Ch237-The Bitch Is Back (Patreon)

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Ch237-The Bitch Is Back

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“At least we’re still in Eira,” Edmund said.

Sylver, Edmund, and the unconscious bandits found themselves standing in a giant cylindrical tunnel. The only source of light was the small glowing sphere floating above Sylver’s and Edmund’s heads. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all made from the same slippery dark gray material.

[Xander’s Waystone - Greater Quality]
[For every 2 creatures teleported inside Xander’s Hole, 1 may teleport out]
[Amount teleported in: 25]
[Amount that can be teleported out: 12]

“The waystone seems to think it worked without any problems,” Sylver said, as he slowly turned in a circle, and observed what little there was to observe of his surroundings.

“The tunnel doesn’t look like it was dug, and I don’t-”

Edmund was interrupted by the sounds of wild hissing, followed by a wet squelching noise.

“I think I know where we are,” Sylver said, as he called his shades back, and snuffed out the ball of light floating above his head.

“You’re probably right,” Edmund said, as he snuffed out his light too.

The Arch-Necromancer, and Arch-Pyromancer, turned toward the source of the hissing noise and waited.

“It’s… glowing,” Edmund said after a bit of hesitation.

Sure enough, he was right.

The [Mage Cap] on Sylver’s head was glowing a dull red, too weak to notice in most cases, but in total darkness, it stood out like a droplet of blood on perfectly clean white snow.

“Having a glowing target on my head is a small price to pay for the magical boost,” Sylver said, as Edmund shrugged his shoulders in acceptance.

The wet squelching and slapping noise gradually became louder, and after a few more seconds, Sylver could vaguely make out pale hairless human-shaped figures running towards him. They had the signature long limbs, and squashed torso that most goblins had, but there was something off about their heads, they didn’t look right.

There were 4 of them, each armed with short white spears, that looked like they were made from a sharpened bone.

[Goblin/??? – Greater Dark-Scout– 99]
[Corpse – Inferior]
[Soul – Inferior]

“Hmm…” Sylver said to himself, as he tried to use [Arcane Insight] on the other 3, but got the same information each time.

He waited for the goblins to get closer.

Sylver raised his open palm towards them and produced a painfully loud pop sound. The goblins barely got a chance to recoil at the sudden onslaught to their senses, before a group of shades appeared directly behind them, and shoved a blade into the back of their skull.

[Undead Mastery (VI) Proficiency increased to 94%!]

[Mirage (IV) Proficiency increased to 90%!]

[Arcane Insight (IV) Proficiency increased to 48%!]

The corpses were thrown at Sylver, and all 4 landed at his feet in a neat pile.

Sylver turned them over using [Dead Dominion], and sent a pulse of mana through one of the corpses.

“What?” Edmund asked in response to the expression on Sylver’s face.

Sylver took his hand off the goblin and stood up straight.

“They’re human…” Sylver said, partially to Edmund, but mostly to himself.

“You mean they’re humans who evolved into this?” Edmund asked with a gesture towards the dead creature on the ground.

“I mean the last time I was here, these things were oviparous, barely had functioning eyes, and their muscles were nowhere near this dense… Maybe the ones I saw back then were the way they were because they were close to an exit?” Sylver said as he used a blade of [Deadly Darkness] to make a cut along the goblin’s spine.

Edmund moved his sphere of light towards the corpse to see it better.

“A goblin this size wouldn’t have a spine this long…” Edmund offered.

“Or hands without the muscles they need for retractable claws,” Sylver said, as he gestured at the hands in question.

“It’s like they devolved into-”

Their discussion was interrupted by a sloshing noise, the sort that made the hairs on the back of Sylver’s neck stand up straight. On instinct more than anything else, Sylver and Edmund began to run down the cylindrical tunnel, and left behind the 4 goblin corpses, along with the unconscious bandits.

The liquid brought with it an odd-smelling gas, that easily passed through Sylver’s defenses, and burned his eyes.

Edmund glowed with a pale white light, as he healed himself, while Sylver tried to think of a way to slow down the oncoming corrosive substance. The sheer force with which it was moving towards them meant that any kind of blockage Sylver might have been capable of conjuring would be useless.

Edmund specialized in gaseous and plasma-based magic, neither of which worked well in terms of defense.

It’s hard to say how long the two men ran for their lives, but during their sprint, they were yet to find anything in their way. The tunnel was squeaky clean, almost as if someone had been pumping enchanted acid through it.

With Sylver’s shades scouting ahead for him, he gradually discovered that the tunnel they were running through, was a loop, and if they kept running, they would very likely reach the original area they had arrived at.

Sylver’s current idea consisted of using a beam of abyss magic to make a hole in the ceiling and then using [Fog Form] to escape. The problem with that plan was that Edmund didn’t have a perk that would let him squeeze through such a small hole, and for whatever reason, he had never unlocked any kind of teleportation ability.

The second idea mostly involved running away from the wave of gelatinous acid, until they found a way out. The problem with that plan was that it wasn’t a plan, and was the sort of thing people would do in the absence of a plan.

Anything magical wouldn’t work due to the difference in scale, even if Sylver had an hour to grow and develop acid-resistant mushrooms, and then had enough nutrients to make a giant wall out of them, the force of the acid would break it apart.

“Can you latch onto the ceiling?” Edmund asked.

He sounded so calm, that Sylver almost stopped running from how at ease he felt.

“No,” Sylver answered.

“Count to eight, jump as high as you can, and make yourself as small as possible,” Edmund said.

With a beaming smile that didn’t fit the current “we might fucking die” mood going on around them, Sylver nodded at Edmund and proceeded to count to eight, as his muscles pulled themselves tight, and shrunk his spine and limbs.

Sylver used his [Deadly Darkness] shadow as a sort of spring to help him jump higher. He was airborne for less than a second before he felt Edmund grab him by the back of the robe. Edmund propelled upwards using two steams of barely visible fire, and pulled Sylver along with him, the way a dog would carry a puppy by the scruff of its neck.

If Sylver had any breath, it would have been knocked out of him, as Edmund flipped him over, and slammed him against the ceiling. Sylver kept his limbs as close to him as possible, as Edmund used one hand to keep himself and Sylver pressed up against the ceiling, and used his other hand to mold a stream of barely visible fire into a half sphere.

Sylver’s smile only got bigger as Edmund shifted the angle of the downward stream of fire, and was now sliding along the ceiling towards the incoming wave of liquid.

What made the current predicament so nice was that he didn’t need to ask any stupid questions, of course Edmund was aware that if the liquid wasn’t a moving mass, they wouldn’t be able to get out of it. The risk Edmund took was calculated, and while his gut wasn’t as tried and tested as Sylver’s, it still had a more than respectable level of durability.

Sylver watched as the edge of Edmund’s mouth curled into a grin, as they reached the acidic liquid.

Edmund’s protective dome of fire nearly buckled under the pressure, if they had tried to do this while on the ground, it would have broken apart. Sylver could feel Edmund’s heart rate increasing with every passing second, he could see the red cracks on his fingers and forearms lose their intensity, and just as Edmund was about to run out of mana, they slid out of the corrosive substance.

Edmund was out of breath, and his hands were closed in tight steaming fists, as he released his magic, and began to fall. Just as he had done, Sylver grabbed Edmund by the back of his shirt and used his [Deadly Darkness] shadow to create a platform underneath his feet.

He had been ready for the shadow to be burned away by the acid, but the walls were acid-free. Sylver and Edmund both watched the blob of shimmering liquid continue down the tunnel.

“I can’t begin to tell you how nice it is to have you back,” Sylver said, with the sort of smile you would normally see on a proud parent.

“We need to get out of here,” Edmund said, as he continued healing himself in quick bursts of healing magic, and once he was done fixing his burned lungs, he covered Sylver’s face in the brown fire.

The skin Sylver hadn’t realized had been eaten away, quickly grew back, and Sylver’s melted eyes materialized inside his eye sockets and filled up with plasma.

“I would have been dead without you,” Sylver said, as he lifted himself and Edmund upwards, and aimed at the ceiling with his finger.

“You would have figured something out,” Edmund said, as Sylver pushed his glowing finger up to the slimy rock, and tried to make a hole in it.

He could feel the abyss magic working, it was most definitely doing something, but it wasn’t cutting through the rock.

Sylver lifted his free hand up to the rock and realized what was happening.

“It’s… healing?” Sylver said, mostly to himself.

Once he understood that, making an incision was as easy as cutting a piece of wet tissue paper with a razor blade.

The second Sylver made a hole, half as thick as his finger, a giant tear appeared, and both Sylver and Edmund were pushed out of the tunnel they had been inside.

Sylver watched as the flaps flapped around as the tunnel deflated for a moment, and in the time it took Sylver to blink, the giant tear was gone. The slightly deflated tube became inflated again.

Due to his weight, Sylver didn’t fly all that high, but he got a good look at his surroundings.

He’d seen this before.

Not exactly this, but he’d been inside giant creatures enough times to know what he was looking at. Thick pulsating tunnels were sprawled out to the very edges of the “cave,” weaving in and out of the oddly gray ground, which just like the tunnels, was moving.

Giant towers of meat connected the ground to the ceiling, and while it was too slow for Sylver to see it, he could tell the meat towers were growing with every passing second.

“You said she was hollowed out?” Edmund asked, even as he knew that Sylver’s answer was going to be “she was.”

“She was… 5 years ago…” Sylver answered, as he reached the apex of his flight, and began to fall down towards the ground.

Sylver used [Fog Form] to break his fall, while Edmund landed on his two feet and simply absorbed the kinetic energy. They both spent a while crouched and touched the oddly hard red “rock,” and both reached the same conclusion that it was indeed demi-god turtle meat. They were pretty sure, but it never hurt to double-check.

“It’s been 5 years since you made the waystone, so the fact that she’s healed so much, means the framework is inaccurate,” Edmund theorized, or in this case, said word for word what Sylver had been thinking.

“There was a forest and everything here back then. And a river over there. And a mountain over there, I used it as a landmark,” Sylver said and pointed towards the locations he listed.

Edmund was staring directly upwards and squinting.

“You said her shell was so deep underwater that you could barely make out her head,” Edmund half said, half asked.

“The sea was calm that day, and I had my shades help me with mapping out the sigils,” Sylver said, as Edmund squinted his eyes even more.

“The top part is above water,” Edmund said, while pointing towards the very top of the “cave,” they were standing inside of.

Sylver tried his best to see whatever Edmund was pointing at, but he couldn’t see it. The entirety of the ceiling looked the same to Sylver's eyes.

“The Sinis sea doesn’t have tides low enough for the top of her shell to point out, so that means she’s either floating-”

“Or she got bigger. Did her shell look deflated to you back then?” Edmund asked.

“A little, but she would have to be inflated like a balloon for the top to stick out of the sea…” Sylver said.

Edmund had stopped staring at the ceiling and was now looking at where Tuli’s neck would/should be. The various towers of meat made it impossible to see very far.

“Can you feel that?” Edmund asked as Sylver focused his mana sense in the direction Edmund pointed.

“Not really,” Sylver said.

He could feel something, but it could just as easily be his imagination. If Edmund hadn’t said anything, Sylver would have ignored it.

Edmund’s mana had a significantly higher concentration of positive mana than Sylver’s, which in turn meant he could sense certain frequencies that Sylver couldn’t. It was yet another reason he and Sylver worked well as a team, collectively they could sense just shy of 96% of all mana frequencies.

Sylver used [Fog Form] to quickly move across the waving hills of muscle, while Edmund silently floated after him.

***

Several questions were answered simultaneously.

What was the source of the odd magic Edmund had felt?

The giant carved metal obelisk.

What was the reason Sylver’s waystone didn’t teleport them to the right location?

The giant carved metal obelisk.

Why did Chrys lose track of Faust?

If Sylver was a betting man, he would put his money on the giant metal obelisk.

Sylver and Edmund were currently sitting inside a gap in one of the meat towers that reached the top of Tuli’s shell. In some places the towers were more like webs, connecting the ceiling and ground.

“There are people there,” Edmund repeated.

Sylver hadn’t said anything the first time Edmund had said that because he was too busy being enraged to do anything but stand there and stare.

Tuli was someone Sylver considered a friend, and seeing a giant metal needle sticking out from the base of her skull pissed him off in a way very few things managed to piss him off.

It wasn’t that it was disrespectful, although that was part of it, it was the fact that they were treating her as if she was a mindless beast. To Sylver, this was the equivalent of watching someone expertly remove Edmund’s skin to make leather out of it.

“I’m going to guess you’re as worried as I am, that such a powerful obelisk is accompanied by an equally powerful mage,” Edmund added.

“It’s preventing her head from healing,” Sylver mumbled, barely loud enough for Edmund to hear.

“It’s also draining her life force. Which is arguably more impressive than simply separating one body part from another,” Edmund said.

Sylver continued staring at the giant obelisk, and the seemingly rotten bone it was sticking out of. From this far away, the circle of decay was clear as day, even if Sylver didn’t have a world-class healer to put two and two together, it was obvious that the metal pillar was sucking the life out of Tuli.

As Edmund had said, draining the life out of a demi-god, even a comatose demi-god, was impressive. Sylver was an expert when it came to siphoning the life out of something, and he could barely steal a droplet of health from Tuli.

Which meant that whoever had built this thing was either more knowledgeable than Sylver when it came to dark magic, or they knew something about Tuli that he didn’t.

Then again, with the system, who the fuck knows?

Anything is possible.

Some mentally challenged child might have decided to try to kill a demi-god as a joke, and the system reward his effort with a skill, that he leveled up to the point that it wasn’t merely possible, but was actively happening.

Just behind the obelisk, Sylver could see black smoke rising from the base of it. He slowly lifted his head and rested his eyes on the giant dirty patch of soot that had gathered along the slope of Tuli’s shell. He took a metaphorical deep breath and calmed himself.

“I’m going to go talk to them,” Sylver said, as he stood up, and relaxed his fists into hands.

“I will wait… 15 minutes?” Edmund offered.

“5 will be more than enough. There’s absolutely no chance that whoever is doing this is doing it for a reason I will consider valid enough to murder Tuli,” Sylver said, as he checked his robe was fine and then moved the darts and daggers floating inside of it around.

“What if their child is seriously ill?” Edmund asked.

Sylver couldn’t help himself and laughed at the question.

“Even if their favorite son is ill,” Sylver said with a chuckle, as he jumped out of the small gap they had been standing in, and slid down the tendril until he reached the ground.

Even if you knew Sylver was there, the fog he used to travel with was so thin that it would be impossible to tell where exactly he was, especially since he spread it as far as he could while he moved through it. On top of that, it was pretty dark in here, the only source of light was the few rays shining through Tuli’s shell, nowhere near to spot a person sneaking towards you, let alone a thin film of fog.

As a result, Sylver reached the obelisk without any problems.

His attempts to scout ahead with his shades proved fruitless since the interference created by the giant metal structure rendered them deaf and blind, the weaker ones couldn’t even move between the shadows once they got close enough to the thing.

Sylver materialized 2 steps away from the obelisk and did his best to make himself look as meek as possible, as he looked around, and waited for someone to confront him.

Magic was too fickle for someone to make something this powerful, and then leave it unattended. The greater the object, the more maintenance it required, an item of this caliber couldn’t be left alone.

“Hello?” Sylver shouted at the metal obelisk.

Careful not to step on a loose piece of bone, Sylver walked all the way around the obelisk and pretended to study the carvings on it.

Pretended, because, despite his somewhat frequent interactions with demons, their magic was as much of a mystery to Sylver, as it was to everyone else who wasn’t a demon. The carvings were almost certainly made by human hands because every now and then Sylver could see the hesitation on certain sigils.

Whoever had carved this giant piece of metal wasn’t possessed by a demon.

Which was good news, because that meant there was a chance the obelisk had enough human errors for Sylver to exploit. Just destroying it was also an option, but the danger with that was that whoever had made this, built it to kill Tuli if someone tried to destroy it.

Which, in this case, isn’t too big of a problem, as powerful as this metal toothpick may be, it wasn’t even close to killing Tuli. Worst case scenario, it would set back her awakening by a couple of centuries, as long as the shell was intact, everything else would grow back eventually.

Sylver did another lap around the obelisk and then looked around for a ladder or staircase, leading downward.

He discovered a locked door embedded into Tuli’s bone, made out of metal, and had a thin layer of lead spread throughout the locking mechanism.

Edmund silently landed behind Sylver and cocked his head to the side as Sylver gestured at the door.

The young man grabbed the door by its edges, and in a single practiced motion, pulled it out of the bone, along with the metallic door frame. Inside there was a spiral staircase, leading downwards. Edmund went in first, and Sylver followed after him.

Slowly, but surely, Sylver and Edmund made their way down the spiral staircase and were stopped by a thick metal door, that was surrounded by wooden planks.

Edmund grabbed the hilt of his sword, as Sylver slowly opened the door. The rusty hinges moaned as Sylver did so, and by the time he had it open all the way, the room was dead silent, and all 6 men were staring right at him.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

“I don’t suppose there’s a chance you lot have no clue what the giant metal obelisk above us is doing there?” Sylver asked with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

A man on the left stood up from his seat.

The interior of the room was bizarre. Because it looked like the world’s most average bar. The floor was covered in wooden planks, as were the 4 walls, as was the ceiling, it was as if someone had simply made a copy of a regular bar, and placed it down here. Including the man standing behind the bar, there were 6 men here.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

“Elvish?” Sylver asked in Elvish since speaking in Eirish hadn’t resulted in a response.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

Sylver heard the sound of a piece of flint being struck come from Edmund, and the next thing he knew, the man on Sylver’s left was screaming while clutching at his engulfed-in-flames face.

Both Sylver and Edmund had a plan as to how to handle the room, this wasn’t their first time fighting together, but what they didn’t plan for was for the 6 men to be teleported away before the fighting even started.

Sylver jumped into the air, just as a giant hole opened up in the space beneath his feet. The portal underneath him turned out to be a trap, as an impossible-to-control torrent of pressurized water shot upwards, and pushed him into a second portal directly above him.

Edmund had a bit more luck on his end, as he managed to dodge to the side, instead of upward. When he saw that Sylver was already halfway through the portal, he flew towards Sylver and pushed the two of them the rest of the way through.

With the benefit of hindsight, that was an incredibly risky, fucking stupid move on Edmund’s part, but the man acted on instinct because he was as worried about losing Sylver, as Sylver was worried about losing him.

Normally with these sort of portal attacks, the person being attacked is teleported into an active volcano, into outer space, to the bottom of the ocean, somewhere where their death is just short of instant.

But instead of any of that, Edmund and Sylver found themselves in broad daylight, with wispy white clouds above them, and a shiny blue sea around them, marred only by a large green circle, directly below them.

On the one hand, Sylver was thrilled that he wasn’t going get trapped underwater, where he would slowly lose the ability to move, and then slowly go insane while he hopelessly waited for Edmund to rescue him.

On the other hand, Sylver had recognized the mana signature of the portals.

Normally that would be great news, better the demon you know, than the demon you don’t, and all that bullshit, but Sylver had a fundamental issue with knowing this particular piece of information.

Because, in a certain sense, it meant that Nautis was Sylver’s “nemesis.”

And that particular teleporting pants-shitting crybaby didn’t deserve to have the Sylver Sezari as a “nemesis.” Some kind of limp slug creature was more in line with what Nautis deserved, not even a slug, a snail that’s too weak to make its own shell, that lies about being a slug out of pure embarrassment.

Thankfully, as Sylver and Edmund started to fall, Sylver saw something in the corner of his eye, that considerably brightened his mood.

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