Ch192-First Impressions (Patreon)

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Ch192-First Impressions

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Sylver stared up towards the sky as they walked and listened to Spring’s report as he told him about the various buildings that were on the line Edmund’s tracker had created.

He had hoped there would be something obvious, like a giant lead cube from within which a man’s shouting could be heard, or a grave with a green flame dancing on it, or maybe just a man with a nametag that read ‘Edmund, Arch-Pyromancer,’

But, the closest thing Spring found was a building that was very likely a prison of some kind, that was sadly too well enchanted for Spring to venture further than the outskirts.

Sylver had 3 more attempts to track Edmund.

He wanted to find him as quickly as possible, but Sylver was worried that Edmund wasn’t in this city. And if he tracked him right now, he would have wasted another charge, with nothing to show for it, other than that Edmund was somewhere far away.

If he wasn’t here, Edmund was North-North-West of the Schlagen mountains.

Then Sylver would go as far as he could, and then he would be forced to use the tracker one more time, and if Edmund was even further North, he would have only one attempt left to find him.

Unlike Earth that Ria was used to, Eira’s geography isn’t what could be described as ‘consistent.’

The Ibis even had a way to measure how inconsistent a certain area was. The higher the concentration of mana, the higher the inconsistency of the land.

For a place like Arda, with a functional dungeon, and a ton of micro lay lines, the number was probably somewhere in the high 80s. Whereas the area surrounding the Schlagen mountains felt quite weak, and Sylver doubted it was higher than 20%.

Aside from the fun nonsense, like upside-down waterfalls, trees that screamed, giant boulders that turned out to be light enough for a child to move, lightning strikes that created pillars of ice, and Sylver’s personal favorite, a wave of inert gas that suffocated an entire town and provided him with over 600 perfectly preserved corpses, there were less fun inconsistencies.

Like how a trip from point A to point B could take 8 days to walk, but a trip from point B to point A could take 2 days. Most of the time it was due to time dilation, there were spots around Arda that had this problem, but thankfully they were very easy to avoid if you knew what to look for.

And if you were prepared, it wasn’t that hard to cancel out the effect, a small lead rod or an enchanted ring was the common solution.

The popular theory in the Ibis is that things like this happened due to fae, spirits, or some other magical creature.

The less popular, but in Sylver’s personal opinion more plausible, theory, was that these kinds of phenomena were simply the result of mana interacting with Eira’s air, water, and earth. Sylver hadn’t studied the subject all that much, other than enough basics to nullify it, but a woman he respected said this was the most likely explanation, so Sylver chose to believe in this theory, as opposed to magical creature one.

As to why someone couldn’t just ask the fae, spirits, or magical creatures to confirm, the answer was that they did. They tried to ask them.

A lot.

But the problem with that is that all the fae, spirits, and magical creatures, gave inconsistent and contradictory answers, down to the point it was impossible to tell who was telling the truth, and who was just fucking around with the curious mages.

Another reason why Sylver believed the mana interaction theory, was because it fit very nicely with the Ki interaction theory.

An area with an abundance of mana tended to produce mages, whereas an area with an abundance of Ki tended to produce cultivators. And similar to how mana interacted with and altered its environment, Ki did too, in its own unique way.

The most obvious difference was the flora and fauna, Sylver didn’t even know what kind of monster a featherless goose was, but he didn’t like the sound of it.

Sylver felt Faust’s soul wake up a little.

“I know I already asked, but is there anything I can do?” Sylver asked as the small man shook his head.

Faust tried to brush away the strings holding him upright, but Mora ignored his feeble attempts and kept his back straight and head looking forward.

“I’m fine, I just need to rest,” Faust repeated, as he had the last couple of times Sylver had attempted to find a solution.

A healing potion wasn’t going to cut it, a stamina potion would just hurt him, and the powder Sylver intended to use to keep himself alert when he didn’t have time to sleep would be fatal to Faust in his current condition.

And according to Xalibur, the aforementioned powder was an extremely potent, illegal, and expensive, drug.

Thankfully Sylver was good at hiding things on his person, and if it was necessary, with a small incision near his lower ribs, in his person. He didn’t have a whole lot of empty space inside himself, but his body was malleable enough that he could discard a couple of kilograms of muscle to replace with something else.

“There’s something I always wanted to ask… Is it true witches in the south can make gold out of iron?” Xalibur whispered, and Sylver thought it over for a moment.

He decided he didn’t want to bargain with the man right now and would ask what he wanted to ask later.

“Sorcerers and mages can, but it’s too delicate of a magic for the majority of witches. But if you want to get technical about it, no. They can make what’s called dirty gold, but it’s useless,” Sylver explained, as Xalibur nodded.

“What makes dirty gold different from real gold?” Xalibur asked.

“It’s worthless. It doesn’t conduct mana, can’t be mixed to make an alloy, and is soft enough that you can cut it with a blunt knife. It also doesn’t reflect light the way real gold does, just a little less shiny. I can’t tell the difference by eye, but all mages can tell dirty gold from real gold with a single touch. It’s also kind of sticky, and feels like it's covered in wet paint when you touch it,” Sylver explained, and could almost see the idea get snuffed out in Xalibur’s head.

Gold is precious and used as a currency, for a reason. It’s fucking hard to find and mine, impossible to replicate, and the amount of effort required to grow and harvest gold trees makes it a waste of time for everyone Sylver had ever seen attempt it.

“Is it true your women walk around without covering their chests?” Xalibur asked, and Sylver felt a little proud that he had some good news for the man.

“In some port towns, yes. It’s normally only done by sailors, but I have heard that several towns adopted it as the local fashion,” Sylver explained, and Faust coughed into his fist for a moment before he spoke.

“Which port towns?” Faust asked.

“Aren’t you actively looking for a wife?” Sylver asked, but could feel Faust roll his eyes before he rolled them.

“I am, but it feels like one of those places you should visit at least once in your life,” Faust explained, and Sylver couldn’t help but agree.

“I think there’s one that isn’t too far out of our way when we go back… More importantly, how much further is it?” Sylver asked as Xalibur squinted to read the small symbol on the flag near the door.

“We’re nearly there, their land is on the very edge,” Xalibur said, and continued to basically walk with only 1 leg.

Sylver wasn’t sure how he was doing it, but his best guess was some sort of Ki spell that shifted his center of gravity with each step. This wouldn’t be all that impressive for a mage to pull off, but it was almost surprising for someone utilizing Ki.

Ki was an energy that could be said to be parallel to mana.

There was positive Ki, negative Ki, solid, liquid, gas, plasma, with the main difference being that it was also split up into Yin and Yang. Which were similar to the way mana was split into dark and light, but according to cultivators Sylver spoke to, there was a bit more to it than just that.

Not that he particularly cared, as an undead Sylver’s body had a unique property living mages didn’t possess.

He was immune to Ki.

Sylver was to Ki, what a piece of lead was to mana.

Provided he snuffed out his spark of positive magic, and retained only negative mana within the part being struck. Positive Ki could affect positive mana, but positive Ki couldn’t affect negative mana.

Now, what that should mean is that all that a person needed to fuck Sylver up was to attack him with positive and negative Ki, but Ki didn’t work like that.

You either had positive Ki or negative Ki, but you couldn’t have both.

Sylver forgot the exact reason, but it was something like cultivators had no choice but to overspecialize, to the point their unused Ki type atrophied and eventually became completely inaccessible to them.

Not that the vast majority of them cared, positive Ki cultivation was superior to negative Ki cultivation in every conceivable way, except for one.

Positive Ki cultivators could cultivate using their own Ki, whereas negative Ki cultivators could cultivate using the Ki of others. Which in turn meant they could attain a great deal of power very quickly, but also needed increasing numbers of victims to gather Ki from.

To make a long story short, they killed whoever they were training to kill, then they were attacked by the brother, father, son, aunt, grandma, cousin, buddy, wife, mistress, second cousin, family pet, of whoever they killed, and then the situation was resolved in 1 of 2 ways.

Either the daughter/sister/pet managed to kill her father’s/brother’s/owner’s killer, and that was the end of it.

Or, very very rarely, the negative Ki cultivator killed all of them and became powerful enough that there wasn’t anyone left in the area that could deal with him.

Except, of course, a certain necromancer that was paranoid about these kinds of people snowballing even further out of control, and took it upon himself to handle them.

Aside from the healthy paranoia, there was also the small issue that negative Ki cultivators fucking always arrived at the conclusion “summoning demons to help me is a great idea!” Sylver was a busy necromancer and preferred to deal with this kind of shit before hordes of demons got involved.

Unlike with most of his mistakes, Sylver learned his lesson regarding bloodthirsty cultivator nutjobs the first time they summoned a demon king.

Sadly, it also meant that he wasn’t used to dealing with positive Ki cultivators. Sylver would go as far as to call himself rusty.

Snuffing the spark of positive mana out was simple enough, reigniting it was easier than breathing, but getting rid of all the positive mana on his skin, robe, and the trace amounts in the components flowing through his veins, was a bit tricky.

Not impossible, just… tricky…

***

By the time they arrived to where Xalibur had been leading them, Sylver found that while he could minimize the amount of positive mana in a certain area, he couldn’t remove it entirely.

Or rather, he could, but it hurt like a motherfucker, and his extremely magical body protested against the idea.

Not to mention, he came up with a much simpler solution.

The double doors were made from that same red-brown wood Sylver had seen used as a building material for literally everything inside this city. They used it in place of stone, cement, metal, armor, weapons, even the paper flags they used looked like a bleached sliver of that very same wood.

At this point, Sylver wouldn’t be surprised if Xalibur’s clothing was made out of woven wood fibers.

Xalibur pointed with his hand towards a tall building in the distance, it had three lights that were blinking at a consistent pace.

“Dog and I will be there,” Xalibur said, and Sylver nodded at the man.

No “good luck,” no, “only so and so could do this!” just a simple nod, and whatever happens, happens.

Sylver walked over to Mora and Faust and the horse leaned down slightly so Sylver could whisper into Faust’s ear.

“If for whatever reason I don’t come back, get Mora to take you home. Wait until you can bluff the gate guards again, and go back to Arda. Don’t try to save me, you’ll only get in the way,” Sylver said, and thankfully Faust could read his tone well enough to understand that arguing wasn’t an option right now.

Sylver rubbed Mora’s neck before he pushed her towards Xalibur and his dog, and she silently followed after him.

Sylver closed his hands into fists and opened them again, as he stared at the gates and thought.

What angle should I take?

Bloodthirsty lunatic, that isn’t worth fighting and is easier to bribe away?

No, they’re cultivators, honor and all that…

Straight and to-the-point honesty?

I just want your money, and you’re either giving it to me, or I’m taking it?

That might work better during the daytime, people tend to be jumpy when a stranger enters their home in the middle of the night…

Would that be a good idea? Xalibur walked in a path to avoid guards, even without me saying anything.

Is sneaking an option?

Not with the barrier they have surrounding the property…

“Are we waiting for something?” Ria tapped out against Sylver’s back.

“Just trying to figure out how best to approach them,” Sylver silently tapped back.

What if I go in, and take one of them hostage?

They’re a band of thieves, just because it worked once since I came here, doesn’t mean it will work a second time…

But maybe…

“I believe they know you are here,” Ria tapped out, as Sylver scratched his jaw.

“Why do you think that?” Sylver asked.

He did feel that someone was watching him, but they were very good at suppressing their soul and presence. Or rather, Sylver’s senses hadn’t developed enough to find them, but even with that, it was still nothing to laugh at.

“The door is thin enough I’m able to use a combination of high-frequency sensors to see through it. The images are blurry, but their movement is quite easy to track. There is one person standing in the very center, and 2 or 3 are hiding near the left wall,” Ria tapped out, as Sylver did his best to extend his awareness that far, but was stopped by the barrier surrounding the area.

The walls weren’t that high, but Sylver could tell by the way the air around them was shimmering that if he tried to jump up and look, he wouldn’t see anything or anyone inside, but they would see him.

Just in case, Sylver used [Fog Form] and was right.

Sylver crossed his arms and just stared at the door for 10 seconds.

“Why am I worrying about this? They’re just thieves,” Sylver said, partially to himself, partially to Ria. His robe moved one of his white masks up onto his face and quickly sealed it up.

He uncrossed his arms and leaned back a bit.

He kicked the doors with his left foot, and instead of opening, they shattered into a cloud of wood chips and littered the weed-infested soil. Sylver didn’t bother waiting for a reaction, and with a slight shiver, walked through the barrier, and felt it announce his presence.

***

On the left, there was a bunch of junk stacked into a pile, where Sylver could vaguely feel 2 souls doing their utter best to hide. In the middle, there was a short young man, barely as tall as Faust and unlikely over the age of 20, dressed in a completely black bathrobe-like costume, with matching black flat fabric shoes.

In his hands was a hook-shaped blade, with several lengths of chain wrapped around the man’s forearm, that extended towards his other forearm, from which a small metal ball was hanging loosely.

Sylver took all of this information in without having to move his head around, thanks to [Lesser Perception], and decided to get the easiest thing to check out of the way.

He kept his head aimed towards the pile of junk on his left, and by his second step felt an immense reaction emanating from the young man in the middle of the rectangular courtyard. The man didn’t so much as shift the weight of his feet before he very suddenly appeared directly in front of Sylver’s face.

Sylver reached out to grab the man by the sides, as did his robe, but the man spat in his face before he could even react properly. The liquid seared Sylver’s eyes and Sylver felt the man’s presence reappear back where he had been a moment earlier, even as Sylver continued to run towards the pile of junk.

Sylver kicked his own foot into his other foot, and with an agonizing cry tripped and began to fall towards the ground. Within the time it took him to blink his blinded eyes, Sylver felt the man’s presence move again, as Sylver made a feeble attempt to use his sleeves to wipe his eyes.

The man didn’t waste so much as a second, as he aimed his hook-shaped blade towards Sylver’s neck, and to his credit, knew a trap when he saw one, as he instantly teleported back to his original position. Sylver continued to pretend to clutch at his eyes, but the man just stood there, swinging his metal ball with his left hand, while he kept the hook-shaped blade at the ready in his right hand.

Sylver used [Fog Form] to instantly get up off the ground, and materialized upright, with his blinded eyes fixed on the man with the hook and chain.

It was only as Sylver saw a discoloration on the hook’s blade, did Sylver feel an unexpected looseness near his throat area. He didn’t even need to touch it to confirm, because he could feel the severed muscles already trying to fuse back together, along with the robe fibers that had been cut.

When did he cut me? He teleported away before he-

Not teleported, just moved very fast.

It was the only explanation that made sense, otherwise, the angle of the cut wouldn’t have been what it was. Armed with this detail, Sylver summoned his ax into his right hand, and threw it with a powerful spin, directly towards the man.

His theory was confirmed, as the man didn’t appear directly in front of Sylver, but a distance to his left, since coming right at him would have meant going through the ax.

Sylver’s ax flew through the space the man had been a second prior, and the man returned to his original position, and Sylver could now see, was holding his breath.

Poison gas, or is this something that he does to concentrate?

Sylver pulled his left arm backward, as he summoned his ax into it, and made a swinging motion.

The man appeared quite literally in the space between Sylver’s torso and his extended ax-throwing arm, and with a single lightning-fast swipe, sliced the thin Sylver-shaped cloud of fog through the neck. The man returned to his original spot a moment later, and his eyes became erratic and wild, as he tried to figure out where the intruder was.

He was fairly certain he heard a muffled snap, as the empty courtyard became populated by a countless number of identical black robe and white mask-wearing intruders. The hook blade wielding man released his blade and began to swing it in a tight circle around his arm. He lifted it into the air, before any of the shades could do anything meaningful, and released it.

As if they were made out of nothing more than thin air, the shades disintegrated as they came into contact with the blade, and the faintly glowing chain. The thing caught fire, and a moment later the nameless man had a ring of fire around him, that became larger with each swing. For 1 shade split apart into 64 pieces, he did a great job as a distraction.

The man felt the ground beneath his feet give away, felt something land near on his non-swinging arm’s elbow, and did his best to react to both, but was just a little too slow.

The small insect clutching a bead of explosives made a chirping noise as the spark jumped from it onto the bead. Sylver was surprised to find that the explosion had staggered the man, but hadn’t blown his arm off. His bathrobe was scorched clean off on the left, and Sylver could now see his torso, which was absolutely spotless.

Sylver would have sighed if he could, but it didn’t matter at this point. That gap of attention was more than enough for him, as Sylver whistled loudly enough that he felt the sharp noise in the small child’s chest.

The man with the hook and ball froze on the spot and an expression that Sylver wasn’t sure how to describe appeared on his face.

Sylver was standing at his full height, and held a motionless child by the throat in front of him, with his other hand holding a glowing dagger, with the wrist holding the dagger pressed up against the child’s chest, further pinning him against Sylver.

The shade directly behind Sylver was doing the same thing.

“I want-”

Sylver nearly stabbed himself in the neck with his own dagger as the child in his arms fucking disappeared, and it was only his years of experience that made him look up in time to see 3 bodies high up in the air.

He can move people to himself, wonderful.

Sylver didn’t bother keeping track of the figure above and instead kicked off the ground as hard as he could, as he moved towards the position the man kept returning back to.

Something thin and metallic missed the back of Sylver’s head and would have gotten embedded in his spine, but instead, Ria caught it and kept hold of it.

Sylver was barely a step away from the man’s starting position, as the shade archers behind him, and underneath the man and children, released their arrows and sent them flying towards the 3 people falling down.

Luckily for everyone, Sylver was right, and the man appeared at his starting spot for a fraction of a second before he disappeared towards one of the walls on the left, and the 2 children appeared next to him. Their feet didn’t even hit the ground when the man reappeared back to his starting position, and his eyes widened horror.

He started to fall, but it wasn’t even a full second, he wasn’t that far off the ground.

His feet were already on the ground, even if he wasn’t.

They were both sitting outside the tiny 15-centimeter earth wall Sylver had raised, while the man’s cleanly sliced-off ankles were about to hit the mushy ground, but Sylver managed to wrap his arms around the man’s torso before that happened.

Sylver could have sworn he heard something, as he shoved himself and the man towards the ground, and out of the area, the man kept returning to earlier, over and over again.

Somehow the man could tell Sylver was smiling underneath his mask, even as Sylver tightened his grip around the man’s torso, and his robe wrapped around his neck and joints, as the two now faced each other in a contest of strength.

The man knew Sylver would win, he knew there wasn’t any chance for him to win the moment he tried to move his arms and felt as if he was trapped between 4 extremely powerful walls, that were closing in on him with every passing moment.

But just as his internal organs reached their limit, just his last drop of Ki was about to run out, and his neck reached the edge of where it was permitted to bend, the man felt the pressure lessen.

“WE SURRENDER!” the man screamed in a loud and uncomfortably shaky tone, that implied a torn lung.

Sylver opened his mouth to speak, but at the very very edge of his vision, saw a small flash of light. He didn’t turn his head, but adjusted where he was looking, just in time to see the large edged plate flying towards him.

Sylver’s attempt to jump, roll, duck, turn into fog, or dodge out of the plate’s way, was prevented by the man Sylver was currently sort of hugging, who had leaned down and bit into his shoulder. The move wasn't random, Sylver could feel the man was waiting for the plate to hit them.

The robe and Sylver’s tough skin stopped the relatively blunt human teeth from drawing blood, but there was just enough contact and natural interference that Sylver couldn’t turn into fog in time, and because of the way he was pinning the man down, Sylver didn’t have enough time to overpower the man’s final lurch of strength.

If the plate had been a little higher, Sylver could have leaned away from it, it would have nicked him, but not beheaded, but the angle it was shot at was very specific, Sylver’s neck would get severed, along with the top half of the man’s head.

They had a plan for an enemy he couldn’t defeat.

On a gut reaction more than anything else, Sylver made a decision and used [Advanced Earth Manipulation] to make as big of a hole underneath the man’s head as he could manage in the fraction of a second he had left, and spent every drop of mana he had to push himself and the man as deep down into the hole as possible.

An assortment of random junk splashed out of Sylver’s neck area, as the vertebra he used for storage via [Bound Bones] was sliced cleanly into two. The miscellaneous rocks, empty flask, beakers, sharpening stone, underwear, canned food, spare pairs of boots, rolls of twine, a couple of bright red romantic candles, and a cast frying pan, went flying in every which way direction, as Sylver’s severed, spinning, head flew parallel to the spinning metal plate.

Sylver’s head landed with a heavy thud as it hit the grassy ground, as the two children standing on the wall on the left, joined the one that had been hiding within the wall on the right. They helped the man Sylver’s large body was crushing with its weight, shove the corpse off.

Sylver’s decapitated body unceremoniously rolled off the shaking with adrenaline man’s body. The man was in such a state of shock right now, that he couldn’t even feel the cut through his nose, that would have been through his head instead if Sylver hadn’t forced him down into the hole.

The air changed in a fraction of a second, as the group of 4 realized everyone was alive, and with the exception of the man’s missing feet, unharmed. The festive mood lasted for about 15 seconds, because that was how long it took for Sylver to rewire himself to move his not technically decapitated body around.

His HP wasn’t even at 0, the system might not like his turtle head in a shell body, but it at the very least respected it.

His body rose from the ground as if he was a puppet on strings, and stood tall over the small group. They all mutely looked up at the headless towering corpse.

“That was, incredible!” Sylver’s voice said, from somewhere near the top of his completely bloodless neck. He refrained from clapping, even if he wanted to because he wasn’t sure if that would come off as sincere as he intended it to sound.

He crouched down so he would have been close to face to face with the three kids, and fighter, if his face wasn’t currently off in the corner, slowly floating towards him.

“Technique aside, because for a mortal that was pretty damn solid, you really were about to take me with you. I saw it in your eyes, no hesitation, just pure rage,” Sylver said, as he pointed his finger at the man with the missing feet.

“And you!” Sylver said as he pointed his finger at the child who had activated whatever it was that threw that bladed plate at them.

“Amazing, terrified to the point your soul nearly left your body, but you didn’t close your eyes. You saw your attack through, you were prepared to kill this man. This man who was willing to give up his life to save you,” Sylver explained, as he reached out with his hand towards his floating head, lifted it to his neck, and plopped it down.

He pulled his mask off as his neck made a sizzling noise, as the flesh started the process of fusing back together.

The four just stared at him, as Sylver turned his head left, and turned it right, and then turned his melted out and blinded eyes back towards them.

“To be perfectly frank with you four, I came here to steal from you… Now, I could kill you all, you’re barely awake,” Sylver pointed at the only adult, “you’re in a state of shock, so are you,” Sylver gestured at the two that had been hiding in the garbage pile on the left, “and you will try to fight, but you’re so weak I can break your skull open with my pinkie,” Sylver said as he gestured at the kid who had shot him with that bladed disc thing.

Sylver remained where he was and gave them all a moment to let the idea sink in.

“Or,” Sylver said, as he chewed on the word for a second, and made sure this was what he wanted. They did attack and kill him, but that was exactly the kind of intensity he wanted from his people.

“Or, you can work for me,” Sylver said, with the kind of smile that could be considered either deeply unsettling, or warm and friendly, depending on whether these four believed his offer was genuine.

“You, and the other people you have hiding underground over there,” Sylver added, with a vague gesture towards the run-down 1 story house.

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