Ch227-Rigged From The Start

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Ch227-Rigged From The Start

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“I’d like to hear it again. Everything. From the start,” Sylver said, for the 6th time.

Aurick took a deep breath before he started telling Sylver the same story for the 6th time.

Sylver was carving a path into the stone ground, as he paced in a circle around Aurick, while the boy was sitting on a stone chair.

Aurick’s origins weren’t particularly interesting.

He was the son of a minor viscount, whole family was mysteriously slaughtered when he was 7 years old, stayed with his uncle until he turned 12, after which Aurick was “kidnapped” by Owl.

Owl explained to Aurick that he is the [Hero] destined to save Eira.

As far as calls to adventure and heroism went, it was pretty standard.

Very few [Hero]s that accepted the call had a happy beginning. The likely reason for this is simply that no one had heard about the would-be [Hero]s, because they kept the fact that they were a [Hero] to themselves and lived out the rest of their lives without anyone knowing about them.

Aurick spoke about his murdered family with a lot of feeling, even though this was the 6th time he was telling Sylver about them. Sylver didn’t particularly care one way or the other, but he didn’t interrupt Aurick and let the boy explain in great detail how his older sister had a treasured silk ribbon that she used to make her hair into a ponytail.

And how distraught Aurick was to find her hanging from the chandelier, with that very same treasured silk ribbon being used as a noose.

The reason Sylver didn’t interrupt him or ask him to skip the part about how he spent a while trying to “wake up” his decapitated mother, was because Sylver was waiting for Aurick to slip up.

Sylver was also stalling, a bit, but for the most part, he just wanted to see Aurick get his facts wrong, at least once.

So far, the boy spoke with the kind of relaxed confidence of someone with absolutely nothing to hide, and due to his magic negating barrier, Sylver had no fucking idea if even a single word of what he said was true.

Sylver knew his name was Aurick.

That was the only thing he knew for certain.

That the child in front of him was named “Aurick,” and that 5 years ago, he had hired Sylver to summon a demon for him, to track down Anastasia.

More specifically, track down a person with Anastasia’s invulnerable bloodline.

That was the only concrete information Sylver had. The rest could be complete and utter bullshit, for all he knew.

Was the “Sun Demon” real?

Sylver couldn’t say.

A demon who specialized in controlling the suns sounded right for a demon, in a very vague sense of the word “right,” but it also sounded like something a child would come up with.

In fact, everything Aurick said was simultaneously extremely plausible, and the kind of bullshit Sylver would have made up on the spot if he was being interrogated by someone.

His story sounded right.

If Lola was the one telling Sylver this, he wouldn’t have doubted a single word out of her mouth.

Fuck it, if a homeless man covered in piss walked up to him and started explaining that there’s a demon walking around Eira, waiting for the right time to pull the suns closer to Eira’s surface, and spoke with Aurick’s confidence, Sylver would have believed him.

But the problem wasn’t whether Sylver believed Aurick or not.

Because even if Aurick was being 100% honest, Sylver was still stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Or in this specific scenario, death by incineration, or a fate worse than death in every way imaginable.

If Sylver had to choose, he’d go for the incineration.

Burning to death isn’t particularly painless, or quick, but on the bright side, it’s a fairly clean death, as far as dying goes. Even if you shit yourself, no one will know, and all that’s left will be very fine ash.

More importantly, Sylver knew how to deal with a demon.

He didn’t have even one-hundredth of the power he needed to kill it, but he at least theoretically knew what steps to take to kill it or seal it away. Just because the chances of defeating it were astronomically low, didn’t mean it was impossible.

The book on the other hand…

Sylver didn’t even know where to start.

Destroying it wasn’t really on the table. The “abyss magic” Sylver was currently able to use wasn’t proper abyss magic.

Sylver’s “abyss magic” didn’t delete anything from existence, not really, it simply broke down whatever he was attacking into such tiny pieces, that it was effectively impossible for it to be put back together.

If Sylver used his current tier of abyss magic on a 1-kilogram block of wood, and there wasn’t any wind or disrupting movement, he would end up with exactly 1 kilogram of invisible to the eye dust.

Real abyss magic converted physical matter, into energy.

And it was exceptionally rare for 2 reasons.

The first was that it was an extremely complicated, and extremely dangerous, spell. Fucking it up didn’t just mean losing a hand, abyss magic crippled a mage who made a mistake. Which in turn meant there were very few mages who mastered abyss magic enough to teach it to someone else. Sylver only knew of maybe 10 mages in the whole of Eira capable of casting high-tier abyss magic.

Even Nyx used it sparingly, and Nyx was the master of dark magic.

Aside from being limited to dark mages, actual abyss magic required a ridiculous amount of mana. The kind Sylver could only get if he had a big dark mana battery in his hand, such as an ancient lich’s hand.

The only plausible way of properly disposing of the book was to find a dark mage, teach them the extremely complicated spell, and hope they didn’t die during practice.

Except there was a problem with that.

Aside from the time constraints, and the highly unlikely chance of finding a competent enough mage in this day and age, the book was indestructible, unless it stopped being connected to people.

Killing Lion, Owl, and Hound was easy, they were unconscious, and even if it would be a hassle to get them out of the Ki barrier, it was very much doable.

The real problem was the little boy currently sitting in front of Sylver, who was currently explaining how Hound trained him in swordplay.

Sylver had been right to fear Hound.

From Aurick’s descriptions alone, Hound had the mixture of strength, skill, and luck, which meant winning against him in a direct fight was next to impossible.

The same went for Lion, although Lion at least had the weakness of being an “honorable man,” and Sylver had a very good track record against people who prided themselves on fighting fairly.

Even if Sylver somehow managed to kill Aurick and figured out a way to jerry rig a sphere of real abyss magic, he would still have the issue of the Sun Demon hanging over his head.

Hypothetically, even if the surface of Eira became nothing but scorched desert, the dwarves would survive, so it wasn’t as if all life would be eradicated.

The book, on the other hand, would eventually get everyone. Not just this realm, but all the other realms too.

Except it wasn’t that simple either.

Because, from the way Aurick spoke about the book, the book he had in his possession, wasn’t “The Story Of The Seven Suns.”

He called it “Sonso’s Book.”

Because, until about 200 years ago, the book was a living and breathing human man. Named Solnoshko.

To make a very long story short, Solnoshko was a wizard, who later became a prophet, and was one of 3 people in all of Eira to sense the Sun Demon’s existence. With that in mind, Solnoshko spent the remainder of his days figuring out a way of stopping the Sun Demon and somehow arrived at the plan to have a small child save everyone.

This small child, whose name had been cursed by the Sun Demon, for some reason, needed to gather all 7 “Sacred Bloodline Traits,” so that he may defeat the current High King so that he could locate the Sun Demon, and kill it.

The High King allegedly possessed a sort of limited omniscience when it came to his subjects, and that ability would make discovering the hidden Sun Demon trivial.

As to why Aurick couldn’t just inform the High King about a demon capable of eradicating everything under the sun, pun intended, well, the answer was simple.

The High King, was on the Sun Demon’s side. Because of course he was.

The man not only knew about the Sun Demon but was actively helping him.

So, the only way Aurick would ever find the demon is by becoming the next High King.

Now, as stupid as this plan/plot/prophesy sounded, it also sounded right to Sylver’s ears. Prophesies are bullshit, all of them, but over the course of his life, Sylver had learned to pick out the ones that had a higher chance of coming true.

And, to Sylver’s utter contempt, his gut seemed certain that Solnoshko’s prophesy was true.

But then he had to ask himself, how Poppy, or Rose, fit into all of this.

Not to mention, the fucking book that screamed at him “DO NOT BELIEVE SOLNOSHKO’S LIES!” followed by an equally loud “DO NOT TRUST AURICK!”

Now, Sylver’s gut reaction was to do the exact opposite of whatever that particular book had said. Which in turn meant believing Solnoshko’s story about the Sun Demon, while also trusting that Aurick hadn’t lied to him.

One of the reasons for this, he assumed, was that deep down, Sylver wanted to have someone else deal will all this bullshit, someone who wasn’t him. He wasn’t equipped to handle this alone.

And right now, handing Aurick Sonso’s book, and sending him on his merry way, sounded like the best idea Sylver had ever had.

But, as nice as it sounded, a demon that threatened everything under the suns… the place where Sylver lived… where all of his things were… It wasn’t something he could ignore.

“Stop talking,” Sylver said, and Aurick was more than happy to comply.

If I give him the book and let him go, there’s a chance the book will brainwash the whole world, and I lose…

If I don’t give him the book, and bury him as deep as I can, assuming Aurick isn’t lying, the Sun Demon will kill everyone, including me, and I lose…

He can’t save the world without the book, since it has the instructions, he needs to get the next traits, so just letting him go while keeping the book is pointless…

Come to think of it, why would there be a copy of the book I destroyed in the other realm? Unless the one I destroyed was the copy…

A part of Sylver was tempted to flip a coin to get this over with.

He didn’t have anyone he could consult about this, and even if he did, the choice was still ultimately his to make. He didn’t have anyone he trusted to make this sort of decision for him.

Then again, what choice did Sylver have?

His options were to either give Aurick the book and hope for the best or dig a bit deeper, leave the boy underground, while Sylver did his best to destroy a book that can’t be destroyed because Aurick is alive and invincible underground.

What made everything so much worse, was that Sylver would never have another chance like this. Aurick’s next move was to steal the emperor’s strength-granting trait, which meant that in a couple of days/weeks, Aurick wouldn’t just be invincible, he would also be too powerful for anyone to trap him.

He would be unstoppable. He was unstoppable now, but at least he could be slowed down as he was. Once he got the emperor’s trait, no one but the High King would be able to stop him…

Give Aurick the book, then immediately snitch to the High King?

Then what?

Hope the High King isn’t actually working together with a demon that is planning on burning the whole realm down?

If I leave Aurick down here, and he escapes, and somehow snatches the book away from us… He’ll be my enemy, and I’ll have a man that I can’t kill, causing problems for me…

If I give him the book and pretend to be on his side, he will leave me alone… Or at least won’t try to kill me…

Is there anything he could say or do to prove to me that it’s just a coincidence that Sonso’s book, and “The Story Of The Seven Suns” look identical?

I mean, if this was the real book, the one the Ibis dealt with, it would have already infected everyone in the Schlagen mountains.

Demons aren’t immune to it. All it would have to do is brainwash the whole realm until it found the demon.

Why limit itself to only 4 people?

Aurick had explained that he used the book for guidance, and as a way of changing Owl’s, Hound’s, and Lion’s classes, and had been vague as to how he used it to steal Anastasia’s invulnerability trait.

The gist of it was the system could be tricked by rewriting a person’s past. Owl, and Bear, were the same person, except Owl was the mage who originally “kidnapped” Aurick, whereas Bear was the mage who hired Sylver to summon a demon.

By blocking out certain segments of a person’s past, one Class could be switched for another, as could Perks, and Skills.

The reason Sylver couldn’t say if this was proof of the book not being “The Story Of The Seven Suns,” was because this sounded exactly like the sort of shit that book would have been capable of. The Class part Sylver wasn’t too sure about, but rewriting memories was 100% something the book the Ibis had just barely managed to seal away was capable of.

Sylver continued pacing around the room while he considered everything Aurick had told him.

Their original plan had been to give Anastasia to the emperor. Then they would leave, and return for the birth of the child, as honored guests. Aurick would then steal the child’s invulnerability, and strength and that would be that.

What happened instead, was that the emperor refused to negotiate with them, and tried to take the box containing Anastasia by force.

Luckily for them, somebody had already released the girl and sent her so far away that the emperor ended up being convinced she had never even been inside the mountain surrounding barrier to begin with.

So right now, Aurick’s plan consisted of waiting for the emperor to lose enough strength for Hound and Lion to pin him down so that Aurick could “steal” the emperor’s trait. Aurick had been extremely vague as to how this “trait stealing” thing worked, but it involved the book and killed whoever was getting their trait stolen.

The only exception to this was the girl inside the box, who was immune to all forms of damage.

At this point, Sylver almost wanted Aurick to magically escape, for someone to break in through the ceiling and save him because at least that way the choice would have been out of Sylver’s hands.

But nothing so convenient happened.

No goddess sent Sylver a message that letting Aurick go was the only way to save the world. Sylver didn’t get an epiphany that proved that Aurick was telling the truth. It was all up to him.

Sylver wanted to ask the boy if he knew who “SVYATOGOR” was, but it felt like a terrible idea. The only thing Sylver’s gut reacted more negatively to, was the thought of going against Aurick.

I’ll give Aurick the book back, ask him to keep his distance from me from this point on, and after I rescue Edmund and bring him to Arda, I’ll talk to Poppy.

Sylver stopped walking around and stood directly in front of Aurick, and they just stared into each other’s eyes for a while.

Sylver waited.

And waited.

But Sylver couldn’t think of anything better. He tried really hard to think of a better idea, but he had nothing.

He wondered if future Sylver would one day curse present Sylver for making this decision. But Sylver always cursed his past self for not knowing something that he couldn’t have known at the time he made whatever stupid decision he made.

Sylver gestured with his hand towards Aurick, and the thick tendrils of [Necrotic Mutilation] slid off the boy.

***

Ria didn’t say anything.

Sylver appreciated that in more ways than she knew.

Because the last thing he needed right now, was to have someone bicker with him, over a decision he had already made and was now simply carrying out.

Ria didn’t say anything, but she was thinking it. Sylver didn’t even need his soul sense to know it, he could hear her making that clickity sound she did whenever she was thinking too much.

There wasn’t a bright flash of life as Aurick took the book, no thunder or lighting, if Sylver hadn’t seen and heard it screaming at him, he wouldn’t have known it was alive.

Aurick opened it, most likely to check that it was real, and even though Sylver saw his eyes moving in a way that suggested he was reading something, the page he was looking at was empty.

Sylver leaned forward, just a little, and ever so gently sent a paper-thin tendril of mana towards the book.

It felt…

Nothing… Sylver felt nothing when his mana touched it. He could feel the mana leaking out of the book, but in no way would Sylver describe it as sinister, or world-ending.

If anything, it felt kind of weak?

Aurick placed the book underneath his armpit and turned around to leave.

With Mora standing a few feet away, Sylver placed his hand on Aurick’s shoulder. Xalibur and Dog were sitting in the corner of the room, and Michael and the 4 strongest cultivators were standing near the window.

Aurick didn’t freeze, in fact, it took him a second to realize Sylver was preventing him from walking away.

The skin around Sylver’s knuckles tightened, as the mana in his hand started to build up.

If this isn’t the book, destroying it would mean the Sun Demon will eventually kill everyone.

If this is the book, I won’t be able to destroy it.

“Yes?” Aurick asked.

5 seconds of utter silence passed before Sylver nodded with his head towards Michael.

“Could you get him some pants, please? You’re about his size,” Sylver said casually, as he took his hand off Aurick’s shoulder.

There was no collective sigh of relief, everyone present either knew better or in the case of the cultivators near the window, didn’t notice the tension in the air.

Once Aurick put on a pair of pants, he left.

***

Sylver lifted his cup off the table as it began to violently shake. The workshop appeared empty, everything Sylver didn’t want to fall over had been placed in a padded chest, that Sylver had enchanted to float half a centimeter off the ground.

He finished his tea, walked up the ladder, and joined Ria in watching the 8th mountain fall over.

As of now, there were only 4 left. The White Rat, the White Ox, the White Tiger, and the White “Palace.” The emperor’s sect didn’t have an official name, it didn’t need one, so the few times people discussed it with foreigners, they called it “The White Palace,” since it was a palace, that was in the White Ring, that was white in color.

Sylver hadn’t done anything of note while he waited.

He experimented with mushrooms and made a fair amount of headway, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was doing everything he could to distract himself, and for a day or so, it worked.

After that, Sylver felt like his head would explode from worry.

But then, Sylver decided to stop thinking about it.

It occurred to him, that even without an Ibis, something must be keeping the planet spinning. The Sun Demon couldn’t be the first realm-ending disaster Eira had faced during the time the Ibis was gone, so clearly, all the realm-ending disasters have been stopped.

And as flimsy as that logic was, it was good enough for Sylver to trick himself into not worrying, and not thinking about, well, everything.

He was in the process of unleashing an ancient dragon into the world, compared to that, a Sun Demon was nothing.

If he was nothing else, Sylver was an optimist.

When it suited him to be one…

Sylver turned around and watched as a small girl did her best to climb the ladder, but she couldn’t close her hand into a fist to grab it properly. She tried to push herself up regardless, but she was having problems extending her legs all the way. The flicking white light in the girl’s left eye fizzled out, and she looked around the roof confused for a couple of seconds.

“Good morning. Would you mind sitting down here please,” Sylver said to the small girl, while he gestured at the armchair next to him.

The girl quietly nodded at him, as she finished climbing up the ladder, but before she could start walking, her left eye began flicking with a white light again.

When Ria told Chrys what she was actively guarding, Chrys excused herself from the dinner table, locked herself in her room, and then forced herself into the minds of the monks near Aurick.

As far as Sylver was aware, clairvoyants usually started with weak-minded creatures, and slowly and gradually, trained their way up to humans.

Chrys skipped a few steps and jumped straight to commanding monks, who were under the protection of a relatively powerful deity. Her control over them wasn’t perfect, but once Zelvash stopped screaming about how dangerous it was, he admitted that it was beyond impressive.

In hindsight, that was the wrong move on the old dark elf’s part.

Because Chrys ended up believing that she knew better than her clairvoyancy instructor.

And it certainly didn’t help that Lola didn’t see the problem with this. She even offered to buy Chrys some slaves to practice on.

Because Lola understood why Chrys was so eager to master her abilities.

Even if the book wasn’t real, or didn’t feel like the real thing to Sylvar, it was a stark reminder of how vulnerable Chrys was. She trusted Sylver to keep her safe, she trusted that Lola would protect her, but she would rather risk her sanity, than not have the strength to keep herself out of the clutches of a certain group of people.

The girl with the glowing left eye stumbled towards the armchair. She walked as if she was blackout drunk, like a puppet whose strings were tangled up.

But, to her credit, she did make it to the armchair without any assistance. She slowly lowered her body onto the soft chair, and then adjusted her limbs so that they were all comfortable. The girl’s body went limp, as the glow in her eye became slightly brighter, and stopped flickering.

Talking is harder than living people realize. Just like walking, they do it without thinking about it, and because of that, assume it’s just as easy for everyone.

To an undead, walking can be a massive hurdle, and a good portion never managed to achieve fluent speech.

At the moment, Chrys could move, she could talk, but she couldn’t do both at the same time.

“I forgot it’s daytime here,” the girl said in her high-pitched voice, but with Chrys’ accent.

“8 down, 4 to go,” Sylver said with a gesture at the enormous cloud of dust in the distance.

The barrier extending out of the middle was clearly visible now. It distorted the light that passed through it and made the single mountain hiding behind it look significantly shorter than it actually was.

“Yeva said to tell you she’s trying to find a magic tutor for Benji. She asked if there’s anyone in Arda that you could recommend,” Chrys said, as Sylver closed his eyes, but couldn’t think of a single person he would trust to teach the young boy.

Lola was incompatible because she was an elf, Salgok’s magic was too closely intertwined with him being a dwarf, and Yeva obviously didn’t trust herself to teach her son…

“Ask for a tutor from the temple of Ra. Priests are very careful with their magic, and they’re the only people who won’t pass any bad casting habits onto him. I’ll find someone when I come back, he’ll just about finish stabilizing his mana core by that time,” Sylver said, as Chrys nodded along, and then the girl she was controlling made the sound of pen scribbling on paper with her mouth.

“How did Ciege react?” Ria asked.

She also wasn’t thrilled about Chrys practicing her magic on living human beings, but just like Lola, she could understand where she was coming from. The girl Chrys was currently talking through was contacted by Chrys directly because apparently, her mind was the right mixture of resilient, and weak. The girl chose to perceive this whole thing as training and refused any jade Sylver offered her.

“He was on the fence until he learned that Benji has an extremely strong affinity with fire. Now he’s been trying to get him to light a candle using magic,” Chrys explained, as Ria smiled at her.

“If you haven’t already, send someone to enchant the house against fire. Yeva probably already did it, but everyone always assumes children have better control over their magic than they actually do,” Sylver said, as he felt an odd churning in the lower half of his torso.

He didn’t have anything that could churn down there.

“Ging took care of it. And Salgok and Murdok double-checked, but don’t tell Ging. I…” Chrys’ voice trailed away, as Sylver stood up, and started looking around.

“What wrong?” Ria asked as Mora stood up from where she had been sleeping and began to grow as her body shifted into its 7-legged form.

“What’s going on,” the girl sitting next to Sylver asked.

Sylver placed his hand over his stomach, but the feeling didn’t seem to be physical.

He looked down at the confused, and due to the expression on Sylver’s face, frightened girl.

“Tell everyone to-”

It wasn’t so much that the sound was loud, but rather the fact that Sylver felt the very air shake before he even started to hear the roaring.

Everyone currently standing on the roof, Sylver, Ria, Mora, Spring, and the girl whose name Sylver forgot to ask, were all transfixed by what they were seeing.

Off in the distance, where the last remaining 4 mountains that composed the Schlagen mountains stood, an impossibly large serpentine head was pushing its way upward.

Its jaw was unhinged, and open so wide that Sylver saw more teeth than head.

Sylver’s robe extended towards the girl in the chair, and formed a shield around her, as the reptilian creature pushed its head even higher.

Sylver saw the air shimmer inside the creature’s mouth, as Mora pulled him away from the edge of the roof by the back of his robe, and Sylver did the same for the girl sitting in the chair.

It didn’t make any sound, as the enormous pillar of pitch-black flame exploded out of the creature’s mouth like an erupting volcano, Sylver first saw the flames lick the top of the spherical Ki barrier protecting the whole country, and only then did the deafening screeching reach his ears.

There was another delay, as 4 unbelievably giant chains appeared out of nowhere, and like a fish in a net, pulled the smiling serpent's head back down into the ground.

Sylver and company remained where they were for a couple of seconds and then saw something land a few meters away from them.

It was a small droplet of dark red liquid.

Before Sylver could even finish forming the thought, dark red liquid started to rain down onto the roof. People below screamed in shock, as they stumbled over their own feet on the now wet ground and did everything they could to get under a roof.

Sylver handed the girl over to Mora, as he reached out with his hand, and allowed a droplet to land on his palm. The liquid was oily and stuck to his skin in a familiar way.

He didn’t need to be informed by [Dead Dominion] to know what it was, the smell alone was impossible to mistake for anything else.

Sylver looked up and saw that the “ceiling” of the giant dome that surrounded the Schlagen mountains, was now filled with pitch black clouds, that were raining blood down on the people below.

More importantly, the uncomfortable feeling in Sylver’s stomach was only getting stronger.

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