[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 59: Loot! (Patreon)

[Soul] has advanced to Silver 4!

[Perception] has advanced to Silver 1!

Main Challenge #1: Catching Water

Difficulty: Silver

- Capture a changeling. [4/1]

Remaining time: 61 hours, 3 minutes, 33 seconds

Reward: Your party will earn 400 silver credits at the end of the challenge (subject to change). Party members may separate. A death of a party member will not result in automatic disqualification as long as you retain a changeling. Violence within your own party remains disabled. For carrying an additional changeling, you will earn an Awakening Shard of the Beyond.

Penalty for Failure: ???

There were eight subdued changelings all in different forms, ranging from a weird glassy pigeon-like creature that Will could hold in his hand to a straight-up human who had yet to form hair, a face, or genitals, and just ended up looking like one of those mannequins in Targets that had always unnerved him. For some reason, Lily took that one, subduing it without any raw iron by simply stabbing it so many times that it couldn’t resist.

As the primary contributor to defeating both of the members of Hua’s party, Will was permitted to take two. He decided on the glass-like pigeon as well as one that he was pretty sure had transformed into a mimic, judging by the way it looked sort of like a boulder and didn’t have any other defining features.

A mimic of a mimic, he thought. What a riot.

Though Will had thought he was lacking in unrefined iron, he’d sifted through his burgeonining inventory while they’d hunted the changelings that had been forced out of the boiling lake and, after chiding himself for letting his inventory management get so sloppy, realized he still had a bunch of junk from the goblins that was made out of iron.

As it turned out, goblins in the Arcadian cave system tended not to refine steel to be used in chains. It wasn’t pure iron either, but it was better than anything else he had.

That meant he now had two chained creatures that he was forced to lug around in a wooden crate alongside a bunch of nearly useless bronze-rank loot. Will had tried to inventory the captured changelings like the others had only to be greeted with a rather unpleasant message.

Warning: Users cannot be absorbed into an inventory.

The system message carried a chilling implication that people who weren’t locked into the system could be tossed into the extradimensional space of the inventory, which Will decided not to dwell on. If it was true, there was nothing he could do about it anyway.

All this left the seven of them in the unenviable situation of having a living being to drag around. The eight changelings they’d gotten were still silver-rank, even if they were temporarily unconscious thanks to a variety of debilitating effects that had been placed upon them, so they were going to have to manage keeping the changelings alive but subdued while also preventing others from stealing them.

Lily didn’t seem to mind that much. The sociopath had told them all to not get in her way and left almost immediately after getting the update to the Main Challenge, dragging the mannequin-like changeling with her. Will was glad he wasn’t going to have to deal with her again, though he worried that she might go after Caiyeri or Hua, both of whom he actually liked.

Fortress was the second to leave. He knelt down onto the rock, palms flat against the ground, and it swallowed him and his changeling whole before closing right behind him as if he had never been there.

“Jesus,” Will said. “This guy just loves to hide, doesn’t he?”

“You make that sound like a bad thing,” Hua said. She was the only one out of them who had actual pure iron to bind her changeling within, though she only had enough to box up one of them. 

“It’s not,” Will said. “He’s just wasted our time with looking for a hole to hide in already. This makes two times he’s done that.”

Caiyeri laughed, but there was no humor in her voice. “Elementals are the least adaptable species you will ever meet. His name is Fortress. Of course he can’t think of any way to solve a problem besides hiding behind walls.”

“He did think of boiling the water,” Will said. “That was neat.”

“I’ll give him that,” Caiyeri conceded.

“Y’know, I’m not all too comfortable with this situation,” Hua said nervously. She flinched as Will looked at her.

“What’s wrong?” Will asked. “Besides the part where you think I’m going to kill you, apparently.”

“Do you not plan on it?”

“If I wanted you dead, you’d know by now,” Will said. “My powers aren’t exactly subtle.”

That didn’t seem to be enough to convince Varix and Vincent, though, who were both scuttling off, tossing nervous glances towards him.

“They don’t like you either?” Will asked Caiyeri.

“Vincent saw me kill a full party of humans,” Caiyeri said. “They’re both cowards who don’t even know the best way to employ cowardice.”

“Yeah, they’re definitely going to be less safe alone than they would be with us,” Will said. “The hell do they think they’re going?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they died,” Caiyeri said. “Then again, they may rightfully assume that you’ll draw the gestalt. Half the archipelago has seen that by now.”

“How?”

“Um, I can answer that,” Hua said. “My sigil’s been showing me some footage of some of the big competitors. That’s the horrible monster, some of the elves… you.”

“Footage?” Will said. “Hey, Hunger, why the hell aren’t I seeing any of this?”

The sensation he got from his god was something like resignation.

“…You’re too new to this whole ‘being a god’ thing to get privileges, aren’t you?”

Deeper resignation told Will that he’d hit the nail on the head.

“Damn it. Well, they’re not wrong to be worried about that, but we’ll deal with that when we deal with that. Hua, you’re staying even though you think I’m going to kill you? You were saying something about being uncomfortable with this.”

“My instincts are really bad,” she said. “I’ve learned not to trust them. If every fiber of my body is saying you want to kill me, then I start thinking that there’s something else going on.”

“Strange,” Will said. “They usually work for me, but fair enough. You’re not wrong, either. But if it’s not that that you’re worried about, then…”

“This capture,” Hua said. “It reminds me too much of what people have tried to do to me. Aren’t these living beings, too? Sapients?”

Will considered the changelings inside his crate. They were both unconscious right now, but he could sense the magic emanating from them. Their auras were complex in a way that many of the unintelligent monsters weren’t.

He frowned. “I suppose, but the alternative is losing.”

“We can lose once,” Hua said. She sighed. “Then again, there’s nothing stopping them from making us do even worse later. I already know that tons of people are going to die during the 1v1s. We might have to kill people that haven’t done anything wrong, or we might do it accidentally. The power we can gain from this means too much to our communities back on Earth. Losing now just to not be able to back out of something even worse would be a mistake.”

“That’s surprisingly mature out of you,” Will said. “Aren’t you, like, sixteen?”

“Eighteen, thank you very much,” she said. “I was in the middle of my first year of uni. You sort of have to be mature now. That, or delusional.”

Will thought back to Dylan and the goon squad of racists he’d joined up with. They’d been immature enough. Then again, they were also now in varying states of decay, their corpses littering the Everdale University.

“Yeah, fair enough,” Will said. “So we’re sticking together? Caiyeri, make sure she doesn’t stab me in my sleep, please and thank you.”

“If she does, I’ll make sure you’re awake for it,” the elf said drily.

“I wouldn’t think someone like you would need a guard,” Hua said. “Seeing how you saw through my cloak and all.”

She wasn’t that much younger than him, but she had much to learn when it came to social interactions. Hua was transparently fishing for information—and while she might be friendly now, Will wasn’t going to give up anything that he could hold as a trump card in the future.

Truth be told, it had only been luck and caution that had let him spot her. He’d used Pages of the Past to check if there were any lingering effects from Fortress’ power, and its new silver-rank feature had let him spot Hua’s sigil skill, which qualified as a ward.

Cultivating the image of being powerful was as important as having the strength to back it up, though, so he didn’t reveal the weakness of having to manually check with his skilll.

For the time being, they decided to make camp atop the volcano. The lingering traces of the offensive magic they’d left behind would hopefully keep the bulk of people from trying to find them. In the meantime, they got to looting the bodies.

Almost everyone had contributed to the fight, but since it had been primarily Will’s skills that had taken them down, he got first pick of the loot.

“You know this guy, don’t you?” he said, kneeling over Rowan Zero. “Isn’t this one of the templates for your race?”

“One of the newest,” Caiyeri said. “New still means decades, though. My Rowan wasn’t an archer. He was a leader, and he was one of the ones who died next to me.”

“You don’t seem all too broken up about it.”

“Clones are meant to be expendable. If we were emotional about our deaths, then we would be useless.”

That didn’t seem to be entirely true, judging from the micro-fluctuations in her aura that Will knew she was too controlled to do intentionally, but he didn’t push.

“Regardless, I’ve cut ties with them,” Caiyeri said. “If I’m going to commit to that, then feeling emotion for any of their deaths would simply be hypocritical.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Will said. “Then again, that does make this convenient, since I’m about to desecrate this dude’s corpse.”

Starstrike Longbow has been added to your inventory.

Tablet of the Guardian has been added to your inventory.

450 silver and 10 gold credits have been added to your inventory.

12 Fire Arrows, 12 Darkness Arrows, 12 Acid Arrows, 11 Death Arrows, and 12 Ice Arrows have been added to your inventory.

Adaptive Quiver has been added to your inventory.

5 Chaos Grenades have been added to your inventory.

“Holy loot,” Will said, taking in the haul from the silver-rank.

Nobody had been permitted to take items that weren’t already on them into the trial, so this had to be the elf’s minimum equipment. Just how stacked was their leadership?

Will hadn’t found any awakening shards in a while. Most of the monsters in the underwater dungeon he’d killed had only dropped credits alongside a monster core and some crafting materials, so seeing a full tablet was exciting.

Everything was silver-rank, too, which meant upgrades. Will’s stealth bow was still bronze, and he was thankful that he wasn’t going to have to dump his freshly-acquired monster cores into it to level up.

Item: [Starstrike Longbow]

Uncommon, silver

Hand-crafted by a skilled artisan and enchanted through starlight, this bow shimmers with a celestial glow.

All projectiles fired by this weapon deal increased radiant damage and gain an instance of [Guiding Light].

[Guiding Light] - The owner of this item can mentally control the arrows after they are released, making small adjustments to guide the arrows to their targets. Though this will not make a full-on miss become a hit, it greatly increases the effective range of this bow.

[Celestial Volley] - Once per day, when this bow is fired, you can have the arrow split into five separate arrows.

It was a basic bow, which made sense given its low rarity, but it was a nice addition to his arsenal.

Will considered unattuning his jumping ring for the new bow, but decided against it. Though he hadn’t used the jump charges yet, silver-rank Jump would take him much higher than Wind Walker’s dozen-foot air-dashes could.

“Now for the real loot,” he muttered.

Item: Tablet of the Guardian

Uncommon.

In front of every great mage is a great guardian. Though this humble tablet may not grant you a warrior mighty enough to strike down the walls of a great city, it will provide you with a companion who can assist you in your struggles.

Affixes a skill to any attribute at your current rank.

Will had been working with his current suite of skills for so long that it had become second nature to him by now, but he hadn’t forgotten that he still had an empty slot under every single attribute.

This was a type of skill that was a bit different compared to his current profile, which was great. Will already had a set of skills that was very good at long-term offense, and a defensive skill would be ridiculously appreciated.

He was overdue for a new Perception-based skill. During the fight, he’d been forced to spread his phantasm apart to see his enemies. Being able to see through his phantasm would make him much deadlier in the field.

Without further ado, he consumed the tablet, selecting Perception.

“Step back,” Caiyeri advised Hua. “This part gets messy.”

Hua frowned. “You say that like—“

Will blacked out.

#

“You insolent insect,” the Hunger said, though the anger in its voice was no longer as overwhelming as it had been before.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Will said. “Let’s get this song and dance over with. I’ll go as far as I can in the tournament for you, so you stop trying to torture me, yeah?”

“Yes,” the Hunger replied. “I have lent power to your skill so that it will suit your skillset more.”

“Not sure if I appreciate you doing that without me asking, but thanks,” Will said.

“I do not appreciate the apparent willingness to lose that your companion has,” the Hunger said.

“Well, you’re going to have to deal,” Will said. “Oops. Feels like this is me. See you next time, and could you ask your godly friends to get me in on some of that video action too?”

He disappeared, leaving the Hunger alone.

The god sighed deeply.

“Sadareth is never going to let me hear the end of this.”

#

Skill: [Thousand Eyes]

- Familiar (time, perception).

- Cost: extreme mana. 1,000 silver credits. 100 silver-rank Monster Cores or equivalent. 1,000 bronze-rank Monster Cores or equivalent.

- Cooldown: none.

Silver

Summons an avatar from an alternate universe that is perpetually locked in a single instant. This familiar is incorporeal. This familiar is a non-continuous entity.

This familiar possess truesight.

[Synchronicity] - You can use all senses through the Thousand Eyes, relying on either yours or your familiar’s. The eyes can access echoes of recent past events (5 seconds or less) within its vicinity, showing you spectral images of events even if you cannot see your target.

[Time-Locked] - By existing outside the normal timestream, your familiar can expend mana to become imperceptible to non-magical means and aura senses.

“Holy shit,” Will said. “Hey, guys?”

“You alright?” Hua asked nervously. “You don’t seem like you want to kill me anymore, and that’s honestly more worrying than it was before.”

“We still have sixty hours to go,” Will said. “There are monsters here, right?”

This was an incredible, top-tier skill for him. It fixed basically every intelligence problem he’d had… but he couldn’t summon it. Will had just used the majority of his monster cores to level up his items.

“We’re on an archipelago designed to kill us,” Caiyeri deadpanned. “You tell me if there’s monsters here.”

“Change of plans,” Will said. “We’re not going to sit around on our asses—at least, I’m not. I’m going out there, and I am going to hunt.”

#

Ataraxis, high priest of corruption, appeared alone.

The chaotic transportation had separated him from the rest of his trusted cultists.

This was no worry to him. Chaos was merely the natural order of the world. To accept that was to be free of mortal worry.

“Surroundings,” he said, commanding his mental journal to record his words. “Tropical. Location name: Archipelago. Target is present. Searching for corruption wielder William Li-Brown.”

#

Main Challenge #1: Catching Water

Difficulty: Silver

- Capture a changeling. [4/1]

Spatial anomalies detected. Time limit has been lowered due to atmospheric corruption.

Remaining time: 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.