Will clicked his tongue.
“It’s not every day you find someone willing to tell you to shut up,” Nathan said.
“No, he has those people already,” Caiyeri replied. “How many times have you told him to shut up since you met him?”
Nathan counted on his fingers, then the backs of his fingers, then gave up. “Okay. Fair. It’s not every day you see someone who can… I dunno, resist telling Will to shut up?”
“Shut up,” Will said. “There are lives on the line, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I would buy that if it weren’t for the list of jokes about fictional heroes I was forced to learn from you during our fights,” Caiyeri said. “I’m gold rank now. I can tell when you’re lying.”
“That has nothing to do with your rank—congratulations, by the way,” Will said. “You can tell that I’m lying because you’ve spent too much time with me.”
“He’s not wrong, though,” Hua said quietly. “Xie-ren is a threat. We might be at odds with Fan Laozi’s regime, but not everyone who lives under him deserves to die. You said you had the positions of their forces, right?”
“Yeah,” Will said. “Perks of the most evil shit I’ve seen in a skill so far. There’s a lot of them. Way more gold-rankers than there should be, Xie-ren among them.”
“Do you know what she is?” Hua asked.
“She’s not on the leaderboard,” Will said, shaking his head. “Looks like Peace has a way to take them off. Or maybe the boosting just means that they don’t properly count. Whatever the case, I don’t know what she’s packing.”
“Don’t put it like that, please,” Nathan said.
“Stop encouraging him,” Caiyeri admonished. “Should we go after her first, then?”
“I don’t think we’re going to end up getting much of a choice,” Will said. “Judging from how she’s moving, I think she’s going to be attacking the city quite soon. We might enter a bit of an all-out melee.”
“I’m a bit hesitant to do that,” Hua said. “There’s raiding a base like this, and there’s getting in between a leaderboarder and the spearhead of this particular Peace faction. I don’t throw down for that type of fight without a proper plan. Or an army.”
“I dunno,” Nathan said. “We’ve always been pretty good at beating the odds.”
“My brother was, too,” Hua replied.
“Do you ever think before you open that mouth of yours?” Yui hissed at Nathan.
“No,” Nathan said honestly. “Sorry, Hua.”
“It’s fine. People die. It’s what we do. I’m just saying… maybe we should call in everyone else?”
“That’s a good point,” Will said. “Caiyeri’s feeling good right now, so we’re going to be riding that high, but I imagine Jessie and Nynn might want to get in on this.”
“You forgot Liam,” Hua said.
“I haven’t seen him in like three months,” Will said. “My bad. Does he actually do stuff other than shoot things with a sniper?”
“He has great sigil skills,” Yui offered.
“I’m wary of those now that I have a better grasp on what sigils entail,” Will said.
“He’s better with ranged weapons than I am,” Hua said. “I’m an assassin. He’s a wallbreaker and sometimes a sniper. You’d have to see him in action, which I’m pretty sure you could do.”
“You also completely forgot about Wisteria,” Yui pointed out.
“Is she even silver yet?” Will asked.
“As of a week ago, yes. She’s progressing along quite nicely, actually.”
“Can you just hurry this up?” Caiyeri asked. “You’re just going to decide to take everyone anyway. Here, let me guess your objection: we’re leaving our base in the superdungeon unguarded. Now, my counter: we’re strong, I’m gold now, and we can just retake it when we get back, which we can do since you have a bullshit portal power you can use.”
Will opened his mouth, then closed it. “Yeah, actually, that’s fair. I’ll be right back.”
He didn’t have any more levels of Blessed or Purified to spend, so he spent the actual time casting Sanctuary, slipping into the Beyond.
To his slight surprise, Aza entered with him.
“Not often I see you in here, especially with Ayla not around,” Will said. “What’s up?”
“It’s about Nynn,” Aza said. “I conversed with him.”
“That’s never a good way to start off a conversation,” Will said. “If you’re not leading with the reason for it, it’s gotta be something bad.”
“It pains me to say that it is,” Aza said. “Nynn has always been an exemplar of what it means to be a Dread Executor. He moves to save cycles at great personal cost. This isn’t the first time he’s sealed his power to interfere, you know.”
“Interfering seems like the name of the game when it comes to your kind,” Will said.
“Our kind. Don’t pretend like you’re not going to be there one day right alongside me.”
Will scoffed. “Even if I live that long, which I’ll remind you is nothing near a guarantee at this point, what makes you think I’d join you?”
“Simple,” Aza said. “You cannot tolerate not having the power to end injustice. You and Nynn are alike in that way.”
“So that’s what this is about,” Will said. “Nynn. He’s never been sealed this badly, has he? He used up everything to kill Ataraxis back in the trial of the champion, and he lost his access to the Beyond.”
Aza gave him a look that said don’t think we’re done with the other topic before nodding. “Correct. He wishes to affect change, which I am sure you can understand.”
“He is, isn’t he?” Will asked with a frown. “He’s preventing Peace from getting a foothold in the superdungeon. Presumably, he’s also helping stem the aliens from charging straight in, though I haven’t been back in the dungeon recently.”
“He is, but when you are a Dread Executor, helping in a User’s normal capacity seems like nothing,” Aza said. “You, even, have been traveling the world, putting down threats to your species. You prepare for a grand summoning ritual. Stars, you are containing a mid-tier demon as a silver.”
“You can’t seriously be telling me that Nynn’s savior complex is giving him performance anxiety,” Will said flatly. “I’m not a therapist. I can’t dig someone out of a hole they put themselves into.”
“I was making neither request nor demand,” Aza said. “This is a warning.”
Will raised an eyebrow. “You think Nynn’s going to be a threat to me?”
“Not only to you. To himself and to everyone around him. True precognition does not exist, but I know my allies well enough to model their behavior. He will almost certainly make an extraordinarily risky play the next time one of your lives is at risk. Under normal circumstances, this would be a small issue, but do remember the condition you have reduced him to.”
“Ah,” Will realized, putting the pieces together. “I cut his connection to the Beyond, but that’s not the same as erasing it. His tunnel in is containing the corruption bomb, but if he tries to open it…”
“I do not know what would happen,” Aza admitted. “I do know that it would threaten the lives of all of your allies, yourself included. Not even you are fully equipped for the level of corruption that could induce.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Will sighed. “Thank you.”
“Of course. I’ve spent enough of your time. Go retrieve your allies.”
#
The remaining people who’d been posted at various encampments through the superdungeon included some that Will hadn’t seen for a while, but he was happy to have them on his side. They were spread out across two locations, which seemed a bit risky. The littered corpses of Peace sigil-holders helped dissuade him of the idea that they were in trouble, though.
He still wasn’t sure how exactly they were not just surviving but thriving, even as uniquely lethal as they were, but he suspected it had something to do with the Inanis system and the forces that Ayla had said they were sending into the superdungeons.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
That wasn’t what was important at the moment, though. What mattered now was assembling the team he needed to attack Fan Laozi and Xie-ren Jie with.
Lily Teneli, Hunter. Silver 10, just like him, but not even close to breaking through to gold at the moment. Will was hesitant to call her an ally, but according to Nathan, her murderhobo instincts had calmed down after she’d been given plentiful targets to exercise them on.
She was with Liam, who was a level behind her. His class had evolved at some point while Will hadn’t been watching—he was now a Siege Engine, and he had proved to be devastatingly effective against fortifications. He was still blind, unfortunately, but his magic senses had grown stronger than Will’s in the duration, compensating for some of that.
Jessie, a devouring gestalt who needed no introduction. Gold 10. As far as Will was aware, it was the highest-ranked creature on the planet, but its core was impure thanks to the number of external souls it had consumed and absorbed into its own. Now, one of its focuses on compacting down those impurities so that it would be a true terror at its current level. Its other one was on speaking in recognizable language, which Will was happy to report included almost-complete English sentences now.
It was with the other remaining Users in one of the larger areas that they’d successfully purged of Peace sigil-holders.
Wisteria, Void Knight, had indeed leveled up to Silver 3 under Yui’s tutelage. She’d come a fair way since Will had first seen her under the sea at the Point Nemo research ship, and she agreed to come with Will almost before he asked the question. It was looking like she wouldn’t be dead weight, which was always nice to see. Yui was a terror on the battlefield. Even if Wisteria was an inferior version, one and a half Yuis was nothing to scoff at.
That left only Nynn. Gold 10. Once a Dread Executor, he was now classless, though he retained the skills he’d had—albeit sealed down to gold rank. He was a force multiplier first and foremost now, since all the attacks he’d grown used to using required too much mana to just use willy-nilly. Even in a support role, he would prove critical in a large-scale battle, but Will was worried that Aza’s predictions would come to pass.
At length, he did get them to assemble and pass through the Beyond, which was the important part.
Shepherding all five of them into the positive energy plane at once proved to be trickier than he’d hoped, but fortunately, nothing went wrong. He had briefly been worried that Nynn’s connection being what it was posed a threat to their venture into the Beyond, but a quick chat with both Aza and Ayla reassured him that it was fine.
Speaking of the latter, she sensed the tug of all of them traveling through the domain she was the most experienced with and chose to make an appearance in front of the six of them, helping stabilize Will’s Sanctuary.
“What’s the occasion?” She asked Will. “You brought a whole party with you.”
“I’m putting the gang back together,” Will said. “We’ve got, what, ten people in all? And we’re facing off against probably a few hundred, maybe thousands. It’s almost a fair fight.”
“You’re not against the primary Peace force,” Ayla said. “You’ll be fine. That one, I’ll remind you, is about a month from completion.”
“And I’ll get there when I get there,” Will said. “Which should hopefully be today, if nothing goes wrong.”
“You should know better by now than to say that,” Nynn said.
“Thought you weren’t superstitious,” Will shot back.
“Superstition’s one thing,” Liam said. “Even I know not to line myself up like that, though.”
“Something will go wrong, because something always goes wrong,” Ayla said. “Just be wary that you’re not the only group interested in third-partying this particular battle.”
“Wait.” Will frowned. “Third-party as a verb… you played battle royales? How the hell did that work while you were a system helper?”
“Magic works wonders even in non-integrated societies,” Ayla replied. “And to answer your next question, better than you. The salient point here is that I sensed movement from a high-priest equivalent. Gold-ranks, almost certainly capable of fighting up a rank given the power I sensed.”
“They’re coming for me and me specifically, aren’t they?” Will sighed. “Thanks for the heads up. Does that change anyone’s plans?”
“No change,” Jessie said.
“Oh, wow,” Will exclaimed. “That was actual, coherent English. You’re doing great!”
“Thank.”
Nobody had any other concerns, so he sent them hurtling back into reality, giving Ayla time to recover her strength.
The situation had changed a bit in the minutes he’d been gone. Not in any way that actually mattered, but Will was pretty sure the desert sand hadn’t been painted with quite that much blood before.
“Turns out there were a few that got away,” Caiyeri said, conspicuously splattered with blood that definitely wasn’t hers. “They started glowing, which I figured was bad, so I tested out my new skills. Hello again, everyone.”
“Oh, gold rank,” Wisteria said, clocking the difference immediately. “Congratulations, Caiyeri. You’re the first of your generation to make it that far, aren’t you?”
“I’m also the last of my generation to be alive, but I appreciate the sentiment,” Caiyeri said. “Actually, it’s possible that I’m the only gold-rank elf alive today.”
“That’s definitely not true,” Nathan said. “There’s still a few elf settlements holding out in various parts of the world, not really interacting with humans much. There’s a couple with gold-rank matriarchs.”
“I’d say that’s good to hear, but I don’t know how much of an elf I am at this point,” Caiyeri said. “Being gold rank is pretty great, by the way. You should try it some time, Will.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Will said, grinning. “Alright. Everyone’s got the general idea of what we want to do. You’ve been working with each other for a few months, mostly. That should overpower people who are essentially roided-up drones of Peace. I’m less sure about Fan Laozi and his gang, but if we can get Xie-ren Jie alive, we get Lu Jie on our side.”
“We’re not killing the lady?” Liam asked.
“If it’s your life or hers, kill her. Ideally we don’t get to that point, but do what you have to. Don’t do anything dumb. Don’t be a hero if you can just call in one of us. Everyone clear?”
Will looked at Nynn as he said that. Even though the Dread Executor was good at controlling his aura, he wasn’t quite as good as managing his body. Will could see hints of the restlessness Aza had pointed out.
“I believe we’re all prepared,” Nynn said, meeting Will’s gaze. “Should we get on with it?”
#
Iridium, Osmium, and Rhodium, all of the Ninety-Sixth Sector, emerged from the dungeon anomaly with a hundred more kills to each of their names.
Though they had done their best to avoid the concerted efforts of the priests within, they had come into conflict with them eventually.
The Unification Front understood that gods had their agendas, but they had also learned from their gods that to deny a god’s followers was not the same as denying a god itself. Killing the followers of Peace would not bring her wrath upon them, and kill those followers they had.
They emerged on the side of a snowy mountain almost as tall as the Great Canyons were deep. Osmium, Speaker of the Flesh, activated his passive skill, regulating all three of their bodies from the inside out. Even without it, the cold would have been easy to weather compared to a hard winter at home, but it was much appreciated.
Iridium had sensed traces of corruption throughout the dungeon anomaly, but in accordance with the orders of the Unification Front, he had not slowed to analyze potential hiding spots. They had passed through one particular location with almost no resistance—the corruption was stronger there, and there were many dead priests around it, which led Iridium to conclude that their target had been here before as well.
Now that they were outside, the trace was fainter. Under normal conditions, that would not make sense, but Iridium had been briefed upon the different powers that this world could wield.
“The corruption wielder can travel-move instantly,” he said.
“Will you be able to find-detect him?” Rhodium asked.
“Of course,” Iridium said. “If you would just give me one moment.”
Unlocking his new class had been a massive boon to him. All his previous skills had not only upgraded—they had evolved.
Trace Terror, a tracking skill he had used to find the targets of his lethal fear, now extended towards anything whose soul he could comprehend, not just what he had left a magical marker on.
In conjunction with another skill that let him analyze souls from their magic traces, he could find the corruption wielder nearly instantly.
The force of the soul shocked him as he entered the skill. Even through a skill that did not interact directly with the soul, Iridium was rooted to the ground by the sheer presence in William Li-Brown’s being.
“Demon,” he hissed, retracting from the skill as if he had been burnt.
“Did he best your detection, brother?” Rhodium asked.
“No,” Iridium replied. “Check your maps. We are less than eight hundred distance-lengths from the corruption wielder.”
“Then let us hurry,” Osmium said gravely, “before he can corrupt this pure world further.”
#
Will’s group came at the perfect time to interfere with a battle, which meant they were a lot later than they had hoped.
With no plane at the ready, they had been forced to make do with their movement skills. They were able to move quickly, but it had been awkward. Caiyeri and Liam both needed momentum to move the fastest, so Will had taken the former and Nathan the latter, dropping them from about five thousand feet up to start their engines, so to speak.
Wisteria and Yui could tag-team using the latter’s access to the Beyond. Unlike Will’s skill, Yui could travel to places she hadn’t been before, but she could only use that movement with a very limited load and couldn’t stay in the Beyond for long.
Jessie just ran, capable of moving at deceptively fast speeds across long, flat distances.
All in all, that meant it took them about half an hour to make it from the ruins of SB-7 to the outskirts of the city proper.
They were engaged in active warfare. Battles between large groups of Users were always hard to follow, and this was no exception. The dominant force was obviously Fan Laozi’s titans, two of which were actively deployed in this area. They crushed buildings a quarter mile tall with casual ease, magical weapons of various types firing from every surface. As they got closer and Sen’s eyes gave Will a closer view of the battlefield, he realized that the titans were moving weapons systems, each of them filled to the brim with gold-rank equipment.
They were being partially manned by silver-rank Users, too. Defenders from the Shanghai side swarmed the side of the titans like so many ants, occasionally popping out of the side to dump a few offensive skills or try to counter one of the Peace side’s coordinated attacks.
Lu Jie was participating, which was evident once a massive white beam of energy that Will recognized as Peace’s Pacify sigil skill distilled into a ranged attack fired on a collected mass of Users on the arm of one of the titans. A portal opened under them, ejecting them atop a crumbling skyscraper. A heartbeat later, a second portal opened, shunting them away as a lumbering sweep of the titan’s arm finished cleaving the building apart at the middle.
The Peace group was operating as a more cohesive unit than Lu Jie’s faction was, which was a bit strange when Will considered that they were the ones with the gigantic titans that were currently dictacting the flow of the fight.
The general trend of the battle became clear as the ten of them drew within striking range of the fight, about a mile from the back of the largest Peace force. Though both sides were losing people fast, the Peace side didn’t seem to care at all. They continued pushing forward, consolidating ranks, and they continued firing the same grouped-up standardized rituals that Peace had granted her followers.
Every time Shanghai’s side lost a person, however, a key part of their strategy went down. They were playing tower defense, mostly, trying to keep the titans in the game, but the problem with groups like theirs or Will’s was that they weren’t units. They were people, and though figuring out a fighting style that played into the synergies between each other worked better than just doing what you could on your own, it also meant that when your teammate died, combat got a lot harder.
Bit by bit, Peace’s forces were making progress. Casualties were mounting on both sides, but if this continued as it was, Peace was going to overrun the city just by sheer force of numbers. Her forces might not be able to take down Fan Laozi or Lu Jie, but the entire rest of the population? That was a very possible failure state.
“Well,” Will said to his assembled group.
“Oh, don’t you dare get into a speech,” Caiyeri said. “I’ve never been so ready to fight in my life.”
“Let me put the script away then,” Will said drily. “Let’s go fuck their shit up.”