[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 60: Thousand Eyes (Patreon)

Will wished he had a lie detection skill of some kind. He’d been through enough life and death battles with Caiyeri to trust her implicitly, but Hua? Not so much. 

The Chinese-Australian girl had understood, having been on the bad end of too many failed alliances herself. Hua was one of the most rational people that Will had dealt with so far, which was a bit of surprise given that she was also one of the youngest.

That did mean that instead of leaving her alone with the changelings, they had to lug around their crates of captured beings around, occasionally checking to see if they were waking up and inflicting percussive maintenance upon them, which meant beating them until they were unconscious again.

If it works on a PC, it works on a living being, Will thought darkly.

Their initial plan had been to stay in one space, but instead Will took them around the island, clearing out nests of bronze-rank monsters. Finding them was easy with both his and Caiyeri’s aura senses working in concert, and Will was glad to take the opportunity to grind the nests. He never wandered off too far from their temporary bases where they left the changelings, only disappearing long enough to go kill a load of bronzes before returning with the loot.

At silver rank, Thunder Wraith’s Grasp was extraordinarily effective against the swarm-type bronze monsters. They fell quickly under the virus-like spread of lightning that came with the skill. Will knew that the power the chain lightning put out was lower than average for a silver-rank skill, so it wouldn’t be as useful against enemies of his same rank, but against monsters a full rank lower than him, it was easy—so easy, in fact, that he wondered how anyone who called themselves a silver rank had ever managed to lose against him.

Level up!

It took literal hundreds of bronze-rank monsters to level him up a single time, which made sense. Advancing at silver rank was much more difficult than it had been at the lower ranks, and Will found that he had to meditate, using the breathing techniques that Caiyeri and the still-absent Ayla had taught him in order to push himself over the edge to Silver 1.

Finding silver-ranks was even easier than locating the bronze ones with how much more their auras stuck out from the high-density magic that characterized the entire archipelago. Those, Will didn’t fight alone. It was a bit of an involved process, but he, Caiyeri, and Hua would tuck their changelings somewhere where they couldn’t be easily found and then go fight them together.

There was no opportunity to rest. Will quickly regretted giving so many of his monster cores away. He had the credits to use his new Thousand Eyes skill, but he was missing almost all of the monster cores. There was no shop on the archipelago, so Will was relegated to using what he’d already brought and bought.

All three of them had enough stamina and mana potions to keep going for hours. The other two needed to dip into their reserves of health potions in order to patch themselves up after fights, but a combination of Will’s Death attribute and his evergreen pendant, which provided him a hefty amount of regeneration outside of combat.

They spotted other competitors from time to time, including Lily, but they took one glance at the mass of shadow surrounding Will and left.

“You’re building up a reputation for yourself,” Caiyeri said, noting a full silver three-man group do a full 180 and not-so-casually run away as Will finished off the silver-rank trap spider nest they’d cleared together.

“Good,” Will said. “If people aren’t going to underestimate me, they can fear me. It makes our job easier.”

The sudden reduction on the amount of time they had to complete the first main challenge had been random, but not unexpected. Will immediately assumed that it had to do with the same effect that had interfered with his transportation into the challenge planet and quite possibly even what had accelerated the initial tutorial. There was clearly something larger at play here, and Will was starting to grow suspicious of it.

He wasn’t going to be able to investigate it with his perception skills that were much better geared towards combat than observation, so he continued slaying monsters, quickly progressing towards the massive amount of cores he needed to summon his new familiar.

The Starstrike Longbow proved to be critical in grinding monsters. Its radiant damage was silver-rank, and the ability to aim after shooting meant that he could just loose an entire volley of charged arrows straight up into the sky and guide them afterwards.

With the timer running shorter, the other Users steadily became more frantic. The sounds of combat increased in frequency and intensity, some of it on the same island as them. There had been 2,938 competitors entering the trial, and after the so-called sentience check, that number had dipped down. Will wasn’t sure exactly how many had been filtered out by that, but he could see that there were around 2,400 now, with the number slowly ticking down.

When there were about eight hours remaining, the active volcano that Caiyeri’s group had started on erupted in a rainbow of light, a confluence of skills exploding all at once. That took out nearly thirty competitors in a single fell swoop, according to the numbers.

All the while, they avoided the gold-rank gestalt, but that was easy enough. It seemed to be avoiding Will, to the point where he didn’t even have to raise his hunger phantasm up threateningly to ensure that it didn’t get anywhere near him.

That definitely wouldn’t have been the case if it had been piloted. Will knew that the life elves wanted him dead, and it had been on its own for the sentience check. Fear wouldn’t have been taken into account if the creature had been driven by an external force, telling him that it was acting of its own volition now.

He wasn’t sure if that worried him more or less.

At length, they finally did it. After over twenty-three hours of nonstop fighting, migrating, and looting, Will had a total of one hundred and three silver-rank monster cores, fifteen hundred and seventeen bronze-rank monster cores, huge amounts of random crafting materials, and a ton more credits than he’d started with.

“And I’m still not Silver 2,” he said unhappily, sighing as he extracted the massive crate of monster cores he’d stuck into his inventory.

“You should try using cores,” Hua suggested. “I’m Silver 4 now.”

“Pro tip: you can’t only try meth once,” Will said. “It’s zero or life. I’m sticking to zero.”

Hua shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Apart from the distortion in the time remaining, they faced almost no trouble even as the number of competitors still in started to drop like flies.

“People are realizing they can’t get their own,” Hua said bitterly. “I guess they’re going after each other.”

“You don’t sound surprised,” Will said, focusing on his skill. There was a particular method it wanted him to use in order to set up the summoning ritual, so they’d staked out a high-visibility location on a beach after killing all of its residents. “You see a lot of action?”

“You haven’t seen what’s happening in Australia?” Hua asked, surprised. “It’s all over the news.”

“Wait.” Will frowned. “You still have news?”

“Do you not? The internet’s still up here.”

“Internet?” Caiyeri interjected. “I heard that was where certain games are hosted. Like—“

“Not the time,” Will said. “You’re telling me you still have infrastructure?”

“A lot of chunks of civilization kept some,” Hua said. “I guess you came from America—you’re American, right? You sound like it.”

“Yeah,” Will said. “My college town went to shit immediately. No service, no internet, no way to know who else is even alive in the country.”

“Well, I’ve heard that your coasts still have infrastructure. Glad to hear that wherever you are, there’s still people. We were starting to worry we lost all of the middle.”

“Do you know how much this changes for me?” Will asked.

“Not in the present, I hope,” Caiyeri said. “I sense auras coming towards us. I don’t know the rank. Finish your ritual up quickly or don’t do it.”

Will froze. “You can’t tell their rank?”

Other people misreading his silver-rank aura for bronze was one thing, but Caiyeri’s aura senses trumped Will’s, even if the raw strength of her aura wasn’t as high.

Will hurried up, depositing all the materials in a rough circle. The exact formation mattered less than the intent of the skill and the presence of all the materials needed.

Unlike most of his skills, this one required a summoning chant. That was new. Will knew that some of Caiyeri’s skills were larger scale and required verbal components, but he’d largely eschewed them so far—in fact, most humans he knew had. That must be a racial trait of some kind, he realized.

Apparently, it didn’t apply to rituals.

“Life in death, born from stasis, forever frozen. I see what sees a world beyond worlds, a time before time. I see what sees me. I see what sees it all. Summon familiar: Thousand Eyes.”

All of the monster cores and credits Will had laid out around himself vanished in an instant, consumed in a flash of brilliant mana. For a long moment, he could barely see what was in front of him, so intense was the force of the magic around him. Caiyeri flinched at the sight of so much power being consumed at once, and Hua gasped in awe.

She can’t see it as well as we can, Will realized. That was good to keep in mind.

Though the visual effect of it died down quickly, Will could sense the mana swirling around them.

Then, bit by bit, his awareness expanded further.

Hua took a panicked step back as the first eye burst into existence. She calmed herself just in time for the second one to manifest, then the fourth, the eighth—she adapted in moments, realizing it was friendly.

Caiyeri got down on one knee, peering at the rapidly replicating eyes in awe. They were far away enough from actual biological eyes that they didn’t creep Will out the same way spiders did. There was no depth to the thousand pieces of the familiar, all of which appeared completely unattached to each other. Instead, it was as if they were radioactive after images, glowing shades of ultraviolet with blaring pink-green irises. If Will squinted, they almost looked drawn on.

They were eerie, but more importantly, Will’s senses spread through them.

His vision fractured into a thousand pieces, the sudden deluge of sensation overwhelming him and threatening to crush his will into shreds.

But he’d dealt with worse. The Hunger had done its level best to break him for days, weeks on end, and he’d come out of that in one piece. A familiar’s perception wasn’t going to do better than a god.

Will let himself become a willow, bending with the wind and allowing his mind to fracture. Though it seemed unmanageable at first, giving him let the eyes rearrange their perception, taking up less and less of his mental space until he was almost human again.

His senses were no longer limited to his own body. Will had a thousand eyes, a thousand ways to see aura, and with a quick pulse of mana, he saw an instant replay of Caiyeri and Hua overlaid over his vision in the same ultraviolet shimmer that the eyes made.

The truesight that came with the familiar passed through his human senses strangely. Will could tell that he wasn’t quite strong enough with Perception to make full sense of it, but his senses were vastly enhanced nonetheless.

“This is what LSD is like, isn’t it?”

“Probably not,” Hua said. “I don’t have any on me, but there’s some back home if you ever visit.”

“Is that some kind of video game?” Caiyeri asked, frowning. “You humans make too many acronyms.”

“Um, not quite.”

Will triggered the Time-Locked attribute of his familiar with another quick expenditure of mana. He found that he could use a very small amount to make one eye disappear entirely or use a moderate amount to blanket a large chunk of them, making the entire familiar vanish from all perception at once—except for his.

There was an intelligence to the familiar, he sensed. It would follow his orders, but Thousand Eyes was a being in itself. A sapient.

A wave of bluish color rippled through the eyes, and to Will’s newly expanded senses, he almost felt like it was asking him a question.

Name.

“It wants a name,” Will muttered. “Hmm…”

“That doesn’t matter,” Caiyeri said. “The aura is still approaching. I still can’t tell what rank he is.”

“Gold,” Will said certainly. The Thousand Eyes moved quickly, buoyed by his phantasm. They ignored walls and had a fairly large sensory radius—and importantly, they could see through stealth skills. While Will couldn’t use that to its full potential, he could at least see through aura cloaking. “Mid gold, though I can’t tell the exact number. His aura control is super good.”

“Shit,” Hua said. “How do we deal?”

“Be ready to run if I get hurt,” Will said. “He’s got a lot of magic items on him. If he wanted to attack us, I don’t think he’d be approaching us in the open.”

Will had a sneaking suspicion as to who this cloaked stranger was here for. Thousand Eyes let him get an idea of the person via Identify, and the name Ataraxis, High Priest of Corruption didn’t leave much to interpretation.

As he went to move, though, the shards of his perception tugged at him, rippling again with the beautiful display of color that only he could see.

Name.

“You can’t think of one yourself?” Will sighed. “Alright, let me think… how does Sen sound?”

“Sen?” Hua asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means ‘thousand’ in Japanese. Also sounds cool enough for a familiar, so there.”

“Fucking weeb,” Caiyeri said.

Will jumped back, hand going to his heart in shock. “How the hell do you know that word?”

“Your friends traded knowledge for knowledge,” she said solemnly. “I know what you are.”

The ripple came quicker this time, the fragments settling themselves.

Good.

“Th—er, Sen likes it,” Will said. “That’s that. You two hold the fort. If something happens…”

“Run like hell,” Hua said. “You don’t need to tell me that twice.”

“I like you, Hua. Don’t let me down.”

#

Ataraxis was thankful that the corruption wielder had chosen to separate himself from his party. That would make the next steps of this easier.

He had not found any of his fellow acolytes and could only assume that they were either lost elsewhere on the planet or had not entered the same scenario as him. He was familiar with the trial of the champion; if this was an early phase, then the latter was very likely.

“William Li-Brown,” he greeted the stranger.

“Ataraxis,” the corruption wielder replied. He sounded tired. “Call me Will. Please. William sounds so British. Also, I have no idea how you got here, but whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it.”

“No?” The high priest said. “I would think twice about that.”

Will glanced at the priest, squinting at him. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Neither are you. This trial takes place off your home planet.”

“You know what I mean. You’re human, but… not quite. Not the kind I recognize.”

Ataraxis nodded approvingly. The corruption wielder was not incompetent. When converted, he would be a powerful force indeed. He was human as well—a bonus. Not a core user, either. The conditions were ideal.

“You are correct,” he said. “I come from a world known as Selethnir. There, people like you are a rarefied few.”

“I’m not surprised,” Will replied. “I doubt you have China there. Or America. We’re more common around these parts.”

“You are being intentionally obtuse,” Ataraxis continued, unperturbed. “I am aware of this type of tactic. I—“

“Bring gifts?” Will said. “I can tell you have a sigil on you. Let me guess. It has something to do with corruption?”

Ataraxis raised an eyebrow in surprise. His natural cloaking at gold rank was stronger than anything anyone on this bronze-rank core-abusing planet should have been able to penetrate, and yet the corruption wielder had seen straight through it.

“As expected from one like you,” he said, his mind taking this into account.

Could he be the prophesied one? Ataraxis was no blind believer of the tenets of his cult, but even he knew to bend the knee before the one who would bring ruin to the system.

“Look, dude, if you’re going to keep sounding vaguely racist, I’m going to have to ask you to go,” Will said. “Make your sales pitch and fuck off, please?”

Ataraxis could tell that Will’s aura was fluctuating, but he could barely sense any discomfort from the man even though he easily outranked Will.

Do not be too hasty, he reminded himself. Ataraxis knew what the prophecy truly was. It was a way to guide the members of the cult, lowly ones like himself, towards a more aggreable path. The holy words held no inherent power. The threads of fate could not yet be woven by anyone short of a god.

There would be a venerated one eventually, but this man here and now was nothing more than a competent wielder.

“I present to you a sigil of corruption,” Ataraxis said, drawing a small, seedlike crystal. “This goes to a nameless god, one that we—“

“Yeah, I see it,” Will said. “I read the description. No thanks. I’m not swallowing that shit. At least I can toss off my current sigil if he ever gets too uppity, and besides, this has evil cult written all over it.”

Ah. Of course. Ataraxis had forgotten his manners.

Will’s eyes widened as the presence of the nameless god crushed his sigil’s, pressing against a god that Ataraxis recognized as Kadael, the Hunger.

“A new god,” he commented. “A weak one. You can do so much better.”

Ataraxis exuded his presence further, crushing Will’s aura—and then, all of a sudden, he found he could go no further.

“Yeah, I dunno,” Will said. “Here’s the thing about new, weak gods. They get desperate. Do you know what happens when a god gets desperate?”

Ataraxis’ had honed his aura control for years. Decades, even. Against someone with a decent foundation, his perfect aura should have crushed them instantly even at the same rank, let alone a full rank above.

And yet, somehow, Will’s aura increased in strength, pushing back.

“You want me to join you,” Will said, voice crackling with power. “This is me saying no. You need me, don’t you? Your aura tells me as clear as day. You can’t take me in dead, can you? Leave.”

Despite the rank differential, despite the fact that Ataraxis should have been able to squash the corruption wielder like a bug, hesitation flashed through him. A dash of fear.

Will laughed coldly. The sound befitted one as defiant as him.

“You fucking loser,” he said. “Gold rank, and you can’t even handle me? Come back to me when you can face me without pissing yourself.”

Ataraxis did not allow himself to be provoked. This was, after all, not the only opportunity he had.

And besides, his time here was drawing to a close. His senses spread out throughout the archipelago, and he could tell that those searching for him were drawing closer. The other human, who had chased him from his homeland, and one more. The latter was more esoteric. He couldn’t quite get a bead on him.

“I admit defeat,” Ataraxis said, bowing his head. “This sigil will not trigger in proximity. You need to fully accept it to make use of it. A gift from me to you.”

“That’s a Trojan horse of a gift,” Will said, but he took it anyway. Whatever skill he was using to monitor Ataraxis must have told him that the high priest was not lying. “Now get out of my sight before I do something stupid.”

Despite his best efforts, Ataraxis was still human. Being belittled by an inferior was tolerable to an extent, but he could feel the rage within him rising.

Yet he could not attack. The corruption wielder was too strong to risk wasting, and showing his hand to capture him alive now would draw the attention of the ones pursuing him. 

“Your time will come, William,” he growled. “You will join us, one way or another.”

“You lost your last opportunity to be cool about forty-five seconds ago,” Will said. “See ya!”

He teleported away in a flash, disappearing into shadow.

Ataraxis sighed deeply. Corrupted one, give me strength.

Main Challenge #1: Catching Water

Difficulty: Silver

- Capture a changeling. [5/1]

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

Remaining time: 8 minutes, 38 seconds.