Chapter 168: Ch144-Chicken Dinner

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Ch144-Chicken Dinner

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Dullen and Gal worked in near-perfect tandem. Gal handled all the large zombies, the ones that relied on pure strength, while Dullen slowed down the smaller ones, and destroyed the ones trying to sneak up on them from down below.

With a single swipe of his giant sword, Gal managed to slice the new Texas into two, a clean cut from the left shoulder blade, down to the right hip. Meanwhile, Dullen protected Gal from the ever-growing thorns that were slowly covering every inch of available ground and were crawling up the walls, towards the ceiling.

“He’s underground!” Gal shouted, as a horse-like monster managed to bite down on his hilt, but exploded from a single punch from Gal’s enormous fist.

“Of course I’m underground, where else would I be?” every monster with a functional mouth said with only the slightest delay between them.

The created effect was a sort of echo. And if both Gal and Dullen weren’t preoccupied with not getting scratched or bitten to death, they would have noticed that the echo started from near the golden throne, under which Sylver was currently hiding.

The stairs weren’t hollow, but Sylver was surrounded by about 7 sets of scales, some were actually zombies, and others were just pieces of scale and carapaces he found and felt were strong enough to be used as a shield.

Sylver held the tiny mushroom in his hand and tried to concentrate on it.

Primal energy was the energy on which everything else was built on. It was the energy that clairvoyants used to predict the future, it was the energy natural-born undead used to gain the necessary abilities to survive, it was the energy that gave gods their power, the energy sorcerers, fairies, and anything that used “natural” magic used. 

It was the energy that decided when a volcano would explode, when a comet would crash into the land, the color of a newborn’s hair, what happened to a soul once it died, there wasn’t a single thing in Eira, or anywhere, that occurred with primal energy influencing it.

A primal energy “vacuum” didn’t exist, better men than Sylver had tried to create it, and had all miserably failed. Primal energy wasn’t just the words on the page, it was the book itself.

Theoretically, primal energy was the source of demon magic, and their ability to know things. And theoretically, Sylver should have been able to sense something when he tried to feel out his status page.

And while Sylver couldn’t voice his findings, couldn’t even think about them, there was something there. Whoever had granted him this ability hadn’t considered that it would be trivial to use it to get a feel for the “magic” that provided him with it.

In a way, it was incredible how much such a small tool could do.

How much potential it held.

Why, in the wrong hands, someone could, theoretically, find the source of something impossibly powerful, and could track it down, and force it to do his bidding.

And, theoretically, if that something impossibly powerful was near-omniscient, it would be the perfect way to track down people that are normally impossible to track down. Not to mention-

“FUCK,” Sylver screamed inside his scale and carapace walled hole, and dropped his mushroom and clutched at his skull, which seemed to be threatening to crack itself open like a walnut. Blood dribbled out of Sylver’s nose, eyes, ears, and he even felt blood dripping out from underneath his fingernails.

“He’s under the throne!” Gal shouted, and gestured at the gaudy-looking piece of bright gold furniture.

Sylver remained in the fetal position for a couple of seconds and found that it was a couple of seconds too long, as his armored walls were torn into perfect 1-centimeter squares, and sparkled for a moment, as the wire tightened over Sylver’s body as if he were some kind of hard cheese being sliced up.

Sylver grabbed at the wire with his [Necrotic Mutilation] bound hands, and before he could even begin to send a current through the damn things, the strings pulled away and sliced through the joints of Sylver’s fingers, severing them into small bite-sized pieces.

Thankfully the armor reformed itself, and pressed the finger pieces against Sylver’s knuckles, as he flooded the bleeding wounds with darkness, and did his best to make sure the mana channels weren’t disturbed by the sudden severance.

Sylver focused solely on his fingers, as he felt several pieces of wire wrap around his torso, and was torn out of his defended hiding place, and was flung up and out, into the chaos above. Only the fact that he reinforced his armor and skin stopped the wire from slicing clean through him.

Sylver landed amongst several pieces of something he couldn’t even recognize, other than that it smelled awful, and was in perfectly cut 1-centimeter cubes.

“There you are,” Dullen said, as he flicked his right hand towards Sylver, while he twirled his left around his body, and destroyed the tiny serpents Spring had attempted to send to slip past his defenses.

In better circumstances, Sylver would have been able to predict where the wire was coming from, but it wasn’t following any logical path, it seemed to ignore the laws of gravity, as well as any kind of air resistance. 

With a twitch of the right hand, the zombies that were rising from the ground around Sylver, fell over into a pile of perfectly sliced cubes, while a shower of sparks exploded out of Sylver’s left leg, as the strings couldn’t get past his reinforced armor.

Sylver looked around at his “army” and watched as the last two-legged reptile fell over into a pile of neat flesh cubes.

“So much for your master plan. All this time to prepare, and a bunch of weak zombies is all you have to show for it?” Dullen asked as he flicked his right hand at Sylver, and Sylver attempted to dodge it but ended up getting hit full force in the chest. 

His skin didn’t get pierced, but if Dullen had put a bit more force into it, it might have.

Sylver’s armor absorbed the blood leaking out of his face and fingernails, and with a flick of his hands, the fingers of his gauntlets elongated until they formed thin and razor-sharp claws.

Gal just stood there, breathing heavily while he held his sword in a reverse grip, and used it to steady himself.

“Let me guess… Some sort of magic interfering metal?” Sylver asked as several strings landed clean hits on his elbow, shoulder, neck, hip, and side of his head, but barely managed to break through the armor, they didn’t draw blood.

“You know, I expected more from someone so weak who managed to make it so far,” Gal said, as he stood up straight, and reversed his grip again, with the sword pointed directly at Sylver’s head.

Sylver blunted his claws as he brought his hands together and lightly clapped them.

“You boys did well. You figured out my only weakness, killing the cannon fodder. Why, I might as well give up now, raising zombies is all that I’m capable of,” Sylver said, as he started to walk towards the two. 

Sylver thought he had figured out the pattern in Dullen’s movements, but as the strings stuck the back of his neck and came dangerously close to getting to Sylver’s spine, he realized that he didn’t.

“It’s uh… Actually, fuck it-” Sylver said, as he brought his hands together again, and just barely managed to keep his eardrums intact, as an extremely bright light was followed by an equally loud sound.

Sylver felt Dullen’s strings tighter around him, but [Fog Form] meant that with even a single tendril outside the string cage, Sylver was completely free of it.

As a blinded, deafened, and enraged Gal, came flying at Sylver, Sylver kicked forward with his foot and was surrounded by 25 Sylver-shaped earth statues. To his credit, Gal ignored them entirely, and his sword passed through the area where Sylver’s eyes were a split second ago, as he turned into fog, and materialized in a crouching position.

Strings slashed on the ground near Sylver, and he was delighted to see that not a single one came even close to Gal.

Once again Sylver turned into fog, and floated out of the path of Gal’s sword, as he sent a tendril upwards towards the blood-covered man’s head, and materialized with his legs crossed over his neck. Gal seemed more insulted than surprised by the fact that Sylver was piggyback riding on him, as evident by the fact that he grabbed Sylver’s left leg and squeezed hard enough to shatter a lesser man’s bone.

Luckily, Sylver’s leg was enchanted to shit, on top of the bone strength increasing resistances [Iron Chest] provided. It still hurt, especially when Sylver’s flesh was squeezed out like toothpaste from a tube, but Sylver hoped the two hooked claws he pressed directly into Gal’s eyes hurt more.

Sylver pulled his hands away, but two claw-covered gauntlets remained embedded in Gal’s eye sockets. As Sylver turned into fog and went back down to the ground, he made the [Necrotic Mutilation] spread out and encase the blood-covered man’s head but…

Gal swung his sword sideways, like a fan, and Sylver had to materialize to stop himself from being blown away and towards Dullen.

Gal attacked with a brand new speed, just barely within Sylver’s range of reaction. He stomped on a piece of fog that used to be Sylver’s head, and simultaneously tried to grab at another tendril of fog, that would have been Sylver’s neck.

Sylver hurried the [Necrotic Mutilation] on his head to get into his mouth and nose and slice his mouth up from the inside, but apparently the steam coming out of Gal’s nose was powerful and hot, enough to force the liquid gore out. And as it turned out, his screaming was doing much the same, albeit not in a way Sylver could understand while he was busy not getting crushed, caught, or sliced up.

Sylver brought his hands together again, and two spikes of ice emerged from the moist soil and shattered as they made contact with Gal’s blood-covered skin.

The shards exploded into a cloud of mist and provided Sylver with enough cover from Dullen’s strings and Gal’s grapples to escape back underground.

“Is that all you got!” Dullen screamed deafly, as his wires shredded through the earth, and found Sylver in under 3 seconds. 

Dullen attempted to get the wires to wrap around the necromancer, but to his shock, when he yanked the robe and mask-wearing figure out of the ground, it was simply a roughly shaped piece of ice that fell onto the ground in small 1 centimeter slices.

Gal screamed louder than he had before, and even with the earth above muffling the sound, Sylver could almost feel it in his chest.

Dullen first, Gal is defenseless without him.

Sylver managed to reach the bottom of the area and grabbed at the three tendrils of [Necrotic Mutilation] that had been severed several times, but as Sylver had instructed, reconnected.

It wasn’t the most efficient, or refined magic, as Sylver channeled half of his remaining MP through the tendril, and waited for the mushrooms buried in the distance to finish preparing. The zombies above, the ones currently laying around in cubed pieces, began to slide amongst themselves.

[Zombie (Petty) Raised!]

[Zombie (Petty) Raised!]

[Zombie (Petty) Raised!]

…

Under different circumstances, Sylver would have taken the time to do a classic “congratulations on defeating my undead… now do it 50 more times!” but Gal and Dullen were a bit too powerful for Sylver to not take this seriously.

Just as before the zombies went down without putting up much of a fight, especially considering how little mana Sylver had to spare them. Thankfully [Necrotic Mutilation] worked like some sort of undead glue, it acted as a muscle where it needed to, and simply flung flesh and bone at the two men, where no amount of magical glue would suffice.

He didn’t expect any of the “zombies” to kill anyone, or even do any serious damage, they were there to keep the two men occupied, and they were doing an exceptional job of it.

Sylver gave the barely functional zombies a few more drops of mana, before he turned into fog and traveled through a tiny tunnel, barely the width of a pencil, and arrived at the first mushroom. Sylver grabbed a handful of mucus the mushroom had secreted and encased it in a different mushroom.

[Mutating Override] wasn’t a skill that would allow Sylver to turn iron into gold, but, it was a skill that could change a bunch of mushrooms into what Sylver needed them to be. The trick was to get them 99% of the way there and force the final 1% using raw primal energy manipulation.

[Necrotic Mutilation] benefited from this skill too, as Sylver was able to make the armor leak all over the place, leaving an interconnected trail of dark green liquid all over the battlefield above. But that was a last resort tactic, Sylver wanted to see how plan C would work first.

Sylver watched as his mana ticked up with every dead zombie, thanks to [Dying Breath], and when Dullen start slicing the Texas near the farthest wall into pieces, Sylver used [Advanced Earth Manipulation] to shoot himself out from the underground, and directly towards Dullen.

Sylver flung the blobby mushroom at Dullen, and as the strings came at the projectile and sliced it open, smiled underneath his mask.

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The effect was immediate, Dullen’s strings went limp before he even realized what was going on. He struggled to move his fingers against the instantly drying glue as Sylver closed the distance, and using [Fog Form] gave himself a small boost in momentum, as he grabbed Dullen by the scalp, and brought his knee directly into the sticky man’s face.

Sylver heard several crunches, most of them being Dullen’s teeth, as the man fell backward completely limp, and disappeared down into the soil.

[Mutating Override] meant that even if Sylver couldn’t remember the names of all the chemicals he wanted, he could create a trace amount of them out of nutrient-rich mushroom liquid, and could then enchant the mushroom to transmute its own flesh into more of the aforementioned liquid.

The glue-like slime reacted with the metal and clogged up whatever tech the circular gloves used. Dullen almost certainly had ways of dealing with such an attack, but all Sylver needed was those 2 or so seconds to knock him out. 

Considering a wire had been wrapped around Sylver’s neck when he kneed Dullen in the face, the fight could have ended very differently. 

Sylver didn’t bother trying to guestimate just how badly he had shattered the man’s jaw, and immediately turned into fog to dodge the compressed blade of air that sliced cleanly through the thorn-covered vines that had climbed up the wall.

Sylver materialized before the gust of wind that followed could break his cloud into pieces, and immediately dived into the ground. Thanks to Spring and the other shades, Sylver got a nearly perfect description of what the blind and deaf Gal was doing right now.

And the answer was swinging his huge sword around so quickly that not a single undead could do a thing against him. They were either flung away by the force the wind around Gal created and the ones that were too big to be moved, were simply sliced up into pieces.

Sylver dug to the other mushroom and found that the stupid thing had burst prematurely, and had already eaten a hole in the earth, and couldn’t be used.

While Gal and Dullen defended themselves against the undead, Sylver used the time to experiment with his [Mutating Override] skill and found that he wasn’t as good as he had thought. 

Aside from being unused to limiting his mana to what his low conductivity body can handle, Sylver also wasn’t used to having so little mana with which to manipulate primal energy.

According to Spring, mushrooms number 3 to 9 were all either faulty or had been destroyed when Dullen had raked the earth with his strings.

In hindsight, changing his original plan and substituting it with mushrooms that Sylver created with [Mutating Override] wasn’t the best idea in the world. In Sylver’s defense, he was still alive, and all that he had left to deal with was a man who couldn’t see or hear anything.

Sylver found that mushroom number 11 was only slightly damaged, and repaired it as he dug his way upwards.

Sylver held the pulsating and lightly glowing bread loaf shaped fungus in his hands and came out of the ground on a pillar of earth. Ice spikes, earth spikes, even thorns made out of plant matter were all useless against Gal, it was like he was made out of pure metal, his skin didn’t even dent from all the force Sylver’s undead had applied to it.

Sylver picked up the bread loaf of mushroom with his [Necrotic Mutilation] armor tendrils and strengthened it as much as he could allow himself, as he prepared to throw it. The loaf started to burn hot enough to turn Sylver’s tendrils into ash.

With a gust of wind helping it along, Sylver lobbed the relatively small loaf at the enraged and screaming Gal and dug down into the earth for cover.

Sylver waited around for a couple of seconds, but nothing happened. There should have been a powerful implosion, very possibly followed by a death notification, but all Sylver could hear was the muffled screaming of Gal.

“Wait, what the fuck am I doing?” Sylver wondered, as he jumped back out of his hole, and used [Dead Dominion] to move all the various pieces of dead flesh, blood, and bone towards Gal, to quite literally bury him in it.

Gal did as expected, and continued to blindly swing his sword. Sylver’s attempt to disturb him by removing his footing turned out to have been a waste of time, as Gal wasn’t actually standing on anything, and was keeping himself in place with centrifugal force, using his sword’s weight to cancel out his own.

Under normal circumstances, the thing to do would be to wait Gal out, he’d have to run out of stamina at some point, but Sylver had a better, simpler, solution.

Sylver made a hole in his mask, a little smaller than the width of his mouth, and breathed out an extremely dense and thick cloud of [Draining Blight]. As Gal continued to keep himself unburied, the almost liquid smoke flowed down near his feet, and with the gentleness of a lion biting down on its prey, sucked every drop of HP, MP, and Stamina it could get its gaseous hands on.

Gal stopped roaring for a moment, and let out a gasp, as a [Necrotic Mutilation] coated dagger exploded out of Sylver’s hands, and glowing with a bright yellow light, stabbed Gal right through the wrist. The dagger wasn’t strong enough to remain in place, as Gal easily yanked it out of his wrist, but it was too late anyway.

With all the dead undead scattered around, Sylver had HP to spare, not to mention the fact that Gal couldn’t do a thing against him, meant that Sylver could allow himself to strengthen [Draining Blight] as much as he wanted. 

Gal dropped to his knees, and reached around for his sword, but was too blind and deaf to know that the various pieces of dead flesh had acted like a wave, and had brought the enormous blade to Sylver’s feet.

For a moment or so Sylver forgot what he was doing, as he lessened the effects of [Draining Blight] so Gal would merely pass out.

Sylver hadn’t exactly been “cornered” in this fight, if he hadn’t attempted to use his newly found [Primal Override] skill, he would have won without a single scratch.

Still, even accounting for Sylver’s fuckup, Gal and Dullen had been formidable opponents.

And Sylver didn’t like letting anyone that posed a threat to him live.

The earth Dullen was trapped in clamped down over his head and kept his body steady, while the head was twisted, and the neck snapped.

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

[Due to defeating an enemy 70 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 18!

+5AP

Having decided Gal deserved something close to respect for how long he managed to hold out against Sylver, Sylver walked over to the panting and nearly unconscious giant and used his own two hands to snap his neck.

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

[Due to defeating an enemy 70 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 19!

+5AP

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 20!

+5AP

[1 perk available for [Swamp Lord]]

[Physical Endurance (III) Proficiency increased to 100%!]

[Physical Endurance (III) rank up available!]

[Undead Mastery (V) Proficiency increased to 94%!]

[Mirage (III) Proficiency increased to 31%!]

[Draining Blight (IV) Proficiency increased to 64%!]

[Necrotic Mutilation (II) Proficiency increased to 100%!]

[Necrotic Mutilation (II) rank up available!]

[Mutating Override (I) Proficiency increased to 84%!]

Sylver smiled as Gal’s HP healed every tiny scratch and bruise, and felt like doing a backflip from the overabundance of stamina the burly man had provided.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” a voice Sylver hadn’t heard before shouted, from somewhere near the ceiling. The earth underneath Sylver’s feet disappeared, as did the various corpses all around him, along with Gal’s and Dullen’s bodies.

“Please give a warm round of applause!” the voice continued, as Sylver’s surroundings disappeared completely, and he was blinded by a bright white light, that didn’t seem to have a source.

Sylver felt whatever he was standing on move underneath his feet, and then he was suddenly being lifted upwards. The light around him receded down to an acceptable level, and Sylver suppressed an urge to jump for cover as the sound of drums exploded all around him, and were quickly followed by some sort of high-pitched brass instrument.

Sylver regained his vision and saw himself standing on a giant platform, with Dullen’s corpse to his left, and Gal’s corpse to his right. Gal’s corpse was higher than Dullen’s.

“To the winner of this year’s Gold Giers Trials!” the voice continued, that Sylver now saw came from an elf with light grey hair, dressed in a white suit with a black bowtie.

“Tod! Or as you all know him, the Silver Sliver!” the man shouted, and a woman dressed in a bright red suit walked over next to him. Pieces of shiny paper fell down from the ceiling and covered Sylver’s blood-soaked robe, and landed onto the dead Gal and Dullen, and piled on them.

“And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for!” Rouge continued, as a giant colorful fucking wheel appeared out of nowhere, and started to spin all by itself.

The wheel spun, spun, and spun, all while colorful pieces of paper rained down on Sylver, the two dead bodies near him, as well as the giant crowd of people holding their breath as the wheel continued to effortlessly spin.

From where he was standing, Sylver couldn’t see a damn thing, partially from all the blood that he hadn’t had a chance to properly wash off, mixed up with the fact that he’d been in the dark for a long time, and now had tears in his eyes from how intense the mild light here was.

The wheel continued to spin and spin, and slowly but surely it started to slow down. The drums started beating a beat that matched the spinning of the wheel, speeding up as it slowed down.

The atmosphere in the whole room changed instantly, as the crowd’s cheering turned into a dead silent stare. Everyone, with the exception of Sylver, held their breath as the wheel kept slowing down, and seemed to be approaching something.

The wheel stopped spinning, and the crowd collectively gasped as it almost spun to the next thing, but exploded in more cheering as it snapped back to the previous reward.

“No fucking way,” the man said, as he slapped a hand over his mouth, and turned his now pale face to look at Sylver.

Stairs appeared in front of Sylver that led down to where Rouge, the man, and the wheel were, so Sylver walked down them to see what exactly the fuss was about.

As Sylver stared at the words written on the segment the wheel’s arrow was pointed to, he couldn’t help but feel that Poppy or one of her sisters had a hand in this.

Apparently, Sylver had just become a Flower.

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