Ch225-What Goes Around (Patreon)

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Ch225-What Goes Around

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After Sylver had returned from his Fobur Plateforged rescue attempt, 11 days had passed.

As of last night, there were 7 mountains left. 7 chain links that were breaking down one by one.

Sylver was sitting in a somewhat odd location, but this way Bruce didn’t have to wait too long before he could rift through the giant Ki bubble Sylver, and his garden of fungus occupied.

Getting a mushroom to react to Ki wasn’t very hard.

At least not for a man of Sylver’s skill.

If can you call semi randomly mashing together various strains of fungus, until something that changed color in the presence of Ki appeared, “skill.”

Sylver had initially tried using local plants, but it turns out that even the ones “infused with Ki,” couldn’t sense Ki.

Sylver ended up learning a fair bit of cultivation alchemy and discovered that they basically used the dried-up roots, eyeballs, and what have you, the same way mages used spell components.

The various ingredients functioned like catalysts. Which meant that, even though they conducted Ki like nobody’s business, they couldn’t “sense” it. They produced a negligible amount of heat, and in some cases produced a faint light, but none of the plants Sylver had access to could be used to sense Ki in the manner Sylver needed.

On top of that, what minimal reaction there was, was far too slow to be used as a counter to cultivators rifting through Ki bubbles.

Sylver needed this thing to react faster than he could. He needed this fungus to handle the rifting cultivator even if Sylver wasn’t aware he was being attacked.

Sylver felt that ever so familiar wisp of softness brush against his face, as Bruce yet again appeared behind him. The furry-looking mushroom growing in the palm of Sylver’s hand wiggled around and changed color, about 2 seconds after Bruce would have sliced Sylver’s throat open.

Bruce sat down, which was the silent signal that the bubble of Ki that Sylver was occupying was getting too “hot.” Bruce was a very quiet boy, and he did as Sylver asked without questioning him.

Mora was inside the house, sleeping inside a cocoon/hammock, Ria and Spring were playing poker inside Sylver’s workshop, and Sylver was sitting on top of a tree in the garden, with about 40 mushrooms covering his head, back, and the top part of his arms.

As the mushroom in Sylver’s palm turned into liquid, the one on his wrist slid into his palm and puffed up as it absorbed the failed attempts liquid remains.

He’d been in situations like this often enough to know that there wasn’t any real rush. Owl wouldn’t attack Sylver right away, he would wait for Hound to lick his wounds, and only then would he attack.

If he attacked at all.

Still, Sylver gradually put everyone on high alert, magically fortified the sect as much as he could, and then prepared an ambush.

Then an hour passed.

Then another.

Then day turned into night.

And then night turned into day.

And while Sylver was content to hide motionless underground, the living members of Faust’s sect needed to eat, sleep and rest. In the end, Sylver allowed everyone to go back to what they were doing, and the cultivators were split into two teams that stayed on guard in 12-hour shifts.

Frankly speaking, Sylver wasn’t in any particular danger, with Mora acting as backup, he was confident in his ability to, if not win, at the very least escape.

And even if they caught him, so what?

Faust was halfway to Tuli by now, and since teleportation magic didn’t work on Anastasia, the chances of her getting here fast enough for the emperor to impregnate her before all the mountain tops finished falling was just short of 0.

By all accounts, Sylver was done.

The closest thing he had to a real problem was all the people in Sylver’s sect, that could be taken hostage.

The people that had been Faust’s responsibility. Except Sylver had been the one who ordered Faust to leave. So, because of that, Sylver was responsible for them.

And even though Sylver only knew a handful of their names, he wasn’t about to allow anyone under his protection to die.

Aside from pride, there was the matter of Edmund.

Sylver didn’t have a single doubt Edmund would understand that he did the best he could, but Ed would have that stupid fucking look of judgment on his face. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it, which made it infinitely worse than if he simply openly judged Sylver for his failure.

It wasn’t as if Sylver was going to murder all of them preemptively, to make his life easier, but it was like walking around with a massive hole in his armor. Sylver wasn’t accustomed to having such an obvious weak spot, the whole point of Lola turning Arda into an impenetrable fortress, was so that anyone that couldn’t defend themselves, could be sent there to be defended.

The only real solution Sylver could think of was to hand the second group over to some other sect, so they would stop being Sylver’s responsibility. But it turned out that the second group was a package deal if Sylver wanted to maintain ownership of his sect’s “headquarters.”

Faust’s sect had 2 groups in it, the first was the “main” group, the cultivators that had been brought over from the sect Sylver had defeated and handed over to Faust.

The second group were the various craftsmen and farmers that “belonged” to Faust, but at the same time, could very easily get up and move to a different sect.

The guards, Faust’s sect had 22, were in the second group, they were powerful, and a couple were even above level 300, but their allegiance wasn’t the same as Michael’s, or Bruce’s.

The guards would defend everyone inside the sect, but their combat ability decreased to nothing once they left the area that belonged to Faust. Even if Faust was defeated and a different sect took over, the guards would stay the same. They came with the land, to put it simply.

The cultivators, on the other hand, the children Faust had uncrippled and then trained, were directly loyal to Faust. Normally the two different groups would have a lot of intersection, the wives and children of the cultivators would live amongst the second group, but since Faust essentially just replaced the previous sect’s head, the people in the second group didn’t care too much if Faust was replaced by someone else.

Anyone with any real ties to the previous sect’s cultivators had left at the same time the defeated cultivators did.

Still, even with that in mind, if someone in the second group died, it would be a mark against Sylver, regardless of how little he cared about them.

On top of that-

“I. Found. Them,” a voice squawked right into Sylver’s ear.

He was very gentle as he picked up the small bird and moved it up to his face.

“Are you sure?” Sylver asked as Bruce stood up from where he had been sitting. Sylver gestured for the boy to leave, and a moment he was gone.

“I. Am. Sure,” there was a long pause. “You. Will. Not. Like. It,” the sparrow with a glowing eye explained.

“Let me guess… Witch hunters? Priests?” Sylver asked as the bird ruffled its feathers.

Chrys had gotten a lot better at guiding the birds she was controlling, as opposed to simply puppeteering them.

“Monks,” the Chrys bird said.

“Ah… That would have been my fifth guess…” Sylver mumbled as he stood up, and in a single shake of his arms, dislodged the various mushrooms growing on him.

Sylver extended his shadow into a perch for the sparrow to sit on, as he nudged Spring to finish losing to Ria, and considered whether or not to take Mora with him.

Sylver hadn’t simply sat on his ass for those 11 days.

Well, that was mostly what he had done, but he did it while Chrys was searching for Owl and the others. Sylver didn’t quite understand how exactly Chrys was searching for them, but both she and Zelvash assured him that she wasn’t in any danger.

Information gathering wasn’t Sylver’s forte, and while he would have preferred that Chrys continued to practice her magic in the safety of his house, he didn’t have any viable alternatives.

It was either let her find them for him or ask the dragon for help.

Or the witches, and their spirit.

Sylver didn’t want to bother the dragon more than absolutely necessary, and he didn’t trust any kind of spirit, let alone the type to work with witches.

Sylver couldn’t say if the reason he wanted to find Owl and the others was because of his bruised pride, his paranoia, or because he wanted to know what could possibly be so important that they didn’t bother finishing him off.

Granted, there was a chance they weren’t aware he had survived, less than a handful of people had seen him since he returned to his sect, but Owl didn’t seem like the type to need word of mouth to find this sort of thing out.

More than anything else, Sylver had a bad feeling about leaving that particular group to their own devices. And the thought that they might interfere with Edmund’s rescue sent a chill down his spine.

Sylver informed Michael that he was leaving, and told him to do as they had discussed if Sylver didn’t send word by sundown.

***

The Green Ring didn’t look all that different from the streets down in the Red Ring. At least not architecturally speaking.

The main difference was that the Ki barriers were significantly more powerful. In fact, they were powerful enough that, under normal circumstances, Sylver wouldn’t have been capable of getting through them.

Luckily, he wasn’t walking in blindly, he had a plan.

Or something close enough that he felt confident as he walked up to the, oddly aptly named, Green Lion sect.

According to Xalibur, these monks were the local equivalent of [Healer]s, and at the moment, were spread thin dealing with the sleeping sickness, rampaging through every inch of the Schlagen mountains.

On top of that, they were also helping the people who had suffered during the “sinkhole.” So many different sects were affected, that it would have been disrespectful to give the event a proper name.

Even nearly 2 weeks later people were still finding dead bodies. When Tarragon had come to Sylver to ask for help, the death toll was nearing 4,000.

Sylver refused, and thankfully Tarragon had enough respect for him to understand that he wouldn’t say no unless there was a good reason.

But even with the monks spread thin, it wasn’t as if their sect was left unguarded. Doubly so since every single one of them was capable of using “healing techniques.”

As Chrys had said, their front gates didn’t have any doors. The only thing that separated the road Sylver was currently standing on, and the inner area of the Green Lion sect, was an odd-looking wooden structure.

Two thick wooden posts nearly touched the surrounding walls, and a thick piece of white rope hung between them.

As Sylver took a step forward, it felt as if he walked into a sauna.

As he took another step, his fingers and toes went numb, followed by a very unpleasant burning sensation on his face.

Sylver felt his flesh vibrate as he saturated it with his mana, and as he took another step forward, he felt his robe protectively tighten around him.

Sylver took another step forward, and as he lifted his arm up to his face, and saw that thin wisps of steam were escaping from the gap between his glove and his sleeve.

“Ria,” Sylver said under his breath.

The sensation was unlike any other.

Ria’s magic negating effect didn’t feel cold, but it’s hard to describe the instant absence of heat as anything other than cold.

Sylver stood perfectly still, as the liquid metal woman enveloped him, and inch by inch, cut his body and soul off from the outside world.

In any other circumstances, this would have been terrifying, even knowing she was on his side, Sylver still had to force himself to not do everything in his power to tear her off him.

He’d been sealed away before.

More than once.

And even though he knew for certain that he wouldn’t be trapped for long, the feeling of disconnect Ria was causing was as bad as water to a cat. The shades inside Sylver’s shadow threatened to revolt, as Spring rounded them up and forced them to stay in a spot that would be covered by Ria.

“You can move now,” Ria said, as Sylver slowly compelled his body to relax.

He looked down at himself and saw that Ria’s golden tendrils were covered by a thin layer of the SAM’s black worms, which made the dark chainmail just short of invisible against Sylver’s already pitch-black robe.

Sylver’s hands were covered in admittedly elegant-looking gauntlets, with matching pauldrons on his shoulders, and similar-looking sabatons on Sylver’s feet.

It took him a couple of steps before his body adjusted to its new center of gravity, and it was only now that Sylver realized just how much he had relied on his magic to help him walk. Between the weight reduction, the added friction, and the fact that Sylver’s robe acted the way a cat’s tail did to keep it balanced, Sylver’s movements were just a bit off.

The moment Sylver’s foot touched the ground on the other side of the gate, he felt a mixture of utter terror, along with an emotion that caused him to laugh so hard he threatened to tear some of the stitches inside of him.

Whatever deity was governing this piece of land was strong.

And more importantly old.

And if the incredibly violent rumbling sensation Sylver could feel at the soles of his feet was an indicator, it was very unhappy to see him.

Sylver slowly realized that it wasn’t that the ground was vibrating, but rather there were two bright green lion golems growling at him. Each one was the size of a 4-person carriage, made out of bright green stone, with heads as wide as Sylver as tall.

The two lions were sitting on matching giant pedestals, and although they were growling, they were still sitting down.

“I’m only here to talk,” Sylver explained to the two lion-shaped golems.

Their eyes were made out of bright blue jade, and while it could have been a trick of the light, Sylver could tell that their eyes were actually glowing.

“May I pass?” Sylver asked as the growling of the two lions became just a bit louder.

“I’ll take it that’s a no,” Sylver said, as the growling became even louder.

He took a step backward, and as he had expected, the growling decreased.

“I’ll give you two one last chance to let me pass. Because you’re not going to like what I’m going to do if you don’t,” Sylver offered, as he took a step forward, and as he expected, the growling reached such a high volume that the rope hanging between the two wooden poles above began to shake.

Sylver shrugged his shoulders, as he took one step backward, and then another. The growling stopped the moment Sylver’s other foot touched the ground on the other side of the gate.

Sylver sent Spring to Faust’s sect, while he remained where he was, in a staring match with two bright green statues.

“What’s the plan? You’re limited to your physical strength while inside, and no offense, but I don’t like our chances against those two,” Ria whispered into Sylver’s ear, as Sylver nodded.

“I’m not going to fight them, Ria,” Sylver said, as he walked over to the right wooden pole, and leaned on the wall it was almost touching.

“So, we’re going to wait for them to come to us?” Ria asked as Sylver shook his head.

“No… Look, this isn’t a strategy I normally use, because even I don’t like using it…” Sylver explained.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is it?” Ria asked with an almost tired tone of voice.

“It depends very heavily on your perspective. But personally, this is a 2? Maybe even a 1, because despite how it may appear, no one is in any danger,” Sylver offered, as Ria did that clicking sound she did from time to time.

“What are we waiting for?” Ria asked, with the barest hint of worry in her voice.

“One of the cultivators loyal to Faust has a 2-year-old brother... And I just sent Spring over to Michael, to see if the cultivator in question would allow me to have the child for a few minutes,” Sylver explained, with all the vague gesturing such an odd-sounding explanation required.

“To do what with?” Ria asked.

There wasn’t any worry in her voice, just confusion.

“To use as a… hostage… Basically… Any deity with this much firepower has to follow certain rules. And one of those rules is almost certainly, to not harm the innocent. And while I don’t know what this deity considers right and wrong, I know for a fact that a 2-year-old child can’t be anything other than innocent,” Sylver explained, with an almost embarrassed tone of voice.

“When you say, “almost certainly,” how “almost” are we talking about?” Ria asked.

Sylver peered through the gap between the wooden pole and the wall and saw that the green lion statue on the other side of the gate was staring at him.

“As close to absolutely certain as I can get, without being absolutely certain. Religions that don’t protect children don’t tend to last long. And if Xalibur, and Michael, are to be believed, these monks have been around for a very long time.

“I’ve only seen one old religion that didn’t care whether children lived or died, and it’s only because of that, that I can’t truthfully say I’m absolutely certain,” Sylver explained, just as a young man dressed in black, with a white skull mask covering his face, appeared a few steps away from Sylver.

He was carrying a very small human boy, dressed in a matching dark blue shirt and shorts.

“You have my word he’ll be returned safely,” Sylver swore, as he stopped leaning on the wall.

On a certain level, the fact that the older brother handed his only living relative over to Sylver, without any hesitation, disgusted him in ways that were hard to put into words.

Sylver made a mental note, there and then, to make sure, all the cultivators under Faust acted out of trust and loyalty, not whatever the fuck this was.

After the older brother left, Sylver very carefully moved the younger 2-year-old brother into his left hand. The people here were shorter than the people in Arda, and with Sylver’s body being bigger than the average person’s, the young boy was almost small enough for Sylver to hold in the palm of his hand.

“You’re going to drop him,” Ria said with that older voice she used when she calmed Rosa down.

“That’s the point,” Sylver said, as he turned on his heel, and walked to the edge of the gate. “I’ve got such a poor hold on him, that if someone were to do anything to me, why, this child might just slip out of my grasp and crack his ever so brittle skull on the hard hard floor,” Sylver said with mock concern, as he raised his right foot.

The twin green lion statues began to growl, as Sylver’s Ria-covered foot passed through the gate’s threshold.

The growling got so loud that the previously relaxed child in Sylver’s hand grabbed him by the front of his robe.

“Don’t worry… boy, they won’t bite,” Sylver said in as soothing of a voice as he could manage, as he walked through the gate, and felt the small boy relax again.

Sylver had been undead long enough that he didn’t remember what being touched by holy energy felt like. To him, it had always been the worst pain he had ever experienced. But it appeared to be a pleasant feeling to the living since the boy looked ready to fall asleep even with 2 lions growling near him.

The two lions stood up from their pedestals, as Sylver took two more steps forward.

“Oh wow, I’m so intimidated. I might just pee myself,” Sylver said as he took another two steps forward.

The lions were now growling so loudly that some of the pebbles littered on the ground were starting to shake.

Sylver turned on his heel and walked over to the lion on the left. It stared him down as he approached, it barred its teeth, and lowered itself, as if it was about to pounce.

“Don’t be afraid, look,” Sylver said, as he slapped his hand down onto the giant green growling lion’s nose. It flinched but otherwise didn’t move.

He rubbed his hand up and down the lion’s snout and angled the boy in his arms so he could reach it too.

“See. All bark and no bite. Isn’t,” Sylver lifted his hand and slapped it on the lion’s nose, “that,” he slapped it again, “right,” Sylver said, as he slapped the lion so hard across the snout, that sparks flew out due to Ria’s gauntlet. There was an ever so slight mark on the lion’s otherwise shiny stone nose.

“Is that necessary?” Ria asked in a barely audible whisper.

“No, but it’s fun,” Sylver answered out loud, as the two lions suddenly stopped growling, and returned to their original sitting position.

“What if they attack us?” Ria asked as Sylver laughed at the bright green statue’s face.

“They’re not going to attack us. Because the deity that resides here is a good deity, and good deities don’t do anything that would result in the death of a child. Because only evil deities would do something as disgusting as risking a child’s life. Even if I were to say something like “I’m going to kill 10,000 children after I leave,” this thing isn’t going to do anything,” Sylver said and felt an almost painful tightness all around his body as Ria sort of gasped.

He struggled to move for a moment, as Ria seemed to be frozen in fear.

“Can you please stop taunting it,” Ria communicated through a tense series of taps.

Sylver took his hand off the lion’s face, and with a slight grin, turned away from it, and started to walk down the road.

The main weakness of this strategy was that it didn’t work on priests.

Well, it did work on priests, but in the sense that their deity didn’t provide them with any power, because then it would be aiding in killing a child. But the moment Sylver did anything to them, they were no longer trying to kill Sylver, they were defending themselves.

The reason for this was that most deities were more concerned with how something looked, as opposed to how it actually was. When they are given the choice of saving 10 people by killing 1, they would always choose not to kill.

It was a morality that Sylver hated, because to him, results matter more than the method.

If you kill 1 person, to save 10, you have a net positive of 9. Assuming these people were strangers of course.

But to these sorts of “good” deities, they would only see the fact that they killed a man and would ignore the 10 deaths they could have prevented.

One of the reasons Sylver didn’t like using this strategy, was because he didn’t come up with it. It never occurred to him to do this, until he saw a demon possess a 5-year-old girl.

The priests couldn’t physically stop the possessed child because it had explosives or something, Sylver didn’t remember the specifics, but he remembered the fact that the priests were all powerless against this demon.

They just watched as it made its way to the main altar.

And then they tried to kill Sylver because he stopped the child.

Every single one of those priests saved hundreds of lives every day, and they were willing to lose their healing magic, all because they didn’t want to snuff out one tiny life.

Obviously, not all religious deities were like this, but luckily for Sylver, this one was.

There were more bright green lion statues on the side of the path Sylver took, and because the deity controlling them knew Sylver wasn’t going to be spooked, they saved their strength and stayed silent.

Sylver saw men with hair so long they carried it in a bag on their back. They all wore identical featureless bright green jumpsuits, and as some of them turned around to look at Sylver, he saw that they had braided beards hanging down to their crotch.

Sylver nodded at them with a polite smile, as he continued walking towards the house Chrys said Owl, Hound, and Aurick were staying in. No one stopped him or tried to ask him what he was doing here. If anything, the monks looked like they went out of their way to not pay attention to him.

The building was quite small, and there were large rotted planks of shattered wood lying around everywhere, it looked like an abandoned storage house. It didn’t have any windows and only had 1 door.

With the young boy half asleep in Sylver’s left hand, he very carefully angled his body to protect him, in the event he was attacked, as he raised his right hand towards the door, and knocked.

After 10 seconds had passed, just as Sylver was about to knock again, the door opened enough for a single eye to look through.

“You alright there Aurick? You look kind of pale,” Sylver joked, as he placed his hand on the door, and pushed it open all the way.

As Aurick staggered backward, Sylver noticed 3 things immediately.

The first was that Aurick look identical to the current emperor. It hadn’t been Sylver’s imagination.

The second was that Lion had lost a ton of weight, along with his left leg, and his left ear.

And the third was that there was an extremely familiar-looking book, floating ominously above the unconscious trio. Milky white wisps of smoke came out from the book and flowed down into the noses of the Owl, Hound, and Lion, who were laying side by side on the ground.

The book had a bright red cover, and the edges of the pages were lined with a yellow metal that was the wrong color to be gold. On the front, there were words in a language Sylver didn’t know, alongside very well drawn, and very distinct, suns.

And if Sylver counted right, there were exactly 7 of them.

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