[Corruption Wielder] Chapter 134: Living Legend

The problem with missiles, Will mused, was that people kept on figuring out ways to hurtle at them faster.

Actually, no, that wasn’t the biggest problem with missiles by a long shot, but it was one of the more annoying ones on his mind at the moment.

The plane was probably toast. Will had entertained the idea of trying to take down all the missiles like he had when a silver-ranker on the Contractor’s payroll had used a single set of gold-rank bullets to try to shoot down his plane, but there were way more missiles now, and they were moving much faster. With Sen’s eyes in the position that they were, it wasn’t likely that Will would be able to spread out his skills fast enough to destroy any of the missiles without the plane also being in the blast radius.

Even if he could get a few safely, there were too many to deal with in one go. The bulk of Sen’s eyes were very close to the plane, since they weren’t quite capable of keeping up with the hypersonic jet they were in.

That meant that his focus was not on preventing the missiles from impacting the plane but instead not dying when it blew up.

He wasn’t the only one moving. Yui also had a skill that let her slow down her perception of time, though hers appeared to be a more offensive oriented one. She had a curved sword out, glowing with the mana she was spending in droves.

Will: Status?

Yui: Not good. If I were Nathan, I could do something, but that damn fool doesn’t have any way to quicken himself. I can get myself and maybe one other person off. It will cost most of my remaining mana to use my large-scale movement skill in conjunction with my acceleration.

Will: We’re going into a fight right after this. Save it.

Yui: Got it. Do you have a defense for us?

Will: I think I can keep us alive, but the plane’s definitely cooked.

Yui: Cooked?

Will: Uh, lost, doomed, that kind of feeling? I’m assuming that didn’t translate.

Yui: No. I’m going to protect myself. Focus on keeping the others safe.

Will: Got it.

Technically, one way of approaching this was by using Sanctuary on all of them at once, but Will was going to save that as a last-ditch effort. Since he didn’t have any other Sanctuaries in place in China, activating one here would mean that their only options would be to emerge from the same spot—which would surely be monitored by the Contractor’s forces—or attempt the same approach with another plane. The latter was certainly possible, but even with the goodwill he’d earned, there were limits on the number of planes individually worth more than the GDP of several lesser nations that he could borrow.

Also, this was as unprepared as either side would get. Will trusted his hit squad to adapt more easily in a pinch. After all, that was why he’d selected them. The Contractor and Peace, on the other hand, only grew more dangerous the more time they had to prepare.

Basically, that meant that his options boiled down to two.

One: use the phantasm to gather everyone together quickly and teleport the entire group outside with one usage of Weapons Free. Will wasn’t sure how feasible that would be, though, especially given how finicky the movement skill was when it came to bringing his allies along.

Two: his Guardian Angel.

Will called Aza to him. Fortunately, the fragment of a Dread Executor was quicker to respond than any other skill he could pull. Wings filled the inside of the plane, radiant energy forming around them.

Unlike Will, Aza seemed to have no trouble operating in the accelerated time without spending a good chunk of extra energy on Time in a Bottle.

“I’m curious,” the Guardian Angel said. “Did you have a plan if I wasn’t able to traverse half the globe in an instant?”

Will checked his mana reserves, decided he had enough to waste some on frivolous activity, and triggered the silver-rank feature of Time in a Bottle, speeding his body up to match his mind. They had about a subjective minute before the missiles hit them, but there wasn’t much else he could actually do beyond softening the impact some.

“I would’ve figured something else out,” he said. “Besides, if you weren’t able to do that, would you really be able to call yourself a Dread Executor?”

“I’m not a Dread Executor,” Aza pointed out. “I’m a piece of one currently operating as your Guardian Angel familiar.”

“Technicalities,” Will dismissed. “Can you protect us all or not?”

Yui was vibrating, magic infusing her as a skill phased her partially out of reality. Will didn’t recognize the skill, nor did he want to use Pages of the Past on it to identify what it was, but it was clear that she was going to be able to weather the oncoming storm just fine.

“Oh, easily,” Aza said. “If I couldn’t, I would have told you to run by now.”

“Great,” Will replied, letting time speed up.

Will: Brace.

Nobody except Yui processed the message quickly enough to actually do anything about it, so most of them were thrown off their feet as roaring thunder and brilliant light flashed through the plane. Yui, already ready to take the blast, was completely unaffected. Will kept himself balanced thanks to his attribute. The other three slammed into the radiant shield but were otherwise unharmed.

When Nynn had shunted the full force of a corruption bomb into the Beyond, Aza had siphoned power from some of Will’s other skills to advance himself to gold, which gave him enough protective power now to absorb the force of a massive bombardment of the same rank. Will wasn’t idle, of course—some of Sen’s eyes avoided the bursts, so Will spat out lightning, darkness, and corruption from each of the range extenders, prematurely detonating a good chunk of the bombs.

Even then, he had to give it to Aza. The familiar’s shield was strong for its rank, only flickering slightly against the esoteric bombardment that tore the plane apart around them. It was over in moments, but in the span of those moments, a perfectly functioning silver-rank plane was reduced first to its component pieces, then wreckage, then atomized it.

The sudden burst of damage wasn’t enough to deal any real damage to them, but it did exhaust Aza entirely. To keep all that up, the familiar had depleted two-thirds of Will’s mana supply.

“I won’t be doing that again anytime soon,” he said cheerfully as the explosions outside died down and his wings started to fold in on himself. “Good luck.”

Also, Aza had no ability to keep them from falling to their deaths.

That was much less of a problem than keeping themselves from blowing up, though. As they plummeted from twenty thousand feet in the air, each member of Will’s squad fired messages back and forth.

Hua: Plane blew up.

Nathan: Yeah, no shit.

Will: Contractor’s behind it, I’m pretty sure. There’ll be a stronghold or a detachment nearby that the missiles came from. I sent Sen after it already.

Hua: I can’t fly.

She sounded awfully calm for someone who was actively free falling, but time and violence had accustomed all of them to life-or-death situations.

Will watched as Nathan jetted over, equipment materializing from his inventory to link himself to Hua and keep her from falling as hard.

Nathan: I got you. You don’t have a way to catch your fall?

Hua: I do. I just said I can’t fly. I’d rather still be mobile once we spot out whoever’s here.

It wasn’t just Sen’s eyes that Will was making use of here. Each of the missiles left a bit of a trace back to the point where they’d originated, though the lines of death they’d painted on the air were fading fast now that there was no magic actively propelling them. He trusted that once he did get in the general area of other people, the demon in his head would alert him. It was only because of Aza that he was even functional at this point, and even then the affectionately named Richard was more disruptive than ever.

Caiyeri: I’ll redirect once I hit the ground. No more attacks coming in, right?

Yui: Not that I can see.

Will: Yeah, can’t see any more at the moment. Think they fired the missiles and ran immediately.

Yui: Likely.

Will: Speaking of which, don’t you have an ability that nullifies skills? [Null Zone] or whatever?

Yui: Yes. Which doesn’t work on missiles.

Will: Oh.

Nathan: So, uh, three of you are still falling. You’re about a minute from the ground, just letting you know.

Yui: I can cancel or redirect my momentum.

Caiyeri: Hey, don’t steal my gimmick.

Will: I’ll start gliding once I get closer to the ground. Focusing on looking for our targets right now.

Hua: Missiles came from the west, so we already passed them. Judging by the trajectories, I’d say… ten klicks west-northwest.

Will: Damn. Where’d you pull that from?

Nathan: She has a skill that lets her track details of weapons for a while after they’ve been used, which you would know if you’d been fighting with her instead of prancing around the world playing superhero for the last three months.

Will: Four months, and don’t tell me you weren’t tempted to do the same. I have requirements I need to meet.

Nathan: Yeah, I definitely was. Superdungeon still needed us, though.

Caiyeri: I hate to be the voice of reason, but somehow it always falls to me to remind you that we are still falling? Should we redirect?

Will: Yeah, yeah. Follow the phantasm. Hua, guide me if I’m missing.

Though Sen’s eyes hadn’t been able to keep up with the plane entirely, the four hundred surviving ones were easily able to match the pace of regular human terminal velocity. They came hurtling down and out, darkness forming a path for all of them to follow.

Will used Wind Walker to redirect himself, using some of the extra hunger phantasm to form dark wings for himself.

I should really see about upgrading this skill to make these more proper wings, he mused. Will would never let it be known that he had any positive feelings towards the “dark angel” moniker he’d picked up, but it was kind of badass. It was a shame that he was still missing pieces of that particular puzzle.

Everyone else made their way in different ways. Nathan flew, dragging Hua on a tether about twenty feet under her. The Australian girl had a crossbow at the ready, but it did look a little comical when she was practically sitting cross-legged as her hair blew behind her, tornado-speed gusts battering her. Yui used one of her chaos skills to manifest a crackling circle of power around her, and suddenly all her vertical speed changed to horizontal, sending her rocketing off at terminal velocity.

Caiyeri, as per usual, hit the ground and came back up with a lot more momentum. She accepted help from Will’s hunger phantasm, pushing her higher and faster with each bounce.

Will had to wonder what they looked like to anyone observing. They were over mostly flat desert, which made it a bit easier on Caiyeri, but they had to look ridiculous. Only Nathan was flying normally, and his image was being undercut by a nineteen-year-old practically meditating right under him.

I’d be embarrassed if I lost to us right now, Will thought. I wonder what the Contractor’s people are thinking right now.

#

ALERT. ALERT. Users [William Li-Brown], [Hua Fang], [Caiyeri Seven], [Nathan], and [Yui] have detected the location of [Shanghai Forward Base 7]. Prepare for attack.

SFB-7, built in conjunction by the Contractor’s people and Peace’s, flurried with activity. There were just under a hundred people in this base, the majority of them silver-rankers with a single trio of golds.

“Get me camera!” one of those gold-rankers shouted. “Fire all remaining missiles!”

On a massive screen in the control room, several hidden camera feeds appeared. A couple of them had already gone blank, having been spotted out and destroyed by the approaching Users or by the aftereffects of the initial bombardment.

“Camera forty-three live!” a silver-ranker called out. “Projecting wide.”

This one was a high-definition magical one placed about three miles outwards. It zoomed in on a certain area of the desert, overlaying a trajectory onto five blurs.

Dread swept the room as they observed. Three of them were hardly visible, cloaked by the swarming void of shadows as they were, but they could occasionally catch a crackle of chaos energy or see the manic energy of an elf seemingly leaping hundreds if not thousands of feet into the air. 

The only ones that were easy to track were a pair that were flying straight, but those inspired no less terror. Information on the corruption wielder and his companions had been widely disseminated, and the trademark black and gold armor that covered the gold-rank otherworlder Nathan was well known amongst the Contractor’s organization. He flew arrow-straight because there was nothing they could threaten with from range. Even in close combat, it would take the gold-rankers to even scratch that armor.

The silver-ranker girl under them was slightly less fear-inspiring, but she was a known problem too. Hua Fang had racked up almost a quadruple-digit kill count of Peace sigil-holders and contracted over the course of months. The fact that they could even see her coming was a relief. 

It was often said amongst those who were on superdungeon teams that most people only ever saw Hua Fang once. Their first impression, as the stories went, would be that she was a regular teenage girl, unsuited for the battlefield. 

They would never get a second impression.

“Remaining missiles fired, sir,” the head of the ordnance team called out. “En route for collision in ten seconds or less.”

On the screen, a hundred red dots blinked to life, each of them representing a missile that had cost the old-world equivalent of millions to construct. Gold-rank projectiles, just like the ones that had been supposed to kill them with their ship.

Even as they fired, there was a sense of resigned fear amongst the control room. Though they knew their organization was powerful and had acted against countries with abandon, and though they knew that even Fan Laozi’s Shanghai-Chengdu faction was weeks from falling to them, this was a threat on a different level.

The projectiles entered sight of camera forty-three, detonating with such force that the clouds of smoke they threw up drowned out the darkness.

“Direct hit!” an ordnance team member cried.

Even then, the entire room’s breath seemed to be held. They knew how deadly their weapons were. In fact, they’d worked countless nights ensuring just how lethal they would be.

And yet, none of them could quite believe that they would be the ones to take down the corruption wielder. He was a living legend in all the worst ways, and his team was no less.

So when the smoke cleared and the darkness remained, all five threats remaining untouched, nobody was surprised. Disappointed, yes. Terrified, possibly. But surprise?

Being surprised by William Li-Brown was how you died.

“They know the location of the base,” the gold-rankers said, communication from the Contractor himself confirming the fact. “Prepare for battle.”

Fear gave way to resolve as triggers in each of the Users there activated. It wasn’t mind control—it was more of a suppressant. A mild magical drug administered through a contract, dulling their fear response while focusing them. In the long term, it would do permanent damage to someone’s mind, but the Contractor knew well that there would be no long term to worry about with these.

When the threat reached the base, there were one hundred and nine Users ready to face them—three gold-rankers on the roof, their power unified in a holding pattern.

They might as well have been one User.

These were no true gold-rankers. Boosted by Peace and contracts, they did not hold the same kind of power that a true leaderboarder would have, even though they would decimate a regular battalion of silvers.

Against them, though? That was a different story.

SFB-7 was built to defend against missiles and other explosives. Even a nuclear bomb detonated a quarter mile away would barely scratch its facade.

What it wasn’t built to withstand was an Orbital Engineer warping space and delivering a Void Reaver’s specially designed anti-magic zone directly into the core of their defenses right before a silver-rank Warrior let loose with all of the new, fancy items she’d gotten from the superdungeon. It wasn’t prepared for choking darkness to flood the base as an elf bowled into three gold-rankers at half the speed of sound, executing one of them with a bullet from a bronze-rank revolver before continuing onwards.

After the first gold-ranker went down, there still seemed to be some hope. The silvers mounted their own offensive, producing one group ritual to support the remaining two and another to form a counterattack.

When the second one ate a dose of corruption and then a series of critical hits in a row by both Caiyeri Seven and William Li-Brown, things started looking worse.

When the last one went down, the silvers finally released their attack—just in time for the corruption wielder to kill their ritual.

From there, even with their fear suppressed, the lines of SFB-7 broke. They could not run. They could not hide. All they could do was fight for survival.

“Fight” was a generous word, though. They didn’t realize that they were only trying to fight four people back. After achieving kill credit two of the three gold-rankers, Caiyeri Seven was undergoing an ascension to gold rank herself, rendering her incapable of properly battling inside.

There were one hundred and six silver-rankers when Hua Fang entered the building, courtesy of a new hole carved by Nathan and Yui. She was one woman, but with the darkness cloaking her and her speed greatly augmented, the residents of the base thought she was a dozen.

There were forty-one of them remaining when William Li-Brown left.

Some of the five of them had had notions of mercy once, but they now knew after months of experience that those aligned with Peace were one moment away from a god hijacking their body and forcing them to fight until their corpse gave out. They did not let any of them run away.

The most common last words that a silver-ranker from SFB-7 said were “what the fuck,” though they typically didn’t get the full sentence out before Hua.

The most common last words that one of them heard, on the other hand, were “leave this one alive for me.” Technically, if one counted the Wails of the Forgotten, the last words they heard were actually something more like “AUUUUUUUUGH,” but by then their minds were usually gone.

From start to finish, eliminating the base took seventeen minutes, and that was only because they stopped halfway through to try to undo some of the self-destruct measures that had been triggered.

Fortunately for the other members of the Contractor’s organization—and less so for the residents of this base—the true self-destruct had been primed from the moment that the corruption wielder had been spotted.

Recognizing this, his team evacuated the building before it simply crumbled in on itself, pacifying the data and bodies within by disintegrating them into a fine ash.

In the wake of the destruction, five bloodied people stood in a rough circle around a now-desolate, ruined bunker. Only one of them was breathing hard, and that was because she had just shed the impurities of silver rank.

“So,” Nathan asked. “What next?”

“Wail of the Forgotten has a very nice feature that lets me find where someone’s allies are,” Will said. “I was thinking Fan Laozi first, but it’s now looking like we have a much better opportunity to kill both birds. Slight complication, unfortunately.”

#

SFB-1 was roughly two and a half kilometers from the nearest Titan, but one of those kilometers was straight down.

Xie-ren Jie witnessed the destruction of SFB-7 without emotion. She had no personal connections to any of them, and they had been expendable.

Their diversion had taken the corruption wielder’s team from Shanghai long enough for final preparations to be made.

Today, they moved on Shanghai. They moved on her brother.

With any luck, by night’s end, there would be Peace in the largest city in China.

You have received a message from [William Li-Brown].

Less out of curiosity and more in the interest of obtaining information on the enemy, she opened it.

Will: Big brother’s looking out for you. This would’ve just said “you’re next,” but I figure I owe it to him for betraying his country to me. Let’s talk.

She scoffed and deleted the chat with him.

There were more important matters to attend to.