Nynn had been around for a very long time. When the cycle had come to join his planet, his world had been ready for it. Their civilization had been more advanced than Earth’s, and they had known about worlds that lay beyond them. Then, his rate of advancement had been nothing short of extraordinary. Within decades, he had ascended past the metal and gem tiers.

  Over the course of the centuries since he had become a Dread Executor proper, he had learned a great deal and gathered a significant amount of probability. Nynn had spent as quickly as he had earned power. Strength without direction was pointless, and he had seen no greater purpose than preventing cycles from degenerating. His own cycle had involved both a low-tier angel and a low-tier demon summoning, though by that time enough of his planet had been in the gem tiers that it had been only devastating instead of apocalyptic.

  As such, compared to Dread Executors who chose to intervene less or act in chaotic ways—that damned Ramiel came to mind—Nynn had a significantly smaller reserve of plausibility to spend. He’d consumed a good chunk of it to forcibly seal himself down to gold rank in order to oversee this particular cycle from within. It had proven to be well worth it, but that hadn’t come without cost. In order to stop Ataraxis and his corruption cult from irreversibly degenerating this cycle, Nynn had been forced to spend almost all of his remaining plausibility to activate his Culmination, a technique two tiers above the strongest beings currently present in this cycle.

  All this was to say that his reserves were nearly entirely dry. He drew deep, consuming the entirety of his remaining plausibility in a flash, but that wasn’t nearly enough to feed his Dreadscythe what it needed to get him to move.

  So he gave it his soul. Nynn winced at the agony that sacrificing parts of himself caused, compounded by the corruption that immediately started eating away at the rest of his body for his violation of it.

  Even like this, his Dreadscythe would hold only a fraction of the power it once had. Tainted by the corruption he was forcing into it, it would not be able to draw upon the same sovereign-tier magic he had once bid it to.

  But it would do enough.

  Greedily consuming its owners life force to sustain itself, the Dreadscythe shone with magic.

  This weapon was a soul-bound one, and so its skills augmented his own instead of simply existing as separate pools of magic.

  Nynn’s sealed Augment Skill ability was currently limited to gold rank. He’d been using it to support others in the superdungeons, amplifying their output and granting their skills further effects. At higher ranks, that skill became a proper menace—it didn’t just adjust skills but mana itself, giving Nynn a terrifying degree of control over any battlefield.

  He wasn’t going to be able to restore it to the heights that his Mana Control skill had once had, but with his Dreadscythe, he could bump the skill up to emerald for a single usage.

  Two ranks above the gold rank that was the functional limit of this current cycle so far. One entire tier above. The aftershock would almost certainly kill him.

  Nynn didn’t care. How could he? He had already given everything he had in the service of protecting the worlds. What was one more sacrifice?

  With mana manipulation techniques thought lost in most star systems, Nynn used an emerald skill to simulate one of an even higher rank. Magic was an act of lying to the world with such confidence that it would allow one to do that which should not have been possible, and this was no different. Before he had learned the ways of the Beyond, he had traveled like this. It was wasteful, yes, but it was effective.

  For a brief moment, Nynn convinced the world that he was in two places. Immediately after, he banished the part of him that remained at his starting location.

  Exhaustion overwhelmed him as he completed his non-skill teleport to William Li-Brown’s side, pain shooting through his body and soul as he manifested.

  I’m not done yet.

  Nynn had made it with no time to spare. The orbital attack was less than a hundred meters away from the corruption wielder, who had made an attempt to move but would not be fast enough to escape the blast radius.

  One of the few upsides of his once-high rank that Nynn had kept when he had sealed himself into the Earth cycle was his incredible mana pool. Even after burning through an emerald-rank skill that he knew would cost his life, he had enough left to continue casting.

  The only problem was that he was already corrupted. Further usage of magic would layer him with so much of it that it would be a miracle if his mind was functioning half a second from now. Nynn had seen it happen before. It wasn’t a pleasant way to go.

  Memories flashed through his mind—comrades he’d kept, friends he’d lost (and oh, there were so many lost)—and resolve took its place.

  With every last bit of remaining power in his soul, Nynn cast Counterspell.

  Darkness immediately overtook him, his focus on his magic and sped-up perception breaking as pain unlike anything he had ever experienced crashed down upon his soul like one of his home planet’s great waves. There was little sensation after that other than chaos and pain.

  #

  Except there was still sensation.

  Nynn’s mind struggled to piece itself together, ruined as it was by the colossal amount of corruption he had infected it with.

  Everything hurt, and moving hurt more, but Nynn… opened his eyes. His senses hurt to use, but he realized that he was under the influence of an aura.

  The former Dread Executor was on the ground, looking up at a figure that he could have sworn was one of those he’d lost. An angry, defiant angel who killed without remorse, a being broken beyond all belief but masking it all with a cocky smile.

  Then, excruciatingly slowly, Nynn blinked, and he saw William Li-Brown, dark wings spread. Corruption blazed from one of his swords, while the other glowed blood red.

  Will: I said not to do anything dumb, you fuck.

  #

  Will’s perception caught up to what had happened in the moments immediately following it. Someone—not Fan Laozi, judging by how caught off guard he’d been by the blast—had fired an insanely powerful skill at him from the lower atmosphere. That had been followed by a second, more intense burst of magic, then the impact of a greatly weakened and re-directed skill.

  Fan Laozi’s other titan had fallen, its upper half utterly obliterated. Even with a frankly absurd amount of magic poured at it, the weapon had been strong enough to break through a gold-rank titan like it was nothing.

  Caiyeri: Mother’s grace, what was that?

  Hua: Everyone alright?

  Liam: We’re good here. Broke a leg, but I’m healing.

  Yui: Shielded in time. Wisteria is also up.

  Will had almost thought that he’d imagined that burst of magic. He hadn’t felt anything like it since he’d witnessed a pair of Culminations during the climax of the trial of the champion. When he’d sensed Nynn’s aura distorted so badly by corruption that he’d almost thought it was another one of Peace’s bombs, he had realized exactly what had happened.

  Even with Time in a Bottle, it had been a very near miss. Will now had a single level of the Blessed and Purified conditions from using Chaos Transfer to shove all of Nynn’s corruption onto Will’s sword Eclipse, and even as is, Nynn was actively dying. Whatever he’d done had damaged his soul in a way that Will was pretty certain he’d only seen when he’d had it shattered himself.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Nynn: You… cannot be allowed… to die.

  Speak of the devil.

  Will: Neither can you, dude. Did you even think about what happens if you die? There’s a corruption nuke in the Beyond with your name on the containment container. Even if you’re not connected to it anymore, it’s still yours. I am not taking risks with that.

  Nynn: They’re… still active.

  Will didn’t need to ask who they were. Obviously, he had no clue to their actual identities, and they were out of range of Sen’s eyes—many of which had been obliterated by the strike—but they were here, and they wanted to kill him.

  “Sorry,” he said, turning to Fan Laozi, who was just now recovering from where the force of the distant blast had knocked him into the side of his own titan. “Looks like we’re going to have to cut this short. I was looking forward to it, too.”

  Will stabbed his sword into the ground and activated Weapons Free.

  In the past, he had encountered some issues with what this skill defined as a “weapon.” It sometimes counted missiles and projectiles, but sometimes it didn’t. There must have been a clear criterion somewhere, because all attempts to delude himself into believing that an arrow was a weapon and not a projectile hadn’t worked.

  Will was grimly pleased to report that the entire titan counted as a weapon.

  Warp Strike triggered, and the tip of Eclipse appeared from the ground just under Fan Laozi. The gold-ranker moved quickly, but Will was faster. Laozi had strong enchantments in his clothes and a bevy of personal protection skills, but they all crumbled beneath the power of corruption that came from the system rebelling against magic that should not have been in this world.

  A good deal of the leaderboarders had countermeasures against corruption now, aware of how large an existential threat Will was, but there was no gold-rank countermeasure that could protect against this.

  Will had cheated death time and time again, and he was damned if he wouldn’t do the same for his friends.

  You have marked [Fan Laozi] for death.

  The corruption he’d stolen from Nynn’s fate pierced the bottom of Fan Laozi’s foot.

  You have inflicted a level of emerald-rank [Corruption] on [Fan Laozi].

  A bell tolled.

  #

  Iridium cursed in the Unification Front’s precursor tongue.

  “Brothers,” he said. “Did you sense that?”

  Of course they had. Osmium and Rhodium were both Speakers of the Unification Front. They were exceptional Hive specimens. It went without question that their sensory abilities were top-tier.

  “Emerald,” hissed Osmium, Speaker of the Flesh. “It was not the corruption wielder. It was a different being.”

  “You sense his flesh, brother?” asked Rhodium, Speaker of the Mind. “I believe I see the one you seek. An otherworlder.”

  “No mere otherworlder,” Osmium countered. “Even our great wise ones do not possess this kind of power.”

  “An outsider, then,” Rhodium said. “We were warned of this possibility. Interference-saboteurs.”

  “The outsider is strong,” said the Speaker of the Flesh. “Platinums, we can defeat. Emeralds, a different story-result.”

  “Iridum,” Rhodium urged. “Weaknesses. Find them?”

  “I know,” Iridium said, eyes closed. He traced the souls in the area through their magic traces, using the skill that had led him to the ominous presence of corruption wielder William Li-Brown’s soul. His eyes flew open as he found what must certainly have been the outsider. “He is weak. His soul falls apart even as we speak. The outsider is not long for this world.”

  “Then we must move at once,” Osmium declared. “We cannot allow them to recover. Your skills remain strong, brother?”

  “They do,” Iridium said. He had been preparing the Orbital Cannon for quite some time, and thanks to the advances of the Unification Front, he had mana to spare. “Then advance. Strike before the opportunity vanishes.”

  They were not so far from the corruption wielder themselves, so they moved as one, gold-rank skills propelling them faster than most humans on this strange planet could envision.

  Partway through, however, Iridium stopped short. His two companions stopped not long after, joining him.

  “What is it, brother?” Osmium demanded. “Every moment wasted is one where they can recover.”

  “Quiet,” Iridium said, antennae going very still. “Did you hear it?”

  It was no sound that he had sensed, but it seemed like one nonetheless. As if this world had pulsed with an unchanging heartbeat all this time, then stuttered for a brief, terrifying instant. A moment where the fabric of reality itself stopped.

  Not half a minute later, a message arrived for them all.

  EMERGENCY UPDATE

  Activity spike from plausibility anomaly William Li-Brown detected. Corruption advances.

  Demonic spike detected.

  All units on Sol-3, CONVERGE ON THE FOLLOWING COORDINATES AND ATTACK IMMEDIATELY.

  #

  “Witness,” Dread Executor Ramiel said. “The boy survives still. He reaches heights you thought he could not.”

  “I won’t believe it until he’s made it to the gem ranks,” Dread Executor Azathoth replied. “My fragment seems to be entertained, but my impression remains the same. He attracts much attention. Do you not see the planet focused upon him? The gold-rankers who fight like they are already a tier above? The plausibility curse? Peace?”

  “This is not the first time a planet has sought a candidate dead, friend,” Ramiel said gently. “Remember the circumstances of your own ascension.”

  “That was different.”

  “Everything is different,” Ramiel replied. “These are changing times. The ramifications of this cycle could break all of them. Much hinges on that one boy’s survival, but even should he die, our universe will not remain the same.”

  “Careful, Ramiel,” Azathoth said. “Nynn sacrificed much to ensure he was not violating the rules when he took a side.”

  “The rules?” Ramiel laughed. “Azathoth, my friend, you are young yet. There have never been rules.”

  With that, he disappeared, leaving Azathoth alone to wonder.

  #

  “It has been a while since you were here for a reason other than to have your soul pummeled,” said the Hunger, observing as a certain corruption wielder entered his dream domain. “Much less requested an audience.

  “Things are changing,” Will said. “I don’t think my soul likes how many things have been glued onto it.”

  “No, it does not,” the god said, observing. “The skills that Sadareth and I affixed to you will adjust on their own given time, but you do not have time. I will fix it.”

  “‘Ppreciate it,” Will said. “One more thing. My other sigils.”

  “Yes,” the Hunger said. “One active. One not.”

  “I’d almost forgotten about them, but recent events have made it clear that I can’t be ignoring them,” Will said. “How does the Crown’s skill work with me? And what the hell is that other sigil? A corruption cultist gave it to me and it’s just been sitting there ever since.”

  “Once given, not even a god can revoke a skill without a new deal,” the Hunger said. “The Crown likely assumed you would not allow yourself to be the kind of monster who would kill so many.

  “Thought wrong, I guess,” Will said. “Gods seem to have a nasty habit of doing that.”

  “So it did. As to the other sigil… that, I cannot discern. You have not formed a connection with it.”

  “Figured. It’s corrupted to high hell. Even the description doesn’t make any sense. It’s just question marks and ciphered text. Tried to get Ayla to figure it out, but nothing.”

  “It is unlikely to be useful to you,” the Hunger advised, adjusting Will’s soul. “If not for your challenges, I would have long since advised eliminating it.”

  Secretly, the god worried that the owner of the other sigil was connected to Peace. If there was a sigil, there was always a chance that his sigil-holder would take it, deepening that bond and removing Kadael from one of the most influential Users he could have.

  There was no way the corruption wielder could know this, of course.

  “You’re thinking it’s Peace, aren’t you?” Will asked.

  Kadael did not show surprise.

  “Oh, don’t look so surprised. There’s nobody else in play who’s so certifiably insane that they’d give a sigil to corruption cultists and then not retract their offer after I got my hands on it. Sure, if I’d used it right away, that’d be one thing—that’s how you and the Crown got stuck with me. But after this long? Yeah, no.”

  Kadael did not sigh, but he did express irritation by way of a soul-crushing attack that Will brushed off as little more than a particularly nasty glare.

  “Good talk,” Will said, flashing the god a lopsided smile. “Don’t worry. There’s no way I’m leaving you for that crazy shithead. Just don’t let her creep in on me, okay?”

  “I am a god,” Kadael said, affronted. “I do not let others do things.”

  “Do you know who you’re talking to?” Will asked. “I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.”

  “As you say, human,” said the Hunger. “Your skills have been adjusted. They will advance properly alongside you.”

  “Thanks, boss,” Will said. “That’s me, then. Still have a bunch of otherworldly assassins to deal with, then Peace and whatever the hell the Contractor’s cooking up, so I’m out.”

  “Will,” the Hunger said, interrupting the corruption wielder’s exit.

  “Yeah?”

  “Congratulations. Devour them all.”

  Will gave Kadael a familiar smile. The corruption wielder might have described it as “shit-eating,” but the Hunger knew better.

  This was the expression of an apex predator.

  “Already on it.”

  #

  Will stepped back into the real world with a weight off his shoulders. His soul had started burning after Fan Laozi had died. The gold-ranker was nothing more than ash now, reduced to nothing in instants by the corruption.

  That burning was still there, but thanks to the Hunger’s efforts, it was no longer painful.

  A list of notifications scrolled through Will’s eyes. For the first time in a while, he took the time to read them.

  You have defeated [Fan Laozi]. As you have slain leaderboard rank 4, you have gained 400 platinum credits and 40 platinum-rank monster cores.

  Progress to [Eternal Throne]: [1003/1000] (+10 from killing a gold)

  [Eternal Throne] has gained [1] charge. Progress has reset.

  Special quest: Gold Challenges (Reaper)

  2.73% of Reapers pass their first special quest. You have beaten the odds, but you are yet in your first steps.

  - Kill 7 beings with a killcount of 10,000 or higher [6/7] -> [7/7]

  - Possess 3 or more sigils [3/3]

  - Kill or subjugate three sources of corruption [3/3]

  Level up!

  All attributes raised to a minimum of Gold 0. All skills raised to a minimum of gold.

  Advancing to gold rank…