Will dove deep into his bottled time as the second group of detonations went off. Even partially defanged, he didn’t want to get hit by the more esoteric effects he’d seen.
Besides the analytical benefits, it gave him the time to examine the rewards he’d just gotten.
First, he put his two free points into Speed, bringing it up to Bronze 6.
Then, he took a look at his bra...
2024-04-04 04:59:03 +0000 UTC View PostThe three members of Will’s current party all had some form of movement skill, but they hadn’t been getting by through sheer speed. Through a combination of clever movement tech, aura control, and good positioning via Azure’s detection ritual, they had found themselves in a pretty decent spot.
They were not, however, the first to get there. That much was clear by the time they swam ...
2024-04-03 03:27:02 +0000 UTC View Post“You’re not focusing,” Caiyeri said. “I thought it would be easier for you to empty your mind.”
“Contrary to popular expectation, I do actually have a functioning brain,” Will replied. “Meditation’s never really worked for me. There’s always too much to do, too much to worry about.”
“There is.” Caiyeri opened her eyes, her aura noticeably roiling just a bit...
2024-04-01 01:52:25 +0000 UTC View PostThe unreal space of the Hunger’s domain was growing uncomfortably familiar. The crushing dread that had assailed Will’s mind the first time he’d been here had faded more and more upon each successive visit until now.
“I assume you have some idea of what’s going on outside,” Will said, “so I’m going to make this simple. Hopefully you have enough room in that tiny little bra...
2024-03-29 04:59:04 +0000 UTC View PostThis is a significant, full-scale rewrite of the previous chapters. Even if you read the pre-rewrite chapters, I would highly recommend reading this. Events deviate heavily.
“Follow the instructions as quickly as you can,” Azure said for what felt like the five hundredth time. “My detection ritual tells me that there are at least two dozen other sapients delving the...
2024-03-28 07:58:35 +0000 UTC View PostNOTE: This chapter has been partially rewritten. If you would prefer not to reread the full chapter, an overview of the changes will be posted at the end. I appreciate any and all feedback on the chapter.
Lake Monroe wasn’t just a lake, which Will had expected. He had yet to see an all-underwater dungeon, though there had been that one that had been mostly submerged. Th...
2024-03-26 06:16:56 +0000 UTC View PostHi. After a couple of months straight writing Corruption Wielder every day on top of attending college, I sort of got into a fugue state for some of the recent chapters. Before I started posting this fiction, I was able to go over each chapter 2-3 times afterward and revisit it when I was a dozen chapters ahead, but I'm not capable of doing that now that I'm releasing daily. As such, I'm not ha...
2024-03-25 01:08:42 +0000 UTC View PostMoving from dungeon to dungeon was easier said than done. All three of them had some form of stealth skill, but they knew they would be contending with silver tracking skills. Azure and Caiyeri had had the presence of mind to at least take themselves out of the party of their elf group, hoping that it would indicate that they were dead.
None of the three expected that to last long, but th...
2024-03-21 04:51:13 +0000 UTC View PostThe information flooded into Will’s mind’s eye as he brandished the fully-charged slayer sword at Qwayne.
Skill: [Chaos Transfer]
- Spell (enchantment).
- Cost: high mana.
- Cooldown: 10 minutes -> 1 minute.
Silver
Let others suffer as you have. 2024-03-20 04:35:16 +0000 UTC View Post
What a goddamn moron. Will found it hard to believe that these were supposedly trained special force elves. Why would he just blindly believe a subordinate without double-checking things?
Maybe Will was just abnormally distrusting, but he was pretty sure that this exact situation justified being a bit paranoid.
That said, he couldn’t discount the elf as a threat.
Critical hit!
Caiyeri let her conjured warhammer dissipate, grimacing at the mess she’d just made of the life elf construct. A result of decades of genetic and magical engineering, the fauna that roamed the state that the opposing elf kingdom were all threats to any living beings in their area. The myriad destructive spells that could be placed within literally any anim...
2024-03-18 05:57:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe second night was no easier than the first. Though Will had already begun to adapt to the pain that the Hunger could inflict upon his body, it wasn’t easy to withstand mind-shattering torture for a whole night.
At least the conversation breaks were getting longer. Caiyeri had warned him about the abyssal elves making a play for the life kingdom, and though the Hunger was not...
2024-03-17 04:22:18 +0000 UTC View Post“Can you tell me the next time you’re about to eliminate all my senses?” Will said.
Of the four of them, he was definitely the least exhausted. Trevor hadn’t gotten into an actual physical combat, but both Darkness and Silence were high cost skills and his Soul attribute was still low enough that using both of them had fully depleted his mana and then some. Will’s Death attribut...
2024-03-16 06:17:50 +0000 UTC View PostTimmel Skyspear. Bronze 8 Paladin.
Fenn Windchime. Bronze 9 Priestess.
Just like Caiyeri, both of the elves were hiding their skill lists. The system didn’t provide a description for either of them, which Will had surmised by now meant that they weren’t automatically hostile towards him and also didn’t warrant a boss description.
Idly, h...
2024-03-14 20:21:32 +0000 UTC View PostThe Iron Boys hadn’t just been the dozen or so people who’d been in leadership. As they cleared their way through the university, the four members in Will’s party found evidence that there had been a number of others in here. There were signs of human presence everywhere, from dorm chairs that had been haphazardly tossed into a circle with couches from the retail dining locations around a...
2024-03-13 21:22:47 +0000 UTC View PostClearing the school grounds was disappointingly uneventful. Will saw people running from him every now and then, but they were always far away enough that he wasn’t able to confirm whether or not they were in the Iron Boys or had been locked up in the university with them. He still found himself half tempted to shoot after them anyway, but he wasn’t ready to take that step yet. Will’s cla...
2024-03-12 17:47:05 +0000 UTC View PostSomething was wrong. Will couldn’t tell if it was the sigil bothering him just for the sake of irritating him, which he wouldn’t put past the petty god that it had attached to him, but he had a nasty feeling about this.
Soon enough, he realized what it was.
Earlier, he’d heard the voices of the two men that he’d just killed, but that hadn’t been all. There had been other s...
2024-03-11 21:30:17 +0000 UTC View PostThere were bodies in the water. They were almost unrecognizable as human now, stripped of all their clothes and equipment.
He had heard gunshots last night. The blood on these bodies was no longer fresh. Whoever had killed him had done so a while ago.
Grimly, Will used Identify on them.
Mark Wong. Neil Patel. Two people, real, human people, who’d died at the hand of...
2024-03-10 19:02:05 +0000 UTC View PostAyla closed her eyes, the passive magic of the suppressing chains preventing her from sleeping. It provided her with rest that equated a good night’s sleep, of course—the organization couldn’t have its workers losing productivity to poor rest.
But it didn’t let her dream. Dreams were dangerous.
She hadn’t been called as an upgraded tutorial helper. Despite the fact that he...
2024-03-09 20:11:18 +0000 UTC View PostTrue to the system’s promise, Thalia did not pursue Will once he left the dungeon. Frustratingly enough, it meant leaving the dungeon uncleared, but even though he knew that he had to push himself to his limits, he wasn’t stupid enough to try to 1v1 a clan boss.
The system was more than happy to notify him about his new discoveries afterwards.
Boss Tiers:
...
2024-03-08 18:43:09 +0000 UTC View Post“Great timing, Caiyeri,” Will hissed.
It wasn’t right to get mad at her. She didn’t control the nature of Will’s fights.
They’d exchanged a few messages after their initial exchange, which had been enough for him to surmise that while she was technically “on-planet,” that didn’t mean that she was actually in the region. She was waiting to be deployed with the rest ...
2024-03-07 17:30:16 +0000 UTC View PostUninformed citizens often assume that Cataclysms are caused by the confluence of superhuman conflicts, triggering a rift to the extradimensional reality where the Pacific alien’s primary body appears to have been stored.
While there is a fragment of truth in this belief, it is dangerously untrue. After over a hundred incidents, a pattern has been established. Large-scale su...
2024-03-07 08:20:42 +0000 UTC View Post“I’m going to be blunt with you,” Will said, drying himself off as well as he could with a shop-bought towel before tossing it back into one of his inventory crates. It was slightly worse than the one he’d been using in college, but it worked well enough.
“If blunt means we don’t end on the bad side of those skills, I think I can live with that,” Trevor said.
Trevor wa...
2024-03-06 14:44:52 +0000 UTC View PostUng’s vault was startlingly well organized for an ogre.
“That’s another point towards it being stolen,” Will muttered to himself.
“What was that?” Lev asked.
“Nothing,” Will said. Thinking out loud was a bad habit born of having someone in his head who actually responded to him. “I call first pick, but you all need to get something.”
Axl hadn...
2024-03-06 00:11:45 +0000 UTC View PostThe world around Ayla fell away as Will’s tutorial completed, her surroundings fading from the complicated, multi-faceted system board of a helper back to her drab reality.
She was never going to get used to that. Even though she couldn’t directly influence the world as a helper, access to the system—real access, not the paltry pieces the administrative organization granted...
2024-03-05 18:21:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe monster that his system identified as an ogre was only Bronze 3. It was certainly more intimidating than the goblin children who’d been at the same rank. Will assumed it would be proportionally more difficult to slay, but it still wasn’t that high of a rank compared to literally everyone in the hell he’d just been through.
His ability to sense its power through its aura was nowh...
2024-03-05 02:23:38 +0000 UTC View PostClass selection initiated.
Your elements are: [Storm], [Space], [Corruption], [Death], [Poison] (unaffixed), [Time] (unaffixed).
The empty room around Will expanded, giving him enough room to walk around and take a look at the options thrown up on the empty void around him.
Windows like the ones that displayed his status popped up all around h...
2024-03-04 17:39:46 +0000 UTC View PostYou have gained 10 silver credits and 300 bronze credits.
Broken Forcemail Armor has been added to your inventory.
Gauntlets of Strength have been added to your inventory.
Sigil of the Hunger has been added to your inventory.
Will put all eight of his free points into Perception, bringing his final attri...
2024-03-03 22:19:28 +0000 UTC View PostTime until tutorial failure: 9 hours, 48 minutes, 30 seconds.
The second floor did not at all look like the first—though maybe that was just the room the stairwell opened up into.
Will and Caiyeri found themselves in the ruins of a temple of no denomination that Will recognized.
The elf, however, did. She clicked her tongue, changing her conjured weapon from...
2024-03-03 08:41:27 +0000 UTC View PostWith their new skills, clearing the way through the goblins was substantially easier. Caiyeri’s new skill affixed to her fire element, which was bound to her Perception stat for some reason. It was a passive ability called Thermal Sight that did exactly what it advertised. Elves already had great nightvision, but at bronze rank, her magical sight extended slightly through walls.
It was ...
2024-03-02 07:07:46 +0000 UTC View Post