Ch085-Lost And Found (Patreon)

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Ch085-Lost And Found

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“What are you doing?” Misha asked. Sylver had spent the last hour wondering if the girl was going to say anything, given how she’d been watching him since the moment he stepped foot into his new workshop.

“Right now, I’m looking for another vein,” Sylver said, as the five shades helping him gently pulled back the recently cut open piece of skin. A sixth one appeared to move the tubes sticking out of the dried-up corpse out of the way.

“How do you even know how to do this? I’ve looked through Deya’s memories, and according to her necromancers are all but gone. The only one she knew about was a retired old man, who got the class by accident because he was guarding a cemetery for so long,” Misha said.

Sylver stayed quiet for a moment, while he slowly used his magic to inflate the barely visible deflated vein, and then inserted an equally small tube into it.

“If by this you mean how do I know how to rejuvenate a body; the answer is that I stole it from a cult. Cults always have the best magic. Especially the religious cults, those are gold mines. The things people are willing to do when they think their god is on their side and going to reward them is incredible,” Sylver said with a slight smile in his voice as he remembered the literal ton of notes he gathered after killing one such cult.

“The racist ones are even better; they don’t see the people they’re experimenting on as people. Which is just fantastic in terms of research, you can achieve just short of anything if you throw enough pain and suffering at it,” Sylver explained, still smiling as he tightened the suture and a shade helped cut the string.

“What kind of cult was it?” Misha asked. She materialized near the ceiling but kept out of the way to not block the floating light.

“Religious and racist. I think they were human, but they could have been dwarves. Their whole thing was immortality, and in their defense, they were on the right track. Maybe another… What? 10,000 trials and they would have found a sustainable solution? There’s this spell [Draining Touch]. It does as the name suggests and allows you to drain the life and mana out of someone when you’re touching them. Problem is, it’s incredibly inefficient. But this cult thought that if it was done slowly enough, you could transfer more than just a snippet of the person’s strength, but their years of life too,” Sylver explained, as the shades near the large glass tank worked together to get it to open.

They poured the mixture Sylver had prepared beforehand into it and mixed it up. It was annoying to put together the pieces of glass, but Sylver needed to see what was going on inside, and he had Spring to handle it for him.

“Why would they need that many trials? Where would they even find that many people?” Misha asked. She floated out of the way as Masha’s corpse floated into the air and was slowly caught and lowered into the liquid-filled tank.

“To their credit, they did go about it in a kind of smart way. They kidnapped women from outside their cult, kept them as slaves and bred them, and then experimented on the resulting children. Dark magic is a bit different from anything else, primarily because of how dangerous it is. For pyromancers, the worst they can do is make a spell that’s inefficient or one that blows up in their face. Which isn’t a huge problem for them because they’re naturally fireproof,” Sylver explained, as he walked over to the tank and walked up invisible steps to stand on top of it.

“And dark magic?” Misha asked as she floated over to look at the floating tube-filled dead body.

“It is very hard to defend against it. The same is true for the users. Even the rituals aren’t 100% safe, there’s always a great deal of room for error and mistakes, which will all result in either instant death or very slow death. Even small alterations to a spell can have catastrophic consequences, it’s a lot like trying to practice juggling daggers,” Sylver said, as he held his hand over the open hatch, and blood from his cut palm started to drip down into the water.

“Juggling daggers?” Misha asked. Sylver closed his hand and the small beads of blood floating on the surface began to glow a faint yellow light.

“Each mistake hurts and costs you. Dearly in most cases. If you fuck up particularly badly, you end up spending the rest of your life growing hair that’s permanently grey. Although it could be worse, I got off significantly easier than most of my peers. When you get past a certain level of strength you become arrogant and reckless, you already know anything, so of course, your ingenious spell is going to work, why wouldn’t it? You’ve checked it three times, surely you couldn’t be wrong? Then you wake up from a 3-year coma, with a grey head of hair and with such a hard punch to the face that you spend the next month finding bits of your teeth hidden beneath various furniture,” Sylver explained, as the glowing blood spiraled on the surface and then swan downwards onto the shriveled-up corpse.

A large number of tubes extended out of the front and back of its torso, as well as a few in the arms and legs. One side of it was unnaturally flat, on account of the body deteriorating while laying down. The blood entered through a hole in the crumbling skull, and the body twitched.

“Punch to the face? I don’t understand, you punched yourself in the face?” Misha asked. She floated down into the water and looked at the dead body that was beginning to move.

“No, my master punched me in the face. Outside of sparing she very rarely hit me, but knowing what I know now, she should have been much harsher on me. I was trying to permanently give myself mana sight, and it is pure luck I didn’t destroy my mana core in the process. But as far as paying a price for mistakes goes, having oddly colored hair isn’t that bad of a trade,” Sylver said. A wave of light slowly moved through the floating body and it began to inflate and straighten out.

“What were you trying to do when you made your eyes turn black?” Misha asked.

Sylver almost touched his eyes but realized his hands were covered in blood and stopped himself. The body in the tank leaked out of every joint as its back straightened and its claw-like fingers uncurled. The ring of keys that had become embedded into the corpse’s fingers fell to the bottom with a clang.

“No these are… something else.  Arguably speaking my biggest fuckup of all time. But it’s fine, it’s the same as the hair, just looks weird, doesn’t do anything,” Sylver said.

He waited for the corpse to finish twitching itself into a standing shape, and then got down from the tank. The tubes sticking out of it were all connected to a large empty bowl, that was made entirely out of carved copper.

From the copper bowl, three large tube bundles connected to three unconscious bodies, that were all laying on their own operating table and covered with a black sheet. Sylver touched one of the carvings on the copper bowl, and a very faint whirring sound could be heard. The whirring sound became quieter as the tubes connected to the three unconscious people began to glow and pulse with life. The copper bowl seemed to smoke for a moment before a much less bright glow traveled up the tubes connected to the corpse.

The floating corpse’s skin began to bubble and peel away, as thin layers of bright red muscles began to appear underneath it. Sylver watched the body for a while before he connected Misha’s already floating and tube-filled corpse to the same copper bowl. The shades closed the hatches on the two tanks.

“And you’re halfway there to being alive again. All that’s left is for the bodies to finish repairing themselves, and you’ll be able to walk around the house with a physical form. And once my spell is finished processing your essences and separating them from the house and each other, you’ll be able to go wherever you want,” Sylver explained as he walked over to the three unconscious bodies and double-checked that all the equipment was properly fastened into them.

“This feels… too easy. I would have thought you would need a ton of specialized tools and crystals and such, but you’re effectively using a big fish tank and some tubes to bring someone back to life?” Misha asked. Her corpse had already regained color and now only looked deflated.

“Well, when your entire school of magic is looked down upon, if not outright illegal, in a large portion of the civilized world, you learn very quickly to work with less than ideal materials. I’ve done much more with much less than I have now, and technically speaking nothing I’m using here is essential. I could have manually transferred the life force from their bodies into yours, but it would have been exhausting and I wouldn’t be able to do anything else while I was at it. There’s also the fact that… not to pat myself too hard on the back here, but I’m very good at what I do. It’s a sort of swordmaster wielding a butter knife, against a novice wielding a holy sword situation,” Sylver explained.

The two bodies inside the tanks were completely invisible now, hidden behind a giant amount of bubbles. The only thing that suggested there was anything inside the large glass tanks, to begin with, was the faint yellow glow that created a distorted silhouette inside the bubbles.

“For all our sakes, I hope this works,” Misha said. Sylver cracked his neck as the shades started to clean everything up and covered the three unconscious Left Tooth members with a black sheet.

“The priestess is here. Sophia,” Misha said while Sylver washed his hands and rinsed his face.

“Is she alone?” Sylver asked.

“No. There are a few priests with her. She’s scared of coming inside, or at least most of the priests near her seem to be,” Misha said. Sylver furrowed his brows for a moment as he finished wiping his hands. He slowly wiped them on a clean towel and stopped as he spoke.

“Would you… no, never mind. It isn’t worth the risk, and it probably wouldn’t work on her,” Sylver said, as he tossed the towel into a shade's hands so it could start washing it to pack away.

“What? I know Masha was a bit intense with what our duties are, but if you need something-”

“I wanted for you to read her mind, but I decided against it. Best case scenario I find out why she wants the cave, but that wouldn’t change anything, and worst case, she catches you in the act, sees it as an attack against her, and then I have to either fight her or run away. Not worth it, please tell her to wait a moment and that I’ll be out shortly,” explained quickly. Misha nodded and disappeared.

*

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“I would invite you inside, but I’m still in the middle of settling in, and not fit to see guests yet,” Sylver said, as he materialized outside of the closed gates that lead to his property.

And I haven’t fixed the door that leads down into my workshop.

“He’s dying,” Sophia said without so much as a hint of worry in her voice.

Sylver mentally ordered the shades inside the house to pack his bag for him and to bring it over.

“What did you do?” Sylver asked, equally calm but unlike Sophia, with a bit of panic inside. Nautis would be useless if he died.

“I asked an “expert” in dark magic for a second opinion,” Sophia said. She made the word expert sound like an insult.

“And what did the expert say?” Sylver asked. The gate behind him opened for a moment and a black and yellow hand passed a large bag over to Spring.

“He shit himself. Literally. And then ran away screaming that it was unwise to get involved with something so devious and ungodly,” Sophia answered. Sylver turned around to rummage through the bag Spring was holding while he waited for the faint smile to disappear from his face.

“So how does that translate to the man dying?” Sylver asked. He almost giggled as he said it, but hoped the grinning pride didn’t leak into his voice.

“He made notes while examining it, and I thought I found a weak spot. I asked a few priests for help and… well… he started to vomit… and then spat out one of his kidneys.  We believe his stomach ruptured and his insides are now attempting to digest themselves,” Sophia explained, oddly more embarrassed than genuinely worried.

Oh… Right she isn’t getting the only thing she wants regardless of how this ends, why would she care?

“If this results in him dying and being unable to pay you, I’ll cover whatever he promised,” Sophia said, now with a slight downward tilt of her head.

She doesn’t care about Nautis dying, but cares about me getting paid…

Sylver glanced at Spring and the shade split into two, one disappeared into the shadows and went to tell Novva to hurry everything up, while the other remained with Sylver.

“Alright, let’s go. I work better under pressure anyway,” Sylver said, as he turned into smoke and started to fly towards the hotel Nautis was staying at. On the way there he got an idea and had the Spring that was with him split into two again, to tell Novva about the change of plans.

*

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There was blood.

A lot of blood.

Some shit too.

But mostly blood.

And what looked like a piece of half-digested lung.

But aside from that, today was turning into a massive confidence boost for Sylver.

First, the expert that was frightened to the extent that he shit himself.

Then Sylver got to see just how much damage one of his weakest curses could do, given enough time.

Sylver ran over to the barely alive Nautis, and he removed a small flask from his robe. Sylver tipped the distilled water into Nautis’s mouth and very gently worked on the curse that was eating Nautis from the inside out. As Nautis swallowed the water, Sylver briefly glanced at his mask-wearing guard and came to a decision. With the two A rank parties gone, Sylver only had one obstacle left.

“Get one of the priests in here, he needs to be healed,” Sylver said. Nautis stirred in his hands, and Sylver lowered him to lay down on the floor. He vomited on himself, and then cleared his throat before he spoke.

“I’m cured?” Nautis asked weakly.

“It’s temporary. This will only work once, I was saving it for just before the ritual, but we don’t have time now. I’ve got a place not far away from here with everything I need, a friend of mine is bringing the other person there. Your guard is going to have to stay behind, the other person insisted on it, and we don’t have time to negotiate,” Sylver explained. He had to be careful to sound concerned and nervous and spoke quickly so Nautis would feel rushed.

Nautis froze as his guard said something.

The guard spoke in a language Sylver didn’t know, probably Vorsy, Nautis’s native tongue, but Sylver heard his name. Nautis said something back to the guard, and the guard nodded, before teleporting away.

“Do what you have to, but if they don’t hear back from me, the entire combined weight of the Black Mane is going to be breathing down yours, and your family’s, neck,” Nautis said. His voice was raspy and gargled, but Sylver could hear the smile in it, even if Nautis’s face was contorted in pain.

Sylver very nearly ruined everything and spoke in his normal voice, but Spring’s hand on his shoulder kept him from snapping.

“You have no right threatening me like this,” Sylver said, his voice calm and altered by his mask. The priest that was in the process of healing Nautis looked up at Sylver and nodded at him.

It was one of Sophia’s personal guards, but it was hard to tell under the veil over the man’s head. It was oddly reassuring that despite the way things were with Sophia, she, or her priests at least, were still on Sylver’s side.

“Maybe not, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. So fix this fucking curse, even if it costs you your life because otherwise, everyone you care for is going to disappear, never to be seen again,” Nautis swore. He started to struggle in Sylver’s hands, and Sylver gestured with his head towards the priest to stop.

In his repressed anger, Sylver got dangerously close to accidentally completely turning the curse off. Nautis’s insides were, if not completely solid, at least in good enough shape that Sylver wouldn’t need to worry about stomach acid burning through Nautis’s spine.

*

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*

Even though his robe was covered in a mixture of blood and vomit, Sylver was having a very good day. The fact that Melo didn’t hesitate for even a second to drink what Sylver gave him, and didn’t say a single word as he laid down onto the operating table, warmed Sylver’s heart.

Sylver waited for Nautis to become completely unconscious and then took his mask off, and started the ritual.

Sylver removed the curse that permeated every inch of Nautis’s body, with a single tap of his magically charged finger.

Thus concluding their deal, the curse was lifted.

Sylver had done everything in his power to undo the curse someone devious and ungodly had put on him. He placed the small piece of amber between Nautis and Melo and cracked his neck.

*

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[Xander’s Waystone - ??? - Common Quality]
[For every 2 creatures teleported inside Xander’s Hole, 1 may teleport out]
[Amount teleported in: 0]
[Amount that can be teleported out: 0]

Sylver wondered just how much the theory of the system being sentient was true. Aside from the [Common Quality], everything else was spot on. With the exception that Nautis had said his perk specified people, not creatures. Not that it mattered, Sylver was going to capture a few bandits so he would have room to spare when teleporting.

In the…

In the highly unlikely, not even worth considering, event Sylver wasn’t able to save Tuli, he would have a secret base of sorts, that he could always escape to. Nautis explained that his perk teleported him and other people away into the same spot he teleported out of while inside Tuli. And when he teleported from inside Tuli to the outside, he always returned to the same spot.

But since Nautis hadn’t bothered to check if this could be changed, or what happens if the spot inside or outside suddenly has a boulder in the place he’s trying to return to, Sylver would be playing it safe and always teleporting midair while on the outside, and from somewhere safe and secluded while inside Tuli.

Melo stirred awake and Sylver walked over to stand next to him.

“Is it over?” Melo asked. Spring handed him his shirt back, as Sylver peeled back the bandage on his chest. It was nice to have access to high-class healing potions.

“You tell me. Any new skills? Perks? Class? Level? Anything?” Sylver asked as Melo’s eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment.

“Give me a second,” Melo said. Sylver waited for nearly a full minute as Melo read through his status and skills and perks and everything.

“Nothing. The ritual didn’t work?” Melo asked.

Sylver rubbed his chin while Melo drank the healing potion Spring gave him and started to pull his shirt on.

Is it possible that the only thing that the system recognizes as Nautis’s magic was the perk his master gave him? And the rest aren’t his, but the systems?

Then I wasted a ton of effort and materials trying to suck water out of a god damn rock…

“Do you feel anything? Pain, or a headache, maybe a small rush of power?” Sylver asked. Melo got off from the table and stretched. He made a gesture at one of the empty bowls on the other side of the room, and it appeared in his hand.

“No, I feel… Normal. I mean, my chest hurts a bit, but you did stick a bunch of needles through my heart,” Melo said, as he pointed at the large basin full of gold-tipped needles that had a wire on their tips that went all the way to Nautis, with needles still embedded in his chest.

Sylver stood quietly for a while longer and kept waiting for something to happen. After all the effort he went through, it seemed like a bit of a waste.

“Fuck it, it is what it is. I’ve got what I wanted, you’ve been paid for your help, and Nautis is about to be auctioned off, never to be seen again. Everyone got what they wanted,” Sylver said. He pushed down his disappointment and walked over to Nautis. Unlike with Melo, Sylver didn’t bother to be gentle or careful and yanked out the gold-tipped needles out of the man’s heart and lungs.

“Since you feel fine, do you mind?” Sylver asked.

“Not at all,” Melo said, as he walked over to Sylver and placed a hand on his shoulder, and Nautis’s chest.

All three of them disappeared.

*

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[Human (None) – 1]
[HP-10]
[MP-10]

Nautis threw up, and Sylver was all but certain he had just lost his other lung. But the three masked healers were making quick work of what would have been a fatal wound, and Nautis was breathing normally by the time he was done spitting everything out.

“I’d like to apologize for threatening you earlier,” Nautis said quietly.

Sylver adjusted the mask on his face and waved away the questioning look on Novva’s face.

“Don’t worry about it. You were stressed out, desperate, I can understand when people say or do things out of desperation,” Sylver explained.

“It doesn’t make what I did right. I’m going to double what I owe you, as an apology,” Nautis promised. Sylver whistled at the promise of an extra million gold and nearly burst out laughing at the smirk on Novva’s face. Even the three healers, lent to Novva by a friend of his, smiled at Nautis’s words.

“You know, I almost feel sorry for you,” Sylver said, lowering the level of excitement in the room down a few steps.

“You think going through this is worth however much money I made? I’ll tell you now if I could give all of that up for never being in this situation in the first place, I would have done it in a heartbeat,” Nautis said, as he hit his recently healed chest with his recently regrown hands and fingers. All that was left were his insides and eyes.

“No, not for that. I honestly believe that you deserved every single second of pain you’ve experienced, and more. It’s difficult for me to hate someone because in most cases I can see where they’re coming from, and I can’t bring myself to hate them for it. If I were in their shoes, I would do the same thing and all that. The only person I do hate is the one I can’t understand,” Sylver explained. Novva reacted to the sound of glass breaking and silently teleported out of the small room.

“Go fuck yourself,” Nautis muttered under his breath, as the healer’s finished with his other hand. Sylver stood up from the chair he was sitting in and walked over to him.

“See… I don’t believe in “evil”. I believe in a great number of things, but I don’t believe there’s such a thing as “evil”. And when you look at a bandit and no longer see an enemy, but a person who could have been a friendly baker if things were slightly different, you lose the ability to hate them. I do my best to make sure the people I fight have a quick and painless death, as much as the situation allows at least. But even when I kill them, I don’t hate them,” Sylver explained.

“I see, now that I’m alone and with something to lose, you think you can extort more money out of me? I already apologized, what more do you want?” Nautis asked, biting each word as if it could hurt Sylver.

“I don’t want your money Nautis,” Sylver said. Nautis lost whatever color had returned to his face.

“I just want you to know that I hate you. I can emphasize with a murderer, a tyrant, a thief, a slaver, a kidnapper, even a rapist, as long as they understand what they’re doing, and accept it. I don’t condone it, I don’t like it, and I may kill them for it, but I can understand it. But kidnapping thousands of people, keeping them separated from their families for years, making them eat the shit I would be wary mixing into pig slop, all because “it got out of hand”. That I can’t understand,” Sylver said, as he gradually removed the voice-altering effect, as the healers started to work on Nautis’s eyes. All three disappeared a moment later, while their magic remained and healed him.

“No,” Nautis whispered.

“It is one thing to do something you know hurts people, doing it willingly, or at least with an understanding of what you’re doing. I can understand why a bandit kills and steals because he cares more about himself than other people. I get that, I understand it,” Sylver said.

Nautis barely reacted.

“People can rationalize anything away, I understand that too, and I can’t hate them for it. I don’t love them for it, but I don’t hate them either. But you? A man who mindlessly went along with whatever you were told to do, and never once, for even a second stopped to think for himself? I don’t like bandits because they use up precious resources and don’t create anything of value, but I don’t hate them. I don’t like killers or rapists, because their actions cause more damage for the future than whatever possible good they might do while alive, but I don’t hate them. But you? If I didn’t hate you, you would have died the moment the ritual ended,” Sylver said with a calm voice.

Sylver could tell the healing magic wasn’t doing anything anymore, and only the small bandage on his face kept Nautis’s eyes closed.

“Just let me go. Please? I’ll tell you where Faun is, I’ll tell you everything, I’ll-”

The tip of Sylver’s boot connected with Nautis’s mouth and shattered several front teeth. The bandage tore off as Nautis scrambled on the floor and held both hands against his recently repaired, and more recently destroyed, teeth. His eyes opened wide in recognition.

“Don’t even worry about it. We’re selling you off, but Novva hired a specialist to get everything you know out of you first. You won’t die, I’m told the woman that’s handling it has a near-perfect success rate. Now, I want to make sure you understand something. There may come a time, far into the future, where I will all of a sudden get an epiphany and will regret what I’ve done here. Then I’ll understand you, and I’ll lose the ability to hate you and I will genuinely feel sorry for you. I might even lose sleep over it, although I doubt it. But until that day comes, I want you to know I’m enjoying every second of this,” Sylver explained.

It was oddly invigorating, there were barely a handful of things Sylver didn’t understand enough to hate. It was a shame Nautis very likely heard very little of it, over the throbbing pain of his broken teeth.

But at the same time, Sylver recognized this whole thing as misplaced anger. Nautis was just at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and Sylver was more pissed off at the fact that he was the reason for the rift between him and Sophia, and didn’t have any monsters or bandits to let loose on.

But at the core of it all was the much deeper, ever-present, and ever-burning rage at losing the Ibis that simply added fuel to whichever fire happened to be occupying Sylver’s mind at the moment.

Sylver reached down and picked Nautis up by the back of his neck. Nautis struggled against his grip, but Sylver couldn’t feel even a trickle of mana in the man’s hands. His freshly grown fingernails attempted to scratch against Sylver’s arm, but they couldn’t even get close because of his robe’s sleeves hardening. Sylver put his mask back on and carried Nautis with him.

*

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*

The building had been cleaned, but there were still traces of water damage on the walls and ceiling. The floor had been scrubbed to the point of shining. The people standing inside the large and open room all shared something in common. Not just the masks they wore that hid their face and statuses, not just the scars that every single one of them seemed to have, and not just the battle-ready way all of them stood, regardless of what they were doing.

There was something off about them, in the way that made them stand out from the unscarred people.

The crowd went silent as Novva walked onto the makeshift stage and lifted Nautis into the air by the arm. He splashed the weakly struggling man with a healing potion, and Nautis’s shattered teeth started to fall out as new ones grew in to replace them. The dark robe he was wearing glittered in the artificial lighting from all the blood it had soaked up.

“Lords and ladies, counts and countesses, dukes and duchesses, thank you all for gathering here today! I assume that all of you know me, but I’ll introduce myself to the friends and family you may have brought! My name is Novva of Pere! I have recently inherited the title of Duke! From my now 33-year-old daughter! I was gone for a while, for those who may not know! I missed all of my children’s weddings! My wife had buried an empty casket and mourned my death as a widow! I am a stranger to my grandchildren, a ghost that looks just like the man in the portraits!” Novva shouted, lifting Nautis into the air with each sentence.

“I’ve killed people! I’ve tortured people! I’ve eaten people!  I’ve crippled them! I left them to die! I’ve committed so many atrocities, only the fact that I had people that depended on me stopped me from taking my own life! There is nothing I will do, or will ever do, that will make up for what I’ve done!” Novva shouted, each time getting a small nod from the mixture of mask-wearing nobles.

“And yet! I got to return home! To a widowed wife that refused countless offers of marriages! That went to sleep weeping and alone, all in the faint hope I would someday return! To a daughter that was now a mother! To my son's grave that had died proudly in battle! To a brother that had passed in his sleep!” Novva shouted, earning teary-eyed cheers from the masked crowd.

“And it is all thanks to one man! We can be honest here! We tell the world a story, but we all know the truth! We’ve been there, we’ve met him, shook his hand, watched him repeatedly lay on the ground shivering in pain as he tried to get us out!” Novva shouted. The crowd of nobles all started to look around, amongst each other.

“Some of you respected his plea for privacy and left him alone! Some of you did not,” Novva said, with a pointed stare at one particular corner of the crowd.

“But today isn’t about that man! Today is about the man that brought Salvador the peeler to us! The one that brought Elyda to cut us apart to see how much she could remove before we died! The man directly responsible for every missed birthday, every missed wedding, every widow, every dead relative, every drop of blood our wives, husbands, aunts, uncles sons, and daughters shed in our place, and every single person that isn’t here today!” Novva half shouted half screamed as his booming voice threatened to crack. Nautis had gone completely limp by this point in time.

“The man who the Cord refused to give to us. Who managed to escape and then tried to make a profit on our suffering by selling it to the highest bidder!” Novva shouted, as he let go of Nauti’s arm and grabbed his head instead.

“The man who’s responsible for every single thing we had to do in exchange for the Cord getting us out of there! He’s here now! Available to do with, as you wish! With every copper going directly to the man who shall not be named but we all know! The starting bid is 2 million gold!” Novva shouted, immediately being drowned out by the sounds of people outbidding one another.

*

*

*

Lola slowly removed the cigar from her lips and blew the smoke up towards the ceiling.

“973 million gold…” Lola said, as Sylver took a sip from his glass and swirled the dark liquid around.

“It’s enough to tell Wuss to go fuck himself if you ever feel like it. Probably the Cord too, but we’re not quite there yet,” Sylver said, as Lola continued to stare at the ceiling.

“It’s almost enough to buy a phantasmal level weapon,” Lola said, as she slowly spun in her chair and made the smoke coming out of her cigar become a spiral.

“Not really. At that level people rarely care about money, it’s more about trading and favors and the like. Before I was reborn, you could offer me billions upon billions of gold, and I wouldn’t have even considered it,” Sylver explained, as Spring poured more dark liquid into his glass.

“What family bought him?” Lola asked as she sat up straighter in her seat. She didn’t bother sipping from her glass and took the whole thing as a shot.

“Don’t know. But I’m guessing it’s a couple that are planning to share him. Love and hatred, the two most powerful forces in the world. The things people are willing to do for the ones they love is a thing of beauty. And the lengths people will go to stick it to someone they hate, should be feared. Oh, uh… The money is going to be coming in a bit slowly, moving around large sums takes time, a woman named Nate will be coming to see you at some point in the future, to sort things out. She’s Novva’s so you can trust her,” Sylver said, as he remembered what Novva had said after Sylver had shown him how to activate the many many curses embedded inside Nautis to shut him down.

He wouldn’t die from them, although Sylver did make it so that he could kill him at any time he wanted, just to be safe.

“My sense of value doesn’t quite fit. The things I considered rare and valuable, cost mere silvers for a kilogram, while the things I took for granted now costs hundreds of gold,” Lola said, as she had just about every time they sat down to talk.

“At least for personal experiments, that’s no longer an issue. I know things need to be done in a certain way for the workshop to work, so use the money as you see fit, but in the future when I ask for something, I’d like to not have to think about the cost. I’m not going to try to buy anything impossible with this, but at least for components and ritual ingredients I want the best of the best,” Sylver said.

“As soon as possible,” Lola added.

“As quickly as the laws of magic allow an object to move from point A to point B, yes. With how many people teleport, everything moves quick. Novva gathered hundreds of nobles from just about every corner of the continent in a couple of days. And yet with all that speed, Kitty has had nearly a year and still hasn’t found so much as a trace of members of the Ibis,” Sylver said bitterly.

“In her defense… this is the Ibis we’re talking about… If your people are hiding, I’m pretty sure even you would have a hard time tracking them down. Not to mention, you’re putting a lot of eggs in the ‘they’d use their real names’ basket. You’re uniquely suited and used to fighting against people stronger than you, is the same true for everyone else?” Lola asked, poking with her cigar towards Sylver as if poking a hole in his plans.

“It isn’t a perfect plan. But what’s the alternative? Look for anyone that what? Anyone who’s too old to be level 1? Anyone who recently had a major personality change? A mage that is using magic that is thought to be dead or lost, at a level of proficiency that shouldn’t be possible?” Sylver asked, as he finished his cup and leaned back in his seat. Spring refilled it.

“There’s also…” Lola started to say but changed her mind.

“There is, it’s a possibility. But for now, let’s assume the best. They’re out there, well hidden, and at some point, they’ll recognize your name, or just happen to overhear mine, and will send a letter, or come here themselves… I’m going to do the surgery tomorrow evening. I would appreciate it if you could watch over me, just in case. I’m going to be uniquely defenseless during the process, and it would calm me down to have someone nearby in case of an emergency,” Sylver said, with his eyes closed and shoulders relaxed.

“I’m offended that you thought you needed to ask. Of course, I’ll stand guard. Not to mention, it’s not every day that you get to see an ancient lich operate on himself,” Lola said, a slight hint of hurt in her voice as she finished her cigar and left it on the ashtray.

“It isn’t as exciting as you imagine it to be, my biology is a lot looser than a normal person’s. And I’ve had a lot of practice. It’s honestly easier now that I have a mostly human body,” Sylver explained, gesturing towards his significantly leaner than the real Ciege’s body.

The muscle was still there, but lack of proper hydration, and over-exertion, as well as Sylver’s magic burning through various vitamin reserves, had made him pale and almost too veiny around the arms and torso.

“Either way, congratulations on nearly becoming a billionaire. If I’m being entirely honest, I’m jealous. The workshop isn’t getting anywhere near that figure for another 23 years,” Lola said.

“This was luck. A steady income is always better than a one-off lucky jackpot. It’s not like I can repeat this,” Sylver said.

“True… It’s weird nothing happened to Melo. Do you think there’s a chance he’s lying?” Lola asked.

“No. There’s no point to it. My best guess is that either the system doesn’t allow skills, perks, and traits to be transferred to the extent I attempted… Or that Poppy’s mark interfered with the ritual. I might not be able to sense any traces of her magic, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of something being there,” Sylver explained. Lola’s eyes widened slightly.

“So what’s next?” Lola asked, deciding she didn’t want to get into this.

“After the surgery… I’m either going to go down into the dungeon to increase my level, or I’m going to go on a quest or two. I’m leaning towards quest because I really don’t like the idea of being trapped inside a boss room again. There’s also the war with the Krists, so I could always ask for higher leveled groups and go after them. If there aren’t any good quests, I’ll go kill Krists off. I don’t think I can make shades out of them, so I’m hoping for a good quest, with lots and lots of bandits. Or monster extermination, although those would take longer to raise as undead. I could use a few more flying capable ones…” Sylver said.

“And then you’re going to meet the woman in white?” Lola asked with a slightly raised eyebrow and a faint grin.

“That’s the plan,” Sylver answered.

“I see… And just for curiosity’s sake, does she look anything like the woman in white standing right behind you?” Lola asked. Sylver turned into smoke and turned inside out and materialized looking behind him. The chair had been sent flying, and Sylver’s heart was trying to hammer itself out of his chest as Lola started to laugh so hard she began to cough.

Sylver reached over her desk and took her empty glass away from her.

“I’m telling Salgok not to give you any more black ale. And I’m taking your bottle,” Sylver said, as Spring collected the large half-empty bottle in question and gave it to him. Lola didn’t stop laughing for even a moment as Sylver finished the whole bottle himself, and started to laugh at her laughing.