his thoughts aloud. He’d been gone for a while. They must have just gotten the system. He’d been weak and confused once upon a time as well.

That didn’t make his irritation at the weakness of his fellow humans any more bearable.

“You don’t know what’s coming for you,” Nathan said as an answer. “My job is to make sure you never have to learn.”

If the target had teleported away, then…

“Activate skill. Spatial Analysis.”

Nathan combed the area around the settlement, using his movement skills to resposition and cover a square mile in minutes.

Just as he was starting to get annoyed with the search again, he found it.

Spatial anomaly detected: Tunnel to the Trial of the Champion.

This tunnel has been closed.

Rank: Gold.

Single-target teleportation can be managed with power ranging from low bronze to the peak of transcendent, but for tournaments like this, the system prefers to be efficient, using magic one rank above that of the user.

You can use [Traverse] on this portal for the next 2 hours, 12 minutes, and 58 seconds.

Warning: time of transit is not guaranteed. This tunnel has been interfered with.

“Of course it has,” he said aloud as if the system could hear him. “The cultists have been through it. Activate skill: Traverse.”

A tear in reality opened, the familiarity of a spatial tunnel comforting to a Nathan who was still readjusting to this new and brutal Earth.

“Let’s see what bullshit you have for me on the other end.”

He stepped through.