Ch240-Graveyard Flowers (Patreon)

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Ch240-Graveyard Flowers

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Sylver turned the card around, but to his surprise, the back was still blank.

He turned it around again and read the words one more time.

‘Please leave me alone.’

He checked the back just in case there was something on there.

Then he turned it around again, and read the words written on it.

‘Please leave me alone.’

Once again, there was no signature, just 4 words, written using just a bit too much force. The handwriting wasn’t anything special, there weren’t any fancy calligraphy loops, it was as basic as it got. It wasn’t rushed, but it hadn’t been written carefully either.

Sylver lifted the piece of paper up into the air and held it up to one of the suns. Then he turned it around again.

‘·ǝuoʅɐ ǝɯ ǝʌɐǝʅ ǝsɐǝʅꓒ’

There was a tension in the air.

It was the type that normally preceded the types of battles that would later on be described as “a massacre.” The tell-tale sign of such battles was that only one side was nervous, drenched in a mixture of sweat and piss, whereas the other was calm.

Or in Edmund’s case, giddy.

Sylver put the note back down, put it back into its envelope, and turned to face the man on the horse.

Anastasia identified the man as… his name wasn’t important, to make a long story short, he was the man in charge of this city. The Marquis of whatever this city was called.

Fredrick, Poppy’s husband, wasn’t interested in the headache that came with managing an entire city. Because like Lola, he didn’t need to own the city officially, everyone of significance was already dancing to whatever tune he played.

“Just so there aren’t any misunderstandings, may we enter the city?” Sylver asked.

The Marquis shook his head.

“Alright. I know it seems obvious, but I hate it when there’s conflict because of a miscommunication. If we try to enter the city, you will try to stop us, correct?” Sylver asked.

The Marquis nodded.

“Great. We got that out of the way… I don’t suppose you’ll tell us why you’re doing this? Or what you were told that you’re this on guard?” Sylver asked.

The Marquis just shook his head.

“Yeah, thought not… Does anyone have any questions?” Sylver asked, without once breaking eye contact with the Marquis.

“How far away is the nearest allied city?” Edmund asked.

He was one of the few people who could ask that question without making it sound like a threat. Edmund asked because he wanted the fight to be fair, that his opponents had a fighting chance.

But even if Edmund was the one to ask, the Marquis had enough sense not to answer. He simply continued looking right at Sylver, with the kind of quiet terror that Sylver felt he didn’t deserve while looking the way he currently did.

If he was a 20-foot-tall skeletal creature, with 3 heads, multiple arms, and a massive cloud of utter darkness blocking out the suns above him, surrounded by an army of undead monstrosities, then the fear in the man’s eyes would make sense, but right now, Sylver was just a pale man, wearing a simple black robe.

“If my memory serves me right, Pere is closest. But I somehow doubt Novva Da’Pere will be all that willing to help you defend against this particular threat,” Sylver said, and while the fear in the Marquis’ eyes didn’t increase, it broadened.

It was the difference between finding a knife-wielding man in your house and hearing the man say your name.

The first was vague, there was a chance the man’s presence was unintentional, and he picked the house at random.

But if that random man calls you by your name, the possibility that he’s here by accident goes right out the window.

About 10 seconds of silence passed, during which Sylver doubled down on the decision he had made the moment he read Poppy’s note.

“We’re probably going to leave and never come back… But since there’s a chance we might change our minds, in an hour, or a couple of years, would you mind answering a few questions?” Sylver asked as he straightened his back. “Hypothetically speaking… Just hypothetically… How long can you afford to have your army standing out here? Forget the soldiers, to keep this many adventurers on standby, you must be bleeding money,” Sylver said.

Edmund took a step forward, so he was next to Sylver.

“Logistics of keeping such a large number of men fed, rested, and maintaining their equipment aside, what are you going to do about the monsters? Someone needs to be out there to keep their numbers down, but if all of your adventurers are busy standing guard, who’s killing monsters? Considering how isolated you are, you have maybe 4 months until a monster outbreak occurs,” Edmund said.

Sylver nodded along.

“The next question is whether there’s any point in having an army at all. You act as if whoever you’re trying to prevent from entering will fight you fairly. That they’ll run straight towards your army, and they’ll clash against one another. What if they dig their way inside? Do you have mages actively searching for underground tunnels?” Sylver asked with the tiniest hint of a grin.

It had the intended effect, as the Marquis somehow managed to become even paler than he had been a minute ago. With how little blood was reaching his face, he wasn’t that many shades away from being as pale as Sylver was.

“They could also attack you from above. Just smash their weapon against your barrier, until it couldn’t handle it. Then again, that attack could be a distraction for what’s happening below. Or the attack from below is the distraction. You can’t take any chances, if one of your opponents gets inside, the others will arrive shortly after,” Edmund hypothesized.

“But before you get started on fortifying your outer defenses, how secure are your insides? Are all the guards paid well enough that they can’t be bribed? Are their families secure enough that they can’t be taken as hostages? All it would take is one guard to create a crack in your defenses. And considering who your opponents are, a single crack is all they would need,” Sylver explained.

“What if they use hit-and-run tactics on you? Whittle down the size of your army over days? Weeks? Months? Will your equipment last that long? Will the people who repair and maintain their weapons and armor keep up with their damage? What are you going to do when there simply aren’t enough swords to go around?” Edmund asked.

“Since you’re not connected to the teleportation network, how long can you last without importing anything? A city’s economy is a vital part of its defense, nobody is loyal on an empty stomach. And if you do allow merchants to visit, how can you be sure the people you’re trying to defend against don’t sneak in via a barrel? Or a sack? What if the intruder can fit himself into a box no bigger than a pack of playing cards?” Sylver asked.

“And even if they can’t get inside themselves, what about disease? A single tainted apple is all it would take to, if not outright kill, at the very least cripple your people. And what about morale? Do you think everyone is going to continue guarding a city, while their wives are dying inside?” Edmund asked.

“On the subject of wives, how secure are your children? Are all their bodyguards paid well enough that they can’t be bought? No secrets that could be exploited? How would they handle multiple teams of assassins, competing with one another, to collect a 50 million gold bounty on your children’s heads?” Sylver asked.

“How…”

Edmund broke the steady flow of barely veiled threats they had been making.

It took him a moment to push past what Sylver had said, but sadly, that moment of silence was enough for the Marquis to break out of the fear-induced trance he had been in.

Without saying a word, the Marquis lifted his left hand into the air, and a split second later, disappeared.

He appeared near the back of his army, and for a half second, all the soldiers and adventurers that had been watching him converse with the four figures in the distance tightened their grip on their weapons and readied for the order to charge.

But no order to charge came.

In fact, there was no order to do anything. The Marquis stood in behind the safety of his men and waited for something to happen.

“Did you have to bring up his children?” Edmund asked quietly as if the distant army might hear him.

“You know how nobles can be. 10,000 soldiers dying is nothing, but god forbid one of their sons loses an arm,” Sylver said with a shrug of the shoulders.

For about a minute, nothing happened. Nobody moved, nobody said anything, the 3 men, and 1 woman, just stood where they were, and watched the motionless army.

“I’m confused, what are we doing? Are we going to war?” Faust asked.

“We’re leaving,” Edmund said with a huff.

“She’s not inside, there’s nothing to gain by going to war,” Sylver added.

“Aside from a couple of levels and heaps worth of fun,” Edmund said with a trace of a grin.

“But what was the point of threatening them?” Faust asked.

“Nobody threatened anyone,” Edmund said.

“I said “hypothetically” twice, and on top of that, we were just asking questions. A threat needs to be direct,” Sylver said.

“Even if we did threaten him, he’s not going to do anything. His whole city was guarded by a near-omniscient clairvoyant since before he was born, this is likely the first time the man has ever had to face an opponent without knowing the outcome beforehand,” Edmund said, as Sylver nodded along.

They watched the army scurry into a new formation for a while. It was made all the more difficult since they seemed to be afraid of letting Sylver and company out of their sight. As if they were backed into a corner by a wild animal and were expecting it to attack them at any second.

“We could just sneak in… I was just trying to scare him with that digging underground thing, but if I go home and grab Ria, I could walk right through their barrier. I strong-arm the Marquis into letting you inside, and we go have a chat with Poppy…” Sylver thought out loud.

Edmund stood on his tiptoes, and continued rising, as he floated off the ground. He stretched his limbs out and lay down as if he was laying on an invisible sofa.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you though. And like you said, since the stick isn’t on the table, that only leaves the carrot. And if she was interested in any of our carrots, she would have told us,” Edmund said.

“If I was interfering with her, she would have told us. She wants to be left alone, and since she didn’t specify that she wants other parties left alone as well, that implies that she’s fine with us interfering with them,” Sylver reasoned out.

Edmund looked somewhat convinced and given the amount of effort the alternatives to simply leaving required, it was good enough for Sylver.

“What if this is a bluff?” Edmund asked.

“To find out, we would need to attack them. And regardless of how relatively unimportant this city may be, we run the risk of making the high king an enemy. And even if we do get in, what’s to stop Poppy from simply running away? It’s not like she’s glued to one place. Our only means of tracking her are Chrys, and given the source of Chrys’ power, I find it unlikely that she’ll be able to find Poppy,” Sylver explained, as he used [Deadly Darkness] to lift himself, Faust, and Anna into the air.

Will materialized underneath them, and the trio sat down in their usual places amidst the large wyverns’ spikes. Edmund floated down onto the wyvern’s back and used his floating sword as a bench to sit on.

***

“Speaking of Chrys…” Edmund said.

They had been outside the obelisk’s range for a while, and yet Chrys hadn’t contacted them. There were plenty of birds nesting inside the forest, even if they didn’t have the vocal capacities of ravens, surely Chrys could at the very least find a rat to answer a couple of yes/no questions.

A worrying thought entered Sylver’s and Edmund’s minds simultaneously.

“She wouldn’t dare,” Sylver said.

“Wouldn’t she? She’s up against you. And if she knows you from before, she knows it’s pointless to attack you directly. She can’t go after me, because I’m me, but what about Chrys, Lola, and the others?” Edmund asked.

Sylver turned to look at the distant city.

“Literally everything could be solved if we sat down and talked. If she doesn’t know about Nautis or Nameless, it isn’t as if I’m going to try to shake information out of her. And if-”

“I wasn’t aware clairvoyants stopped being paranoid lunatics. I’m glad to hear the current generation of future-seeing magic users are all relaxed, and rational people,” Edmund said, while continuously rolling his eyes.

“Rose was reasonable. Even with the [Hero] thing, she didn’t sound all that crazy,” Sylver argued.

Before Edmund got a chance to speak, a flock of crows collided with Will. Most of them disappeared into a cloud of feathers and blood, as they hit the spikes on his back, but a few survived.

“We were just talking about you,” Sylver said, as he looked around at the splatters of blood the unlucky birds left behind.

Five crows, each with a brightly glowing left eye, turned their heads in perfect unison and looked directly at Sylver.

“Poppy is gone,” they said.

Their voices harmonized so well that it almost sounded as if a person was speaking.

“I feel like we’ve already discussed how I feel about pregnant pauses,” Sylver said as the birds simultaneously cocked their heads to the side.

“She’s not in this realm,” the quintet of ravens explained.

“How can you be sure?” Edmund asked.

The ravens turned their heads without moving their bodies and were now looking at Edmund.

“She told me,” the ravens said, as Sylver sat up from his makeshift seat, and moved towards the birds.

“Poppy spoke to you?” Sylver asked.

The sheer confusion dulled whatever sense of anger he may have felt. The birds turned to look at Sylver again.

“She stopped by the house before she left. She said that it’s too dangerous here without Lily and Rose,” the ravens explained.

Before Edmund could ask the question, the ravens answered.

“She said a lot of sleeping giants have begun to wake up. And she said she doesn’t want to be here when they start moving,” the quintet of pitch-black avian creatures said.

A moment of silence passed, during which Sylver resisted the urge to say something incredibly offensive. Thankfully, he succeeded in not telling Poppy, through Chrys, where exactly she can shove her ominous message of future danger.

“Did she by any chance specify what or where the giants are?” Sylver asked.

“She didn’t,” the ravens said.

“Of course not. Can’t ever predict something and be specific about it, that would make things too easy,” Sylver said.

Edmund reached out with his hand and gently patted Sylver on the shoulder.

“On the other hand, now that we know she’s gone, we don’t have to worry about her,” Edmund offered.

“That’s a good point… Alright,” Sylver said as he clapped his hands together, “from this moment on, I never want to hear the name Poppy, Rose, or Lily ever again. We’re done with them.”

The 5 birds made a coughing sound.

“There’s one more thing…” the birds said. “A good thing,” they added, once they saw the expression on Sylver’s face.

“What good thing?” Sylver asked.

There was no excitement in his voice, he was just tired at this point.

“She did something to the eye. She stabilized it, I think. It’s hard to describe it. But it’s a lot easier for me to control animals and people, and my range increased significantly, I can almost see the Asberg,” Chrys explained.

Sylver had to remind himself that despite her abilities, Chrys was still young.

“You…” Sylver closed his eyes for a moment and forced himself to speak in a calmer tone. “You let Poppy fiddle with the only thing we have that can find my people?” Sylver asked, on the off chance he heard her wrong. She was talking through birds, it wasn’t impossible they weren’t saying the words Chrys meant for them to say.

Sylver did his best to not sound furious, but the quintet of ravens looked ready to fly away out of fright.

He wasn’t even sure who to blame for this.

Was he at fault for not instilling the importance of the eye to Chrys? Was it Chrys’ fault for being so naïve? Was Lola responsible for letting this happen under her watch? Should Sylver had asked Bruno to stay near her?

“What’s done is done,” Edmund said with a genuinely relaxed tone of voice.

The thing is, he understood exactly why Sylver looked like he was about to start screaming. But unlike Sylver, Edmund’s mind didn’t immediately go to the worst-case scenario, knowing him, Edmund truly believed that Poppy did something to help them.

Instead of dwelling on what had already happened, and could no longer be changed, Sylver chose to move along.

“Alright then… Can you ask Lola what she knows about Nautis?” Sylver asked.

The quintet of ravens spoke without so much as a pause.

“He disappeared 3 years ago,” the ravens said.

“Excuse me?” Sylver asked, with giant creases on his forehead from how open his eyes were.

“The people whose turn it was to torture him, disappeared, along with Nautis, a little over 3 years ago. To date, none of them have been found,” the ravens explained, in a relaxed tone of voice, as if it was no big deal.

“Did… Was… The report Lola gave me, that caught me up to date on all the things I missed while I was away… You wouldn’t happen to know if this was mentioned in it?” Sylver asked.

There was a pause this time.

A good 10 seconds of silence.

“She says it was,” Chrys said.

“Where?”

“Right before Arda’s monster outbreak. A lot of weird things happened around that time, she says it’s possible you skimmed past it,” the ravens explained.

“Because compared to everything else, it was barely worth a footnote?” Sylver clarified.

The pause that followed lasted for a solid minute.

“Yes,” the quintet of ravens said.

“Alright, good to know,” Sylver said.

***

Sylver sat with his back to his companions and stared at the distant sunset.

The ground below was mostly grassy plains, with a barely visible stream of water meandering through it. The long shadows cast by what little remained of the sun showed the smooth hills spread throughout the otherwise flat land.

After talking to Chrys for a while, Sylver gave himself some time to think things through.

Tera was going to give birth within the next couple of hours. Her water hadn’t broken yet, but Chrys could already see the two identical boys sleeping in their cribs, a week from now.

Both were in perfect health and indistinguishable from one another. The only thing Chrys couldn’t see were their names, because Tera didn’t like the names Bruno suggested, and Bruno didn’t like the names Tera wanted to use.

Ria had gathered a literal metric ton of Lola’s prototypes/botched enchanted items and sealed herself away inside one of the storage rooms in Sylver’s workshop. And since it was Ria, Chrys couldn’t see what she was doing. When Chrys tried to go inside, Ria politely, but very firmly, asked her not to disturb her.

Mora had followed suit and disappeared into the dungeon 2 days ago and was yet to return.

Chrys also mentioned that she was 99.8% sure the Sun Demon was real. Or, at the very least, something very bad was going to happen in 13 years during the Summer Solstice. So bad that it made it nearly impossible for Chrys to look further than 13 years into the future.

On the other hand, the other clairvoyants didn’t see anything of the sort occurring in the near future. Quite literally, not a single one saw anything notable occur during the next real summer solstice.

But that was something to deal with in the future, it was important, but it wasn’t urgent.

Rescuing Tuli was urgent.

And since Chrys had confirmed that Novva didn’t have anything that could be used to curse Nautis, Sylver wasn’t sure what their next step was going to be.

Edmund floated over to Sylver but didn’t say anything for a few minutes.

“Since a demon is involved, anything other than a priest or paladin will be basically useless. We would just be handing the demon more people to fight against us,” Edmund said.

“Yep,” Sylver said without looking away from the sunset.

“The biggest danger is that we don’t know just how many people Nautis has. Or how strong they are. Or how strong he or the demon is,” Edmund said.

“Yep,” Sylver said.

“And because of Tuli’s shell, as well as the obelisk’s magical interference, we have no way of scouting it out without actually going in,” Edmund said.

“Yep,” Sylver said.

Neither of them spoke for the time it took the last sun to finish setting. Sylver continued sitting on the edge of Will’s back, and since the suns had set, he watched the ground beneath them.

Sylver sighed as he came to a decision. He stood up and turned around so he was facing Edmund, Faust, and Anna.

“Alright, I have something. As far as plans go, it isn’t my best, but-”

Sylver had the imprint of a small hand on his chest and was flying away from the giant sphere of sparkling light. A half second later, the sphere of light, or rather, the person surrounded by the sphere, was sent flying toward the ground.

Sylver watched as Edmund flew behind the sphere of light, while Faust carried Anna toward the direction Sylver had been sent flying.

Sylver kicked his legs forward and turned around, so he was upside down, relative to the ground. A person wearing silver chainmail, armed with a silver great-sword, had jumped upward and was less than a second away from reaching Sylver.

Sylver flexed his left foot and snapped 2 of the metatarsal bones, which resulted in an explosive release of seawater.

Sylver feinted reaching for the silver armored person’s weapon, and when the person pulled their sword back to counterattack, Sylver pushed all the water around him using [Advanced Water Manipulation] upwards.

The silver great-sword-wielding person was pushed upward, along with the water, while Sylver was launched towards the ground.

He narrowly missed a tree branch, that would have torn an arm off if he collided with it, and expertly dived into the small hole formed in the earth beneath him.

He created a tunnel barely big enough for a toothpick to be pushed through, as he used [Fog Form] to squeeze through it. Sylver made the earth directly above him bunch up, which increased its density, which in turn protected him from the onslaught of holy magic the person above was trying to kill Sylver with.

Just as Sylver thought he was “safe,” a silver javelin impaled the space his head had been a moment earlier. It was sheer luck there was enough room in the tiny hole he made for him to move his head out of the way.

He wasn’t as lucky with the second javelin, or the third. The second one passed through his left thigh, it slid along the bone but didn’t break it. The third javelin got him in the stomach, but just like the first two, the thrower had used too much force, and the javelin just moved through him. They left two holes in him, that hurt so much, that a lesser undead would have lost its mind from the absurd amount of pain.

Instead of digging deeper, Sylver pressed his hand up towards the hole one of the javelins left behind and forced a tendril of fog through. He materialized on the surface a split second later.

Upon closer look, his opponent was a woman, the shape of the shoulders and the wide stance gave it away since the leather padding underneath the silver chainmail hid any sort of obvious womanly tells. Her helmet didn’t have any eyeholes, and it appeared that the “helmet” was simply very fine chainmail that had been tailored to perfectly wrap around her head.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

Sylver made a sideways gesture with his hand, as a spike of solidified earth formed underneath the woman, and if she reacted a little slower, would have pierced her through the groin, and exited through the top of her head.

Instead, even though she had been ready for an attack from the side, she stomped her foot on the ground and canceled out Sylver’s magic.

Expertly, she blocked Fen’s attempt to shove a rapier through the back of her neck, she dodged out of the way of Dai’s downward swing, and as Sylver tried to jump back to create some distance, the woman sort of threw herself at him, using the sword as a lever.

Sylver couldn’t see her eyes, but he could feel the woman savor this moment, as she got closer and closer, to the seemingly defenseless undead. Her hands were both glowing, reaching for Sylver’s head, and the second she made physical contact, Sylver would be gone.

But right at that moment, the seawater that had been making its way downward reached the ground, and the unimpeded woman found herself trapped by the ice that had enveloped her. Sylver tried to send an earth spike through her face, but the woman managed to react quick enough to block it.

Instead of spike exploding out of the back of her skull, the silver fabric like chainmail was torn and revealed a scratched pale check underneath it.

Sylver didn’t bother trying to finish her off, because his current priority was to buy as much time as he could. If it was just one paladin, that would be one thing, but even as Sylver ran away, he could feel 4 more aiming at him from above.

Sylver kicked up a cloud of dust, and 8 identical black robe-wearing men ran out of it, each wearing a mask made out of semi-solid mushrooms.

Sadly, the paladins either had a way of tracking him, or they were very lucky, because all 4 of them ignored the decoys, and it was pure luck that Sylver didn’t get hit by their silver javelins.

Off in the distance, he could see flashing lights, which could belong to anybody given the current opponents, but Edmund’s magic had a very distinct crackling sound to it.

Sylver wasn’t going to win this fight, not with a shredded thigh, and a hole where his belly button should be, but he didn’t need to.

He only needed to survive long enough for Edmund to kill them all.

Just as Sylver finished this thought, he smashed his face against the invisible barrier.

Sylver stabbed at the barrier with his dagger, but he was experienced enough to know when a barrier was too strong for him to break.

He turned around and saw a woman wearing a bright red robe, floating in the air, surrounded by what could only be described as a sea-urchin-like barrier consisting of feather-shaped silver daggers.

For a breath, Sylver and the woman made eye contact.

And while Sylver recognized her by the shape of her hips, as well as the glowing tattoos on her uncovered shoulders, he could tell that Sophia had no idea who he was.

And between the hood hiding his face, the red crown on his head, and the generic black robe, he couldn’t really blame her.

The mass of floating silver blades pointed right at Sylver and flew at such speed, that they left an afterimage behind them.

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