Ch269-Nice Weather (Patreon)

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Ch269-Nice Weather

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Similar to how it was drawn on the map, it was a big stone square.

4 giant sandstone walls that were about a kilometre and a half in length, roughly 70 meters in height, and somewhere between 10 to 15 meters in width, depending on where you measured.

If Sylver wanted to, he could throw himself over the wall using [Deadly Darkness], or using his robe, or [Black Mass] to climb to the top and then pull him up, or he could cut a hole through it with a beam of abyss magic, or just [Fog Form] through a crack, if he found one, but regardless of what method he chose, the wall was barely an annoyance.

And yet, the people who were looking down at him from the top of the wall were far too assured of their safety for the wall to be a simple wall.

Now, on the one hand, given what the “average” warrior/magic user appeared to be like in this jungle land, there was a very good chance these part reptile people thought Sylver was on the same level as the 2 cat cannibal warriors standing behind him.

In which case, their arrogance was understandable.

On the other hand, the wall wasn’t as simple as it initially appeared, and Sylver was the idiot for underestimating them.

Sylver turned to Lostal once the man leaning over the edge of the wall finished shouting his answer at him.

“He’s being polite about it, but to summarize, he’s not interested in talking to us, and wants us to leave, immediately,” Lostal said.

“I see… Ask him if there’s anything magic-related that he might need help with,” Sylver asked.

Lostal cupped his hands over his mouth and started to shout up at the ever so slightly scale-covered man. His eyes were yellow, he was bald, and his ears were so close to his head that they almost looked like someone drew them onto his skin.

“We-do-not need any help with-anything. Go-away,” the man from the top of the wall shouted in relatively solid Eirish.

He spoke a bit too quickly, but there was a chance that was due to nerves.

“Does the name Nels mean anything to you?” Sylver shouted at the man.

The man leaned back inside the wall and was gone for a few seconds. He peaked his head out again.

“If-you-do-not-leave we will make you,” the man shouted back calmly.

“Listen, man, you seem like a nice guy. Come down here so we can talk things out? Or send a proxy down, I am truly only here to talk,” Sylver said.

The man Sylver had been speaking to leaned back inside the wall, and a fraction of a second later, a smooth shiny black cube attached to something inside the wall by a wooden chain flew over the edge of the wall, and like a trebuchet pointed at the ground, the chain connected to the cube released, and flew towards Sylver and company at a terrifying speed.

The cube landed on all 4 men, kept moving, and dug into the soft ground until the flat top of the cube was level with the ground.

“Did you know he was going to do that?” Lostal asked.

The tree made entirely out of [Black Mass], covered with a paper-thin illusion to look like a tree, leaned out of the way and revealed to the men above that the people they had been talking to, and had just killed, were in fact decoys.

“Usually they use hot oil, but this isn’t anything new,” Sylver said.

He pressed his fingers up to his throat and made his voice so loud it caused the surrounding trees to shake in sync with him.

“I’m still willing to talk! But this is your last chance to resolve things the easy way! Send someone down to speak to me right now or I’m going to force my way inside!” Sylver yelled at the top of his lungs.

Instead of sending someone down to talk, they attempted to launch a second shiny cube at him.

But rather than being thrown towards the ground, the wooden chain broke too early, and the giant shiny cube was sent flying high into the air and landed somewhere far away.

The three men who were in charge of operating the device were quietly saying something to the man who seemed to be their superior.

Given that Aleri, the many-winged bird shade, was the one that flew into the wooden chain and prematurely broke it, they were likely trying to explain that they saw a black blur and a glint of light from the enchanted dagger the [Black Mass] collar wearing Aleri had used.

Initially, there was little noise save for men quietly whispering to one another in a foreign hissy language.

But as Sylver’s small band of shadowy figures entered the walled-up city through a mouse hole, materialized inside people’s houses, and began to press sharp weapons up to their throats as they forced them outside into the narrow streets, the hissing whispers were replaced by several ear-piercing screeches, that only got louder with every passing second.

The men that were on the top of the wall jumped into the city, and as Spring briefed Sylver on what was going on, Sylver clasped his hands behind his back and waited for the screaming to die down.

***

There wasn’t enough room for everyone Spring deemed potentially old enough to know something, so the 80 or so men sat shoulder to shoulder, chest to back, with so many constantly moving tendrils of [Black Mass] binding them together, that from Sylver’s point of view it was almost like he was speaking to a shiny black floor with severed heads placed in 5 neat lines of 16.

Sylver left Lostal and the 2 cat cannibals on top of the walls, so Sylver could speak to the captured men in private.

“I do understand… A stranger arrives at your front door, yells a question at you, and after politely telling him to go away, he persists, I understand fullywhy you reacted the way that you did,” Sylver said to the 80 men, each of whom had their jaws held closed so Sylver could speak without being interrupted.

For a few seconds, he stared at a small piece of string stuck to the ceiling and tried to collect himself.

“Do you know what the problem is? I was ready for a fight. A good old fashioned undead climbing up walls, being thrown off them, arrows, boiling hot sticky sugar oil, fire, lightning, powdered silver that fell from the sky like rain… Not that you’re to blame for not living up to my expectations, I came to you, you didn’t come to me, I get that… Anyway…” Sylver said while he stared at the small piece of white string stuck to the ceiling.

He turned towards the silent men.

“Before I start doing anything, I’d like to give everyone here a chance to answer my question. But, for your sake, for the sake of your women, and especially, for the sake of your children, take a minute, and really think about your answer,” Sylver said and waited until he had each and every heavily restrained person’s full attention.

“What does the name Nels mean to you?” Sylver asked.

Before he had a chance to clarify that he was looking for literally anything regarding the name, a grave, a vase, that it was the name of a drink, a dish, that Nels is a type of shoe, more than half of the men Sylver was holding captive made an odd expression with their eyes.

Nevertheless, Sylver waited for exactly a minute, and with every passing second more and more of the men got that odd look in their eyes.

When the full minute was up, Sylver crouched down so he was eye level with the man at the very front, who was one of the first to change his expression when he asked about Nels.

Sylver and the man stared into each other’s eyes, and although Sylver was close enough that he could heard the man’s heart pounding in his chest, he couldn’t get a consistent enough read on his soul to tell if he was about to lie or not.

Aside from his mind being too foreign to what Sylver was used to, he was also part reptile, which only further muddled things.

Wordlessly the bear trap-like pieces of [Black Mass] that had been pressing the man’s jaws closed, loosened, and disappeared into the mass of tendrils wrapped around the man’s body.

The man opened his mouth as if he were yawning to release the tension that had built up in his jaw.

“What does the name Nels mean to you?” Sylver repeated.

He could see in the man’s eyes that he knew something, but he also saw that the man was about to try to negotiate with him.

Sylver didn’t move his body, didn’t particularly do anything with his eyes, but somehow the man got the message that any kind of deviation from answering the question Sylver had asked would result in… something uniquely horrifying.

“Nels is the name of the Teixiptla of the Tenochtitlan,” the old man said.

Sylver stood up from his crouch and gestured with his hand towards a man in the very back of the room.

“You. Is what this guy said true?” Sylver asked as the [Black Mass]holding the man’s mouth closed loosened enough for him to speak.

“Yes,” the young man said simply.

Most of the other men, warriors, and elders, nodded in agreement with the young man.

But despite the confidence with which the old man said it, Sylver didn’t believe it was this easy. He gestured with his hand and the rest of the mouth restraints fell off.

“And if I were to ask someone outside this room, they would say the same thing?” Sylver asked.

“Yes,” about 10 people said without even the briefest moment of hesitation.

Sylver just looked at them.

***

“Teixiptla means skin wearer. Or as we say in Eirish, impersonator,” Lostal said as he limped over to one of the chairs Sylver had moved to the corner of the room.

While he had the man limp from one group to another, Sylver made himself comfortable inside the shaman’s home.

After a fair bit of digging, literal digging, he had managed to make a copy of the man’s sacred text, ritual frameworks, and although it was going to take a while to adjust for components he wouldn’t have access to once he left this place, he now knew how to infect a perfectly healthy human person with a curse that will gradually turn them into a some sort of lizard.

Their skin would peel off their bodies every other week as they gained scales, claws, fangs, poison sacks, tails, and if they were lucky, the skin between their fingers would stretch and form the kind of webbing ducks had on their feet.

He had no intention of using this, but from his experience, it isn’t possible to predict what might come in useful 50 years down the line. If nothing else, this kind of curse would work pretty well as a preventative for a deadlier curse.

Assuming the people Sylver was cursing didn’t mind having all their teeth fall out, and the men specifically were alright with certain rather important parts of their anatomy being absorbed into them.

Spring rolled up the parchment he had finished making a copy of, and handed it to Sylver, who placed it inside the dusty urn he found it in and used [Advanced Earth Manipulation] to bury it inside the shaman’s floor.

“So, this was common knowledge. And if the guy on the wall simply told me “Nels is in that distant city over there,” all of this could have been avoided?” Sylver asked.

“I mean… Would you have taken him at his word?” Lostal asked.

Sylver shrugged his shoulders.

“I wouldn’t have flooded their village with undead and traumatized their children… This isn’t my first time being in a stupid situation because of a lack of communication, but… even for me this is dumb,” Sylver said as Lostal shrugged his shoulders.

“Could have been worse,” Lostal said.

“You have no idea… Anyway… What’s done is done… If they knew what I was about to do if they didn’t tell me aboutTenochalan … Where is that anyway?” Sylver asked.

Lostal lifted his hand and tapped his forehead.

“Inside the “head” of the giant face with the glowing eyes and mouth. But there’s a…” Lostal searched around for a good word.

“Wait, let me guess… A mythical beast guards the entrance. No wait… We must face 3 trials before we can enter?” Sylver asked.

“Was that an actual guess or was this written somewhere in the shaman’s notes?” Lostal asked.

“Not my first time discovering a secret isolated civilization being protected by a bunch of spirits. Has anyone in this place passed these trials?” Sylver asked.

“One of the warrior clans has making it to the trial grounds as part of their coming-of-age ceremony, but taking on the trials hasn’t been done… no one currently alive here has attempted the trials,” Lostal said, as Sylver leaned back in his seat and kicked his feet up onto the shaman’s ornate, painstakingly carved table, and began to stare at the dusty ceiling.

“Are there any requirements for taking on the trials? Do I need the shaman’s blessing or anything?” Sylver asked.

“Not as far as they know. You walk into the giant’s mouth, and if you pass the trials you’re granted entry into Tenochtitlan,” Lostal explained.

“Tenochi-Tecnocht-Can you say that again?” Sylver asked.

“Teno-chti-tlan” Lostal said.

“Tenochti-tlan… That’s really strange…” Sylver said to himself.

“This whole place is strange,” Lostal said.

Sylver leaned further back in his seat and was now balancing on the chair’s two back legs.

Why does it sound familiar?Sylver thought to himself, as the two wooden chair legs snapped cleanly under his weight, and Sylver fell half a centimetre towards the floor before his robe extended downward and formed itself into a seat for him.

Lostal cleared his throat.

“I’m uh… I’m going to guess you intended to go through these trials, given that Nels is allegedly on the other side of them…” Lostal said.

“The only alternative is waiting for one of their merchants to venture down here. And if what I was told is to be believed, happens about twice a year, if they’re lucky,” Sylver said with a shrug of the shoulders.

“Yeah, listen… These guys all speak Eirish. Or at least most adults do… And they said everyone in Tenochtitlan speaks Eirish too, so you don’t exactly need a translator…” Lostal said.

Sylver sat up straight, stopped staring at the ceiling, and turned towards Lostal.

“Are you worried I’ll die during these trials?” Sylver asked.

Lostal lifted his hand and scratched the back of his neck.

“Attacking a fortified city was sorta… I could see you overpowering them, but what if one of the trials asks you to… I don’t know… face your greatest fear or something, and because you can’t do that you die there, or you’re trapped, and then I’m caught and brought here and they peel my skin off and use it for crackling?” Lostal asked.

“First of all, I’m offended you think anything in this mountain can trap me, let alone kill me… But aside from that, I get what you’re saying… We’ll do this... We’ll get someone to guide us to the trial entrance, I’ll go in alone, and I’ll leave you and Mora outside. If you don’t hear from me within 2 days, she’ll get you out, and carry you to the nearest village. Once I have Nels, we’ll meet at the village, and all four of us will fly to Novva,” Sylver said.

“That’s… Yeah, that’s perfect,” Lostal said, as he stood up from his seat and hobbled over to the door to tell the conquered locals to pick somebody to guide them to the large head’s mouth.

***

With Mora standing guard over him, and not knowing what he was going to be up against, Sylver took a moment to look over his status.

Total Level: 195
[Koschei-16]
[Necromancer-100]
[Swamp Lord-79]

CON: 200
DEX: 110
STR: 110
INT: 556
WIS: 331
AP: 30

Health: 1,992/2,000
Stamina: 1,000/1,000
MP: 34,444/36,080

Health Regen: 23.34/M
Stamina Regen: 20.00/M
MP Regen: 41,239.44/M

In an ideal world, he would get his dexterity and his strength up to 200, and then work on his wisdom until it reached 500 and gave him a powerful mana regeneration perk, the way he got one for reaching 500 in intelligence.

But Sylver was only 21 levels away from reaching 100 in [Swamp Lord].

And he had no intention of facing those 3, speaking in third person dickheads, without some kind of ace up his sleeve.

He already had a certain something on the off chance he accidentally killed a creature that granted him enough levels to reach 100, but Sylver wasn’t too far away from having the required quantity of mana to imbue himself with something with a bit more kick to it.

The last time he spoke to them they gave him 60 seconds to leave the moment he tried to leave a marker behind, and although the number of spells in that particular school of magic was limited, there was one that Sylver could do a great deal of damage with if he could bind it to himself.

On the other hand, his original plan of figuring out what exactly they did to his magic, and then formulating a plan to do something when he reached level 100 in his next class, was the smart way to go about things. But it was always good to have a backup plan in case the first failed.

He also had Ria, but for her to be part of the plan first required her to not be in a deep coma, and since she hadn’t woken up by now, there was no real way of knowing if she was going to wake up in an hour, a day, or a year.

If she was human, and not a metal golem, there were certain tests Sylver could run, certain rituals he could perform to help her, but Ria wasn’t human, she wasn’t even an actual golem, she was whatever it was that she was, and anything Sylver did was as likely to hinder, as it was to help.

So since he couldn’t count on Ria, Sylver had to work with the tools he had.

And given that he was almost at the required mana quantity to give himself the sort of tool that could be used to kick a certain The Mage person/creature/thing right in the mouth.

CON: 200
DEX: 110
STR: 110
INT: 586
WIS: 331
AP: 0

Health: 1,994/2,000
Stamina: 1,000/1,000
MP: 35,330/37,730

Health Regen: 23.34/M
Stamina Regen: 20.00/M
MP Regen: 43,125.39/M

Sylver waited for the system to pull his guts out through his nose, but even as he felt his mana become denser, felt the channels twist and turn as they were stretched out inside him, at no point did it “hurt.”

It didn’t feel pleasant, but nothing happened that was intense enough for him to flinch, the process felt unusually surgical in a way.

Still, just in case, Sylver remained on the floor and spent well over 10 minutes nudging the expanded network of mana channels inside his body.

He had laid down because he thought it would make him pass out like when he increased his intelligence and wisdom near Edmund, but either that was an anomaly, or merely a punishment for questioning the system right before he distributed his points.

Sylver rose from the dusty ground just as Lostal hobbled into the room.

“I’ve just had a thought I wish I hadn’t,” Lostal said.

Sylver ran his hands along his robe’s collar and rolled his shoulders as he straightened his back.

“I promise not to judge,” Sylver said.

Lostal cleared his throat before he spoke.

“You said the magic keeping this jungle inside the mountain is unravelling, and it will eventually break completely,” Lostal said.

“Could be as soon as a week, given that the shiny black glass they use for their weapons and armour is the enchanted rock meant to stabilize the whole thing,” Sylver clarified.

It hadn’t occurred to him to ask about the strange rocks when he was dealing with the cat cannibals, but the giant shiny cube the people here attacked him with got enough of his attention that he asked them where they got it from.

In non-magical terms, they’ve been digging into the foundation of their house, like rock-eating termites.

“And when it unravels, what exactly will happen?” Lostal asked.

From the corner of the room, Mora lifted her head from the pillow she had made and turned her head towards Sylver.

“Well… Based on how I entered, the current space we’re in will “invert” and the area inside the cone-shaped jungle will appear on the outside. It’ll be like turning a sock inside out,” Sylver explained, as Mora fully stood up and walked over them.

“What about the trees, buildings, and the people?” Lostal asked.

“What about them?”

“Is the inversion going to break everything up and kill them?” Lostal asked.

“It might launch a few of them into the air as the gravity magic unravels, but aside from that, no… Wait… Did you fall in love with one of the women here and you’re trying to-”

“No, no, no, nothing like that, sort of the exact opposite... These people are all cannibals, right? Or, I mean, they have to consume human flesh because their curse makes it so chicken, vegetables, fruits, doesn’t sustain them?” Lostal asked.

Sylver could see where this conversation was going, but at this point, he was curious as to what specifically Lostal was asking to happen.

“That’s oversimplifying it, but sure,” Sylver said, with a calm but slightly wide-eyed expression as if he didn’t know what Lostal was trying to say.

“And because of the curse, that hundreds of them have, along with several thousand men and women in different villages, cities, and tribes, or some variation of this curse I mean… So when the magic unravels, and there are suddenly several thousand cannibals mere hours away from villages with people…” Lostal said while he made a circular gesture with his hands as if he was trying to make the idea in his head roll over to Sylver.

“And so,” Sylver asked with his own circular gesture of the hand as if he was rolling Lostal’s idea right back at him.

Instead of making vague sounds until Sylver relented, Lostal took a short breath.

“I think it would be best to kill everyone in this jungle… And by everyone, I mean anyone infected with a curse that makes their only source of nourishment human flesh. And, uh… And…” Sylver could almost see the man’s tongue dry up as he forced the next words out of his mouth, “I’ll kill the kids, so you don’t have to. If your shadows tie them up, I’ll do the actual killing,” Lostal said.

At some point Mora became more interested in what Lostal was saying, and when he was done both the pale-faced necromancer with a crown of glowing red mushrooms growing out of his head and the equally pale horse that didn’t seem to be breathing were both looking directly at the relatively young scout.

“I see,” Sylver said without a grin or a smile, but a kind of soft calmness.

Lostal didn’t avert his eyes, didn’t back away, the man stood where he was, and tried to do what he could to calm his ever-increasing heartrate.

For a few moments, Sylver enjoyed the quiet certainty of the young scout.

“It’s a relief to know that Novva has such devoted men under him. And so resolute in protecting his people… But we’re not going to be killing anybody, and I’ll explain why,” Sylver said.

“…”

“For starters, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe this mountain is part of Novva’s territory. And although it’s arguable, the people here are technically citizens of the High-King’s empire,” Sylver said.

And I wouldn’t hear the end of it from Edmund if I destroyed an entire civilization, Sylver added to himself.

“Second of all, there are ways to manage their curse. Possibly even cure it. We’d be depriving the realm of capable workers, right when we need all the help we can get,” Sylver said.

And because of their curse, they’re not worth the effort to turn them into undead, Sylver added to himself.

“Thirdly, the air here is a lotmore oxygen-rich than normal. Not to mention they’re going to end up halfway up a mountain. Even if they somehow don’t immediately asphyxiate to death, they spent their entire lives in a warm climate, their bodies will shut down from the cold before they even get a chance to realize what’s happening,” Sylver said.

And if I start killing them, the jungle guardian spirit will start trying to kill me, and I’ve got enough holy damage as it is, Sylver added to himself.

“And last, but not least, while I genuinely believe you would be capable of killing children in cold blood, I can also tell you’re not just going to shrug it off and move on with your life. And now more than ever this realm needs people with your kind of mettle,” Sylver said with a proud smile.

And this feels like the sort of thing that will get my [Corrupting Abomination] trait replaced with something even worse, Sylver added as a final thought.

Lostal had an unreadable expression on his face.

As if he couldn’t decide whether to argue the point or to trust in the wisdom of the person standing in front of him. Who, apart from being the one who had the final say in the matter, also sounded to have given the whole thing a great deal more thought than he had.

Sylver and Mora walked past him, and as Lostal quietly began to limp after them, Sylver pulled back his many many shades and the trio made their way towards the two lizard warriors who were going to escort them to the trials.

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