Ch208-Hello Again

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Ch208-Hello Again

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Total Level: 160
[Koschei-10]
[Necromancer-100]
[Swamp Lord-50]

CON: 200
DEX: 110
STR: 110
INT: 413
WIS: 259
AP: 0

Health: 2,000/2,000
Stamina: 982/1,000
MP: 11,591 /16,520

Health Regen: 23.34/M
Stamina Regen: 20.00/M
MP Regen: 9627.03/M

Sylver’s arms felt numb from overexerting his mana channels in such a way.

In reality, his whole body felt numb, but his arms were uncomfortably numb. The lines he had carved into his bones had seemingly floated to the surface of his skin and presented themselves as purple-tinged scars.

They looked like bruises if bruises could look like Sylver’s skin was cracking to pieces. He spent the ride back to Faust’s sect feverishly rubbing his skin until the marking subsided, but his body plain and simple didn’t have the necessary components to fix the damage.

The bruises were lighter by the time Sylver had to jump off Ulvic, but they were still visible, and to save himself the embarrassment, Sylver wrapped his arms up with bandages.

It was significantly better than rotting from the inside, but it was yet another reminder that Sylver was pushing his body further than he should be. Sadly, he didn’t have Nyx around to tell him to slow down, he didn’t have the luxury of waiting for his flesh and bones to grow at their own pace.

But with every strained mana channel, with every cast spell, and every moment he was alive and moving around, Sylver was edging closer and closer towards a body capable of ripping souls straight out of people’s bodies.

Sylver walked through the emptying streets with the body part-filled boxes floating in a neat cube above him. Faust had invested some red jade into a couple of alchemical books and provided Sylver with a list of monster bits that could be used to brew a potion, pill, or powder.

When it came to monsters that lived in swamps, the vast majority of the important bits were the venom sacks, skin, fangs, and liver. The monsters that Spring killed that weren’t on the list, were harvested for what he thought would make the most sense as a potion ingredient.

Sylver knew a thing or two about alchemy, he knew a thing or two about most things, but alchemy was one of those skillsets that he had a somewhat in-depth knowledge of. As a pure-dark Sylver was limited in the tools he could use to enhance his abilities.

Doubly so after he became undead.

Thankfully potions were one of those things that just about any creature, regardless of mana core type, or how alive they were, could benefit from. Granted, it was difficult to adapt the useful potions to affect an undead pure-dark, but once Sylver figured out how to do it once, he could do it with most potions.

Ironically, and very few people found this funny when Sylver told them, but the damage sustained from potion overuse was identical to overusing certain types of dark magic.

Why, the symptoms were so similar that magic-enhancing drug addicts were very often mistaken for dark mages. But that was one of those subjects that Sylver hadn’t bothered to delve too deeply in, since there was very little that could be done with potions that couldn’t be replicated with good old-fashioned spell work.

It was useful when he was an apprentice and struggled to cast more than 1 spell at the same time. But at his current level Sylver juggled strength enhancement, air resistance reduction, adhesiveness, several telekinetic spells, channeling mana towards the shades to make them a bit faster and stronger, and lastly whatever magic he was using to attack his opponent.

While it might be nice to become a bit more focused, Sylver’s bottleneck wasn’t his mana manipulation abilities or his lack of focus, it was a lack of mana.

And the only potions Sylver knew that could increase his mana capacity by a significant amount, would cripple his body for about a month. Because, and this was something only a very select number of master alchemists were aware of, potions affected a person’s soul.

Some were purely physical, but unsurprisingly, the ones that touched anything mana channel related also had to touch the mage’s soul.

The two people standing outside Faust’s sect were wearing identical masks, that looked worrying similar to the masks Sylver used. Except while Sylver’s mask was white to bring attention to his head, and away from his hands/feet/body, these two were wearing a very dark shade of red.

They were wearing the standard bathrobe style shirt that was the norm here, with matching dark red pants, gloves, and tight wrappings around their wrists, ankles, and neck, that completely hid all their skin. The only part of them that was directly visible were their eyes.

“Do you have eyeliner underneath that?” Sylver asked the boy/man on the right.

Age-wise they were closer to men, than they were to boys, especially when the fact that they had no choice but to mature to survive was taken to account.

It was starting to become a very worrying recurring theme in Sylver’s choice of allies. First Misha and Masha, then Chrys, then the dark elves, Ria in a certain sense, and now these thieving cripples who would have all been dead if not for the boy who forced Sylver to get decapitated.

All were children that didn’t get to be children.

“To better hide in the dark,” the boy answered.

Sylver could do little but nod at him, as he walked through the gates and entered the sect, floating boxes full of dead monster parts following behind him.

It’s starting to get annoying that they don’t use their names. I can barely tell them apart as it is, and now they’re all wearing matching uniforms.

Sylver thought as he looked at the identically dressed people punching and kicking those weird targets Faust had constructed. They were crisscrossed-shaped metal spheres hanging off a large wooden pole.

If you punched the sphere on the left, it would spin clockwise and would make a sphere on the right spin towards your head, foot, or torso, depending on how the metal connecting them was bent.

Sylver funneled the boxes down into Faust’s workshop, and after they were inside, followed behind them.

“I’m ready for good news!” Sylver said as Faust continued quietly stirring his giant fancy cauldron.

Sylver put the boxes in the corner and made himself comfortable on his own shadow. Faust continued working on his potion/pill for a couple of minutes before he was able to step away from the simmering cauldron.

“They asked to meet inside Fobur’s house. Didn’t specify a time, so I guess just go whenever you’re ready,” Faust said with a slightly forced smile.

“Good… Any more good news before you tell me about the other thing?” Sylver asked, and Faust took a moment to sigh before he spoke. He almost looked guilty as he grinned at Sylver.

“The woman who came here was hot. And I mean hot. If she wasn’t crazy, I might have asked her out. She was like 9.5 out of 10 levels of hot,” Faust explained, and Sylver raised an eyebrow at him.

“Define crazy.”

“Well, she’s in a group that agreed to work with you. If she isn’t crazy herself, she’s crazy by proxy. But that one was crazy, I might not have your soul reading abilities, but I know crazy eyes when I see them,” Faust explained, and Sylver could do little but nod.

“Alright… Now give me the bad news,” Sylver said, and he could see Faust contemplating whether to make this specific problem, Sylver’s problem.

“It’s not bad news, per se, it’s more of a… Never mind. I’ll handle it,” Faust said.

“Because I trust you, I’m only going to ask this once… Are you sure?” Sylver asked.

Faust looked away for a couple of seconds, and then quietly nodded at Sylver.

“On an unrelated note, hypothetically, what would someone need to treat the Night Fever mimicking curse? I’m going to guess this isn’t something a bottle of holy water will cure, so what’s the solution?” Faust asked as Sylver chose to believe this really was an unrelated topic of discussion.

He would have felt it if one of the kids under Faust’s protection caught it.

“On the contrary, at the very early stages, a bottle of high-quality holy water would pretty much cure it. Or at least suppress it, I’m not 100% certain regarding the curing part. But since the curse itself isn’t directly destructive, as long as the person continues drinking holy water, they should be fine,” Sylver explained and could tell by the way Faust was nodding along that he was committing his words to memory.

“How long for a proper, full, cure? Hypothetically, I mean. I don’t mean how long you would need, but how long would someone like Tarragon need to find a cure?” Faust asked.

Sylver would be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted to ask why exactly Faust was so curious, but he’d already decided not to get involved. Even if this sounded like the kind of thing that eventually became big enough that Sylver had no choice but to get involved.

“Curses are… They’re sort of alive, in a way regular spells aren’t. Even the act of looking at them can cause them to react. I have curses that will activate just by thinking about them. For all I know that curse sucked in its stomach when it felt me reaching out for it. To figure out what it really looks like, required waiting for it to run out of breath, metaphorically speaking,” Sylver explained.

“So, it might react differently to Tarragon… Is there a way to protect yourself from it?” Faust asked, and Sylver had to be mindful of Ria misinterpreting his respect at a well-made curse for something else.

He wasn't happy there was a curse around, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate the skill.

“Not sleeping in the same room as someone already affected by it. Apart from that, not really. It’s got 3 conditions for transfer, the infected person must be asleep, the target must be asleep, and the person and the target must be in the same room.

“Lycanthropy on the other hand only has 1 condition for transfer, exchanging bodily fluids. Generally speaking the more conditions a curse has, the harder it is to prevent. There are potions to stop the spread of lycanthropy, but not this,” Sylver said, as Faust nodded along, and seemed to come to some kind of decision in his mind.

“Just out of curiosity, what could someone already infected do?” Faust asked, and Sylver really didn’t like the way he sounded.

But he had to trust Faust wouldn’t withhold information that would harm Sylver.

“Sleep as much as they can during the time they are awake. The damage to the body is done during the coma the curse puts people in, and the only way to buy more time is to allow the body to rest during the time the curse isn’t active,” Sylver explained.

“I see… What would happen if someone attempted to brute force the curse? Just saturate the infected person in pure healing magic?” Faust asked.

“Nothing. If you’ve slept because of it even once, it’s already a part of you. Think of it like… Like cutting the leaves off a tree. It will slow the tree down, a little, but you need to get the roots to kill it. Curses are typically made with an end goal in mind,” Sylver explained, as he brushed invisible dust off himself out of habit.

“Assuming this one was made,” Faust added.

“Yes. And while I hate myself for assuming the worst in who I would somewhat consider to be my people, but my money is that the witches made it. Except then the question is why they waited so long before using it. They must have lived there for centuries, so what happened in the last year that they turned hostile?” Sylver asked as Faust raised an eyebrow.

“Witches?”

“Right, I thought I already mentioned it. I found what I presumed to be a witch coven in the middle of the swamp. We didn’t get a chance to talk, but these soul-stretching monsters seem like something a witch would do… Maybe… It is possible the person I was chasing wasn’t a witch and specifically lead me to the coven…” Sylver explained, and gradually started to mumble to himself.

“What?” Faust asked.

“Don’t worry about it. Just be careful your people don’t wander too deeply into the swamp if they need to go there for some reason. I may have antagonized them a little, so let me know right away if someone goes missing… Anyway… Any other hypotheticals you want to run by me before I leave?” Sylver asked, as Faust smiled at him and shook his head.

“I need you to stay here and babysit the sect when you have a day or so to spare. There’s an auction happening in the White Ring, and I wanted to have a look. There’s a grand auction happening in a week or so, but the things being sold there are far above my budget at the moment, so there’s no point looking,” Faust explained, as Sylver placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Assuming all goes well with the Bucklers, take a good look at the things being sold at the grand auction. Because if this group is even half as competent as I imagine them to be, there might be a way of procuring some of the things you want, but can’t afford,” Sylver explained, as Ria chimed in.

“By stealing them,” Ria said, with the kind of accusatory tone that meant that Sylver should feel ashamed for suggesting such a thing.

“Yes, although I would prefer to call it a heist. Sounds less criminal that way, and more exciting,” Sylver explained.

“It’s still stealing,” Ria doubled down.

“Ria, you’ve watched me kill people, in what way is merely taking their possessions away from them worse than that? Also, it’s not stealing. Stealing implies taking something when you don’t have the right to take it. If I’m strong enough, or smart enough, to take their things from them, I didn’t steal,” Sylver explained, as Faust nodded along.

“The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must,” Faust said.

Or rather quoted, because Sylver had the feeling he had heard those exact words somewhere before.

“Well put Faust. As heartbreaking as it may be, that genuinely is the reality of the situation. I realize the methods I choose to employ may at times seem barbaric, or downright sadistic, but I promise you Ria, I’m merely doing the best I can with the tool I have available. As is Faust, as is his thief-filled sect, as is the dragon, along with everyone else,” Sylver explained, as Ria quietly slithered back into her staff.

***

Ria made that quiet ticking noise she sometimes did, but aside from that, she didn’t say anything. She was thinking, or whatever her version of thinking was called.

It was the middle of the night by the time he was nearing the house that belonged to Fobur Plateforged, and Sylver felt an uncomfortable pressure in his stomach region. It wasn’t painful, it was more of the kind of feeling his gut had when he was being watched or followed.

And as the raven with a glowing left eye landed on Sylver’s shoulder, the feeling disappeared.

“One chirp for yes, two chirps for no,” Sylver said, as Ria’s attention shifted away from whatever had been on her mind and focused on the creature.

“No. Need,” the bird said.

Sylver reached up with a hand towards it and scratched its neck.

“This is incredible! Did something happen?” Sylver asked with a smile in his voice that spooked the small avian creature. Because it could hear the thinly veiled “threat.”

“No. Every. One. Safe,” the bird answered, as Sylver continued to smile, but had to be careful not to sound too angry as he spoke.

“So, you’re here just for the fun of it? You decided to ignore my warnings, even though I was very clear about how dangerous this is?” Sylver asked and watched as the bird cocked his head at him.

“No. Danger. Too. Small. Too. Fast. Other. Can. Not. Sense,” Chrys explained.

“I’m happy to see you Chrys, but the world is a big place. Don’t do this, it’s unnecessarily dangerous,” Sylver said and felt the bird’s small feet shift on his shoulder.

“Came. To. Warn,” Chrys said, and Sylver rolled his eyes at her.

“A warning from a raven, perfect. Just what I needed,” Sylver said.

The Chrys raven with the glowing left eye stepped left on his shoulder, then stepped right, and finally moved its beak until it was touching Sylver’s ear.

“Be. Careful,” the raven said, as Sylver considered if it would be worth the effort of adapting his “lungs” so he could sigh.

“Thank you for that. An extremely vague and ominous warning. Chrys, I apologize if this may sound harsh, but keep your predictions to yourself for the time being. Even with the eye, you’re not…” while Sylver looked around for a polite word, the Chrys bird continued talking.

“House. With. Red. Roof. Watching. You. Two. People. Danger,” the Chrys raven explained and lifted its left wing towards a house with a red roof. Sylver turned his head and body towards the house in question.

“Are you sure?” Sylver asked, as he expanded his bear soul armor, and moved his robe around to prepare himself.

“I. Am. Sure,” the Chrys raven said, as Sylver started walking towards the house in question.

He couldn’t feel anyone inside, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone inside.

The light in the raven’s eye flickered for a moment, and before it completely disappeared, Chrys made it fly away from Sylver’s shoulder.

Sylver placed his ear up against the door and was surprised to find the inside of the house completely empty as he extended his mana into it. The shades similarly swept through it and couldn’t find anything.

Sylver knocked on the door, loud enough that the sound traveled down the empty street.

“I know you’re in there,” Sylver said, as he slammed his palm against the door, and only now realized he couldn’t hear the sound bouncing around the supposedly empty building.

Sylver summoned a decoy shade to continue hitting the door, while he very slowly crept towards the nearest window. The house was a small 2 story home, two rooms on the ground level, and what seemed to be a bedroom on the second floor.

There was nothing near it, it stood alone as if there had been a bunch of buildings here in the past but this was the only one that had survived some sort of catastrophe.

Using [Fog Form] he sent a tendril through a crack underneath the window, or rather, attempted.

Something was blocking him, his fog could enter the house, but Sylver could tell he wouldn’t be able to travel through the tendril.

After pausing for a second to see if he had a better idea, Sylver flicked his dagger into his hand and used the back of it to smash the grimy glass pane.

It was like kicking over a trashcan and seeing rats scurrying out of it, Sylver felt the two souls materialize out of nowhere, and then felt them promptly disappear. He used his ax to break the window down completely and jumped through it.

At first glance, the inside of the house was a normal abandoned room. Dust lined the floor, ceiling, walls, the only source of disturbance was the shattered glass on the floor, as well as the spots where Sylver's feet had been.

Sylver swung his ax in a circle around himself, and was as surprised as the other guy, that he actually hit something. Sylver lunged at the invisible figure, as Spring tried to open the umbrella, but that half-second it took for Sylver’s robe to throw it to him was too long.

There was no flash of light, no disturbance in the air, the man simply disappeared before Sylver had reached him. Sylver collided with the wall, and pushed himself off it with his hands, as his daggers exploded out of his robe and flew around the room with blinding speed.

Sylver flinched as a raven landed on the shattered window, and with a glowing eye, cocked its head at him. It jumped down from the window and landed near a barely visible blood splatter.

“Who were they? Did you see what they looked like?” Sylver asked the bird, and it shook its head while tapping a foot near the blood splatter.

Sylver used [Dead Dominion] to get all the blood he could find and floated it up towards himself into a small sphere.

“Do. Not. Know. But. I. Know. They. Were. Watching. You,” Chrys explained, as Sylver summoned his clone blood out of his [Bound Bones] storage and mixed it up with the blood he had gotten from the man he’d hit.

The resulting tracker was just barely functional. Sylver estimated the range to be near 50 meters if he was lucky. Sylver looked at it and tried to figure out a way to extend the range before he shoved it in his pocket.

“No, you know what? Doesn’t matter. Thank you very much Chrys, but I don’t care about this,” Sylver said, partially to the bird that was cocking its head, partially to Ria, and mostly to himself.

The raven flew up and landed on the broken window.

“I’m being serious Chrys. I’ve got enough on my plate. Go home, please. I’ll bring you a souvenir as a thank you for the help,” Sylver said, and thankfully Chrys was able to understand he was being polite now, and if she tried to argue, he would stop.

As the light in its left eye flickered away the raven croaked at him and flew away into the night.

Sylver walked up to the second floor, just in case, but even after having his floating daggers fly around in hopes of hitting something, he found nothing.

Sylver moved the mattress down to the first floor and tossed some of the wooden furniture onto it. He reached into his backpack and sprinkled some dwarven whiskey onto the mess. Sylver used his [Advanced Earth Manipulation] to move the dirt the foundations were built on out of the way and finally used [Morbid Mushroom] to grow a giant ball of white fungus on his hand.

Sylver tossed it at the mattress and used [Fog Form] to leave unseen through the window.

Once he was far enough away, Sylver had a shade enter the building.

In the dead of the night, it looked like a bonfire and not just a simple house fire. Sylver heard people waking up, screaming, heard a man barking orders to wake up one name or another, as he walked away from the mess.

***

Fobur’s house was a bit worse for wear than when Sylver had last been here, but at least someone replaced the door. Sylver walked up to it and knocked three times.

There were 3 souls inside that Sylver could count, two belonged to men, and the third was using something to cloud its presence.

Normally Sylver would have been happy to see a fellow mage, but the circumstances in which they were meeting were far from ideal.

A man with a cloth mask covering his face opened the door and gestured for Sylver to enter. Even from here, Sylver could see the white smoke from the burning building. It had probably sunk into the ground by now.

As Sylver walked towards the room he could feel the clouded soul, he felt a strangely familiar magic engulf him. Sylver nudged Ria to prepare herself to wrap around him, as he turned the corner and saw a man wearing a dark brown robe, with a similar colored dark brown mask.

The man was about Sylver’s height, very wide, hunched over, and with hands that were somehow bigger and wider than Sylver’s.

This close, Sylver could feel the man’s soul, even through the interference. He asked Ria to wait.

“Sylver Sezari,” the man said.

He spoke in such a deep and gruff voice, that it almost sounded like he was snoring.

Sylver knew two things at that very moment.

It wasn’t a coincidence that the emperor, Dobrynya Nikitich, looked like he and Nameless were related.

And that even though he knew his name, Bear had no idea who Sylver was.

“I am. Who am I speaking to?” Sylver asked as Bear removed the flimsy cloth mask that had been hiding his withered and bearded face.

“You can refer to me as Owl,” Bear, now Owl said.

Sylver could tell he wasn’t faking it. He had no recollection of meeting Sylver, all those years ago, when he helped Nameless, and company summon a demon to find the owner of a drop of blood.

He could see it in Owl’s completely white blinded eyes, he could feel it in his soul.

“I believe we can help one another,” Owl said, as Sylver nodded at him.

NEXT CHAPTER 

(AN: Just FYI this wasn't a sleep schedule related lateness, this was almost an entire day without electricity, family bullshit, and having to restart the chapter after not being happy with it lateness.)