Ch185-Tooth And Claw (Patreon)

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Ch185-Tooth And Claw

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Sylver flashed his guild card at the guard at the dungeon entrance, before he once again turned into vapor and flew down the path covered in glowing thread. Slinky, the enormous snake-looking chimera, left a small gap for Sylver to funnel through.

Once he was inside, and the snake had a chance to flick its tongue at him, Sylver used [Fog Form] to fly towards the large swinging dark orange cocoon. Some kind of reddish liquid had seeped through the fabric and was staining the grass underneath it.

It swung in an oval shape, and a dark blue spider with a white exclamation mark on its abdomen ran behind the cocoon, and repeatedly head-butted it.

“You alright in there?” Sylver shouted at his trapped companion, and got something akin to a nod, through their shared connection.

“Is she going to be able to use magic?” Spring asked as he materialized next to Sylver.

“Morana? Sort of. Her magic is wild; it isn’t actually “magic.” It’s more like… she can hear what I’m saying so I can’t be as honest as I would like to. So to sum up, yes. She will be able to use magic, and if I need it, I will be able to siphon some of her mana out of her,” Sylver answered.

They both turned around as they heard something slithering towards them. They saw that Bruno and Tera were walking towards the swinging horse cocoon, along with a snake that looked to be about 10 meters behind them.

If the ear-to-ear smile on Tera’s face was anything to go by, Bruno’s confession had been successful. Even if the blank and slightly distraught look on his face said the opposite.

“Why did you wait so long to tell me I was married to the Bernhard Justesen?” Tera shouted once she was within range, and the look on Bruno’s face suddenly made sense.

“I take it you’re a big fan?” Sylver asked, as Bruno mutely nodded, while Tera practically threw the book in her hand at Sylver.

On the cover, there was a drawing of an old man, with the left side of his coat covered in so many medals that you couldn’t see the fabric underneath. After briefly flipping through “The Life And Times Of Bernhard Justesen, Volume I of XV” Sylver closed the book and handed it back to Tera.

Sylver bowed slightly towards Bruno, who just stared at him, almost accusingly.

“I had no idea I was talking to the man who invented the modern periodic table. Or reinvented I should say. I’m fairly certain the concept was brought over from one of the human [Hero]s,” Sylver said, and Bruno mutely nodded at him.

“He also revolutionized the 7 alchemical processes into the 12, that alchemists all over Eira use today! And he created the first viable false dragon fire recipe! And he translated ancient eastern chemistry tomes into-”

Tera’s drooling speech about how great the man she was married to and was carrying the child of, was interrupted by a massive gust of wind that nearly caused the woman to fall. Bruno caught her, and a moment later the dust the wind carried was forced to avoid the 4 people watching the cocoon that was steadily rising into the air, via a small vortex directly beneath it.

“What did I tell you, telling the truth always works out in the end,” Sylver said, as the wind increased in strength, and threatened to break the small barrier Sylver had erected.

It didn’t help that Morana was draining him dry to help herself come out.

“What is she doing!” Bruno shouted, and Sylver just barely heard him over the whistle of the wind outside.

Even though she was concentrating on her cocoon, Morana took special care not to damage the ceiling, the walls, or any of the chimera that had come over to look at the commotion. The conical vortex gradually became thinner and thinner, until it was just barely wider than the floating cocoon in the middle of it.

Sylver flinched as he felt a strange sensation emanating from his ring. He lifted it to his face to look at it more closely, and after a couple of seconds passed, understood what Morana wanted. The flesh that made up Sylver’s fingers turned into dust, floated away, and disappeared into the cyclone.

Sylver lifted his other hand upward, and the flesh also turned into dust and funneled towards the floating cocoon. Just as Sylver was about to tell her he to stop, Morana stopped on her own, and he even felt something akin to apology aimed towards him. The wind intensified even more for a while and got so fast that it became compressed enough that the image of the cocoon inside became just short of invisible.

And then, all at once, the vortex disappeared.

Sylver and company watched as the giant compressed cone of air ended inside Morana’s “mouth,” and then watched as her neck repeatedly inflated, and deflated, as she swallowed down and stored the air away.

The creature that Sylver had named Morana was hard to see at the moment. The just short of clear string hung loosely from her body, as if she were a wet dog, and obscured some of the finer details.

What Sylver could see right now was a 4-meter-tall creature, with 7 spiderlike legs, an extended neck that was almost as long as its torso, and a “head” that looked like it had been split down the middle, and then again down the side, and created a giant circular opening, very likely filled with teeth.

Some of the weaker chimeras backed away from the creature, as it made a noise that could loosely be described as a loud bark in a giant empty cave. It echoed from the source and was followed by a clicking noise, as the “head” was fused back together, and the neck became shorter and shorter.

The legs similarly became shorter, and the creature gradually lowered itself down into a manageable 2-meter-tall height.

Finally, it flicked the rat like tail on its back, and the string that was previously loosely hung around it snapped into place. The creature became mummified in its own string, and a second later, the string shimmered and was replaced by snow-white fur. Along with a wonderfully smooth mane, and matching tail.

Its 8 eyes blinked in unison for a while, and one by one, they closed, until only the “normal” eyes remained. Sylver hadn’t noticed it before, but the creature didn’t have ears before, but now two symmetrical spear tips sat comfortably on the top of its head. There was a crackling noise, and Sylver saw the bones on the creature’s torso move around until they found a comfortable position that made it look like she had regular ribs.

Sylver approached the creature and kept his bony hand extended out towards her. The creature lowered its head and proceeded to rub against Sylver’s pitch black hands, as he lightly patted it on the side.

“Good girl, who’s a good girl,” Sylver asked, as Bruno and Tera stared at monstrosity masquerading as a horse.

Which it was.

Appearance-wise.

Inside it had a ribcage within a ribcage, the way Sylver did, along with 3 hearts spread out between its back legs, front legs, and a general heart, with lungs that seemed very similar to what Sylver had replaced his lungs with, and a handful of other organs, that Morana couldn’t convey the purpose of.

They were important, is the gist of what Sylver understood.

If you ignored the fact that it was completely white, even the hooves, Morana looked like your average, every day, slightly bigger than normal, horse. Sylver’s hand got a little too close to her nose, and he accidentally cause her to sneeze.

Sylver tried to stop it before it happened, but the compressed mixture of hydrogen, oxygen, and some custom-made chemical, shot out of Morana’s mouth. Sylver was very careful with the gas mixture, as he grabbed hold of it, and gently funneled it back into Morana’s mouth.

“Alright, among other things, she can breathe fire,” Sylver said towards Bruno and Tera, who were both slowly making their way towards the horse and its rider.

Sylver gently pushed his fingers into her mouth and pulled the lips back to look at her teeth. Morana proceeded to open her mouth so wide that her “jaws” were almost at 180 degrees.

Sylver saw a venom gland on the roof of her mouth, and could also see the joint where the jaw could be further separated into two, and through his mana, could feel the retractable teeth that seemed to be serrated.

Her tongue appeared normal at first glance, but again, through his mana Sylver could see the squashed straw for what it was, along with the “stinger/needle” hiding within it.

“Is it over?” Tera asked, as Sylver gently closed his steed's mouth, and ran his hand up and down her neck.

“Seems like it,” Sylver answered, as Morana, Mora, for short, pushed her head towards him and rubbed against Sylver’s chest.

“I can’t see her status,” Bruno said. Tera said the same after a moment.

[N/A – N/A – 170]
[HP: 22,000 – 100%]
[MP: 4,500 – 100%]
[Stamina: 7,200 – 100%]
[Corpse – N/A]
[Soul – N/A]

[Arcane Insight (IV) Proficiency increased to 4%!]

“She can’t convey what attributes or skills she has…” Sylver mumbled as he tried to peer into the creature’s mind.

“No, wait… She has something to do with air manipulation. And she was fixated on increasing skills related to her threads, and they’re all really high apparently… I think… Anyway, doesn’t matter, we’ll figure it out as we go along,” Sylver said, as he patted his steed on the neck, and was surprised to find dark brown reins hanging down from her head.

Sylver leaned over and saw that Mora also had a saddle on her back, along with two bags on either side and a small pouch around where the handle was.

After touching the fabric, it felt like normal, everyday leather. Expect the “leather” shifted its shape, and for a couple of seconds, Sylver saw that everything was made out of tightly-woven string. Sylver looked down and could see shiny silver-colored metal horseshoes peeking out from underneath her hooves.

“You are amazing,” Sylver said to Mora and could tell by the smug way she raised her head in the air she understood him. Sylver reached into his [Bound Bones] storage and pulled out a carrot.

The vegetable was flicked out of his hand by an invisible string and landed near two furry mouse-like chimeras, who happily lowered their head and started munching on it.

“Alright… Apples? No. Tomatoes? No. Sugar? Hay? Barley? Grass?” Sylver kept guessing for a while and wanted to smack himself for not thinking of something so obvious. “Meat? Human meat? Oh…”

Sylver reached into his [Bound Bones] storage and removed one of his old clones. They were largely useless at this point, not to mention he already had enough spare arms, legs, and heads, that they were just taking up space.

Sylver was curious to see how Mora planned to eat the corpse. It turned out she first sucked out all the blood in the body using her tongue, and then used her extremely powerful tentacle-like mouth quarters to wrap around a specific body part, and then ground it into pulp, before swallowing it.

Despite how it sounded, the process was surprisingly clean, and if you ignore the sound of bones being crunched, rather quiet. Her saliva had some kind of congealing effect, given that the places where she had bitten off the corpse's arm weren’t bleeding.

Sylver pulled out 3 more clones and left them for Mora to snack on, while he, Bruno, and Tera went to see the other chimera Bruno had prepared for him.

***

“If she’s undead, what is the point of her eating?” Tera asked once they were out of Mora’s supposed earshot. Sylver chose not to tell her that she heard her loud and clear, partially due to her connection to Sylver, but mostly due to one of her perks.

“I think I mentioned before that dead and alive are a sliding scale, right?” Sylver asked, as Bruno mutely followed along.

Sylver empathized with the man. After multiple lifetimes of hardship, having something go your way, in every way imaginable, was about 10 times as shocking as having everything go wrong for the 100th time.

And even if Tera wasn’t actively holding onto Bruno’s arm, like some sort of love-struck teenage girl, there was an almost sickening aura of joy around her.

Sylver wasn’t jealous…

Alright, he was a little jealous, but not enough that he was going to comment and spoil their mood.

“I don’t think so,” Tera replied.

“Well, they are. If 0 is dead, and 100 is alive, I’m somewhere in the high 80s. I grow, I’m affected by my environment, I can hypothetically starve to death, and I need air to breathe… That’s not entirely true, but let’s pretend it is for the time being… Since Mora copied my body, to a certain extent, nothing I say will apply to her either…” Sylver said as Bruno gestured left, and the group turned left and continued walking down the tunnel lined with glowing threads.

“Wait, high 80s?” Bruno asked.

He momentarily snapped out of his shock at Sylver’s words.

“I’m a little less “alive” after my modifications. I don’t have a digestive tract, my lungs have been minimized and no longer function the way regular lungs would, and my reproductive system has been all but discarded,” Sylver said and continued before Tera could ask a follow-up question, “everything is still there, in one piece, I didn’t cut anything off,” Sylver added hurriedly.

Tera was quiet for a second, and then seemed to remember something.

“Are you going to go to Torg anytime soon?” Tera asked.

Sylver thought the question over, and mentally mapped out the path he would have taken to get to the Schlagen mountains.

“On my way back, maybe… Why?” Sylver asked.

Tera already had an overly smug smile on her face, but upon hearing Sylver’s question, it became just a tad bit more unbearable.

“No reason,” Tera said.

“I did mention that Syl was the one who pushed me to tell you everything?” Bruno asked.

“She said there’s a level 90 [Necromancer] currently working for some noble. He removes curses from cursed artifacts, and his employer sells them for a huge profit,” Tera quickly explained.

“What’s his name?” Sylver asked.

“I don’t remember, I’ll need to check. He’s quite old, human, somewhere in the 120 to 150 age range, but he’s not undead. Do you know him?” Tera asked, and Sylver refrained from scoffing.

It took him a couple of seconds to wait out the snarky response.

“No… Did she say anything about me?” Sylver asked, in an attempt to change the subject.

“She said Sophia the ex-head priest of Ra was at Torg for a couple of days and paid extra to keep the items she won anonymous. That’s all,” Tera said.

Sylver was sure he didn’t make a face, but Tera thought differently.

“Did you want her to ask about you?” Tera asked, with that ever so slight hint of pity only women were capable of.

“I mean… It’s better like this, I have been gone for 5 years…” Sylver said, and even if he didn’t sound like it, genuinely did believe it was for the best.

“Don’t worry about it, there’s someone out there for everyone,” Tera offered, and Sylver refrained from rolling his eyes.

“I’m not…” Sylver realized how sad this sounded, even as he said it, “I’m not lonely,” Sylver said.

Tera and Bruno both had this aura around them, the kind newlyweds often had, like they were better than all their unfortunate single friends. Bruno at least had the courtesy to keep his face plain and blank, but Tera was just a little too happy about her amazing reincarnator husband.

“What are you looking for in a woman?” Tera asked.

Sylver refrained from explaining to her the checklist he had long ago decided was necessary for any kind of relationship to work.

“Tall, big, and I have a thing for warrior types with muscles and scars from fighting,” Sylver explained, and Tera looked shocked for a moment. He explained his explanation, as he gestured at himself.

“I’m a big person, and I prefer… what’s the polite word for it… I like it when things get a little violent, and I can’t do that with someone that I can break like a twig if I’m not careful enough. When you meet the dark elves, there’s a woman there called Dasha. She is the lower limit of the kind of woman I would be open to meeting,” Sylver said.

The trio walked in silence for a bit, as Sylver regretted his momentary lapse in judgment, Tera regretted prodding Sylver’s preferences, and Bruno barely heard a word Sylver had said, as he was still in the process of recovering from the shock of Tera falling in love with him a second time.

“You went on a quest with Henra, right?” Tera asked after some time had passed.

Bruno had kept the prepared corpses far away from the main area because the preservation spell was the kind of dark magic that would harm the weaker chimeras if it was closer.

“Henra the warrior, part of the Pixie part… I mean… No, I think she has a thing for necromancers,” Sylver explained.

“What about the other one, the druid. Edna,” Tera asked after she recalled the name.

“Unless she suddenly had an urge to train alongside Henra and copied her physique, no…” Sylver said.

“Hmm… Why did you sleep with Leke then? If you like big women, I mean?” Tera asked.

“I almost want to say she pressured me into it,” Sylver said.

This got Bruno’s attention.

“She pressured you?” Bruno asked, and Sylver responded a little too quick.

“Oh please, like you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about! Did you think wearing your shirt collar a little higher would hide the markings? Have her wear gloves, she’ll be able to get a better grip, and the nails won’t scratch your neck,” Sylver offered.

This got a chuckle out of Bruno and made Tera’s smug face turn as red as a tomato.

“Anyway, as I said, I’m good. I’ve got all the women I could ever want in my life, I’ve got Lola, Misha, Masha, Ria, Chrys, Leke, Maul, Lao, Chloe, and let’s not forget the literal army of dark elves, the majority of whom, are women. And now Morana too. Not to mention about 100 of my shades are women, I think,” Sylver said.

Spring whispered the actual number in Sylver’s ear, but Sylver didn’t bother correcting himself.

At some point, Tera had to be left behind. Even though she complained about it, and gave Bruno the look, the old reincarnator wasn’t willing to risk it.

He trusted Sylver not to fuck around with his magic, but it would be a pointless risk to the two weak souls inside Tera, in the event something unforeseen were to occur. She left and was carried away by the serpent that had been following them.

“There’s going to be a gathering at my home tomorrow evening. You’ll need to go to Ron’s Rest and have him open a door into my house. I know there isn’t much point pretending I’m not connected to Lola and everyone, but I’d like to keep it up anyway,” Sylver explained and got a nod from Bruno in response.

“You asked me to remind you that you have 2 skills that have ranked up. And that you have some attribute points to distribute,” Bruno said, and Sylver mutely opened up his status.

Sylver decided to put all 10 points into intelligence, for that slight boost in mana capacity.

Total Level: 139
[Koschei-10]
[Necromancer-100]
[Swamp Lord-29]

CON: 200
DEX: 110
STR: 110
INT: 287
WIS: 238
AP: 0

Health: 2,000/2,000
Stamina: 997/1,000
MP: 8,873/11,480

Health Regen: 23.34/M
Stamina Regen: 20.00/M
MP Regen: 6147.54/M

“I now regenerate over 100MP per second,” Sylver said without any emotion in his voice.

“What’s your constitution at?” Bruno asked.

“200, and I have exactly 2,000 health,” Sylver answered.

Bruno was quiet for a while.

“So classical glass cannon… Although, in your case, it’s more to do with you being an undead, than a mage” Bruno said.

“Yes, yes, I remember, but I already died and came back before I met you, so not much I can do about it now. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, does it? Even if I become “dead,” I have more than enough control over my soul to walk around perfectly fine for several weeks. More, if I’m able to use Morana as an anchor,” Sylver said.

“Then forget I said anything… Did you figure anything out about your unique class? I tried to research it, but the [Koschei] class isn’t mentioned anywhere,” Bruno asked, and Sylver shook his head.

“I initially thought it was something to do with how much danger I put myself in… But it gave me a level when I locked my needle and heart up in my ribcage. I got another level when I got Nyx’s grimoire back. I got 3 more when I forced the thing I prefer not talking about into a deal… And I got another one when I created Morana,” Sylver counted out.

Bruno was silent for about a minute and seemed to arrive at the same conclusion as Sylver.

“It’s level increases whenever your “power” increases. You became more powerful when you made your weakness harder to harm. You became more powerful when you got a master-level necromancer’s grimoire. You got more power when you forced the you-know-what into working for you. And the same is true for the horse chimera,” Bruno said.

“What about the perks that don’t do anything? And the trait?” Sylver asked, and Bruno went quiet again.

“I’ve never seen it before, but my money would be that you should have those perks, but you haven’t met all the conditions. Normally you wouldn’t even know about them until the conditions were met, but maybe… The order is important? So they are placed there as placeholders?” Bruno explained.

There was a line between thinking about perks, levels, attributes, and thinking about why they were a thing. The system seemed to accept that Sylver wasn’t trying to pry details about it from Bruno, and was doing what the system wanted, and was just playing along as if this was all normal.

On that thought, Sylver decided against ranking up either skill and postponed both until he had Ria near him.

“Egg, hare, chest, and duck,” Sylver said out loud.

“See, now that rings a bell. I can’t for the life of me remember what exactly, but I think I recognize the pattern. I certainly feel that I do,” Bruno said with a finger pointed at Sylver.

“On that note, I’m going to need some time to see if anything happened to your bodies or souls while I was gone. Faust will be staying at my house up until we leave, but do keep in mind that you might feel a little woozy after the checkup, so plan accordingly,” Sylver said.

They arrived at a large wooden door, and every inch of it was covered in faintly glowing burned in sigils. Bruno gestured at it, and the door shimmered and swung out of the way.

“How is he?” Bruno asked as Sylver followed him into the overflowing with mana room.

“Terrible. But I’ve seen worse. What he needs is something to distract him, and a fair bit of tough love. With things like this, trying to fix what set him off is pointless, the pus might be coming out through the skin, but the rot is probably somewhere deep inside,” Sylver said.

“What a lovely analogy,” Bruno said, and what surprised Sylver was that he meant it.

Sylver rubbed his hands together and caused golden sparks to fly everywhere. He stretched out his pitch-black bone fingers towards the first chimera and waited for the liquid-like smoke to engulf the creature.

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