Ch239-All The King’s Men (Patreon)

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Ch239-All The King’s Men

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As far as makeshift explosives went, this was pretty good.

Edmund didn’t think so, but thankfully Sylver hadn’t made this to please Edmund, he made it to tear whoever tried to enter this bunker into tiny chunks.

When Edmund made a “bomb,” it’s more accurate to describe it as a delayed disintegration spell. Physical matter acts funny when it “burns” at the temperatures Edmund is capable of reaching, to the point describing anything he “burns” as “burning” is wildly inaccurate.

Sylver could see it in the way Edmund was trying to decide whether changing the positions of the pickax heads would do anything.

Edmund used his magic to move the explosion Sylver’s infinite bombs caused, into a small cube of carved iron. The cube was then placed into a box filled with nails, pickax heads, and whatever else Sylver found nearby that he thought would work well as shrapnel.

These explosives were then half haphazardly hidden throughout the bunker, Sylver couldn’t make them into a chain, but even if only 1 of them detonated, there was a pretty good chance the change in air pressure alone would set all the others off.

If the bunker was stronger than the combined force of the explosives, great, whoever opened the door will be blasted by a highly compressed wave of air, filled with fast-moving metal fragments.

If the bunker is weaker than the combined force of the explosives, great, the whole thing will be torn apart, and whatever secrets it may have held will be lost among the copper rubble.

It did occur to Sylver that there might be something about Tuli hidden around here, but it wouldn’t change the fact that Sylver only had 1 way of healing her. Although given how quickly Tuli appeared to be healing, Sylver was hopeful that simply removing that rod from her spine will be enough.

Sylver did have the idea to coat the insides of the bunker with slow-acting poisonous mushrooms, but the problem with that is that Sylver had a hard time telling just how deadly a particular mushroom would be to a living person.

For this to work the infected person would need to live long enough to have contact with Nautis, but if it took Nautis a year to die, then there was no point in doing this. Sylver hadn’t had a chance to develop that aspect of his mushroom magic, he had wasted what little downtime he had trying to bend physical space using fucking fungus.

In short, an explosion was better.

It was direct, had a good chance of killing someone, and worked well as a message.

The message in this particular case was “Fuck You,” but it could also be interpreted as Sylver being more concerned with killing and destroying Nautis, as opposed to helping Tuli. The last part was a bit of a stretch, but it made more sense than that Sylver ruined a perfectly good bunker out of sheer spite.

Once all the explosives were primed, Sylver closed the hatch.

The sky was dark, not quite the dead of the night, but between the thick clouds blunting the feeble light of the moons, the surrounding forest gained a feeling of unease.

But, much to the woodland’s chagrin, the present company was unable to appreciate the eerie atmosphere.

Sylver could see in the dark as if it was the middle of the day, Edmund barely bothered to keep his eyes open, with how much information his mana sense provided him, Faust had a similar setup, albeit based on Ki, instead of mana, and Anna was incapable of experiencing fear.

There was a cold wind whistling as it brushed past the trees, hiding the presence of enemies, save for the fact that the darkness was practically infested by creatures of the night, more commonly referred to as shades.

“You mentioned lightning. What were the other attacks like?” Sylver asked, a bit louder than he intended.

One of the downsides of Sylver’s [Chloromancy] trait was that he had a keen awareness of the various plant life around him, including the plants being actively altered by whatever Fae was hiding inside them.

The alterations felt light, and more importantly, gentle, which meant it was likely that the Fae here weren’t one of the “wacky” ones.

The “wacky” Fae would have been giggling to themselves as they molded the tree trunks into phallic shapes, or made the leaves fall all at once, and kidnapped someone while the others were buried in an avalanche of green.

These Fae were “wacky,” instead of wacky because it was an act.

They only acted “wacky,” when they’re fucking with people, the second they sense a serious threat is approaching, their carefree attitude disappears, as if it was never there in the first place, and they move with the precision of a well-trained army unit.

It was a lesson Sylver learned the really hard way.

“What do you mean?” Faust asked.

“Did they attack you using physical projectiles, bolts of fire, ice shards, air blades, beams of light, or something else? We might be able to work out how many people we’re up against,” Sylver explained, as Faust stared off into space for a moment.

“Arrows and metal spheres about the size of an apple. The weird thing is, they weren’t moving that fast, certainly not fast enough that I couldn’t dodge them, and yet, every time I moved out of the way, I still somehow got hit,” Faust explained, as both Sylver and Edmund simultaneously slightly cocked their head to the side.

“After you got hit, was there any debris? Or did the arrows and spheres disappear after they hit you?” Sylver asked.

“Now that you’ve said it… No... I caught an arrow with my hand, but I got hit in the back of the head almost immediately, I didn’t drop it, but when I went to block the next attack, the arrow was gone,” Faust explained, as Sylver and Edmund shared a look. “How bad?” Faust asked.

“Not too bad,” Edmund answered with just a hint of worry in his voice.

Sylver on the other hand looked around, and then lightly tapped his foot against the rocky ground.

“Actually… This might even be a good thing,” Sylver said.

Edmund caught onto Sylver’s idea before he even finished thinking of it.

“Even with you storing the excess away in your bones, it’s still going to take a while. And we’ll have to fight them eventually anyway, why not take care of them now?” Edmund asked as Sylver rolled his eyes.

“Because one of us will have to stay close to Anna, to make sure she doesn’t get kidnapped, and even if we do kill them, Nautis will have time to reorganize his forces, or he’ll recruit people to replace them by the time we come back. Even if we win, we don’t really win, and even a minor loss on our side will eat up a ton of precious time,” Sylver explained.

“Given the distance, the density of rock at that depth, and the fact that you’ll have 3 people with you…” Edmund took a second to do the mental math, but his calculations were interrupted by Sylver.

“1 person. You’re going to take Anna with you. With your speed and altitude they’ll never catch you,” Sylver said, as Edmund lifted his head and looked up towards the cloudy sky.

“Even if they do, I’ll be capable of dealing with them,” Edmund said with a faint grin, that had a slightly sinister edge to it if you looked at it from the right angle.

“Going by context, Anna is going to be flown through the stratosphere, while Syl and I dig a tunnel?” Faust asked.

Anna initially looked as bored as she usually did, but that only made the small glint in her eyes even more obvious.

“You’re not claustrophobic, right?” Sylver asked.

“What if they have someone underground? Will you two be alright?” Anna asked.

Edmund chuckled at the question, as he liquefied his sword, so it had a more streamlined shape against his back. It now looked like an uncomfortably long shield.

“Syl is the absolute worst person to attack while he’s underground,” Edmund said with a proud smirk.

“We’ll be fine. They can’t use long-range attacks while we’re surrounded by rock so that only leaves close-quarter combat, which is both of our specialties,” Faust explained, while Edmund nodded along.

“I see,” was all that Anna said.

While Sylver worked on making a hole in the ground for Faust to fall through, Edmund tried to decide how best to carry Anna. Since he didn’t need to worry about her getting fried due to air friction, the only real problem was that Edmund needed at least 1 free arm to fly at a proper speed.

After a few seconds of considering, Edmund decided the best way to carry the girl, was by placing her over his shoulder, like a sack of potatoes. Neither of them were particularly pleased with this arrangement, but both of them weren’t the type to complain about something so minor.

“See you in a bit,” Edmund said, as he once again lifted his head to look up to the sky, and promptly disappeared.

Sylver and Faust watched as a trail of glittering yellow sparks appeared in the air, and became brighter and bigger, as the source of the sparks continued gaining altitude.

The sparks disappeared as Edmund passed through the clouds. Faust was about to turn away, but Sylver silently gestured with his hand for him to continue watching.

For a few seconds, nothing happened.

Sylver and Faust just stared at the dimly lit clouds and listened to the faint rustling of the surrounding trees.

The first thing they heard was a soft crackling sound, which was followed swiftly by a sound that could be described as slowed-down thunder. The clouds glowed with a bright yellow light, and a half second after it had appeared, the light began to move south, leaving a glowing trail behind it.

“Oh…” Sylver said.

“And you call cultivators flashy,” Faust said.

“At his full strength, he would be bright enough to turn night into day. We actually used it as a tactic once. There was an army marching through a desert, and since there weren’t any landmarks, they relied on figuring out their location using the suns and stars. Ed pretended to be a sun and made them veer off course. Took them almost 4 days to figure out what we were doing,” Sylver explained, as he went back to making a hole in the ground.

“I don’t know why, but I expected him to be a bit…” Faust searched around for a word, but couldn’t figure out how to phrase what he was trying to say.

“Intimidating?” Sylver guessed.

As if it was some sort of cold volcano, earth came out of the hole, and spread itself out around it, like a rocky anthill.

“Not intimidating, no… I don’t know, he seems so normal it’s throwing me off a little. Like he’s just a guy,” Faust explained.

“He is just a guy,” Sylver countered.

He gestured for Faust to jump down, as he reached the edge of the range of his [Advanced Earth Manipulation] perk.

Faust landed at the bottom of the hole, without making a sound, and Sylver materialized next to him a moment later. As the earth above moved to plug the deep hole, the two were plunged into darkness. Sylver made a sphere of light float above his head, out of habit, as opposed to any real need.

“The same way you’re just a guy,” Faust said.

“Everyone is “just a guy,” at their core. The people that claim to be more than that are off their rocker,” Sylver said.

“You know what I mean,” Faust said.

“I do. Ed and I wouldn’t be friends if he thought he was more than “just a guy.” I don’t get along with people who think they’re more than what they actually are. It’s why I can’t stand most [Hero]s, they think the fact that a god gave them a task means their desire to complete it is somehow more important than everyone else’s,” Sylver said, as he gestured at the wall covered in shattered rocks.

He touched the wall, and immediately a tunnel just barely tall and wide enough for Faust to walk through appeared. The trick here was to section off a piece of earth and compress it just enough for it not to touch the ceiling, floor, or sides of the tunnel. Once that was done, all Sylver had to do was touch the floating chunk of rocky earth, and absorb it into one of his [Bound Bones].

Sylver got past Faust using [Fog Form] and began working on the next section of the tunnel, while Faust walked towards the end.

There was no point digging down to bedrock, anyone capable of getting this deep, wouldn’t be hindered by an extra kilometer of stone.

Warriors are more or less useless in a fight that isn’t on land. They can fight underwater, with the right kit of enchanted items, but unless they are specifically trained for it, they won’t fight all that well.

When it comes to fighting in the air, in the sense of fighting against a flying opponent, they usually have 1 or 2 ways of dealing with them. Not to mention ranged weapons are a thing, bows, slingshots, spears, boomerangs, and so on.

Fighting underground is something only magic casters are capable of doing.

Even if they have the physical strength to shove rocks out of their way, moving underground is a nightmare, if you don’t have access to earth magic.

One of the main reasons Sylver tended to hide underground while his shades/zombie fought above, was there was a very small number of mages capable of digging this deep, and more importantly, Sylver had the advantage when he fought in enclosed environments.

Mages tended to use mid, to long-range attacks and were almost absurdly weak against someone hitting them point blank with magic, or in Sylver’s case, grabbing their necks with his bare hands.

***

Hours passed in the blink of an eye.

At some point, Sylver came up with the idea of making the tunnel into a hole, and while Faust wasn’t initially thrilled at the prospect, Sylver was able to bribe him by telling him he could go to sleep if they did this.

Healing magic fixes people physically, but drains them mentally, considering the amount of damage he had been healed from, it was a wonder Faust was as awake and alert as he was.

Right now, Faust was laying on his back inside a tube of hardened mushrooms, which were lined with soft mushrooms that functioned as pillows. Sylver initially tried to lubricate the outer layer using more mushrooms, but it turned out it was easier to just cover the tube in a layer of [Necrotic Mutilation], and have the substance pull itself forward.

The tendrils basically climbed through the hole and dragged Faust’s mushroom-enveloped body behind them.

Sylver in turn mostly stayed as a cloud of fog, the 50% reduction in MP regeneration was irrelevant, it didn’t take all that much mana to make the tunnel, the main limiting factor was the relatively short range of Sylver’s [Advanced Earth Manipulation].

50 meters sounds like a lot until you realize a single kilometer has 20 50-meters worth of lengths in it.

In terms of speed, Sylver had no idea. He didn’t care enough to keep track, and after the first half hour, time lost meaning.

Sylver dug a hole, went ahead, and while he waited for the Faust tube to reach him, he dug another hole and went ahead.

It was a simple and monotonous motion, which meant that Sylver barely registered what he was doing after a certain point, and all of his attention was instead focused on his thoughts.

He had made a list of questions to ask Poppy, and then he rearranged them, as a way of distracting himself from the uncomfortable question he didn’t want to ask himself.

What’s my angle?

Back when Sylver “negotiated” with Rose, he had the threat of a tortuously slow death, and on the flip side, Sylver couldn’t be threatened, because he cared more about finding Edmund, than he did about his own life or the lives of the people waiting for him in Eira.

One of the downsides of knowing what your priorities are is that it’s hard to unknown them. Sylver’s number one priority was not letting Edmund die. His second priority was not to die himself. Number three was finding more Ibis members.

Lola and the others were number four, if he had to let them die to find another member from the Ibis, it would break his heart, but he’d do it.

Since he knew his priorities, there wasn’t any confusion as to what would happen if Poppy threatened Edmund’s life. If she admitted that Nautis was working for her, and then told Sylver to stay away from him, or she would kill Edmund, Sylver would have to stay away from Nautis.

Then Tuli would be killed, and the ocean's worth of turtle blood would be on Sylver’s hands.

What made it all the worse, was that Edmund wouldn’t let Sylver make this choice.

Edmund was an optimist, in the most insulting sense of the word, if there was even a chance that he could save Tuli, he’d go for it without a moment of hesitation.

What makes Edmund’s optimism so goddamn weird is that he’d been wrong more than once.

It was one of those things Sylver never understood.

When Sylver took a chance and fucked up, he learned a lesson from his failure. The next time he had to make a difficult choice, he made the smart choice, as opposed to the “right” choice, as certain people put it.

Edmund didn’t learn shit.

He took a chance, and sometimes it worked out for the best, but sometimes it resulted in utter catastrophe.

And yet, Edmund was fine with that.

He wasn’t fine fine, certain failures haunted him to this day, but even with that whispering in the back of his head, he’d rather attempt to save everyone and fail, than merely save those he could guarantee the safety of.

Sylver was the sort of gambler who treated gambling like a job, he counted cards, he bet according to a strict cost/benefit analysis, if someone followed Sylver’s strategy, over the long run they would leave with more money than they initially came in with.

Edmund didn’t even bother looking at his cards and went all in.

The only reason he wasn’t considered a mentally challenged monster was that more often than not, he won. Royal flush, and everything.

People forget tragedies. No one wants to dwell on the death of a child, no one wants to think about the time Edmund’s failure resulted in a city being sucked into the demon realm, after a mere 100 years, no one even remembered the name of that city.

What they do remember, is the time Edmund defeated 300 sorcerers, that were trying to bribe an ancient dragon into reviving a dead god.

What they don’t remember, or rather don’t know, is that Edmund could have simply killed an innocent woman, who had some sort of connection to the ritual or something.

Sylver himself didn’t remember the specifics, but he did remember getting into an argument with Ed about it. If Sylver was given that choice, the very concept of risking his own life, and the lives of everyone who would be killed by the revived god, just to save one woman, was absurd.

More than that, it was irresponsible.

Or it would be if Edmund didn’t have a near-perfect track record.

A part of Sylver couldn’t care less about Poppy.

Edmund was here, whatever Poppy tried to throw at them, Ed would catch, and throw right back at her.

But as enjoyable as that line of thinking might be, the fact of the matter was that Sylver didn’t know what Poppy was capable of, and betting that Edmund could counter it was plain stupid.

But what else could he do?

If Poppy is an enemy, then what?

Just to start, she’s significantly more powerful than both Sylver and Edmund, and while skill and experience can overcome a certain gap of strength, the gap between them and the Poppy was more like a chasm.

And even if she wasn’t that powerful, she was rich enough to hire 100 high-level adventurers to guard her.

So, since the stick wasn’t on the table, the only thing left was some sort of carrot.

Which meant either being sent on a month/year-long quest or telling Poppy one of the many secrets Sylver had gathered over his long life.

Then again, Sylver didn’t know what Poppy was after.

Rose claimed she was the one responsible for everything Poppy had done, the mining camp Nautis built inside Tuli, Yeva’s kidnapping, handing out soul magic grimoires like they were candy, all for the purpose of summing a [Hero].

Allegedly, for the purpose of summoning a [Hero].

Truth be told, Sylver wasn’t 100% certain Rose had told him the complete truth back then. Partially because Sylver wasn’t interested in the whole story back then, he just wanted Edmund and a way to find more Ibis people, if they were out there to find.

Actually… Since Rose spoke about being limited by how much she could interact with that world, there’s a good chance the same rule applies to Poppy.

As was usual, Sylver wished he had been able to predict the fact that Poppy might get in his way in the future. Back then he assumed… hoped, that he’d never have to ever see them again.

Sylver stopped moving, as he heard a sound above him. He stayed as he was for about a minute, while he slowly reached out toward the sound with his mana.

Sylver dug around the large mushroom cylinder that contained a sleeping Faust until he had a room big enough for both of them to comfortably stand.

Sylver made the top half of the mushroom cylinder break apart, and he absorbed the floating pieces into his [Bound Bones] storage.

“We’re about to be attacked?” Faust asked as he quickly climbed out of his makeshift bed.

Considering he didn’t sound the least bit rested; he had spent the entire journey wide awake, pretending to be asleep.

“Oddly enough, no. We’re here,” Sylver said, as the rest of the mushroom tube broke apart and disappeared.

“Really?” Faust asked as the ground under his feet shook for a second, as Sylver turned it into a platform, and began to slowly move it upward.

The walls looked like they were melting, as Sylver moved the earth above them, down underneath them.

“Mages capable of manipulating the earth very rarely have offensive capabilities, it’s too slow of a magic to put up a fight against most things. Even if he has dwarves working for him, they know better than to attack a mage moving underground,” Sylver explained, as the sound of rushing water gradually became louder.

“Honestly, I was certain you would accidentally dig into a secret tunnel, or get attacked by giant worms,” Faust said to which Sylver responded by shrugging his shoulders.

“When we’re outside, run southwest as fast as you can. Once we reach the road, we should be safe,” Sylver explained, as Faust nodded at him.

The dirt became dark and wet, and just as it was about to start dripping onto the two men, the mud collided with an invisible barrier and moved out of the way.

Sylver used [Advanced Water Manipulation] to stop the rushing river water from filling up the hole they were standing in. Faust made a cutting gesture with his left hand, and the water above them exploded from the force and left behind a giant opening.

Sylver materialized above the river, and held the water out of the way, as Faust jumped into the air. The cultivator kicked the air and reached the riverbank.

He didn’t look back, as he jumped again, and more or less disappeared.

Sylver landed on a thick sheet of ice, and slowly floated towards the riverbank. He removed his hood, ran his hands through his hair, and then spread his arms out, to stretch them.

He even yawned.

But to Sylver’s surprise, no one had attacked the decoy.

He pulled the illusion-covered shade back into his shadow, as he was propelled out of the water, and landed on the riverbank.

Sylver was carried towards the road by Ulvic, who was surrounded by 4 more wolf shades, each of which was carrying a decoy Sylver on their back.

The suns were high in the air, which meant Sylver had dug through the night and a good half of the day.

The surrounding trees were oddly short, barely 10 meteres, and a couple were as wide as Sylver was tall. They looked bloated as if someone had squashed a normal tree.

Ulvic and his wolves ran unimpeded, the trees were all so far away from each other, that the wolves could almost run at their full speed, in a straight line.

Once Sylver could see the paved road, he released the metaphorical breath he had been holding. If someone attacked them now, they would risk being attacked by the patrolling guards. The guards weren’t as unkillable as they were inside the city, but they were still plenty strong, within a certain range of the road.

As luck would have it, Sylver found Faust standing a few feet away from a group of 6 men, clad in full plate armor, with an emblem painted onto their round shields.

The 6 guards gave Sylver an odd look, as he summoned 2 wolf shades to act in place of horses, but aside from that, they kept to themselves.

With the road being just shy of empty, Sylver and Faust reached Poppy’s city in record time.

At some point, Edmund found them and flew down to meet them. Anna was dropped down into Faust’s arms, and he caught her and sat her down in front of him.

“I have good news, and bad news,” Edmund said, and the fact that his tone was so cheerful, meant that Sylver could guess with a fair amount of certainty as to what the bad news was.

“How many?” Sylver asked through gritted teeth.

“I counted about 300 adventurers, and maybe 3, or 4, thousand soldiers,” Edmund said.

He did his best to hide his grin, but he was close enough that the joy emanating out of his soul was almost infectious.

“What’s the good news?” Sylver asked as he slowed Ulvic down to a walk.

“You probably won’t have to talk to her,” Edmund said.

Sylver pulled Ulvic down into his shadow, as he fell, and landed on his feet.

In front of him, the road stretched out towards the sealed-shut city gates, archers, mages, and wizards stood at the ready on tops of the castle walls, and as Edmund had said, about 4,000 people were spread out near the gate, and wall.

Sylver slowly moved his gaze from one edge of the army to the other.

The soldiers were largely irrelevant, but if the fact that Edmund was grinning so hard that Sylver could see his teeth was any indication, the 300 or so adventurers were all pretty strong.

Sylver just watched, as a man on horseback broke out of the army, and galloped towards the Arch-Necromancer, Arch-Pyromancer, an ex-[Hero] legendary cultivator, and a woman who was the ultimate shield.

The man had a white flag tied to a tall pole in his left hand, and he was waving it with such vigor, that it was making the horse sway as it ran. The words “pure terror” came to mind, as the man got close enough that Sylver could make out the expression on his face.

“I HAVE A MESSAGE! I HAVE A MESSAGE!” the man screamed over and over again, while he continued waving the white flag around.

Of course you do, Sylver thought wearily.

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