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Ch247-A Happy Ending

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The priests and paladins Sophia had with her had followed Faust to the camp, and Sylver, and Edmund were left alone with the ex-high-priest. Enough light shone through the crack in Tuli’s shell that they could see each other without much issue.

Out of necessity, Sylver was sitting down on a metal chair Edmund had created out of his sword. Edmund stood directly behind him, on his left, and Sophia stood, floated, about 5 steps in front of the two men.

Her wings of silver feathers were currently grouped as if they were an enormous chandelier, a fair distance behind Sophia.

Sylver had to lift his head to meet Sophia’s eyes.

She had… Sylver had to make an educated guess that she looked happy because he could only vaguely see her body, and looking directly at her face made his eyes itch. But he was fairly certain he could hear a smile in her voice, even if said voice was causing the inside of his ears to heat up.

“I’m not sure how to proceed from here,” Sophia said.

Both Edmund and Sylver chuckled.

“You get used to it,” Sylver offered.

Sophia didn’t laugh.

Or chuckle.

“I’m only asking on the off chance this is all a strange combination of coincidences… Did you do something to the moons?” Sophia asked.

Strangely enough, Sylver got the feeling that if he said “no,” Sophia would choose to believe him, and wouldn’t press the issue further.

But the fact that Sylver got that feeling meant that it was safe to tell her the truth.

“Yes... Edmund did most of the legwork, but I was the one who organized it and asked him to do it,” Sylver said.

Even if Sophia were to attack them, it wasn’t as if she could win against Edmund.

Not one on one.

Especially given that her magic revolved around fire of all things.

“I see… And you... did it because you made a deal with the demon?” Sophia asked hesitantly.

“No. I made the decision after we sent it back to the demon realm,” Sylver explained, but he could see that the answer only further confused Sophia.

There was a pause before she spoke.

“What?” she asked. There wasn’t even any anger in her voice, just pure confusion.

Instead of answering, Sylver waited for the inevitable follow-up question.

“Why?” Sophia asked.

He waited a moment just in case Sophia wanted to repeat herself, as people often did in these sorts of situations.

“Someone I care about is missing, and this will help me find them,” Sylver explained.

“What? How? How could this help you find anything?” Sophia asked. From her tone, the question seemed almost rhetorical.

“It will stir things up and will reveal where they’re hidden,” Sylver said.

Sophia absentmindedly tried to float closer to the duo, but a single creak from Edmund’s sword stopped her.

“What did you do? Specifically, what did you do to the moons that the small one flashed red?” Sophia asked. Edmund spoke before Sylver could.

“We altered the speed at which it rotated. By an estimated 3 days, but it’s more likely a lot less than that, a day, maybe 12 hours even. As to why it flashed red, we don’t know,” Edmund offered.

Always the optimist.

“You understand that it will take years for the teleportation networks to be reconnected?” Sophia asked.

“I know,” Sylver said dismissively.

“And that-”

“Sophia,” Sylver interrupted with a raised hand and just short of a shout. “I am aware of the repercussions. I took them into account before coming to this decision. More importantly, it’s already done. We barely had enough power to do it, undoing it is just plain not possible right now,” Sylver explained.

Sophia didn’t say a single word for a solid 5 minutes.

She just floated there.

While she did that, Sylver felt the metal coil inside him gradually disintegrate into a fine dust. By the time Sophia spoke, the needle was only covered by Sylver’s the darkness he used to give his chest volume and his robe.

“I don’t know how to respond... I don’t even know how to react. You potentially ruined the world just to find somebody... It’s... It’s...” Sophia said as the chandelier of metal behind her clinked in unison with her voice.

“Keyword there being “potentially,”” Sylver added, as Sophia lifted her face and stared directly at him.

It felt a lot like trying to stare at the sun.

“This might be the most romantic thing I have ever seen,” Sophia said, as Edmund lifted his hand up to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Of course it is,” he mumbled to himself, as Sylver’s face broke into a grin.

“You’re insane, obviously, but damn... Putting the entire world in danger, just to find someone you care about,” Sophia said with a grin to match Sylver’s in her voice.

“Almost half a million women in Arda and you picked her,” Edmund said quietly into Sylver’s ear.

“Don’t be so dramatic, we picked each other,” Sylver whispered back.

“I mean, damn. It’s like something straight out of a romance novel,” Sophia said, as the grin on Syvler’s face only grew bigger.

Edmund continued to shake his head.

***

After they were done discussing what had happened, Sophia, Sylver, and Edmund joined Faust at their makeshift encampment.

The priests and paladins had questions and were beyond curious, but at the same time, they seemed content to simply do as Sophia said.

Whether it was blind devotion or the kind of unhesitating trust Faust had for Sylver, Sylver couldn’t say for certain. But they would keep their mouths shut either way.

Now that he got a better look at them, Sylver noticed a couple of odd things. The first was that the priests all had small grey spots growing on their forearms and the bottom part of their necks.

While they rested, Sylver saw one of them scratch their arm, and a tiny silver point came out of the grey spot. The point looked like a miniature version of the floating feather-shaped daggers Sophia used.

The paladins on the other hand were doing something Sylver hadn’t seen in a while. He didn’t believe it at first, but as the woman sitting closest to Faust reached out to grab the teapot, Sylver saw veins growing inside her armor.

Their flesh was fusing to the metal garments they were wearing.

If this was anything like what Sylver had seen, in a few weeks these 7 women would be permanently encased in blessed metal. In Sylver’s experience, the kind of people that went down this route were… abused would be the polite word to use.

He hated the idea of it now, as much as he did back then, but just as before, it wasn’t any of Sylver’s business, and he respected their decision to go through with it.

While they ate and drank, Sylver’s shades cleaned up the surrounding area, crafted passable tents, along with makeshift mattresses, and as the morning sun gradually replaced the moons, the priests all went to sleep, while Faust, Sophia and the paladins went to hunt the remaining feral vampires.

Edmund needed to rest too, but he had a question to ask first. The same question Faust asked before Sophia interrupted them.

“Now what?” Edmund asked in the language only he and Sylver knew. On the off chance, one of the priests in the nearby tents were listening in.

Sylver fiddled with the empty cup in his hand.

“Her shell is above water. It’s only a matter of time until a passing ship spots her, and then there will be adventurers adventuring inside her guts,” Sylver said, as Edmund rolled his shoulders and rubbed his hands together.

“So, one of us would need to stand guard. And he would need to stand guard until…” Edmund’s voice trailed off as the logic of what he was saying no longer made sense to him.

“Until the person who isn’t standing guard does what? Finds a way to heal a demi-god?” Sylver asked.

“What if we have someone claim it for us? That noble you’re friends with owns land not too far from here,” Edmund offered.

“Novva? That’s not a bad idea … Except the coast surrounding the Sinis sea is owned by Fredrick’s man,” Sylver answered.

“Ah…” it took Edmund a moment to remember what the problem with asking that particular man was. “The guy whose city we talked about conquering… Where you know who used to live,” Edmund said.

“Yeah…”

In theory, it was possible for Novva to own land that isn’t directly attached to what he already owned. But that required negotiating with the man whose children Sylver “hypothetically” threatened the lives of.

“Since she’s in the sea… Are there any underwater colonies nearby? I’m fairly certain I saw something about avoiding an area on one of the maps in Lola’s office,” Edmund asked, as Sylver tried to remember.

“Now that you mention it… There should be one a day’s travel west of here… I think,” Sylver said, as he vaguely remembered the map Edmund was talking about. It was the one on the right side of Lola’s office desk.

He used to have a copy, but the notebook that had it had been incinerated. The map he had of the local area didn’t include the trade routes or the spots they had to avoid.

“One of us stays and guards Tuli, while the other negotiates for… a land claim? Do you want to rock paper scissors for it?” Edmund asked as Sylver scoffed at him.

“Remind me again, how many hours can you breathe underwater? And what do you suppose I would be able to do if something happened to you?” Sylver asked as Edmund furrowed his brows.

“At least I won’t have a heart attack if the water gets too deep. And you’re not exactly in top negotiating shape,” Edmund countered.

“I’ll be fine by the time I get there. But that’s the main reason I want you to stay. In the event everything goes pear-shaped, I’ll at least know there’s someone on the surface that can rescue me. If someone traps you, deep underwater, what do you imagine I would be able to do?” Sylver asked.

“Fair point…” Edmund said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

“And I think the locals down there will appreciate not being boiled alive whenever you have to fight something,” Sylver added.

Edmund sighed.

“They probably wouldn’t like that very much… I want a crate of silt wine,” Edmund said.

“I’ll bring it if they have it. I’m only now realizing this, but I don’t think I’ve had fresh caviar since I got here…” Sylver said.

“Fresh deepwater caviar is something else…” Edmund said wistfully, as he wiped a bit of drool from the edge of his mouth.

“What are we doing with Faust? Do you want him around to keep you company?” Sylver asked.

“Let him go to his wife. He hasn’t fully recovered, and at this point resting will do him more good than any kind of magic,” Edmund said, as Sylve nodded along.

There was a lull in their conversation, as neither of them wanted to broach the subject they were trying to avoid.

Sylver took it upon himself to get it over with.

“What do we do once she’s guarded,” Sylver thought out loud.

“You said you could heal her with 3 million lives,” Edmund said.

“I did say that… But would you even allow me to kill a million people, let alone 3?” Sylver asked, as Edmund covered his mouth with his hand, and yawned into it.

Sylver and Sophia had a long conversation, during which they traded their respective stories.

Sophia left Arda after she got wind of an unnamed artifact that was capable of healing “anything,” and after purchasing it in Torg, she and her group of highly trusted priests and paladins made their way to Tuli’s body. They entered through her nose and then spent a month in a holy trance. Once they came to, the artifact was gone, Tuli’s body was rising and healing, and Sophia had grown in height, size, and magical and priestly power.

Then Nautis came and teleported them out of Tuli. Every time they attempted to get back inside, Nautis teleported them to the surface.

Then they shot down Sylver’s wyvern, got knocked out by Edmund, and through their god were teleported inside along with Sylver, Edmund, and Faust. After Sylver went down into the roots, Sophia and her lot were teleported to the surface by Nautis, and on their way back inside, they heard and saw the shell crack open.

As they approached the crack to investigate, they unanimously lost consciousness, and when they awoke, everyone had red hair and was significantly more powerful than they had been.

After that, they entered Tuli through the crack in her shell, and Sylver was present for the rest of it.

By the sound of it, they lost consciousness exactly when the demon-summoning portal was shut down. And they regained it a couple of minutes before Edmund was done with the moon adjusting spell.

Sophia’s main concern was how it was possible that the demon was stopped without waking Sobek up. Sophia was on a mission from her god, and gods don’t give their priests tasks that are unnecessary.

And yet, somehow, the Moon Demon was stopped, without Sobek being awoken. When Sophia asked for specifics, Sylver explained that he knew the demon-summoning spell’s structural weakness, because he was just that clever.

It wasn’t a lie.

Sylver really was clever enough to take a look at an impossibly complex framework, and through sheer brainpower calculate which sigils could be altered. He’d done it before, multiple times.

This time, he just so happened to know the weakness intuitively, given that he was intimately familiar with the inspiration for this particular demon-summoning framework. But Sophia didn’t need to know that part.

“Even a million is too many... Even 35,000 would be too much...” Edmund answered mostly to himself.

“Since you haven’t made any suggestions, I take it your healing magic wouldn’t do much,” Sylver asked.

“The amount of time required would be absurd. Not to mention I have no idea what to do about the shell. I was skeptical about fixing the sigils when it was whole, but fusing it back together...” Edmund said as Sylver took inventory of everything available to him.

As he handed his empty cup over to a shade, Sylver had an idea.

And idea that he wouldn’t have been able to share with any living creature save for Lola or Edmund.

Lola because she was born into this knowledge, and Edmund because he attained this knowledge “the honest way,” as the high elves put it.

“We can have an Eldar tree act as a temporary conduit... Use it to close the crack in the shell. The roots will transfer her life force into her shell, kickstart her awakening, and she’ll handle the rest,” Sylver theorized.

Edmund gave Sylver a look only someone who fully understood what Sylver was suggesting could give.

To call his proposal “sacrilege” was beyond an understatement.

What made it all the worse, was that Edmund could see that it could work.

“What kind of time scale are we talking about?” Edmund asked.

“We don’t need to fully mature, just grow enough to conduct her mana. She could be up and about in as little as 5 years,” Sylver explained, as Edmund seemed to realize something.

“You want the dark elves to live here... Their children will soak up the dark mana spread out throughout her body...” Edmund guessed, but he had guessed wrong.

Because having the dark elves do that was about 10 times better than what Sylver had in mind. It was also significantly less dangerous, way easier, and more importantly, three times faster than the cursed combination of contraptions he had been planning to construct.

“Brilliant, isn’t it?” Sylver asked.

“You forgot about them didn’t-”

“Yes, I forgot about them. But it’s killing 2 birds with one stone. The dark elves have somewhere to live and grow their numbers, and the dark energy infesting her gets cleared away,” Sylver said.

“And neither of us will need to stay behind to tend to the tree...” Edmund added.

The plan wasn’t perfect.

For starters, contacting the dark elves in question was going to take a while. How long depended entirely on Chrys, given that neither Sylver nor Edmund knew how a clairvoyant would go about recalibrating their clairvoyance.

Although it was counterintuitive, adjusting for a brand new realm was easier, than making the small adjustments needed to account for one of the moons moving slower.

Adjusting for a new realm was akin to writing in a brand new notebook, but adjusting for changes in the realm you’re already accustomed to involved erasing old notes to make room for the new ones.

In an ideal world, Sylver would have warned her, but aside from being pressed for time, he also wanted as few people as humanly possible to know. He wasn’t even sure if it was a good idea to burden Lola with the knowledge.

But that was something he would consider in the future when he returned to Arda.

Without a functional teleportation network, the trip back would take months. Which meant Sylver had plenty of time to decide on whether or not to tell Lola he was the one that messed with the very core of Eira’s magic.

But even with all the obstacles in his way, it felt good to have a plan.

Figure out a guard situation for Tuli, tell the dark elves to come here, help them settle in, plug the hole in Tuli’s shell with an Eldar tree, and then it will just be a question of waiting for Tuli to wake up. And once Tuli wakes up, she will handle the Sun Demon, and will likely know what happened to the Ibis, and the thing Sylver couldn’t think about.

On the topic of the Sun Demon... Sophia already knew about it.

In the sense she once heard a prophecy about it. And apparently the “Sun Demon” had been a looming threat in Eira for the last 500 years. And every “real” summer solstice, the people in the know held their breath on the off chance this would be the year the Sun Demon was actually going to do something.

Sophia spoke about it in the same way someone might talk about a fictional character, something less than a myth, a rumor, as opposed to a real living world-ending threat.

Sylver was tempted to tell Sophia he knew the demon was real “for a fact,” but that would involve either telling her about the ancient dragon he had freed into the world, or telling Sophia to trust the word of a clairvoyant child.

Sylver trusted Chrys, but he trusted her the way... He trusted her, while keeping in mind that it wasn’t out of the question that her paranoia had manifested into an actual prophecy. Or that Aurick and company were doing something to alter the future Chrys was seeing, as a ploy to steer Sylver into helping them.

Granted, the dragon had no reason to lie, but with the language barrier between them, it wasn’t impossible that it had been referring to an event that happened in the past. If something made a sun-sized hole in Eira, there would be some evidence, but if something could erase the Ibis from history, filling up a large hole with dirt wasn’t impossible.

A couple of volcanoes, some seas move around, and the hole is sealed.

Truth be told, Sylver would be ecstatic if the Sun Demon turned out to be a myth.

And given the initial source of the information, he was tempted to believe Sophia and carry on with his life as if the Sun Demon wasn’t going to burn the world to shit in a mere 13 years.

But, that kind of wishful thinking had bitten Sylver in the ass far too many times to count.

Far too many times.

So, until he had definitive proof that the Sun Demon was just a bedtime story to scare children, he was going to continue to act as if it was as real as the Moon Demon.

***

It was nightime by the time Syvler’s body was healed up enough for him not to turn feral. Without the metal ribcage, he had to restructure his insides a fair bit, there was a lot more room, but there was also a ton of exposed vital organs.

“Exposed” in the sense someone would need to get through skin, flesh, bone, and enchanted bone, to touch them, but as powerful as Sylver’s body and magic may be, it was very far from indestructible. For extra effect, he wrapped some of Mora’s string around everything vital, just in case.

Faust showed the first sign of life when Sylver told him that he could go to where Anastasia was. He offered to stay here, to keep Edmund company if nothing else, but Edmund insisted that he should go be with his fiance.

Sylver’s talk with Sophia before leaving was fairly short.

The priest woman was determined to bring Sobek back to life, and she trusted that whatever Sylver was going to do wasn’t going to hurt Sobek. While they waited for Sylver to do his thing, Sophia and her 14 followers planned to wait and pray, until Ra told them to go somewhere else.

Obviously, Sylver didn’t tell her about the Eldar tree that they were going to use as sacrificial glue, but Sylver got around that by explaining that Zelvash was a talented druid, and was the best person to consult about awakening Sobek.

Both moons were high in the sky when Sylver reached the surface.

Faust double-checked that the bag full of letters for Lola and the others in Arda was secure, and after a quick hug goodbye, the old cultivator vanished into thin air.

Given her recent increase in power, Sylver couldn’t so much as shake Sophia’s hand, let alone do the thing he’d been wanting to do since the moment he saw her. But, without Lola’s special ring, there wasn’t much he could do about it other than complain.

The steam that was rising out of Tuli’s shell didn’t travel all that high, before it fell, and traveled down her shell. The gas acted very strangely because it didn’t diffuse as it reached the seawater below, it persisted.

If it carried on like this, Tuli’s shell would be just short of invisible inside a cloud of fog. Unless someone was specifically looking for it, they would have a hard time spotting her shell from above.

It was possible this was Tuli instinctively hiding, the way a snake might play dead, but it was much more likely that this was just Sylver reading too much into steam acting unnaturally. It was steam that came from a demi-god, so it was hard to say what “natural” steam was meant to do in such circumstances.

Sylver used [Fog Form] to fly as high as he could before he summoned his wyvern.

The shadowy beast spread its wings, and in three powerful flaps, built up enough speed to fly. As it climbed up towards the clouds, Sylver searched around for a good spot among its spikes and settled into a comfortable sitting position.

Everything was sore, his body, his mind, his soul, and he was exhausted beyond any sense of the word.

He was exhausted before they came here, and what made it so much worse was that Sylver and Edmund came here on holiday. The vast majority of the items in his [Bound Bones] were cutlery for a beachside picnic, swim trunks, drink mixing equipment, and other similar miscellaneous items.

Sylver tried to relax, but with every flap of Will’s wings, he couldn’t help but shake the feeling that he’d forgotten something.

[Mutating Override (IV) rank up available!]
Choose 1 from the following:

Mutating Override (V)
-Decrease the MP cost by 20% when overriding undead biological matter.
-Decrease the MP cost by 20% when overriding living biological matter.
-Increase the malleability of [Necrotic Mutilation] by 50%.

The first two were obvious, but what did it mean by “malleability?”

Given that the decrease in MP cost was going to show up again, Sylver picked the 3rd option. For no reason other than he was extremely curious to see what the system was going to do.

[Skill: Mutating Override (V) [F]]
Skill level can be raised by overriding primal energy field.
I – Mutate biological matter by overriding its primal energy field.
II – Decrease the MP cost by 5%.
III – Increase range by 10%.
IV – Decrease the MP cost by 25% when overriding personal primal energy field.
V – Increase the malleability of [Necrotic Mutilation] by 50%.
*Quantity of MP required dependent on rate, volume, and complexity of primal energy field being overridden.

Sylver heard a ringing noise, far, far away from him, that was somehow simultaneously inside his head.

[Skill [Necrotic Mutilation] has been removed!]

[Skill: Black Mass (IV) [D]]
Skill level can be increased through use and conversion.
I – Manipulate biological matter.
II – Empower a creature or item using manipulated biological matter.
III -Increase the range of [Dead Dominion] by 50% for [Black Mass].
IV – [Petty] Souls can be infused.
*Quantity of conversation dependent on biological material.

The [Necrotic Mutilation] that was spread throughout Sylver’s robe instantly began to tighten and contract, and he quickly forced it out of his robe, and onto one of the spikes on Will’s back. The glowing green liquid appeared to be boiling, and with every bubble, less and less green glow remained.

When it finally settled down, Sylver was left with half a bucket full of, the very aptly named [Black Mass]. It had the appearance and consistency of ink, except there wasn’t any shine or reflection to it, even with the light from the moon’s illumination, it looked like a 3-dimensional shadow.

As Sylver reached out towards it with his magic, he as usual couldn’t believe just how smooth the connection was. He felt as if he had been using this spell for millennia.

It wrapped itself around his finger and proceeded to travel up his arm, and before Sylver could finish the thought, the material solidified into a perfect imitation of the gauntlet Sylver had been thinking of.

A half thought later, he was holding a replica of the ax Salgok had given him.

But more interesting was that Sylver felt an empty space inside the material, and like a child putting the cube through the square hole, Sylver directed one of his [Petty] shades into the empty space.

At first, nothing happened.

Then the axe came to life and fell onto the floor in a black puddle. It lay like that for a few seconds, and under Sylver’s direction, without him manipulating the material itself, the shade took control of the [Black Mass] and produced a thick spike.

The spike extended higher, and as Sylver reached for it, it turned into the axe it had originally been.

Sylver channeled his mana into it, and the axe became heavier, sturdier, sharper, and most importantly, was able to float on its own.

“Well now…” Sylver said to himself, as he liquefied the axe, and wrapped the half bucket full of [Black Mass] around his torso.

As Wil breached the clouds, Sylver smiled to himself and began to experiment with his new toy.