Sylver Seeker

Foma sat down and placed his hole-covered helmet directly in front of him.

The table was very long and oval-shaped, Sylver counted 22 chairs, and sat down opposite Foma. They both simply stared at each other for a few seconds and were interrupted as an old man walked into the room and sat on Sylver’s left, at the head of the table.

Sylver felt like someone ran an ice cube down his chest, and had to suppress himself from swatting away the rough magic from his soul. It felt as uncomfortable as having his face covered in tentacles, but Sylver just took a deep breath and did his very best to ignore it.

“We’ll start simple. What is your name?” Foma said as the old man’s tendrils dug deeper into Sylver’s soul.

“People call me Tod here. Or the Silver Sliver. And I apologize in advance for doing this, but I know how this usually goes so I’m going to skip several steps to save us both some time,” Sylver said.

The old man sat a little straighter in his seat, while Foma continued to just blankly stare at him.

“I don’t want to get involved. Whatever this is, I’m not interested. I have more than enough on my plate as it is, I do not need anything else. You will take me, and my friends, to the nearest location with a functional Lyon, and we will be out of your hair. If you’re worried about some sort of information leaking out, I swear on my life I won’t tell another living soul about what I saw or heard here,” Sylver offered, while the old man stopped being coy about it, and really got his hands in there.

“As for my friends, I will put them into a coma so they can’t see or hear anything. I’ll explain away the distance we traveled with a recently acquired perk. I just leveled up, so they’ll believe me. If they don’t, I will deal with it without revealing whatever this is,” Sylver continued.

The old man nodded along very slightly, all while Foma just sat there without moving a muscle or saying a word.

“Would you mind waiting here for a while?” Foma asked.

Sylver looked up at Foma and couldn’t sense so much as a lick of hostility.

“Of course,” Sylver said, as Foma very slightly nodded and walked out of the room, along with the old man.

Left to his own devices and little to do, Sylver decided to see what his first perk from his [Swamp Lord] level up was going to be.

The very first perk put Sylver in a good mood, at the irony of offering it to him in his current circumstances.

[Perk: Solar Powered]-10% increase to all stats while under direct sunlight.-10% decrease to all stats while not under direct sunlight.*At least 40% of skin must have contact with direct sunlight.

Aside from the fact that Sylver spent most of his time well out of the way of the sun, in this realm in particular this would have been a hilarious perk to have.

He wouldn’t be able to properly use magic, and his torso would need to be uncovered, but at least he would have 10% more health, strength, and what have you.

The rest of the perks could be divided into one of two groups, they either came with restrictions that made them useless, or they provided such an insignificant boost that it was a waste of a perk.

But there were 2 that caught Sylver’s attention.

[Perk: Prince Of The Marsh]-15% decrease MP cost for [Advanced Water Manipulation]-15% decrease MP cost for [Advanced Earth Manipulation]

[Perk: Morbid Mushroom]-User will be able to cultivate and manipulate fungal matter.-10% decreased MP cost for all fungus related plant magic.*Degree of manipulation dependent on affinity, proximity, skill, and knowledge of the user.

The usefulness of [Prince Of The Marsh] was fairly obvious. Sylver was currently in a realm that seemed to be mostly water, and if the cost was reduced, his range would be extended, the amount of water or ice he could move around at one time would be increased, and when he went back to Eira [Advanced Earth Manipulation] would make it extremely easy to move around underground.

Not to mention he got the feeling that this perk would give him access to more water and earth related perks and skills.

[Morbid Mushroom] on the other hand appealed to Sylver for a different reason.

Fungal related magic was something he already knew. Except back when he learned it, it only worked on an extremely delicate and specific type of mushroom. The sheer amount of care and effort that stupid thing required made it worthless for anything that involved not sitting around in a damp cave.

It was fantastic as a defensive measure, sure, Sylver wasn’t denying that, but it was utter shit when it came to doing anything outside that one specific cave.

Unless you were a fairy…

Or had a system that did most of the work for you…

[Prince Of The Marsh] was the safe and predictable choice… But even enchanted to shit, ice was simply ice, there was a limit to what it could do.

Mushrooms on the other hand…

With a little tweaking, Sylver could theoretically create something to defend him against fire. If those witches could do it, why couldn’t he?

The possibility was almost certainly better than just a small increase in controlling water and earth.

Sylver almost jumped as Foma opened the door and allowed a man wearing a robe inside.

The man looked kind of young, he was in his 30s at best, but he had a very dark complexion that usually only came from very old dark elves, or naturally born ones. His robe was a dark blue and was a shade lighter than his skin tone.

“What do you know about the Flip,” the man asked as if he were disgusted with the word. He spoke in perfectly fluent Elvish.

Sylver sat straighter in his seat and tried to get a read from the man.

“It was when the planet turned over. The ice melted, and drowned the world,” Sylver explained, just short of word for word of how Bigs had explained it to him.

“And?” the man asked.

“That’s all I know,” Sylver answered honestly.

Not 30, older. Way older.

“What about the fairy tale?” the man asked.

“I don’t know any fairy tales,” Sylver answered. The man leaned back in his seat slightly and stared at Sylver for a long while.

“You really don’t… Huh… What about the Dark Year? What can you tell me about that?” the man asked.

“A cloud that blocks out the sun, and makes the demons unkillable,” Sylver answered.

“I see…” the man said.

Sylver waited for him to say something else, but the man just sat there while tapping his finger against the thick metal table.

“How did you manage to walk through a horde of demons completely unharmed? Not just unharmed, you pushed them away before you forced the door open?” the man asked.

“I’m a master of the dark arts,” Sylver said with a little bit of bravado.

The man gestured with his face for him to continue, but Sylver remained silent. The man sighed deeply before he spoke in an exhausted sound voice.

“You put us into a very difficult spot here… On the one hand-”

“There is nothing difficult about it. Do as I ask, and I won’t blow a giant hole in your ship and drown everyone,” Sylver interrupted, with a tense but otherwise calm tone.

The man just stared at him, without so much as a hint of fear.

“You are free to attempt to fight me. That is very much an option. But,” Sylver said as he lifted his right hand up and very gently closed it shut.

Even if he couldn’t feel the water, Sylver could hear the ship’s metal groan under the strain. He got the barest flickers of worry in the man’s eyes.

“But you’ll do enough damage that we’ll all die even if we do manage to kill you…” the man finished.

“You can’t imagine how much of an if that is. I’m hard to kill under extremely advantageous conditions, you don’t even want to know your chances if you try to fight me as I am right now,” Sylver added.

The man looked even more tired than before at Sylver’s words. He rummaged inside of his robe for half a second and pulled out the necklace Sylver had given them.

“I know you aren’t an enemy because they wouldn’t have risked even one of these getting back into our hands,” the man said.

“I’ll give you the rest once we get to the Garden,” Sylver repeated, as he had said to Foma while they walked.

“Yes, you did say that,” the man said. “Would you believe me if I told you the Flip wasn’t as random as you believe it to be?” the man asked, as he tucked the necklace back into his robe.

“How so?” Sylver asked.

“The people currently living in the garden and calling themselves pure-blooded elves are anything but. They’re invaders. They came here from a world they ruined, and they tried to take our world from us,” the man explained.

If Sylver wasn’t mentally and emotionally exhausted, he might have felt some empathy for these people.

“And when they realized we were simply too powerful to be conquered, they ruined it. Lush forests, deserts, beaches, mountains, sunsets, in one day they took everything away from us,” the man continued with a strained voice. Sylver thought he looked like he was about to have a heart attack, or burst into tears.

“And then they crawled into their protected bubble and left the rest of us to drown and die. Do you know what they did to make sure we would never go against them?” the man asked, as he pulled his robe to the side to show Sylver an indent where the others had the organ that stored pure positive energy.

“Do you know how many truly “pure-blooded” elves are left? The ones that can still use old magic, and not this useless shit the rest of us are left with?” the man asked, growing older in his voice with each passing second.

“I’m very sorry to hear that, but what does any of this have to do with me? I’m powerful, sure, but not, change the world powerful,” Sylver said.

He didn’t like talking to someone when he couldn’t tell if they were lying or not. When the man reached into his robe, Sylver felt something crawl up his spine and got ready to dodge out of the way.

Instead, the man simply pulled out a sealed envelope.

He placed it on the table, between him and Sylver, and nodded at him. When Sylver reached out with his hand to grab the envelope, the man caught him by the wrist. Sylver kept his hand still and looked up at the man, and saw that both of his eyes had turned white. They were white for barely a second before the man blinked and they were back to normal.

Sylver shrugged off his hand and took the envelope.

The man abruptly stood up and all but ran out of the room. Sylver continued to sit where he was and pinched the bridge of his nose.

I should have just drowned everyone and gave Ria a shot.

Sylver went to open the thing when Foma walked into the room.

“He said to wait until you were outside. There are several Lyon’s heading towards the site of the explosion, one of them is bound to spot you and pick you up,” Foma said.

A part of Sylver wanted to rip the envelope open right now. No one ever said to wait to open something like this, unless Sylver was about to have questions and was going to attempt to force answers out of whoever gave it to him.

Sylver dragged his finger over the edge and used a tiny bit of magic to slice it open.

Inside he found…

Nothing.

“He said the contents will appear when you are outside,” Foma added with a hint of a knowing smile in his voice.

Sylver almost didn’t believe him, because there wasn’t so much as a drop of mana in the envelope. On the other hand, with the system being present, who knew what was or wasn’t possible?

*

*

*

He left all the remaining 11 necklace things with Foma, as he stepped outside. Sylver couldn’t say his experience here had been entirely positive, but he decided to trust that Foma wasn’t trying to trick him.

He hadn’t realized it, but it was very warm inside of the ship. The icy chill of the moist wind bit Sylver’s face and tried to force its way up his nose.

Sylver walked in the direction Foma had pointed to, and checked the inside of the envelope, every other step.

He heard Estus shout for him, and almost dropped the card that fell out of the envelope. Sylver caught it with his shadow and turned away from Estus and the group to read the contents.

There was nothing on it.

Just an empty card, even when Sylver sent enough mana into it to vaporize it, he couldn’t find anything inside or out of it.

Exhausted in a wholly new way, Sylver stashed the card away in his robe and placed it close to his chest.

Estus, Runnel, Bigs, Bean, and Tulip were all perfectly fine, if a little frightened.

Luckily for Sylver, his bullshit explanation as to what had happened back when the ship appeared was cut short by the sound of a Lyon attempting to land on a floating piece of ice.

From there it was difficult for him to pay attention to his surroundings.

At some point, Ria had figured out a portion of the language Sylver used to talk to Spring and was now actively conversing with him through small inaudible taps against Sylver’s arm.

Given that the two of them were quite interesting creatures, one was an undead created by a master necromancer, while the other was some sort of machine that possessed a soul, a person would have expected them to hold long and deep philosophical discussions.

Instead, Ria mostly told Spring about how doctor Abel always started his morning off with a single cup of tea and a piece of toasted bread with a thin layer of vegetable butter.

While Spring told Ria about how Sylver sometimes would go for days without eating anything, and would then gorge himself to the point he complained about feeling sick, only to do it again barely a month later.

It wasn’t easy, but Sylver figured out how to tune their conversation out, as he continued to check the card every other minute to see if something had changed about it.

The people in the Lyon they were in right now were all fast asleep, as were the two guards that had come with them. Ria kept Sylver updated whenever they tried to talk to one another, but the guards seemed far more interested in the dungeon exploding than they were in anything else.

Luckily it also appeared that neither Bean nor Tulip had heard Estus’ outburst about Sylver and the lab coat.

At one point Bigs fell asleep, and Sylver decided he might as well get it over with. The marking on his spine disappeared as it traveled from his skin and onto his bones, and very slowly and quietly, Bigs stopped moving around in his sleep.

The rest of the journey was a bit of a blur, Sylver couldn’t even remember what happened after they landed, or how he’d managed to walk home. He knocked on the door out of habit and watched through the clear glass door as Grant walked over to it and unlocked it.

“Are you alright? You look paler than normal,” Grant said, as Sylver practically shoved him out of the way and walked upstairs into one of the bedrooms. Sylver didn’t even realize how tired he was until his head hit the pillow.

*

*

*

Sylver woke up and almost screamed from the pain of getting the back of his head blown open.

The feeling passed and he felt a sharp chill get dragged down his spine. His possible future tried to force itself into his actual past. Sylver didn’t even attempt to decipher anything, and simply washed the intrusive effect away by getting a bullet out of one of the guns near Grant’s bed and massaging his forehead with it.

Sylver walked into the bathroom and washed away the blood leaking out his nose, and checked to see that he hadn’t torn his cheeks open or bit his tongue off.

Almost out of habit, Sylver pulled up the card the dark elf had given him, and for the first time actually froze in shock.

Sylver flicked the card back into his robe’s sleeve and very quickly washed into a presentable state and walked outside his house.

Sylver would be hard-pressed to tell anyone what he did while he waited for the “night” to arrive, other than nervously pacing around the Garden while resisting the urge to double-check what he had seen on the card.

Eirish wasn’t technically speaking a single language. Apart from dialects, there were also different “styles”, so to speak. The point of the language was that if you knew one “style” you could read any other, albeit slightly slower.

The one the Ibis preferred to use was complex to the point of being just short of absurd. It might as well be another language.

But the reason they used Eirish, was because the language was perfect for writing spell frameworks, there were a few who were working on an alternative, but as far as Sylver was aware, no one had been able to create something better than Eirish.

Sylver wasted very little time as the glass above him started to turn dark, and had the card in his hand before they were even completely opaque.

Sylver didn’t believe in fate, but he very much believed that the woman in white had sent him here for a reason.

And if he was reading the coded card right, someone from the Ibis was responsible for what this realm had called “The Flip”.

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