Ch205-Eye Of The Storm

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Ch205-Eye Of The Storm

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Sylver had once visited a nation that was led by a corpse.

Not an undead, that would make too much sense. A ruler that doesn’t care about personal wealth, doesn’t need to waste time with food and sleep, looks at situations without emotions or pride getting in the way, is forced to think about the future because he’s immortal, can’t be seduced or threatened, why would anyone want an undead as a ruler?

No, those people worshiped a literal corpse.

There was nothing magical or special about it, it was just a dead body, that had been treated so as not to rot away into nothing. The only good thing about it was that it didn’t smell like rot and shit.

As far as corpses go, it was pretty great. Two arms, two legs, never decapitated, damage to the heart was minimal, they even kept it clean. If Sylver found such a corpse by the side of the road, he would have been delighted.

The “speakers” spoke for the corpse, the ministers carried the corpse’s orders out, the soldiers marched in the corpse's name, and the nobles bided for the “corpses” favor. And as Sylver watched the emperor’s empty eyes slowly gaze over the elves presented to him, he was reminded of this corpse.

He didn’t say anything, his people spoke for him as if he was just a dead body that was incapable of speech.

If Sylver had thought that the emperor’s death had been faked, the sheer amount of grief he could both see and feel emanating out of the current emperor convinced him.

He was well dressed, well-groomed, presentable, had a powerful aura around him, and if Sylver wasn’t aided by his soul-sensing ability, he wouldn’t have known the emperor was moments away from bursting into tears.

Obviously, he would wait for his guests to leave before he allowed himself another day of weeping and mourning, but it was an upsetting reminder that regardless of what the previous emperor was, he was still somebody’s father.

Possibly two somebodies for that matter…

Because he looked just like Aurick.

Like an older, depressed, and significantly more powerful and muscular Aurick.

Do I ask if he knows a boy, man by now I guess, named Aurick and see what happens?

Best case scenario he knows him, and they are enemies, and he provides me with useful information to kill him?

Do I want to kill Aurick? He and his group just sort of fucked off and didn’t do anything important enough for Lola to hear about it.

And apparently, he either didn’t tell anyone I helped them summon a demon, or the people he told can’t do anything about it.

Worst case scenario…

They’re brothers who love each other very much, and “oh! So, you’re that black-eyed albino that fucked him over!”

Given Sylver’s past experience, the latter was significantly more likely than the former.

More importantly, Dobrynya Nikitich was a man whose name had been one of the 3 the book had screamed at Sylver.

Which meant he was going to do his very best to keep his involvement with this man to the absolute possible minimum.

For starters, Sylver wouldn’t win in a fight against him. Army of stone golems, and high-level guards aside, Dobrynya had that signature relaxed posture, of being so powerful that he bored out of his mind.

Reason number 2 was the book.

Reason number 3 was that there was very clearly some sort of prophecy/fate nonsense happening here that involved the dragon, and Sylver didn’t want any part of it.

Aside from the amount of involvement necessary to find and sterilize the shield ancestor girl.

After a small amount of talking, Tarragon presented the uninterested emperor with a literal ton of gold. The gold was in the form of large bars of gold, each one was about 33 kilograms, and there were 30 of them, stacked neatly on top of one another.

The chest was enchanted to weigh next to nothing, given the fact that the small man wearing a skull cap made of gold picked the chest up with one hand, and promptly carried it away.

The extent of the emperor’s interaction with the group could be summarized as brushing his hair out of his face 3 times and then limply waving the elves away.

Sylver now understood that the purpose of this meeting wasn’t to greet the elves, and wish them luck on finding a cure, it was a simple “the previous emperor may be dead, but I am just as powerful as he was.”

***

“I believe I am going to miss Nikita,” Tarragon said, as the carriage silently rolled forward.

There were 6 guards around them, 2 walked ahead of the line of carriages, 2 walked behind, and there was 1 on either side.

It was the middle of the night right now, or at least dark enough that the elves had to summon balls of light to see the road. The sky was almost cloudless, just the barest wisps of black, outlined by the flickering stars above, and two moons.

“He’s just grieving,” Sylver countered.

Although he doubted Dobrynya was going to stop grieving anytime soon. When Nyx left Sylver didn’t get a chance to sit down and cry his eyes out, he had shit to do, and ultimately handled her abandonment relatively well. A person who has nothing but time to sit, sulk, cry, bitch, moan, wasn’t going to stop until something happened that forced him to stop.

“I’m aware of that, but he was never a cheerful person to begin with. I wouldn’t dare to describe Nikita as jolly either, but he at the very least made an effort to smile. Even to those he considered beneath him. His wife was a lovely woman though, Kalina, she used to brighten a room with her presence alone,” Tarragon explained, as Sylver nodded along.

“When did she die?” Sylver asked.

The guards weren’t jumping in to break their faces for discussing their rulers, so either Tarragon was important enough that they let it slide, or they understood that he held no ill will towards their royalty.

“A little over 20 years ago. Died during childbirth, tragic that. I’m told she accidentally activated a skill, or perk, of some kind that killed all the healers present. Happens more often than you think, I lost my right arm to a magic caster with a fever. Poor boy attacked anything that moved, ruined my favorite robe in the process,” Tarragon explained, and Sylver couldn’t say how he knew, but he knew not to ask for details regarding the mother’s death.

“What do you use to sedate cultivators? Is there a local herb that works, or do you just use dwarven anesthetic?” Sylver asked, and Tarragon turned his head to look at him.

“Dwarven anesthetic? I do not believe such a thing could be used on anything other than a dwarf. Anything powerful enough to sedate them would be fatal for any other race, regardless of level,” Tarragon wondered out loud, as Sylver smiled to himself underneath his bandages.

“It’s a joke. Dwarven anesthetic is just punching someone until they pass out. The way a dwarven lockpick is an explosive or a large hammer,” Sylver explained, and after a moment passed, Tarragon raised his hand to his mouth and softly laughed.

“I’ll have to remember that one, that’s very good,” Tarragon said, as he pulled out a notebook and made a literal note of it.

“And a dwarven scalpel is an ax. Do you know the one about the dwarf who didn’t want to get seasick?” Sylver asked, as Tarragon giggled and added the dwarven ax to his notes.

“I haven’t,” Tarragon said a little too loudly, and Sylver felt the attention of the two guards walking ahead of them shift towards them.

“The dwarves discovered that the best way to not get seasick, is to lean over the rail of the ship with a gold coin between your teeth,” Sylver said, as Tarragon giggled again and wrote the joke down into his notebook.

“Oh, this isn’t a joke exactly, but it made me laugh at the time. We were being attacked, bandits and one of them was a dwarf, I think a couple of them were, anyway. So this dwarf is about to fight Burnet, he’s in the 4th carriage, very tall man, literally two and a half times as tall as the dwarf he’s about to fight.

“I’m hiding inside the carriage, and this dwarf puffs up his chest and shouts “When I’m done with you, I’ll be the tall one!” Burnet laughed so hard the dwarf had time to run up to him and stabbed him in the face! He’s still got a scar from it!” Tarragon explained as Sylver started to laugh, and so did the two guards walking ahead of them.

Sylver even heard the sounds of giggling coming from inside the carriage they were sitting on.

***

Turns out Sylver’s trick with the cliché song, wasn’t limited to songs.

He knew so many jokes and anecdotes that nobody had ever heard of it was ridiculous. Sylver had even more jokes about elves than he did about dwarves. The only people dwarves loved laughing at more than their own, were elves, and humans.

Although Sylver did have to be careful not to say any of the really bad ones. Half of his “jokes” were from military people who had very strong opinions regarding whoever they were fighting, and just so happened to have a way with words when describing their opposition.

Sylver may have also accidentally introduced a somewhat ancient slur, that he wasn’t aware hadn’t been used for centuries. He would only learn this fact when he sat down to drink with Faust and told him one of the jokes he told Tarragon, his group and the guards accompanying them.

Faust laughed harder than all the elves put together when he heard the punchline. And once he explained the meaning behind the slur, his sect laughed along with him.

As they began to approach the Blue Rat sect, Sylver decided to leave. Tarragon looked around somewhat nervously before he instructed a woman elf to come to the front to take his seat and left with Sylver to escort him home.

When they were out of earshot of the guards escorting the group, Tarragon stopped in a convenient alleyway between two shops and very casually covered himself and Sylver in a very powerful soundproof barrier.

His eyes had lost their warmth and looked wrong on his otherwise soft face.

“Kalina’s death wasn’t an accident,” Tarragon said in a whisper.

The barrier was good enough that Sylver trusted it, and yet Tarragon didn’t.

“I knew one of the healers that was looking after her. He was too careful to get killed by a stray skill going off, the man had more self-preservation perks than healing perks. Kalina was in perfect health before her death, I’ve seen the reports, perfect, not just great, perfect,” Tarragon repeated in a hushed tone.

“Why would someone kill her?” Sylver asked as Tarragon looked over his shoulder.

“I don’t know. I just thought you should know,” Tarragon explained, as Sylver raised what little remained of his eyebrow.

“Thank you… I think,” Sylver said, as Tarragon reached upward and placed a hand on Sylver’s shoulder. The relatively short elf gently pulled him until Sylver leaned his ear down to Tarragon’s mouth.

“The emperor’s advisor was wearing a silver amulet with a white stone in the middle, underneath his shirt. I do not believe he knows who you are, but it’s only a matter of time, so don’t let your guard down,” Tarragon said, as Sylver tensely nodded.

“There are only 3 families that possess the card you presented. I want you to know that you will always find help with us. If there’s anything you need, anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask. But be careful who you talk to, there are spies everywhere here,” Tarragon said, as he moved his head away and made as close to eye contact as possible with Sylver’s current bandaged up face.

“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you…” Sylver said quietly, as Tarragon nodded at him.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, before Tarragon released the soundproof barrier and continued escorting Sylver to Faust’s sect.

***

“How did it go?” Faust asked, as he finished levitating pills out of his cauldron, and carefully placed them in a small cold sand bath.

Sylver sat down on his own shadow, and with a gesture of his hand, coated Faust and himself in a paper-thin layer of magic.

It wasn’t strong enough to prevent eavesdropping, but it was weak enough to break at the barest whisper of mana or Ki. If someone tried to listen in, Sylver would know.

Sylver wasn’t sure where to start, or even what to say.

He’d told Bruno about the book, and the names it had screamed at him, but he hadn’t told anyone else. Even Lola didn’t know, only Bruno, and Ria knew about it. He trusted the dark elves wouldn’t say a word about it to anyone, but now he had to figure out if telling Faust about it would be a good idea.

Sylver was worried he hadn’t been careful enough in the past. He’d told Faust about the dragon, the shield girl with the birthmark, not to mention all the other shit he’d spoken out loud about while under assumed privacy.

Sylver’s soul sense provided him with the ability to sense when someone was paying attention to him, when someone was watching him, listening to him. But now that he’d seen someone as proficient and powerful as Tarragon worry about being overheard while covered in a soundproof barrier, Sylver struggled to place his trust into his skills.

Sylver didn’t have what he needed to boost his abilities to their maximum, to feel even the world’s most covert assassin’s presence, what he had right now amounted to an extremely powerful intuition, nothing more.

Even with the shades literally checking every inch of the sect’s land inside the barrier, something inside Sylver just didn’t sit right.

Sylver stood up from his seat and spoke to a very worried-looking Faust.

“I’m leaving two daggers for you. Throw this one outside if something goes wrong inside the sect, and I’ll come running as fast as I can,” Sylver said, as he placed the dagger in question onto one of the nearby tables.

“You can feel it too? Good, I was starting to worry I was losing my mind,” Faust said, with a very quick tap on his ear.

“And this dagger is if someone comes looking for me,” Sylver said, as he laid down the dagger with a cloth wrapped around the handle.

He and Faust shared a knowing glance, that was as subtle as a wink, but if someone omniscient really was watching them, all the coded language in the world wouldn’t help.

As Sylver started channeling his fog up towards the first floor, he remembered something.

“Do you still need Mora, or are you strong enough to handle everything yourself?” Sylver asked, and Faust’s half-grin disappeared.

“Regretfully, I still need her… If you don’t mind me asking, where are you going?” Faust asked as Sylver moved the fog towards the back of the house.

“At the moment I’m waiting for you know who to come see me. So, I decided I might as well use this time to go back to the swamp and see if I can lure out that dog and rat,” Sylver explained, as he considered if there was any point waking Mora up to tell her he was leaving.

She already knew what he was going to say, just as Sylver knew she was very comfortable right now and didn’t want to be disturbed.

“The ones you said are one of the only few things you should be afraid of?” Faust asked without so much as a hint of mockery in his voice.

“That was before. Now that I understand how they work, there’s nothing to be afraid of… Well… They are about the only thing that can seriously mess me up… And they have almost twice as many levels as I do… I’m not heading straight for them mind you, I’ll take a detour and pick up a couple of levels,” Sylver explained.

Faust’s eyes opened a little wider as he remember something.

“You’re planning to scout out the river while you’re there,” Faust said.

“That too… Honestly, I don’t think sitting and waiting by the river is going to get me anywhere. At least that’s what my gut is telling me. But since I’m heading in that direction anyway, I might as well see if there’s a good spot to set up a trap, or ambush, or something,” Sylver explained, as Faust simply shrugged his shoulders.

“If you want, I can lend you a couple of people to keep watch for you. I have 3 that practice the [Southern Moon] constellation, they’re nearly impossible to detect during the night. And I can have people patrol the river during the daytime, they’re strong enough that they should be able to deal with anyone that attacks them,” Faust offered, as Sylver remembered why he came here in the first place.

“There’s a man named Tarragon living at the Blue Rat sect. He’s an elf, he’s the leader of a group of elves that came here to help with something. I’d suggest you get a loan from him, but you seem to be doing well enough as you are now,” Sylver said as Faust gestured at his bubbling cauldron.

“I get ingredients, I get jade from selling the pills and potions, the students get experience from hunting monsters, and are working towards paying off their debt with their own hard work. If possible, I would like to ally myself with a couple of sects. I know you said things get messy when alliances are formed, but-”

“Oh, I don’t care, form whatever alliance you want. That was when I thought I might need to win someone’s trust and didn’t want to accidentally become allies with their sworn enemy. You’re basically on your own, do as you see fit. Just keep a safe spot for me to sleep when I need it, and make sure none of your pupils die,” Sylver explained, as Faust smiled at him and nodded with each point.

“How’s the wife search going?” Sylver asked, just so he could end the conversation on a positive note.

“I haven’t started. I’m still on the building power stage. I haven’t left the sect grounds even once since I stepped foot inside. So, unless the woman of my dreams just happens to magically fall from the sky, I’m just going to continue focusing on building myself and everyone else up as much as I can,” Faust explained.

For about 30 seconds he and Sylver stood in complete silence and stared at each other, as they both waited to hear the sound of a woman screaming from falling from a great height.

“Does this usually work?” Ria asked, and Sylver saw an ever so faint flash of a smile appear on Faust’s face before he realized Ria was the source of the feminine voice.

“Ed met his wife by falling through her ceiling. She and her family lived in the middle of nowhere, it was literally the only ceiling for hundreds of miles in any direction, and Ed just happened to get attacked while he was flying above it. She nursed him back to health, and by the time I found the idiot, he had already proposed to her,” Sylver offered, as Faust sighed.

“Anyway, I’m here if you need me,” Faust concluded.

He was genuinely upset that a woman hadn’t fallen from the sky during their pause, and if Sylver was feeling his soul right, was a bit angry at Ria for getting his hopes up for that half-second.

“The elves I mentioned earlier... I don’t know if you knew this, but they love older men. Especially ones that are centuries older than them. I don’t know how you would go about proving it, but I thought you should know,” Sylver offered and could see it in Faust’s eyes he already had several ideas to take advantage of this information.

With as close to a smile as Sylver could get from the very recently suicidal reincarnator, Sylver left the room.

***

After essentially informing Mora that he was still alive, undead, and asking her to continue standing guard, Sylver left Faust’s sect and went towards the swamp. The swamp that was coincidentally close to the river the girl that Sylver needed to find to free Edmund, was going to travel through.

Probably.

The river the girl was probably going to travel through.

The smart thing to do would be to use the card the dragon had given Sylver, to ask whether the girl was still on her way, or if she was already inside the barrier.

The problem with that was that Sylver was scared of the dragon, and even if its life depended on him, dragons weren’t necessary creatures Sylver would describe as “rational.”

For starters, Sylver didn’t know what the 3 headed dragon’s opinion was regarding the undead. If Sylver had to make an educated guess, the dragon tolerated his undead presence, and if the circumstances were even slightly different, would have incinerated him just for getting within incinerating distance.

The other issue was that Sylver didn’t know how difficult it was for the dragon to communicate with him. What if there was a limit, and Sylver wasted it by asking to speak to the dragon now?

And more than anything else, Sylver wasn’t sure what the fuck the dragon had said before it teleported him back to where he was. The only words Sylver could understand were “TIRED, DANGER, TIRED, HOME, NEGATIVE, MOUNTAIN, and AGREE.”

Sylver knew NEGATIVE MOUNTAIN was its name, Gorynych, but that was the only thing he knew for certain…

Come to think of what home could it possibly have after spending so long trapped inside that mountain? How does it know it has a home to return to?

The only explanation is that it’s actively communicating with someone currently living in its home. But then, why wouldn’t that creature come here to free the dragon?

Is it too weak? Is it unable to for some other reason?

Is there a second fucking country using a goddammed ancient dragon as a power source?

Sylver struggled to imagine how the Ibis would react to learning that there was a whole country built around sucking the life out of a trapped ancient dragon. They probably wouldn’t even bother trying to negotiate and would just send Sylver to “deal with it.”

Kind of how Sylver was dealing with it now…

The idea that Sylver was carrying out something akin to his old duty, even in his current form, made him grin his wrapped-up face.

As Sylver arrived at the edge of the swamp, he summoned Cory into his hand and dropped the water commanding shade into the muddy ground below. The rodent-shaped shade quickly started working on gathering as much water and mass he could, while Sylver sent his shades out in all directions, to find something to kill.

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

…

That was fast.

By the 9th message, Sylver accepted his fate and did his best to move the notifications out of his face as fast as possible. Off in the distance, the shades were massacring some sort of slime-covered pig creature, that was being aided by so many similar-looking pig creatures, that Spring didn’t even try counting.

They had white whiskers in place of tusks, that they used as a combination of whips, and piercing weapons, and were killing 5 shades for every 1 pig the shades managed to kill, purely due to their speed.

After the number of shades had been whittled down by a quarter, Sylver got up from the tree branch he had been sitting on and used [Fog Form] to float over to the battlefield.

They had formed a defensive ring, by running in a loose circle around nothing in particular. Every time a shade attempted to materialize near the circle, one of the pigs used its whiskers to stab the shade, and the pigs behind and in front of it, defended it as it prepared to attack again.

Sylver materialized right in the middle of the pig circle and disappeared into the hole he had made in the mud as he fell towards the ground.

He didn’t even have to create his own, Sylver simply manipulated the plant life already present in the murky water above him.

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

The first two died due to the thorn-covered vines stabbing it in the belly button, and as the squealing pig continued running, it was like the vine had simply caught a zipper and pulled it open.

More messages of defeat flew by Sylver’s eyes, as he pulled the trampled over corpses towards the hole the still alive pigs were running around, and with a single wave of his hand, sprinkled as much [Clever Clematis] seeds as he could make.

The pig corpses sort of fused together, as the plants growing out of their eye sockets made their way upwards and wrapped around the body of the pig directly above it.

Down in his hole, Sylver suddenly found himself sitting on a warm bundle of corpses, that had been replaced by a little over 40 blooming [Clever Clematis] flowers. Sylver’s felt his mana channels falter under the quantity of mana flowing through them, but Sylver ignored his body’s protest and continued killing the pigs above with one hand, while simultaneously repairing his shades with the other.

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 32!
+5AP

[??? (???) Defeated!]

As Spring informed him of the pig reinforcements arriving, Sylver grabbed hold of the corpse he was sitting on and proceeded to rot it from the inside out. It puffed up and the skin bled from being stretched to such a degree.

Just as the corpse was about to burst, Sylver threw it out of his hole, high into the air, and used a small amount of explosive to send that sweet-smelling carrion flying as far away as possible.

Sylver planned to remain where he was and to tunnel his way towards the heart of the swamp. And while he did that, the shades above would kill anything that was attracted to the bait.

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 33!
+5AP

[??? (???) Defeated!]

It did feel a little like cheating.

This deep underground, Sylver was in as much danger as a fisherman on a sturdy boat.

It wasn’t his fault the vast majority of the monsters here relied on poisons and toxins, that were completely useless against the undead, and minions of the undead. As some sort of reptile appeared out of seemingly nowhere and swallowed a distracted archer shade whole, Sylver decided to put his excess mana to use and started fiddling around with his mushroom strains.

[??? (???) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 50 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 34!
+5AP

[??? (???) Defeated!]

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