Ch197-It’s Quiet

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Ch197-It’s Quiet

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Sylver’s journey to the heart of the swamp was annoying peaceful.

According to Ria, he had been walking for over 4 hours, with absolutely nothing to show for it. Ria used the time to continue practicing levitating and mastered it enough that Sylver decided it was a good time to introduce the idea of levitating while having someone interfering with you.

And while it wasn’t strictly necessary since Ria could make Sylver’s magic ineffective, Sylver put his foot down on having her perfect the basics before moving on to anything else.

It turned out that it was comically easy for her to adjust her telekinesis to cancel out Sylver’s magic. It was as simple as increasing or decreasing the amount she was pushing herself away from the ground.

For a human mage in training, this would have taken roughly a year to master. Adjusting your spell mid-cast was a lot easier said than done. Casting a spell was hard as it was, but changing the structure while it was active was the equivalent of writing with one hand, and drawing a picture with the other.

But for Ria, it seemed to genuinely be a trivial matter. The biggest issue was that she couldn’t perceive the mana Sylver was throwing at her, and had to react, instead of preemptively adjusting her spell.

For the average mage, this would have been a death sentence.

But Ria reacted faster than Sylver was capable of casting his spell. So fast that Sylver couldn’t even say anything, if she was faster than him, she was faster than every other mage they were likely to ever encounter.

Sylver wasn’t even being arrogant when he said he was well within the 1% in terms of casting speed. Aside from the fact that he wasn’t limited by his physical muscles, and cast directly from his soul, he was also just plain fast. Even within the Ibis, he wasn’t a mage anyone would ever describe as a “slow” caster.

He wasn’t the fastest, but amongst the arches, he was the 5th or 6th fastest, and that’s taking into account that his magic was considered to be the slowest to cast. Light was quickest, then plasma, gas, liquid, solid, and darkness usually had the casting time measured in minutes, not seconds.

If not hours.

Even when Sylver pushed himself, and tried to throw enough feints that Ria would get confused and mess up, it genuinely did more damage to him and his pride, than it did to Ria’s floating staff. And this was Sylver using the simplest of the simplest of magics, he didn’t even want to try and use something with more than 1 frame.

If he had to compare it, this was probably what it felt like trying to fight one of the rabbits. By the time your fist reached the empty space where their head had been one-thousandth of a second ago, they were already a couple of kilometers away.

But similar to the rabbits, Ria’s speed came at a cost. With her inability to sense mana, it would only take two spells being cast simultaneously to make the magic she used to cancel out the first spell go out of control, and break her apart.

Then again, if Sylver hadn’t made her stop canceling his magic to train, even that wouldn’t affect her. In a certain sense, Ria had the perfect magical defense.

“What’s next?” Ria asked suddenly, as Sylver ran out of feints to test her with, and began to repeat himself.

He was quiet for a while, as he thought about which direction to develop Ria’s abilities and skills and then had to figure out how they would work with her relying solely on sigils.

“The next logical step is telekinesis on something other than yourself… But that’s… It’s not inherently difficult, I’m just struggling to figure out how you could do it…” Sylver said, as he rubbed his chin, and continued getting bad news from his shades.

“Isn’t it just directing the force used for levitation towards something else?” Ria asked, and could somehow tell Sylver wasn’t going to answer with a simple “yes.”

“Do you remember how I mentioned that it’s important to know if you should be moving or standing still?” Sylver asked.

“Oh no,” Ria whispered with a hint of genuine fear.

“I mean… If you brute force it, it could work… You mentioned something about encryption?” Sylver asked as Ria disappeared from sight.

He just kept walking while he waited for the liquid metal woman to come back from being flung high into the air in her attempt to move a small branch on the ground.

She stopped her fall a fraction of a second before she would have hit the semi-liquid muddy ground.

“Why did I go up, when I tried to move it forward?” Ria asked calmly, as Sylver turned to look at her, and could see a couple of ice crystals melting on the tips of the ribs embedded into her staff.

“Because the flow of mana in the air is flowing counterclockwise because you were more than a meter away from it because it weighs less than you, because we’re above sea level because it’s floating in a liquid with a higher viscosity than distilled water at 0 degrees Celsius, because-”

“How does your brain not explode from thinking about all that whenever you want to move a branch?” Ria interrupted, just as Sylver finished warming up and was about to get really specific.

Sylver vaguely gestured behind himself, as the branch Ria had attempted to lift floated into the air and floated towards them, and was followed by about 20 small pebbles Sylver found buried near the branch. He moved the branch in front of them and then had the rocks orbit around the branch.

“Normally you would spend a couple of months trying to lift a pebble, and very gradually your mind would start to see a pattern, even if you couldn’t put it into words. That’s not an option for you. You’re like a wizard, but without the adaption wizards have,” Sylver explained, as he let everything fall down into the water below his feet.

“So what do I do?” Ria asked.

“Is the encryption thing going to take too long?” Sylver asked, and could tell right away he’d hit a sore spot.

“The parts I’ve managed to decrypt seem to rely on an element I currently don’t have. Considering her original function, my best guess is that she needs a physical host, with what you refer to as a mana core, and mana channels, to use magic…” Ria explained, with a tone that was far too upset, considering she knew what she needed.

Sylver waited for her to continue, and during that time guessed the reason she wasn’t thrilled about becoming a mage.

“Ah… You don’t want to manipulate a dead body to cast a spell…” Sylver said.

“I don’t want to manipulate an alive one either. But aside from that, I can’t. I’m restricted to inorganic materials. To put it in a way you would understand I’m a fish that can swim in water, but I can’t do anything other than flop around on land,” Ria explained.

Sylver could do little more than shrug his shoulders.

“Hmm… So you can manipulate her because she is a machine, but you can’t have her manipulate someone else, since that would require you to indirectly manipulate them… When you say you can’t, do you mean you don’t know how, or-”

“I mean; I am incapable of it. The same way you’re limited in what kind of magic you can use, I am limited in what kind of item, object, or device, I can interact with. These bones aren’t organic, and yet they can very clearly use magic, so if I can figure out how they’re doing it, I’ll be able to do it too,” Ria explained.

“What about that fire you summoned back then?” Sylver asked as the aforementioned ball of fire appeared near a hand Ria had formed.

“It’s limited. Just look,” Ria said, as she tried to throw the ball of fire away, but it barely traveled two meters before it fell down towards the ground.

She then produced a small icicle, that did the same.

The next spell would have made her stick to a wall if she was near a wall to stick to.

“That is… very strange…” Sylver admitted as hot air began to rise from Ria’s body and staff.

“I now realize they’re all utility functions. There are more, but I haven’t finished decrypting them. Everything I’m able to do on my own is meant to help me force my way through armor, to get inside the wearer’s body,” Ria explained in an understandably defeated tone.

“Hmm…” Sylver said.

He already knew Ria couldn’t do what SAM did when she was a bunch of worms. The worms only worked the way they did because they had a kind of swarm intellect, they all shared one brain, at least that was the way Sylver understood it.

Which meant that right now they were limited to giving Ria a “body” to move around. They weren’t even worms; they were “nano-bots” as Ria called them. Which Sylver understood just meant they were very small worms, small enough that they were like sand, but even smaller.

“What about the bones?” Sylver asked, with a gesture towards the 3 ribs.

“Also encrypted. But I can manually activate the sigils. To be honest with you, I don’t think they’re actually encrypted, they’re just built in such a way that only someone capable of sensing mana could understand the code,” Ria explained, as one of the shades finally returned with some good news.

“How long will it take to decrypt?” Sylver asked, as he reached out and grabbed Ria, and turned towards the right, and started to quietly move towards the first monster he would hunt.

“I have no idea. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen. It’s like trying to decrypt a book, written in another language while being blind. Not to mention I’m functioning on solar power, and the tiny amount of mana I’m able to convert into electricity,” Ria explained, as Sylver used [Fog Form] for a few seconds to float through a bunch of bushes.

Ria had mentioned the power limitation before, but there wasn’t much Sylver could do. Apparently, the lightning created from mana wasn’t the right type, or more accurately, Ria couldn’t absorb a significant portion of it.

She theorized that she could build a steam engine, but the idea was shut down almost immediately. Sylver wasn’t a craftsman, but as a mage, he knew when something was too complex for mana to leave it alone. Anything fancier than the inside of a clock had a nasty habit of warping and breaking apart.

Some areas were safe from this effect, dwarves and their mountain kingdoms, but the nearest one was months of travel away. Sylver didn’t have the time to spare, and more honestly, he liked dwarves, but he hated being in their domain.

Lola was already looking for alternatives, so Sylver wasn’t going to think or worry about it too much.

“We’ll figure something out. There’s not much point focusing on simple magic, since you’re able to memorize a spell after casting it once, give me some time to figure out something you can do that I can’t,” Sylver said, as Ria perked up.

“Like teleportation?” Ria asked, and Sylver froze, and realized that his answer wasn’t going to be “no,” but a confused, and hopeful-

“Actually, yes. I’m not sure if you have enough capacity, but if I just charge up the man crystals while you’re casting…” Sylver said, as his “prey” turned around and made eye contact with him.

It was a giant dark red reptile standing on its hind legs, armed with a terribly familiar shade of dark red claws, teeth, and of course, matching dark red alligator-like scales. It was about 15 meters tall, and about 3 meters wide.

It might have been the way the sunlight shining on them, but the dark red claws, teeth, and scales looked just a bit like the wooden weapons the witch hunters from earlier had used.

[Lesser Fafnir – Mystic Hunter – 249]
[HP: 176,552 – 82%]
[MP: N/A – N/A]
[Stamina: N/A – N/A]
[Corpse – N/A]
[Soul – N/A]

Mystic hunter, I wonder what this monster is used to hunting? Armed with magic distorting armor? Magic distorting claws? And magic distorting teeth?

Sylver wondered as he felt an unpleasant feeling move down his spine.

He walked out of the bushes he had been semi-hiding in, and through the moss-covered stumps, and tree trunks, tilted his head so his mask was more visible to the monster.

With a wave of his hand, a large cylinder of dirt rose from the swamp ground, and protectively hid Sylver.

The monster made a noise that could be loosely interpreted as a chuckle, as it reached the cylinder in the time it took Sylver to blink, and with a single swipe of its claws, shredded the earthen barrier into nothing. It very briefly wondered what the little grey spheres inside were supposed to do, as they spilled out, and promptly detonated.

***

It was only now that Sylver realized how much he had gotten used to the system helping him out. He waited a whole minute before asking a shade to go up towards the surface, to see if the monster was still alive or not, since Sylver hadn’t gotten a system notification.

According to the shades, it was very fuzzy on the surface.

And as Sylver materialized on top of a small wooden stump, or rather the charred remains of one, he had to agree. As he had rightfully suspected, the [Mystic Hunter] was immune to magic, but if the blood splattered everywhere was to be believed, it wasn’t immune to explosions.

Sylver jumped down from his stump and floated over to the crater, where the mud cylinder he had filled up with bombs had been. To his surprise, he didn’t find a weakened level 249 reptile, losing consciousness, and just barely hanging on.

Instead, he found…

A couple of scales.

4 scales to be precise, and what seemed to be a single claw, attached to a torn-off finger.

Other than that…

“So now there’s a wounded, and likely pissed off, mage hunting monster wandering around,” Sylver said out loud as if voicing the thought would make it less ridiculous.

The shades came back with, as seemed to be the new norm, bad news. They couldn’t find a trail, a supposedly crippled reptile left behind, meaning it either had the ability to fly, or it was pretty good at being stealthy.

“Are you going to track it?” Ria asked, as Sylver touched some of the blood floating in the water, even though he already knew there wasn’t any point.

“It’s anti-magic, inside and out, the spell won’t work…” Sylver explained, as he wiped his finger with a summoned piece of cloth, and threw it towards the filling up with water crater.

Sylver looked up for a moment to orient himself and then started walking deeper into the swamp.

“Where are you going?” Ria asked, after a couple of seconds.

“That way. We entered from the south, so I’m going northeast,” Sylver explained, and his completely oblivious tone made Ria keep quiet for a minute or so.

“What about that lizard?” Ria asked.

“You mean the lizard that for some reason is covered in armor magic can’t pierce, along with claws that can fuck up anything magical? That lizard?” Sylver asked.

“Yes.”

“Since I don’t know where it went, and I can’t track it, I’m going to try and forget about it. If it shows up again, I’m going to do my best to hide. I don’t know about you, but I prefer fighting things that aren’t immune to my main method of attack,” Sylver explained, as he searched for a distraction, and thankfully found a couple.

Total Level: 141
[Koschei-10]
[Necromancer-100]
[Swamp Lord-31]

CON: 200
DEX: 110
STR: 110
INT: 289
WIS: 240
AP: 10

Health: 1,722/2,000
Stamina: 970/1,000
MP: 8,755/11,560

Health Regen: 23.33/M
Stamina Regen: 20.00/M
MP Regen: 6242.40/M

Even without saying anything, Sylver could feel a reaction from Ria. He also felt a tickling at the back of his skull and had to not think about the fact that Ria had reacted to him opening his status.

There wasn’t much debate as to where Sylver should put his 10 attribute points. He put all 10 into intelligence, and even the thought of a magic hunting lizard with a vendetta against him couldn’t put a dent in the joy Sylver felt at almost getting to 300.

CON: 200
DEX: 110
STR: 110
INT: 299
WIS: 240
AP: 0

Health: 1,723/2,000
Stamina: 974/1,000
MP: 8,921/11,960

Health Regen: 23.33/M
Stamina Regen: 20.00/M
MP Regen: 6458.40/M

Sylver felt his mana core swell up a little, and then felt, but didn’t think about, the order in which his mana channels were altered. Curiously, the closest thing he could feel to a pattern was that it was every mana channel that was altered, was as far away as possible from the previously altered mana channel.

Sylver didn’t voice or think about this detail, but he did his very best to solidify the memory of this moment.

With that done, he moved on to the next thing.

There were 11 perks offered by [Swamp Lord] for increasing the class up to level 30, but out of those 11, there was only 1 Sylver was interested in. Even if his relationship with these particular things wasn’t pleasant, it was too good to overlook because of such a stupid reason.

[Perk: Corpse Blossom]
Alive Aloe – During bloom will increase a creature’s [Constitution].
Lightning Lilac – During bloom will increase a creature’s [Dexterity].
Grand Gladiolus – During bloom will increase a creature’s [Strength].
Clever Clematis – During bloom will increase a creature’s [Intelligence].
Shrewd Snapdragon – During bloom will increase a creature’s [Wisdom].
*Limited to 1 seed per corpse.
*Effectiveness dependent on proximity.

Like a child being gifted a brand new toy, Sylver reached into his [Bound Bones] storage and pulled out the first corpse he could find. He had no idea who the corpse belonged to, other than that it wasn’t one of his clones.

A small seed that looked like a dark grey raisin appeared in between Sylver’s thumb and forefinger. He held the corpse in one hand and held the seed in the other, and without even having to think about it, the seed in his hand changed shape and color, depending on Sylver’s intent.

He decided to start with the [Clever Clematis], and very gently, Sylver poked the seed into the wound on the corpse’s neck. Sylver’s [Chloromancy] worked in tandem with his [Dead Dominion] as he felt the tiny seed spread its roots up into the corpse’s head, and down throughout its body, and watched as a single bright green stem forced its way out of the gaping wound.

Sylver stared at the green stem, and in tandem with the first purple flower budding on the top, Sylver felt his mana capacity and regeneration gradually increase. Instinctively he knew he could command the flower to grow faster, provide a bigger boost, but for a shorter period of time. Or he could command it to grow slowly, for a smaller boost, but for a longer period of time.

Sylver released the corpse with the bright purple flower growing out of its torn open neck and kept it floating near him using [Dead Dominion]. After some playing around Sylver figured out the effective range was barely 5 meters when he made the plant grow quickly and seemed to be near the edge of 50 meters when the plant was made to grow slowly.

Surprisingly enough, it did work on the shades, but the more shades Sylver shared the flower with, the less they received individually. The intelligence boost the flower provided was finite, and Sylver got the feeling it would be the same for any other attribute.

Next, he grew an [Alive Aloe] inside the stab wound in the back of a woman’s spine. Sylver could tell right away the flower didn’t like this placement, but it worked regardless of that.

He would later discover that the flowers responsible for an intelligence and wisdom boost, preferred being grown in the head. The constitution boosting flower preferred being grown near the heart, and the strength and dexterity flowers preferred being grown near the chest, and abdomen, respectively.

From experimenting with the corpses he had on hand, Sylver got a maximum boost of 20 to 30 percent, for a little under a minute, and was able to have a steady boost of around 5 percent, for roughly 15 minutes.

As they bloomed, the corpses the seeds were in would dry up, and when the flower started to wilt, the corpse became as dehydrated as jerky and about as brittle. Sylver would dissect one of these at a later date, but from a cursory observation, couldn’t see anything wrong that he couldn’t fix, given enough time.

He also found out that once planted, the seeds didn’t do anything until Sylver gave them an order to grow. He could even hold them off from blooming, but once the flowers opened up, Sylver could only slow them down, but couldn’t stop them completely. Cutting the flower off caused the process to stop completely, but doing so killed the flower.

Sylver could then plant the same seed, or he could plant a different seed, but it would have to grow new roots, and there was less moisture left for it to use.

When Sylver explained how the flowers worked, even Ria seemed to get motivated to find something powerful to kill and experiment with. However, just from the tone she used, Sylver could tell she wasn’t interested in the killing itself, but rather that she felt something interesting when he used this perk, and wanted to see him use it more.

***

“You forgot to accept the skill rank up,” Spring said in a disappointed tone of voice.

He had waited an entire half hour and ended up losing the bet he had made with Ria, back when Sylver first got the notification.

Sylver’s choice was limited to 2 effects.

The first would increase his resistance to darkness-based magic, which was useless to Sylver, especially since he was a full dark, and the other would make him a little lighter. And while it sounded useless, the less strain Sylver put on his leg muscles, the better.

[Skill: Vigorous Conditioning (IV) [A]]
Skill level can be increased by receiving damage.
I – Increase resistance against [Positive Energy] by 25%.
II – Increase resistance against [Physical Damage] by 40%.
III – Increase Stamina Regeneration by 50%.
IV – Reduce body weight by 20%.

For a moment Sylver was worried he was going to float up into the sky, but the moment passed before he had even managed to finish the thought. It felt like being under the effect of an extremely well-balanced anti-gravity spell, except it was somehow smoother than anything Sylver had ever managed to achieve.

Normally with such a spell, there was at least some uncomfortable feeling of weightlessness, like something was lifting you by the shoulder, neck, head, foot, but the system made it feel so natural, Sylver was used to his new weight within 2 steps.

Sylver was smiling, as he continued walking on the murky swamp water, and his friendly smile evolved into a slight grin, as he felt something slowly finally surrounding him. He used [Fog Form] to fly high into the air, and sat down on a branch.

Below him, the perfectly calm and undisturbed water began to bubble, and a couple of seconds later, an oily and dark brown head emerged. It looked like a human head covered in mud, but if a person were to look closer, they would see that it wasn’t hair sticking out through the mud, but very fine tentacles, the source of which was a-

[Gourd Gizzard – Mud Slinger – 82]
[HP: 6,770 – 100%]
[MP: 0 – 0%]
[Stamina: 5,319 – 91%]
[Corpse – Petty]
[Soul – N/A]

According to the friendly barkeep, these things looked like a small gourd, with hair sticking out of the top. Once they’re broken open, there is an organ that looks similar to a chicken’s gizzard. The barkeep didn’t say what it was used for, but according to Sylver’s list, the Red Bears were offering a gram of green jade for every set of 5.

Sylver looked down and saw that there were now 2 more human-shaped mud figures standing behind the level 82 one. They were level 81 and level 76. Behind them, 3 more appeared, and 5 more appeared behind them, and 7 appeared behind them, every time Sylver blinked more and more appeared.

After some more blinking, he heard a sound behind him and saw a person-shaped creature climbing up the tree trunk. Directly below it, there were between 100 to 200 [Gourd Gizzard]s of various shapes, sizes, and levels. Sylver was surrounded from both sides.

[Gourd Gizzard]s were extremely dangerous, not due to their individual prowess, but because they hunted in very large groups.

“There are so many of you,” Sylver said, as the one climbing up the tree began climbing faster.

He could see the hair tips sticking out of its hands, like a glove with needles coming out of the palm area.

Sylver didn’t bother turning around as a ball of dried mud flew right at his head, about the size and spikiness, of a chestnut, as a tendril of [Necrotic Mutilation] extended out of his robe, and smacked it back down.

“A whole army,” Sylver said, as the creature that was climbing up the tree was now close enough that Sylver could see the hair in its mouth positioned like shiny needle teeth.

“But,” Sylver said, as he slapped his hand on the tree branch he was sitting on, and a sharp branch grew out of the tree trunk the mud creature was attached to. It passed through the creature’s mud and exited with the pierced gourd-shaped core screaming, with a high pitched wail, as its various fine hairs attempted to reach for the mud sliding down the tree trunk.

Spring appeared on that very same branch, and with his bare hand, grabbed a fistful of struggling hair, and deftly sliced it off.

He then, while the whole “army” down below watched, proceeded to crack the gourd open down the middle like a coconut, and scooped out a small slimy bright red organ, that genuinely looked identical to a chicken’s gizzard.

“Mine’s bigger,” Sylver said, as the ground that had been inhabited exclusively by mud creatures, suddenly found themselves outnumbered by creatures that were as black as shadows, with faint cracks of gold.

“Be careful to leave the gourds intact!” Sylver shouted, and thankfully Spring heard him loud and clear to pass his order along because he doubted any of the shades below could hear a thing.

Considering the mixture of battle cries and terrified and confused screeching.

While he waited for the sounds of battle to attract more monsters on his list, Sylver floated the corpse of the [Gourd Gizzard] over to himself and dissected it to pass the time.

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