Will hadn’t read up much on Henry, but information on him was apparently scarce. He hadn’t been anyone important before the apocalypse had hit, just like Will. What little they did know about the Blizzard Arcanist wasn’t even enough to pick him out in a lineup, though it did confirm that initial assumption of insignificance—British, born and raised, a few years out of college, working some dead-end job in a consulting firm. Exactly college-student-Will’s failure state.

To be fair, Henry was still pretty much Will’s failure state. Lord of a city, ruling through terror and overwhelming power, and killing everyone who got in his way… Will couldn’t say he hadn’t been tempted to do the same at points.

Sen’s eyes spread across the city, revealing the depth to which Henry had taken over it. Everything was freezing cold, and the rare areas that weren’t were already primed with ritual magic that would explode with ice when the right kind of mana was passed into it. The population of Birmingham was significantly lower than it had been, but there were still people here. Most of them were bronze rank or low silver, cowering in safe spots and presumably acting as Henry’s agents in exchange for their lives.

Will didn’t even bother dealing with them. Any number of bronze ranks put together couldn’t threaten him. If all the silvers here put their efforts together, they’d probably be able to break past his defenses, but they were so spread up and cowed by Henry’s ongoing blizzard that there was only one real threat here.

[Michael Cunningham] is attempting to share [Eye in the Scry] with you. Accept? [YES / NO]

Familiar with how the Tracker’s skill marker worked, Will accepted. A marker popped up in his vision, outlining a human figure about half a mile out.

Caiyeri: I should accept that, right?

Will: Yeah. Do you need a ride?

Caiyeri: I see the target. I should still be good.

The elf had gotten dramatically better at making use of her defensive skills for movement during the course of her time in the superdungeon. Unlike Will, who was very much a slippery, mobile, ranged attacker, Caiyeri was mostly agile in close quarters. For longer distances, she relied on momentum redirection with her Emergency Shield alongside a couple of other skills that were intended to make her a harder target to hit but also served to increase her overall mobility.

While Will used the harsh, freezing wind to fuel his hunger phantasm’s wings, Caiyeri ping-ponged from ground to building to the air, using the distance from the helicopter to the ground as her starting speed.

Behind them, Blurr began providing support. Dark figures slipped out of the vehicle, slithering and gliding down towards the ground. Chaos energy infused them, protecting them from the gold-rank chill that infused the whole city. Her summons were a reliable force multiplier. Will would have been comfortable fighting this alone, but Blurr worked great as a support for his fighting style. Her creatures were largely okay with navigating through the darkness he spouted, and they targeted everything he corrupted with extreme prejudice.

It was a bit absurd that he considered one of the single most powerful native Earth faction leaders as a “decent support” for him, but Will wasn’t fighting the same battle that most people ont his planet were.

In any case, they didn’t need their skills immediately. Henry noticed they were coming pretty quickly, judging by the way the aura that passed over the entire city shifted, but no attacks hit them. As a matter of fact, the winds actually seemed to lessen to some degree, letting them in without problem.

“I think he wants to talk,” Will said. He relayed the message to Blurr.

Natalie: Aren’t you here to take heads?

Natalie: Well, if you want to talk, you can talk. We’ve been at a de facto standoff for a while. Peace would be preferable to drawn-out war if the assassination fails.

Will: I’m not so fond of Peace myself, but I see your point. I suppose it can’t hurt. I’ll be closer to him anyway.

Caiyeri got the memo too, evident in the change from a chaotic, destructively unpredictable movement pattern into a relatively straightforward bounce along the streets that mostly ignored influence in the area.

The Council House, presuambly one of the city’s former government buildings, was a pretty nice and intact building given that the apocalypse had come and gone, but it wasn’t much compared to what a few silver and gold-rankers had erected in Geneva or in any of the capital cities. Will landed on the roof, looking for a door. Not seeing one, he used Decaying Touch on a portion of the floor below him and stomped on it, sending the ceiling crumbling in on the floor below.

Caiyeri was a second behind him, crashing through a window not ten feet from him like a human—well, elven—wrecking ball. She rolled to a stop, deftly landing on her feet with a conjured warhammer in her hands.

“Four floors down,” Will said.

Will: Blurr, you gonna come in person or no?

Natalie: No. Summons are on standby as well. The last time we approached, he was quite hostile. We’re in a holding pattern high above. Tell us when to deploy if necessary.

Will: You got it.

Caiyeri: You can drop the “if” from there. Have you met this man?

Will: Hey.

Natalie: Yeah, I know. They’re very close.

Will: Hey!

“Stairs?” Caiyeri asked, tilting her head over to a set of them.

Sen’s eyes flew through the stairwell, checking for any obvious traps. Will avoided a couple of sensors using Pages of the Past, which he hadn’t used quite as much recently thanks to Sen’s expanded capabilities but did have some additional features that the familiar lacked—finding pre-set magical effects, for one.

It didn’t look like there was anything terribly lethal pointed at them, which was promising for negotiation’s sake.

Ayla’s words came to mind. What are you going to do if one of them isn’t a monster?

Blurr and Caiyeri’s were probably more applicable in this situation, though. Will was not planning on leaving this place without blood on his hands. Henry had demonstrated the ability to control his magic with more precision and less lethality than most could manage, which almost certainly meant that those first ten thousand had been intentional. What was he at now? Fifteen thousand?

Still, Will just kept his swords at the ready instead of fully charged, keeping his corruption swirling in hunger phantasm outside of the building rather than enveloping himself in it. He and Caiyeri took the stairs down.

“You seem excited,” he told the elf, who was practically bounding down the stairs.

“I finally get to deal with a regular human again,” she said. “Fighting alongside the others is nice, but the superdungeon is strange in ways that are a lot more annoying to deal with.”

“Yeah?” Will asked. “I suppose murdering one guy’s a lot easier than that.”

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“Talking to,” she corrected him. “And murdering him afterwards, I suppose. It’s good training, that’s for certain. I have an armory of loot on me now and I’m on the brink of my gold rank-up, which is a pace unheard of amongst elves.”

“Something stopping you?”

“Nothing in particular,” Caiyeri said. “We’ve just run into a bit of a wall. The monsters are getting harder, and though the cultists are sort of falling off, we’re running into traps set by technology we’ve never seen before. I thought it might be Earthen tech at first, but…”

Will cocked his head. “You’re implying that the other planet has access to the superdungeon, too.”

“That’s our best guess, yes,” she said. “But again, no progress on that. There’s too few of us to risk our lives on something like that. We can talk more later, though. We’re here.”

They followed Michael’s mark, finding themselves in an entirely intact room that looked like it might’ve been a governor’s headquarters at some point. Will, an American, could only liken it to something like the Oval Office, except there were massive paintings in the place of any windows.

Said paintings were of the same person who was standing at attention behind a mahogany desk, his blue steel armor glimmering with frost energy. He looked like an arrogant dickhead with a poorly trimmed mustache in the paintings, which said a lot about the character of the guy who’d commissioned it.

“Henry,” Will said.

The Blizzard Arcanist turned, his face obscured by a flat visor. “The famous Reaper himself. William. A pleasure to meet you.”

He extended a hand.

“It’s Will, and I’m not shaking that,” Will said. “The last guy who shook my hand planted a bomb on it.”

It had been a silver-rank one and therefore easy to dismantle with Ravenous Feast, but Will wasn’t looking forward to seeing his arm get frozen off or something.

“Of course,” Henry said. “Could I offer you anything to drink? I have the frostiest beers this side of the date line.”

His British accent was smooth and buttery, which made Will assume he’d been high-class or something—he had little education on the subject, and he didn’t particularly care. It reminded him of how the Hunger had spoken when they’d just met.

“I’m good,” Will said. “You called us here to talk, didn’t you? Let’s talk.”

He didn’t advance, but he held a sword in each hand. Eclipse crackled with the power of every soul he’d fed to it, while his trusty slayer sword remained as reliable as ever. To be honest, he probably could have swapped it out for a different sword by now, but the sheer intimidation factor of the red glow and its Unstoppable feature was very nice to have.

Also, it appealed to the edgelord in him. Guilty.

“Could I first ask who your elven friend here is?” Henry asked, oily charm oozing from his words. “I haven’t had the opportunity to meet so many of them since my return.

“Caiyeri Seven,” Caiyeri introduced herself. “The last abyssal elf.”

Will: That is definitely not true.

Caiyeri: It isn’t, but everyone else remaining is hiding. I’m the only relevant one left. You make shit up all the time to make yourself sound cooler.

Will: Fair.

“A pleasure to meet you, Caiyeri,” Henry said, looking at her like he was trying to picture how her head would look mounted on a wall.

“Get on with it,” she said, toying with two guns—one the seven-shooter Will had gifted her a while back and the other a high silver-rank one that he didn’t recognize.

“I have been monitoring the leaderboard,” Henry said. “I’ve noticed a few names go missing from it recently. Lance. Cross. Karina.”

The last hadn’t crossed the 10,000 kill line before Will had executed her, but she’d needed killing all the same.

“People die all the time,” Will said, shrugging. “Are you trying to suggest there’s a correlation there?”

“You don’t need to treat me like an idiot, Will. I know why you’re here, and I’d like to have a civilized discussion. Perhaps we can avoid some unnecessary bloodshed.”

“I’m listening,” Will said. “Not very closely, but I’m listening.”

“I’m no monster.”

Caiyeri snorted. “Kill count?”

“Fifteen thousand,” Will replied.

“Fourteen thousand, six hundred and four, thank you very much,” Henry said. “The most recent waves haven’t been my decision, either. You understand how it is.”

Will stared at the gold-ranker, dead-eyed. “Yes. That’s why I have fourteen thousand fewer dead to my name than you do.”

“Please,” Henry said, raising his hands placatingly. “Allow me to explain.”

“I’m giving you ten to get on with your goddamn explanation, which you seem to keep sidestepping,” Will said. “Nine. Eight.”

“Alright, alright. Will. Caiyeri. Have you received any achievements for killing yet?”

Will recalled getting one back in the tutorial, but that had been for killing a particularly large number of goblins in one burst. He’d also gotten First Blood for being one of the first to kill anything, but that was a different story.

“For one thousand, yes,” Caiyeri said. “Nothing much came of it, though. A slight increase in my power, perhaps.”

“That effect continues as the numbers get higher,” Henry explained. “While I was in the other world, I learned this. The leaders I served under all had tens of thousands of kills. Some even reached six digits. At ten thousand User kills, you unlock a certain new kind of ability.”

“Is that so,” Will said flatly. “So you went and murdered a city.”

The visor hid Henry’s explanation, but Will could feel him rolling his eyes through his aura. “Not even close to a city. I killed ten thousand people who were net negatives on society. Criminals. Murderers. Thieves. Rapists. The kind of folk that we were already trying to keep off our streets, I got rid of… forever.”

Somehow, Will doubted Henry had been so circumspect as to what kind of person he’d eliminated. He himself possessed one of the strongest sensory abilities in the world, and even he wouldn’t have that level of confidence killing a thousand, let alone ten.

“All so you could reach that ten thousand,” Will said. “What exactly does that do for you, again?”

“Quite a bit,” Henry said. “Your pool of power expands, and it can expand much further when you’re at the end of your rope. I found a new fire within myself that lets meaugment my magic. It permits me to expand the breadth and depth of my skills, enabling me to hold dominion over a city. I can use items beyond my rank, and I can temporarily overcharge my own items to go above and beyond.”

Oh, god, Will thought, slowly realizing why he’d been growing more and more familiar with the explanation Henry had been giving. Killing ten thousand people lets you spend plausibility.

No wonder so many of the leaderboarder otherworlders were utter sociopaths and also such widespread influences with their power. They quite literally were not playing the same game as the rest of them.

“Make no mistake, this was no impassioned killing,” Henry continued, apparently on a roll. “When you consider that these were bronze-rank and unformed individuals, I was doing the world a service. You of all people should know that the human race has not even begun to face its greatest challenges.”

“Sure,” Will said. “Planet coming in a couple of years minus a few months, gods taking interest in the place, otherworlders fucking shit up and killing tens of thousands—oopsies.”

“Tell me this, Will,” Henry said, ignoring the not-so-thinly veiled insult. “When the angels descend, when aliens come to compete with us for our limited resources, would you rather have ten thousand weaklings, not a single one of them higher than bronze, or a single terrifyingly powerful gold-ranker?”

“You’re farming XP off shitters by murdering them all,” Will said. “You do know this isn’t an RPG, right? This is real life.”

Caiyeri: I have no strong opinions on this apart from the fact that this was once a life elf program too. I don’t think they ever hit the 10k mark, though. We’re operating on a different level from the elves back then. Makes our conflicts look silly in retrospect.

Will: Good to hear. I’m going to hear this guy out just a little longer.

Caiyeri: Guns still locked and loaded, then. Heard loud and clear.

“I don’t plan on killing any more that I don’t have to,” Henry said. “Birmingham’s streets are free of crime. Our people are safer under me than they would be under anyone else save for a small handful of people. When the monsters come knocking, my citizens will be grateful for what I did, as much as it pained me.”

“So, your sales pitch is… let you keep doing what you’re doing?”

“I have no illusion that you’ll join me,” Henry said. “Just like me, you’re doing important things, and I wouldn’t dare impose while you have the fate of the world in your hands. What I do ask is that you let me protect my people in peace. I don’t plan on doing anything that might be disruptive in the same sense that my original spree was. Not unless I get closer to a hundred thousand kills, but I expect that to take decades, if not centuries.”

“Leave you alone and you’ll do the same for us?”

“Essentially.”

Will stopped for a moment, considering the matter. Like he’d thought of earlier, Henry’s path was scarily similar to ones he’d considered going down before. At face value, the gold-ranker wasn’t even terribly wrong. Ten thousand bronze rankers would be less effective against, say, a platinum-ranked Peace summon than Will or Henry alone would be.

But was Will fighting for that kind of society? Where the defenceless just perished and only murderers could survive?

No. Almost exactly the opposite, in fact.

Will looked at Henry and saw a road that had once been parallel to his but was now something more than that. Left to his own devices, the gold-ranker would become a warlord, killing more with the justification that he could protect them all with his enhanced power.

In some ways, that fulfilled the Dread Executor motto. Certainty through death. Order through chaos. Peace through dread.

But Henry was nothing like Will or Yui, Aza or Nynn. He was a loose cannon. One could only be so cavalier with life before they became what they wore they were protecting the world from.

For this kind of person, Will referred to the last line of that motto.

Eliminate. Eradicate. Execute.

Will: Go.

With a single thought, darkness exploded out from all of Sen’s eyes, blanketing the city. Caiyeri fired off two shots as Will dashed forward, swords in hand.

Henry’s body crumpled before he could get there, the shots blowing it apart—and revealing the melting ice that had made up the copy that had been speaking to them.

All across the city, the air began to freeze.

Will: Michael, Blurr. Hit it.

Michael: Heard. Tracking again.

Natalie: Summons out.

“Fight’s on,” Caiyeri said. “Ready?”

Will smiled coldly. “You know it. Henry is a dead man walking.”