Sylver Seeker

It was important to remain calm and collected.

That Faust was as cool as a cucumber was extremely fortunate because Sylver wasn’t certain he would have had the capacity to deal with someone panicking right now.

The number one priority was preventing the demon from fully forming the portal.

Because if the demon crossed over, and it was 6th tier, or higher, as Edmund had estimated, then everyone was done. Sylver would be “dead,” as would Edmund, and Faust, and Sophia and her lot would likely die from the sheer magical pressure.

Then the demon would be free to wait for the winter solstice, after which the whole world would drown.

In theory, given the specific nature of this demon, there was a chance it would be weak upon crossing into this realm, but the sheer amount of mana it had in its possession would counter even the strongest of Edmund’s attacks.

But given that the demon wasn’t stupid, it was unlikely to stick around long enough for anyone to do anything.

As Nautis lowered his hand into the portal, Sylver felt the portal nearest to his head solidify. As the primal-energy-distorting hand materialized in Sylver’s blind spot, Sylver used [Fog Form] to get away from it.

But Nautis didn’t wait for Sylver to catch his breath, and repeated the exact same attack, using the exact same hand.

If this was anyone else, Sylver would have felt obligated to admit that this was a brilliant, and deadly, combination, but given that the caster was Nautis, Sylver refused to believe it was anything other than dumb luck and coincidence that he had combined those two abilities.

But, as impressive as the whole thing sounded, and as “unbeatable” as it may seem, this wasn’t Sylver’s first time fighting against it.

As Sylver continued dodging out of the way of Nautis’ teleporting hand, a shade hiding behind the altar at the top of the pyramid threw one of the rogue-type shades at Nautis. Sadly, instead of knocking Nautis out of the air, the shade merely passed through him and disappeared into a cloud of black smoke.

Normally, when a shade is destroyed, Sylver can pick it up, and heal it back into shape, but this shade was gone. The framework in its head and skull had been severed, and that in turn disrupted the magic that allowed it to exist as an undead shade.

But its death hadn’t been in vain, because Sylver now knew that Nautis’ defense was passive, given that he didn’t react until after the shade had already passed through him. He didn’t stop his assault with his teleporting hand either.

The fact that Nautis reacted at all meant he didn’t have complete confidence in his defenses. It was also possible he wasn’t accustomed to being untouchable but considering that this was a power “given” to him by a demon, the former was more likely than the latter.

Sylver had been building distance between him and Nautis, as had Faust, but as Sylver began to close the distance, Faust mirrored him and approached the floating white robe-wearing figure.

Nautis didn’t appear to panic, but then again, it’s hard to tell without seeing his face.

Sylver reached the pyramid and began to run up the bone cubes. With a flick of his wrist, a thin black staff appeared in his hand. It teleported with him as he used [Fog Form] to reach the top of the pyramid, and as Sylver spun the staff in his hand, the tip extended and stretched into the shape of a scythe.

“I hope you enjoyed this Nautis,” Sylver said, as he spun the scythe faster and faster, and increased its size and length with every swing.

Nautis lifted his hands out of the portals and turned his head to stare at Sylver.

“Won’t work,” Nautis said, as Sylver’s scythe began to flicker with golden sparks.

“Then you have nothing to fear,” Sylver said, as he moved the scythe from his left hand into his right and stopped spinning it.

The air was shimmering from the heat the blade was outputting, and even amidst the rumbling the turning pyramid made, it was impossible not to hear the dangerous hissing noise that came from the dark weapon.

Sylver threw the scythe at Faust. And as Faust grabbed the weapon out of the air, he disappeared.

And as Faust disappeared, so did Nautis.

Sylver vaguely felt Faust bouncing from the ceiling to the floor and saw a trail of shimmering air in his peripheral vision. As Sylver ran towards the top of the pyramid, Faust appeared on top of it, with a questioning look on his face.

Sylver almost spoke in demon tongue but remembered at the last second that there was a chance the demon working with Nautis would translate. So, he instead just winked at Faust, and as the cultivator disappeared to chase Nautis away, Sylver continued inspecting the framework that made up the bone pyramid.

The trick with this sort of framework was that the slightest alteration could cause it to implode. Which meant that Sylver couldn’t do anything until he figured out how it worked.

The heart was the source of the power, that was obvious enough, the blood was used as a medium, not the most efficient method of moving energy, but it made sense for something this big, and the only mystery that remained was why the pyramid was powering the metal tree, instead of opening the portal directly.

The most likely answer was that the metal tree was being used to refine Tuli’s life energy, into something more useful to a demon. Or it was possible that the flesh the tree could tap into wasn’t enough for the summoning and needed energy from the heart to supplement it. Or it was-

Sylver felt Nautis’ presence far above him, but Faust scared him off before he even finished materializing.

As a blob of congealed blood landed near Sylver’s feet, he got an idea. One that didn’t require a full understanding of the demon-summoning framework.

At the very top of the pyramid, Sylver leaned over the dark square into which blood was flowing, and he considered the wisdom of what he was about to do.

He waited for a breath or two, to make sure no better idea presented itself.

Sadly, given the scale, it was either this, or making an educated guess that the sigil Sylver would destroy would slowly shut the pyramid down, as opposed to imploding, and either killing everyone or transporting them to the demon realm.

The daggers in Sylver’s robe flew upwards and cut around one of the holes the spears had left. A lump of turtle heart meat fell downward and landed directly into Sylver’s hands.

The remaining skin on Sylver’s arms crumbled into dust, up to his shoulders, as the chunk of meat dried, and shrivelled up. The piece of meat the size of a watermelon gradually shrunk until it was the size of an apple.

Sylver’s neck and cheeks flickered with golden sparks, and with a flash of light, the skin on the upper half of his torso tore apart, and dissolved into a grey liquid, along with the skin of his neck, and all of the skin on his head below his ears.

Mora’s strings hung loosely around his significantly thinner body as if he was a cloth puppet someone had abandoned before they could finish sewing all the pieces together.

Sylver rolled his shoulders as he got a better grip on the piece of turtle heart jerky, and with a grunt, began to squeeze it.

His bones creaked from the pressure, and steam escaped from the small cracks that formed on his humerus, but Sylver pressed on, and eventually, a barely visible droplet of pitch-black ink gathered at the bottom of the apple-sized turtle heart clump of meat.

Sylver was careful as he shook the piece of meat, and eventually, the honey-like black liquid fell. The droplet was smaller than a dried raisin, and it disappeared into the blood flowing along the floor without leaving a trace. The blood didn’t even ripple from the droplet and continued to flow up into the altar, into the black square.

On the verge of losing consciousness, Sylver had to use the altar to steady himself, and while he was at it, he grabbed the blood-soaked book and hid it away in his robe.

Just short of delirious from the labour he had just performed, Sylver stood on his shaking legs and waited for the curse to reach the portal above.

[Mutating Override (IV) Proficiency increased to 100%!]

[Mutating Override (IV) rank up available!]

Nautis chose that moment in time to return to the room, and to his and Faust’s mutual surprise, the black scythe Faust had been wielding melted out of his hands. Sylver vaguely felt a portal forming directly behind his head and then had the metaphorical wind knocked out of him, as Faust grabbed him by the back of the neck and carried him away.

Sylver was thrown from one corner of the room to the other, and although he managed to gather enough strength to stand on his own, his mind was too fried to properly predict Nautis’ portals.

Faust shouted something into Sylver’s ear and slapped him across the face, but Sylver couldn’t gather the mental force needed to understand language.

With the weakness of a man about to fall asleep from a fatal concentration of narcotics, Sylver just barely managed to tell Faust that they needed to get upstairs.

Faust said something in response, but it fell on deaf ears. Spring could only repeat what Sylver had said since he couldn’t understand what Sylver was thinking.

At some point, Spring decided to kill three-quarters of the remaining shades, and the influx of mana woke Sylver up like a splash of cold water in the face.

He was inside a tunnel, on Faust’s back, and Faust was using Sylver’s arms the way someone would use the straps on a backpack to carry him.

Sylver used [Fog Form] to get off his companion, and as he materialized next to him, and ran alongside him, Sylver saw that Faust’s face was drenched in sweat.

“Go ahead, I’ll be fine,” Sylver said as he sped up the tunnel.

It warmed his heart that Faust trusted Sylver enough to do as he said, and as soon as he finished nodding, Faust’s body became blurry, and he disappeared.

Sylver ran with all the strength and speed that he could muster, but his legs could only do so much.

He very nearly crashed, as he lost his footing, on account of not having any floor to run on. Very briefly Sylver saw that the tunnel he was coming out of was connected to a giant empty sphere of a room, and on the left he could see the pulsing black metal pillar embedded into the bone.

He continued running, climbed up the wall, and ran through the connecting tunnel on the other side of the spherical room.

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