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Ch266-Random Chance

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Sylver, Edmund, and Bravo walked a short distance away from the dark elves, cultivators, and rabbits, and waited for [Xander’s Waystone] to activate.

The waystone worked, Bravo was beyond certain, but just to be safe Sylver decided to make a test trip first, to make sure they weren’t teleported inside of a vein.

There was also the risk of ending up near one of the Gorgons, so both Edmund and Bravo wore a very tight blindfold around their eyes.

Like the first time he used it, there was something unmistakably slimy about the magic inside the glowing amber. It felt like he was handling a raw egg as he directed the spell’s effect towards Edmund and Bravo, and bit by bit felt the thin slimy space manipulating threads snap into position with a silent twang.

Sylver had a hand pull his head backwards by the hair, and he saw the reflection of his eyes in the wide sword that was directly above him.

He looked further upward and saw that Edmund was holding Faust’s sword in place between his thumb and forefinger and had been kind enough to lean Sylver’s head and neck out of the way, so he didn’t get decapitated.

“I thought it was the guy,” Faust said as Edmund released Faust’s sword, and Faust placed it into the leather loop hanging off his left shoulder.

“Don’t touch him if he shows up. Use heat until his magic stops working, and wait for his body burn into nothing,” Sylver said he stood up and straightened out his robe.

“Should I mark this as the teleportation spot, or will it always be different?” Faust asked.

They were maybe 20 steps away from the metallic remains of the demon summoning tree, and as Faust suggested, Sylver tapped his foot on the fleshy ground and created a thin circular bright blue mushroom carpet.

[Xander’s Waystone - Greater Quality]
[For every 2 creatures teleported inside Xander’s Hole, 1 may teleport out]
[Amount teleported in: 30]
[Amount that can be teleported out: 12]

Sylver looked around for the 4th and 5th person the waystone counted as having been teleported in, and it took him longer than he cared to admit to understand that the waystone had counted Ria and her creation as 2 “creatures.”

Once Sylver confirmed Medusa and her sisters were where they were supposed to be, Edmund created a platform for Bravo to stand on and flew the man up through the crack in Tuli’s shell. Once he was out of range of whatever Tuli was doing that blocked all forms of teleportation, save for Sylver’s waystone, and Faust’s cultivation thing, Bravo was going to set a marker down somewhere nearby on the off-chance Lola, or anyone in Arda, needed to get to Tuli, or vice versa.

Bravo sadly couldn’t teleport back and forth whenever he wished, the only perk capable of covering such a vast distance had a several-day cooldown, so it was more of an “in case of emergency” thing.

“How hard would it be for the dark elf mages to mine iron ore from an underwater cave?” Faust asked.

Sylver thought the question over.

“I can leave a couple of shades to handle the digging and mining… Transporting the raw ore shouldn’t be too hard if you have 2 or more mages working together… It’s very much doable, but it would be a lot easier to just buy it, especially if you’re after a large quantity,” Sylver answered.

Faust scratched his chin, and Sylver only now noticed that he wasn’t wearing his usual cultivator bathrobe.

The dark blue material looked smooth and silky, and the edges of his collar, sleeves, and hem had golden threads neatly sown in a straight 2-line pattern. He had also wrapped a dark bandage around his shins that stopped the bottoms of his baggy pants from moving around.

“Anna likes it,” Faust said before Sylver could say anything.

“It’s a good look,” Sylver said. Faust shook his head and brought the conversation back to where it started.

“The reason I asked about “iron ore,” was because I found a big patch of it underneath. And I say “iron ore” in air quotes because I know what normal iron ore is meant to look like in Eira, and the patch below is anything but normal,” Faust explained as he reached into his pocket and produced a leather satchel.

Sylver opened it and saw that there was a bunch of rust inside.

He took a small flake out and put it in his mouth.

After a couple of seconds of chewing it, he spat it out and handed Faust his satchel of “rust” back.

“Crystalized demi-god blood. But you already knew that,” Sylver said.

“You know how red jade needs a year to settle? And white jade needs a thousand years?” Faust asked.

“I’m guessing this is the legendary never-before-seen brown jade that takes ten thousand years to settle?” Sylver asked in a tone that made it sound like a genuine question, as opposed to a joke.

“You’re surprisingly close… It… If we were to use…” Faust mumbled for a good minute before Sylver realized that there was only ever one topic that made Faust this uncomfortable.

“It’s discarded blood, you can do with it whatever you wish. Talk to Ruslana about when and how to bring it out of the cave,” Sylver said calmly, as Faust stopped looking for a metaphor to imply he was going to perform demonic cultivation, without outright admitting it.

“Alright. I… Yeah, alright,” Faust said.

***

Sylver very quickly double-checked that the number of people around him was the same as it was a half second ago, and was relieved beyond words that it was.

218 dark elves, 21 cultivators, Xalibur, Dog, 8 rabbits, 4 rabbit children, and a large pot Bruno had filled with “slugs” that would provide the settlers with fresh “milk,” “eggs,” and a material that was functionally speaking “sourdough.”

[Xander’s Waystone - Greater Quality]
[For every 2 creatures teleported inside Xander’s Hole, 1 may teleport out]
[Amount teleported in: 441]
[Amount that can be teleported out: 217]

155 slugs, according to the waystone. However since Maul was pregnant it was hard to verify if there were 150 slugs, and 5 yet-to-be-born kids, or just 155 slugs.

Each and every one of the rabbits was equipped with a necklace that absorbed all the dark energy that they came into contact with, and all of the dark elf mages were going to periodically absorb the energy gathered in the necklaces before they reached their capacity.

Normally such a device would let the wearer survive for 10, maybe 15 minutes in such a negative energy-dense environment, but as Lola had discovered, as long as the rabbits didn’t stop moving, their bodies moved too fast for the negative energy to be absorbed into them, or their necklaces.

So, they had 10-15 minutes of standing still, and could in theory run around for however long they wished.

Sylver would have to build a spot in Tuli that was isolated from negative energy so they had a place to sleep, but building that was more annoying than it was difficult. Not even that annoying since he had the exceptionally capable Zelvash helping him.

As for using an Eldar sapling as a sacrificial glue to kickstart Tuli’s healing process, the conversation went smoother than Sylver could have ever expected.

Much to Edmund’s utter dismay, neither Zelvash nor Ruslana cared.

Maybe “cared” isn’t quite the right word, since it was more like they didn’t fully grasp what he was asking of doing, and how much of a sacrilege it was, but the important thing was they were willing to do as he asked.

Frankly, they had more questions about the tiny surgery Edmund was going to perform on their eyes, than they did about the ritual that would have easily made several countries band together to stop them if they knew what they were planning on doing.

Sylver still needed to run a couple of tests to make sure the formation he had in mind would block all of the curses, but he would only need 3, maybe 4, living human beings to test his theory on, and he was more than certain he would be able to pick up a couple of pirates or bandits on his way back.

***

Sylver didn’t even need to ask, because Chrys’ smugness radiated through the small group of glowing-eyed ravens.

All of them looked like they were dancing, they were lifting their feet, and putting them back down, and Sylver half expected them to break into song.

Chrys’ good news came in two-fold.

Firstly, Lola wasn’t doing this reluctantly, she had allegedly seen the wisdom in Chrys' words and was downright excited to put her plan into action.

Most likely Lola realized that if this worked, she could “retire” and wouldn’t have to be part of any future insane ideas, but Sylver chose not to ruin Chrys’ good mood by mentioning that.

The second good news was that they only needed to hire one assassin, because the dwarf who was one-half of the two people that would have been capable of repairing Eira’s existing teleportation network, just so happened to fall asleep in a house with a blocked chimney, and was found dead an hour or so ago.

Apparently, a bird had attempted to build a nest inside his chimney, and a shaggy dog had pushed his windows closed from the outside, Chrys spent a good 10 minutes explaining all the tiny “coincidences” that occurred which resulted in the man she wanted dead, being dead.

The best part, in Chrys’ almost alarmingly cheerful words, was that not a single person was going to believe this man’s death was anything other than an unfortunate accident. Because, not only was the man a notoriously heavy drinker, but he had also burned down 3 of his previous houses in an uncannily similar manner.

Chrys wasn’t as lucky with the other half, the elf, since the woman was a highly educated scholar, and lived with 4 other equally competent and educated women in a dormitory, but it was winter, and it wasn’t as if highly educated women were immune to slipping on ice and cracking the back of their skull open.

Considering the amount of money Chrys paid the team of assassins just about anything was possible.

***

Whatever magic was responsible for clipping Will’s wings either didn’t affect Mora, or her magic happened to cancel it out perfectly. Normally Sylver would take the time to figure out what exactly was going on, but merely being inside the spell made his insides feel like they were made out of stone.

So for the time being he left the strange fog alone, and left it up to the dark elf mages to figure out how to traverse through it without simply walking along the sea floor.

Laketula had erected a barrier, and even from this high up Sylver could tell there were guards spread out through the city.

Dressed in Novva’s colours, to no one’s surprise.

Mid-flight Sylver took off his [Black Mass] chest piece and wrapped it around Will’s neck as a sort of collar.

And as the wyvern flapped its mighty wings, Sylver lost his grip on the creature’s back, and if not for Mora, would have been left behind while the flying shade disappeared into the horizon.

The wind pressure the wyvern’s immense speed created meant Sylver’s favourite spot to sit and sleep in was no longer viable, and the only spot where he could lay down and not worry about being flung off like a piece of dried dirt was underneath a warped spike near the left wing.

It wasn’t the most comfortable spot, and the sound of rushing wind was somewhat painful on his ears, but it was a worthy trade-off for how much ground the wyvern was covering.

They had left Tuli in the middle of the day, and it wasn’t even dark by the time they reached Pere.

To make a very polite speech short, while Novva was grateful for the help Sylver’s shades had provided and would have loved to keep them around to further help with the clearing and raw material transportation, enough people were under the impression that the shadowy figures were there to replace them and that they fed on the blood of babies to sustain themselves.

Novva explained, again, very politely, that under much calmer and less disastrous circumstances he would have gone out of his way to dispel such rumours and stories, but given that the situation was what it was, Sylver gathered up every single baby-blood-drinking-shade, and left the city slightly sooner than he had intended when he had arrived.

He walked away from the main road to wait for Edmund and played around with a bit over 100kg of [Black Mass].

It turned out 66 kilograms was the limit for a [Common] shade.

So, if the system followed the same pattern, the limitation for a [Greater] shade was going to be 666 kilograms. Then again, the system skipped infusing [Lesser] shades, so who was to say what the next effect was going to be?

This close to the city and the main road the only thing Sylver found to test the [Black Mass] sword on was a big snake, and even without magically enhancing it, the sword sliced through the dark blue monster’s scales as if they were made from paper mâché.

Edmund landed on Sylver’s left without even disturbing the loose leaves on the ground and stared at him with a hollow look in his eyes.

“Good to go?” Sylver asked.

Edmund just looked at him.

“What?” Sylver asked.

“Why weren’t you this relaxed when Ivinik kicked you out?” Edmund asked.

“Because Ivinik was talking out of his ass to get rid of me. Novva is in a genuinely difficult situation, and unlike Ivinik, these people haven’t spent their entire life eating vegetables grown by the undead,” Sylver said.

Edmund looked at him for a while longer and then shrugged his shoulders.

***

They travelled for 2 days, and 1 night, and as the early morning suns began to peak through the dark snowy clouds, Sylver, Edmund, Mora, Ria, and Ria’s creation, reached the Moaning Heights.

Named so on account of the sound the wind made as it vibrated the ice layers at the peaks that created a groaning sound, that in certain areas sounded like a woman moaning. And apparently, she moaned so loudly that it was the last thing the people who first crossed these mountains heard.

As to why these great explorers didn’t simply fly over these great big mountains, the answer was that all 6 peaks were high enough that wings and most methods of magical flight were incapable of passing over them.

There was a time when the mountains separated the continent into two pieces, but ever since the teleportation network was erected, the mountain range was a minor annoyance, as opposed to an impenetrable wall.

Allegedly there was a tunnel a [Hero] created, that passed clean through the mountain, but to date, no one had found it, or to be more accurate, no one who found it informed the historian that had authored the book Sylver had read this information from.

The book also mentioned that a great many people used to disappear in these mountains, but that could be said for pretty much anything and everything in Eira, people “disappeared” all the time, if anything it was weird when people didn’t mysteriously disappear.

If there was a trail they were meant to follow, either all 3 of them had missed it, or the year-round snowstorm had hidden what few footprints the adventurers that climbed the mountains for the odd quest left behind.

Sylver wasn’t looking forward to having to trudge through snow, but he was looking forward to having more flight-capable undead, and if a monster was capable of flying and fighting in this kind of wind, even the best wyvern outside these mountains wasn’t going to hold a candle to it.

They found a small cave that Edmund closed off from the wind using his sword, so he and Sylver could have breakfast, and while they waited for their coffee to boil.

Chrys chose that peaceful moment to slowly rise out of the floor.

“Does the name “Nels” mean anything to you?” Chrys asked, as both Sylver and Edmund slowly lowered their sandwiches to the floor as if they were lowering deadly weapons.

“Is she somewhere nearby?” Edmund asked before Sylver could.

“You’re going to hate this,” Chrys said, and both Sylver and Edmund could instinctively tell she was right.

“Chrys, can you just- what reason- just tell us, please,” Sylver said as the see-through image of Chrys flickered and ever so slowly floated higher into the air until half her face was inside the stone ceiling.

“You won’t be able to find her if Edmund is with you. And I honestly don’t know if I should say anything more than that, because even as I’m talking right now the probability of her being at my surprise birthday party 3 years from now becomes less and less,” Chrys explained, as her image further moved into the ceiling, and stopped just above her chin.

“So, I take it some kind of monster is going to make me eat shit, and I will somehow find Nels as a result of that, and if Edmund is nearby, he would have been able to prevent it from making me eat shit?” Sylver asked.

Chrys thankfully shook her head.

“To be completely honest with you, I have no idea. I think this is more of a case of you getting lost as opposed to fighting something, but every word I say muddles the futures I will have seen,” Chrys said.

“Alright, stop speaking. Ed, fly away, Mora and I will traverse the mountain and we’ll see what happens,” Sylver said.

Edmund turned towards Chrys.

“Is he going to fall through a portal into a different realm?” Edmund asked.

“Can’t be worse than where I found her,” Sylver said to no one in particular.

“She’s in this realm. I’m about 85% certain of that,” Chrys answered.

“That’s a 15% chance of him being whisked away and not returning for 3 years,” Edmund argued.

“Can you come back in about 10 minutes while Ed and I have a word in private?” Sylver said at the floating woman who was neck deep in the stone ceiling.

Chrys’ image flickered and disappeared entirely.

Edmund spoke before Sylver could.

“Bad idea. Really bad idea. This mountain has been here back when I was moving around, I remember it because I…” Edmund’s voice trailed off, as Sylver stood up, and with an enormous smug smile on his face, lifted his arms above his head, and stretched to the left, and then to the right.

“What could have possibly changed since you last passed this mountain?” Sylver asked rhetorically.

Edmund’s face was unreadable, on account of the fact that he himself couldn’t decide whether to be happy, furious, or upset.

“Any major changes come to mind in the last year or so? Last couple months maybe?” Sylver asked as he continued to make a show of stretching as if he was working his way up towards something inhumanly heavy and needed to warm his muscles up for it.

“You understand that she’s probably wrong about you not being beaten to half death,” Edmund said, but Sylver’s grin didn’t waver.

“You know, I think I remember reading about the moon flashing red recently? Do you think there’s any connection between that and this?” Sylver asked as Mora joined in on the mockery and did her best to stretch herself out in a showy manner.

“I’m not leaving,” Edmund said in a serious tone.

“I recall someone saying something about-” Sylver lifted his hand and did a flowy gesture “-wiggle room? But I don’t remember who said it, but whoever said it must have known what they were talking about,” Sylver continued, as Edmund stood up from his makeshift seat, and as Sylver continued to grin and stretch his body in mock preparation for his herculean feat of brilliance a piece of a smile peaked through Edmund’s mask of annoyance and anger.

“Since when do you take a clairvoyant at their word?” Edmund asked, but his actually good question was no match for the answer Sylver had in his pocket since the moment Chrys started talking.

“How do you think I found you?” Sylver asked.

Edmund opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out.

Sylver in turn took the deepest breath he’d ever taken in his life since he found himself attached to a metal toothpick. And when he spoke, the words flowed like the world’s most expensive wine.

“I,” Sylver said.

“Alright, get it over with.”

“Told,” Sylver continued.

“Go ahead,” Edmund said with a wave of the hand.

“You,” Sylver said.

“You did, I was there,” Edmund said with a smile that almost matched Sylver’s.

“SO! I told you it’d fucking work, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it and I did it, because I fucking KNEW IT!” Sylver said in a completely out-of-character level of excitement and unrelenting joy, but in his defence being this right this quick on something as big as what he had done was a completely new experience for him.

Normally his big moves took years, if not centuries, to pay off, this one took weeks. Fucking days. And to top it all off this was the first time he felt this good about something Chrys had said. He’d go as far as to say he had butterflies in his stomach from how certain he was that this was going to work.

“I’m not going to celebrate until I see her,” Edmund said, as Sylver remembered something.

“Of course, good idea. And to celebrate the three of us will drink Atolonian brandy,” Sylver said.

What little trace was left of Edmund’s bad mood at being sent away while Sylver went off to find their long-lost friend, was washed away.

“You found a bottle?” Edmund asked.

“I found four barrels,” Sylver said, and it took Edmund a few seconds to decide whether Sylver was bluffing.

Edmund shook his head and returned his focus to the objectively more important topic.

“So, I’m supposed to just sit around and wait?” Edmund asked.

“No, you’re supposed to make sure the dark elves, Faust, and his people, the Gorgon sisters, Lola, Chrys, Bruno, Ciege, Yeva, and the rest of Arda, are all still here when I return with Nels,” Sylver said, with just enough seriousness in his voice that Edmund understood that he meant every word he said.

“Alright…” Edmund said as he floated over to Sylver, and they grabbed each other’s hands.

“Since we’re halfway there, can you fly over to Torg and grab my rune for me?” Sylver said.

Edmund nodded.

“Stay safe,” Edmund said as Sylver nodded back at him.

“You too… Now get out of here, I’ve got a damsel in distress to rescue,” Sylver said.

Edmund tried not to laugh but the very idea of describing Nels as a “damsel” let alone “in distress” was too much for him, and Sylver could hear him cackling even as he floated off into the snowstorm-covered sky.

The back of Chrys’s head appeared on the ground as if she was floating face down in the rock.

“It’s a bit clearer now. You should finish your coffee and then… Have the horse move as fast as it can towards the 2nd peak from the left… And… No, do the- try the first thing I said first,” Chrys said, with that tone she tended to use as if she was trying to read a speech from a piece of paper that was barely close enough for her to see the words on it.

“What about Ria and the other thing?” Sylver asked as he tapped his back, where the radioactive mushroom shaped like a book was.

“Can you take them out and put them on the floor,” Chrys said, as Sylver’s robe did just that.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Pick them up,” Chrys said, as Sylver lifted the book with his hand.

“What if Mora carries them?” Sylver asked.

“Worth a try,” Chrys said.

Sylver placed the book onto Mora’s back, and in the blink of an eye, she covered it with enough white string that it would have been impossible to guess there was anything underneath her skin.

“It’s barely noticeable but it’s slightly worse if she has them instead of you. Looks like it might help somehow if you have them,” Chrys said.

Sylver’s robe reabsorbed the tightly sealed book, and the [Black Mass] wrapped around his torso further covered and protected the magically untouchable bars of gold and black.

When Sylver turned back around Chrys was gone.

“If there’s nothing else, we’re off?” Sylver asked the empty cave.

Mora cracked her neck as her 4 legs split up into 7, and as she gradually grew in height she walked towards the cave entrance, while Sylver finished his boiling hot coffee in a single gulp.

Sylver used [Fog Form] to materialize on her back, and after she secured his legs and hips enough that he wasn’t going to be flung off her back without being torn off her, she ever so gently grasped the strings she had extended into the surrounding air, and like an arrow pressed against a string, flew forward into the blinding white snowstorm.