Ch194-Slow And Steady (Patreon)

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Ch194-Slow And Steady

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Sylver had seen drug dens that were tidier than the shithole these people called a “home.” It was disorganized, there was dust and grime everywhere, and the air was so heavy with the stench of decay that even Sylver’s eyes were affected by it.

Sylver followed the boy who managed to behead him up into the second floor, and was shown into a room that could very loosely be called an “office.” The reason it could be called that was due to the presence of a shelf with 4 books on it, a small desk that was barely holding itself together, and a chair that was sitting on top of a wooden box, so the chair didn’t break under the boy’s weight.

Sylver and Faust both sat down on a solidified bench made out of Sylver’s shadow, and the two grown men quietly stared at the relatively small boy.

“We were framed,” the boy said, as Faust clicked his tongue.

“When?” Sylver asked.

“Almost 9 years ago. Our sect wasn’t the greatest in the Red Rim, but it wasn’t the worst either. We used to have enough green jade that there wasn’t a single person below level 100,” the boy explained, as Sylver scratched his chin.

“How did you get framed? By who?” Sylver asked.

“We don’t know,” the boy answered.

“The only people who would have known who betrayed you and how, died or disappeared, right?” Faust asked, with a strangely excited tone.

The boy proceeded to tell a story that Faust kept interjecting into. Each time it was as if he had already heard it, and was doing his best to clear things up for Sylver’s sake, even though both of them were hearing it for the first time.

During the story, Sylver discovered a somewhat worrying fact.

They didn’t have names.

Or rather, until the sect managed to cobble enough money together to regain its name, they weren’t allowed to have names.

Normally a sect that was unable to pay its dues to the emperor was simply disbanded, and broken down for parts. The people in the sect would either join sects they were on friendly terms with as lower class members, join the emperor’s army, or they would be sold off as slaves, in the event they were incapable of doing either.

This sect in particular was the last type.

If they allowed their sect to disband, no other sect would want them, they wouldn’t be able to meet the requirements of the army, and they would most likely be captured, and sold off as slaves.

Faust explained that a cultivator’s leveling speed and potential relied on 2 things.

Resources, and natural physique. Lack of one could be overcome by the other, but this particular group had neither.

Not to mention that their reputation as thieves made getting any kind of proper loan impossible, and they couldn’t be trusted to handle the important and well-paying missions. In short, they were fucked.

It was an ever-tightening loop around their necks, they had to give all their earnings to the emperor, didn’t have enough money to heal, cultivate, or do anything to help themselves, and then had even less money to give to the emperor the next month.

Sylver had seen this before, albeit on a slightly larger scale. And apparently, Faust had not only seen this before but was familiar enough that he answered all of Sylver’s questions before the boy could. With frightening enough accuracy that the boy started to doubt that Faust wasn’t a local.

In the end, Sylver left Faust alone with the boy, to get the full story from him so he could give Sylver a simplified version.

***

“Several sects banded together and forced their leader into selling them their artifacts at an insultingly low price. At least, that’s what he said, but I’m getting the feeling they were betrayed, although it’s just a feeling at the moment,” Faust explained, as Sylver continued watching the shades currently in the process of cleaning up the lower floor.

“Why don’t they leave? Or why didn’t they, I mean, I know everything is locked down right now, but they could have left in the past?” Sylver asked as a shade’s foot broke through a rotten plank, and he marked it for Sylver to fix later.

“They lost a lot of members during their 9 years of degradation. 49 to be exact… They can’t leave until all of them have been buried. Right now they’re willing to work with and for us, but they can’t leave their dead in debt,” Faust explained.

“I’m going to assume there’s a reason they can’t just bury them themselves?” Sylver asked.

Faust nodded at him.

“Normally when a child is born, the parents reserve a spot for them. Money is tucked away, specifically so everything related to their death is handled,” Faust explained, and Sylver spoke before he could continue.

“They’re all bastards, aren’t they? Of course they are… Can this be resolved with money?” Sylver asked, and had to wait for a second as Faust considered his question.

“As in, one of us goes back to Arda, gathers a bunch of jade, and then uses it to pay off their debt?” Faust asked, and Sylver shrugged his shoulders.

“It will take a few weeks, maybe, but why not?” Sylver asked, as Faust reached into his back pocket, and produced a small red rock, that had a very faint glow inside of it. “Let me guess… It’s filled with Ki, and an unfilled ruby is worthless. How many can you fill up in a day?” Sylver asked as Faust put the glowing stone back into this pocket.

“I can fill up hundreds of kilograms of red jade. The main problem is that the Ki needs time to settle. Red jade needs a year, green jade needs 10 years, blue jade needs 100 years, and white jade needs 1,000 years. It also can’t be moved around while settling. And before you ask, no I can’t speed it up. Unless you happen to know some time magic?” Faust asked, but it wasn’t a genuine question.

“Why did Xalibur take my rubies then? I know for a fact they didn’t have any Ki in them,” Sylver asked.

“Because they’re still worth something, even without any Ki in them. With rubies, I think it will be something like a 3 to 1 in terms of the value of a filled and settle red jade, and an empty one. I know you have food tucked away, but food isn’t that expensive here, even fancy wine is still valued in red jade, and they need a lot of blue jade,” Faust explained.

“I’ve got weapons? Armor too. Some rare ingredients,” Sylver offered, as he summoned one of his daggers into his hand, and patted his bag with the other hand.

Faust dismissively waved the offer away.

“It might work, selling them for scrap metal, but it would barely be a drop in the bucket… He didn’t say this out loud, but I don’t think he would accept a handout. He won’t say no to training, and resources, but the money for the burial has to be earned with their own two hands,” Faust explained, as Sylver leaned down pinched the bridge of his nose for a couple of seconds.

Sylver reached behind himself with his other hand and pulled the Ria staff out. She didn’t move for a few seconds, and then the black liquid swelled up and formed into the shape of a small girl, sitting on her floating staff.

“There are 9 buildings that we believe could be hiding Edmund. More if we assume they have underground dungeons or storage rooms, but there are 9 to start,” Ria explained, as Sylver continued sitting there with his head down.

“What? Oh, right… I almost forgot. Do you need to search the buildings, or would just being inside be good enough to find him?” Faust asked, with his head turned towards Sylver, who slowly lifted his head and brushed his hair out of his face.

“I should be able to feel him if he’s close enough, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. Is he locked inside the same container I am? Is he a person? All I know is that he isn’t “alive” or “dead” and that I won’t be disappointed when I find him. Does any of that sound familiar to you?” Sylver asked as Faust’s face went completely blank.

“You know what? I’ve heard of cultivators that were taught by an ancestor hiding within a ring. Assuming the same person responsible for you, is responsible for Edmund, a ring would make the most sense… thematically, I mean,” Faust thought out loud, and Sylver leaned his head back down and went back to pinching the bridge of his nose.

“If he’s in a ring, on a person, moving around, then the tracker is useless. On the other hand, assuming he’s somewhere in the area, once he hears about me, Ed will be able to come to me,” Sylver reasoned.

Faust just sat there, as did Ria, and when he spoke he didn’t sound very certain.

“There is a way to kill all the birds with one stone…” Faust said, almost quiet enough that Sylver wasn’t sure he meant for him to hear it.

“I do love killing,” Sylver said, as Ria looked away from the thoughtful Faust and glared at him for a moment.

“These guys need resources. You need to become famous to get your name out there. You need to enter those 9 buildings to check if Edmund is in there. I need resources to grow and grow my army as well. So that would be 5 birds?” Faust asked as Sylver gestured for the man to spit it out.

“Do you remember how the boy said they weren’t thieves, and only took what they were owed?” Faust asked.

“I do.”

“Here’s what happened… So, there aren’t any real guards in this place. The guards we saw were all employed by the sect that owns the area. If a member of a sect refuses to pay for a completed mission, no one can force them to pay. They usually do, because it would ruin their reputation if they didn’t,” Faust explained, as Sylver pinched the bridge of his nose a little harder.

“Unless the people they hired are known thieves, in which case there’s no harm not paying thieves. Even if they did everything they were supposed to,” Sylver finished.

“That’s awful!” Ria said, as Sylver lifted his head back up and stared at a shade currently in the middle of using a wire brush to scrub the wooden floor clean.

“You’re also… Well, mages don’t have a good public perception. I don’t know if they’ll try to catch you to drown you, but do keep that in mind,” Faust explained, as Sylver stood up from his shadow and flexed his fingers for a while. “As long as you’re strong, they shouldn’t do anything. In theory, they might even try to buy your favor. Anyway, you can’t exactly quit using magic and start using Ki so-”

Sylver laughed so hard the volume made the dust clinging to the ceiling start to fall.

“-so find a mission requiring something big killed, and kill it,” Faust concluded after Sylver had calmed down enough to hear him.

He spoke after he finished laughing and wiped the tears that had formed at the edges of his eyes.

“If someone were to invade a large sect, would the guards from that sect try to follow the intruder into an area belonging to a different sect?” Sylver asked, and while Faust wanted to tell him something rather rude and sarcastic, he decided to forgive the old necromancer for laughing at the concept of abandoning his magic.

If Sylver had given the same offer to Faust, he likely would have laughed too.

“If they’re allied, yes. If they’re enemies, I don’t know… Maybe… The sect you attacked would probably put a bounty on your head. If it’s high enough, unrelated sects might start sending people after you, to claim it. But uh… Would you mind waiting for a bit before doing anything that drastic? I’ll be in fighting shape in a week or so, assuming you bring me some red and green jade,” Faust said, as Sylver nodded at him.

Sylver thought things over for a while and decided to ask a question he half knew the answer to.

“Back there, you knew what the boy was going to say before he said it. Is this kind of situation common for cultivators?” Sylver asked.

Faust actually rolled his eyes.

“This is the “kidnapped princess in a sorcerer’s tower” level of cliché. Anyway, I’ll handle everything on this end. Just bring me Ki-filled jade, and I’ll do the rest,” Faust offered, and Sylver believed him.

It was a strange thing to describe something happening in real life as “cliché,” but Sylver wasn’t a stranger to the same event repeating over and over again. Over the span of hundreds of years, granted, but when you’re past a certain age, you start seeing the patterns whether you like it or not.

“What about Xalibur?” Sylver asked.

“The rubies you gave him were enough for him to have Dog cured of one of his diseases. I think I heard the healer mention it would cost 90 grams of red jade to fully cure him. He’s an exile, although the boy doesn’t know which sect he was from. He’s still waiting outside,” Faust reminded, as a shade confirmed his words.

He was just sitting on the grass couch Sylver had made, watching Dog chewing on something.

“Do we need him for anything or-”

“I’m not even going to mock you for this, but that man to a normal cultivator is what you are to a normal mage. I have no idea what he knows, or who he used to be, but even from briefly being around him, I would be willing to be he has at least 1 S rank skill. As long as the reason he’s an exile isn’t for something seriously fucked up, I’m going to invite him to join my sect,” Faust explained, with a spark in both of his eyes.

Sylver looked at Faust for a while, a grown man who was doing a very poor job of keeping his excitement at bay.

“Alright. Keep in mind that we’re not staying here. Once I have Edmund, we’re going back to Arda. So sort everyone’s shit out, and then make sure they’re ready to leave,” Sylver explained, as Faust’s excitement died down a little.

“I uh…” Faust rubbed the back of his head and looked away from Sylver.

Sylver placed his hand on Faust’s shoulder and felt the man flinch.

“We’ll get over that bridge when we get to it, how about that?” Sylver offered.

Arda was probably the last place Faust wanted to be, and Sylver didn’t get the feeling forcing the issue would be a good idea right now.

First, he had to find Edmund, because Sylver wasn’t leaving this place without him. He would worry about the rest afterward.

“They don’t have an adventurer’s guild here, but there’s a bar where you can find out which sects are offering which missions. Wait a bit before going, I need to find you a badge so people know your part of our sect,” Faust said, as he started patting his pockets, and finally produced a folded-up piece of paper.

It was a hand-drawn man with directions to the bar in question.

“Is there any local etiquette I should be aware of?” Sylver asked as he stored the paper away in his [Bound Bones] storage.

Faust stopped walking towards the door and turned around. He looked at Sylver for a while and cocked his head to the side slightly before a wry smile spread on his face.

“Be careful not to harm civilians. Anyone who isn’t dressed like me, I mean,” Faust explained, as he gestured towards his brightly colored bathrobe getup.

“Didn’t think a place like this would have that kind of rule,” Sylver said, as Ria shrunk down into the staff, and floated into Sylver’s hand.

“It’s more of a courtesy thing. These kinds of places are big on community, all cultivators are. They don’t have a choice, since they need to stay in one place while their jade settles. If the general public likes you, you’ll be surprised by how many people will be unwilling to go against you,” Faust explained, as Sylver hid Ria inside the back part of his robe.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sylver said, as Spring handled sorting out which shades would stay to continue cleaning, and which would go with Sylver.

“One last thing,” Faust said, even as he was already halfway out the door. “Until I’m fully recovered, do your best to stay low-key,” Faust asked.

Sylver brushed away the dust that had fallen onto his shoulders from the ceiling.

“Who’s more low-key than me?” Sylver asked.

***

With his freshly carved badge hanging off a string wrapped around his left arm, he seemed to become all but invisible to the guards.

A few non-cultivators stared at him, a small child even went as far as to point at him, but aside from that, no one seemed to care too much. Sylver adjusted his robe so it resembled the bathrobe type the cultivators wore, and just to keep things simple, kept his eyes just short of closed so no one would notice that they were pitch black.

With the wrinkles this squinting created, Sylver probably looked like your average, everyday, 7-foot-tall muscular elder. The fact that he purposely aged the skin on his face and hands, helped solidify this image.

He did notice one strange thing during his walk.

Women.

Or rather, a lack of women.

Sylver didn’t even try counting, because the man-to-woman ratio was above 200 to 1, at least when it came to people who were walking outside during the day.

That, and the lack of other races. After the time Sylver spent among “elves” in the Garden, seeing dwarves, humans, actual elves, and everything in between walking around the streets in Arda was a bit of a shock, but he was used to it within a day.

Now that he was surrounded by nothing but humans, he felt like he was back in the Garden, alone, cut off from Lola and the others. He wasn’t, of course, Sylver even planned to send a shade to Lola to give her an update on what he was up to.

The distance the shade would need to cover would be great, but if he was alone and unencumbered, Aleri should hypothetically be able to get to Arda within a week or so.

The bar was mostly empty as Sylver walked in. A few small groups of men were asleep inside the booths on the left, a man with a grey shawl on his head was busy cleaning a table on the right, and a portly man who was almost as wide as he was tall, was standing behind the bar, polishing glasses.

Sylver approached the bar and was careful to have the wooden symbol on his arm turned just enough that the actual symbol on it wasn’t visible, as he sat down behind the stool nearest to the barman.

“Can I help you with anything?” the man asked.

He didn’t stop rubbing the glass in his hand, but he wasn’t looking at it, he was staring at Sylver’s face.

“Yes young man, you can, thank you. I’m looking for work, and I was told you are the man to see,” Sylver offered with as soft and polite of a tone as he could muster.

The expression on the man’s pudgy face was relaxed, and oddly enough, so was his soul. Sylver had a whole thing planned, from telling the barkeep about how he was passing through and got stuck inside, how he bought membership into a sect, and would then complain about his missing friend, Fobur.

Instead, the barkeep put his glass down and retrieved a small booklet from somewhere underneath his bar.

“Are you looking for anything in particular, sir?” the barkeep asked, as he licked his thumb and started looking through the pages.

Sylver’s [Lesser Perception] let him effectively look at what the man was reading without having to crane his head, or unsquint his eyes. Not that there was any point in doing that since the man moved the book up to where Sylver could see it and turned it around so he would have an easier time reading.

Sylver was careful not to overplay his old man voice and was a little upset at how easy it was to speak in such a manner.

“Anything with a powerful beast that mainly uses poison or venom would be marvelous,” Sylver said, as he gradually started bending his outer spine, and decided he might as well take this old man thing all the way.

“Hmm… The Green Moth sect has recently increased the amount of jade offered for 2 pairs of a skunk ape’s glands. Depending on the condition, they promised up to 10 grams of green jade,” the barkeep explained and was nice enough to move his finger along the text he was reading, so Sylver could follow.

Sylver squinted his eyes for real out of habit and had to be reminded by Spring to open them back up a little.

“You’ll have to forgive my ignorance young man, but what exactly is a skunk ape?” Sylver asked.

Even if Sylver could guess, he wasn’t in his comfort zone at the moment. If it were a place where monsters were made using mana, that was one thing, but this was Ki land, and Sylver didn’t want to take any chances.

“They’re about 10 feet tall and are said to be roughly shaped like a large man. They move while surrounded by a noxious cloud of their own making, and are near impossible to deal with without some kind of poison resistance. They are estimated to be anywhere from level 150 to 300. The glands being offered a reward for are hidden 2 hand widths above the base of their tail,” the man explained and went as far as to find a diagram for Sylver.

Sylver nodded along to the man’s description.

“Thank you for the help young man, you wouldn’t happen to know where I might find these creatures?” Sylver asked, and felt Spring silently tap something out to Ria, who tapped back, and shook a bit from giggling.

“If you follow the Makrys river north for half a day, you should find them near the western edge of the blue swamp,” the barkeep explained casually, as Sylver felt Spring and Ria freeze at the words.

Ria froze in worry, Spring froze due to excitement.

“There wouldn’t happen to be any other materials being offered payment for in that area, would there?” Sylver asked, and honestly couldn’t help himself as the smile crept into his gravelly voice, but was surprised to find the barkeep was smiling as much as Sylver was.

“If you would like to have a drink while you wait, sir, I can draw you a list of all the monster parts being sought after,” the barkeep offered, as he placed an empty glass in front of Sylver, and pulled the book down behind the bar.

“Thank you young man, but I don’t drink before a job,” Sylver said and very gently pushed the empty glass away from him.

He would later learn that the reason the barkeep was so polite, was that he mistook Sylver for an old cultivator from a foreign sect. Apparently white hair, and wearing dark colors were the height of old cultivator fashion.

The barkeep didn’t even question why a powerful man would bother trudging through the swamps for what amounted to scraps, he just told him everything the old man wanted to know.

“My friend owns a supplies shop just down the road. If you need anything to traverse through the swamps, he’ll be more than willing to provide you high-quality items, at a very reasonable price,” the barkeep offered, as he handed Sylver the neatly written out list of monster’s and their respective parts to look out for.

Sylver took the list and just looked at the man for a while.

“I won’t forget this kindness you’ve shown me today, thank you,” Sylver said to the slightly surprised barkeep.

They just smiled at each other, as Sylver walked out of the bar, and started reading through what amounted to a shopping list for a [Swamp Lord].

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