Chapter 188: Ch164-One Small Step

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Ch164-One Small Step

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Sylver watched the giant corpse fly through the air, and even though he trusted and believed Ria when she told him the Dandy-Lyon’s location, a part of him was skeptical. It didn’t make any sound, left no trail, and Sylver couldn’t see it or feel it.

And yet, the corpse turned into bright red mist, and coated the upper half of the vehicle, as it started tumbling to the ground. It went from being perfectly silent, to so loud that Sylver felt the powerful beat of the rotating blades at the top in the soles of his feet.

Except unlike the time it was brought down by the explosion, the giant metal carriage didn’t break apart into 4 pieces.

Instead, it made the sound of metal rubbing against metal, and in the time it took Sylver to blink, was covered by a thick coat of bright orange foam. The Lyon slumped when it landed on the ice and didn’t shatter or bounce, it was as if someone had dropped a ball of fresh dough.

The unexpected development was almost enough to shock Sylver out of his rage-induced fugue state. Luckily his anger managed to remain intact, and instead of standing there and staring at it, Sylver advanced on the foam-covered vehicle and made it just in time.

The door wasn’t exactly “kicked” open, but the person who had opened it hadn’t been all that careful with it either. With a hissing puff, the door opened fully, and Sylver watched as a suit of armor floated out of the door, and immediately locked its eyes on Sylver.

It was a very dark metal grey, with interlocking plates that left no opening and didn’t seem to restrict the wearer’s movement either. Tiny streams of bright blue fire coming out of its feet and back allowed the person inside to fly, but there was something else there, it was moving too smoothly for something flying using raw fire.

Sylver had hoped for a moment of hesitation, some sort of verbal warning, maybe a couple of seconds of confusion, but the armor-wearing person was more than ready for Sylver.

What he wasn’t ready for was the remains of the monster Sylver had thrown at their Dandy-Lyon, that he now had a hold on using [Dead Dominion] and increased the force with which it fell.

The result was a lot worse than Sylver would have preferred. The armor-wearing person was completely unfazed and unaffected by the half-ton of dead meat, and it passed over him the way a stick of butter would melt around a white-hot knife.

Thankfully Sylver was used to his plans failing, and before the armor wearer could move another inch towards him, Sylver threw an explosive at the corpse, used the corpse to move the bomb right underneath it, and then condensed it for maximum effect.

The result was a splattering of gore so large and dense that it quite literally blocked out the sun.

Sylver was in the process of creating enough [Necrotic Mutilation] to coat the shades to keep them alive while they fought when Ria ruined everything.

“One of their weapons went off when they hit the ground, the power core is damaged, it won’t be able to fly,” Ria said into Sylver’s ear, as he started to cover himself in [Necrotic Mutilation] armor and was about to begin covering his summoned ax.

Sylver stood still for a moment, even as he heard the sound of the flying armor approaching, and burning through the cloud of red blood, and with a sigh that seemed to deflate his entire being, turned into fog and funneled his body down underneath the ice.

Sylver narrowly dodged a painfully bright laser that would have sliced his body into 2 down the middle, and with another slight push of [Advanced Water Manipulation] got far enough away that he was out of their range.

Sylver just swam for a while.

If you can call laying perfectly still while a torrent of water propelled you forward swimming.

He could feel his hand, now that he knew to look for it, he would be able to feel it even if that walking pile of shiny bones ran all the way to the other side of this planet.

On a certain level, it was relaxing. 

Sylver was close enough to the ice that none of the weird shit swimming below tried to chase after him, and the few that did were promptly told to fuck off via a powerful pulse through the water. Sylver couldn’t make it strong enough to kill, but it was enough to stun them to make attacking him not worth the effort.

Sylver gradually went from enraged, to pissed off, to vexed, and finally was back to his usual level of anger. After Sylver sent another arrow-looking fish away, Spring decided to take it upon himself to inform Ria that Sylver was calm enough to hold a conversation with.

“What happened back there?” Ria asked as Sylver turned over so he was on his back, and watched the giant chunks of ice above him blur into a steady blue and white. There was a pause, during which Sylver accidentally stumbled onto thoughts and memories that almost pushed him back into a state of pure anger.

“I would prefer not to discuss it,” Sylver answered with an unstable edge in his tone.

“I see… I thought I should let you know I recognized them,” Ria said, and it took Sylver an entire second to process her words.

“Who? The things with the eyes?” Sylver asked, baffled by the idea as much as he was worried.

“No, the three androids. The one that called itself Grim is a very old harvester model, S9 or S10, they’re mainly used by farmers for agricultural-related work. The one that held the box with the snapping hand is a relief model, but I can’t tell which variant since the skin shell is missing,” Ria explained, as Sylver dived deeper to not have to go through an extremely large glacier.

“What about the one with the robe?” Sylver asked.

“The height is about right for a librarian model, but it’s hard to say for certain without removing the robe and wrappings,” Ria explained, as Sylver made an honest attempt to put the puzzle pieces together.

Poppy did say that Ria’s people were responsible for this realm being the way it is… “Built the gun and loaded it,” were Poppy’s exact words.

“I understand you don’t want to talk about it, but why did you freak out when you saw that hand?” Ria asked, and Sylver was too deep in thought to hear her. It was only when she asked again several minutes later that he responded.

“My current body isn’t mine. Or rather, it isn’t the body I was born with,” Sylver explained, and could immediately feel wave after wave of confusion from Ria’s soul.

“Alright… So why did every muscle in your body tense up when you saw it?” Ria asked, as Sylver turned around again, and looked down at the seemingly endless abyss below him.

“You might have noticed that I use a very limited amount of magic. And that sometimes I do something, and then my fingers turn black and rot. My current body isn’t compatible with magic. Especially not the type of magic I use and specialize in,” Sylver explained, as he and some sort of fish monster covered in grey fur locked eyes, and Sylver casually sent it away with a single deafening pulse through the water.

“I see; you’re going to replace your hand with that hand… How recently did this body change happen?” Ria asked, and Sylver realized he had another reason to get his hands on his hand.

“I got this body roughly a year ago… As to the hand, it’s at the very least… Actually, it shouldn’t be here… Why would she…”

Why would Nyx keep it? She destroyed the staff, she gave me back the crystals inside of it… Why would she want my hand?

Her body was significantly better at conducting magic than mine was.

I lost the hand when I forced Nyx to retire, but that was well after the incident with the book…

But I had that paranoid episode the same year that she disappeared, so I know for a fact the hand wasn’t in Eira by then.

Well, if anyone could hide my own flesh from me and succeed, it would be Nyx.

Why though? Why my hand specifically? She had access to countless corpses, far superior to my body in every conceivable way.

Unless she needed someone who was a pure dark…

Why would Nyx do any of this? And if it wasn’t Nyx, who else had access to both the book, and my hand?

At the thought that he might be mistaken, Sylver once again felt around for his hand and found it instantly.

Sylver’s soul might have been compressed and weakened, but the “fingerprint” was still the same. The hand inside the box was Sylver’s hand, there was no doubt about it.

“What’s the plan?” Ria asked, possibly for the 3rd time, on account of the fact that Sylver was almost getting a headache from trying to fit pieces that didn’t fit together.

“The big one, Grim, is a problem. But if I can touch the hand for even a fraction of a second, it will be my win,” Sylver explained, as he felt something keeping pace with him deep underwater, and prepared himself just in case.

“What will happen when you touch it?” Ria asked.

“I’ll be able to stop everyone from moving. Although I have no idea how much mana is stored inside of it, it should be enough for at least one seventh-tier spell. And worst-case scenario, even if they kill me, or throw me out again, I literally just need physical contact with it for a split second,” Sylver explained.

“So you just need a sample of it?” Ria guessed.

“It’s my primal energy field, once I touch it, the primal energy field of my current body will be altered. Then I just need to speed up the process with a ritual or two, and I’ll be able to use however much magic I want to,” Sylver explained and could feel almost the exact moment where Ria did the equivalent of biting her tongue and nodded along to keep the conversation going.

“Those things with the eyes… Were they death lords?” Ria asked, and Sylver gave himself a moment to figure out how to properly word his response.

“Best I can say is maybe… I was caught off guard by, well… everything, I hadn’t given much thought as to what they were. I entered the Dark Year expecting to fight a death lord, I have a spell that should act like a key that will allow me to control it, but I didn’t feel like there were any keyholes anywhere in there,” Sylver explained, and as a group of small aquatic monsters passed underneath him, got an idea.

“What is a death lord anyway? What does it look like? Where does it come from? What does it do?” Ria asked, as Sylver dived a little deeper, and slowed himself down.

“It’s a collection of souls that’s fused into one big abomination. Appearance-wise it doesn’t look like anything, it doesn’t have a physical form, and it certainly doesn’t have pitch-black shadow skin or flowing eyes. Where it comes from, I have no idea. Similar to the book they are more of a “kill first, ask questions later” kind of dangerous. As for what it does, that’s the part that makes it more dangerous than quite literally everything short of a god,” Sylver explained, as he carefully moved the water around himself to hide his body.

“Could you beat it if you fought it?” Ria asked, and Sylver actually laughed loudly enough that the sound got past his attempts at stealth, and scared the monsters away.

“A death lord? Even if I had every advantage available, I am quite literally incapable of killing it. I can slow it down, I can seal it away, I might even be able to weaken it, but you need extremely potent holy magic to permanently put it down. On the other hand, I’m somewhat of a death lord’s natural enemy… The magic death lords are capable of using, is ineffective on me. Not to mention the fact that I can shave away its army,” Sylver explained, as he concentrated on a small group of fish swimming just slightly below him, and with a gentle wave of his hand froze all of them into a large sphere of ice.

They were so weak he didn’t even get a notification for killing them.

“So the only issue is that you can’t kill it for good?” Ria asked to clarify, as Sylver reached out with a net made out of [Necrotic Mutilation] and converted all the fish corpses below into more dark green liquid.

“No, the main issue is that unless you’re prepared for it in advance, a death lord can steal the undead under your command. On top of that, if a mage dies within its range, the mage will turn undead but will maintain all of their abilities. And once it accumulates enough mages, it opens a gate to the demon realm, and now you have to deal with demons on top of a death lord. Demons who come back to life when you kill them,” Sylver explained and was surprised he wasn’t shivering as the memory floated to the forefront of his mind.

“So the death lord itself isn’t the issue, the issue is that it can snowball into a catastrophe. What happens if you don’t stop it?” Ria asked, as Sylver cast out his net of [Necrotic Mutilation] and used the thorn-covered net to kill and gather more unsuspecting fish.

“I don’t know. The conditions required for a death lord to form are extremely rare. People significantly smarter than me have attempted to create one, and the closest any of them have ever gotten was accidentally creating a demon,” Sylver explained, as he spread the net of [Necrotic Mutilation] as far and thin as he could manage, and allowed it to trail behind himself, like some sort of jellyfish.

He even managed to make the net automate the killing and converting process.

Ria was silent for a long time, during which Sylver could feel her soul jumping from happy, to sorrowful, to frightened, to worried, to happy, and so on and so forth, to the point Sylver ended up tuning her out of his soul sense.

She spoke up just as Sylver decided he had enough [Necrotic Mutilation] for what he intended.

“Do you think they are responsible for the Flip? The androids, I mean…” Ria asked with a completely emotionless voice.

“You’re worried your group are the ones who did this. Eden’s Garden, the only place that supports life is called The Garden. Then there’s the fact that you recognize your technology being used by them. I’m getting tired of saying this to people, but you’re not responsible for the actions of every robot, or android, or whatever you consider yourself to be. Do you have any idea how much suffering necromancers have caused?” Sylver asked.

“It’s different, I-”

“It’s not, I promise you, it’s really not. The only time you can be blamed for something someone else does is if you can stop them, but don’t. But even then you’re not being blamed for their action, but that you chose not to stop them,” Sylver explained, and regretted the tone of voice he used because he was now worried that Ria would interpret it as him telling her what to do, rather sharing a lesson he spent a lifetime learning.

Sylver floated down towards the large sphere of [Necrotic Mutilation] and spread it out like a flat platform. He stood right on top of it and then curled it into the shape of an umbrella.

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“I want to know what happened here,” Ria said, as Sylver further curled the dark green liquid, and could feel that there was enough shadow inside the hollow half sphere.

“I’m not leaving without that hand,” Sylver said, as Will slowly and gradually materialized within the safety of Sylver’s shadowy umbrella. The wyvern was curled into a tight ball to limit the amount of space he took up.

Slowly, gently, and with the care only a man who was simultaneously exhausted, angry, and motivated beyond belief was capable of, Sylver covered every single inch of the wyvern in a paper-thin layer of [Necrotic Mutilation].

“And once I have my hand, you can be sure I’m going to ask them a couple of questions,” Sylver said, as Will experimentally spread his wings, and Sylver floated his body down onto Will’s back.

The dark green protective layer of [Necrotic Mutilation] pulsed with a pale yellow light as Sylver’s feet touched it, and it appeared to shimmer for a moment before it almost fused with Will’s body.

Sylver pointed both hands upwards and parted them, and made an opening in the giant chunks of floating ice. With a single flap of his wings, Will exploded out of the water, and climbed higher and higher in the air, perfectly perpendicular to the ground.

They both felt the point where they reached the limit, where the air was too thin to fly, and Will curled downwards and began to fly in the direction Sylver instructed.

From this high up, he could see it.

An enormous cloud of darkness, running away from him like a terrified child. Sylver laid down flat on the wyvern’s back, and using a small dagger, started slicing away pieces of his flesh while staring at the amount of HP he had left.

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At Spring’s reminder, Sylver checked to see what his options were for his [Appraisal] rank up.

[Appraisal (V) rank up available!]

Choose 1 from the following:

Appraisal (VI)

-See the quality of the target’s corpse.

-See more details when physically touching the target.

-Get notified if an [Appraisal]-like skill is being used on you.

-Increase the skill’s range by 100%.

-[Requirements not met]

…

Unlike with [Mutating Override], there were roughly 9 pages’ worth of potential effects that Sylver hadn’t managed to achieve.

Which, in the defense of the skill, was completely fair. He forgot to use it half the time, and very often barely used the information it provided him. While a range increase and more information would be great, it would be far less useful than knowing when someone was using a skill to peak at his status.

As for the corpse quality effect, Sylver could already do that without relying on the skill.

[Skill: Appraisal (VI) [F]]

Skill level can be increased by appraising targets.

I- Get basic information about the target.

II- See the HP of the target.

III-See the MP of the target.

IV- Increase the skill’s range by 300%.

V- See more details when appraising a target.

VI-Get notified if an [Appraisal]-like skill is being used on you.

Wasn’t there something at the bottom of it?

Spring nudged Sylver to apply his 5 attribute points while he was at it.

Sylver could tell that his smile showed his teeth because they immediately started to hurt from the cold wind. But that wasn’t enough to spoil his mood, because he was so close to no longer being limited by Ciege’s pathetic body.

It wasn’t awful, there were a great many perks to inhabiting the young blacksmiths' muscular and well-endowed body, but Sylver missed overpowering his foes with raw power, in a way that would have made his lich self sick.

But when he was a lich he chose to handle things quietly and carefully, the option to just go wild with dark magic was always there, he simply chose to use his mana efficiently. Sylver was fairly certain that he would only need to absolutely destroy a handful of enemy mages before he realized that it’s a pointless and inefficient waste of mana. 

But in the same way he didn’t listen to Nyx when she warned him to stay away from those succubus sisters, some lessons can only be learned the hard way.

Sylver placed all 5 points directly into his intelligence and giggled as he felt his mana channels spasm for a moment before they settled down into their new form.

Total Level: 128

[Koschei-6]

[Necromancer-100]

[Swamp Lord-22]

CON: 165

DEX: 105

STR: 105

INT: 266

WIS: 227

AP: 0

Health: 344/1,650

Stamina: 741/825

MP: 4,771/10,640

Health Regen: 19.25/M

Stamina Regen: 14.85/M

MP Regen: 5434.38/M

Sylver kept his dagger pressed firmly against his kidney. The system was slightly vague in regards to how many points of HP each body part held, but he had found that bleeding out worked best, and with just enough blood in his body to keep his heart functional, Sylver was fairly certain one good stab would be enough to bring it below 20%.

If not, he would stab himself again.

The fact that he managed to catch up with the Dark Year was all thanks to Will.

And now that Sylver was getting closer to it, the reason might have also been that it had stopped. The lack of landmarks made guessing where Sylver was impossible, but he was sure he hadn’t traveled anywhere near long enough to return to the Garden.

Then again, Sylver’s time tracking abilities were not what anyone would call “adequate”.

In the end, it didn’t matter, as Sylver had Will loop around, and then proceeded to have the wyvern throw him as hard as he possibly could towards the giant wall of darkness. 

Sylver stabbed himself in the kidney, a moment before contact.

[Hare’s Great Escape] kicked in and felt exactly the way a certain drug Sylver had once partaken in felt. The 500% increase in Dexterity made his heart feel like it was beating at an impossible tempo, even as the world around him slowed to a crawl. 

As Sylver entered inside the Dark year, he felt the pull at his body and soul, and instead of fighting it, jumped towards the pull.

With each passing second, Sylver got closer and closer to his goal. His soul felt like it was on fire, his mind was racing fast enough to steam his poor human brain, and Sylver’s magic sparked up a storm of yellow behind him. He felt the wall of the cubic prison with his mana and could feel his hand directly behind it.

Sylver scorched both of his hands as he set off an explosion on his left side, and in the way a house spins in a tornado, Sylver spun around the magnetic cubic prison and could see the skeleton’s shiny bone shoulder.

Sylver could feel it react to him, he could practically taste the skeleton's attempt to do something to the magic permeating its surroundings, as Sylver pulled his hand back, and punched thin air.

Sylver’s hand detached from his wrist, and his fist flew ahead of him, fingers perfectly straight and streamlined, with only a couple of arteries and veins keeping it connected to the wrist.

It was hard to say if it was due to the skeleton’s slow reaction, Sylver’s brilliant plan, or plain luck, but he didn’t care at this point, all that mattered was that he’d done it.

Sylver’s finger punched a hole through the box, and the tip of his middle finger was in direct contact with the ash white, dried up, and tattooed hand inside. The hand that belonged to a lich that would one day be capable of casting 11th tier magic.

This wasn’t just a step forward, it was a fucking leap.

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