Ch221-White Snow

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Ch221-White Snow

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Even if Tarragon hadn’t specified the meeting place, Sylver would have found him. To a person of Sylver’s specific composition, the ground might as well have had streams of liquid magma flowing through it.

With Tarragon standing in the middle of the chaos, a volcano of mana, engulfing his surroundings the way a cloud of ash would. As the level 417 [Ancient Druid] turned, so did every leaf, vine, and branch near him.

Sylver could almost hear his voice echoing out of the surrounding flora.

“Apologies for the late notice,” Tarragon said with a slight bow, as the man standing behind him stood up from the log he had been sitting on.

“Is this everyone?” Sylver asked as he looked around.

Tarragon gave him an apologetic smile, as he gestured at the only man standing next to him.

“This is Anice. He’s the closest thing we have to a curse specialist,” Tarragon explained as Anise quietly nodded at Sylver.

Anice had a pair of goggles around his eyes, and a strange-looking breathing apparatus around his mouth and nose. He was wearing gloves, and the skin on his face was a little too shiny. Going by the faint smell of mint, it was some sort of ointment.

“One of his classes is [Healer], so even if he does get poisoned, he should be fine, but I didn’t want to take any risks. The monsters here aren’t the kind we’re used to,” Tarragon explained, as he and Sylver started to walk down the road that would eventually lead them to the swamp.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Sylver asked.

As Tarragon moved, his influence moved with him. Sylver could feel Tarragon’s grasp on the grass behind them lessen, as he gained hold of the weeds in front of them. Sylver estimated his range to be in the 50 meters area.

“We are looking for a redheaded lady of the night,” Tarragon said.

Sylver waited for him to continue.

“Does she have friends, or are we sharing?” Sylver asked as Tarragon started to laugh.

Sylver had left Mora back in Faust’s sect, she was still recovering, and he wanted her there to make sure the sect had protection in the unlikely event they were attacked.

He doubted anyone would attack them while he was gone, the effects of the Night Fever were devastating, the sects were all busy fortifying themselves, to worry about a small fry like Faust, but he felt better with having Mora there.

“She almost certainly has friends. After we realized brothels were where the curse originated, we went to investigate them. She, along with 3 other women we’ve been able to identify, have been systematically moving around the Red Ring, presumably to infect as many people as possible,” Tarragon explained, as Sylver nodded along.

“Systematically?” Sylver asked.

“It certainly looks like it. Made the curse extremely hard to track down. We got lucky; all things considered. One of the patients Anise had been treating turned out to be patient zero for his district. Anise had a hunch and followed the metaphorical trail to a local brothel. There wasn’t anything obvious like a hex bag, but all the girls working there had very strange magic surrounding them,” Tarragon explained.

“Symptomless carriers,” Sylver said.

There was a pause before Tarragon spoke again.

“Quite right… We were looking at it backward. Because the children were the first to succumb to the curse, we had assumed they were the first ones to be infected. We had also been assured that it wasn’t a curse. They were very specific about that,” Tarragon said with a hint of annoyance.

“They don’t have a high opinion of magic here, do they?” Sylver asked.

“It’s understandable. Difficult of getting inside aside, there’s not much for a mage to do in this place. They have a couple of spell blade types here, but those are basically warriors. They use their magic like a disposable throwing knife, they’ve got no respect for the craft. The only real mages these people have seen are us,” Tarragon explained as Sylver nodded along.

“And healing magic isn’t the memorable type,” Sylver offered, as Tarragon smiled at him.

The ground below their feet was uncharacteristically solid. Courtesy of several roots weaving into a sort of rug for them to walk on, that returned to their natural positions after Tarragon had finished walking on them.

“It’s memorable to the person regaining the use of their fingers, but aside from that, not particularly, no. Believe it or not, I’ve tried to have a [Pyromancer] accompany us. But I’ve been denied, the fewer people know about this place, and our somewhat secret alliance, the better. My grandfather started this whole thing... Apologies, I’ve forgotten what we were discussing,” Tarragon admitted, as Sylver smiled politely at the man.

“You were assured this wasn’t a curse,” Sylver said.

“Yes, that’s right. One of their [Healer] equivalents allegedly confirmed that a curse couldn’t be responsible. We’ve been told cultivators can diagnose curses and diseases by examining a person’s meridians, but it turns out it isn’t as foolproof as the locals believe it to be. Granted, we’ve never seen a cruse like this either, but… Anyway, reinforcements are on their way. In the meantime, we can at least figure out the source of this curse,” Tarragon explained.

Tarragon continued talking for a while.

He spoke of his experiences dealing with curses in underground dwarven settlements, spent a while discussing the merits of using potions alongside healing magic and did his best to explain how a curse can spread without physical contact.

Sylver wasn’t sure how familiar with curses Anise was, but if Tarragon's explanation was to be believed, these people didn’t know shit about curses. Their only recourse against a curse of any kind was to blast it to smithereens with holy and healing magic.

In their defense, that’s the proper way of dealing with 99 out of 100 curses.

Sadly, Anise, and by the sound of it, the elves as a whole, weren’t educated enough to know that the curse they were trying to treat was the rare 1 out of 100.

This Night Fever like curse was very good. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t have to be. It just had to be better than the people trying to remove it.

They weren’t even tracking this curse, the only reason they were in this swamp was that Tarragon found a piece of a leaf inside the shoe of one of the missing ladies of the night.

They were tracking a leaf.

Which, to be fair, wasn’t that far off from tracking someone using a drop of blood.

Since there was a good chance they would get into a fight, Sylver decided to take this time to pick a perk for his [Swamp Lord] class. There wasn’t anything that would help him teleport through his mushrooms or anything that would boost his mana capacity or regeneration, but there were a couple that were promising.

One was called [Steady Growth] and would make any plant Sylver grew get stronger over time. But this meant Sylver would have to carry this plant around with him or come to where he left it to maintain it. He also got the feeling this perk would measure time in days, rather than hours, or minutes, and Sylver didn’t plan to sit still anywhere that long.

The second choice was better.

[Perk: Greater Greenhouse]
-User is able to cultivate plant matter as if it was in its ideal environment.
-Limited to [WIS/2]m
*User must have had physical contact with the plant matter.

It wasn’t anything new, technically speaking, but forcing a plant to grow when it didn’t want to required a lot of mana, and more importantly, effort and attention. This wasn’t quite as good as getting an upgraded version of [Fog Form], but it was certainly better than whatever the system would have chosen for him.

[Perk: Greater Greenhouse]
-User is able to cultivate plant matter as if it was in its ideal environment.
-Limited to [WIS/2]m
*User must have had physical contact with the plant matter.

Fuck, Sylver thought, as he suddenly gained awareness of every branch he stepped on. It was so annoying, it was almost disorienting, and the system took its sweet time before it provided Sylver with a metaphorical off switch.

He tested the perk and found that it gave him something a bit stronger than the current plant perception his [Chloromancy] trait gave him.

Once he touched something, it was as if he was still touching it, even when he wasn’t. Sylver could feel the small fish swimming underneath the lily pads, even when they were too small for his [Advanced Water Manipulation] to perceive them.

The group wasn’t disturbed as they walked.

It was hard to say if it was due to Sylver’s earlier “hunting,” or because Tarragon was blasting enough mana into their surroundings that Sylver would have been wary of fighting him.

Or it could have been due to the witches flying above them. They were hiding their presence, but that was useless against Sylver, especially if someone is staring right at him.

There wasn’t any warning, or buildup, as Tarragon, Anise, and Sylver all stopped dead in their tracks, seemingly frozen in time.

Nine women floated down from the sky, and with their wands pointed at the three men, landed on the marshy ground.

They were all wearing a fuzzy dark green cloak, that blended them into the mess of moss and weeds, along with cone-shaped pointed hats, that were all hanging limply behind them.

They all had 1 line on their sleeves, except for one woman, who had 2 lines on her sleeve. None of them said a word, as they made a circle around Sylver and company, and began mumbling under their breaths while they moved their wands in a circular motion.

Sylver always liked looking at witch magic.

He didn’t like using it and would talk at length to anyone who would listen as to how inefficient it was, but he couldn’t deny it was pretty.

It had everything people imagined, sparkling lights, bits of smoke, it even made a fancy hissing sound. From Sylver’s point of view, it was a six-pointed star inside of a circle, and inside the six-pointed star, there was a triangle.

The triangle was just barely big enough to catch Sylver, Tarragon, and Anise.

Sylver couldn’t even blame the alleged curse specialist.

This curse was extremely powerful. Tarragon might have been able to stop it if he hadn’t been caught off guard, but Sylver and Anise had no chance.

Well, Anise had no chance.

Sylver on the other hand was enjoying one of the few perks of being born a full dark. The curse had more effect on Sylver’s robe than it did on Sylver.

Witch magic differed from other magic in the fact that it was meant to be done in a group.

Mage craft was a solitary activity.

One mage could help another mage’s spell, but it was very uncommon. Witches on the other hand practiced group magic exclusively. They were weak individually, some were downright defenseless if you separated them from their coven, but in exchange for that 9 tier 2 equivalent witches could cast 4th tier magic.

“We’re only here to talk,” Sylver’s voice said, from up above.

The witches snapped their heads up and saw an uncountable number of shadowy bodies standing on the tree branches, some armed with bows, others armed with swords, axes, and daggers.

It surprised Sylver how difficult it was to move. If it was just a bit harder, he would have slipped out of his robe, and tried talking to these witches while fully nude.

Thankfully, it took him only a couple of seconds to undo the curse on his robe.

“I’d like to have a word with you ladies,” Sylver said, as he walked over to Tarragon, and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Or I can remove the curse binding my friend here, and we go straight into action,” Sylver offered.

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

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

…

Sylver felt like a hammer had been lightly smashed into his forehead, as he saw the message appear 9 times, and going by the sudden uneasiness in the air, the witches had successfully seen Tarragon’s impressive level of 417.

And whatever Anise’s level was.

“Who are you?” the witch with 2 lines on her sleeve asked.

Sylver’s hood fell back, as he ever so slightly lowered his head towards the woman.

“Sylver Sezari. Necromancer, master of the dark arts, adventurer, and holder of several third-degree witch ranks,” Sylver said, as the witch hesitantly nodded back at him.

“Why are you here?” the witch asked. She had a bit of fuzzy black hair peeking out from underneath her hat.

“I’m here to see if we can help each other,” Sylver said while he pointed to himself. He gestured at Tarragon and Anise, “they’re here to track down a redheaded prostitute, who was purposely infecting people with the sleeping sickness,” Sylver explained and saw something peculiar in the witch’s face.

It wasn’t shock, in fact, it was the exact opposite.

“If you knew why we were here, why did you stop us?” Sylver asked as he tightened his grip on Tarragon’s shoulder.

With his immunity to their curses, he didn’t doubt himself, but Tarragon and Anise were a different story.

“We were going to make you think you found the girl’s corpse and would then scare you off with a level 800 monster before you had a chance to examine her,” the witch explained.

“I see… And that works?” Sylver asked as the witch gave him an odd look. “I get that it probably took you a month to prepare this curse, but… Anyway, would you mind keeping these two here for a bit?” Sylver asked as he decided not to question it.

The witch just stared at him.

“I swear on my mother’s blood I won’t raise my hand against you, except in self-defense,” Sylver swore, while he used his pointer and middle finger to cover his left eye.

He could almost feel the collective relief, as the witch he had been talking to nodded at him and gestured for him to follow her.

***

Sylver hadn’t been bullshiting about being a 3rd-degree witch, more than once.

Granted, he was only a 3rd-degree witch for a couple of seconds, but that didn’t make it a lie.

Hierarchy within covens was simultaneously straightforward and stupidly complicated.

A witch who hadn’t made a contract with any spirit, or demon, was called an “initiate.” They handled the cooking, cleaning, and miscellaneous tasks the members capable of using magic were too busy to do.

Above them, were the 1st-degree witches.

These ladies were apprentices to a 2nd or 3rd-degree witch and typically were allowed access to a portion of their master’s magic. Once they gained enough experience, they formed a separate contract with their master’s spirit, and from that point were considered 2nd-degree witches.

2nd-degree witches had a considerable amount of range in their abilities and power. Some were weak enough that 1st degrees witches posed a threat to them, while others were powerful enough to form multiple contracts, with multiple spirits, and if they were powerful enough, could be recognized by a 3rd-degree witch.

An old woman was standing outside the barrier that surrounded the coven. She had 3 lines on her sleeve and was backed up by two rather large women with 2 thick lines on their sleeves.

“You’re a long way from home, corpse,” the old woman said.

Her voice was low and raspy.

“None of that, please. I came here to discuss the sleeping curse you’ve been spreading,” Sylver said, as he wagged his finger at the old woman, the way he would at a small child.

She almost smiled when Sylver wagged his finger, but she looked like she was about to spit in his face as he mentioned the curse.

“Who are you with?” the old witch asked.

“Does it matter? You want to hurt the emperor, and I want to help you,” Sylver said as the woman lifted her head to look him in the eye.

She had an eyepatch over her left eye, and there was a line down her nose, that Sylver was all too familiar with.

He’d gone through the same ritual once.

An incision down the nose is made and the sinus is filled up with a mixture of hallucinogenic herbs. The nose is then sutured back into shape, and the person spends several days in a drug-induced trance.

It’s a very crude, but effective, way of attracting a demon.

The reason they split the nose apart, as opposed to just shoving herbs in through the nostrils, was partly because that was what the original ritual specified, but also because blood from a cracked open nose was different from blood drawn from a vein in the arm.

This was another reason why Sylver never delved too deeply into witchcraft. It was too symbolic for his taste.

Mage craft was straightforward. It wasn’t simple, but once you understood the governing principles, the only potential for failure was human error. A spell performed by one mage could be repeated by another and required the exact same components.

Witchcraft was more art than science.

If two witches gave up their “beauty,” the difference in power wasn’t something objective, like desirable features relative to the culture/location, no, the difference was how much each witch felt she was giving up.

To an ugly woman, her beautiful eyes were all she had, while a beautiful woman still had her hair, face, lips, etc…

Sylver normally refrained from using this word, but witchcraft was dirty magic.

“Come with me,” the old witch said, as she seemed to come to a decision. She turned around and started to walk towards the invisible barrier.

“I want you to swear on your book of shadows that I won’t be harmed,” Sylver said, as he took a step towards the old witch and the barrier.

He felt everyone stiffen up, even the witches floating high above him, and the ones hiding in the trees behind him.

“I swear,” the old witch said under her breath.

***

In the middle of the village stood a giant blood-soaked wooden pole, that had a pile of skulls around it. 6 pale blue flames floated near the top of the pole and gave it an odd-looking shine.

A wall was wrapped around the pole in a U shape, with a large altar directly in front of the pole. The magic circle that surrounded the pole, and separated it from the rest of the village, was about 20 meters in diameter.

Which meant the spirit inside was 5th tier, at best. Not a demon though, something local, going by the symbols carved onto the foreheads of the skulls.

As Sylver and the old woman approached the totem pole and alter, the floating balls of blue flame lowered themselves towards the skulls and made the various eyeholes light up.

The rest of the village was standard. Small 1-story wooden huts, built to be as close as possible to one another, with just enough room for people to walk between them. There was a public bath, several outhouses, and the rest of the space was used for herb gardens.

Two seats and a wooden table appeared just outside the circle around the totem pole, and the old witch sat down. The table was pressed right up against the edge of the circle painted on the ground.

“What’s the plan after the man that was with me goes back, and returns with a high-level party to retrieve the girl’s corpse?” Sylver asked as he sat down.

“We are prepared for that. But he won’t come back,” the old witch said, as Sylver realized something.

“I forgot to introduce myself. Sylver Sezari. Necromancer, adventurer, master of the dark arts, and 3rd-degree witch,” Sylver said, as the old witch nodded at him.

“Abby Metcalf,” the old witch, Abby, said.

“Why won’t he come back, Abby?” Sylver asked.

“Because a man will sit him down, and will come up with a believable reason, as to why the swamp is off limits. Then your friend, and his elves, will do their best to quarantine, cure, and help those affected, and when everyone infected is dead, they will leave,” Abby explained calmly.

Sylver reached up with his hand to scratch his cheek.

“I don’t like where this conversation is going. But I appreciate that you’re being so direct Abby,” Sylver said, as the old witch shrugged her shoulders.

“The emperor knows we’re here. He also knows we’re responsible for the “sleeping sickness,” as you called it. The reason he won’t do anything about us, and won’t allow anyone to do something about us, is because then he would have to admit we exist,” Abby explained, as Sylver nodded along.

“Let me guess… All the people here were children who were thrown into the swamp, because of their low aptitude for Ki, who were collected by your predecessors, and were trained to be witches,” Sylver said, as Abby’s eye opened slightly.

“Are you from Elanor’s coven?” Abby asked.

“No. It’s just the only explanation that makes sense as to why a group of relatively powerful witches would hide in a swamp. Although I don’t understand why you wouldn’t simply leave. It would take several generations to get back to your current level of power, but what use is power if you can’t do anything with it?” Sylver asked.

“If only it were that simple, little lich,” a voice spoke from Sylver’s right.

He turned his head and saw a creature sitting on his right, almost as if it was sharing the table with Syvler and Abby. The spirit chose to give itself the form of a nude woman, with a face that looked eerily similar to Abby’s.

Sylver and the spirit locked eyes and stared at one another. The spirit's body made a faint crunching sound, as its face gradually lost any semblance of humanity, and bit by bit, it stopped resembling a woman, and instead looked like a sexless skin-covered doll.

“For your own sake, don’t be rude,” Sylver said calmly, as the creature blinked at him. This was probably the first time it had met someone whose mind was completely inaccessible to it.

It spoke without moving its lips. If before the spirit had sounded like a young woman, now it sounded like a child talking from the inside of a deep well.

“I told no falsehoods,” the spirit said, as Sylver just looked at it with a bored expression on his face.

Sylver turned towards Abby.

“Why are you still here?” Sylver asked the old witch.

“She can’t leave this place. No one born here can. They need the emperor’s permission, which they will never get,” the spirit explained, as Abby nodded her head.

Sylver pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a few seconds.

He imagined stepping into the spirit’s ring and then crushing all the skulls surrounding the totem with his foot. Sadly, he needed Abby’s help, and although he wasn’t afraid of the spirit itself, these witches weren’t exactly harmless.

“What was the point of spreading the sleeping curse? What’s the end goal behind it?” Sylver asked.

“We were hired to do it,” Abby said.

There was an odd pause.

“And I’m guessing you can’t tell me who hired you, and even if I guess correctly, you wouldn’t tell me,” Sylver said, as Abby shrugged her shoulders.

“That’s a fair assumption,” the spirit answered.

“But you are trying to hurt and kill the emperor, right?” Sylver asked.

“We aren’t trying to hurt anyone. But if we were, this curse wouldn’t be strong enough. I reckon, we would probably need, what? A couple tons of gold to make a curse powerful enough to kill the emperor?” the spirit said, in a singsong sort of voice.

The problem with the spirit speaking in hypotheticals is that even if it was saying something ridiculous, it wouldn’t be a lie.

Sylver’s further attempts to get something close to a straight answer out of the spirit annoyed him so much, that he had to stop talking for a minute.

From the sounds of it, the only purpose of the curse was to annoy the emperor and the largest and strongest sects. Sure, the upper brass would be safe, but a sect without people to cook, clean, handle logistics, and so on, would at the very least get destabilized.

The sleeping curse, which would eventually kill hundreds of children, was nothing more than a distraction.

The witches went along with it because it was the only way they could acquire enough gold to craft an emperor killing curse.

But that meant that someone wanted the area to be destabilized for a reason.

Which begged the question, what was Nameless’ plan? Or Owls for that matter.

Sylver gestured with his hand towards the ground, a small branch sprouted and grew until it was about as tall as Sylver was while sitting down. The branch pulsed with life, and a in the blink of an eye a flower appeared on the branch, and promptly dried up, and was replaced by a bright green fruit.

The fruit grew and grew until it was about the size of a person’s fist. It turned yellow, then red, and finally fell off the branch it had grown on and landed in Sylver’s hand.

“Normally I try to stay away from classics, but this seems most appropriate,” Sylver said, as he tossed the red fruit towards the spirit, who caught it with both hands.

The spirit stared at the shiny red fruit, and as Sylver had predicted, a sick smile appeared on its pale and featureless face.

“A poisoned apple?” the spirit asked, with the glee of a child that had just been handed a large bag full of chocolates.

“Cursed, but yes. I figure it's easier to mix it into his food than have someone sleep in the same room as him,” Sylver explained, but the spirit wasn’t listening. It was already working on the apple.

Sylver had hoped he would be able to help them improve their curse, but even if he could understand the framework and circuit the spirit used, he doubted the spirit’s pride would allow any alterations from a “little lich.”

Sylver left the coven with the apple in hand, and as he made his way back to Tarragon and Anise, the ground shook beneath his feet. Aleri flew high up into the sky and confirmed that another mountain peak had disappeared into a cloud of dust.

The White Dog sect was gone.

And now only 10 sects remained.

NEXT CHAPTER 

(AN: Sometimes the words flow like a fountain. Other times it feels like passing a kidney stone. This was one of the kidney stone chapters. What you have just read wasn't the first 221st chapter, or the second, or the third, this is the fourth rewrite. Fourth's time the charm apparently.)