Sylver Seeker

It felt like an impossibly strong water current. If not for the thick layer of mana protecting him, Sylver was all but certain his skin would have been flayed from his body. Not flayed, pulled.

Sylver’s fingers burned with the effort as he continued to grip the quickly rusting metal doorway, and with each passing second lost more and more material to hold on to. As Sylver’s left hand passed through the rusted metal as if it was made of blood-red sand, he resigned himself, and as the magic increased its pull, let go

Besides him, Sylver could feel countless dead bodies flying in the same direction as he was, mostly fish, a handful of large bears, some sort of snake-shaped thing, and 2 humanoid corpses. Using [Dead Dominion] Sylver pulled everything within his range towards himself.

He grabbed his knees and rolled his body into as tight of a ball as his indestructible and inflexible ribcage allowed, and layered the corpses on top of one another, to hide himself as much as he could manage.

For a second or two, Sylver had a faint spark of confidence in his plan. Hide amongst the dead bodies, pretend to be dead, wait until the death lord and lich were off guard, and in a single fluid motion, enslave the death lord, and have it fight the lich for him.

The best part about this plan was that if any part of it didn’t go exactly the way he needed it to go, Sylver would be killed so quickly that he wouldn’t even notice. A young lich may attempt to capture him, it might try to stun him, or something to that effect, but this wasn’t a young lich.

This was a lich that was old enough to know that unless you were absolutely certain your attacker wasn’t a threat, you had to assume they could destroy you.

A stationary phylactery like Sylver’s was a rarity in Eira. A phylactery had to be small, portable, easy to hide so that even if the castle or cave the lich resided in is destroyed, it will still survive. The slightly better solution, that Sylver had never seen any liches use, is to leave the phylactery under the guard of something as powerful as the lich itself.

Such as a death lord, speaking in pure hypotheticals of course.

Sylver’s plan wasn’t flawless, but it wasn’t as if he could have prepared himself for the perfect counter to it.

If he was lucky, this lich would be a mage. Because then there was a tiny chance that the lich’s spell would have a flaw that Sylver could exploit.

If he was less lucky, the lich would be a sorcerer, and Sylver would be forced into the first dick-measuring contest that even at full mast he would have no chance of winning.

But as with most of Sylver’s plans since coming back to life and tied to a tiny needle, it was over before it had even started.

If the previous pull on Sylver’s body was described as a strong current of water, the pressure that obliterated the corpses protecting him, felt closer to the underside of a waterfall. Except the pressure disappeared as quickly as it had appeared and left a ball-shaped Sylver lying motionless on the empty, and oddly calm floor.

As he opened a single eye, he could see a dog-shaped creature looking down at him. It looked identical to one of Sylver’s shades, with the main difference being an uncountable number of eyes constantly flowing down its body as if each eye was a droplet of water sliding down a glass pane. Some eyes joined together, some split apart, but in those 5 seconds that Sylver was staring at the creature, not once did he see a single eye appear more than once.

Operating on pure instinct, Sylver very slowly and carefully uncurled from the fetal position, and while maintaining eye contact with the creature, or more accurately staring at the space a dog would have eyes, he stood up and very lightly nodded his head towards it.

Sylver turned as he heard a noise behind him, and saw a man-shaped shadow staring right at him, covered from head to toe in eyes, with 3 giant ones glowing with faint grey light, two in the area a normal human would have an eye, and an extra one on the forehead.

Sylver continued to turn his head to inspect his surroundings and saw another eye-covered creature, except this one had no shape that Sylver could describe, other than that it was a blob, a deflated balloon. The eyes on this creature moved around its body with such speed that its shadowy body appeared more white and red, than black.

“How about Elvish?” roughly 100 different voices asked, all seemingly coming from the direction of the man-shaped creature.

[??? (???) – ?????][HP-0][MP-?????]

Five question marks?

“Hello,” Sylver said in a whisper, while he waited for the nervous heart trying to breach its confines to relax and listen to him.

“You’re not a [Hero],” the man-shaped creature said.

“I didn’t say I was,” Sylver answered, as he felt around for his spark to cast magic, and for the unlife of him couldn’t find it. More than that, Sylver’s attempt to make a new one fell through.

Or rather, it was like trying to strike a match while submerged in water.

Only now that he was paying attention to it, did Sylver realize he didn’t feel any pain, or pressure because he was standing in pure negative energy. Negative energy so intense that it had managed to flush out every single drop of positive energy in his body, even the items in his [Bound Bones] storage felt completely devoid of positive energy.

Sylver turned at the sound of screeching, only to see a monstrous abomination flailing its tentacles around. It flung its body on the perfectly flat flooring before the tentacles wrapped themselves around itself, and it appeared to turn inside out for a moment before it resumed the shape of an eye-covered blob.

“Why are you here?” the man-shaped creature asked. Sylver turned to look at it and could see that the position of the three glowing eyes had changed.

“Where are we?” Sylver asked, as he turned on the spot and looked around but couldn’t see anything. Without any resistance, his mana spread out in every available direction, and Sylver quickly realized that he and the eye-covered shadows were all standing in an enormous cube.

In the silence that followed Sylver walked away from his original position and pressed his hand up against the wall he had come from. Even though he was physically touching it, the wall was there, and at the same time wasn’t there.

Without being able to cast mana he relied purely on his ability to sense souls, and Sylver almost struggled to comprehend the sheer quantity of souls passing through the wall into the room, and going somewhere.

“Who are you?” the man-shaped creature asked.

Sylver saw that once again the position of the eyes had changed. Before he could even think of an answer, Sylver felt something grab him by the wrist, and was unceremoniously pulled through the wall.

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As Sylver was about to collide with the wall, he turned into fog for a split second and reformed with his feet glued to the wall. He looked up and could see a creature covered from head to toe in a pitch-black robe, with a hood covering its face, including its eyes.

Before he could ask or say anything, Sylver felt his magic give out, and he fell down to the floor and discovered a split second before hitting it that he couldn’t turn into fog. Sylver jumped to his feet but remained where he was, while he stared at the robe-wearing creature.

It wasn’t the lich, Sylver could tell right away, the magic that overpowered Sylver’s was coming from somewhere far far away from him.

[]

[Appraisal (V) Proficiency increased to 100%!]

[Appraisal (V) rank up available!]

“I…” Sylver cleared his throat by coughing into his fist, “Hello,” Sylver said.

The creature didn’t say anything, it didn’t move, all it did was silently stand there.

As Sylver took a step towards it, it didn’t move.

He took another, and it didn’t move.

And another.

And another.

With one hand very gently touching the edge of the creature’s hood, the creature remained perfectly motionless.

Sylver grabbed a handful of the creature’s hood and very gently tugged at it.

It remained completely and perfectly motionless.

“An undead that is also completely devoid of white magic, I see,” a low, deep, booming voice said right into the back of Sylver’s head. Sylver was slow and took his time as he turned around and came face to face with a skull that wasn’t like any skull he had seen before.

The structure was all wrong, bone wasn’t god damn clay, it followed very specific rules in regards to how it could grow or form.

“What is this?” the flat-faced eyeless creature asked, as it reached down into Sylver’s shadow, and pulled out a completely limp Fen by the top of his head. It only had 4 fingers on each hand, with 9 joints in each finger, that seemed to possess the range of motion of ball and socket joints. It turned Fen around with one hand, as if he were a disco ball on a string, before very gently lowering the shade back into Sylver’s shadow.

“A [Necromancer], I see,” the flat-faced creature said, as it floated towards Sylver, and tapped his stomach with a single finger. Sylver just stood there and stared at the creature’s face, as it pulled its hand back, and then gradually floated away from him.

The two of them stood there staring at each other, both completely motionless, including the robe-wearing creature standing a little to Sylver’s left.

Sylver flinched as he felt the lich’s magic pulse through him, and suppressed another flinch as the flat-faced creature was now close enough that it was nearly pressing its face against Sylver’s nose.

“Curious. I was not aware that lack of white magic was the only requirement. I am Grim,” the flat-faced creature, Grim, said.

Sylver only noticed it now, but regardless of how close or far away it was, its voice sounded like it was coming from the exact same spot, directly behind Sylver’s head.

More than anything else, the soul Sylver could feel, if he could call it that, was wrong. Just like bones, souls had rules that governed the shape they could take, the color, the size, volume, density, depth, and this creature was disregarding every single one of them.

Under different circumstances, Sylver would have struggled to call it alive, but the way it moved, the way it occupied its body, even the way the mana in the surrounding air interacted with it, all indicated that it was even more alive than Sylver was.

“Tod,” Sylver answered after an unknown amount of time had passed.

What threw him off, more than anything else, was how familiar this creature felt.

“What do you suggest Tod,” Grim asked.

The word sounded wrong when Grim said it. He managed to make the name seem like an insult.

[]

“I would like your help,” Sylver said.

This creature, Grim, was weird, but Sylver couldn’t even get close to seeing it as a threat.

“What would you like my help with?” Grim asked, and floated away from Sylver, and went back to exactly the spot he had been earlier.

“I would like for you to answer my questions,” Sylver said.

“What kind of questions would you like me to answer?” Grim asked as Sylver took a very careful step away from the motionless robe-wearing figure on his left.

“What are you?” Sylver asked.

“I am Grim,” Grim answered, and if Sylver wasn’t standing in the middle of complete and total darkness, while constantly feeling the magical pulse of an immensely powerful lich, he would have rolled his eyes.

“What are you doing here Grim,” Sylver asked.

He only now realized that he couldn’t read Grim’s soul properly. Sylver couldn’t even tell if the creature was focused on him or not, it was almost like it wasn’t there.

“I am waiting to release them,” Grim explained, with the slightest nod towards the large cube housing those 3 eye covered creatures.

“What are they?” Sylver asked.

“I don’t know,” Grim answered.

“Why are you waiting to release them,” Sylver asked.

“I don’t know,” Grim answered.

“What will happen when you release them,” Sylver asked.

“I don’t know,” Grim answered.

“Wh… I would like it if you came with me, Grim,” Sylver asked.

This time there was a pause before Grim answered.

“I cannot leave,” Grim explained.

“If I release them now, would you be able to leave?” Sylver asked, and gestured towards the cube holding the three creatures.

“I cannot leave,” Grim explained.

It’s a golem… Some sort of fucked up golem with a soul, but it’s a golem…

It's magic-based, so Ria can’t hack into it…

If I do something to make it perceive me as an enemy, I’ll have no chance.

I need to talk to the lich…

And offer it what? Even if I manage to convince it that my advanced knowledge is genuine, what’s stopping it from just attacking me and forcing the information out of me?

Sylver felt the pulse of disrupting magic pass through him, and the next pulse felt like it came from a different location. It was closer.

The next pulse felt even closer.

And the one after that Sylver heard before he felt it.

He turned around again and found Grim, and the robed figure missing and was now staring right at a skeleton that seemed to be made entirely out of metal.

Even in the pitch-black darkness, the skeleton had a perfect mirror finish polish, there wasn’t a single speck of dust or anything on him anywhere.

Sylver looked down as he heard a click from the wooden box the skeleton was holding, followed by an intense pulse of magic.

“How are you alive?” the skeleton asked, and Sylver heard the voice as if it was talking into the back of his head. As opposed to Grim, the skeleton’s voice was almost normal.

“I’m undead,” Sylver answered, as he felt the intense pulse of magic pass through him, and now had the same exact question as the skeleton did.

This was instant death magic.

And not just any instant death magic.

The skeleton opened the box he was holding and turned it around, so Sylver could see the contents.

It was a severed hand, with a grey-colored tattoo on the wrist. The thumb and middle finger touched, and the hand snapped its fingers and released another wave of instant death magic, that by all rights should kill anything and everything.

“Who are you? Why are you here? What do you want?” the skeleton asked, as it closed the lid, and then held the box up to its chest defensively. It clicked one more time and released another pulse of death magic.

“I’m a [Necromancer], [Swamp Lord], and a master of the dark arts. The better question is, what do you want?” Sylver asked, and couldn’t do a single thing about the smile that threatened to tear his cheeks open.

“I want you to leave,” the skeleton said and took the smallest of steps backward. Sylver just stared at the creature and felt blood freely pouring out of his nose as he focused on the dead matter sitting snugly within the wooden box.

Sylver didn’t even get to finish bending his knees to lunge at the skeleton when he found himself face to face with the man-shaped creature with eyes falling down its body.

“You’re not a [Hero],” the creature said.

“I know,” Sylver answered, and walked over to the wall he could feel souls coming from.

Sylver pressed his hand up against it, and then pressed his face against the wall too.

The wall remained perfectly flat, perfectly motionless, and perfectly dark.

But then it wobbled, and a barely visible gold-colored string came out of it, ever so slightly above Sylver’s head. Sylver remained where he was while he waited for the string to get longer, and pulled himself away from the wall once the string was long enough that it touched the floor.

Sylver spat into his palms, and rubbed them together, and then proceeded to clear the blood out of his nose onto this hands.

The string sparkled for a fraction of a second, just bright enough to illuminate the cube Sylver was currently trapped in.

As Sylver waited for his mana to settle down, he shouted loud and clear at the wall with the golden string coming out of it.

“LET ME OUT! GIVE ME THE HAND! AND I WILL LEAVE YOU IN PEACE!” Sylver screamed, and gave Grim, the hooded figure, and the metal skeleton an entire minute to consider his mildly unhinged-sounding proposition.

Sylver turned around and could see that the man-shaped creature had walked off into the furthest corner, the blob was sitting on the ceiling right above the man-shaped creature, and only the one that looked like a dog remained where it was and just stared at Sylver.

“DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN-”

Sylver fell to his knees as the sudden presence of light blinded him, the magical interference hit him right in the gut, and the backlash from the built-up and unreleased mana forced its way back into his core, the way someone might pass a kidney stone.

Sylver screamed into the bright and empty void.

Beautiful and untouched white snow surrounded him as far as the eye could see, while a wonderfully bright white sun sat directly above him, and somehow shined so brightly that the reflective snow didn’t allow so much as a shadow to form underneath Sylver’s body.

With his hand clutched at his stomach, Sylver vomited bright red blood, onto the pristine and fluffy snow. Like some sort of dog, Sylver lowered his face to the snow that wasn’t covered in puke and blood, and with his darkening fingers grabbed a handful of it, and forced it into his mouth, to get rid of the taste.

It was hard to say how much time Sylver spent sitting around and screaming, like a child who just had his favorite toy ripped out of his fucking hands.

Ria refrained from offering her opinion, or thoughts on the current situation, and Spring had very wisely chosen to do the same.

Sylver wasn’t completely done with his temper tantrum, but the swelling of the water underneath him forced him to put it on pause for the moment. Or at the very least, redirect the anger into something more productive.

The ice creaked as the tentacle pushed itself against it, and finally gave out, and shattered into giant chunks, and sent Sylver flying far into the distance.

Or rather, it should have, had Sylver not lunged down into the water, all while summoning more and more [Necrotic Mutilation] from his [Bound Bones] storage, and freezing the ice around him into razor-thin blades.

[Kraker Polaris (Warrior+Rogue+Rogue+Rogue+Rogue+Rogue+Rogue) - 174][HP-49,788][MP-855]

Sylver wasn’t sure if he was roaring with rage as he propelled his body deep into the water, and made his way towards the main body. Something dark blue, and exceptionally foul-tasting appeared in the water, and Sylver felt his limbs lose all feeling and motion.

He knew he caught the piece of shit off guard when he stabbed it its stupid giant eye, and it didn’t have a single tentacle close enough to stop him. Its eyelid closed over the stabbed eye and was torn down the middle as Sylver twisted the dagger to line up with the eyelid.

The creature didn’t so much scream as it did flail around.

Especially when Sylver ripped the eye open, and forced himself inside of it.

Freezing the hole through which he entered, Sylver dug his pitch black and rotting fingers into the soft and slimy flesh of the monster, and sucked it dry.

Now that Sylver knew what it felt like, he could feel it even down here. All he needed was a slightly faster method of transport to catch up with their moving smoke-covered base.

[Kraker Polaris (Warrior+Rogue+Rogue+Rogue+Rogue+Rogue+Rogue) Defeated!][Due to defeating an enemy 40 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Draining Blight (IV) Proficiency increased to 91%!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 22!+5AP

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As far as patrols went, unit number 618 was having one of the world’s most routine and mind-numbingly boring patrols possible.

And then someone brought their Dandy-Lyon down by throwing a giant squid’s corpse at their propellers.

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