Ch092-Colaborate And Listen (Patreon)

-

-

Ch092-Colaborate And Listen

-

-

Sylver realized that he hadn’t said a word in almost 2 days.

Mostly because he was busy adapting the spell that ended up turning into [Coat Of Carrion]. He could have left it as is. The skill did do all the work for him if he allowed it, but there was room for improvement.

Primarily using the created liquid coating to form a weapon without using something as a base. Sylver knew at a rational level it was possible, but even with Bruno’s notes, he couldn’t figure it out. One thing he did learn was that his shades weren’t capable of donning a full set of [Coat Of Carrion] armor. Or even a piece of [Coat Of Carrion] coated armor.

Spring was the strongest, but his body exploded under the weight. The same was true for Sylver, except his spine threatened to shatter when he tried to wear even a drop more than gloves, gauntlets, and shoulder pads. Sylver had some hope for zombies, but he was getting more and more of a feeling that it was simply a limitation of the skill.

On the bright side, the skill or spell didn’t appear to have a range limitation. Sylver coated a shades sword and then flew away on Will. The shade was instructed to wait for a full day before returning to Sylver with a report.

Range wasn’t an issue.

Duration was the issue.

If it wasn’t being used the weapon could be coated for as long as you wanted it to. But every single swing, regardless if it hit something or not, burned through the coating. Sylver could control his coated weapon directly, he could choose when the weapon was boosted or not, but Spring and the other shades couldn’t.

[Bound Bones] luckily prevented a need to carry a dead body around, but Sylver found that reversing the spell’s effect wasn’t possible. Once a piece of skin, bone, or drop of blood was converted into [Coat Of Carrion] there was no reversing the effect.

Or more accurately it was difficult to the point of being impossible. Breaking something apart was always a lot easier than building something.

Sylver found that the skill wasn’t limited to just being used to bind something. It could just as easily be used to tear something open, forcing its fleshy bone-shard-tipped limbs into a wound and pulling it apart until it ran out of strength.

Sylver also found that he had a certain level of control over something coated in [Coat Of Carrion], even if he hasn’t had contact with it for a long while. There was a range limitation, but for the life of him Sylver couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t limited to his line of sight, but the longer the time between him having physical contact with the coated item increased, the less control he had over it.

Something Sylver himself held in his hand and threw could be made to adjust its course, quite a significant amount. If he wanted to, he could even make it shoot out a tendril and pull the thrown weapon towards the target.

All in all, Sylver had a lot to think about.

Pyos and Lorn talked to each other for the most part, and whenever they needed to stop to rest and camp Spring handled everything.

“There’s no need to apologize, Grusha does the same thing now and then, I’m more than used to it,” Pyos explained when Sylver hid his notes away and looked around slightly confused.

“Grusha?” Sylver asked.

“My wife. She’s a mage too, one day her eyes just glaze over and she spends several weeks barely speaking a word or eating anything and sits around writing things down while trying to make a pebble glow in a specific pattern. At least you’ve got your friend here to make you eat, Grusha used to starve herself to half death before I met her,” Pyos explained, while he patted his stomach.

Although there wasn’t a whole lot to pat, for an old man Pyos was in very good shape. Save for some problems with his back, and some sort of lung thing given by the way he would run out of breath mid-sentence from time to time.

“What is he anyway? Every time I asked he wouldn’t say anything,” Pyos asked. Lorn seemed to perk up from quietly playing his lute without making any sound.

“He’s a shade. A bound shade, although they’re all in a way bound shades,” Sylver explained, as he stood up from the tree stump Spring had given him to use as a chair.

“Why can he talk while the others can’t? The one with the hat that was watching the pot looked like he wanted to say something to me, but he didn’t,” Pyos asked, with a gesture towards Fen he was currently standing near the edge of the camp and staring and acting as a deterrent for low-level monsters.

“His name is Fen, and uh… How do I explain this... When I raise an undead there’s a very tiny interaction between their mind and their body. A zombie isn’t aware it’s a zombie, but it knows how to walk and swing a sword and all that. The connection is far too small for it to understand what’s going on around it, or speak for that matter. They have spacial awareness, to an extent, but it’s all tied to me,” Sylver explained, as he placed his hands on his hips and leaned back until he felt the tension in his spine release.

“Ah. So you can’t just send them down into the dungeons to hunt for you?” Pyos asked. Sylver spun his finger towards the campfire and made it burn a bit brighter as he waited for the teapot to boil.

“With Spring, I could. But they can’t be healed without me being nearby, and with dungeons specifically, he’s almost blind inside of them. They’re like… Essentially any undead I raise are trained dogs. They can bite on command, but there’s only so much that they can do without any input from me. Their minds aren’t awake or aware of what’s going on, but if I tell them to go here and kill that guy, they’ll do it,” Sylver explained.

He poured Pyos a cup of tea into a wooden travel mug and poured himself the same.

“So they’re beaten into submission dogs?” Pyos asked without bothering to hide his distaste.

“No. They’re more like employees or mercenaries. They’re afraid of dying and I allow them to remain on this plane of existence, and in exchange, they fight for me. Their souls provide them the mana they need to remain here, but without my magic and framework inside of them they wouldn’t be able to do anything,” Sylver said.

“That’s not as bad as I expected. Quite honestly I always pictured necromancy to be a whole lot more… Devious?” Pyos asked. Sylver smiled slightly at the word.

“It’s uh… They’re renting their bodies from me if that makes any sense. Because once they died their corpse was no longer theirs, I took it, for lack of a better word renovated it, and allowed them to live in it. At the cost of following my commands,” Sylver explained.

“Why is it that magic is always so boring once you get past the exciting and flashy exterior?” Lorn asked with a defeated sigh.

“Because it’s as much of a science as it is an art. Chords are boring, learning notes is boring, but you can’t play a song without knowing them. You can play by ear, sure, but that’s called being a sorcerer, and they’re vastly inferior to mages or wizards,” Sylver explained sat back down and drank some of his tea.

“So what’s so special about this one?” Pyos asked, pointing at Spring who was currently in the process of watching three shades pack away Sylver’s tent.

“Remember that connection thing I spoke about? What normally happens is that it grows bigger or smaller depending on how willing, or motivated, the undead is. But it’s a slow process, we’re talking years slow. With Spring I was able to expedite the whole process because he was a lot more compatible than all the others. I won’t get into specifics, because it’s a trade secret, but what he is right now is what I hope all the shades I gave names to will end up as,” Sylver explained.

“What happens to the unnamed?” Pyos asked.

“Nothing. They remain at the bottom rung and aren’t aware of what’s going on around them. Once I have passed a certain number of shades I release the weakest and most unaware ones,” Sylver said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“I’ll be honest with you. I like you, as a person. And I’ve seen enough in my life that I’ve learned not to make assumptions about people and their reasons for doing certain things. But it’s sickening to hear you speak of people’s souls as if they were disposable objects. I would prefer if we changed the subject,” Pyos said with a grimace and with a raised hand towards Sylver, while Lorn just shrugged.

“I can understand that. What’s your plan for your kitchen?” Sylver asked, as Pyos almost excitedly reached into his backpack and looked through his notebook for the sketches.

*

*

*

Things like this reminded Sylver, yet again, to always temper his expectations. Considering how advanced Red-Eye’s barrier was, and how well trained the men under Bonny’s command were, Sylver had expected an impenetrable fortress.

Instead, he saw what looked like a fishing village.

A fast-moving river meandered its way out of a large rocky cave, on top of which small wooden huts had been built on raised platforms. The roofs were made out of thatch, and small tough-looking boats were littered all over the place and hanging just above the water.

If not for the cages that had remains of blood splatters on their floors, Sylver would have honestly thought Pyos had brought him to the wrong place. It wasn’t even that heavily guarded.

But never the less Sylver could see the logic behind it. He wasn’t familiar with the surrounding area but could guess that this river was important for moving items north and south, making it incredibly difficult to predict where the rebellion would strike next. Not to mention it made bringing in reinforcements dead simple, as well as escaping in the event of the army deciding to attack.

Even with all the magic in the world, an army of soldiers could only move so fast. On the other hand, the rebellion would only need one mage that was capable of water magic to run away out of the army’s reach.

What the empire needed to nip this in the bud was to block up the river and make traversing it impossible. Or to hit them so hard that they didn’t have time to react, but that involved moving enough men to handle them.

Which because of the other wars they were currently in the middle of meant they likely didn’t have the manpower to cover so much ground. If the empire found out about this rebellion they would very likely dispatch a small mobile group, to do what Sylver about to do.

“I have less and less faith in this rebellion. Bonny seems to have been an outlier,” Sylver mumbled to himself as he turned into smoke and materialized standing up. Pyos flickered for a moment before he appeared near him.

“We’re well past this being a bandit clearing quest, so I’m willing to help if you need it,” Lorn offered. Sylver looked at him and thought it over.

“As much as I enjoyed our fireside chats and all that, I’m too old for this. It was very nice traveling with you, I genuinely do hope you make it out of this alive. Grusha will make biscuits and I’ll show you the wood I plan on using for my countertop” Pyos said, with a hand extended out towards Sylver. Sylver pulled his glove off and they shook hands.

“Thank you, I’ll be back as soon as I’m done here, I look forward to it,” Sylver said without so much as a shred of uncertainty. If Pyos was at all impressed at the confidence, he hid it well. If anything he looked mildly bored.

Sylver turned away from Pyos and quite honestly didn’t realize when the old man had left. He was one of those people who naturally compressed his soul to be near impossible to track.

“Since you’re willing to help can you check if that cave goes anywhere?” Sylver asked.

*

*

*

Sylver had planned to wait until after wiping out the remaining bandits before choosing a perk, but he was worried he would accidentally hit level 90 and would get one randomly chosen for him. Ideally, he would have done a bit more to give himself a better chance at getting a really good perk, but he wasn’t about to go try and kill monsters on the off chance it might unlock a special level 80 perk.

[Perk: Phantom’s Theft]
-For every creature that dies within your range, heal for 5% of their maximum HP.
*Current range: 21m

[Perk: Shadow’s Subtlety]
-Move with the silence and grace of a shadow.
-Gain 25% to Dexterity and MP Regen while in the form of a shadow.
*Weakness to all forms of damage increased by 50%.

[Perk: Dead Dominion]
-Gain control over any deceased biological matter within (WIS/2)m.
*Control over deceased biological matter dependent on proximity and mass.

Sylver had 9 other perks to choose from, but these three stood out.

[Phantom’s Theft] was good in theory, given that Sylver could hypothetically just jump into the middle of a crowd and focus solely on killing things. With how much more HP everyone else had it would mean that for every person Sylver killed that had over 20,000 HP he would gain 100% of his HP back.

It was tempting. Especially given how few options Sylver had to heal himself with, but he could achieve the same result with [Draining Touch], not to mention draining touch provided him with mana on top of HP.

[Shadow’s Subtlety] sounded interesting for a wholly different reason. Sylver’s smoke form via [Shadow’s Soma] was useful but was limited in that he didn’t regenerate anything while using it. [Shadow’s Subtlety] on the other hand would allow him to presumably hide and regenerate his HP, stamina, and MP, with an extra 25% boost to his MP regeneration.

But the 50% damage increase meant it wouldn’t take a whole lot to finish him off. He would be one lucky silver-tipped arrow away from dropping dead or being crippled.

[Dead Dominion] felt a bit different from the other two. In fact, it was the only one Sylver had a good feeling about. His range would be limited to 50m, but it would grow as he increased his level. In theory, every level up could increase it by 2.5m.

Not to mention it was the only perk Sylver knew the requirements for. His skill [Biological Manipulation] was one part of it, and having physical contact with over 250 corpses was the other part. The other two had been unlocked without his knowledge.

Most importantly, Sylver already knew how to use this perk. It was technically something he could one day use on his own, but the ritual to open his senses to primal energy wasn’t one Sylver was going to be able to do for a very long time.

The ritual needed the blood of a very specific eel, that was nearly extinct back then, Sylver genuinely couldn’t imagine that it existed on this side of the Asberg. He’d already attempted to find it via the cats, but they found absolutely fuck all. Either it didn’t exist here, or it was so well hidden that Sylver had no chance of finding it. Then there was the fact that Sylver wasn’t sure his body would even be able to handle the ritual, even if he did have all that he needed.

Not to mention the perk didn’t mention a cost for using it. If [Dead Dominion] functioned in the same way Sylver used to be able to manipulate dead matter around him using nothing but his soul, it would be the perfect defense and offense all at the same time. It was a useless ability back then because of who Sylver was up against, but it would be extremely useful when fighting against anything lower than 6th tier.

The other 9 perks Sylver had to choose from offered either a slight decrease in the cost of using dark magic or provided resistance against holy magic. All 9 were too small to even be worth considering, a 5% resistance to holy magic wouldn’t save him if he were to fight a priest.

Sylver sat down and looked down at the rocky river below and read through all the perks one last time to make sure he hadn’t accidentally missed something vital.

If he were fighting a large group, [Phantom’s Theft] would make him near unkillable. But that would only work if the enemies all had a ton of HP and could be killed in one hit by the shades. The same effect could theoretically be achieved if Sylver could get his hands on whatever the recipe that alchemist from Urth used, not to mention a potion would be a lot more reliable. And with [Dead Dominion] Sylver could just immobilize his enemies and use [Draining Touch] on them with relative safety and ease.

“There’s a hidden exit in the cave. It’s behind a large rock and warded against teleportation and clairvoyance spells, as far as I could tell at least. The river is coming up from the ground, but there’s a bunch of roots and rocks down there, I don’t think anyone would be able to get through it,” Lorn said, surprising Sylver for a moment.

Sylver looked up at the floating man.

“Where does the exit lead out to?” Sylver asked. He stood up from the rock he’d been using as a seat and cracked his neck.

[Perk: Dead Dominion]
-Gain control over any deceased biological matter within (WIS/2)m.
*Control over deceased biological matter dependent on proximity and mass.

“There’s a large dead tree, my guess is that it used to have goblins living underneath it, going by the claw markings and the shape of the tunnels,” Lorn explained, as Sylver took a very deep and slow breath.

Everything else aside the system really knew how to make something intuitive. Just like with [Shadow’s Agent] it took Sylver a few seconds to get used to the new extra limb.

But this wasn’t quite a new limb, it was more like it was something Sylver already had that had gone numb, and now was slowly regaining feeling.

He spread his arms out and felt the system limiting him. Just like he had done with the demon, using a paper-thin cloth barrier to stop it from leaving its plane, the system had placed a similar razor-thin cloth over Sylver’s senses.

It was so similar to what Sylver would have felt if he could sense primal energy that he felt like his finger was just about to scrap against the bigger picture before the system ever so slightly tightened the limitation and pushed him back in his place.

Sylver let his breath out and burned his lips from the resulting steam.

Right, my body is still human, I need to be careful not to fry my brain, Sylver thought as Spring handed him a handkerchief to wipe away the blood oozing out of his nose.

“You alright there?” Lorn asked, floating in a circle around Sylver as Sylver once again spread his arms out.

As long as he stayed within his allotted 50 meters, the system didn’t seem to have a problem with how Sylver used the perk. His only limitation was range, and that his brain would start to boil if he tried to move too much mass at the same time.

He nudged a tiny dead and dried up worm to straighten out and push its way out of the ground, found dead mouse bones covered in roots and snapped them into pieces, and forced them up into the air, a bunch of teeth that he couldn’t identify came out of the ground and floated in the air.

In under a minute Sylver was surrounded by a small vortex of tiny pieces of dead things. He stretched his arm out towards it and they washed over it as if liquid. Sylver momentarily cupped his outstretched hand and grabbed a fistful of floating dead matter. He opened his fist and a dark red ooze fell down towards the ground before it joined the vortex of floating trash.

A smile spread on Sylver's face as the dark red ooze mixed into the floating junk and absorbed it into itself, slowly but surely getting bigger and bigger.

Barely 3 minutes passed before Sylver was surrounded by a bubbly dark red swirling sphere with him at the very center. Sylver’s robe shuddered for a second before it flicked several darts and daggers at the floating liquid. They came out on the other side covered in red and wiggled in the air for a moment before they joined in on the slow-moving whirlpool of death and decay.

“Couldn’t be better, thanks for asking. Would you mind showing me where the escape route comes out?” Sylver asked politely, as his robe absorbed all the floating coated daggers and darts back into itself.

*

**

*

Sylver materialized right outside the dirt-covered wall and very slowly moved his hand towards it until he felt the metaphorical trip wire strain.

“There’s a spherical rock on the other side of this wall, do you mind telling me what the sigils at the very top of it look like?” Sylver whispered. Lorn moved through the dirt wall and poked his head out of it.

“Kind of like S.A.S. But there’s like a line on the top and bottom connecting the two S’s to each other,” Lorn said, as Sylver ever so slightly turned his hand clockwise and pushed a little harder.

“In the direction, the A is pointing in, there’s a sigil that looks like a circle with two dots inside of it. Directly before it, in the direction of the A-shaped sigil, is it shaped like a triangle with a line going through it, or like three squiggly lines?” Sylver asked. Lorn disappeared again and came back out.

“Three squiggly lines,” Lorn answered. Sylver smiled slightly at this and pushed a bit harder against the wall.

“There’s a wire sticking out of the sphere, what does the sigil it’s coming out of look like?” Sylver asked.

“Like the number 3, the bottom part sort of goes the other way, like a Z?” Lorn said. Sylver turned his hand counterclockwise and heard a very faint click.

The floating goblin skeletons directly behind him moved themselves against the wall and pressed together as much as they could. Sylver just barely managed to turn around and roll into a ball with his back towards the wall, before he was sent flying by the explosion. The remainder of his floating flesh and bones had covered his body as much as they could, taking the brunt of the explosive force.

As the pieces of floating flesh burned and turned into cinders and ash, they were released from Sylver’s grasp and were whisked away by the sudden draft that the explosion had created. It lasted for a couple of seconds before Sylver snuffed the fire out with a wave of his hand.

“No, no, that was on me. My hand slipped, it happens,” Sylver said very quickly and dismissively, as Lorn was about to start asking if it was his fault.

He got greedy because of finally being able to use something he hadn’t realized he missed and paid the price for it. Sylver glanced up at his HP and regretted it.

Health: 442/1,000

If he was being completely honest with himself, his pride took a bigger hit than his back did. Sylver shuddered as he felt a piece of bone move against his back because of a falling boulder, and felt it grind against his exposed spine for a second. Sylver’s cloak quickly spread itself out and covered his back and stopped the bleeding.

Sylver gave himself a second to gather his thoughts and turned into smoke and very carefully avoided the still-burning remains of the exploded barrel of tar.  He materialized right on top of the giant tree that used to be the entrance/exit but was now laying on its side in multiple pieces.

Sylver spread his arms out to stretch and found that his left shoulder had been blown wide open. He decided he might as well get it over with and lowered his left shoulder down, while Spring appeared behind him and scooped out the rotten flesh inside with a thin dagger. Sylver’s robe tightened against the gaping wound and he breathed a sigh of relief as he no longer felt any pain in his shoulder.

Well, there was pain, but it was easy to deal with physical pain, of missing a giant chunk of flesh, as opposed to the eye tearing pain of having silver stuck inside of you. Sylver moved his hand upwards while looking towards the giant rubble-filled crater and…

“Gods fucking dammit! I wasted so much fucking time gathering all of those,” Sylver muttered to himself as there was simply too much weight on top of the giant pile of dead bodies he had gathered to get them out of there. If he used earth magic, he’d be out of mana by the time he had a hole big enough to get them out.

Small pieces of teeth and, nails and horns managed to move through the cracks and crevices, but the bigger parts needed to be broken down but that would take too much time. Turning all of them into [Coat Of Carrion] liquid would require making physical contact with them, meaning individually touching them.

Sylver’s choice was made for him when he felt a disturbance with his mana, and very quickly turned into smoke and traveled towards the bandit cave entrance. A woman dressed in dull orange plate mail teleported directly on top of Sylver and stomped her foot on the swirling darkness. Sylver managed to gather himself into one piece and materialized, just as the woman finished doing something to her mace to charge it with magic.

“I come in peace, my name is Sor-” Sylver just barely managed to move his head out of the way as the woman threw her mace and obliterated the tree behind Sylver. He didn’t get a chance to so much as catch his breath as the woman moved her hand to the left, and the macehead shook for a moment, before flying towards Sylver.

Sylver turned into smoke and split his torso into two and allowed the mace to pass through him, but didn’t account for the handle and was hit directly in his sore left shoulder blade. He fell onto his back and his robe shoved him downward, towards the woman, as the mace changed direction midflight and nearly crushed Sylver’s skull beneath it.

The woman moved her arm towards herself, as Sylver’s robe threw him in the air, and it passed underneath him and ended up in the woman’s hand. Sylver flipped in the air and landed on his feet, just as the woman teleported directly in front of him and swung at him from the top, downward.

Instead of dodging Sylver leaned forward and hugged the woman under her arms. Bright red tendrils exploded out of Sylver’s robe, and wrapped themselves around the woman, forcing themselves underneath her armor and stabbing her in the eyes, mouth, nose and any other soft parts they could find. Sylver didn’t try to lift her off the ground but held her in place as Spring angled his dagger underneath the back of her helmet and pushed it upward in a single smooth motion.

[Human (Warrior+Warrior+War Smith+Bronze Knight+Warrior) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

The tip of the dagger came out through one of the helmet’s eyeholes and was less than a finger’s width away from Sylver’s own eye. Sylver stood still, with his arms wrapped around the dead woman’s torso, as Spring pried open the back of her helmet and held it open. Sylver moved his left hand upwards and gently reached underneath her helmet and drained the remains of her health and mana through the back of her neck.

[Draining Touch (III) Proficiency increased to 62%!]

[Physical Endurance (II) Proficiency increased to 93%!]

[Coat Of Carrion (I) Proficiency increased to 3%!]

When the fuck did [Physical Endurance] get that high? Has it been active this whole time?

Sylver breathed a short sigh of relief as he grew skin on his back and finally stopped feeling his robe rubbing against his bones. Spring pulled the dagger out and held the woman’s body in place as Sylver let go of her and the tendrils coming out of his two daggers broke off and fell limp against her armor.

Sylver breathed in and then breathed out a dark cloud of smoke, which turned into a small spiral and forced itself through the dead woman’s visor and into her mouth and the newly created hole where her eye used to be.

[Zombie (Common) Raised!]

[Raise Zombie (III) Proficiency increased to 44%!]

Sylver placed his hands on the zombie’s shoulder and patted them as he used some water to wash away the blood leaking out of her helmet and the tendrils hanging all over her body.

“Go run into the cave and bash the first person you find in the head, alright?” Sylver asked. The bronze-clad zombie nodded and picked up the mace that had fallen on the floor and turned around and began to run towards the bandit hideout.

Sylver stretched his arms for a few seconds as he spread the woman’s HP around through his body. His robe twisted itself around his body as Sylver poured some water over it to wash away the blood. He pulled his mask off and saw that it was scorched to the point of turning from white to black, and handed it to Spring as Spring gave him an identical, but clean, mask back.

Sylver cracked his neck and his knuckles as 3 shades wearing robes identical to his materialized out of his shadow. The 3 shades turned into 6, then 12, then 24, and then one of them split into 16, while the other two stayed at 8. In total there were 33 figures wearing pitch-black robes and identical bone-white masks.

Sylver split the group into three, ordering 8 shades to stay near the exit and “guard” it, 8 to run directly behind the zombie woman, and 16 to come with Sylver to circle around and hit the camp from the other side.

Sylver heard the sound of a page turning as he looked directly above him a saw Lorn staring wide-eyed down at him and his multiple copies.

“What? They already know I’m here, might as well use the confusion to my advantage,” Sylver argued. Lorn merely shrugged his shoulders, before he disappeared out of sight.

Sylver and the rest of the shades stood in a circle and very quickly ran towards the middle, mixing and matching at random, until they all of a sudden began to run in their separate directions.

*

*

*

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

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

[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

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

Sylver felt the faint connection between him and the zombie get severed as he continued to run through the dark green forest, even as he heard voices shouting behind him. His group of shades split into 2, 10 going with Sylver and 6 going slightly to the right.

Sylver grinned under his mask as Spring informed him the group chasing him split into two. He split his group of 10 into 2 groups of 5 and then scattered them into every direction short of running back the way they had come.

[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

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

[Necromancer] has reached level 89!
+5AP

Sylver reached the edge of the river but didn’t slow down as he used the [Bracelet Of The Aurai] to run on the fast-flowing water. Sylver watched the group of 8 shades on the other side of the river split apart as they made contact with the rushing, and screaming, band of warriors.

The warriors were all oddly thin and were armed with daggers, rapiers, some sort of wobbly spear, metallic claws and-

[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

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

[Necromancer] has reached level 90!
+5AP

[1 perk available for [Necromancer]]

[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

-they didn’t get a chance to use anything, as the shades lunged at them and yanked out the ignition device embedded inside of the bombs. From where he was running Sylver saw several of the slightly panicked warriors stop what they were doing to look at the smoking hole where a wooden bridge used to be, as chunks of their comrades splattered all over the nearby houses and fell into the river.

Sylver heard an explosion off in the distance but guessed that he wasn’t quite as lucky with the shades guarding the secret exit.

As the chunks of dead flesh and bone floated down the river and towards Sylver, he concentrated on his recently acquired perk and made the bobbling chunks fly into the air and follow right behind him.

There was a great deal of movement and shouting as Ulvic and his pack appeared out of one of the nearby houses and began to attempt to tear anyone within their vicinity. Sylver veered to the left to catch a few more fragments and allowed his robe to release its hold on the darts and daggers hidden inside it.

Almost as if they were tied to one another, the daggers flew out of Sylver’s robe and spread out around him, as if they were a cage. Sylver kicked hard off the invisible platform and landed on one of the wooden bridges.

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

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

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

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

…

It was hard to keep track of who was where, as notifications of defeated enemies flashed in front of Sylver’s eyes, as he ran towards the entrance of the cave, as did the rest of the panicked warriors. Sylver had them cornered and-

Only the fact that Sylver felt the mana building up below him gave him enough room to jump back and get out of range, as a wall of ice tall enough to completely seal up the cave entrance, exploded out of the river.

Sylver ever so slightly turned to the left as a giant ice spike missed him by less than a hair’s breadth, and exploded into pieces as it collided with the frozen water beneath him. He stepped right, then left, then two steps left, each time narrowly avoiding the spike of crystal clear ice.

A young man wearing a pale blue robe with an oddly dark complexion stood at the top of the wall of ice and looked down at Sylver. He stared right at Sylver, without so much as a twitch as a spike of ice came out of the ice beneath him and killed Reg behind him before he even finish materializing.

[Elf (Mage+Mage+Mage+Mage+Mage+Prime Elementalist) – 169]
[HP-4,900]
[MP-11,288]

Sylver glanced around, but couldn’t see anyone. Spring very quickly informed him that the ice was doing something, and they weren’t able to pass through it, even in the small cracks forming underneath it.

“So which one are you? Svental? Horst? Lourge? Which dog did they send this time?” the ice mage asked.

Sylver bowed in mock as the floating blobs of flesh behind him formed into a rough shape of a person and mimicked him.

“Horst the horstiest, at your service,” Sylver said with an amplified voice that made the puddles of blood that hadn’t been frozen by the ice vibrate and splatter.

“Liar!” the ice mage shouted, but he didn’t sound angry, he sounded oddly amused if anything. Sylver might have even heard a soft chuckle.

“I don’t suppose we could talk things out?” Sylver offered, as he lifted his masked face up to look at the ice mage, as did the Sylver-shaped loose collection of heads, arms, and legs. A bright red ax covered in pitch-black smoke appeared in Sylver’s hand as if out of nowhere. He threw it up into the air and a floating detached hand caught it.

“Do you really think after what you’ve done I-” the mage grinned at Sylver standing on a small wooden bridge as he almost casually stepped to the side to allow the shadow-coated ax to pass him by. “Just what I’d expect from a dog of the-”

The ice mage disappeared in an explosion of frost as Sylver pulled his frozen solid hand back and found that he couldn’t let go of the dagger. The ice mage’s eyes were wide open with confusion as he glanced down at the “Sylver” below and saw him standing perfectly still while surrounded by fallen chunks of flesh and bone.

To his credit, the ice mage didn’t waste a breath before waving his hands in the air and riddling Sylver’s body with spikes of ice. Sylver disappeared into a cloud of smoke, as his shattered mask fell off and clattered to the ground.

“You think I’ll fall for the same trick twice?” the ice mage asked the darkness around him, partially blinded by his own resulting snow that was now slowly falling down.

10 Sylver’s appeared out of nowhere and in perfect sync, holding an identical bright red dagger in each hand, and running at full speed towards the ice mage. The ice mage rolled his eyes as he turned on his heel and made a giant spike of ice appear in front of it.

The spike exploded out of his hand and much smaller spikes appeared near his feet and shot out towards the multiple Sylver’s all around him. Each spike landed true and kept going through the resulting clouds of pitch-black smoke, as the real Sylver clutched at his chest from where the spike had hit him.

“Typical, your kind always aim for the back,” the ice mage said, or tried to say, as the blood-red daggers continued to move towards the ice mage, and impaled him in the stomach, torso, thigh, shoulder, and side of the neck, and exploded with bright red tendrils. They bound the mage’s hands, head and yanked his feet together, and made him fall onto the ground into a growing pool of his own quickly freezing blood.

The mage tried to say something through the tendrils and bone shards wrapped around his throat and face, embedded deeply in his skin. Considering there were shards of bone stabbed in his eyes, and one that managed to get into his mouth and stab him in the tonsil, he was most likely trying to scream.

“Well fought!” Sylver shouted, as he ripped the frozen solid piece of skin covering the center of his ribcage, and threw it away. His pitch-black sternum glinted in the dim light one of the moons provided, as his robe covered the hole up and started to warm up what it could.

He walked over to the ice mage and used [Dead Dominion] to flip him onto his back, via the dead tendrils and bone shards.

“I’ll give you one chance to die painlessly. Bring down the wall of ice,” Sylver said in an oddly sweet and calm voice, practically whispering it into the struggling mage’s ear. The ice mage froze up and began to scream the same exact muffled sound that Sylver could tell by his soul was meant to be “never.”

“Good. At least you’ll die with dignity,” Sylver said as he stood up with a smile under his mask. He pressed the struggling man down against the icy ground as Dai appeared near him and stabbed the man directly in the heart.

[Elf (Mage+Mage+Mage+Mage+Mage+Prime Elementalist) – 169]
[Due to defeating an enemy 70 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Necromancer] has reached level 91!
+5AP

[1 perk available for [Necromancer]]

[Optical Illusion (III) Proficiency increased to 100%!]

[Optical Illusion (III) rank up available!]

[Coat Of Carrion (I) Proficiency increased to 9%!]

[Draining Touch (II) Proficiency increased to 69%!]

Sylver looked down through the ice below him and saw the faintest flickers of light, like fireflies trapped in a glass jar. Except these looked more like torches, and the ice that the mage had raised to fortify and defend, now acted to trap those inside.

It was too thick for anyone to teleport out of it, but if Spring was to be believed there was already a big enough crack for him and the rest of the shades to get inside.