043 Corruption

My Divine Sense screamed at me.

I gasped, snapping back to reality—no, not my reality. Not yet.

I thought the memory synchronization had finally ended.

But when I blinked, my perspective shifted again.

And I was David_69 once more.

—

The dungeon was suffocating. The air was thick, as if pressing down on my lungs.

No torches. No light sources. Just an endless, stretching void.

And then—

It moved.

A mass of writhing tentacles slithered across the dungeon floor, as if the shadows themselves were alive. The tentacles pulsed, shifting between reality and corruption, their grotesque forms distorting like a broken rendering.

At the core of the entity was a woman.

Or at least, something pretending to be one.

Her face was frozen in a too-wide grin, her eyes bulging, her laughter jagged and unnatural. She didn’t blink. She didn’t breathe. She just cackled.

And in that moment, I knew.

This wasn’t just a memory.

This wasn’t just a reenactment.

Because standing beside me, glowing with holy radiance, was Dave.

"My Lord!" he shouted, his voice trembling with equal parts devotion and panic. "This is not a memory reenactment!" It’s not part of the memory synchronization, you mean.

I swallowed hard.

No. No, it wasn’t.

For the first time since coming to this world, I saw a Name Display.

[Corruption]

I exhaled sharply.

Simply put, this was corrupted data implanted in my head.

I hated the Eldritch Faction.

I freaking hated the Eldritch Faction.

They were always doing weird, fourth-wall-breaking bullshit, and now I was experiencing it firsthand.

This wasn’t the same thing I fought in LLO.

This wasn’t the same glitched nightmare boss that had nuked my PC.

So logically, I should be able to manage, right?

Right?

There was just one small problem.

I didn’t have players or mobs to use as cover.

The silver lining was… Divine Sense had evolved.

In ways I’d never hoped for.

I sidestepped. Then ducked. Then weaved between a series of unnatural movements—no, not movements. Trajectories.

Killing intent had a shape. A path. A direction.

And I could see it.

I wasn’t dodging attacks. I was dodging the future.

Dave trailed behind me, keeping pace. His summoned form flickered with holy radiance, barely a step away from phasing out of existence. He was hiding behind me, but not out of fear. He was waiting. Watching.

Summon: Holy Spirit was an ability that allowed me to summon an NPC of my class at 70% of my level. Dave should be sitting somewhere around Level 190.

Could two Paladin-class characters take down a raid boss?

I didn’t think so.

Our problem was simple: damage output.

Sure, we could spam offensive ultimates and shave off chunks of [Corruption]’s health, but that thing could just soak it up. Worse, we’d be accelerating our own demise.

"We need a plan," I muttered, side-glancing at Dave as we continued dodging.

"My Lord, I suggest overwhelming it with divine might!"

"We don’t have enough of that."

"We can keep striking it down until it ceases moving!"

"We don’t have enough of that either."

Dave hesitated, then frowned. "Then… how do we win?"

That was the million-gold question.

I eyed the cackling woman at the core of the mass of tentacles. Unlike the writhing, ever-shifting corruption around her, she was a fixed point—a constant in the chaos.

A weakness.

"I don’t think this thing is fully real," I said. "It’s a… fucking bug or something. The way it's moving… the way it's interacting with this space… it's like it's trying to overwrite something."

I wasn’t getting everything from Divine Sense, but that was the idea.

Dave’s glow flickered. "My Lord, are you saying…?"

I nodded. "We can’t beat this thing."

In LLO, purging corrupted data usually required some kind of system intervention. GMs, rollback functions, and even rare quest items meant to debug glitching entities.

I had none of that.

But maybe…

I clenched my fist.

"Dave, I need time. Keep it busy."

Dave straightened. "At once, my Lord!"

He lunged forward, drawing his greatsword and cleaving through the eldritch mass. Holy energy burst from the impact, buying me a few precious seconds.

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I only hoped it would be enough.

I remembered an old rumor from LLO’s beta testing.

A loose monster.

A corrupted piece of data.

At the time, players thought it was some kind of malicious joke by the game devs. The reason was simple—perma-death.

This thing wasn’t just wrecking the game; it was ruining lives.

Conspiracy theories ran rampant on the forums. Some people claimed the game’s glitches, bugs, and those unreasonable, virus-like monsters were actually manifestations of the Eldritch.

Time and time again, they appeared—sometimes to raise the stakes of an event, sometimes just randomly out of nowhere, turning everything into a nightmare.

No one liked the Eldritch Faction among the Great Enemy.

Whenever they showed up, the genre flipped into a souls-like death trap, and perma-death was handed out freely with love and care.

But despite all that, these things still followed the game’s rules.

They had health bars.

They had skills.

They had limitations.

I watched as Dave shielded me, his holy radiance growing dimmer. I think he died one time already and then used an Ultimate to top off again. His body—his summoned projection—was riddled with injuries. His form was cracked, his sword chipped.

Yet, he still fought with everything he had.

And that was why this would work.

I clenched my fist.

“EGRESS!”

A streak of brilliant white light engulfed me.

For a split second, I saw [Corruption] thrashing—tentacles recoiling, the cackling woman at its core twisting in distorted rage.

Then, the world shattered.

And the next thing I knew, Dave and I were no longer in that twisted, memory-infested space.

[Corruption] still lived.

I could feel her.

A persistent, gnawing presence at the back of my mind, like a parasite that refused to die. She wasn’t in control—not yet—but she was aware. Aware of me. Of my existence. Of my thoughts.

I exhaled, rubbing my temple.

“That was unpleasant,” I muttered.

Dave was kneeling beside me, his summoned form flickering, on the verge of dispersing. His face was grim, but his devotion hadn’t wavered. “My Lord, are you well?”

“Well enough,” I said, though the pounding in my skull said otherwise. “That thing… It’s still here. I can feel it. Like it’s waiting.”

Dave tightened his grip on his sword. “Should I attempt an exorcism?”

I scoffed. “Yeah, no thanks. Last thing I need is for you to accidentally smite my soul out of my body.” This was Eldritch we were talking about, not some demonic seed in its infancy.

He hesitated. “Then what shall we do?”

I sighed, staring at my hands. “The only thing we can do—I need to get stronger.”

Dave nodded, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. “Indeed, My Lord. Your holy radiance is mighty, but the Great Enemy is insidious. You must become an even greater force.”

I snorted. “Yeah, well, I’m not exactly a walking calamity yet.”

Dave looked almost offended at that. “Yet.”

I shook my head. “I also need to absorb more knowledge of this world. The rules here might not be exactly like LLO. If I assume too much, I’m going to get killed. For real.” The fallen angel and the demonic threat seemed like minor concerns now at the prospect of getting Eldritch-ed if that was even a word.

Dave didn’t argue. He simply waited, listening.

“And… I need to break past the level cap.”

He blinked, as if surprised. “You believe such a thing is possible?”

"I can start with experimenting on some skills' flavor texts for example, but that wouldn't be enough..." I shrugged. “Back in LLO, the level cap was just a system limitation. Players theorized there were hidden conditions to surpass it… even without the game devs’ input. It was just never confirmed.”

Dave furrowed his brow. “But this is not the world you used to know, My Lord. This world follows its own laws.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “There might be a way. I just need to figure out how.”

Dave fell silent for a moment before nodding. “Then I shall aid you however I can.”

I gave him a tired smirk. “Yeah, I figured you’d say that.”

"My Lord," murmured Dave as his form began to fade. "It seemed I've incurred damage from the [Corruption] and had sustained enough damage. I am afraid I have to go."

The [Corruption] probably had a Damage Over Time skill... ugh... disgusting...

"Rest, Dave..."

And then Dave vanished without even managing to say goodbye.

Despite everything, despite the looming threat of [Corruption], despite not knowing what the hell I had actually gotten myself into, I felt something resembling… determination.

One thing was clear.

If I wanted to survive—if I wanted to win—I had to evolve.

I had the perfect guinea pig to test how this world's power system could integrate with what I knew—Lu Gao.

If there was one thing that stood out, it was how Brukhelm didn’t use the flashy techniques he had demonstrated in the martial tournament. That sword wave he could call back and forth? Completely absent. The lack of him, using Ultimate Skills had been most worrisome. There had to be a reason for that. And then there was Fan Shi. She was another valuable data point—her abilities might help me draw the line between mana and qi.

This called for a long, arduous quest.

But before anything else, I had to deal with Yellow Dragon City. After everything that just happened, they were going to need help.

I glanced toward the city’s skyline, wondering if the festival would still continue. Lin Lim’s people had been looking forward to the Grand Feast. It didn’t sit right with me that something they had worked so hard for could just… disappear overnight because of a catastrophe.

A presence stirred behind me.

I turned, already knowing who it was. “You’re late.”

Jiang Zhen stood there, his expression unreadable as ever. “I came as soon as I could.”

It was then that I noticed.

His whole left arm was missing.

Shit.

That looked painful.

Jiang Zhen caught my gaze and, as if sensing my thoughts, casually remarked, “I encountered a demon.”

I frowned. “Demonic cultivator?”

He shook his head. “No. Something else. Demonic? Yes. Human? Never.”

I exhaled through my nose, my mind immediately trying to piece things together. A different kind of demon? One not from the usual demonic cultivation path? That was concerning. Or maybe, the easiest answer... was the demon he fought was the kind I'd hate more to see in this world.

I didn’t ask for more details just yet. Instead, I raised my hand.

I’ve exhausted my spell slots. I’ve used Judgement Severance, Final Adjudication, and Divine Word: Rest. So I resorted to my gear’s special ability. I used one of my Wandering Adjudicator’s effects called ‘Ephemereal Touch’, which allowed usage of any Ultimate Skill regardless of spell slots, mana resource, and cooldown. Moreover, it couldn’t be canceled. It had a painful cooldown period of 120 hours though.

“Divine Word: Life.”

A pulse of invisible energy radiated from my fingertip and flowed into Jiang Zhen. It wasn’t a direct healing spell—it fortified health, empowered all healing cast on the target, and, more importantly, it had a chance to remove a random debuff for every healing magic that connected.

And in my book, Dismembered was a debuff.

“Great Cure.”

A moment later, Jiang Zhen exhaled sharply. His sleeve stirred, then flesh and bone twisted into existence—his arm regrew, complete and unblemished.

He flexed his fingers, testing the movement. “...I see.”

“That’s a ‘thank you’ moment,” I pointed out.

Jiang Zhen glanced at me and nodded. “Thank you.”

He moved his arm a bit more, adjusting to the sensation. Meanwhile, my mind was already spinning, analyzing.

A demon that wasn’t a demonic cultivator.

That was something I couldn’t ignore.

I dispelled the layered barriers protecting me, letting out a slow breath. The pressure weighing down on me lightened, but the conversation ahead wasn’t going to be easy.

Jiang Zhen was still flexing his newly restored arm, his gaze sharp as he finally looked at me properly. “You knew something was coming.” He was referring to my barriers.

I didn’t deny it. “Had a bad feeling.” I’d rather not talk about my memory thingy.

“Hmph.” He let that slide, but I knew he wasn’t done with the topic. “Tell me—what do you know about the demon I fought? I have a feeling you have an answer... for that.”

I crossed my arms. “Depends. What did they look like?”

“Dark skin. Two horns.” Jiang Zhen’s face darkened. “Didn’t use much qi, but they could command supernatural powers like yours.” That was one way to describe skills.

I stilled.

It was exactly like Brukhelm.

Jiang Zhen’s eyes bore into me, his unspoken accusation clear.

I sighed. “You can get the details from Lei Fen.”

For a moment, it looked like he was about to press me further, but then he let out a slow exhale and relaxed—just a little. “Tch. Too bad I couldn’t kill them twice.”

I raised a brow. “You sure you killed them even once?”

Jiang Zhen shot me a sharp look, but I wasn’t joking.

I shrugged. “Demons are annoying like that.”

His gaze narrowed. “Explain.”

I considered my words, then decided to just rip off the bandage. “There’s a good chance that demon is still alive. Their body might be gone, but their soul? Probably not.”

Jiang Zhen’s face darkened further. “That’s impossible. A soul without a body cannot exist for long.”

“Not for long, sure. But if it finds a new host?” I gave him a pointed look. “Then it’s just a matter of waiting.”

Jiang Zhen paled.

I nodded. “Yeah. Demonic soul parasitism. A real pain in the ass.”

“That kind of technique…” Jiang Zhen clenched his fists. “Only immortals are supposed to be capable of that.”

“Guess your demon didn’t get the memo.”

Silence stretched between us. I could see the gears turning in his head. The realization that this wasn’t over was sinking in fast. There were probably more demons out there, the kind that regularly visited LLO.

I decided to lighten the mood. “Hey, at least now you have a cool story. ‘I fought an immortal-level demon and survived.’ Sounds impressive.” I was being a sarcastic jerk, but this was Jiang Zhen we were talking about.

Jiang Zhen gave me a deadpan look. “I lost an arm.”

“And got it back.” I gestured at his fully restored limb. “Look at that. Good as new.”

“…Tch.” He glanced at his arm and sighed. “Fine. You’re right.”

I smirked. “I usually am.”

Jiang Zhen scoffed but didn’t argue. “Still. If that demon comes back…”

“You’ll have a second chance,” I said. “And this time, you can kill them twice.”

He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “Hah. You really know how to talk.”

“It’s a talent.”

For the first time since arriving, Jiang Zhen didn’t look like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Maybe I was getting better at this whole not ruining someone’s day completely thing.

Small victories.