Ch217-Crumbling

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Ch217-Crumbling

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Sylver adjusted the collar of his robe, as Faust finished pulling the last piece of blue jade out of the sword hilt Sylver had given him.

In hindsight, Sylver should have saved his trick with the orange fungus until after he was done pulling all the metal shards out of himself.

His skin looked as if a zebra and a dalmatian had a child, and then someone pushed it through a meat grinder.

It wasn’t the threads that made him look like this, it was the fact that his skin was pearl white, and his blood was just short of pitch black. Every tiny cut and bruise stood out like someone spilled ink on snow.

His right arm looked like a chessboard, and his legs looked like marble. Most of the damage was in his torso, the upper half specifically, but the fact that Sylver had been pushed out of his body, had spread the metal shards around.

It was like putting your shoes on, while your foot is covered in sand.

In fact, the metal that was still stuck inside his body was itchy in much the same way sand tended to be, except it was more like shattered glass, or several internal wooden splinters. Sylver had successfully cleaned out the area around his spin, and joints, but he would have to wait for the rest to come out naturally.

“By any chance, is there a Ki technique to create a powerful magnetic force?” Sylver asked, as Faust tapped the handle with his hand, and uncovered the blue jade inside.

“There is, but it has more to do with manipulating a single weapon, as opposed to pulling out tiny pieces of metal. More importantly, it wouldn’t work on this, Jet Steel isn’t magnetic,” Faust explained, as he gestured to the remains of the blade that had belonged to one of the men Sylver had killed.

“Jet Steel?” Sylver asked.

Faust had used that word earlier, but he was more interested in telling his story, than explaining himself.

The man’s storytelling abilities weren’t awful, but they weren’t great either. The biggest issue was that the focus of his story was wrong.

Sylver wasn’t interested in what set of moves Faust used to defeat unnamed sword wielder number 11 because they could be all summed up with “I swung my sword harder/faster than the other guy.”

Granted, hearing the thought process of an ancient cultivator, that was proficient in all types of martial arts, weapons, and techniques, might have been interesting, but not when Sylver was the one listening.

Admittedly, Sylver was slightly biased, but on the other hand, he wasn’t wrong. Once you’ve fought one cultivator, you’ve fought them all.

Sure, sometimes, they do something unexpected, like breathing fire, sprouting wings, or their sword transforms into a metallic copy of them, but those are rare, the vast majority of cultivators either use a sword or their fists and rely on pure strength/speed.

In their defense, it’s usually more than enough to defeat everything in their way.

Until it isn’t.

The outcome of a fight between two cultivators can usually be predicted by comparing the difference in physical abilities, and experience. And while this wasn’t universally true, the fact that they were bound by “honor,” typically meant there wasn’t a whole lot of cheating.

Now, it wasn’t as if fights between mages were always interesting. There are only so many times you can watch two men flying around, shooting fireballs at each other, before you get bored of it.

When two mages that use the same magic get into a fight, it always ends up looking like a game of badminton. They just throw shards of ice at one another, until one of them runs out of mana.

Cultivators focused on the area inside of their bodies, while mages focused on the area outside of their bodies. There are a limited number of ways to move your arm around, but a near-infinite number of spells a mage could use to affect his surroundings.

Fire, air, water, earth, darkness, light, lightning, lava, ice, smoke, healing, death magic, the book of “known magical affinities” was so gargantuan that it had to be divided into 12 parts!

Even then, every single book was thick enough to be used as a weapon. Magic might not always be as “flashy” as cultivation, but there was so much variety that it didn’t matter.

Even the “alchemy” cultivators' practice usually ended up creating a potion, or a pill, that resulted in them eventually punching harder.

As a mage, Sylver, a “low tier alchemist,” knew how to make a potion that turned the drinker into a 500-meter tall tentacle monster, that shot lasers from its 42 tentacles.

“Jet Steel is the local name, I always called it a Wave Blade. The two metal alloys are mixed in such a way, that when you channel Ki through them, the Ki exists the edges in waves. The end result is essentially an extremely fast sawing motion. Theoretically, given enough Ki, it could cut through literally anything. I saw a whip made out of this material once, you wouldn’t believe how much of a hassle it was to deal with,” Faust explained, as Sylver nodded along.

“I can imagine…” Sylver said as Faust continued carefully carving away the wood the blue jade crystal was embedded in.

“You want to know how they managed to move in a way that you couldn’t react to them,” Faust said after a few seconds of silence.

Going by his tone, he had hoped Sylver had questions about his story. And, again, it wasn’t a bad story, it just wasn’t very interesting to Sylver.

Faust’s nameless sect was attacked. He defended everyone. The people who attacked him had said they were the “elite,” and Faust decided that since he already defeated their elite, it would be a piece of cake to defeat everyone left.

He was half right, those guys might have been the “elites,” but the Green Mongoose sect still had a fuckton of cultivators. Luckily the kids under Faust’s care were in pretty good shape thanks to his efforts and backed him up in what ended up being a lengthy battle.

They won, took the cultivators they defeated as hostages, and spared their lives in exchange for their whole entire sect. Then they used the funds in the sect’s storeroom to pay off the debts of Faust’s sect and founded a brand new, debt-free, sect in the territory that had previously belonged to the Green Mongoose sect.

Sylver was a little bit confused on that part but wasn’t curious enough to ask for details.

The long and short of it was that Faust conquered a piece of land and under the laws of this place, now owned it. Because the children actually ended up helping him in the fight, they accepted payment for their help without any complaint and had enough to bury most of their dead comrades.

There were still a few who hadn’t been “buried,” but it was just a matter of time until the child that felt responsible for paying that specific burial debt earned enough jade to pay it off.

“Was it like this?” Faust’s body became see-through, and a split second later, Sylver felt him appear behind him, as the see-through body still sitting down disappeared.

“Or like this?” Sylver saw an after image casually walk 5 steps forward, but all the while felt that Faust was already standing in the spot the after image ended up at.

“Or like this?” Faust asked, as his body became blurry, and Sylver felt the same pillowy sensation near his shoulder, as Faust appeared behind him.

“That one, how are you doing that?” Sylver asked as an annoyingly coy smile appeared on Faust’s face.

“Is this really your first time seeing this? How low level were the cultivators you fought in the past?” Faust asked with a smirk, as Sylver tried to remember the name that kid with the white eyebrows used.

“The Lorr Rank Monarch?” Sylver said, as the smirk fell off Faust’s face completely, and was replaced by a pale look of utter disbelief.

“The Lorr Rank Monarch,” Faust repeated, as Sylver felt the life leave the man’s body, and was caught off guard by the amount of confusion he felt emanating from him.

“He had very bushy white eyebrows,” Sylver added as he nodded.

“Holy shit…” Faust whispered under his breath.

There was a very strange moment of silence, as Faust plain and simple couldn’t wrap his head around Sylver defeating someone that powerful.

“Wait!” Faust said a little too loud, “what color were his eyes?” Faust asked as Sylver sifted through his memories.

“They… one was blue, and the other was orange?” Sylver said as Faust lowered his head into his hands.

“Holy shit…” Faust repeated while Sylver shrugged his shoulders. Faust looked up at the stitched-together corpse. “Is he dead, or…” Faust asked.

“Very dead, yes. He had some sort of reincarnation thing going on, but I put a stop to it. I’m trying to remember if I attacked him, or if he attacked us… The Ibis was on good terms with most high-ranking cultivators…” Sylver explained as he consulted his memories.

“You killed the Lorr Rank Monarch…” Faust repeated as if Sylver had said something absurd.

“I’m pretty sure he attacked us… I had Rook with me, and back then I only took him with me when there was an active threat… No, wait… I remember, his disciple attacked us, and then we attacked him. He sent us a message swearing revenge after we killed his disciple, and Aether teleported me right into the cave he was hiding in,” Sylver explained, with the casualness a person would use when discussing a particularly average lunch.

“Was he strong?” Ria asked.

She hadn’t said a word since Faust had started telling his story, and had stayed with Mora in the corner the large horse-shaped monster had chosen to build her regenerative cocoon in.

Faust lifted his face out of his hands and first stared at Ria, and then almost reluctantly, stared at Sylver.

“The Lorr Rank Monarch is a demi-god 10th tier arch-mage equivalent…” Faust said. Sylver made the choice not to comment on Faust’s comparison and forced his face to remain peacefully neutral. “How did he die?” Faust asked as Sylver scratched his chin.

“He survived my attempt to disintegrate the mountain, and then… He had a sword made out of lead, killed a couple of my wraiths, and then… I remember sealing his soul to prevent it from moving into a new body… I don’t think it was instant death magic, but… I’ll be honest with you Faust, I don’t remember,” Sylver explained, as Faust stared at him, with the strangest mixture of disbelief, awe, and a bit of resentment.

“How can you not remember?” Faust asked with unfiltered astonishment and bitterness.

Sylver shrugged his shoulders.

“Must not have been a very interesting fight… Maybe I did kill him with instant death magic, I’ll ask Edmund when I find him. He was there as backup because I distinctly remember him whining about not doing anything on the trip back, and he brought the wrong wine,” Sylver explained with a note of annoyance.

Faust continued staring at him for a full 10 seconds before he chose to pretend Sylver hadn’t said anything and moved on from the conversation entirely.

“It’s called Rifting. At least, that’s the most common name for it. I’ve also heard it called Bubbling, Snorkeling, and Sliding. There are variations, as you just saw, but the basis of them all is the same,” Faust explained, as Sylver nodded along.

“Is it a Skill, or a Perk?” Sylver asked as Faust shook his head.

“Neither. It’s not really a technique, it’s more of a… You wouldn’t describe walking a certain way as a technique, right?” Faust asked as Sylver shrugged his shoulders.

“How do I stop it?” Sylver asked.

“You don’t. I mean, since you’re incapable of sensing Ki, once it’s started, you won’t be able to stop it. The only thing you can do is either predict what they’re going to do or prevent them from getting into it,” Faust explained.

“Can you explain what you mean by “getting into it?” And is this something anyone can do?” Sylver asked as Faust wiggled his stump towards him, and Sylver felt something extremely soft rub against his torso.

“Can you feel that?” Faust asked, as Sylver touched the area in question, and could feel something there.

“What is it?” Sylver asked, as Faust lowered his stump, and once again became blurry, and appeared directly in front of Sylver.

“In places with a high concentration of Ki, the Ki can sometimes clump together, for lack of a better word. Bruno told me you have the same thing with mana, but it’s on a bigger scale. It’s why going from Arda to Torg takes longer than going from Torg to Arda. Sort of the same thing here,” Faust explained

He once again became blurry, and Sylver realized a half-second later one of the daggers floating around inside his robe was missing and was now in Faust’s hand.

“Does time dilate when you’re inside those clumps?” Sylver asked as Faust shook his head.

Sylver’s dagger was in his hand now, but his left boot had been taken off and was being held by Faust.

“It depends on the amount of Ki in the bubble, and how much skill the person Rifting has. 1 minute is the limit. But it takes a lifetime to get to 1 minute, even I can barely do 40 seconds. From what I’ve witnessed, and going by your description of their attack, they can do around 4 to 5 seconds,” Faust explained, as Sylver’s boot was back on his foot, but the dagger he had been holding was replaced by a pencil.

“What are the weaknesses of this thing?” Sylver asked, as felt a very weak trace of Faust’s soul, as he disappeared, and repeated in front of him.

The pencil was gone, and Sylver’s dagger was back in his hand.

“A single Ki “bubble” can only be used a handful of times. The bigger the bubble, the more times it can be used, but again, it depends heavily on the user’s ability. It’s also really difficult to stop something already moving,” Faust said, as Sylver raised an eyebrow.

“So as long as I don’t stand still, they won’t be able to get me?” Sylver asked.

“No, they will. But the Ki bubbles aren’t spherical, they can be tall, wide, thin, in a spiral, rectangular, you get the gist. So if your hand is moving forward, to cut your hand, they would need to move their sword along the same axis your hand is moving, but in the opposite direction. What can sometimes happen, is that there isn’t enough room for them to maneuver their blade to move opposite your hand’s direction,” Faust explained.

“But since I have no idea what the shape of the bubble I’m standing in is, I can’t position myself to minimize the amount of room they have,” Sylver said.

He felt a fizzing sensation on his exposed face, as Faust stomped his foot as if he had missed a step.

“And now the bubble you’re in can’t be used for Rifting. But yes,” Faust said.

“Can more than one person use a bubble at the same time?” Sylver asked.

“Nope. It’s first come, first served. You also might have noticed I could only Rift from very specific places. It’s where the name comes from. You can only enter a bubble, from the edge of the bubble. But the good news is that most cultivators won’t be able to Rift as seamlessly as me. You’ll see them take a deep breath, or stay perfectly still for a moment before they start trying to Rift,” Faust said.

“How vulnerable are they during that moment?” Sylver asked as Faust nodded at him approvingly.

“Almost completely defenseless. You can’t maintain a Ki barrier while Rifting. Also, it takes a lot of Ki for normal cultivators to enter a Rift. More importantly, every single step and swing costs 10 times what it would outside of a bubble. It feels like moving through an extremely viscous and invisible jelly. Which is why I have some good news,” Faust said.

“If I have enough hard materials around me, the person attacking will run out of strength cutting through them… So, decoys, and obstacles… I’m surprised they managed to cut through my bulletproof robe though…” Sylver mumbled to himself, as the daggers and darts inside his robe floated out of it and shaped themselves into a Sylver-shaped cage around him.

“Oh, that was thanks to the Wave Blades. It’s ridiculously expensive in terms of Ki, but you can’t deny it’s a deadly combination,” Faust said.

They both turned their heads toward the door that lead to the stairs, a couple of seconds before someone knocked on it.

“Enter,” Faust said.

A child dressed in black, with a skull-shaped mask, opened the door and threw an envelope at Faust, who caught it between two fingers.

Faust ran his nail along the edge of the envelope and quietly read the letter inside.

“Your new friends are requesting a meeting. At sunrise, inside a tea shop called “The Parched Parrot.” Do you think I scared her off?” Faust asked, as Sylver took the letter from him and read through it, just in case.

“Who?” Sylver asked.

“The hottie who came last time,” Faust said.

Sylver folded the letter up and disappeared it into his [Bound Bones] storage, as he looked at the one-armed cultivator.

“What are you… Oh, ok, the 9.5 crazy woman. Did you do anything to scare her off?” Sylver asked, as Faust innocently shrugged his shoulders.

“Not that I’m aware of…” Faust answered.

“Alright…” Sylver said.

“I didn’t,” Faust repeated as if Sylver had accused him of something.

“I’m leaving Mora here until she’s fully recovered. If you could bring her some goats or pigs or something, I would appreciate it. She isn’t fond of eating animals, but I’m all out of human corpses,” Sylver said, as Faust nodded back.

Sylver patted Mora’s cocoon, and the large horse-shaped monster made a noise similar to a whistle in response. Getting back into her large horse body had been difficult, and the unbreakable threads she had used took a heavy toll on her.

***

Sylver adjusted the bandage around his eyes, as he leaned back in his seat, and finished his 5th cup of tea. His hood was up, to hide the scarring on the side of his face, and he had a white strip of cloth wrapped around his eyes to help him blend in.

Now that Faust’s sect was a thing, wearing black robes wasn’t odd. The white skull that symbolized Faust’s sect, that hung on Sylver’s shoulder felt a bit ridiculous, but he wasn’t going to complain too much.

Just as Sylver was about to pour himself another cup of tea from the teapot at his table, a server walked up to his table, and replaced Sylver’s cup, with an empty cup, with a tiny note inside. He briefly touched the piece of paper with the tip of his finger, and then stood up, and headed for the men’s bathroom.

He did as the note said, walked into the 2nd stall, and still fully dressed, sat down on the wooden toilet. Sylver fiddled around with the multiple layers of soul armor around his body while he waited until eventually, he heard the sound of a large stone being moved.

He looked up and saw that a panel had been removed from the wooden ceiling, and a hand was gesturing for him to follow. Sylver used his [Bracelet Of The Aurai] to create steps in the air for him, as he walked up them, and eventually had to get onto his stomach, to fit in the tight crawl space.

Silently, he followed the man crawling ahead of him, and eventually, they reached a ladder. Sylver let his robe do the climbing for him, as it slowly lowered him down the ladder.

He kept his shades in his shadow, on account of feeling something strange in the tunnels around him. The ground, ceiling, and walls were all made out of dirt someone had compressed, as they had dug the tunnels. A tiny lantern with a flickering weak flame sat on the ground at the bottom of the ladder.

The man Sylver was following picked it up, and without a word, began to walk.

There was something very strange about the dirt the tunnels were composed of. Sylver could feel it with his [Advanced Earth Manipulation] someone was actively channeling Ki through the walls.

As the breeze Sylver felt changed directions again, he realized someone was moving these tunnels around and were constantly altering the path the man in front of Sylver was taking.

Sylver had tried to “spar” with Faust, but the end result was always the same. The moment Faust successfully entered the bubble Sylver’s body was occupying, it was over.

It wasn’t over over, even if Faust tore Sylver to pieces, he still couldn’t do anything about his indestructible ribcage. But as he had said, Sylver’s only real options were to stop him before he entered the bubble, make him waste his energy on decoys/armor, or somehow predict his movements and catch him.

The last part was due to the fact that it was very difficult to change direction while inside a bubble. Usually what happened is that the cultivator ran towards his target, but a bit to the side, entered the Rift, and as he was “sliding” forward, turned towards his target and attacked him.

Hypothetically, if Sylver figured out which direction his attacker was going to slide towards, he could stick out his hand to catch them. It’s what he had done with the blue robe heir when he had caught his sword. The problem with that was, that there was still more than enough wiggle room inside the bubble for his opponent to avoid him.

Faust speculated that blue robe was simply inexperienced and wasn’t able to see what he was doing clearly. Purple robe, on the other hand, wasn’t that far off from being a master. The technique he used to push Sylver’s ribcage out of his torso sounded rather advanced, according to Faust at least.

With all that in mind, Sylver decided he would prefer to have a bit more MP, than speed.

CON: 200
DEX: 110
STR: 110
INT: 461
WIS: 267
AP: 0

Health: 1,821/2,000
Stamina: 996/1,000
MP: 8,447/18,440

Health Regen: 23.34/M
Stamina Regen: 20.00/M
MP Regen: 11,077.83/M

The man Sylver was following flinched, as Sylver quietly rolled his head and hands until the altered mana channels finished settling in.

They walked, and walked, and eventually reached a room made up of carved runes. Sylver could feel the barrier disconnect him from the space outside, as he stepped through the small doorway.

The room was barely tall enough for Sylver to stand at his full height, the top of his hood brushed against the ceiling. He bent his knees a little, so it didn’t get pulled back as he walked.

Inside the room, there were several pillows strewn around the floor, and as the door behind Sylver was quietly closed, he walked over to the pillows and sat down. He rested his back on the wall, and faced the only way in, or out, of the room.

Sylver scratched his cheek as wave after wave of exploratory Ki washed over his body, and with every second, increased in intensity. It took him a while to realize the Ki wasn’t looking at him, and when he felt a soul very briefly brush against his soul sense, as it was pulled away, he realized the room had kicked out one of those invisible ghost’s Chrys had shown Sylver.

5 minutes passed, before the door Sylver was staring at opened, and a grey-faced Bear/Owl walked in, followed closely by a bloodied and bruised Wolf.

Wolf helped Owl sit down, and for a moment, Sylver forgot that he was supposed to be afraid of these two people. They just looked like two old men, the kind that would play chess in the garden on a sunny day. One was massive, and wide, while the other was small and stringy.

“This is Hound,” Owl said, with a gesture at Wolf.

Wolf/Hound gave Sylver his signature smile, full of teeth, with the sort of expression that made him look as if he was about to growl at him.

But Hound’s heart wasn’t in it. There wasn’t any genuine anger in his eyes. As if Hound thought that his very presence would cause the [Necromancer] in front of him to shit himself, and anything else would be wasted effort.

He doesn’t recognize me…

Sylver realized, as he continued his silent staring match with Hound, and chose to be the first to break eye contact.

“In exchange for rescuing Fobur Plateforged, we want you to help us defeat the recently appointed Emperor,” Owl said.

“Oh…” Sylver said.

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