Ch079-A Long Day (Patreon)

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Ch079-A Long Day

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[Perk: Shadow’s Agent]
-Any creature under the caster’s command, can be used to channel magic.
*Efficiency decreases over distance.
*May not work on non-humanoid creatures.
*May not work on non-magical creatures.
*May not work on creatures with a high magic resistance.
*May not work on creatures with a low mana conductivity.

The system was sending Sylver mixed signals.

On the one hand, it threatened to put him into a permanent coma, if he tried to investigate it any further than he already had. And on the other, it gave him something that shouldn’t be possible.

Not just that, but it made it so intuitive that Sylver felt like he was the one who made it. The barely existent connection Sylver felt to all of his shades, now had an accompanying path for his mana to flow through. It was as simple as lifting his hand, and he was suddenly casting from ten meters away.

Aiming was an entirely different thing. It took a fair amount of mental gymnastics and calculation to orient the spell to go where Sylver wanted it to go, but it wasn’t outside of his range of abilities. Sylver called out 4 shades and had them stand north, east, south, and west of him. Sylver maneuvered his soul until it had 4 ‘appendages’ and tried to create a simple fireball framework.

All four shades simultaneously had a small spurting blue ball of fire floating above their heads. Sylver kept the balls in the air for a few seconds and tried to see if there was a time or volume limit on the perk. Sylver ran out of mana before either question was answered, and all four balls of fire snuffed themselves out into nothing.

Sylver’s brow furrowed as he concentrated again, and summoned 10 shade archers out of the floor. All 10 of them drew their bows and held their arrows at the ready. One arrow flickered with a yellow spark. Then another, 2 archers to the left, then another 4 archers to the right. One by one a small spark jumped at the edge of one arrow then another.

Sylver tilted his head ever so slightly as he further adjusted his grip on his magic and all 10 arrows began to glow a bright yellow light. When the archers’ released their arrows, the arrows moved so fast that Sylver couldn’t see them. A giant explosion from where they hit the walls nearly made him stagger as the shockwave caused the ceiling to rain down with dust.

Sylver summoned more shades and made their swords, axes, spears, and daggers glow. He could even make the wolves’ fangs and claws glow.

“So now you can empower shades at a distance. As well as cast spells through them. I’ve seen you do it before; I don’t understand the point of accepting this perk?” Spring said, as he repeatedly tossed his glowing blade into the air and caught it with one hand.

“That was different. I charged them up, I prepared a spell and put a timer on it, but this is something else…” Sylver said. He undid the clasp on the [Bracelet Of The Aurai] and tossed it towards a swordsman shade. The shade put the bracelet on his wrist and locked it closed.

Sylver tilted his head and blindly reached out with his mana through the shade until he felt the bracelet suck it up. Sylver waited until he felt that it was full, and tried a variety of approaches. When the bracelet was on his own wrist, Sylver didn’t even activate it consciously, it was as close to a reflex as magic could get. With the bracelet being on the shade’s wrist, it was like trying to manually contract the right muscles to jump.

And yet…

The shade jumped up and stopped.

It was standing on thin air. Sylver had it jump again, and was a little quicker activating the bracelet this time. The shade moved his arm too much on the third attempt and came back to the floor.

“I’ll need to practice with this, but it opens up a lot of possibilities. For example,” Sylver said, as he had shades materialize near the walls, and with a slight delay made them all turn translucent. More than that, Sylver created an illusionary pane over each shade and was able to cover the entirety of the sewer canal in an illusion.

Spring looked around the bright forest they were both suddenly in and laughed a little. “I get it now, this solves your range issue,” Spring said, as the illusions came down and they returned to standing in a damp and dark sewer canal.

“Solves is a bit of a strong word. This will help, but I’ll run out of mana after casting one spell if I’m too far away. There’s also a delay, that I’ll need to find out if it’s just me having a hard time compressing my spells, or just the price I have to pay for the range extension,” Sylver said. He brought his shattered left arm up to his chest and had a shade put the bracelet back on his right arm.

*

*

*

Sylver removed the flask’s stopper and smelled it.

“Goat’s blood?” Sylver asked as he swirled the dark green liquid around.

“As I said, I don’t know. It’s a healing potion for undead, or as close to one as I’ve ever seen. Loft lost his arm and one flask was enough for him to grow a new one. Should be enough for you,” the red-eyed man explained. His bone-white hair seemed jarring to his slightly tanned skin, and his pitch-black fingernails gave him an oddly feminine look that matched with the oddly soft way with which he spoke.

Sylver smelled it again, held it up to the light. It was smooth, with the consistency of cream, but more liquid. It had a very faint scent of magic to it, but Sylver was struggling to put his finger on what exactly was going on with it.

Sylver swirled it around for a couple of seconds and drank the whole thing in one gulp. It tasted like very strong mint and strawberries, despite nothing about its smell suggesting such a thing. Sylver washed it down with a glass of water and swirled it around in his mouth for a few seconds to get the taste out.

The effect was instantaneous.

Sylver was tempted to release the spell that was keeping his body numb to see what exactly was going on but chose not to. The darkness that kept his legs together wobbled as Sylver’s mana channels moved for a couple of seconds, and Sylver sat down onto a chair to wait it out lest he fell.

Oddly enough the potion had priorities.

It started with Sylver’s head and fixed the cracks in his skull and the ripped-up skin that had ruptured. The blood clots that had formed in his head broke down and disappeared. Then it worked on his torso, starting with his heart and fixing his internal organs, one by one until it started fusing the bones back into one piece. Sylver’s skin was the last to heal, and dark murky-looking blood oozed out of the various cuts before they closed.

In about 30 seconds, Sylver was back in one piece. Albeit exhausted and with a strange heaviness in his stomach. He checked his body was stable before releasing the numbing spell and found that he felt perfectly fine.

“You said you got this from an alchemist in Urth?” Sylver asked. Spring was coming down the stairs with the bag now.

“A ghoul woman, I forgot her name. But if you ask around I’m sure someone will point you in the right direction there are only 2 alchemists in the entire city. If you want, we’re all going there after the tournament is finished, you’re more than welcome to tag along,” the red-eyed man offered.

Sylver spoke as Spring placed the bag of gold coins onto the table for the red-eyed man to count.

“Thank you, but I’ll have to pass… I’m planning on going to Urth in the future, but not right now. Is there anything I should know about it?” Sylver asked. The red-eyed man had a strange look on his face as Spring returned to Sylver’s shadow.

“Not particularly. There’s always a massive demand for books, especially more exotic ones. The people who handle transportation have a hard time finding new ones, and the library has been seeing less and less use since everyone’s already read everything there is to read inside of it. Most of the creatures living there don’t do or need a whole lot, just a place to exist without being chased and killed on sight. If you manage to bring something no one has read before, it’d be a great help,” the red-eyed man said.

Ron had warned Sylver not to ask for his name, and Sylver didn’t see a reason to go against his warning. Primarily because Sylver was fairly certain he felt the red-eyed man’s magic encircling him. It was harmless, and very likely unconscious, but it was still annoying Sylver the slightest amount. It was like talking to a man while he had a sword in his hand.

“I see… Is everything there?” Sylver asked. The man placed all the coins back into the bag and turned around to hide them in his backpack.

“Yes, 200 gold, and once again I’m sorry about the price. It was my last one and-”

“Don’t even worry about it. The amount of time and effort you saved me with this is worth whatever markup you placed on it,” Sylver interrupted.

He and the red-eyed man spoke for a while longer. Sylver found a good place to end their conversation, and left shortly after. He asked Ron to put whatever the red-eyed man and his companions ate onto Sylver’s tab.

200 gold was a small price to pay for what Sylver had previously considered impossible.

*

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“This thing is as much of a cultivator as you are,” Flesh said. He pushed his finger against the nude and unconscious warrior thief, and Sylver saw something move inside of him. It wasn’t so much as Sylver saw something moving around, so much as he saw the man’s mana channels moving around in response to it.

“How are the lessons going?” Sylver asked. He spoke in Eirish and Bones answered.

“Good… Understand easy, read easy, but talk hard… Little words,” Bones said. Sylver was glad to see he hadn’t picked up Ron’s weird vocal ticks.

He can understand, but he doesn’t know enough words to say what he wants.

“The poetry is god awful. Everything is so to the point, it’s hard to even call it poetry. I hope the singing is at least better,” Flesh complained in near-perfect Eirish. Sylver winced slightly as he heard the change in octave mid-word, and made a mental note to find a language teacher that used a mouth to talk.

“It’s an acquired taste. The elf performers here favor instrumental pieces, while the dwarves, gnomes, and humans have a greater focus on words. Arda is a trading town, the culture here isn’t exactly set in stone… So he’s not a cultivator?” Sylver asked. Flesh poked the man’s chest three more times and the same something passed through him.

“I don’t know how to explain it so that you would understand…” Flesh said.

“But in essence, that’s a no? Keeping in mind you’re essentially going to be doing little more than talking to people and handling paperwork,” Sylver asked.

“Keeping in mind that my wife would probably have a problem with my body changing after we got married and I find myself in need of strength to protect her,” Flesh countered.

“Isn’t the whole point of this that you two live normal-ish lives this time? Wait for me to figure out how the break or alter the curse? Why would you need strength to protect anyone?” Sylver asked.

“It’s one thing if it’s just me. I can put my own life in your hands, that’s my choice to make. But I wouldn’t feel right if I allowed my wife to be protected by someone else, it uh…” Flesh said a word that Sylver didn’t know in a language he didn’t know, “you know?”

“No. But I think I get it, you’re willing to trust me, but you’re not willing to trust me with your hypothetical wife and kids,” Sylver said.

“Something like that… Look uh… See this part here?” Flesh asked. He poked the warrior in the chest again, right over his mana core.

“It should be flat. If it’s flat that means his body hasn’t undergone any changes from interacting with Ki. I’ll start at zero, but I’ll be able to get a solid base for myself after a while. Mage, warrior, rogue, doesn’t matter, even if the body is crippled I can fix it, but this needs to be flat,” Flesh explained. Sylver turned to look at Bones.

“Any complaints?” Sylver asked.

“The jaw could be a little more squared, but otherwise, no. I’ll fix it myself afterward, gives me something to do while I wait for everything to mature,” Bones said. He spoke in demon tongue, but Sylver continued to speak Eirish.

“Glad to hear… I’ll keep this guy here unless I find something better, but keep in mind that I can get whichever body you move into to look the same as your old one. I’ve never done it on a living human before, but I can’t imagine it’s that much different from operating on a zombie… Might be easier actually, given that I could have a healer handle the stitched-up areas… Cosmetic surgery isn’t my forte, but I’ve done it before, it’s not that hard,” Sylver said, with a gesture towards the warrior thief who had managed to do more damage to him than whole armies have in the past.

“So what’s left? I mean, how much longer until we can leave this place and start walking around?” Bones asked.

“2 weeks? I need a few sacrifices for the ritual, and then I’ll need to perform the ritual, which will take a day. Then you’ll both be asleep for 3 days, and once you wake up, we’re good to go. Lola already has all the components I need ready; I’m just left with finding 20 human-ish sacrifices,” Sylver explained.

“Do they not sell slaves anymore? I would have thought you kept a couple on hand, just to be safe?” Bones asked.

“They don’t work well as sacrifices. Too brittle, and I have personal reasons not to use slaves in such a way. Bandits are better, they’re free, their souls are significantly tougher, and I even get rewarded for killing them. Slaves are better if you free them and employ them, magic can handle a great deal of menial labor, but creativity has to come from a living being. You can’t force a good idea, no matter how much mana you sink into it,” Sylver explained.

“Huh… Well, you learn something new every day,” Bones said.

Sylver sat around for a while and checked to see how well the connection between their souls here and their real souls back in the crypt was. Both were surprisingly stable, much better than Sylver would have expected.

He mentally patted himself on the back as he left.

*

*

*

“Cannibals. Followers of a war god. Scavengers and pillagers. A bit like goblins in a way, our scout units have confirmed that they took over an island not too far away from here. Killed all the men and took the women as breeding slaves and have been sending the produced children to scavenge and bring more women back. We think they use some sort of magic to speed up their growth because the timeframe doesn’t make sense otherwise,” Tolst explained.

Tolst was a proxy between adventurers and Arda’s military. In the same way, Sylver would talk to Raba without meeting with the Cord directly, Tolst was a way for adventurers to work for the military without having to enlist.

“We call them Krists. They have a way to make interrogation useless, so a lot of their motives and other important details are still a mystery. But we’ve figured out their god is called Krist, hence, Krists. Although it’s just as likely that’s the name of their king, but god works better. Makes them seem more foreign, and easier to kill if the low-level troops don’t see them as people. One of the downsides of having to fight a human army when your army is mostly human,” Tolst explained.

He was a level 92 rogue but didn’t look the part. His hair was a deep black and was tied into a single braid behind him, that was covered in etched metal. His left ear was pierced with so many silver piercings that it was hard to tell if there was even an ear left under them, while his right was completely untouched.

Other oddities included the fact that Sylver had never heard an accent quite like his, and Tolst was easily the darkest human Sylver had met since waking up in Ciege’s body. His dark brown eyes were sometimes narrow enough that Sylver couldn’t see any white, and he had a hard time telling if they were opened or closed.

“They do use magic, but not like the kind we’re used to. It was explained to me it’s some sort of wild sorcery, as opposed to our neat and tidy mage craft. They’re mostly warriors, but you’ll always find at least 1 of them among a group, one Krist that isn’t as muscular or as tattooed as the others, and wearing a dead animal’s skull on his head,” Tolst explained. He patted a man on the shoulder and whispered something in his ear before he turned back to Sylver and continued speaking.

“Our advice is always to take those out first, because otherwise they start chanting, and causing all the warrior Krist’s to grow twice as strong. We theorize it’s some kind of [Berserker] perk, but even our best researchers haven’t been able to identify what exactly is going on,” Tolst continued. He held the tent flap open for Sylver and gestured that he should enter.

Inside the soundproof tent, were about 20 people running from one table to another, shouting letters and numbers at one another, and now and then, moving a piece on one of the many maps littered around the place. One of the people, a man wearing the same dark green uniform as Tolst, with a different insignia on his shoulder and chest, walked up to them.

“Sir?” the man asked.

“3 rank 5s. As close to the west canal as possible,” Tolst said. The man nodded silently and returned to running around from table to table. Sylver briefly looked at what was going on with his [Mana Sense] and regretted it instantly. The sheer amount of mana being used for telepathic communication was likely enough to be enough to cast a couple of 3rd tier spells.

Sylver pulled his mana back into himself and went back to completely blocking everything out. The few seconds of exposer had given him a very faint headache.

A different man from the one who Tolst had spoken to earlier returned after about 30 seconds and placed 3 sealed envelopes into his hands. Tolst opened the tent flap and gestured for Sylver to leave.

“Is this your first war?” Tolst asked.

Sylver held in a laugh and answered without any trace of it in his voice, “It is,” Sylver answered.

“Then I’ll give you the short version. This is a war. Not the war, but a war. One of many, the kind that has been fought hundreds of times in the past. There are no heroes in this war, there aren’t even any legends. If you’re here for fame, you won’t find it here,” Tolst said. His tone had changed, it was stern, rehearsed.

“I’m not here for fame,” Sylver said, as he walked alongside him.

“Good. As I said, this is a war. We have tried diplomacy, and it hasn’t worked, so now we are in the process of wiping them out from this world. If it weren’t for the natural defenses on the island they call home, we would have glassed the whole thing months ago. We’ve handled the brunt of the invading force, and you adventurers are mobile enough to deal with the few who managed to slip past,” Tolst said.

Sylver nodded and followed Tolst towards the camp’s entrance.

“I want to be crystal clear about this. I do not care for your reason for being here. Whether you’re doing it for the experience, to meet a perk requirement, or for fun, it is all the same to me. You are a body I’m throwing at the enemy in the hopes you’ll kill them. If you are captured, you’re on your own. But I’ll say this right now,” Tolst said.

He leaned in to the point he was almost speaking directly into Sylver’s ear.

“If you do get captured, I would highly recommend doing your very best to escape or die trying. Because I have seen firsthand what they do with captives and despite what you might have heard, they are unwilling to trade hostages, no matter who you know or who your father is. If you were a woman they would do their best not to kill you, but I strongly advise against dressing up as one in the hopes of them going easy on you. Their ‘going easy’ is cutting off all your limbs, and the rest you’re better off not knowing,” Tolst explained.

“I understand,” Sylver answered simply.

“Good. The locations in here are suggestions, we have a rough idea of where all the invading groups are going, but this information isn’t 100% accurate. They are estimated to have an average level of 50, but as I said, this information isn’t 100% accurate. Approach the situation as you see fit, and report back to us if you manage to survive. Once you enter into combat with them, please break the wooden stick inside the envelopes, so we can mark you down as dead in case you don’t report back,” Tolst said.

“Alright,” Sylver answered.

“That’s all. Oh, one last thing. I was told you are a necromancer, is that true?” Tolst asked. He was still speaking with his rehearsed tone.

“I am.”

“Then I would like to add one more thing. My personal views on dark magic are not in any sense of the word positive. But as I said earlier, this is a war, and you are a body I’m throwing at the enemy in the hopes you’ll kill them. As such the military is somewhat relaxed with what is and isn’t allowed when it comes to the enemy. So even if you do something… unsightly to the enemy, be aware that as long as they are dead by the end of it, there will be no repercussions,” Tolst warned.

Sylver cocked his head to the side slightly at his words.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Tolst asked.

“I’m quite sad to say I do. But you’ll do well in life not to assume that all the stories you’ve heard are true. Nasty rumors involving necrophilia and cannibalism do have a kernel of truth to them, but those kinds of dark mages are the kind my kind kill on sight,” Sylver explained. It was depressing to think little goodwill the necromancers on this side of the world had.

“So you’re a civilized necromancer?” Tolst asked. There was a hint of a smirk there, but he masked it well.

“Just because you’re a rogue doesn’t mean you’re a lecherous thieving alcoholic. And just because I work with the dead, don’t mean I want to fuck them,” Sylver said with a slight smile.

“I’ll keep that in mind… Well, best of luck. If you manage to survive, we’ve always got more work,” Tolst said, as he shook Sylver’s hand. Sylver watched him walk over towards the next group of adventurers waiting near the entrance.

Sylver noticed that they all looked far too excited to be here, and didn’t like the jagged shape their swords had. A blade like that wouldn’t leave a clean cut. Sylver opened the first envelope and summoned Ulvic to get some distance away from the camp.

*

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“I sometimes forget that the world at large isn’t as understanding of the whole “magic is a tool, nothing more” mentality you have. Although given that you’ve fought and killed more “evil” necromancer’s than you’ve ever met in your past life, I kind of see where everyone is coming from,” Spring said.

Sylver yawned and made the dagger in Spring’s hand glow bright yellow. It was getting easier to use the perk, and Sylver was all but certain that the delay was his fault and not the perks.

“Those kind don’t live for very long, but they really know how to make an impression on people. It’s like being born in a town of goat fuckers. Even if the goats say you never fucked them, no one will believe you. But, it is what it is, not a whole lot I can do about it. Maybe if I meet enough people who see that not all necromancers are corpse fucking sadists, it might be enough to clear the name in the next 2 or 3 thousand years, but it’s unlikely,” Sylver said.

“Why corpse fucking? Where does that come from anyway? You’ve never so much as glanced at the female shades in that manner, are you saying that others had-”

“They have, a lot have. At some point, I started to worry the two go hand in hand, but it’s the other way around. Necromancers don’t become corpse fuckers, corpse fuckers become necromancers. It’s an obsession with the dead, just a slightly less sterile version than trying to bring a loved one back. All the good necromancers I know studied the magic in an attempt to bring their husband, child, or wife back from the dead, and ended up sticking with it, even after they realized it wasn’t possible,” Sylver explained.

He turned over onto his stomach and used his robe to stand up. It was dark tonight, the clouds above covered the stars and moon, but there wasn’t so much as a rumble of thunder in the air. Spring did as the note inside the envelope said and followed the river leading west, while constantly on the lookout for a large wooden bridge going across it.

“What’s the plan if the woman in white doesn’t show up? Or if she doesn’t know anything?” Spring asked.

“I see; I’m so frazzled from the lack of sleep my thoughts are leaking out to you. Since that’s the case, you already know the answer,” Sylver said. Spring waited for about a minute before he spoke.

“Tuli. You think she’ll have answers if you’re able to wake her up. And Carr Da’Nerto, the book thief, but you’re leaving that to the cats for the time being. But what about if they don’t have any answers?” Spring asked.

Sylver was quiet for a long time, only the muffled wind rushing over the barrier covering Will’s back made any noise.

“I don’t know. I’m moving forward, bit by bit, one day at a time, and it seems to be working. Let’s… Let’s just get Flesh and Bones settled in for now, and we’ll go from there... But… I don’t know, the woman in white seems too specific to be a coincidence. The question of why she shows up the same time every year is something I haven’t been able to figure out, but it can’t be random if she follows such a strict schedule,” Sylver said.

“I don’t like that we’re putting all our eggs into a barely visible white basket,” Spring said.

“Most of our eggs. And I’m very open to alternatives than just nearly blindly walking up to a potentially 9th tier mage and hoping she hasn’t been looking for me to kill me. Even with the [Dead Man’s Last Stand] that fraction of a second it would take for me to use it, is more than enough time for her to obliterate everything within 10 kilometers of her. I wouldn’t even call this a plan necessarily, it’s disgustingly close to praying for a miracle,” Sylver said.

“We could not go? Ask Ciege and Yeva to stay there and let the woman in white do whatever it is she does and try again next year? Focus on getting stronger, increasing your level, building up shades, and other undead. Have Lola craft more weapons, enchantments, maybe find a perk that would be enough to make a difference. Doing it as you are now, seems both stupid and suicidal,” Spring cautioned.

Sylver walked over to the edge of Will’s back and looked down at the quickly moving ground far beneath him.

“Am I scared, or are you? I accepted the fact that deep down I’m a coward, but this is almost insulting. If the woman in white isn’t related to me, so be it. But I’m not about to run away because I’m afraid. This is the closest thing I have to a clue right now, this might be the only thing standing between me and finding everyone alive and well and in the same position as me,” Sylver said with uncharacteristic softness.

If it weren’t for the fact that Spring could hear him through the shadows, he wouldn’t have heard a word.

“But you do understand that chances are-”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sylver interrupted quietly. “I appreciate the concern, but I’m tired of everyone always questioning me. I’m going to see her even if I shit myself out of fear in the process. That’s the bridge isn’t it, check the map,” Sylver ordered, with a hand pointed towards a bridge that was wide enough for 4 carriages to pass side by side.

Spring checked the map and confirmed. They flew an estimated 10 kilometers south from it, and Sylver jumped off the wyvern to see if they left any traces on the ground.

*

*

*

The potion Sylver had drunk had helped a bit with the weariness. But Sylver wasn’t at a stage yet where he would be able to disregard sleep yet. He would have to stop his heart and give up on being alive, but that came with its own dangers. Right now the adrenaline Sylver forced his body to overproduce was helping with staying alert, but he could already feel his body straining from the over-exertion.

He’d slept as much as possible while on Will, but the constant influx of information Spring provided was too valuable to cut off but too intense for Sylver to rest in the way he needed. It would be like blinding himself in enemy territory, he wasn’t willing to do it. In hindsight, he should have not spent so long talking to Lola and slept instead, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

Sylver sent Ulvic back into the shadows once he felt it. It wasn’t what he was used to, but Sylver could feel magic in the air. Whatever the spell was, Sylver was already well within its range. Going by how sensitive it felt, Sylver could only guess that it was an alarm spell. Which he had very likely triggered already.

Sylver feigned ignorance and walked in a straight line through circular spell he could feel, and compared the change in intensity to triangulate the middle, and hopefully the source of it. Meanwhile, Spring spread everyone out to find the Krists, but he didn’t have any luck. He found a crudely made cart with dead bodies inside of it, but the area around it was deserted.

Sylver closed his eyes and spread his awareness and mana out through Spring and the other shades littering the area. He closed his hand into a shaking fist as he became the biggest source of animosity these nomads had ever seen and felt a reaction almost instantly. Sylver cut off the killing intent and returned to looking at the world with clear and clinical eyes.

Some people did it naturally, they leaked violence and death, while Sylver had to stir himself into a frenzy to achieve it. Now that the worst thing he could ever imagine had already happened, Sylver had to search for a new source of anger. Imagining Lola, Ciege, Yeva, and Benjamin being in danger worked quite well for the moment.

The Krists were smart, they returned to their camp and gathered around a man wearing a bear’s hollowed-out skull over his own. His face was sticky with blood and dust, as was the rest of his naked body, with only the deep black tattoos that made his otherwise pale arms nearly invisible in the night. The pattern looked like a black fire that spread from the man’s shoulders, down towards his hands, and ended at his fingers. With the shades being spread out, they likely assumed about 50 people were hiding throughout the forest.

Sylver found a solid piece of stone deep underground and made the smallest of holes in it. While bear head chanted, Sylver turned into smoke and materialized inside the rock. A crude carving on one of the rock’s walls was enough for Sylver to mask his presence inside of it.

Sylver checked to see how bad the efficiency was at this range, and found that he lost over 80% of his mana in the process. But it was good enough for this.

Spring appeared directly behind bear head, and in a fluid motion, reached around his head with a sword’s sheaf and pulled back hard enough to shatter the man’s windpipe closed. Someone attempted to punch Spring, but he called a duplicate shade behind him to be hit instead, while he disappeared into the shadows. More shades got in place to handle bear head and the other Krists, but Sylver felt the spell even while hiding inside of his rock.

A good half of Sylver’s shades were destroyed from bear heads spell, while Sylver rearranged the survivors to get away from there. Sylver felt the spell take hold around the Krists makeshift camp, and Spring described it like trying to walk through mud.

Great, their sorcerer is a light attribute. With my luck probably holy too…

Sylver came out of his hiding place and walked towards the prepared group. He could feel the magic moving away from the sorcerer in the middle in ever-increasing waves. It wasn’t potent enough to hurt Sylver, but he could visibly see the effect it was having on the muscle-bound warriors nearby. Their veins looked like they threatened to burst, as their skin started to steam slightly, and their eyes became bulging and bloodshot.

A woman wearing a thin black robe walked out from amongst the tree line where Sylver had been. She walked so slowly it was almost a saunter.

“Gentlemen! How about a one on one duel? Winner takes all?” The woman offered with a laugh, batting her eyelashes at the giant hoard of monstrously giant men.

Bear head vaguely waved his hand towards the buxom woman and caused the paper-thin illusion Sylver had created to waver but not break. Giving up on any attempt at subtly the woman sprinted towards the group and reached into her robe for a second. The woman jumped high into the air, and landed almost right on top of bear head, but was quickly yanked off him by her leg.

There were maybe 3 seconds where the foaming at the mouth savages attempted to tear the illusionary woman into pieces. Sylver’s illusion gave out quickly, and Reg was left silently trying to stab as many of them as possible, while Sylver used [Auditory Illusion] to mimic a woman’s voice screaming in pain to help keep everyone confused.

The three grenades in Reg’s pocket went off in near-perfect sync.

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

…

While everyone was stunned and the framework bear head had drawn on the ground was disturbed, Spring appeared out of the shadows with all the other shades, and started strangling and otherwise incapacitating the survivors. Sylver handled bear head himself and shoved a dart through the man’s eye to knock him out with a jolt of mana directly to his brain.

Sylver’s soul sense helped pick out the ones that were pretending to be unconscious, and his shades pinned them to the ground and knocked them out too.

In under a minute the fight was over.

Sylver picked out one of the more in one piece corpses and had it dragged away from the pile to dissect.

Tolst had been right, these were humans, but they weren’t normal. Their bones, and muscles were fine, but their internal organs were all wrong. The kidneys were too small, the lungs were too enlarged, their liver was the size of an apple, and their stomachs connected directly to their large intestine.

If Sylver didn’t see that this was a fully grown man, he would have thought this was an extremely disabled child. The forced growth Tolst had mentioned made sense, but if they’re all like this they would all be dead in under a year.

Sylver moved onto the next body and cracked its skull open to look inside. There was a faint smell of Sulphur coming from the man’s blood, and having pulled the brain out, Sylver discovered that there was a metallic rod stuck through it. Sylver had another body’s corpse dragged over to him, and used a dagger to remove the skin from around its head.

There was a hole there. That matched the metal rod Sylver found in their brains, and after Sylver used magic to reach inside the hole in the man’s skull, Sylver found the same metallic rod. He checked the alive ones and found a hole and metal rod inside too.

Except when Sylver tried to pull it out of the unconscious man’s head, he started to violently convulse and died. Given that Sylver didn’t receive a notification for defeating him, the system didn’t consider him to be responsible for his death.

Meaning these rods were made to kill them when removed?

Sylver did feel them react to his magic, but it wasn’t blocking it or anything, it barely felt like it was interfering.

“I don’t get it… A condition for their class or perk? A cultural thing? Maybe this is why they can’t be interrogated, this thing cancels out all attempts, and removing it kills them... A bit crude, but it does make leaking information impossible…” Sylver thought out loud. He summoned a ball of water and washed his hands in it.

“Is it going to get in the way of your ritual?” Spring asked.

Sylver walked over to one of the unconscious men and placed a hand onto his chest. He checked the man’s soul and life force, and couldn’t find any issues.

“No… I don’t think so at least, I only need their life force for it, this is entirely physical… A biological trigger to kill them if someone takes it out? It’s hard to call it a weak point, you’d need to stab them in the head to abuse it, but that would kill them anyway…” Sylver explained.

12 bodies were stacked on top of each other and tied together so as not to fall apart. Some of them were still as muscular as they were before, but others looked to have deflated once they were put to sleep. Each one of them had a pitch-black tattoo covering the majority of their body, only the sorcerer was largely tattooed.

The tattoos always started from the area around the front of the heart, or their stomach, and spread out in various patterns. One man had fish scales that got smaller and smaller as they got further away from his stomach, another had hexagons that did the same, another had vines, another had petals.

As far as Sylver could tell these tattoos weren’t drawn by the same person, but there was a theme in these designs, that Sylver couldn’t put into words. A logic he didn’t understand but could feel.

“You know what? Not my war, not my business, not my problem. Let’s just get 8 more of these, 10 more to be on the safe side, and call it a day,” Sylver said.

He tried to make some of the dead bodies into shades, but they were too damaged for the process. In hindsight, one grenade might have been enough. There was also the problem that Sylver felt like something was wrong with them. They looked like bad meat if he had to put it into words. But whatever the issue was, he’d already decided he didn’t care.

Sylver burned the dead bodies they were carrying with them in a makeshift cart and did the same for the Krists that he had killed and dissected. Sylver flew away on Will and moved towards the next area.

*

*

*

Capturing the next group of Krists was dead simple. Now that Sylver was aware of their magic, he didn’t bother searching for them on the ground. He felt the dome-shaped spell brush the underside of Will’s stomach, and Sylver eyeballed the rough area they would be most likely to hide in.

Sylver didn’t bother trying to trick these people, he dropped down from the sky, and landed directly in their midst. The sorcerer in this group wore a fox’s head over his own, and Sylver grabbed his arm, disrupted whatever magic he was trying to use, and stabbed him through the eye with a dart.

The other warriors were too distracted by Ulvic’s pack rushing at them, and failed to notice all the translucent shades wrapping and tightening a metallic wire around their necks. Without their sorcerer, these guys were so easy to handle, it was laughable.

Sylver wanted to get 10 to have 2 extra, but this group had 19 people here, counting the sorcerer.

“Bones had a point… I really should keep a few on hand for the future. But it will be a pain to keep Will in the air with all this added weight…” Sylver said, as Spring finished putting the last warrior into a coma. Sylver stared at the warrior, with his thick tree trunk arms, and matching legs.

“I don’t… I don’t really need them in one piece though… Cauterizing the wounds will take a while, but the only alternative is taking two trips…” Sylver thought out loud, as Spring got the idea and got the other shades to untie the Krists from the first group.

Sylver inspected all of their cores and found 3 that had flat ones like Flesh had wanted. Worst case scenario, Sylver would simply have him switch his body again if he isn’t happy with these.

Sylver kept bear head and fox head in one piece and had the rest of the people’s arms and legs removed. The resulting cuts were sealed using fire, and Sylver reduced the weight of his cargo by almost half.

“It’s times like these that I’m grateful I decided not to take Lola with me,” Sylver said.

“Oh, I 100% agree. You wouldn’t hear the end of it if she saw this. So we’re sneaking these in through Ron’s door outside of Arda’s walls, and then storing them in your workshop? How long can they stay alive anyway?” Spring asked.

“A week, maybe 2, if I’m lucky… It’s fine, be careful they don’t snap their necks, and pack everyone up… I’ve got an idea, for long-term storage, but I’ll need to see how hard the materials I want are to find...” Sylver said. He walked up Wills's wing and sat down into his usual spot.

All that was left was transferring Flesh and Bones into their new bodies, and then helping them enter Arda through the proper channels, and settling them in. And after that… Well, that’s something to think about after Flesh and Bones are alive and comfortable.

Sylver might not have any bandits left to hunt, but these Krists were good too. Even if there was something strange about them and their bodies. The first sun just started to rise by the time Will reached the proper altitude. Sylver lay down and tried to rest his body, if not his mind. Only a bit more until he could have a proper sleep.