Ch091-Not That Kind Of Story (Patreon)

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Ch091-Not That Kind Of Story

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[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Necromancer] has reached level 87!
+5AP

[1 perk available for [Necromancer]]

Sylver ignored the message as he once again consulted the notes Bruno had given him. He slowly curled his fingers into a fist. The dark liquid-like substance lazily copied his movement, and the hand-shaped blob became a fist-shaped blob.

Sylver looked at it and flicked his hand. The blob extended for a moment, formed elongated and sharpened claws, and then lost strength and snapped back into the shape of a blob.

[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 40 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

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

Sylver flicked his hand again, and the same claws appeared and snapped back in place just as quick as before.

“How likely is it that you’re going to tell someone about what you did here?” Lorn asked, half sitting half laying with his back facing the ground, floating right above Sylver and looking up at the sky.

He was understandably squeamish about what was going on below him. Most of the corpses had been fully intact, dying either through infection that made their blood thicken, or just passing out from the lack of breathable air. A few were unlucky and were eaten by the zombies, and a few were even more unlucky when their hiding spot was blown up via a series of explosives.

The shades organized the corpses into separate piles after they stripped them of their armor and cleaned them up as best as they could. After that the corpses were prepped for future use, mainly removing the internal organs that weren’t necessary, and draining the blood from the bodies that had too much mass to fit into a bone.

For whatever reason [Bound Bones] didn’t seem to consider souls in the calculation it was using when deciding the mana cost of storing something. Which was very convenient for Sylver, if a little strange.

Although the problem with that was that he couldn’t store souls by themselves inside of bones, that was a problem for the future, when Sylver could use souls for more than as a power source for their corpses turned undead.

Sylver had had all the useful corpses stored inside a bone, and then very carefully organized them inside of a wooden box, and then buried the box as deep as he could manage, along with a shade so he wouldn’t have trouble finding them later. These were genuinely excellent bodies, Sylver didn’t want to raise them out in the field while pressed for time.

He’d do it in his home, and make them extra special.

The ones that remained had been “harvested” for Sylver to attempt to make Bruno’s spell work, while he waited for everyone inside the barrier to pass out or die. Given that these corpses were originally too broken to be raised as shades, Sylver hadn’t been gentle when harvesting them. Sylver sat in the shade of a tree, while surrounded by a small mound of dead bodies, or bits and pieces of dead bodies in this case.

“I take it you’re going to sing a slightly revised version of what you’ve seen?” Sylver asked.

The black blob of muscle and darkness twisted itself around his arm and almost reached up to his shoulder.

“Slightly is an understatement. People don’t tend to like hearing about pregnant women being torn apart by zombies. And the protagonists of popular songs are very rarely so… cold? I guess that would be the word? I want to say rude, but that’s not quite the word I’m looking for,” Lorn said, as he strummed his lute every other word and built a simple tune.

“Brash? I’ve been kind of on edge because of the pieces of silver burning the inside of my shoulder,” Sylver offered. He made his darkness-covered hand into a fist and slowly turned it over as the mass of darkness coating his arm flatted against his skin.

“I almost want to say sadistic, but you didn’t look like you were having a whole lot of fun. Lifeless? More like- Oh fuck, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it in that way,” Lorn said, turning the right way round and floating down to face Sylver. Sylver raised both hands towards him.

“Calm down, it’s alright. I’m not alive, and I don’t take it as an insult. That stuff with Red-Eye… It’s a bit hard to explain, but don’t worry too much about it. Which reminds me, I would appreciate it if you didn’t include Urth in your songs,” Sylver said, as Lorn nodded along.

“I wasn’t going to. The place has a bad name as it is, I don’t want to pile onto it by mentioning that a vampire that aided in killing a town was from there,” Lorn said, as he glanced to the side, and instantly turned over to only look at the sky again.

“Bad name? Why?” Sylver asked. Lorn was quiet for a while, or merely grunting from trying to throw up without the use of a stomach, while Sylver got back to trying to figure out Bruno’s spell.

“You remember how Red-Eye mentioned whores and cripples?” Lorn asked. The shade holding the book open for Sylver flipped it to the next page.

“Sure,” Sylver answered, as he adjusted the framework in his head to account for the smaller amount of flesh being used. Bruno’s spell was supposed to be used on a body, not just an arm.

“Well, the word on the metaphorical street is that those so-called whores and cripples aren’t there by choice. And I don’t even mean they were tricked into coming there, under false promises of money, I’m talking straight-up kidnapping,” Lorn said. Sylver flexed his arm covered in the dark red blob and got an idea after seeing it catch the light in a certain way.

“I see,” Sylver said, as the blob of dark red goop moved off his arm and into the palm of his hand.

“And?” Lorn asked expectantly, as he struck his lute.

“And what?” Sylver asked.

How did master Ward do it? Bones for structure, muscle for movement, blood as fuel? Sylver thought, as he reached down with his ball of swirling flesh and darkness, and made it absorb and crush up fragments of bone and muscle. It formed bubbles on its surface as Sylver kept mixing and matching the interior structure.

“What are your thoughts on it?” Lorn cautiously asked.

Sylver felt like the solution was at the very tip of his tongue, as the seemingly boiling mass of flesh, blood, bone, and darkness swirled around in his hand and appeared to be eating and chewing itself.

“I don’t know. The few undead I’ve met recently have been polite and respectful, and more honestly, if there was a shred of truth in the rumors, the temples would have decimated the necropolis ages ago. But then again, I can see it happening. Not all undead manage to maintain their minds in the way I have. Even I had a period of time where I struggled to see the people around me as anything more than just walking meat,” Sylver said, as the swirling liquid in his hand went lax and dribbled all over the ground.

What am I missing? Is it an issue of volume, mass or is there not enough mana? Nic had less mana than I do right now and he could do it on a whim… Is the issue that it’s not my flesh and blood? Sylver asked himself, as he made a dagger appear in his hand and dragged it down the back of his forearm.

The pool of darkened minced meat and bone was slowly soaking into the ground, as Sylver held his hand over it and let his blood drip into it. He cocked his head to the side as he felt the connection form. But it felt strange, there was something too solid about the connection.

“Is that how you saw the liberation army? Just pieces of meat?” Lorn asked, with just the slightest change in his tone that Sylver understood to mean that there was more to his question.

“Believe it or not, no. They’re fighting for what they believe in, I can both respect and understand that. Maybe they’re even in the right, most people aren’t wholly “good”, it isn’t that farfetched for there to be a number of nobles that are “evil”, kidnapping young women to then drown them when they get bored. With Lawrence in particular, I almost feel bad about it. He didn’t really care about the whole liberation army thing. He joined out of love, I can admire people like that,” Sylver explained, as he furrowed his brows and focused on the puddle on the ground and saw it start forming into a blob again.

“But you still killed them?” Lorn asked, still floating in the air and looking up at the sky.

“I did. I needed the corpses, I needed to pass the quest, and I don’t like war, especially when it will get in my way and might cause my friends to get hurt. Like I told Bonny, this isn’t political or personal, it is entirely out of need,” Sylver explained. The blob formed into a blunt spike and reached upwards.

The tip of the spike coiled itself around Sylver’s hand and the rest of the body of liquid followed after it.

“So that makes it alright?” Lorn asked. Sylver’s arm shook from the weight as the dark red liquid moved up his arm and covered his shoulder.

“Nothing makes it “alright”. It is what it is, for better or for worse. If in some convoluted way the liberation army does manage to kill me and overthrow the high king, I will be remembered as one of history’s vilest killers. A monster in human form, that kind of thing. It’s all about perspective,” Sylver said quietly, as he very slowly adjusted the framework, line by line until he started to feel a building pressure around his arm.

“I’ve heard that before. Most of the army has a similar outlook on it, or at least all the soldiers I spoke to did,” Lorn said.

Sylver felt the pressure move up and down his arm in waves, as everything seemed to just click inside of Sylver’s head. This was only a portion of what Bruno’s spell was supposed to do, but it was almost better.

In fact, it was good enough that Sylver wasn’t all that certain there was any point consulting Bruno’s notes after this. Bruno’s magic was slow, grandiose, and effective, but came with a high cost.

This barely functional cobbled together and improvised piece of dark magic that Sylver was altering by the second was fast, small, extremely effective, and most importantly, cheap.

Sylver felt the blob of dark red darkness react as he sent a wave of mana through it, and nearly fell over as parts of it slammed and clamped themselves down and solidified.

Sylver looked at his armored-up hand, and for a split second couldn’t wait to tell Nic about it, and rub it in his face. Master Ward was always a little too smug about his advanced blood magic techniques.

The fact that Sylver figured out one of his spells and could use it after only a few days of thinking it over, using barely related spell notes, and with less than 3 hours of experimentation would take the wind right out of him.

“New perk?” Lorn asked, floating down to look at Sylver’s arm.

It wasn’t quite the same as master Nic’s blood armor was, but Sylver felt like his version worked better. Fragments of bone stuck out of flat areas in a scale-like fashion, forming a layered defense while allowing the armor to bend without breaking all the bone fragments off. Similarly, Sylver’s finger had matching bone fragment scales on the back and formed into slightly curved claws at the end of his fingertips.

Sylver closed his fist and found that the gauntlet had indents on his palm so the bony fingertip claws didn’t snap. Sylver walked over to one of the nearby trees and flatted his hand out. He shoved it towards the tree, and, for lack of a better word, wiggled the bone fragments, along with the rest of the gauntlet, towards the tree, and found that with the added momentum his hand was buried up to the wrist inside of the tree trunk.

“Does a mage even need a close quarter combat perk? Kind of seems pointless. Not to mention from what I’ve seen you’re all about speed and dodging, what use does armor have for you?” Lorn asked, as Sylver tried to pull his hand out of the tree trunk, but had to leave a large portion of the gauntlet inside. He looked at his hand as the armor on his forearm moved up to cover his hand.

Sylver touched the gauntlet stuck inside the tree trunk with the tip of his finger, and it very quickly liquefied and was absorbed by his gauntlet, moving some of the bone fragments around as it moved up his forearm and remade the vambrace portion of his armor.

Sylver took a step back and held his open palm towards the tree trunk. It took a few seconds, but shards of bone exploded out of it, with the body made up of solidified flesh and blood, and disappeared inside of the tree trunk.

As Sylver ran out of mana the whole thing turned into a mush liquid and slumped down onto the ground.

“It’s not a perk it’s-”

[Skill: Coat Of Carrion (I)]
Skill level can be increased through use.
I – Using the flesh, blood, and bone of the dead, empower an item or creature.
*Quality dependent on flesh, blood, and bone being used.
*Quantity of flesh increases power.
*Quantity of bone increases durability.
*Quantity of blood increases duration.

“-a skill?” Sylver asked as the notification popped out without any warning.

Huh…

“I wouldn’t have advised it, it’s better to acquire skills on your own, rather than through class rank-ups. Not to mention most people stick to one or two skills at most, there’s no point gathering a ton of skills if they’re all low level,” Lorn explained, as Sylver waited for his mana to regenerate.

Sylver looked around the area, and towards the blacked-out barrier, and lifted his arms into the air to stretch.

“There’s only one mage left,” Sylver said mostly to himself, as he stepped onto a giant warrior’s corpse, and slowly lost height as his feet went into the man’s chest.

Dark red liquid pooled inside of the corpse’s now hollow chest, and slowly traveled up Sylver’s legs. It barely reached Sylver’s waist before the corpse had completely disappeared. Sylver took a step towards the next one and nearly fell over as he felt something in his left leg snap.

He caught himself but could feel the bundled-up muscle in his calf and released the armor on his legs.

Fantastic, there couldn’t have been a more perfect time for me to find the limit of Ciege’s strength… Sylver thought to himself sarcastically, before realizing he was actually right.

Total Level: 92
[Koschei-5]
[Necromancer-87]

CON: 65
DEX: 100
STR: 1
INT: 150
WIS: 100
AP: 75

Health: 633/650
Stamina: 294/325
MP: 422/2250

Health Regen: 7.58/M
Stamina Regen: 4.88/M
MP Regen: 281.25/M

35 into constitution to get it over with. That leaves me with 40 points to distribute…

Sylver waited a moment before mentally adding 35 points into constitution.

The effect was noticeable.

It felt like his breathing was back to how it was before he confined his lungs into an iron cage. Not only that, the soreness in Sylver’s arm all but disappeared. It went from being almost painful enough to make him cry, to just barely itching. Sylver breathed in a breath of fresh air and gagged as the smell of shit and decay hit him all at once.

His eyes felt sharper, even without him enhancing them with magic, the faint rustling of leaves sounded louder, and Sylver felt his torn achilles heel slowly moving back into place, without any effort on his part. But the downside was that he could smell everything around him.

“HP is at a cool one thousand. Good choice, your opponents will always waste time trying to figure out if it’s the real number, or a fake one,” Lorn said, as Sylver went back to looking at his status.

It was… temping was too weak of a word to describe the idea of dropping all 40 points into intelligence. It would bump up MP regeneration to almost 6MP per second.

Sylver flicked his wrist and made one of his daggers appear in it. He leaned down towards one of the other discarded corpses and poked it with the tip of the dagger. The poked area turned a dark red as it liquefied and moved up the dagger’s blade, coating it entirely in a few short seconds, before moving up the handle and doing the same.

The dagger in Sylver’s hand extended out slightly, as well becoming a barely noticeable amount thicker and wider. As Sylver moved it to the side, the dagger shimmied towards that side, adding a significant amount of force behind the movement.

He tossed the dagger into the air and caught it again, it didn’t spin even once. Sylver tossed it in the air again, without doing anything differently and it spun in the air so quickly that Lorn could barely track its movements before it fell back down and landed in Sylver’s hand. Sylver could feel that the added weight was already rubbing against the limit of what he could handle.

Although weight was the wrong word, his hands couldn’t handle the force the daggers added to his swings.

“If you forget the fact that that’s someone’s dead skin, that’s kind of cool,” Lorn said, as Sylver pulled his hand back and threw the dagger towards the tree.

As it made contact, bright red strings exploded in all directions and wrapped themselves around the tree trunk, using shards of bone to embed themselves deeply into it, like briar hooks. Sylver aimed his open hand towards the dagger and…

It shook for a moment before it fell onto the ground. With the speed of a snail, the dagger dragged itself through the loose soil and leaves and eventually came close enough for Sylver’s robe to grab it and move it back into place.

“Still absolutely disgusting, but it looks useful,” Lorn said.

Sylver thought it over for a while and tried to convince himself to ignore his lack of strength before he reluctantly dropped the remaining 40 points into strength. It wasn’t just the blood armor that he wanted the added strength, there was also the problem that Sylver haded seeing that single number whenever he looked at his status.

Total Level: 92
[Koschei-5]
[Necromancer-87]

CON: 100
DEX: 100
STR: 41
INT: 150
WIS: 100
AP: 0

Health: 988/1,000
Stamina: 496/500
MP: 1,488/2250

Health Regen: 11.67/M
Stamina Regen: 7.5/M
MP Regen: 281.25/M

Sylver cracked his neck as he disappeared into the pitch-black barrier.

*

**

*

Finding the mage wasn’t that hard.

He was almost certainly inside the large sphere of bright blue lightning, that fizzed so loudly that it was the only sound Sylver could hear while inside the barrier.

He was wearing a bright blue robe, with a yellow hood that had pieces of metal embedded into it, that sent sparks flying as lightning arced from one metal stud to the other.

[Elf (Mage+Mage+Mage+Thundering Nimbus) – 149]
[HP-6,951]
[MP-N/A]

The barrier is unstable, and I don’t even know how long it will hold… It could be here for months and the mage might eventually fall asleep or run out of mana, or it could fall in the next few minutes and he’ll be free to go.

Sylver very slowly and quietly walked around while holding his hand against the barrier, and plotted out a plan of attack. A few tiny embers continued to burn in the nearly airless town, appearing to be the tiniest of candles in the otherwise pitch-black area.

With [Eyes Of The Royal Tiger] Sylver saw everything around him as if it were the middle of a bright and sunny day. He watched the mage from the corner of his vision as he circled him, constantly hiding behind cover and being careful not to be seen just to be safe.

Only a 57 level difference… But he only has 4 classes, meaning they’re likely [Uncommon] or [Rare].

Should I just leave and cross my fingers the barrier holds out? Does it matter if I let him leave? What’s he going to do? Describe my mask and robe to the other outposts? Give them my fake name?

To say I could get fucked if I fight him is an understatement. Just getting near him is already enough for the shades to pop, they’re not going to be of much use…

Sylver spent a good five minutes observing the mage. The mage used his lightning to somehow alter the air around him to make it breathable, while almost automatically killing anything that dared get too close to him. On top of that, his sphere seemed to be as much of a shield, as it was a spear. A bomb fell directly onto it, and the mage just barely reacted to it.

Sylver stepped over a piece of Red-Eye’s mask and-

...

…

…

Sylver smacked himself on the forehead so hard that the lightning mage heard the sound and turned towards it.

“I’m such a fucking idiot,” Sylver cursed himself, as a bolt of lightning descended from the large cloud floating near the top of the pitch-black barrier, and melted a great sword one of the shades had embedded into the ground.

Sylver turned into smoke and stayed low to the ground as he slithered towards the middle of the town. Giant bolts of lightning rained down around him, turning all the swords Sylver had gathered out of habit into puddles of liquid metal.

Apart from that Sylver reached the middle of the town undisturbed and unharmed. He appeared inside the house that housed the barrier creation device, and very carefully removed his mask, and allowed the compressed air inside to escape.

“Will your thing still work if you’re in an anti-magic field?” Sylver asked, as Lorn shimmered into sight and was staring directly at Lawrence’s decapitated corpse. Red-Eye took a while to get out because he apparently wanted to have a snack first.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, not a problem… I promise you, this isn’t as perfect as it first appears, I wouldn’t be working as a guild tester if there weren’t a ton of drawbacks and conditions attached to it. Why?” Lorn asked, as he looked away from Lawrence’s corpse and watched Sylver crouch down near the barrier creation device.

“I’m going to turn magic off, and then I’m going to try and stab that mage to death,” Sylver explained, as he found the framework he had been looking for and tried to figure out how to force it to activate. Shades wouldn’t be able to materialize inside an anti-magic field, so Sylver would be on his own.

“Alright,” Lorn said as Sylver reached out with his finger towards the blue quartz, but changed his mind and started over.

“You’re not going to try and talk me out of it?” Sylver asked after a while, as he reached out with his hand and very carefully started to alter the course of the mana flowing through the quartz.

“You sound like you know what you’re doing, and more honestly I kind of want to see the fight,” Lorn said, as Sylver felt the air around him become heavy. His robe stopped moving and draped over his body as if it were made out of scraps.

The extra 40 points in strength hadn’t done a whole lot. Saying the change was barely noticeable implied that there was a change.

There wasn’t one.

Or if there was, Sylver hadn’t noticed it. Walking might have become a bit easier, but it was hard to tell given that Sylver spent every moment he was awake enhancing his body with magic. Sylver quickly stored all his daggers and other weapons into his radius and ulna, and missed a couple that fell out of his robe, and had to bend down to pick them up.

The good news was that the anti-magic field that Sylver had erected didn’t affect the runes inside of him. He could summon his ax at will without any issue, and could even summon an explosive. Whether it was because runes are naturally unaffected by anti-magic fields, or just the result of Sylver’s indestructible ribcage insulating them, was something Sylver would check at a later date.

Sylver closed his eyes for a moment and shut down a large portion of his pain receptors. A mage at that mage’s level would almost certainly know how to enhance his body using internal magic. Not to mention that it was unlikely that he managed to get to level 149 without knowing how to defend himself while out of mana.

Meaning that there was a very good chance this fight was going to hurt. Not as much as trying to fight him while he could use magic, but breaking your nose hurt no matter how many times it had happened.

Sylver made sure the stiletto hidden up his sleeve wouldn’t fall out, made sure the laces on his boots were tight, was careful to make sure he wouldn’t accidentally get tangled up in his robe, before making his way towards the lightning mage. Luckily Kitty’s [Eyes of The Royal Tiger] still worked perfectly fine, otherwise, Sylver would have been walking completely blind.

As he got closer and closer to the spot he had last seen the mage, Sylver suddenly got an idea. He could just throw a bomb at the mage. What was he going to do? How could he even stop it?

Granted, Sylver might get caught up in the explosion, and there was a danger of shrapnel, but absolute worst-case scenario he’d simply need to use [Draining Touch] on the mage's corpse to grow back whatever he lost because of the explosion.

Sylver was careful to always have a good cover, in the even the mage had a ranged weapon of some sort. Crossbows could be made to be small enough to be hidden inside someone’s sleeve, Sylver didn’t want to take any chances and get killed in such a stupid way.

Again.

He finally found the spot where he was fairly certain the lightning mage should be, but couldn’t see him anywhere. Sylver crept around the sides and corners for a good five minutes, before he heard Lorn chuckle to himself. Sylver shot him a glare, as he tried to figure out what Lorn was looking at with such a shit-eating grin on his face.

Sylver saw the lightning mage.

Laying on the ground, breathing very quick and shallow breaths, like a fish that was suffocating. The only reason Sylver could tell the man was breathing, was because he was sending a small cloud of ash into the air with each exhale.

“He’s barely awake, has been for the last couple of minutes. I know for a fact he isn’t faking it, if you’re willing to take my word for it,” Lorn offered.

Sylver stood up straight and walked towards the barely moving mage.

“Right… Without any magic, he can’t breathe the oxygen-deprived air… I’m uh… Well, it’s not like it would have ended any differently if we fought. I don’t see any point raising a mage as a shade, since I can’t make a shade that can use magic at the moment, so your soul is free to go,” Sylver said, as he leaned down towards the mage and lifted his chin up with one hand while he slit his throat.

Given the way the man’s eyes were bulging, he likely had no idea what was going on right now.

[Elf (Mage+Mage+Mage+Thundering Nimbus) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 50 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Necromancer] has reached level 88!
+5AP

[1 perk available for [Necromancer]]

“I was kind of hoping this fight would unlock a new perk, but it is what it is,” Sylver said, mostly to himself before he saw Lorn move in front of him.

“So the skill you unlocked earlier, the dagger thing, that was from that book you read? Do you know how much skill books go for?” Lorn asked, as Sylver walked through him and took a straight path towards the town center.

“It’s extremely specialized. It isn’t worth anything unless you’re a necromancer that happens to know a bit of dark magic,” Sylver explained, as he saw Lorn in the corner of his eye appear to sulk for a moment.

“Since I’m revising most of the story anyway, I might as well make this out to be a big fight. It’s too anti-climactic otherwise,” Lorn explained, as Sylver entered the house housing the barrier creation device, and crouched down near it again.

“Life is anti-climactic sometimes. Keep it in there, use it as comedic relief after a very long stretch of brutal and gore-filled deaths,” Sylver offered, as he tapped it with his finger and watched the crystal lose its glow.

“No offense, but this isn’t that kind of story. I’m thinking of going for the anti-hero angle. Or maybe the necessary evil route. It was kind of tense when you were lying to Red-Eye, and when you were running away after killing him, so maybe I can make it into a thriller? It’s hard, you only get one chance to introduce a song to people, it’s important to get it right the first time. Not to mention the fight with Lamb-Chop, that’s a whole other story,” Lorn said, mostly to himself as Sylver walked out of the building and watched the pitch-black barrier slowly turn transparent.

“Not that it changes anything, but Bonny was lying about being pregnant… I was almost certain back when she said it, but I checked just to be sure,” Sylver explained quietly.

“Bonny Ann’s story isn’t about whether or not she was pregnant,” Lorn said casually as he strummed his lute.

“You specifically mentioned the fact that she was a pregnant woman. I just wanted to clear things up,” Sylver said, as Lorn nodded without looking at him, and made a very small note in his book.

Lorn was still trying to decide how to approach Sylver’s story by the time Sylver finished burning the bodies that didn’t have any use and was flying away on Will to the next outpost.

*

*

*

Sylver chose the outpost labeled #2 because it was the closest. He’d expected it to be in the process of being reinforced, given how the guards mentioned waiting for all the others to finish setting up their defenses.

Instead what he saw was a giant pile of burning corpses, near which four guards stood around and stared at with unmistakable pride in their eyes.

All four wore identical studded leather armor, with matching identical spears in their hands, and identical bows on their backs. When one of them turned, Sylver saw that they all had a small round shield strapped over their back, as if it were a turtle shell. There was something off about their armor like it had been made to look simple on purpose.

The four men turned as one and looked directly at Sylver, smiling so hard that their black beards parted to reveal their yellow teeth.

Sylver moved his smoke form behind a large tree and had Spring materialize and walk out from behind the tree wearing Sylver’s robes and mask.

“Everything alright here?” Spring asked as he approached the burning pile and oddly relaxed men.

“That all depends. Are you here to cause trouble?” the man standing closest to Spring asked. None of them so much as reached for their weapons.

“Quite the opposite. There’s a group of rebels that are planning on taking this town over,” Spring said, as he stopped walking and stood close enough that he could feel the heat coming off the burning pile.

“Oh dear! Rebels? In our neck of the woods? What do they look like?” the man on the very left asked with false surprise, as the other three men chuckled. He sounded younger, but it was more tonal than anything to do with his actual voice.

“Leather armor, mostly warriors, and some of them might have the symbol of two fish kissing somewhere on their bodies,” Spring explained. The man who had spoken last rummage in the burning pile of corpses with the tip of his spear and dragged out an armor piece with the symbol of two fish kissing visible on the shoulder pad.

“Is this the symbol?” the man asked.

“Yeah…” Spring said awkwardly as he waited for Sylver to tell him what to say next. Sylver was just about to talk when Lorn materialized directly in front of Spring.

“Holy shit. You’re-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” the man standing at the very back interrupted as Lorn shimmer for a moment and almost disappeared. The man spoke with such calm authority that Sylver was reminded of a tribe leader.

Lorn turned around and waved towards Sylver. “We can leave! This town is safe, there’s no point being here,” Lorn shouted towards the tree line where Sylver was hiding. Sylver almost felt embarrassed as he stepped out from behind cover and Spring disappeared into the shadows.

He kept his mask on as he walked towards the men and the burning pile of corpses.

“I’d like to clarify something first. Kurska was attacked and taken over about 2 months ago. And from what I heard them say, I was under the impression this town was too,” Sylver asked. All four men shared a look before two of them disappeared into thin air.

“Two months? These fish kissing guys have been coming here for nearly half a year now. But now that you mention it, they did start hitting harder recently. Dima nearly lost his foot to one of them,” the man said, gesturing at his mirror image, called Dima apparently.

“I didn’t lose my foot to one of them, we’ve been over this! That python wasn’t with them, it was just plain bad luck,” Dima reprimanded, to which the nameless man just smiled.

“Well maybe if you paid more attention to your surroundings you-”

“I really hate to interrupt but there’s a third town possibly in the middle of getting attacked right now. If you’re really fine, I’m going to leave,” Sylver said, as both Dima and the other guard looked behind them.

“Which town? Where?” Dima asked.

Sylver reached into his robe and pulled out the map he had looted from Red-Eye. Dima took the map from Sylver’s hands and looked it over.

“That’s Hars’s territory…” Dima said to his twin as he handed Sylver the folded-up map back.

“Where’s the rest of your party?” the man without a name asked.

“He’s alone. But he killed Lamb-Chop, Kold-Kap, and Zet the Zealot all by himself on the way here,” Lorn blurted out. Dima and his twin exchange another odd look.

“Lamb and Zet are dead? Seriously?” Dima asked, as he nearly gestured towards Sylver before he changed his mind and kept his hand down.

“Again, I apologize, but every second that passed might be another person being brutally murdered,” Sylver reminded, as the two guard’s brows furrowed in a near-perfect synchronization.

“That town is safe, don’t worry about it… But there is something you could do to help if you’re interested,” Dima said.

“I’m interested in the sense I have a quest to clear bandits out,” Sylver explained, while Lorn glanced at him with frightened eyes.

Oh, I see what this is…

“Pyos will show you where the “bandits” are coming from. Or where they’re gathered at least, trying to find their heads and leaders is a waste of time, but you’ll give everyone a ton of breathing room if you can handle that group for us,” Dima explained. Sylver looked up towards Lorn.

“You would be well within your rights to stop here and go home. And with all due respect to these two “guards”, this is far beyond what constitutes a C rank quest. This is closer to B rank, maybe even A rank, depending on how you choose to look at it,” Lorn said.

Both of the “guards” had a small grin on their faces, but there wasn’t any judgment in their expressions or body language.

“Is Dermit still working at the adventurer’s guild?” Dima asked Lorn while Sylver quietly thought it over.

“Dermit? Dermit… Dermit… I don’t think so,” Lorn answered as Dima scratched his chin.

“Short guy. Long blond hair that covers half his face to hide how scarred up it is? Walks with a limp, always smells like fresh pine for absolutely no reason?” Dima explained as Lorn’s eye’s widened.

“The guild master’s name is Dermit? Dermit Gesley?” Lorn clarified.

“Baby Ges, that’s him. If you handle the bandits for us, my brothers and I will write you a recommendation. I’m not sure how much good it will do, but it might come in handy in the future,” Dima offered.

Three men appeared behind them, two identical to Dima, and one that was so hunched over that the top of his head barely reached Sylver’s waist. Sylver felt his skin crawl and the hair on the back of his neck stand up like heckles as the hunched-over man looked up at him.

“Ah, good, you found him. Pyos I need you to show… I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name,” the guard that wasn’t Dima said.

“Sylver,” Sylver answered.

“Fyodor. I need you to show Sylver to the bandit encampment in the south,” Fyodor explained.

“I’m tired,” Pyos said, with a noticeable slur in his words.

“I’ll lend you Katya for 3 days,” Fyodor offered.

“A month,” Pyos countered.

“3 days.”

“3 weeks.”

“3 days.”

“2 weeks.”

“2 days,” Fyodor said, at which point Pyos stuck his hand out towards the tall man.

“Fine, 3 days, but I get your spot at the next champagne fair,” Pyos countered eagerly.

“I’ll give you Ivan’s spot,” Fyodor offered, which caused one of the newly arrived brothers to say “Hey!”

“Deal,” Pyos said, as he and Fyodor shook hands.

The brother in the back that had said “hey” started to say something but Fyodor shot him a glare that shut him up. Sylver heard a very quiet “we’ll talk later” before Fyodor turned around to face him.

“This is one of those villages where by pure coincidence every other person is a retired master swordsman, or a legendary mage, or something along those lines, right?” Sylver asked.

Pyos didn’t say anything as he placed his hands on his backside and with a groan stood up straight. At his full height, he was almost as tall as Sylver was. Everyone, including Lorn, pretended Sylver hadn’t said that as Fyodor started to speak.

“Pyos will show you where the bandit camp is, but you’ll have to handle everything else by yourself. When you’re done, I would appreciate it if you brought us some of their maps. The ones we have here are old, and these bandits really know their cartography,” Fyodor explained. His brothers nodded along behind him.

“Alright. I’m going to guess I shouldn’t tell anyone I’ve seen you here, and if I ever hear a story about a group of 4 identical looking men, I shouldn’t try to say I’ve met them?” Sylver asked.

To their credit, all the people standing near the pile of burning corpses managed to smile with the perfect mixture of threatening and politely asking him to play along.

Pyos leaned down to the left and the right and stretched his limbs out, as Lorn whispered something in one of the yet-to-be-named brother’s ears. Sylver saw recognition in the brother’s eye, but couldn’t hear what he whispered back to Lorn.

An old woman wearing an amulet that was powerful enough to suppress the magic of a mage up to the 5th tier appeared a few moments later and gave Pyos a small backpack filled with food and kissed him on the cheek.

“Just once I’d like to have a normal quest,” Sylver muttered as he and the old man with scars covering almost every inch of skin on the back of his hands walked in the direction of the rebel camp.

“People who go on normal quests don’t end up having a whole city named after them,” Lorn added quietly but with a grin aimed towards Pyos.

“I’m leaving the moment we’re close enough that you can see them,” Pyos said while he shot Lorn a glare that made the man completely disappear.

“Sure thing. Out of curiosity, who’s Katya?” Sylver asked.

“Fyodor’s granddaughter, she’s a carpenter. She’s barely level 40, but the things she can make out of wood are better than anyone else I’ve met so far. I’m going to get my kitchen remodeled,” Pyos explained, speaking without a grimace in his voice for the first time since Sylver met him.

“Is 3 days enough for that?” Sylver asked.

“It is the exact amount of days she told me she would need. Fyodor is a good man, but he’s a mean motherfucker when it comes to his granddaughter,” Pyos explained, as Sylver nodded along.

They talked about the most mundane of things as Sylver felt Lorn appear behind them and could feel that he desperately wanted to ask something.

When Lorn ended up blurting the question out, something about Logan the Lucky, Pyos huffed and ignored him, and continued to talk about his idea to make scented soap using flower petals.