Ch086-Bon Voyage!

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Ch086-Bon Voyage!

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Both Masha and Misha continued to sit right next to their respective corpses and watched the bubbles float off their peeling skin. At the very top of the large glass container, shades scooped away the layer of dead flesh and placed it in a large basin, to be burned at a later date. Sylver used the back of his sleeve to wipe away a small bead of sweat off his eyebrows and added yet another tube into the man’s body.

As of last night, the Left Tooth was down 4 more members.

Courtesy of Masha luring them in under the guise of whatever the woman’s name was.

The 4 men currently with multiple tubes coming out of their chests and sides had attempted a rescue operation in the middle of the night.

Sylver was dead asleep in a drunken stupor, and Misha made a soundproof sphere around him, while Masha and Spring handled the intruders.

She created an illusion of the woman crawling down the white stone path with leaving a trail of blood behind her, from her chopped-off legs, and the many many burn marks all over her screaming in unbearable agony face.

Sadly, it didn’t work quite as intended, as the group of 4 left 1 person outside the gates just in case. A very gentle push from Spring made the man stumble through the gates and that was enough for Masha to dig her metaphorical claws into him.

After that, she overpowered all four of them and knocked them out, after which Spring and the other shades dragged the 4 bodies down into Sylver’s workshop, stripped them, shaved them, washed away the blood, and prepared all the tools Sylver would need to add them to the corpse repairing spell.

By the time Sylver woke up, it was the middle of the day, and he couldn’t recall a single thing that had happened after he finished off Lola’s bottle of black ale. According to Spring, he spent most of the night talking to Lola and consoling her when she started to cry.

Spring wasn’t able to understand what they were talking about since without Sylver’s input he was limited only to Eirish, and Sylver and Lola spoke exclusively in what Spring assumed was elvish. Spring guessed that the topic of Leke came up at one point or another since he heard both of them say her name several times.

Late into the night Tamay entered the office and dragged a sleeping Lola home, while Sylver rode home on Ulvic’s back, and then turned into smoke and lazily flowed into his bed.

Sylver tightened the stitch until it stopped bleeding, and connected the small tube up to the slightly glowing copper bowl. He watched it for a few seconds and double-checked that everything was working fine before he cracked his neck and spoke towards Misha and Masha.

“I might be gone for a while. I’m leaving 10 shades here to help you out with the house.  Lola is handling finding staff and the like, as well as repairs, use the shades until then. They’ll handle feeding and keeping these guys alive for you, just make sure there’s always some kind of raw meat in that basin over there. I’m locking this room, just in case, but don’t let anyone Lola specifically doesn’t say is allowed in here,” Sylver explained, as he cracked his knuckles and walked towards the two large glass tanks.

“How long are you going to be gone for?” Misha asked from within the liquid and bubble-filled tank.

“I’m going to be doing a bit of surgery on myself tonight… and afterward I’m going to go straight on a quest. I left some gold in here, in the event you’re done healing before I return. But I’ll say it again, don’t try to leave the house until the spell that’s separating your souls is finished. I’m not used to using unprocessed mana straight from a leyline, so it’s best to be a bit more cautious than usual,” Sylver said, as he gestured towards the small chest sitting on the stairs that lead to the secret door that opened into the master bedroom.

He found that the proper way to open the aforementioned secret door was by solving a weird puzzle thing on the other side of the house, that Sylver dismantled along with all the other nonsense Misha and Masha knew about. All the secret passages have been trapped or cursed so no one but Sylver could use them, the hidden room behind the fireplace was sealed shut and cursed, and Sylver collected 17 different keys that were hidden behind portraits, inside statues, and one that required playing a specific sequence on the grand piano in the ballroom.

The keys were hung downstairs in Sylver’s workshop because he only found what 5 of them opened and decided to keep them around just in case he found 12 more keyholes.

“You’re sick?” Masha asked. Sylver was caught slightly off guard by the genuine worry in her voice.

“No. But I’m weak, and since I can’t do anything to fix my magical weakness, I decided to fix my physical weakness,” Sylver explained.

“So you know how to bring a body back to life, enchant a house with enough magic that even we feel restricted, but you can’t do anything to strengthen your magic?” Masha asked.

“Maybe can’t is the wrong word to use. It’s better to say I’m not strong enough to handle anything I could do. There’s also the issue of collecting materials, but more in the sense of the time it would take. Not to mention, I’m not entirely certain how exactly the system… how exactly it would affect my class and skills and the like,” Sylver said, as he turned into smoke and funneled through a tiny hole in the bookshelf that hid his workshop.

Rigged with enough curses that anything smaller than a cat would be instantly vaporized if it tried to force its way inside.

And anything bigger than a cat was going to wish it were vaporized.

“So when will you be back?” Misha asked.

“A month maybe. Possibly two, I’m on a schedule so I’m not leaving the continent or going too far away from the teleportation network. In the meantime, as I said, if you have problems call for Lola, she knows what to do,” Sylver said, as he walked down the large staircase and opened the door outside into the garden.

“What happens if you die? Hypothetically speaking, I mean,” Masha asked, adding the second part after she realized how bad it sounded.

“If you mean what happens if I don’t come back, nothing. Our deal still holds. Guard the house, and when your bodies are healed, and your souls have been separated from this space, you’re free to do as you wish. Stay here and work as guards, get access to my knowledge and connections and become very capable and powerful mages. Or take however much gold you can carry and live your near-immortal lives wherever and however you wish,” Sylver said, as he reached the gates and waited for the barrier to make a hole for him to walk through.

Masha and Misha were both eerily quiet while Sylver waited, and Sylver just barely heard Misha as the gates swung closed behind him.

“Good luck!” Misha shouted. Sylver smiled and nodded at them and turned into smoke and funneled down into the rain gutters.

*

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*

Sylver held the helmet down with his left hand and pressed the trigger with his right. The small metallic cylinder shot out of his hand and bounced off the wooden wall, before falling to the ground.

“The tips are a treated titanium alloy. They’ll snap before they’ll bend, but without enchanting them, anything thicker than 2 centimeters is out of the question. Unless you have enough raw strength to use them as a plain old dagger, but that defeats the point. They’ll work against chainmail, but you need to get the angle right. Also, the wounds they make aren’t that severe, unless you hit a vital spot. My advice would be to go for the head and eyes, you have a better chance of getting lucky with those than trying to shatter their joints or pierce their heart or something,” Salgok said, as the small cylinder floated back into his hand and he put it back into the large box full of identical cylinders.

“It’s alright, they’re perfect, thank you. And the other thing I asked you to look into?” Sylver asked.

Salgok smiled and pulled down his left glove to show a scar in the shape of a nail on his wrist. It was darker than Salgok’s other scars, down to the point it almost looked like a tattoo as opposed to a scar.

“So, the bad news is that it’s just like you thought and it doesn’t work on that hammer you gave me. And it doesn’t work as a storage chest either, you can summon a small box, but when you unsummon it the things inside just fall to the floor. But here’s the good news,” Salgok said, as a small grey nail appeared in his hand. He grabbed it with both hands and grunted as he snapped the small nail into two.

An identical one appeared in his hand, at the same time as the two broken half nails disappeared.

“Huh…” Sylver said as Salgok charged the nail and made it fly out of his hand and through the helmet that was still on the table. The nail disappeared while embedded in the helmet and appeared in his hand.

“The only downside is that getting the scar really hurts. Like sticking your hand into a white-hot furnace, and I say that from personal experience. It’s feels like being branded, but even ice doesn’t help with the pain. And it doesn’t even increase your physical endurance. The scar doesn’t itch, but I have no idea how it will work for something bigger. My personal opinion is to just forget about this rune and sell it off or something,” Salgok offered, as he held one hand over the scar and pulled it back to reveal a rune laying on top of a glowing nail.

“Is that going to heal?” Sylver asked, with a finger pointed at the nail-shaped scar that hadn’t gone anywhere.

“Of course. Although I have a bunch of racial perks that I’m going to go on a limb and guess you don’t have. So I don’t know if it will heal if you use it. You could try what the temples sometimes do to deal with scars, cut the chunk scarred flesh away and use healing magic to grown back fresh skin without a scar, but your guess is as good as mine if it will work with this. It’s a [Legendary Quality] rune, it doesn’t exactly play by the normal rules,” Salgok said, as he walked over to the next table and pulled back the cloth.

The whole thing had been polished to the point that it would have had a mirror finish, if not for the fact that Salgok coated it with the same material all of Sylver’s darts were, which made them very dark and hard to see even under good light. Sylver picked it and ran his hand down its handle.

“I followed the blueprint down to the letter. Although I don’t understand why you want a hollow head for an ax,” Salgok explained, as he turned the ax over in Sylver’s hand and Sylver saw that the head of the ax was mostly empty.

With just enough room for Sylver to stick one of his infinite bombs into it.

“How many hits until it breaks?” Sylver asked, as he experimentally spun the ax around in his hand. The balance was perfect.

“Depends on the hits. But if we’re talking monster carapace or good enchanted armor, about three, if you’re lucky. Although if you pour some mana into it, you could probably make it last a while. But I’ll say it again, it’s going to hurt like nothing you’ve experienced,” Salgok warned, as the [Rune Of The Defiant Armsmaster] started to glow in his hand. Sylver put the large ax down and watched as Salgok hit it 9 times with the rune until he got it right and an identical rune appeared on the ax. The rock in his hand turned into grey dust and flowed into the now glowing red rune on the ax.

“Do I need to grab it with the hand I intend to summon it into, or does the location of the scar not matter?” Sylver asked.

“Doesn’t matter. You can wrap it up in a blanket and take it home if you want. But my workshop is soundproofed if you want to do it here. And I’m not going to judge you if you have trouble tolerating the pain… Unless you shit yourself, in which case you’re cleaning it up, and I’m never going to let you forget it. But other than that, be my guest,” Salgok said with a slightly insulting smile, as he took a step away from the ax.

Sylver’s robe parted into two and reveal his pale chest. He cracked his neck and turned around, and while smiling at Salgok laid down on top of the glowing ax with his back.

Sylver was about to stand up when he gasped and a tear rolled down from his eye. He gritted his teeth so hard there was a crunching sound. Sylver lay there for a full minute, all the while holding his breath and sweating without blinking or moving, only shivering. Finally, he stood up from the table and swung his arms around to stretch his significantly tighter back muscles.

[Binding Successful]

“You barely flinched? What the fuck, I was drunk when I did the nail and I screamed like a newborn babe!” Salgok argued, as Sylver summoned the ax into his hand and spun it around. It was a thing of beauty.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I barely felt anything,” Sylver said, as he tossed the ax into the air and made it disappear before he caught it. He made it appear and disappear in one hand then the other in quick succession. He briefly at his back’s reflection on a polished shield, and saw that he now had a large dark scar of an ax hanging across his back.

“No, come on, you’re fucking with me, there’s no way-”

“I’m fucking with you, it hurt like a bitch, but I’ve been through worse. My pain tolerance is considerably higher than yours. Despite nearly pissing myself, I wouldn’t even put this in my top 100,” Sylver said, as his robe pulled itself back together and covered him. He tossed the ax into the air and made it disappear.

“Fucks sake. It’s shit like this that makes me glad I never went through with becoming an adventurer. This is 3rd place in terms of pain for me. 2nd place is when I got my arm twisted off in a woodturner. And 1st place involves a freshly sharpened bear trap and walking around the workshop in a pants-less robe,” Salgok said, as Sylver started to laugh.

Sylver spent a while catching up with Salgok before he left to find a quest to test his new weapons on.

*

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“No, read it again, 3 parties minimum,” Shera said while stabbing the piece of paper with her finger.

“You read it again! Recommended 3 parties minimum. Keyword being recommended! And with all of my shades, I have the equivalent of 20 parties with me. Shera, come on. The king of bandits has claimed a town for herself. Presumably with an army of bandits. It’s within spitting distance of a teleportation node, and it’s only 2 days old, they probably don’t even have a proper defense set up!” Sylver said, as he pushed the page towards Shera and for a moment reconsidered having her as his guild representative.

“Their average level is 110, they’re all from a retired mercenary band, and they were strong enough to overpower the army outpost stationed near the town!” Shera countered, although that all sounded like all the more reason to go to Sylver’s ear. Shera must understand that too, as she snatched the page off the table and began reading through it again.

“No…It’s a C class quest? Wait is it… ye-yes! You can’t take this, your rank is too low!” Shera said, practically shoving the page into Sylver's face to prove him wrong, as he calmly lowered it to look at her with a smug smile. “What? Oh fuck, right…” Shera said as she remembered.

“So I guess all that’s left is finding someone to observe me, and I’m free to go on whichever C rank quest I want?” Sylver asked, as Shera just stared at the page and thought through all the rules the guild had ever had.

On the one hand, Sylver liked the care she was showing by attempting to stop him from going on this quest.

On the other, he wondered what exactly he would need to do for her to stop underestimating him. Maybe if he came back from singlehandedly clearing out an army-sized amount of experienced bandits?

Shera stood up from her desk and walked through the door to go to the back of the guild.

She came back a few moments later with a sealed dark red envelope in her hand and signed the back of it. She scribbled something down on another sheet of paper and handed both to Sylver.

“There’s a man named Lorn somewhere in this military camp. Give this to him, and he’ll be your observer for the bandit clearing quest. If you manage to complete it, he’ll give you a similar dark red envelope to give to us. If you try to tamper with this one or the one Lorn gives you, you’ll receive an automatic failure, and there’s a chance you’ll be banned from working at the adventurer’s guild,” Shera said, with such a serious tone of voice that Sylver almost turned around to look to see if she was speaking to someone else.

“I’ll keep that in mind… Well, in that case, I guess I’ll see you soon. Thanks for all the hard work,” Sylver said, as he gently put the envelope in between one of his notebook’s pages and absorbed it into his robe.

“Good luck!” Shera shouted.

*

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The woman was small.

If not for the correct human proportions, Sylver would have guessed she was a tall dwarf.

But despite being small, and speaking so softly that she was almost whispering, Sylver was on full alert. Similar to Wolf, this woman’s presence caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up straight. Despite Novva towering over her in strength, status, and height, Novva never once turned his body away from her as he spoke.

“It’s not so much as being unwilling to speak, he’s willing, very willing, but he plain and simple doesn’t know. Faun found him and gave him a guard to help him. From there the guard organized meetings with various temples until the temple of Ra found someone to heal him, and now he’s here. The guard was the one who suggested he offer the cave in exchange for healing,” the woman interrogator explained.

She wore a bright green suit, with shiny black boots that looked slightly out of place.

“So he lied about being alone? When did he meet Faun?” Sylver asked.

He felt stupid that he had missed that when he had been touching Nautis, but Sylver was caught off guard by the god brand at the time.

“Right after the witch called their contract off in Torg. Less than a day right after. He was staying in an inn near her and simply cried and went to sleep after she left. He woke up from Faun knocking on his door. You said not to ask about what he did while working for the witch, so I haven’t, but he’s told me some things I think you would be interested in,” the woman interrogator said, this time looking at Sylver.

Predatory, is the way he would describe the way she was eating him with his eyes. Something was terrifying and oddly exciting, about the thin smile on her face.

“I’m not. And I would prefer it if you forgot about everything he says regarding that. Especially names, I don’t want to know a single thing when it comes to the witch and what she had been doing, only the things right after she left him” Sylver said, leaning backward the slightest amount as the woman seemed to stare at him harder with every syllable.

She nodded and left.

“Are you scared of the witch?” Novva asked after the interrogator had closed the door behind herself and went back to “interrogating” Nautis.

“We have a deal not to meddle with one another, and if she kidnapped one of my old associates and tortured them for information about what they did while working for me, I would consider that meddling. I would advise you against finding anything out about her as well, she’s nothing but trouble,” Sylver said, as he and Novva walked towards the stairs and started walking up them.

“I’ll keep that in mind… She’s staying at Holton’s by the way,” Novva said.

“Who is?” Sylver asked.

“Miranda. Or Mira. The interrogator, she’s your type, right?” Novva offered, with a toothy grin.

“What makes you think she’s my type?” Sylver asked.

“The fact that you had the same look Melo gets on his face when Sherry’s around. And that-”

“I appreciate the concern, but my personal life is complicated enough as it is. I don’t need to add a woman who tortures people for a living to it… As fun as it sounds,” Sylver explained, as he waved away the question with his hand.

“I knew it. Oh, right. Leke was it? You still haven’t talked to her? I thought you would have sorted everything out by now?” Novva asked. He teleported into his room, while Sylver entered as smoke through a hole in the wall.

“She’s busy with tournament stuff. And other excuses aside, I’m not looking forward to talking to her about it,” Sylver offered, as Novva sat down into an armchair and poured himself some tea from an enchanted pot. His hotel room was quite small; given that he was still staying here largely incognito. Sylver sat down on the bed opposite him.

“I do understand that on a personal level. But you’re leaving for a quest, you never know what can happen. What if she spends the next 10 years waiting for you to return? I’m overjoyed my wife waited for me, but on the other hand, it wasn’t a good time for her while she waited. It’s only good that she waited because I eventually returned. If I was dead, like you might be, no offense, she would have wasted her life waiting for me, with nothing to show for it,” Novva said, as Sylver couldn’t help but smile at the odd comparison in his head between Novva and Ciege.

Both of them did things other people wouldn’t even consider for the ones they loved. In Ciege’s case he gave up his life, and Novva did what he had to to survive and go home.

“One could argue that she will be happier if she’s uncertain, than if she knows for sure,” Sylver said.

“One could argue that, but you know better… I don’t think you’re doing this because you’re afraid of confronting her… But have you considered writing a letter? Have it delivered after you leave?” Novva suggested while Sylver’s eyes widened as he stared at him.

“I’m insulted you think so little of me. I’ll talk to her tomorrow morning. I need to stock up on some components anyway, I’ll find out from Tera where she’ll be,” Sylver said, as Novva shrugged semi uncertainly and semi apologetically.

“Good. I mean, it’s bad that you have to do this, considering she’s the one that approached you first.”

“Right? Why do I have to be the one that breaks things off?”

“Because, as you’ve said before, you know how this will end, and you know this is the right thing to do,” Novva said.

“It doesn’t make it any easier.”

“No, it doesn’t. But you’ll get over it. And I want to say you’re overreacting, considering most of the time you two spent together was in bed, but I do understand that when you don’t have a whole lot, even the small things feel like they’re giant,” Novva said.

Sylver nodded.

*

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The shades finished setting up the small tent and Sylver finished burning the grey hair off his chest and wiped away the soot. He was wearing only a towel to cover his lower half and had set the operating table in the middle of the now oddly empty workshop that was hidden beneath Ron’s rest. Lola sat in the corner with a wooden staff in one hand, and some sort of silver ball in the other.

“I’m going to avoid looking at your level and MP from now on because I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to look you in the eyes if I do,” Sylver said.

Lola grinned at him.

“Good idea, I would also avoid looking at my rings or my staff. I met a lot of interesting and highly specialized people while I was crafting your anti-teleportation umbrella. Everything else aside, the craftsmen here really know how to specialize,” Lola said, as her eyes wandered over towards her admittedly powerful-looking staff.

“Good to hear. Bit of a shame I can’t use anything they create, but that’s life. It wouldn’t be interesting if everything was easy and just handed to me. No offense,” Sylver said, as the shades moved the four barrels that held the four Krists closer to the operating table.

The lights that normally made the room bright enough to make every single speck of dust stand out like a giant eyesore, had all been removed, with only a very large lamp hanging off the ceiling and pointing straight down onto a polished metal table. The curtains hung off the lamp and diffused the reflected light, providing the otherwise dark room, with a very soft light.

“Some taken. Other than sitting here, is there anything at all I could do to help?” Lola asked.

Sylver thought it over as he walked over to the large table and swirled a conical flask around, before drinking the sludge-like liquid inside of it.

“If I tell you to leave and tell Ron to lock me in, don’t argue with me, just do it,” Sylver said, after he drank from a different flask, this time with a green and slimy liquid.

“Why?”

“When I die, or when my body dies to be more accurate, I have trouble maintaining my long-term reasoning. I’m fine if it’s a couple of minutes, maybe an hour, once I’m strong enough I’ll be able to stay dead as long as I want without any problems, but right now I’ve got maybe 50 seconds.”

“50 seconds before what?”

“Before I forget why I shouldn’t kill you, and anyone I can get my hands on. I won’t do it immediately, but it will be purely because I told myself not to do it, I won’t be able to understand why I shouldn’t kill everyone, and even that will wear off after a certain point. I’ll become a feral zombie if that makes any sense. But a feral zombie with all of my knowledge, experience, and abilities. It happened once when Poppy killed me, but it wasn’t a problem because there were a bunch of zombies nearby for me to drain. In a city though?”

“I can see why that would be an issue... So what do we do? Just leave you down here to rot? Wait for you to tire yourself out?” Lola asked.

“Ideally you would leave a bunch of unconscious bandits in another room and have Ron open a door to let me get to them. But that’s assuming I’m unable to break my way out of here. Which I hope I won’t be, hence why I’m doing the surgery here and not in my home. Which reminds me, did you have any luck getting into contact with someone from Urth?” Sylver asked.

“I’ve had my people speak to some of the undead staying upstairs, and some of the ones that came for the tournament, but they’re… not very friendly…” Lola said, almost embarrassed by her words.

“Right… Alright, never mind, I’ll go there myself at some point. At the very least I’ll learn how exactly they’re able to make a healing potion that undead can use,” Sylver said, as he finished the last bottle and had to grab Spring to steady himself.

“Has it started?” Lola asked, as Sylver fell over and was caught by Spring and Fen and was lifted onto the table.

With how pale Sylver’s skin was, the dark patch that appeared near his stomach area looked like the world’s deepest bruise. Lola watched while the curtain was still out of the way as the black splotch moved around and started to travel up to his throat and mouth.

Pitch black smoke pooled in Sylver’s open mouth and began to slowly seep down onto the floor. It spiraled around the operating table and kept moving in a slow swirling circle around him.

Spring mumbled to himself as he picked up a small pouch made out of linen and swallowed it whole.

His whole body became see-through as it lost shape and nearly disintegrated, before the lazily moving smoke on the ground climbed up his legs and up to his head, and covered him completely in mere seconds. The smoke made a rustling sound as it fell off Spring’s body, and revealed a different person’s body.

The man had short combed hair that glowed with a bright yellow light, and there wasn’t a single yellow crack anywhere on his body. The way his muscles pressed against his skin made Lola think for a moment that the man didn’t have any skin. The man’s shoulder’s somehow looked relaxed and under great strain all at the same time.

Finally, the man moved his head to the side and cracked his neck.

“Haven’t done this in a while, forgot how odd it felt,” the man said.

“Syl?” Lola asked, standing up from where she had been sitting.

“Who else? But look at that, even after a year of using Ciege’s body I still see myself as my old body. Although this doesn’t feel quite right either,” Sylver said, as he flexed his fingers and the muscles on his forearms seemed to flow with the movement. He adjusted Ciege’s body on the operating table and turned his Ciege’s to either side.

“I’ve really done a number on this thing. I don’t even remember getting hit that often, and yet it looks like someone ran his arms through a meat grinder,” Sylver said, as he lifted Ciege’s arm and turned it around before he let it flop back onto the table.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” Lola offered. Sylver turned to look at her for a moment and returned his attention to Ciege’s body. He made his hand flat and reached through Ciege’s chest, and pulled out a small grey piece of metal.

Sylver held it up to the light and looked at it. With his eyes no longer being bound by physical limitation he got a really good look at it.

“Originally liches used a small wooden box to store their soul. You would then need to feed other people’s souls into it to sustain yourself. Very similar to vampires, but with souls as opposed to blood. Then for some reason, most would be liches figured out how to make the process slightly more streamlined. Elves, if you would believe it. It makes sense, immortal souls are an excellent fuel source, one elf is the equivalent of around 800 humans. If you mix high elves into that, the numbers start to become astronomical,” Sylver said, as he slowly turned the needle over in his hand.

“Are you trying to tell me you sacrificed high elves when you became a lich?” Lola asked. There wasn’t any anger in her question, at best she sounded tired.

“Not high elves. Worse. Much worse… I sacrificed 7 demigods.” Sylver said. The needle glinted under the bright light, as he slowly lowered it down onto a nearby table.

“That’s impossible.”

“In my defense, I was already immortal by that point in time. I just… It wasn’t enough. I was always up against people who were born powerful and great, and then put as much effort as I did into getting even more powerful, I didn’t have a chance. There wasn't anything special about me, my claim to fame is that one of my ancestors was a witch that was burned at the stake next to Lost Gytha, White Jane, and Old Agnes,” Sylver explained.

“Who?”

“They were local fortune-tellers, of a sort. In the sense they tended to force the events they foresaw to happen. One of them would have a dream that a village would burn to the ground while everyone was mysteriously locked inside their homes, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what ended up happening. Or a noble family would find all of their servants missing, only to later return with their eyes, tongues, hands, and feet cut off. The short version is, they all went insane from overusing dark magic. When exactly my ancestor found the time to give birth and somehow not eat the infant, is a mystery to everyone,” Sylver said. Lola walked back to her spot and sat down.

“Where did you even find 7 demigods?” Lola asked, clutching her staff so hard that Sylver heard a faint crackle from the wooden thing.

“It took a while, but as I said, I was already immortal. Or unkillable, if we’re being accurate. Stealing immortality from 7 separate demi gods wasn’t easy. But it isn’t as amazing as you think, all the demigods I caught didn’t have a god backing them anymore,” Sylver explained, as he picked up a scalpel and looked down at Ciege’s shaved chest.

“Why though? I’m not even going to try to understand how you did it, but why?” Lola asked.

“Because I’m not the smartest, not the strongest, not the toughest, not the fastest, and not even the most magically capable mage. There are plenty of people that could have beat me in a fight. Maybe even twice. Maybe even three times. For one woman it took me nine attempts before I finally won. But half the fun of being a manifestation of an unstoppable force is having something immovable to bash yourself against,” Sylver said, as he made a perfectly straight incision along Ciege’s chest and down his abdomen.

“You’re talking about your fight with the Grey Witch… I didn’t think she was real,” Lola said, almost whispering the words.

“She was very real. A natural-born genius. She overpowered Edmund and even nearly broke the barrier around the Ibis. It was unreal how strong she was. My god she was amazing, I’m fairly certain even Aether wouldn't be able to beat her one on one…” Sylver said, putting the scalpel away with a giant smile on his barely visible face.

“So how did you beat her?” Lola asked after nearly two-minute disbelief filled silence passed during which Sylver had opened up Ciege’s chest cavity and was slowly closing off one blood vessel after the other.

“Oh… I used an artifact that created a dead zone around us, and just punched her to death with my fists. She was smarter than me, a better mage than me, but I was bigger and I hit harder than she did. Although to be completely honest, it was a damn close fight. It turned out she was a very competent martial artist on top of everything else. But her downfall was that she wasn’t used to fighting dirty. With all things being equal, the man that is willing to spit his blood into his opponent’s face to blind them is the one that will win,” Sylver said, with a look of confusion on his face as he ever so gently started to sever the blood vessels that connected to Ciege’s still beating heart.

“Every time I let you speak; you ruin yet another fairy tale I loved,” Lola said.

“I also threatened her daughter’s family and ended up killing them too when they decided to seek revenge,” Sylver added, as he carefully lifted Ciege’s weakly beating heart out of his chest and placed it in a carved and enchanted jar filled with a warm murky liquid. He waited for a moment and carried on once he saw that the heart continued to beat without any issue.

“Fuck’s sake… Should I even ask about when you rescued the Prince of Hearts?” Lola said after softly groaning to herself.

“Not unless you want to hear the story of me tearing someone’s face off with my teeth, and then using my own shattered rib as a dagger to kill a vampire lord. Things became a lot cleaner once I became a lich, I had shades to do my work for me, and I could use ranged magic, but before that the amount of fights that devolved into close quarter combat is ridiculous. It took me far too long to learn how to effectively use my limited mana. My path to lichdom was filled with blood, guts, gore, blood, and more blood!” Sylver said, as he removed his deflated lungs and placed them on a nearby tray.

“You said blood three times.”

“Because that’s how much blood there was! Everything bleeds! You make the wrong cut on someone’s neck and you’re suddenly absolutely soaked in steaming hot blood! It’s ridiculous! And it’s always the insane and reckless that try to attack the Ibis to become immortal when there are so many better alternatives! Even fucking [Hero]s came after us! Do you know how difficult it is to kill a [Hero]? Even now I shiver at the memory, I don’t believe in immovable objects, but fuck me that guy wouldn’t go down. Oh dear,” Sylver said, as his shadowy form backed up from his body.

“What?”

“Nothing… It’s fine, it’ll heal,” Sylver said, as he went back to cutting Ciege’s body apart, and started the process of removing his ribs to replace them.

“The Blue Demon?” Lola asked, as she sat back down and remembered all the stories she had heard about the Silver Lich.

“Oh, that was a really bad one. Creatures with a powerful regeneration are annoying to deal with, and nearly impossible when you can’t cast fire-related spells. I would cut him into two, and each half would grow a new body. But, funny story, the Blue Demon, wasn’t actually a demon. I ended up feeding him to an actual demon that I summoned. After that, I had to…”

Sylver continued to empty out his torso as he, one by one, ruined Lola’s perception of him, fairy tales, the Ibis, every [Hero] that Lola knew about, and then he finished it off by telling her about one of her ancestors, and what she had done to conquer the forest that would one day become Lola’s and her family’s home.

“The history people write down tends to leave out the part where all the corpses shat themselves, and then spent several days rotting in the open sun” Sylver said after finishing his retelling of the battle of Greenwater.