Sylver Seeker

Chapter 275: Get Out

Sylver Seeker Book 7

Chapter 9 (275) - Get Out

It was one of those wordless conversations that happened in a single glance, Nels wanted to pretend she hadn’t cried like a little girl, and Sylver was so happy to see her that he decided not to hold it over her head like he would have prior to today.

So for the official record, Sylver found Nels, they at most had a hearty chuckle with each other, and they most certainly didn’t act like children who were reunited with their parents after being lost in the forest for several days.

Getting Nels out of the fluid-filled balloon was as simple as dragging a finger against the membrane and catching her when her decapitated head flowed out with the unscented liquid.

To his soul sense holding her was like holding a bee hive, hundreds of little tiny souls that buzzed against the skin of his hands, and warned him not to poke his fingers through.

“Wait, wait, wait, I need my body,” Nels said while gesturing with her eyes further down the tunnel right as Sylver started walking back towards the exit.

“I rescued Ed before I rescued you, he can make you a new body,” Sylver said.

The look on Nels’ face was worth everything he had to go through to get her, first was the gleeful smile at hearing Edmund’s name, followed by the calm horror that, Nels the such and such, had been rescued.

By Sylver of all people.Sylver in turn had a horrible grin on his face because he knew exactly what was going through her mind. He was using muscles in his face that he’d never used before today, it was an indescribably fantastic and satisfying feeling.

“I need the body I came here with,” Nels said.

She saw, that Sylver saw, that she was pretending that he hadn’t used the word “rescued.” But what infuriated her more than anything was that Sylver so magnanimously allowed her to pretend he hadn’t said it. Any other day Sylver would have been insufferable to her about this, but this was a unique day, so he just let the whole entire thing go.

He turned her head over and looked at where her neck ended.

“It’s a pretty clean cut,” Sylver said, as he turned her back around.

“Why are your eyes like that?” Nels asked.

“This isn’t a good place to talk about this,” Sylver said.

He helped Klara up off the ground, and almost handed Nels’ head to her out for no discernible reason that he could think of, but Nels made a sound and Sylver stopped.

He waited a bit until Klara’s lungs calmed down, and he tried, and failed, not to pat himself on the back as he spoke.

“I found Nels,” Sylver tried to rein in what ended up sounding like the epitome of smugness, “We’re just going to walk a bit more to get something of hers, and after that we’re all leaving,” Sylver said.

“What’s her name?” Nels asked.

Klara flinched at the new voice.

“Nels, this is Klara, she was in a troupe, and I wouldn’t have made it this far without her. Klara, this is Nelson Magia, but we call her Nels, she is a mage,” Sylver said.

To her credit, Klara looked like she was smiling, and her face was illuminated as Nels’ eyes flashed with a pale white light.

“Oh, that’s really on there… Klara, would you mind turning around and holding your hair up?” Nels asked.

Klara did as requested, and both Nels and Sylver saw the perfectly smooth white porcelain mask embedded into the soft flesh on the back of Klara’s neck.

“I’ve never seen a white one before, but it should come off the same way as the others,” Nels said.

Klara put her hair back down, and metaphorically held her breath.

“How do you get it off, because my plan was surgery and Ed,” Sylver said.

“There are small holes on the edges where they connect to their other parts, if you push a needle down into the hole at the right angle the whole thing snaps off,” Nels explained.

Hole was too big of a word for how tiny the “holes” were, but Sylver felt them on the mask on his shoulder, and as Klara pushed down the skin of her cheek on her face, he saw matching holes on her white mask.

“I take it you need to feel around for the right angle, otherwise you would have just told me what it was,” Sylver said.

“They’re kind of like mollusks, you have to be really precise to slip through the muscles, otherwise they clamp down. In her case, it will almost certainly kill her,” Nels said.

“When you say snap off, because her one is fused to her teeth and most of the bone of her jaw,” Sylver said.

“I see… I don’t know, I’ve never seen one attached to bones before, so it might be best to leave it to Ed,” Nels said.

Klara lifted her hands up to her face, and pointed at her eyes.

“Ed will sort that out too,” Nels said with the sort of calm confidence that managed to put all of Klara’s worries to rest.

“While we’re introducing everybody, Nels, Klara, this is Spring, he’s a shade who lives in my shadow,” Sylver said, as Spring materialized on his left, and he turned Nels’ head around so she would see him, while Klara just nodded at Sylver.

Nels gave Spring a really strange look.

“Where’s Rook?” Nels asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Sylver said as he turned Nels’ head around to hand it to Spring.

“Do you have gloves it could wear or something, I don’t want cold hands touching me,” Nels said.

Sylver used [Greater Undead Channeling] to grow white coloured moss on Spring’s hands and fingers, and gave it a few drops of mana to make it heat itself to slightly warmer than body temperature.

“Huh…” Nels said.

She wanted to ask about Sylver using chloromancy, but again, not the time or place.

He handed Nels’ head over to Spring, and since her back was towards him Sylver tied her shoulder length black hair into a manageable ponytail.

“Thanks, I was just about to ask. You can’t imagine how annoying it was, like being in a cocoon,” Nels said, as Spring turned her so she was facing in the same direction he was.

Sylver picked Klara up off the ground and lifted her onto his shoulder, Spring walked on the other side and slightly behind Sylver so Nels wasn’t at the very front of the group.

“A piece of Babel merging a dungeon with a hollow-vault, I get, but where did these things come from?” Sylver asked.

“Do you remember… Klara, sorry about this but we’re going to talk in a different language for a bit, please just ignore us,” Nels said, and switched to a very soft sounding language that Sylver couldn’t remember the name of, even though he was apparently fluent in it. “Do you remember when that golden pyramid appeared in the north-east, and Ad-the mage with the shield and I went to deal with it? We were there for nine months and in the end managed to get them to go back where they came from?” Nels asked.

Sylver didn’t say anything for about ten seconds.

“No,” Sylver said.

“They had a giant circular calendar, predicted the end of their world, worshiped a thousand different deities? Ae-the son of your master, came to see the calendar in person?” Nels offered.

Sylver thought about it for a while.

“The calendar sounds familiar. I did not know Ae-that person went to see it,” Sylver said.

If Aether went there without him then he must have gone after Sylver made the emperor shadeling, which meant it must have happened not that long ago.

“My best guess is some of them returned and came here with a relic that their deities followed. Maybe by luck, or on purpose, they sealed up the hollow-vault, had enough people to reproduce, and used the underground dungeon for resources,” Nels explained.

“I bet I could guess what the end goal is,” Sylver said.

“Back then they were sacrificing people every day at sunrise to stop the suns from destroying the realm. But I’m not entirely sure what they’re doing now, I didn’t get a chance to look around properly before they strapped a crown on my head and I lost control of my body,” Nels said.

Sylver had stopped walking, in perfect sync Spring stopped too.

“Why did you ask me about when the next full moon was?” Sylver asked.

“It’s when they all come down here and mix and match body parts,” Nels said.

“I see,” Sylver said, as he started to walk again, and Spring followed after him.

“Can you tell me why this shade flickered when I mentioned the suns?” Nels asked.

Sylver looked down at her, and when she saw the expression on his face she managed to look just as tired and annoyed as he did.

“You’re really not going to like it,” Sylver said.

“Is it the thing your master told you not to get involved in, and you very famously didn’t listen?” Nels asked.

“Yes,” Sylver said after a moment. Nels let out a loud sigh. “What’s the giant thing up in the sky with the white sand?” Sylver asked.

“It’s a dungeon core that was fragmented into eight pieces by the piece of Babel. You know about the eight cities, right?” Nels asked. It was nice to hear that Sylver made the right decision not to even think about fighting the thing in the sky.

“I don’t. I’ve only seen three so far, and one was empty,” Sylver said.

“Empty as in completely empty, or empty as in there weren’t any mask wearing freaks walking around?” Nels asked.

“The latter. There were buildings, but nothing else. Or, my shades didn’t find anything or anyone when I sent them to look, I wasn’t in the empty city very long,” Sylver said.

The surrounding bubbles of various body parts of men and women got smaller and smaller the more they walked, the air was so hot and thick that there was a thin layer of something foglike flowing downwards on the floor.

To keep Klara, Spring, Nels and himself protected Sylver’s spell was burning through close to ten percent of the mana he was regenerating.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Are we getting close?” Sylver asked.

“I don’t know,” Nels said.

“How do you know your body is here?” Sylver asked.

“Because I watched them carry it away down here after they took it,” Nels said.

Sylver decided not to ask a follow up question.

They walked in silence for a while, Nels stared straight ahead, and Sylver did the same.

“Have you ever heard of Essera?” Sylver asked.

“It’s the capital city of the Ageth empire,” Nels said.

That name Sylver knew, it was one of the human empires the current High King conquered a long long time ago.

“Do you know how long you’ve been here? Inside the hollow-vault I mean?” Sylver asked.

“I had a faint awareness for a few months when they first put the crown on me, but your guess is as good as mine after that. I remember walking down here, and I remember someone taking my crown and armour off me, but even though I was awake after that I couldn’t move my body.

“At some point I regained control, broke out, got wrapped up in lead chains, and they took my body away and left just my head. I was stuck like that for maybe a year? And I think it’s been around twenty days since I felt their magic break down?” Nels said without any real certainty.

“Just for the sake of curiosity, if I hadn’t shown up, how long do you think it would have taken you to get out of the hollow-vault?” Sylver asked.

Nels glanced at him, and when she saw that he wasn’t asking this stroke his ego, she answered honestly.

“I don’t know. If things stayed as they are now, maybe a few months? If everything returned to normal, it would probably take years, assuming they didn’t crack my skull open to scoop my brains out,” Nels said.

“What level are you?” Sylver asked.

“I was four eighty nine when I came in, but I’m down to two twelve now. Lost three classes, and they were good classes too. Two rares and a legendary, incredible perks too,” Nels said.

“So the armour sucked your levels out of you?” Sylver asked.

“Yeah. How many did you lose?” Nels asked.

“I didn’t lose any?” Sylver asked.

Nels looked over at him and he couldn’t feel anything, even though he could tell by the way her eyes moved she was looking at his status.

“Is your level, right now, one ninety five?” Nels asked.

Total Level: 195

[Koschei-16]

[Necromancer-100]

[Swamp Lord-79]

CON: 200

DEX: 110

STR: 110

INT: 586

WIS: 331

AP: 0

Health: 1,990/2,000

Stamina: 991/1,000

MP: 31.767/37,730

Health Regen: 23.33/M

Stamina Regen: 20.00/M

MP Regen: 43,125.39/M

Alongside the pleasantly large numbers, not counting the 195 that in comparison to Nels’ 489 seemed small, there was also a long list of perks Sylver had available to him from reaching level 70 in [Swamp Mage]wayback when he defeated those fish creatures that had copied his appearance.

He briefly looked through them, and alongside the ones he’d had available before, there were enough perks that looked attractive that it would be wise to sit down and properly figure out which one to choose.

Then again, at 79, one fight would likely push him over the edge, and then something would be picked for him.

“Is your… Is the thing your first class gave you with you right now?” Nels asked.

Sylver moved the perks aside and looked at her.

“How do you know about that?” Sylver asked.

“I knew a li- person with a similar complexion to you that had it. But it wasn’t his first class and he was well over level six hundred, almost at seven when I last saw him,” Nels said, casually.

“Was he… No, later, waiting a few hours won’t kill me,” Sylver said.

For some reason that made Nels grin with childlike glee.

“I really missed you,” Nels said.

“I really missed you too… I’m letting you know now, the degree to which I am going to rub finding you in Ed’s face may make you feel sick,” Sylver said.

“I forgot to ask, but how did you find me? I can’t imagine you being here is a coincidence,” Nels asked.

“A clairvoyant gave me a vague direction to travel in, and I walked around asking if anyone had seen you, and that eventually led me here,” Sylver said.

“This clairvoyant wouldn’t happen to have… two very similar looking siblings, would they?” Nels asked, in that tone people tended to use when they hoped against all odds they were wrong.

Sylver clicked his tongue, and small sparks briefly flickered along the edges of his robe.

“This one doesn’t. The one that found Ed, did… It’s a long story,” Sylver said.

He searched around for something positive to tell her to lift his own mood, but couldn’t think of anything quite positive enough to balance out the woman with two siblings being mentioned.

Technically, as much as he hated thinking about it, Chrys was related to them, she had one of their eyes, not to mention that Chrys only found Nels after Poppy had visited her.

Well, after Sylver nudged the moon, but it wasn’t like there was a way to prove what specifically cleared the future enough for Chrys to spot Nels.

“How did you end up here in the first place?” Sylver asked to fill the silence.

“I walked into a forest full of fae. Got lost, no surprise there, and when I eventually got tired and closed my eyes for a second to rest, I woke up in a bright green rainforest inside a giant cone. Fought off the local cannibals for a few months, and I just blacked out one day while flying around. Woke up naked and handcuffed on a giant gold table, they put a crown on my head and everything after that is fuzzy,” Nels said.

At first Sylver didn’t quite figure out what exact part of her story made the hair on the back of his neck stand up straight, but after thinking about it for a while, he remembered her saying that she was almost level 500 when she came here.

“Why were you here for a few months?” Sylver asked.

“What do you mean?” Nels asked.

“You knew it was a hollow-vault, why didn’t you just break out?” Sylver asked.

“Because the hollow-vault is powered by a dungeon? The walls regenerated faster than I could cut through them,” Nels said.

Fuck…

“If the walls are powered by a dungeon, then there needs to be a direct path out of the hollow-vault… Since it’s structured around a mountain, then… You know what, it doesn’t matter, the “guy” that walked me here wants me to leave so I’ll just ask him to show us the door,” Sylver said.

He could hear the raised eyebrow in Nels’ voice.

“Why would they do that?” Nels asked.

“The likely answer is they could see how much of a-”

“You’re a pure dark, deadly poison for their piece of Babel,” Nels interrupted, and Sylver couldn’t do anything other than nod along because what she said made a million times more sense than the nonsense he was about to say about them feeling threatened by him.

If a part of Sylver got mixed into their tower, it wouldn’t mix with anything else, they’d end up with the mana equivalent of a lump that would eventually absorb so much negative mana that it would at the absolute least clog the whole thing up.

There were now internal organs floating around on their own outside of torsos, tongues and teeth in separate tiny bubbles, and he could tell Nels had noticed it too.

“I think we’re getting close,” Nels said.

Sylver placed his hand on Nels’ head, and tried to feel around for anything extending out of her. He could feel

what must have been her connection to her body, but he couldn’t say which direction the connection came from.Sylver lifted his hand off her head.

They walked in silence for a while, and Nels saw Sylver look over his shoulder.

“Don’t,” Nels said.

“I wasn’t going to,” Sylver said.

“You were thinking about it.”

“I was thinking it’s a shame they’ve got so many high quality, perfectly functional, organs just floating around doing nothing. I’m not going to do anything while you and Klara are here,” Sylver said.

“What would you even do with them? How many livers or lungs could you possibly need?” Nels asked.

“As many as I can get, I don’t have a steady supply of bodies anymore, half my shades are pirates from a pirate ship,” Sylver explained.

“Gross. Should I even ask about where the other half came from?” Nels asked.

“Mostly bandits, and some wolves,” Sylver said.

“Beggers can’t be choosers I guess. Is this one a bandit too?” Nels asked and gestured upwards at the shade holding her.

“Martial artist,” Sylver said.

“Can everyone stop moving for a second,” Nels said in Eirish so Klara could understand her.

Sylver condensed the spell keeping everyone cool and breathing so there was less interference, and tried not to smile too much as he watched Nels whisper a spell into existence.

Edmund focused on function over form, not to say his magic wasn’t charming in its own way, but Nels had that old school textbook perfect manipulation of mana that didn’t waste so much as a wisp.

“False alarm,” Nels said without any emotion.

Sylver kept an eye on his MP as they walked, and kept his soul sense open on the off chance he felt something.

They walked for a good half hour after the point where Sylver thought they should turn back. For the meantime he kept that thought to himself.

The relief he felt when he saw Nels' chopped up body was almost as intense as Nels’ was.

He was about to ask Spring to hand Nels over so the shade could climb up the wall to grab the body parts, but Nels pressed her lips together, and with a single sharp whistle the two arms, two legs, and torso were torn out of the wet bubble, floated over to them, and hovered in the air a few meters away from them.

The body parts turned around as Nels inspected them. There was barely a piece of her skin that didn’t have a scar, burn mark, pale discolorations from venom, and what Sylver recognized to be deep tissue damage from a sixth tier curse.

He very sadly had performed enough autopsies on humans that even if he didn’t want to, he knew exactly where each and every piece of damage came from.

“You should have seen the other guy,” Nels quipped.

Despite himself, Sylver smiled, and with a wave of his hand a long tendril of [Black Mass] extended out of his sleeve, and arranged the limbs and torso into a small black rectangular box. It was about the size of a small fridge, Nels, for all her great power, was not a large person.

As the box floated over to Sylver’s hand, he sent a pulse of mana through it to check that everything was secure, and as he felt something that shouldn’t be there, his heart skipped a beat.

“Did you replace your heart with a metal cube?” Sylver asked in the soft language Klara wouldn’t know.

“It’s encased, not replaced, but yes,” Nels replied.

Sylver looked down at her, and she stared back at him with complete and total indifference.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sylver asked.

“Maybe later,” Nels said in that unique way only women are able to say “maybe” and mean “absolutely not, never, no.”

“Alright then,” Sylver said.

The passed the part of the tunnel that was filled with bodies that looked like Nels’, but without any of the damage, and the entire time Sylver was on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.

As he was so close to the exit he could smell the people on the other side of it, the floor under his feet started to shiver and shake, and the gentle warm wind in the tunnel became so strong and fast that he had to hold Spring down to stop the shade from flying away.

Just as suddenly as it started, the shaking and the wind died down, instead of the smells of grilled vegetables Sylver instead smelled something fresh and damp.

He handed the box with Nels’ body over to Fen to hold, put Klara into the arms of Reg, and walked two steps ahead of the three shades.

There was a bright light coming out of the entrance to the tunnel, Sylver kept close to the wall as he walked through the curved tunnel, and as he peaked over the edge of the bare wall, he saw Mora’s head poking out of the wall of white sand.

Silently, Sylver walked over to her, made sure to have direct physical contact with Nels’ head, her body parts, and Klara, and only when he had a firm grip on Mora’s mane did he walk through the white sand.

The blindingly bright white light shining on the surroundings turned off the instant Sylver’s foot came out of what was now a completely solid black wall.

He saw Lostal flinch as he noticed the decapitated head Sylver was holding under his arm, and as Sylver’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that there were thousands of tiny flickering lights all along the jungle’s floor, walls, and ceiling, almost like stars in the night sky.

Behind him the giant circular glowing face, surrounded by eight glowing points, was completely dark and lifeless.

He couldn’t quite believe that was it, that someone looked at him, made a rational decision, and then followed through with it.

What’s more, and Sylver only noticed this when Klara doubled over and sucked in a shaky breath, but the mask on his arm was gone, the gauntlet that had used spikes to fuse itself with the bones of his arm was gone, and in terms of damage at most Klara looked like she had a minor sunburn on the bottom half of her face.

He handed Nels over to Spring, and grabbed Klara by the sides of her head.

She looked absolutely terrified as the white in her eyes receded, and with a very odd sounding whimper she went completely limp. But her soul was absolutely fine, her jaw and teeth all felt normal, he searched every nook and cranny inside her and couldn’t feel even a trace of the white mask.

“They really wanted you out of there. You should have asked for their gold or at least got my staff back,” Nels said calmly, as Lostal flinched again as the decapitated head spoke for the first time.

Sylver took the eyeball sitting pointlessly on the face shaped lump of flesh on his shoulder, and popped it back into his eye socket.

“So is this it?” Lostal asked.

“Yeah, we’re done, everyone can go home,” Sylver said.

“We still have to get out first,” Nels added. “Since the walls are powered by a dungeon then it will take weeks to make a hole big enough for everyone to fit through…” Nels said.

Sylver tied the box with Nels’ body part to Mora’s side.

“Not weeks,” Sylver said.

As Nels was about to speak, he held the amber coloured rock directly in front of her face.

It took her a second to read the framework carved into it, took another second to translate it into something she could understand, and another half a second to realize that Sylver wouldn’t have such a dumb smile on his face if he had any doubt about the waystone not working.

“Like I said, we’re done, and everyone can go home. Can you put her on your back please?” Sylver asked Mora with a gesture towards Klara.

Everyone awkwardly huddled together, Sylver had one hand on the back of Lostal’s head, had his other arm wrapped around Mora’s neck and Klara’s torso, and pressed Nels up against the bottom of his chin so there as as much physical contact with everyone as physically possible without making things stranger than they already were.

As the waystone’s slimy magic covered everyone including Ria and her creation, Sylver felt his stomach fly up to his throat as he felt around for his needle and couldn’t feel it, and he physically let out a sigh of relief when he found that Ria had moved it a little further left than he’d originally placed it.

He waited an entire minute for the “any second now” to happen, but even when he applied more pressure on the waystone than he’d ever had to apply, the magic simply refused to connect and snap into place.

He released the effect, tried again, and in quick succession tried to get it to work three more times, before he threw the thing on the ground and the only reason he didn’t shatter the piece of shit into a million pieces was because Mora moved it out of the way of his foot with her thread.

Sylver turned to the giant golden face high above him, and he knew it was all in his head, but the thing looked like it was grinning at him.

He turned to look at Mora, Klara who was sitting on her back, Nels’ head, and a slightly frightened Lostal, and as he looked past them, he noticed that the various flickering lights he could see in the distant rainforest were all moving towards him.

“I spoke too soon. This might take a while,” Sylver said, to nobody in particular.