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Ch251-We Have To Go Deeper

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It took a fair bit of talking for Tristen’s father to allow Sylver and Edna inside. Initially, the guards told them to fuck off, but then the guards from Amelia’s house explained the situation, and the two foreigners were allowed inside.

When the doors opened, Sylver was taken aback at the sheer quantity of blood. Edna said the boy was about the same size as the daughter, Amelia, and yet he had bled enough to, quite literally, fill up an entire room.

With a careful hand gesture, Sylver grabbed hold of the blood and used [Dead Dominion] to make a passage for him and Edna to pass through.

Finding Tristen wasn’t difficult, you just needed to follow the hoarse screaming. As Sylver walked toward the boy, he saw that the floor, ceiling, and walls were covered in deep scratching, most were as wide as Sylver’s pinkie, and a few were wider than his whole palm.

The reason for the inconstant size became obvious once Sylver was close enough to see the source of the screaming.

Huddled in the bottom corner of the room, Tristen did his best to cover his body with the blood-soaked blanket, but every time he breathed in and spasmed, the blanket was further torn to shreds by the thick clear crystals sticking out of his body.

He looked like someone had jammed broken glass into him, the crystal stuck out from underneath his torn-up toenails, hung in clumps in his bloodied hair, protruded from every edge of his body, his ankles, knees, elbows, neck, and spine. His chest was barely visible underneath the glass shards, and strangely enough, his left hand was completely engulfed in sharp crystals, while his right hand was completely clean.

“Ask him if he can stay still for a minute,” Sylver told Edna.

The boy was squirming, every movement sliced up his body, which made him squirm more from the pain, which only further sliced him up.

“ItA HErtZ!” the boy, Tristen, screamed, through a mouthful of broken glass.

Some of his teeth were there, but Sylver saw the shiny crystals sticking out from where his back molars were supposed to be.

Sylver rubbed his hands together, to get the magic flowing, and extended the [Black Mass] on his torso out onto his forearms.

“I’m going to hold you down for a bit, try to bear with it,” Sylver said calmly, while the boy took a shuddering breath between screaming.

As Sylver approached him, the boy instinctively tried to crawl away from him, but his feet were tangled in the remains of the blanket he was covering himself with.

He tried to say something in Eirish, but his accent was thick, and the fact that he saw saying it between sharp gasps and shaky moans meant Sylver had no chance of understanding him.

Sylver reached for the boy’s throat, and immediately the boy grabbed Sylver’s wrist with both hands and tried to force him away from him.

Thankfully for both, he couldn’t put much force into his attempt, and Sylver was able to reach his neck. The sharp glass embedded itself into the [Black Mass] wrapped around Sylver’s arms, and when the boy kicked with his legs and nearly sent a handful of broken glass into the weakness all men shared, Sylver blocked the kick with his knee, and pressed his body against the boy and his limbs.

As he pressed on the boy, more blood leaked out, and Sylver was blinded by the cloud of blood spreading out through the water. Shards of crystal rubbed against crystal, and made razor-sharp flakes that glittered in the light coming in from the ceiling.

When he finally stopped moving, Sylver was worried he wasn’t going to start moving again.

This close up Sylver could see that the boy’s eyes had been blinded by the broken glass, where he should have had eyeballs, he instead had what looked like squashed tomatoes.

Since he knew what he was looking for, it took Sylver less than 10 seconds to find the source of the curse, and where it had spread to.

As Sylver gradually released the pressure on the boy’s body, he began to scream again, somehow louder than before, and shortly after three people entered the room, and at Edna’s request began to cast healing magic on him.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t numb him from the pain, all it did was refile his dwindling supply of blood. Sylver pulled out the piece of vellum he had prepared on the way here, and he swung it through the ever-darkening cloud of blood.

The text was significantly clearer than Amelia’s, due to how much blood Sylver was able to use.

Sylver left the healers to their work, and left the room, with Edna in tow.

Tristen’s father looked very similar to Amelia’s father, the main difference was that he wasn’t as fat, and while Amelia’s father’s hair was unkempt and loose, Tristen’s father’s hair was neatly braided into his beard.

He had introduced himself when Sylver and Edna initially came here, but Sylver couldn’t hear his name and didn’t bother asking since Edna was going to be doing all of the talking.

While Edna spoke to the boy’s father, Sylver took one of the crystals embedded in the [Black Mass] on his forearm and inspected it under the light.

Once Sylver wiped the blood away, the crystal was almost completely clear, with small white cracks inside of it. Sylver brought the piece of crystal up to his eyes, and then lowered slightly, and licked it.

The conversation Edna had been in the middle of ground to a halt, as the boy’s father, and the 5 guards behind him, all stared at Sylver, with an indescribable level of disbelief in their eyes.

“I wanted to make sure it was actually salt,” Sylver explained softly.

Edna translated what Sylver said, but the father didn’t look any less insulted. Sylver hid the crystal inside his robe and continued to speak.

“The salt has avoided his heart, lungs, liver, and kidney, so he won’t die unless he bleeds to death, or stabs something vital. In theory, if you tied him up so he can’t hurt himself, he will stay alive indefinitely… Most of his body will turn into salt, but he’ll be “alive” in a certain sense of the word,” Sylver explained and waited for Edna to translate.

The woman was impeccable, she kept her cool and-

“KAnya FiXA Hima?” Tristen’s father asked over the sound of his son screaming in the background. Apparently, he could speak Eirish.

Sylver lifted the piece of blood-stained vellum in his hand and made it unravel so the father could see what was written on it. Sylver was a bit relieved when the father couldn’t read the contents of the contract because it meant he couldn’t read the modified elvish the people in the Garden wrote in.

“He took the curse willingly. The only way to free him is to have the person who cursed him undo it,” Sylver explained, as he lowered his hand.

The father said three long sentences, but his Eirish was so broken Sylver didn’t understand a single word. He repeated himself in Finnish and gestured at Edna to translate.

“He’s asking why Tristen would take the curse willingly. And what can he do to save him,” Edna said.

“According to the contract, in exchange for his life and Amelia’s life, Tristen was meant to bring someone called Euryale the “Gorgoneion.” Given that he’s currently turning to “salt” from the inside out, I’m going to guess that he either decided not to steal it or couldn’t,” Sylver explained.

His explanation caused a commotion before Edna even had a chance to translate.

2 of the guards immediately swam away towards the center of the house, where the Gorgoneion was, while the remaining 3 began to argue with Tristen’s father and Edna.

It was weird to see 5 people arguing without making a sound. There was a great deal of hand gesturing, one of the guards even lowered his spear as if he was about to use it, but ended up pulling it back up, and Edna gradually stopped trying to explain herself, and simply waited for everyone to calm down.

“They’re saying they can’t give Euryale the Gorgoneion,” Edna translated.

“I figured as much. Can you ask them if the Gorgoneion is something unique to their house?” Sylver asked.

“It’s a… Symbol? Proof? The direct translation is “representation of authority.” It’s some kind of regalia, but it’s also a tool?” Edna tried to explain.

“I see… That makes sense. I was wondering how Amelia was meant to steal it from their house,” Sylver said.

“Amelia was supposed to steal a Gorgoneion?” Edna asked.

“The contact said “the” Gorgoneion, so I thought there was only one,” Sylver said.

Amelia, had a similar contract to Tristen, except hers involved turning into “sea foam.” And in the space where Amelia’s contract mentioned saving Tristen, Tristen’s contract mentioned saving Amelia.

Although “saving” isn’t the right word, because at no point in either contract did it mention anyone being “safe,” or “saved.” It mentioned them being “alive” and, “living” and, “being together” but both texts very specifically never once specified in what condition they would be “alive.”

***

Tristen’s father tried to force the boy to explain himself, but Tristen didn’t say a single word.

Well, he screamed, but he was screaming in general, not as a response. The man was experiencing excruciating pain, and he still refused to tell anyone why he signed a contract with Euryale.

Or who Euryale was.

In terms of further bad news, a year or so ago, Tristen and his father got into a massive argument about the boy’s boundaries not being respected, and as a result, the guards that were meant to follow him had been forbidden from following him.

Which meant that nobody had any idea as to when or where Tristen could have possibly gotten into contact with Euryale.

The Gorgoneion was where it was supposed to be, so at least they still had that.

Sylver was saved the trouble of being asked variations of “How can we heal our child without giving up the one their contract said would save them?” Tristen’s father spoke enough Erish for Sylver to understand him, but Sylver pretended he didn’t so he would continue asking Edna stupid questions.

To an extent, Sylver respected Tristen.

He made a decision, and stuck by it, regardless of how catastrophic the consequences were. He did second guess himself when his father told him Sylver would be able to save him and Amelia, but he apparently didn’t trust the weird-looking pale man who held him down and made the pain worse than it had been.

Which… Fair enough.

Sylver didn’t know how honest of a person Tristen’s father was but lying about an outsider being an expert in all things dark magic, to trick Tristen into revealing Eurryale’s location, would be reasonable for any parent.

This meant the only alternative was Amelia, the girl whose life force was being converted into sea foam, that was slowly leaking out of her.

One idea Sylver had, that Edna almost refused to translate, was to temporarily decapitate Amelia, attach her head to the body of someone overflowing with positive mana, hope that gave her enough strength to speak, and ask her where Medusa was.

The curse originated in her stomach, and Sylver explained his reasoning extremely well, but the problem with his idea was that there was a chance she would just die, and more importantly, in Edna’s words, there was “absolutely no fucking way they will let you cut her head off!”

Which… Fair enough.

They likely wouldn’t let him cut her leg off, let alone her head.

A pinkie or a thumb was most likely the limit. And even then, he doubted they would be fine with the idea that it would never grow back, since it would have been used in a dark magic ritual.

And when Sylver insisted that Enda let the father know it was an option, he reacted exactly how Edna said he would react. If he had any alternatives, he would have likely removed their heads for merely suggesting such a thing.

So Sylver needed to somehow figure out the location of two mages, Medusa and Euryale, without causing any serious harm to Amelia, and he needed to do it before Tristen accidentally slashed his neck open.

Then again, Sylver’s deal was with Amelia’s father, he only went to see Tristen because his name was in Amelia’s contract.

Although now that he had read both contracts, he wasn’t completely certain it was possible to save one, without saving the other. It was written in Elvish, that odd mixture of dialects the “elves” in the other realm used, which in turn meant that one sentence could have up to 3 different interpretations, depending on which specific dialect was being used.

And what was most impressive, was that all 3-interpretations worked within the context of the contract.

But as impressed as Sylver might be, the contracts were standing between him, Tuli’s safety, and not being deep underwater.

Edna stood up from Amelia’s body.

“What if you infect a corpse with it? Fill it with her blood, and make the curse think the corpse is her?” Edna asked.

“Even if we surgically removed her stomach, and implanted it into a compatible living body, the curse would lose some strength, but it wouldn’t stop,” Sylver explained.

He had already considered what Edna suggested, but this curse wasn’t in her blood, or her flesh, or even her bones, it was tied to her very essence.

In theory, with enough skill, experience, and time, it was possible to separate the curse from the girl, but that was in the realm of the Silver Lich, a mere mortal like Sylver could at most agitate the curse.

“Lead? We give her a lead-infused potion, completely nullify the magic inside her and have a priest heal her until the curse burns away?” Edna offered.

“The lead would also nullify the priest’s magic. Not to mention the curse is a part of her, and trying to magically burn it out of her would be the equivalent of trying to burn an illness out of someone’s flesh,” Sylver countered.

“What if we kill her? Just for a second. Long enough for the curse to decide it completed what it-”

“Even if he let us, it wouldn’t work. The curse isn’t meant to kill. It would just suck whatever life is left out of her corpse,” Sylver explained.

Edna continued offering ideas, that gradually became less and less feasible, and Sylver explained why they won’t work, while he tried to think of one that would.

“There has to be something you can do,” Edna all but shouted as her final idea was calmly explained away by Sylver.

“…”

Sylver just stared at the woman and then went back to staring into space, while he searched for something in the contracts that he could use.

Eventually, Sylver stood up and walked over to the unconscious girl.

“What does a Gorgoneion look like? How big is it I mean,” Sylver asked.

“It’s a medallion, a flat disc about the size of an apple,” Edna said.

“I see… Can you go ask the father if he would be willing to bring it here? If he says yes, could you also have someone find me a mirror that’s bigger than the Gorgoneion?” Sylver asked, as Edna nodded at him and left.

***

Even for Sylver, this setup was low-tech.

The crystal Sylver had taken from Tristen was tied onto the polished copper mirror, and while Amelia’s father held his medallion above the mirror and crystal, Sylver placed Amelia’s hand onto the crystal and mirror.

At first, nothing happened.

Nothing happened for a long while, the suspense diffused into a mere caution, and Sylver could see that the father’s hand was starting to cramp from not moving for so long.

The staff worried about Amelia almost filled up the entire room. They stayed quiet for the whole half hour Sylver spent staring at the girl’s hand, the piece of salt, and the metal medallion.

“Hmm…” Sylver said as he stood up from his crouch and leaned back to straighten his back. There was a faint smile on his face.

“You saw something?” Edna asked.

“Absolutely nothing. This curse is as smooth as butter. The mirror trick barely works on mediocre curses, and this is good, even by my standards,” Sylver explained, as Edna translated his words, and asked the question he was going to ask.

“What was the purpose of doing this if you didn’t think it would work?” Edna asked.

Sylver picked the copper mirror up and put Amelia’s hand back where it was. He pocketed the mirror and the piece of salt.

“I just wanted to see how everyone would react. In case someone knew something and wasn’t telling us,” Sylver explained, as he lifted his hand and pointed at the guard standing on the left side of the group. “Everyone was concerned, but otherwise calm, except for this guy. Ask him if he knows something about Amelia’s curse,” Sylver said.

Edna translated the question, but the man didn’t flinch, his eyes didn’t become wide with surprise, and when he answered, and Sylver got the feeling he didn’t stammer.

“He says he doesn’t,” Edna said.

Sylver walked over to the man and reached out with his open hand toward him.

“Ask him to hold my hand. And then ask him if there’s something he knows but isn’t telling us,” Sylver said, but the man maintained a perfect poker face.

At least that was how it seemed to Sylver.

The two guards standing behind the guard Sylver was looking at grabbed his arms, pulled him away, and pinned him against the wall, as Amelia’s father walked over to him, and spoke softly and calmly.

Edna was too busy listening to the exchange between the father and the guard to translate, but she didn’t need to, Sylver had seen this song and dance enough times to know roughly what was being said.

Obviously, the guard had been bribed into doing something that resulted in Amelia being cursed.

Or he was madly in love with her but couldn’t do anything about it because of his low-ranking position, and since he couldn’t have her, he decided that no one should.

Or something political. Amelia is the daughter of a nobleman and all that.

It was most likely political.

The interrogation lasted significantly longer than it had any right to.

Thankfully Edna knew Sylver well enough to skip the details.

“He said he saw Amelia heading towards the…” Edna asked the guard standing next to her something in Finnish, and he answered. “It’s like a big crack in the sea floor. And that she started feeling ill right after coming back from it,” Edna explained.

Sylver covered his face with his hand, and after a while, ran both of his hands through his hair.

“A big crack in the sea floor, of course,” he said.

“It’s the only place Medusa could be. And I’m willing to bet Tristen went there too,” Edna offered.

“Certainly not the only place, but I fear you’re probably right,” Sylver said.

Enda lowered her voice to a whisper, for all the good it did given how well sound traveled underwater and in an enclosed room. “You’re not going to go?” Enda asked.

“I’m thinking,” Sylver whispered back.

To be more specific he was trying to determine how much his curiosity, and Tuli’s safety, were worth to him.

He was already deep underground, deep underwater, and it wasn’t as if a few more kilometers of rock would get in Edmund’s way. At most, they would make the rescue a bit longer than it needed to be, but worst-case scenario Sylver would be fine.

In the end, the prospect of meeting someone even slightly close to his level of curse knowledge was worth the relatively little extra danger of going into “a big crack in the sea floor.”

“Alright… We’ll go. But I want 50 of his best men to escort us,” Sylver said and waited for Edna to translate.

***

The sheer quantity of negative energy leaking out of the enormous crack in the ground was enough to put any undead in a good mood.

It was actively killing the 50 men Amelia’s father had provided and was making Enda nauseous from the effort of keeping her barrier up, but Sylver was having the time of his unlife.

He ended up leaving the soldiers near the edge of the crack, so they could escort him back, and although Edna protested, and made a couple of good points, she eventually realized Sylver wasn’t telling her to stay away just to mess with her.

She was strong, for a druid, but she would die down there if she tried to follow him.

There was a powerful stream of water coming out of the crack, not quite boiling, but hot enough that it was unpleasant.

Sylver stood on the edge of the crack and moved his hand into the stream moving upward. He pushed down against it and used [Advanced Water Manipulation] to make it move around his hand.

Sylver stepped forward, and for a few seconds was sent floating upward, before he found the right position for his water magic, and sunk down into the dark crack as if he were a rock.

It was dark, but not any darker than it was anywhere else deep under the sea.

And with this much negative energy, it truly didn’t matter how little light there was, because Sylver could feel his surroundings as if he was touching them with his hands.

At some point, he noticed that there were wooden fragments embedded into the walls. Planks of wood had been caught on the rock on their way up, and the lower he went, the larger these fragments became.

Eventually, the fragments turned into nailed-together boards, which later became whole floors, and after a certain point, parts of whole ships became appeared.

If Sylver knew more about ship craft he might have been able to figure out if they were from the same era, or even which country they were from, but all he could say for certain was that the ships were old and had been soaked in negative energy for so long that there weren’t any magical traces of their origins left.

Sylver saw an entire ship trapped under a protruding rock and decided to break the monotony of sinking by checking if there was anything useful inside.

The on its side, and if you ignored the barnacles, and the things infesting the wood, it was in relatively good shape. The door hinges had rusted away and disappeared, given the nail holes in the door and the door frame, and the mast was missing, but aside from that there wasn’t any visible damage to the ship.

The only thing of interest inside was a large piece of seagrass that was covered completely by creatures that looked like white beetles. They made a sizzling sound as Sylver approached them, but didn’t do anything else.

The shades came back with reports of much of the same.

When Sylver tried to leave the ship, he found a figure standing in the doorway.

It was as tall as him, as wide as he was, wore a robe that looked identical to his, and had a face that looked eerily similar to his own.

“Are you Medusa?” Sylver asked.

The figure didn’t respond and just stood there.

Menacingly.

“Euryale?” Sylver asked.

It lifted its right hand towards him and pointed at his face.

“Look, either say something, or leave,” Sylver said, as he took a step towards the figure, and it copied him, and took a step towards him, all while pointing at his head.

Sylver took another step, and the figure copied him.

“This isn’t going to go how you think it will. Last chance to leave,” Sylver offered, as he took another step forward.

Sylver waited a moment. But the handsome figure continued to silently block the doorway.

As he walked towards it, it walked towards him, and when the figure reached to grab Sylver by the throat, he leaned towards it and put his fist clean through its chest.

Its face lost its shape, its robe turned grey, and as it tried to free itself from the forearm impaling it, Sylver sucked every drop of magic and life out of it.

[Deep See Imitation (N/A) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 70 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 64!
+5AP

[Draining Blight (VI) Proficiency increased to 97%!]

As Sylver walked out of the boat, he was met with 20 more identical mirror images, standing on the rock walls, like they were growing out of it.

“Gentlemen!” Sylver said with a flourish, as he floated to the top of the boat. “There is no need to turn this into a bloodbath!” Sylver explained.

The one standing closest to Sylver narrowed its eyes, as a crown of red fingers began to grow out of its head. Another’s robe shimmered as it came to life, another started affecting the rock it was standing on, and the one furthest away was manipulating the water into a cutting beam.

One copy just disappeared, it turned into an invisible cloud of fog and got crushed by the water’s pressure.

But it was only when Sylver saw one of the copies wrap a layer of [Black Mass] around its hands, did Sylver realize what was going on.

He looked down at his feet and saw that thick sharp seaweed had grown around his legs and was pinning him in place.

Sylver leaned his head to the side, cracked his neck, and took his time cracking each individual knuckle, as the copies armed with his skill, perks, and traits began to approach him.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Sylver said, as the seaweed around his feet shrivelled up into nothing.