Lance was a slippery piece of shit.
Granted, Will had expected that to be the case. Killing Cross had been—well, easy was the wrong term for it, because he’d still needed to push himself to the limit to chase the Necromancer through all of his constant teleports as well as avoid the frankly absurd amount of power he’d been putting out. He’d managed to make it look effortless, of course, because he was just that cool, but it hadn’t been a walk in the park.
Anyway, the point was that Lance was way harder to track down. Cross had been mobile, but that was just within the context of his own city. He had by and large been a stationary target after taking over Sydney. Hell, he’d even had a throne room, that arrogant bastard.
Will figured he should try getting one of those some time. Even if Cross had been an evil piece of shit, it had been a badass setup.
Lance, on the other hand, had been playing this with guerrilla tactics. His domain was the sea, and he’d dipped in and out of the water at frankly absurd speeds. There had been a few points during the fight where Will had fully lost track of the gold-ranker. The water itself had been charged with enough magic to interfere with Sen’s eyes and even destroy some of them.
After Will had figured out that Lance was not, in fact, immune to electricity, things had gotten a lot easier. Sen’s eyes couldn’t spend much time in the water, but they could get there long enough to act as a range extender that could trigger Thunder Wraith’s Grasp, spreading charge to the water. With Abyssal Tempest augmenting Will’s Power attribute and triggering lightning strikes every time he hit anything that had been charged, it had been easy to start smoking Lance out of hiding spots.
[Envoy of Mercy] has activated. You have gained one level of [Blessed] and [Purified] for each life you saved. 121 instances of each have been gained.
Of course, Will couldn’t just go around turning the flood even deadlier without keeping the civilians in mind. That had probably been the worst part of the fight, and the reason why it had taken so long that he’d alerted the ESNA.
As it turned out, one-manning a rescue operation was a massive pain in the ass, even if it was—just barely—doable. If Will had been able to find a way to get full boats into his inventory, he would have absolutely done that, but he still hadn’t been able to prompt anything that big to fit.
He frowned at that mental wording. I mean, it’s not wrong.
[Envoy of Mercy] has activated. You have gained one level of [Blessed] and [Purified] for each life you saved. 8 instances of each have been gained.
What had turned out to be the best stopgap was just moving as fast as possible, creating portals to the Beyond, shoving massive amounts of equipment through them, and using his hunger phantasm to move as many people as possible. Fortunately, nobody was helpless now, which meant that once he tossed out that rope, the bronze-rankers that made up the majority of the city’s population were able to use their simple movement skills to get onto the boats, vehicles, and various other pieces of abandoned unformed-rank garbage he’d found floating around the portals he’d left in London, New York City, and half a dozen other cities.
[Envoy of Mercy] has activated. You have gained one level of [Blessed] and [Purified] for each life you saved. 27 instances of each have been gained.
Will couldn’t save everyone. He had accepted that maybe a little too easily, to the point where he didn’t even feel anything when a particularly nasty wave completely annihilated a building that he knew had held at least a hundred people in it. Seeing enough death could condition anyone, it seemed.
Or maybe it was the demon. At platinum rank, his demonic eye was by far the strongest part of himself and was a primary driver of his ability to keep up with Lance, who was almost a full rank higher than him. Being able to see and cut the lines of the skills the gold-rank water mage was using made it much easier to find and counter him.
Unfortunately, it had also changed him in ways that he still wasn’t sure of. Richard was taking up more real estate in Will’s soul than it had before, and that worried him. Not enough to make it his number one priority, especially since Aza, his Guardian Angel familiar and offshoot of the Dread Executor Azathoth, had been re-summoned and was more than capable of managing the demonic influence on Will, but he was still keeping an eye on it.
For now, Will was focusing mostly on preserving what he could of the city and its people. He’d stuck Lance with his good ol’ wither plus corruption plus despair combination after clearing several layers of protection against afflictions. Lance had escaped afterward, but Will had successfully marked him for death and could therefore see his exact location through any defenses he’d put up.
That also meant that Will could see him getting steadily slower and more desperate. The waves had intensified, deadly whirlpools forming in the muck. Will did what he could to stop them, of course, but he was fighting an uphill battle.
He was beginning to consider the merits of going around tossing busloads of Users through the Beyond when the mana infusing the flood abruptly stopped.
Three soft chimes alerted him to the notifications he’d gotten from the kill.
Progress to [Eternal Throne]: [609/1000]
Special quest: Gold Challenges (Reaper)
Sub-task advanced.
- Kill 7 beings with a killcount of 10,000 or higher [3/7]
Special quest: Pre-Impact Leaderboard
Maintain your position on the leaderboard. Eliminate threats to it.
- Bonus: Kill others on the world leaderboard. For the duration of this quest, you can see the leaderboard ranks of everyone you encounter.
You have killed leaderboard rank 2.
Reward: 1,000 platinum credits. Platinum Attribute Potion.
That made two platinum attribute potions now. The credits were nice, though he already had a lot more of those than he needed thanks to scamming his sponsors. Will had yet to use the one he’d gotten from killing Cross, though he’d been half-tempted to while helping Natalie eliminate a few major threats to her country.
Looking at the devastation Lance had wrought in just under an hour, Will wondered if it would have been worth going to kill him first. How many deaths had occurred because he’d been busy completing sidequests?
Nah, that’s not important. Will wasn’t going to bog himself down in moral dilemmas when there was only so much he could do. The weight of worlds rested on his shoulders. No matter what choice he made, people were going to die. Besides, the ESNA had been managing this situation decently well so far if what Regina had said was anything approaching the truth. They’d lost a lot of land, but not that many people.
High above him, another sonic boom alerted him to the presence of a new aircraft accompanying the other three that had already been observing the area.
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Will: Regina? That you?
Regina: Yes. Do you need assistance?
Will: One moment.
The plane started circling above them, meaning its speed relative to Will was significantly lower than the speed of sound, giving Sen’s eyes plenty of leeway to catch up to it. With the range extending ability, Will could target the guns inside and outside the ship.
He chose the Pilot’s sidearm, then activated Weapons Free.
To his credit, the guy driving the plane did not visibly panic. His aura told Will that he’d just about shit his pants, but the flight pattern didn’t waver.
“Nice and roomy for a fighter,” Will said, looking around the inside of the plane. “Unless it’s not one?”
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t try to give my people heart attacks, Will,” Regina said. “It’s a modified recon unit. Silver-rank frame, gold-rank internals.”
“Good stuff,” Will said, nodding approvingly. “Anyway, Lance is dead.”
“I saw,” Regina said. “Two months, two top-tens dead. You’re making waves.”
“I would be surprised if I wasn’t,” Will said carefully, eyeing the 10 leaderboard rank above Regina’s head. “You’re not on the list of my targets, if you were concerned.”
“If I was, this plane would be in a million pieces by now,” the Supreme Commander of the ESNA said. “Set us down, Coyote.”
“On it,” the Pilot said. “Where at?”
“Anywhere large enough to land.”
“So,” Will said. “I’m assuming you’re not just here for leisure.”
“No. I had hoped to talk. And thank you, of course. Lance has been a plague upon the southern half of our faction for far too long.”
“You know what his goals were?” Will asked.
“Who knows? It could be a sigil or a sponsor driving his actions, or maybe whoever took him in in his other world. He could just be insane. Intentions matter less than result.”
“Fair enough.”
“I was thinking on the subject of rewards,” Regina said. “Or gifts, if you prefer to think of them that way. You did us a great service.”
Will perked up at that. “I do like the sound of that. First things first, though—I need planes, or boats, or anything you’ve got for mass transport. Mine does not play nice with huge groups, and it’s gotten even worse recently.”
“How many survivors?” Regina asked. “We were expecting double digits or lower. Most of those not fast enough to make it to evacuation sites in time weren’t people who could survive a flood on this scale. We were projecting casualties in the tens of thousands.”
“Your projections weren’t wrong,” Will said grimly. “Let me count.”
“Of course.”
The plane came to a gentle stop as Sen’s eyes flew around the ruined city, landing atop a mostly-intact roof on what had been an office building.
“15,761,” Will said at last. “I’m not sure how many of them died during our fight, but it was a lot.”
Regina blew out a breath, which Will decided to interpret as her being impressed. “Fantastic work.”
“Thanks. So, about those planes…”
“Already on their way,” Regina said. “With more on the way. I called the first wave of them when I saw you were here, but I expected a tenth of the survivors.”
“I did what I could,” Will said. “And I think you might be underestimating how tenacious some of these people are.”
He’d received about a total of three thousand levels of Blessed and Purified, which he was very grateful for but knew from experience could be spent all too quickly. That was the number of people he’d directly saved, while the others had all managed to use the equipment he’d teleported in for them.
Regina caught the implication there, but didn’t directly address it. Neither of them particularly liked the other that much, but they respected each other. Will wasn’t going to tell her how to go around running a country, and she wasn’t going to defend abandoning a city with nearly thirty thousand people still in it.
“We’ll look into better evacuation techniques for future incidents,” she said instead. “There are enough threats to us that there is a very real chance we’ll need them.”
“That could be helpful,” Will said. He had no real horse in the race, but he did prefer outcomes that resulted in less loss of life.
“Something tells me that’s not your greatest priority,” Regina said, opening the olane doors with a wave of her hand and stepping outside. “Pardon me for a moment.”
As they stepped outside, Regina activated a number of skills in sequence, calling on large-scale telekinesis and what seemed to be mild mind influence to get people moving towards relative safe spaces.
“Administrator-type class, huh,” Will said. “Seems useful.”
“In some cases, certainly. Less suited to direct combat than the Reaper himself, of course.”
“My class comes with baggage,” Will said. “But we don’t need to compare. We were on the subject of rewards?”
“We were,” Regina said. “I’m not sure what you want, but if it’s within our power to do and doesn’t actively impair our ability to function as a nation…”
“Intelligence,” Will answered immediately. He didn’t want to do this whole political dance where both of them had to read between the lines and adhere to dusty social customs to figure out who wanted what. “For progression purposes, I need the ability to find and locate threats, and I also need at least a small group focusing on finding Peace sigil-holders.”
“We already have the latter,” Regina said, nodding approvingly at Will’s straightforward approach. “I can assign more people to them, but we’ve had too many fires on our hands. I suppose that identifying those fires falls under intelligence.”
“Yes,” Will said. “Transportation as well. I’ve been making my way around okay enough because I can call on one of my friends, but he’s gone onto a super deep delve into the superdungeon. It took me three separate planes to get to Florida, and all three of them blew up in the process. I have a lot of haters.”
“I can see that,” Regina said. “Why us? You have allies in Australia and a teleportation ability, do you not?”
“You and I both know that the ESNA has some of the most effective remaining technology infrastructure,” Will replied. “My support network is getting further apart because we also have our own fires to deal with. I want open access to your planes if we need them.”
“Done,” Regina said. “No promises on response time for the rest of your team, but you’re a valuable enough fighter to warrant immediate movement.”
“Fantastic,” Will said. “Now, intel. Let me get out the notebook on what I need.”
#
Will flipped through the brief Regina had given him as he walked through a grey, dead field of burnt-down trees, brushing off the ashes that rained down upon him.
Name: Cinder Solace
Gender: F
Original Nationality: unknown, likely American, records wiped after disappearance
Class: Infernal Plaguespreader, Gold 9
Threat level: S
Location: Yellowstone supervolcano
Casualties: 1m+
Notes: Do not directly engage if possible. Since her emergence ~1 week after the ESNA’s establishment, plague-carrying gas has actively spread from Yellowstone. Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho have suffered 90%+ losses. All active ESNA and Pacific Alliance Users with air purification skills have been assigned to active duty to prevent further spread.
DO NOT APPROACH YELLOWSTONE WITHOUT PPE. There are no documented survivors that have gotten closer than 1 mile to Solace. (1/20)
You have been afflicted with a level of gold-rank [Firepox].
You have been afflicted with a level of gold-rank [Red Death].
Two levels of [Purified] have been consumed to nullify these afflictions.
Regina hadn’t been willing to risk any of her pilots on this, so he’d been dropped from the sky roughly in the area of Yellowstone.
They hadn’t been joking when it came to how powerful Cinder was. Sen’s eyes couldn’t even tolerate being in the same area as her, so he’d left most of them behind. Will was burning levels of Blessed and Purified just being within a few miles of the caldera, which was so thickly obscured by red-hot ash that he couldn’t even see it properly.
He still had plenty of blessings to burn, though, so he continued dashing towards it blindly, using his aura senses instead of Sen to scout out his surroundings.
Just like the report stated, there was nothing living in this area. Equilibrium Mantle kicked into overdrive just for Will to be able to exist here, and even then it wasn’t able to fully take effect. He could breathe the air, which was more than most other people who came here could say, but it was still taking a toll on him.
It only got hotter as he approached, which was also not terribly promising, but it was more than manageable.
Cinder Solace was currently the number one ranked User on the global leaderboard, and given the other offenders there and her class name, Will had been pretty certain that she would easily reach the 10k mark in terms of kills. The casualty count on the brief he’d been given backed that up, as did the constant deluge of afflictions and damage coming from the volcano.
He did have a skillset that was suited towards surviving in hostile environments, though, and he was able to negate some of the damage by simply cutting the weak points apart with Eclipse and the slayer sword.
Soon enough, he was in the thick of the ash, the heat growing so great that it was penetrating through his skills.
This was the kill zone described in the brief. One mile out.
From here, Will relied primarily on his aura senses, moving towards where the mana seemed more concentrated. It took a couple of hours with several false starts, but Will had a few hours. So long it wasn’t on the order of months, he was unconcerned.
It had been two months since he’d returned from the trial of the champion, and he was still no closer to finding a solution for what to do about the entire other planet, nor how to counter Peace. Getting to gold wouldn’t solve anything, either, but it would hopefully get him the tools he needed to take action.
There was a certain point of ashen granite that had more focused mana in it than the others. When Will stepped onto it, it crumbled beneath his feet, sending him falling. With no sight to orient him, Will relied on his aura senses and skills to catch him—unfortunately, not all of the volcano walls were infused with mana, and he hit a wall, tumbling downwards in a rough slide.
He recovered before he hit the end of the pit, sensing a sudden spike in the ambient mana.
The strength of Cinder’s aura was incredible, rivaling his own. There was a certain sense of malice to it that sent a shiver down Will’s spine, instantly setting his senses on edge.
Was this what it was like to fight him?
He focused his senses, spreading his hunger phantasm to keep himself oriented—but no attack other than the terrible heat of the surroundings came.
From a distance below him, he heard something, and he struck immediately, opening the ground beneath him.
The sound got louder as he disrupted the ground beneath him, and he realized it was a voice.
“Stop!” she shouted, voice cracking with obvious stress. “You’re still alive, right? Please. Please go. Get out of here now and you might still have a chance.”
Will paused, frowning.
“Cinder Solace?”
“William Li-Brown?” came the reply.
What the hell was going on here?