Ch216-Carry On

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Ch216-Carry On

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Sylver cradled the Mora cocoon in his left arm, as he jumped out of the fissure and landed on sandy ground. It was bright outside, and the fresh air felt like poison as it entered Sylver’s “lungs,” and reapplied salt to every minor wound he hadn’t had a chance to fix.

The sun blinded what remained of his eyes, and the sand underneath his feet seemed determined to make him fall.

The trip to the surface had been uneventful, Sylver fought against 2 monsters that resembled stingrays, that used their tail to throw their battle ax shaped bodies at him, but they were harmless once Sylver’s abyss magic separated them from their tails.

Mora had fallen asleep at some point, and when she woke up and realized how exhausted she was, she compacted herself into a small sphere and then wrapped herself up in threads. Sylver felt her stir when he reached the surface, but he told her to go back to sleep for now.

As Sylver had told Ria, the quest had been successful. He came here to kill the two heirs of the blue tiger sect, and he did just that. The details were largely irrelevant.

In hindsight, he should have decapitated the blue robe wearing heir the moment purple robe closed his eyes to cultivate his tea, but Sylver did what he thought was best, and didn’t currently possess the ability to travel back in time.

Even if he did, he knew from experience he was too paranoid to trust a man who looked like him and claimed to be Sylver from an apocalyptic future. That sort of trick only worked the first 2 times, after that, Sylver no longer trusted men who seemed to know everything he knew.

He fell for it again when a future version of Aether showed up, but thankfully the clairvoyant shape-shifting imposter wasn’t capable of copying Aether’s magic. The real Aether would have dodged out of the way or corrupted Sylver’s spell before he finished forming it, while the fake made the mistake of assuming Sylver wouldn’t actually use 9th tier dark magic against someone he considered one of his closest friends.

For a few years after that incident, Sylver made it a habit to try to kill everyone he hadn’t seen for a while. It didn’t help his reputation, but it did keep everyone on their toes, and as Sylver had intended, weeded out all the pretenders.

Aside from that man who had replaced one of the cook’s dogs. To this day, Sylver wasn’t certain how he missed him, but thankfully the man was too terrified of being caught and continued acting like a dog until the day he died.

Sylver sucked in his gut, as he inserted the forceps, and removed yet another shard of metal.

It was almost funny.

In the “I can either laugh or cry” sort of way.

His flesh was dense enough to stop most of the metal from flying out of him, but not dense enough to stop a sword from cutting right through him.

Now, in hindsight, what he should have done, the moment he realized red robe was coming after him, was to purge his body of all traces of positive mana, so that red robe’s Ki enhanced sword wouldn’t be able to cut him.

But even if he did that, while whatever Ki cutting technique red robe used to make his cuts so smooth might not affect him, the very real sword, and very real cultivator strength, would still be a problem.

Now, maybe, Sylver’s bones would be strong enough to stop the sword, but considering the man’s level, and the fact that he used all of his Ki in that attack, Sylver didn’t like his chances.

Sylver carefully pulled another shard out of his chest and dropped the tiny piece of splintered metal into the tray Spring was holding for him.

The folded-up metal created a very pretty pattern on the blade, but as Sylver pushed the forceps back into his chest and started wiggling the shard back and forth to loosen it, he couldn’t help but hope that every single person involved with the creation of these blades died a very slow, and gruesome death.

When a normal sword shattered, you’re looking at maybe 20 to 50 pieces, somewhere around that, depending on how it shattered obviously.

But these swords? With all their layers? Even if Sylver had been cut by 1 sword, there still would have been around 300 shards inside of him.

This was cruel.

Even for Sylver.

Then again, it was partially his fault for being in a rush, and not considering how difficult it would be to remove metal shards from the inside of his slightly healed bones. Sylver knew the moment he started pulling them out, he wasn’t going to find all of them.

His only option was to either learn to live with pieces of blades stuck inside his bones, or to take a dip in an acid bath, where he would have to effectively tear his body apart to expose the metal.

I’ll need a new body. Sylver realized as the forceps bent from the pressure he was exerting on them, and he ran out of patience.

Sylver stood up from where he had been laying on his back and manipulated the string Mora had provided him into stitching up his chest. He very gently flexed his muscles and adjusted the tightness of the stitches.

He looked down at the moving landscape below, as he stretched and further adjusted the stitches in his shoulders, knees, elbows, wrists, neck, and spine.

Will was almost inside the clouds right now, and Sylver used a very simple illusion spell to make the bottom half of the shade’s body white.

Sylver looked over to where Ria was sitting next to Mora’s cocoon. Ria had been quiet during the trip back. Unusually quiet.

He got the feeling she was sulking.

Which was strange, considering Sylver was the one who had lost all of his front teeth and had spent several long and painful hours pulling shards of metal out of his face. Ria had merely lost the golem thing she built out of those metallic monsters.

“Is everything alright?” Sylver asked, as Ria flinched from his voice, and lifted her head to face him.

“Yes, I’m fine. Did you get all the shards?” Ria asked.

Sylver didn’t even need to feel her soul to tell she was lying.

Not directly of course, if he had to guess, she had chosen to interpret his question as “is everything alright, physically,” and then answered, “yes, physically, I am fine.”

“Most of them, yes,” Sylver said.

He hadn’t kept count, but he was fairly certain he got at least half of the shards out. The pieces that were left were too small for him to feel inside his body using his mana.

Ria just nodded at him, and then went back to staring at Mora’s cocoon. Her legs were pressed up to her chest, and she had wrapped her arms around them, while she rested her head on her knees.

He normally gave people time and did his best not to pressure them, but in this case, Sylver also wasn’t in the mood to talk.

Sylver summoned what few corpse parts he had left and used the few remaining clone pieces to restore the skin on his face and gave himself enough teeth that he wouldn’t feel embarrassed when smiling.

As he mentally prepared a checklist of components he would need when he returned to his workshop in Arda, he suddenly got an idea.

Sylver summoned the corpses of red and orange robe and focused on the tips of his fingers. A tiny piece of fungus appeared on all of his five fingers, and within a couple of seconds, grew until they met in Sylver’s palm.

He had considered all the time he spent trying to create a fairy ring as a teleportation device a waste of time, but now that he had been given a couple of tips by his [Novice Chloromancy] perk, he saw all of his failed attempts under a new light.

Normally Sylver would have been overjoyed at such an idea. But the fact that the system was almost entirely responsible for it, spoiled the whole thing. It was tainted, the way a tiny speck of dark green mold inside the breadbasket tainted the whole loaf.

As Sylver allowed the strains to get acquainted with one another in the palm of his hand, for whatever reason, he decided he was done being upset about it.

He had never complained about using magic he stole from his enemies in the past, so why was he being so self-deprecating now? Even if the system was 100% responsible for every “bright idea” he had using something it gave to him, so what?

If anything, it would make eventually cracking it open all the better. Sylver knew firsthand just how painful it was to be killed by your own weapon. The fact that the system would be completely responsible for what he ended up doing to it wasn’t something to be upset over.

It was almost worth celebrating.

Sylver already knew it was possible to work outside the system, all the evidence he ever needed was sitting a couple meters away from him, quietly sulking about something she didn’t feel comfortable sharing.

He’d never complained when the warriors he was fighting waited for him to get back to his feet, or in a couple of cases, threw him one of their weapons since they destroyed Sylver’s. To keep things “fair,” or “honorable.”

Well, he complained after he killed them, but never during, or before.

Sylver could feel the fungus in his palm resist his alterations, it was almost fighting him, but it was an ant trying to stop a mighty river from flowing.

He felt a warning buzz in the back of his skull as he summoned a single [Corpse Blossom] seed into his hand. But the buzzing remained where it was, even as Sylver forced the mixture in his palm to attack the tiny pip.

It felt stupid to say it, but the seed felt angry, as it tried to disappear out of Sylver’s hand. A wave of revulsion passed through Sylver for a fraction of a second, as if he was witnessing some sort of unspeakably horror. But the feeling wasn’t his, it was something someone had tried forcing onto him and failed spectacularly.

Sylver felt the buzzing at the back of his head retreat, the way the sea might retreat before a tsunami, but somehow he could tell it wasn’t going to come crashing down on him.

The system pulled back its arm, to see if he would flinch, but Sylver quite simply ignored it and continued trying to crossbreed his custom-made fungus, and the magical seed the system had so gracefully provided him.

Sylver couldn’t feel the primal energy of the seed, but he could feel the fungus’ primal energy interacting with the seed’s primal energy. And while for most people that would be the equivalent of trying to pick a lock using a puppet controlled by strings, Sylver wasn’t most people.

He spent a while just standing there, staring at the mixture in the palm of his hand, and with every failed attempt, got closer and closer to cracking open this system-given nut.

There wasn’t any lightning, or thunder, or even a satisfying sound, as Sylver’s microscopic mycelium found a metaphorical crack in the seed and tore it open.

It melted into the shimmering mess of fungus.

The mixture of fungi changed from a dark green to a sickly yellow, and as Sylver poked and prodded the structure of its primal energy, changed once again into an alarmingly bright shade of orange.

It had the consistency of warm honey, with a similarly slimy sheen.

Sylver crouched next to red robe’s body and touched the man’s throat with the hand coated in bright orange fungi.

It wasn’t as quick as Sylver would have liked, but the important thing was that it was thorough. Once it found the first vein, it followed the blood vessel to the heart, and then the brain. Sylver maintained contact with it, and with every dead end, adjusted the structure and instructions.

And yet, even as the orange honey-like fungi pulsed with life, and began to sprout, the system still didn’t have a snappy name for the mushroom.

Sylver pulled his hand away, and the orange glove-shaped mushroom disappeared into red robe’s chest. The corpse made a hissing noise, as the mushroom continued to slowly spread into every single muscle, bone, and organ.

With a sound that almost sounded like a scream, the man’s mouth began to open. Red tendrils climbed out of his mouth, and looked a bit like fuzzy hair, as they gradually covered the man’s face, and made it look like his bright red beard had grown upward.

The hair-like tendrils reacted to Sylver as he stretched his hand out towards them. They slithered up his fingers like tiny snakes, and one by one wrapped themselves around his fingers and hand. With every escaping bright red worm, the man’s corpse popped, fizzed, and sloshed, as the fungus absorbed and processed every inch of flesh and bone into the equivalent of a healing potion.

Sylver watched as his hand gained layer after layer of muscles, tendons, nerves, blood vessels, and finally, skin, and nails. With every tendril that escaped the man’s mouth, his body contracted, his skin folded up, as his arms and legs were retracted into his torso.

By the time Sylver had a fully formed hand, and wrist, the only thing left of the red robe wearing man was a deflated bag of brittle bones.

Sylver clicked his tongue as he pulled his sleeve up, and saw that he had a hand, but everything between his shoulder and wrist was empty bone.

[Mutating Override (II) Proficiency increased to 97%!]

“I should have started with my face…” Sylver said to himself, as he experimentally closed his hand into a fist, and then opened it. Aside from the fact that it looked like he was wearing a glove made out of skin, there weren’t any problems.

Sylver repeated the process with orange robe, and managed to completely fix his face, ears, and even fixed some of the damage inside his throat.

It wasn’t perfect, and the conversion rate was understandably terrible given the differences in density, but Sylver now had a way of healing himself.

His shattered bones were still a problem, as were the shards of metal embedded inside, but at least his soft and fleshy parts could be fixed in a matter of minutes.

Provided he had enough corpses.

Even now he could feel the system buzzing in the back of his skull, like a bee behind a thick glass window, but apparently the fact that Sylver meddled with it so indirectly meant it couldn’t interfere with him.

He had used the [Corpse Blossom] seed the system had provided him, the [Alive Aloe] specifically, and perverted its constitution increasing effect into the equivalent of a healing potion.

The reason the system hadn’t rendered him comatose from the attempt, was because Sylver didn’t have the faintest clue how the constitution increasing effect occurred, and simply directed it at the fungus, which was partially made out of Sylver’s flesh.

He knew the system really didn’t like his creation, when he discovered he couldn’t use [Seed Store] on it. Not that it mattered, since Sylver could do it again using the same 5 mushrooms, not to mention the fact that he had already mixed the spores into his bloodstream and could summon the bright orange fungus on command.

Sylver continued experimenting with the invasive fungus, and the other 4 seeds [Corpse Blossom] provided him, while he waited for Will to bring them home.

***

At some point during the joinery, Sylver remembered he had 10 attribute points to distribute, but he wanted to consult Faust on something before he used them.

The way those cultivators managed to slither past his perception wasn’t normal. He would have known if they were teleporting, and simply being fast didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to sense them.

Mora was still asleep by the time they reached the area the Blue Tiger sect controlled. Sylver didn’t understand the specifics, but she was experiencing something akin to backlash from using her string to trap the blue robe heir.

In an odd way, Sylver was happy to hear that. He wasn’t happy that his companion was exhausted, but it was akin to discovering that you and a close friend were both allergic to the same thing.

Sylver had Spring walk ahead of him, and he gave the skin suit wearing shade a crude bright blue mask to wear, as he approached the main house of the Blue Tiger sect. Both Sylver and Spring spent a while walking around the area, to scout it out.

Sylver had planned to have the 2 corpses show up in a semi-respectful way, but as he leaned down to inspect a copper serving tray and felt a piece of metal drag against his spine, he changed his mind.

Spring entered a public bathroom, snapped a tiny [Bound Bone] that contained the two corpses, removed his skin suit, assimilated it into himself, and then returned to Sylver’s shadow.

There was utter chaos as a man desperate to piss discovered the two partially mutilated heirs sitting on the toilet and screamed loud enough that Sylver didn’t even need a shade to confirm the bodies had been found.

Sylver mixed himself into the crowd, as much as possible given his height and appearance, and while one group ran towards the screaming, Sylver joined the other group, that was quickly moving away from the screaming. Once he was outside the area owned by the Blue Tiger sect, Sylver made sure no one was following him and made his way towards Faust’s sect.

***

The fact that the barrier was weak enough for Spring to almost pass through it, worried Sylver, but he chose to remain optimistic.

But as he walked through the barrier to Faust’s sect, as usual, his optimism was stomped on.

When he left, the sect was composed of a walled-up piece of land, with a beautiful double gate serving as the entrance. Inside there was a 1 to 2 story building, if you counted the roof, and more recently, a bunch of martial arts practice equipment had been built into the wonderfully green grass on either side of the path in the middle.

What Sylver was looking at right now, couldn’t even be described as ruins.

There was an enormous tear in the ground like someone had ripped the earth open. Debris of the completely destroyed building was littered throughout the opening, along with Faust’s training things, and thanks to [Dead Dominion] Sylver could also tell that there was blood down in the fissure.

Sylver could hear a ringing in his ears, as he felt a tightness form within his chest. Ria was saying something, but the only thing Sylver could focus on was the destruction someone had brought to the place he had considered his temporary home.

The home he had forced his way into and accepted the responsibility for, which had been torn to irreparable shreds. Sylver tried to take a deep breath, but he had neither the lungs nor the calmness required for such an action.

It wasn’t even anger he felt right now, anger was-

Sylver’s neck made a cracking noise as Ria forcibly turned his head. A man dressed in black, with a white mask shaped like a skull was standing near him, and it took Sylver an embarrassingly long time to compose himself enough to hear what the boy was saying.

“Master Faust has asked me to escort you to the new sect,” the boy said, as Sylver kept his gaze fixed on the boy’s eyes, and gradually turned his body towards him.

“What?” Sylver asked, and with every second cooled down enough to think straight.

“We have moved, Master Sylver. Master Faust has asked me to escort you to the new sect headquarters,” the boy repeated, as Sylver unclenched his fists.

“Lead the way,” Sylver answered, as the boy nodded at him, and gestured for him to follow.

Sylver vaguely recognized the boy, even with the mask and concealing dark bathrobe-like clothing he was wearing. He wasn’t certain which one he was exactly, but he could tell by his soul he was one of the kids from Faust’s sect, and not just a random kid wearing the sort of thing people expect “necromancers” to wear.

The black robe was fine, that was a very fair stereotype, but the skull-shaped mask almost felt like he was mocking him. All of Sylver’s masks were an oval shape, and if they were carved, they never resembled a skull.

But the mask the kid was wearing looked as if someone had taken one of Sylver’s plain white masks, and then scaled it down to fit a child’s head and carved it into the shape of a skull. Sylver also saw that the boy wasn’t wearing his wooden carving on his arm and was instead wearing it on his hip.

They walked in silence, Sylver had questions, he had a lot of questions, but he decided to save them for Faust. The suns had finished setting by the time they reached the new sect headquarters.

The entrance was a brilliant green, with a giant white skull carved into the painted wood. Two fully grown adult guards stood on either side of the entrance, and after a nod from the boy in front of Sylver, moved to open the gates.

Similar to the old place, the new one had blood splattered everywhere. There was blood soaked into the grassy ground, on some of the roofs, between some of the stones in the path, and inside the thick wooden walls, which were in the process of being repaired.

Sylver lost count of the number of white skulls he saw as he followed the boy towards the 5-story building, but he also saw a familiar symbol a couple of times as well.

Although the color was different.

Once again, two guards opened the doors for them, and Sylver saw a one-armed Faust chocking on his tea as he turned his head and saw Sylver standing there. His left sleeve had been folded and sowed shut, so the stump wasn’t visible. He was also wearing an eyepatch on his right eye, and there was a line of very poorly sown stitches on his neck.

He was missing a piece of his right ear, and while Faust did look good with a shaved head, the burn mark on his temple ruined it.

Faust coughed into his only hand while Sylver stared at him.

“Do you want the short version or the long version?” Faust asked as he wiggled his stump towards the table, and a cup levitated towards the empty seat and was filled by a similarly floating tea kettle.

“Why a skull of all things?” Sylver asked as he walked over to the table, and with a flick of his hand, created a chair for Ria and Faust to sit on.

Faust somehow managed to look simultaneously ashamed, and completely unconcerned, as he shrugged his shoulders.

“I thought it would be… Look, I’ll be 100% real with you, I was in a very strange headspace when I took this place over, and it didn’t occur to me how the skull thing would look. But by the time I realized it, half the servants already had it tattooed on their foreheads, and my thought process was that the symbol doesn’t really matter, so why not a white skull?” Faust explained as Sylver pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I did all of this?” Faust asked, as Sylver kept his head down, and tried to wish away the migraine forming inside his head.

Spring spoke in Sylver’s place.

“They attacked you, you defended yourself, and then you came here, killed their leader, and now you own everything they used to own,” Spring explained, as he made himself comfortable in his seat.

“I mean… yes, but it was a whole thing. I sacrificed my arm, Michael nearly died, even Xalibur and Dog had their moment… You were gone for a week, and I managed to conquer a Green sect! I caught a sword with my teeth Syl. You should have seen me, I was magnificent. All that shit Bruno said about feeling more alive than ever before, I finally get it,” Faust explained, as he gestured with one hand, and wiggled his stump.

“All the fights I fought before, win, lose, my heart was never in it. I didn’t care, but now… You really should have seen me, I had the whole underdog thing going, I was outnumbered, they had better equipment, I didn’t even have a sword, and I still won. I never slept well, I don’t remember if I ever told you that, but I slept like a log after this Syl,” Faust continued, as he enthusiastically waved around his hand.

“You said servants, are they actually servants or are they slaves?” Ria asked, as Faust refused to calm down and seemed like he was going to explode if he didn’t have someone to tell his epic tale of conquest.

Which, if you summarized it, was the story of one guy beating up a bunch of other guys.

Riveting stuff.

“Honestly, both, kinda. They’re technically speaking my property, but the land their houses are on is owned by them, and I think they are allowed to sell that land to other servants, but I haven’t really looked into it. I doubled everyone’s wages, salaries, what have you, and apart from a couple of families, everyone seems content to stay here. To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not all that sure what they all do?” Faust explained with a confused look on his face.

“Is there going to be revenge or something? Is the Blue Mongoose sect going to attack you?” Sylver asked, as he stopped pinching the bridge of his nose, and straightened his back.

“Nope, I won this place fair and square… They might attack you, specifically, for being a witch and all that. I recommend going somewhere public with that elf healer you mentioned. Make it look like you have friends in high places. How did it go with your thing?” Faust asked as he looked Sylver up and down, and despite Sylver’s best efforts, could tell he wasn’t doing too hot.

“Pretty standard… You might have to fight a cultivator wielding an ancient [Hero]s artifact, in a couple of weeks, possibly months, maybe days,” Sylver explained, as Faust’s eye widened at his words.

“Ah… So we’ve both been busy,” Faust said, in a tone that suggested that the thing he had been busy with was as interesting as the thing Sylver had been busy with.

Sylver laughed to himself, as he got exactly the non-reaction he expected from a man who used to be a [Hero].

“I need to patch myself up. Is there a private place for me to do that, while you tell me how exactly you conquered a whole sect within a week?” Sylver asked.

Once again, there was something almost childlike in Faust’s smile.

As Faust led Sylver to the 5th floor, which had been converted into a room/workshop for Sylver, he began explaining how it was a calm and ordinary day, when the entrance was smashed open.

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