Will was starting to feel a bit like a broken record. He was pretty sure that it wasn’t exactly normal to be someone who was getting used to otherworldly dimensions in which he was meant to contest a god, but that was just his life now.
He briefly wondered how many other people on Earth or the other planet had come into contact with gods even a tenth as many times as he had. Of those, he wondered if they’d come out unscathed or had gone insane from having their soul broken to shreds repeatedly. There had been points where he’d thought the latter result would be his life’s ultimate ending, but here he still was, alive and kicking and contesting Peace.
She was the same as he remembered her, taciturn and so blindingly bright that she couldn’t be looked at directly. There was a hint of increased danger to her now, though, as if the time since she’d last seen him had given her the drive to actually kill him.
Given the fact that last time, she’d said that she was bored, Will counted this as a step up.
He remembered contesting her with his intervention skill Desecrated Bond back at the first global summit. Then, he’d used it on some inconsequential silver ranker to make a point, and he’d been stunned by how little Peace cared about his general existence even if he annoyed her. It had been a departure from so many other gods where their sheer hatred for him made them predictable and gave him leverage.
Then, he’d had nothing to use against her. Now… well, that was still mostly true. Her forces were widely spread out, and nobody had disrupted the preparations that the Contractor was making on account of her spending plausibility to hide them from all possible surveillance.
This time, though, Will didn’t feel the same desperate urgency he did before. He knew more of the ground rules now. This carved-out area of space they were represented the soul-space that they had to contest. Peace had all of Xie-ren’s power to use in this contest, but she could wield the gold-ranker’s soul with a strength that Xie-ren could never even dream of. Will knew how much pain he’d be withstanding, and he knew that he would likely even be able to sever the bond because Peace was ultimately limited by the amount of power that her User could output.
He’d also gained the Heretic title since the last time they’d met, which granted him more resistance to the divine magic that Peace would be using to push back against Will’s efforts to sever her from this place. In essence, he knew that he’d be able to complete the primary objective he was here for, although it would be painful in a level that few mortal minds would be able to comprehend.
Will was somewhat of a connosieur when it came to soul torture, though. Though the Crown refused to open its domain to him when he dreamed, the Hunger still did, and that god had been growing its influence and power as the cycle progressed, using Will’s accomplishments to fuel itself. In a self-sustaining cycle, its increased power let it wreak further havoc on Will’s soul every night, forging it stronger again each time, which in turn increased Will’s ability to accomplish great deeds and empower the Hunger more.
There was always the concern that Xie-ren being a rank higher than the last one he’d contested of this sort would make the Peace able to utilize her power to a far greater extent, but Will had prepared for this as much as he could.
Now, the real question was what he could extract from Peace before this encounter ended. Desecrated Bond was one of the few chances he had to interact with gods that weren’t his own sigils, and Peace was one in particular that he would greatly appreciate insights into evil plans about.
To his surprise, he didn’t have to badger her with insults for minutes on end before she spoke this time. Instead, it was Peace that opened the conversation.
“Humans are tiring,” she said, each word reverberating with godly power. “This one accepted peace. Why can you not?”
“Ooh, breaking policy, are we?” Will said. “I seem to recall you calling me ‘predictable’ last time. Still feeling that?”
“An insect’s actions are predictable,” the goddess said. “It lives. It finds food. It mates. It infests. It dies. It is irritating nonetheless.”
“Some insects are real good at not dying,” Will said. “I’ve found a lot more in common with the cockroach than I thought I ever would.”
“Your kind only ever seeks defiance for the sake of it,” the goddess said. “The truth lays in front of your eyes, but you would refuse to acknowledge that the sky was blue if it was a god saying it.”
“It’s pretty definitively not been blue for a few moments here and there,” Will said. “I’m reasonably sure part of that has to do with the planet hurtling towards us, which isn’t something that my cycle is supposed to be dealing with.”
“The cycle falters,” Peace acknowledged. “A trend that has been only increasing in intensity and frequency with each new integration.”
“So you admit that’s true,” Will said. “I’m going to wrap around to an earlier point you made. You think I’m defying you just because I want to? Are you dumb? I have sigils, you know.”
“One of which you have made no contact with in months.”
“Because he’s working for you, dumbass,” Will said. “The only interest I have in the Crown comes from the skill he gave me. I bet he felt real good giving that to me only to realize that I’m not the weak-willed pacifist he thought I was.”
“Peace requires a stronger will than violence,” the embodiment of the concept itself said. “It is easy to push mana into a skill. Before the system, it was easy to pull a trigger. To swing a blade. True will is having the opportunity to end a life and not taking it.”
“And yet here you are,” Will said. “Taking lives like candy from a baby.”
“No peace comes without its cost.”
“Yeah? What do you think you’re going to accomplish here? Congratulations, your little summoning ritual over in bumfuck nowhere is going to work out because you cheated the cycle and orchestrated a way to use divine power without someone else having to make the first move. Let’s say you kill me. When that’s done, you’ve rid the world of its corruption wielder, sure, but also one of a very, very small group of people that care about keeping this place running. I don’t see a way a greater peace comes from my death.”
“You think on far too small a scale,” Peace said. “Very mortal of you. What is one world amongst trillions? If the cycle is allowed to continue on, yours is not the last that will fall into conflict. I seek a lasting peace.”
“Starting by taking my head,” Will said drily. “A favored of your sister’s, if my theology is correct.”
“Correct.” The goddess offered no further explanation.
“You care to elaborate how that’ll help?”
“Not particularly,” Peace said.
As always, she was entirely unphased by what he had to say, contrasting other gods and even powerful mortals who would lose their shit at anything other than total, unquestioned obedience. In some ways, that made her scarier. Anger was predictable. Peace wasn’t.
A bit of time passed in which neither of them said anything or made any moves, both watching the other in case they might offer up a nugget of information—Will looking to make any more sense of Peace’s plan, the goddess trying to find… he didn’t really know. Insights into his psyche? He supposed he should be flattered that a core goddess wanted to poke at his brain, but he was getting a bit sick of that by now.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“If that’s all, then?” Will said, expanding his soul-space outwards. “Let’s dance.”
After Will had experienced the inside of a Desecrated Bond once, the second go round was just retreading old ground. Peace was using a stronger vessel this time, but Will had also grown stronger and number since the last time he’d done this. Pain was a familiar companion to his soul now.
And when it came to a contest of the souls, he knew who would win every time. Peace wasn’t torturing her subordinates to maximize their soul power. That was something that could and would result in brain damage or death in those who weren’t able to handle it. A brittle sword held up to the heat of a forge could break.
Will had not broken yet, and he would not break now.
Peace made an effort, but even she recognized that the fight was lost from the beginning.
“For every one of these you cut me off from,” she warned Will as he strained with effort, pushing back against the all-consuming shattering sensation that her soul-space inflicted on him, “there are ten thousand more. You cannot defeat me every time, and there are many who seek peace.”
With a roar of exertion, Will pushed through another layer of the goddess’ defenses, corruption spreading through the sigil link.
“Yeah, I know,” he panted, soul exhausted even if his body was in baseline reality and completely rested. “I’m one of them.”
“Yet you have not considered our point of view.”
“Oh, I have,” Will said. “I want peace. Just not yours.”
He shattered Xie-ren Jie’s link to her goddess.
#
Iridium, Osmium, and Rhodium of the Ninety-Sixth Sector slid to a halt as a collective, their antennae quivering as a wave of raw, dirty power rang like the tolling of a funeral bell.
All three of them shuddered with revulsion as their senses processed the foul stench of magic being torn asunder.
“The corruption wielder’s work, no doubt,” Iridium said. “Our hunt-race is coming to a close.”
“We are close,” Rhodium agreed. “I sense minds. Tens of thousands. Many of them are united in purpose.”
“Not of the Great Purpose, I presume.”
“From preliminary investigations, they are of the same kind that we encountered within the dungeon anomaly,” Rhodium said. “Though that first impression was negative, they may yet prove not to be hostile. They are, just as we are, but servants of a greater cause.”
“Then we will avoid-prevent the deaths of abundant-overmuch of their kind,” Osmium said. “Iridium. You can handle this, yes?”
“With pleasure, brother-comrade,” Iridium said. “We will strike the instant his defenses are lowered. Advance with me.”
As the Speaker of the Soul, Iridium had gained skills that the previous Speakers had possessed, all of them amplified by the sheer weight of the role.
His predecessor had possessed a singular skill by the title of Atmospheric Cannon. Designed to depopulate moons, it absorbed chunks of a celestial body’s atmosphere to fuel itself, firing a devastating attack that could wipe out small cities. What the previous Speaker had used it as, however, was an instrument of assassination. With the assistance of another Speaker, the beam could be aimed and calibrated in such a manner that its only victim would be a single target, the area around them protected.
With Iridium’s own signature skills, that effect would be compounded. Even if the stricken user survived the first blow by some miracle, he would be slaughtered in moments by a fast-acting fear virus that targeted the soul itself, bypassing all defenses.
William Li-Brown wasn’t going to know what hit him until he was little more than a smear of blood on the ground.
#
All sigil-holders of [Peace] within 1,000 miles have been alerted to your current position.
Will stumbled on dead grass as he collapsed back into his material body. It was always disorienting coming back from spaces like the Beyond or the strange soul-space that Desecrated Bond shunted him off to, but this time had been particularly rough. Xie-ren had possessed enough power for Peace to make it particularly painful for him.
Judging from Xie-ren’s reaction, it seemed like he’d gotten the better end of the deal. The Chinese woman fell to her knees, clutching at her head as if she was going to find a wound there. Unlike the last Peace sigil-holder he’d done this to, she didn’t scream, instead just cycling through her magic in shock.
Will had to respect the amount of power she had. Even with Peace gone, she still seemed to be gold rank, and she’d been effective against an entire city of silver and gold-rank defenders with just her skills and Peace’s shitty disposable troops. Before she could collect herself enough to try turning those skills on him, he screamed at her as politely as he could.
“PLEASE GET STUNNED BY THIS,” he bellowed, activating Wail of the Forgotten as he did.
Instead of the usual enhancements that he poured into it, Will weakened the skill intentionally, widening the area of effect so that the damage would be lowered.
The stunning effect on the skill was one that he rarely used since strong enemies could typically resist it and weaker ones would usually just die under the weight of his relentless assault, but with Xie-ren as scatter-brained as she was right now, he figured she’d be at a moment of critical weakness.
He predicted correctly. She froze up, eyes going wide as haunted voices overwhelmed her.
It wouldn’t last forever, but it would last long enough. Will dearly hoped that there weren’t any Peace sigil-holders in the area who could teleport here in under a minute. He’d be able to deal with them, but it would get in the way of his other task here.
Will: Job’s done, mostly. Doubt she’ll be immediately cooperative, but I have her.
Nathan: Got it. Already on my way.
Sen’s eyes patrolled the mountaintop and the area immediately around it, giving Will a general idea of what was going on. Some of the Peace sigil-holders in the area—gold-ranks, mostly—were fast. They were within minutes of finding him and presumably engaging him in a fight.
Nathan, fortunately, was faster. The otherworlder was a tinkerer with a class meant for extraterrestrial travel and attack, and it showed in the sheer speed he demonstrated in getting to Will’s side. A sonic boom accompanied his arrival.
“I can carry both of you,” Nathan said, “but I’m not great at taxiing more than one person while also keeping weapons systems online.”
“Can you handle her?” Will asked.
Nathan looked Xie-ren over dubiously. “Probably. Worst comes to worst, I can just drop her, yeah?”
“She might be able to fly,” Will said.
“Might?”
“I don’t know,” Will admitted. “But it feels like every asshole can fly these days. Or at least hover. Makes dramatically throwing people off towers so much less effective.”
“You’ve been doing a lot of that?”
“I tried. Twice. Once in Moldova, once in New Zealand. First guy just healed off the damage, second guy didn’t even move.”
Nathan snorted. “You’re not helping the sociopathic serial killer image, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Will sighed. “Just get her and go. I’ll catch up to you. We don’t have long before her backup gets here.”
Some of them were already climbing the mountain at rapid speeds. Will had Sen spit out hunger phantasm at them and occasionally used the familiar’s gold-rank feature to project his aura through the eyes. It wouldn’t kill any of them right off the bat, but it forced them to group together to keep his corrupting darkness away from them, buying Nathan enough time to take off unmolested.
Will followed, a decent distance behind. He wasn’t at supersonic levels yet, not even close, but he managed to get some good speed by plummeting hundreds of feet and converting the downward momentum into a glide with wings made of hunger phantasm.
As he glided, he sent off messages to Lu Jie and the rest of the squad. Most of the others he’d brought were still fighting off Peace sigil-holders, doing just as a good a job here as they had in the superdungeon, but they were occupied enough that they probably weren’t going to be able to come with him to meet the Portal Mage. Liam in particular expressed a wish to “pick off the stragglers” before grouping up again.
That was fine by him. Will needed to be the one to kill Fan Laozi anyway. That was his final requirement to rank up to gold. The last few months had been a tumultuous time, but he’d acquired enough treasures from dungeons during that time to meet the other Reaper challenges.
All that remained now was one more kill between him and a rank that might let him actually survive. It didn’t escape his notice that he was also within thirty kills of a thousand for Eternal Throne, a number he could have barely dreamed about months ago. That promise of resurrection was incredibly appealing now that it was within reach.
Distantly, Will had to marvel at just how much he’d changed. When he’d first gotten the Crown’s sigil, he’d firmly decided against becoming the type of monster that would murder just to get a bonus from a skill. Now, here he was, hundreds of kills later, doing just that. He’d found a lot of targets worth killing, but he had to wonder how many of those kills had just seemed like nails when all he had was a hammer.
Not important, he reminded himself, a throbbing pain in a hollow eye socket reminding him of the demon there and the stakes at hand. If he had to become a monster to protect himself, his friends, and the world, then he would.
He glided straight over the battlefield and deeper into the heart of the city, where Nathan had raised a smoke signal of sorts, using magical flares to spark a beacon that stretched more than twice as high as any of the skyscrapers in the area.
Will: You know I can see you on my map, right? You definitely didn’t need to do that.
Nathan: C’mon, let a man roleplay Hatchet every now and again.
Will: Dude, the smoke signal didn’t work in that book.
Nathan: Yes it did. Did we read the same thing?
Will: You’re impossible sometimes. I’m settling down. Are you with them?
Nathan: Yep, with Lu Jie. Bit of a heads-up, though… Fan Laozi is coming, and he doesn’t seem very happy.
#
High up in the sky, further than any Earth native could sense, air began coagulating, sucked into the effects of a gold-rank orbital weapon.