Sen was going to have to put in a lot of work here, but it seemed that Henry was at least somewhat aware of Will’s familiar. While his city-wide influence wasn’t on the same level of Cross’, the Blizzard Arcanist had a skill that reduced parts of the city to a temperature so low that Sen’s eyes began suffering damage even in their intangible state.
Natalie: Twelve summons active. Three are dead already. Others are adjusting. Check the northside. Think he’s hiding there.
Michael: Can’t get ahold of him. Did he leave? His signature’s jumping all over the place.
Will: It was a decoy. He might be traveling between them.
That also seemed to be a constant between the 10k killcount Users. Almost all of them had huge area-of-effect powers that went far beyond what someone of their rank should have reasonably been able to accomplish, and that package seemed to include powerful movement abilities within their range of influence. Cinder hadn’t shown any signs of the latter, but she also hadn’t wanted to kill anyone, so Will assumed she wouldn’t have used any.
Henry’s was looking to be a pain in the ass. Cross and Lance had both stopped their respective Sen-countering abilities when they’d started moving around, but Henry’s passives were rendering entire areas uninhabitable for his intelligence and hiding amongst them.
Unfortunately, it seemed like they were dealing with a competent opponent here. Fortunately for them, their collective bullshit was almost certainly more than the sum total of what the gold-ranker could toss out.
Will: Stay close-ish to me and I’ll get rid of the adverse weather. Gonna try to clear out the coldest bits. Smoke him out.
Caiyeri: Roger roger.
Will: There is no fucking way you watched that series. We don’t even have functional TVs in most countries.
Caiyeri: Nathan said it would annoy you.
Will: Remind me to punch him the next time I see him.
The elf fell in line with him, bouncing off a building and through a section of Will’s phantasm wings. He solidified that section of the phantasm as she started to fall, giving her a section to hold onto.
“Oh, this is much warmer,” she said, getting into a crouched ready position. “You get the most randomly useful skills.”
That was a fair complaint. Will had honestly not expected to find much use out of Equilibrium Mantle when he’d first gotten it, but it had shown itself time and time again as a sleeper power play in his repertoire.
Though he didn’t actually nullify the effect of Henry’s skills, it gave him some leeway to throw Sen through the temporarily warmed area behind him, giving him more avenues to attack and investigate.
Will slashed through weak points when he saw them, his magic flashing through the air at seemingly nothing and making contact with crystallized mana, shattering the bonds between User and magic in a flash of dark energy.
“Nathan isn’t here to complain about your abilities being, and I quote, ‘incredibly unfair bullshit,’ so I’ll do it for him,” Caiyeri said. She ducked her head to one side, narrowly dodging an icicle that manifested out of thin air, charged with spatial energy. “What kind of User gets to kill magic?”
“You should try bullying a few more gods,” Will advised. “That gets unexpectedly good returns.”
Caiyeri snorted. “If anyone normal took your advice on half the things you do, there wouldn’t be a body left to find.”
“Hey, you did it once. That worked out, didn’t it?”
“When I was younger, I tried cutting a hand off to see if a healing potion would reattach it if I still had the hand. It ended up succeeding, but I wouldn’t try that again.”
“That is worryingly absurd.”
“We had very little in the way of entertainment in the facility.”
Even as they bantered, Will cut off more parts of the blizzard, slowly eliminating Henry’s influence. The Blizzard Arcanist replied, of course, using various ranged skills to teleport massive amounts of ice around and even casting a lightning strike or two, but Will chained Ravenous Feasts into each other, using the restored mana and life force from each consumed skill to eliminate the next. Normally, that skill took twelve hours to cool down, but with the levels of Blessed that Envoy of Mercy had given him, he could negate the cooldown with the same title.
Bullshit indeed.
Michael: Hey. I think he’s realized what you’re doing. I got eyes.
Will and Caiyeri both stopped chatting as a fresh marker appeared half a mile from them.
Will: On it.
#
Henry was very annoyed.
The conversation he’d had with Will hadn’t gone to plan. Obviously, Henry had heard a lot about the corruption wielder. William Li-Brown was a topic often spoken of in hushed whispers behind closed doors.
Henry had a number of connections to prominent figures in other countries, many formed during the global summit, which had been a resounding success. Sure, on the surface, nobody wanted to talk to the supposed mass murderer, but when leaders thought their peers weren’t looking, they all preferred to have power on their side.
He’d built a pretty thorough profile of the corruption wielder from that. Despite his relatively low position on the leaderboard until recently, Will was one of the most disproportionately powerful Users this planet had to offer.
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It had been hard to believe until he’d witnessed the man’s aura himself. Henry had a whole city comfortably under his thumb, and even he’d been staggered by how potent Will’s aura had been. Hell, he’d had to check the leaderboard to be completely sure that the man was somehow still silver.
Despite that, Henry had figured that there was a decent shot at convincing him to leave Birmingham alone. All signs had pointed towards Will having an understanding about what was necessary for the greater good.
Not enough of one, evidently. Henry had been playing with kid gloves on, trying to get a message through to the corruption wielder, but that wasn’t working.
Silver-rank chaos summons from Natalie Blurr proved to be more annoying than he’d thought at first, but Henry had spent a good deal of time preparing for her. The Tracker that she so obstinately kept employing was finding him no matter how many times he swapped between frozen bodies, which was acceptable.
Henry triggered Deep Freeze, the skill that he’d used to rend ten thousand people apart in the span of a single hour. Rather than target his entire town, he chose the specific spots where he detected enemies, slowing and crippling the summons. He didn’t even check to see if the skill affected Will and hius elf companion.
By now, he was beginning to accept that he only had one option here.
Run.
As a gold-rank with otherworlder benefits and the boosting effect of his 10,000 kill title, Henry knew he was powerful. There were very, very few nations on this planet who could challenge him, let alone people. By all rights, a Silver 10 shouldn’t have even been a threat.
But Henry wasn’t dumb. He’d been tracking the gossip, the underground news networks. He’d watched the leaderboard as he’d slowly slid up the ranks without doing anything.
Henry was strong, but he wasn’t the strongest. There were those above him that he wouldn’t even have thought of challenging.
One by one, they were dying, and it was this Reaper who was killing them.
You have received a message request from [William Li-Brown].
Finally. Maybe the stronger magic burst had been enough to catch his attention.
Will: So I was thinking about what you said. 10,000 dead to save however many more?
Henry: Yes. You’ll understand when you get there.
Will: What are you thinking about your odds against me?
Henry: What?
Will: Don’t answer that question, because I can tell. You’re not fighting to win. You’re fighting to run away.
Henry: Take it as a compliment.
Will: I’ll take it as an answer, actually. I was wondering earlier. Thinking about whether your strat was legit or not. There’s plenty of people in the world who need saving, and maybe, just maybe, it’d be worth getting rid of a few of them to keep the rest from dying.
Henry: You’re getting it.
Will: Then I thought about it some more. See, I haven’t been doing that so far. I just kill the people who need killing. You, on the other hand, have. It’s a great test case. One person with your strat, one with mine. See who comes out on top.
Will: So far, seems like I’m winning. Unfortunately for you, that means the list of people who need killing only gets to expand by one.
Shit.
Darkness exploded from Henry’s immediate surroundings. Recognizing the skill as the one that allowed the corruption wielder to teleport, he deployed immediate countermeasures.
I won’t die here, he chanted to himself, digging deep within himself to find that new pool of power he’d gained. Enhanced skill: Absolute Zero.
Matter around him stopped moving. Darkness shattered. Not even a protective skill could shield against this magic, which plunged his surroundings into such absolute cold that they would never move again.
Will: That’s cute. I should introduce you to a couple of my friends.
Henry heard an explosion from a distance, followed by an arrow that slipped through the tiniest gaps in his layers of automatic defenses, nearly reaching him before Absolute Zero stopped it.
A second later, the remaining darkness around him coalesced into a starry portal. Before he could adjust his efforts to dispel it, a sudden impact slammed into him, knocking his senses awry. Henry’s world went black for a moment, confusion joining the shock of the sudden impact.
What was this? Absolute Zero froze matter so effectively that anything that got near him was near-guaranteed to simply die on the spot.
To make matters worse, a second arrow broke through his shields. This time, he didn’t have the presence of mind to do much more than protect his vitals. It pierced his shoulder, freezing before it could detonate its payload.
The truck that had apparently slammed into him early did so again, and it was only this time that Henry caught what it was—an enormous monstrosity larger than the house he’d grown up in.
Will: That arrow is courtesy of Caiyeri Seven. I believe you’ve met.
A thread of magic connected from—somewhere, Henry couldn’t see—to the arrow, and that frozen tip melted.
You have been afflicted with a gold-rank level of [Wither].
Henry tried to teleport, but he’d broken focus on Absolute Zero. Shadowy darkness swirled out of a hundred suddenly-visible eyes, overwhelming his skill, shattering it.
Devouring it.
That darkness crept towards him, too, and before he could counter it, sudden motion alerted him to a flurry of spear-like bone shooting towards him from the monstrosity.
The only safe place to dodge was the darkness.
Will: And that’s Jessie. Do forgive its manners. It’s not very well-socialized yet, but we’re working on it.
Except the darkness wasn’t safe either, was it?
You have been afflicted with a gold-rank level of [Corruption].
And just as Henry had seen in after-action reports a dozen times, a bell tolled.
The darkness parted, revealing a cloaked angel of death, midnight wings glistening with an evil light.
“I’ve thought your proposal over,” Will said. “Here’s my answer—“
His wings spread wide, revealing the swords he’d brought with him. One shone a glistening blood-red, while the other seemed to suck in the light itself.
“NO.”
Henry never heard Will’s declaration, the wails of the forgotten filling his mind instead.
The last coherent sentence he heard was from an elven woman’s voice.
“Well, that was disappointing.”
#
Progress to [Eternal Throne]: [619/1000]
Special quest: Gold Challenges (Reaper)
Sub-task advanced.
- Kill 7 beings with a killcount of 10,000 or higher [4/7]
“Job’s not done,” Will said. “Thanks for the assist, guys.”
“Neither Jessie nor I are guys,” Caiyeri pointed out. “Natalie isn’t, either.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Will said. “How did you feel about that?”
Jessie shook like a wet dog, its aura radiating with enthusiastic approval.
Will winced. “Don’t go too hard on that. You’ll break another building. We’ve done enough property damage as is.”
Natalie: Saw the leaderboard shift. It’s done?
Will: Yeah. Thanks for helping out.
Michael: Thank god. That man was a cancer on our country.
Natalie: I cannot properly emphasize how little I did during that fight. I owe you.
Will: You’re good. Debts matter less than trust.
Will: Actually, I might have a favor to ask.
Natalie: Go for it.
Will: You’ve got good intelligence, right? Good transportation?
Natalie: Yes.
Will: Fantastic. I’m about… fifty-seven percent done with my challenges. I’m looking for Pixie, Warr, and any other leaderboarders you know of who might be a problem. There’s a lot more shit coming our way, and you can be damn sure I’m not going to be silver when it does.