Several questions were answered simultaneously.
What was the source of the odd magic Edmund had felt?
The giant carved metal obelisk.
What was the reason Sylver’s waystone didn’t teleport them to the right location?
The giant carved metal obelisk.
Why did Chrys lose track of Faust?
If Sylver was a betting man, he would put his money on the giant metal obelisk.
Sylver and Edmund were currently sitting inside a gap in one of the meat towers that reached the top of Tuli’s shell. In some places the towers were more like webs, connecting the ceiling and ground.
“There are people there,” Edmund repeated.
Sylver hadn’t said anything the first time Edmund had said that because he was too busy being enraged to do anything but stand there and stare.
Tuli was someone Sylver considered a friend, and seeing a giant metal needle sticking out from the base of her skull pissed him off in a way very few things managed to piss him off.
It wasn’t that it was disrespectful, although that was part of it, it was the fact that they were treating her as if she was a mindless beast. To Sylver, this was the equivalent of watching someone expertly remove Edmund’s skin to make leather out of it.
“I’m going to guess you’re as worried as I am, that such a powerful obelisk is accompanied by an equally powerful mage,” Edmund added.
“It’s preventing her head from healing,” Sylver mumbled, barely loud enough for Edmund to hear.
“It’s also draining her life force. Which is arguably more impressive than simply separating one body part from another,” Edmund said.
Sylver continued staring at the giant obelisk, and the seemingly rotten bone it was sticking out of. From this far away, the circle of decay was clear as day, even if Sylver didn’t have a world-class healer to put two and two together, it was obvious that the metal pillar was sucking the life out of Tuli.
As Edmund had said, draining the life out of a demi-god, even a comatose demi-god, was impressive. Sylver was an expert when it came to siphoning the life out of something, and he could barely steal a droplet of health from Tuli.
Which meant that whoever had built this thing was either more knowledgeable than Sylver when it came to dark magic, or they knew something about Tuli that he didn’t.
Then again, with the system, who the fuck knows?
Anything is possible.
Some mentally challenged child might have decided to try to kill a demi-god as a joke, and the system rewarded his effort with a skill, that he leveled up to the point that it wasn’t merely possible, but was actively happening.
Just behind the obelisk, Sylver could see black smoke rising from the base of it. He slowly lifted his head and rested his eyes on the giant dirty patch of soot that had gathered along the slope of Tuli’s shell. He took a metaphorical deep breath and calmed himself.
“I’m going to go talk to them,” Sylver said, as he stood up, and relaxed his fists into hands.
“I will wait… 15 minutes?” Edmund offered.
“5 will be more than enough. There’s absolutely no chance that whoever is doing this is doing it for a reason I will consider valid enough to murder Tuli,” Sylver said, as he checked his robe was fine and then moved the darts and daggers floating inside of it around.
“What if their child is seriously ill?” Edmund asked.
Sylver couldn’t help himself and laughed at the question.
“Even if their favorite son is ill,” Sylver said with a chuckle, as he jumped out of the small gap they had been standing in, and slid down a tendril until he reached the ground.
Even if you knew Sylver was there, the fog he used to travel with was so thin that it would be impossible to tell where exactly he was, especially since he spread it as far as he could while he moved through it. On top of that, it was pretty dark in here, the only source of light was the few rays shining through Tuli’s shell, nowhere near to spot a person sneaking towards you, let alone a thin film of fog.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
As a result, Sylver reached the obelisk without any problems.
His attempts to scout ahead with his shades proved fruitless since the interference created by the giant metal structure rendered them deaf and blind, the weaker ones couldn’t even move between the shadows once they got close enough to the thing.
Sylver materialized 2 steps away from the obelisk and did his best to make himself look as meek as possible, as he looked around, and waited for someone to confront him.
Magic was too fickle for someone to make something this powerful, and then leave it unattended. The greater the object, the more maintenance it required, an item of this caliber couldn’t be left alone.
“Hello?” Sylver shouted at the metal obelisk.
Careful not to step on a loose piece of bone, Sylver walked all the way around the obelisk and pretended to study the carvings on it.
Pretended, because, despite his somewhat frequent interactions with demons, their magic was as much of a mystery to Sylver, as it was to everyone else who wasn’t a demon. The carvings were almost certainly made by human hands because every now and then Sylver could see the hesitation on certain sigils.
Whoever had carved this giant piece of metal wasn’t possessed by a demon.
Which was good news, because that meant there was a chance the obelisk had enough human errors for Sylver to exploit. Just destroying it was also an option, but the danger with that was that whoever had made this, built it to kill Tuli if someone tried to destroy it.
Which, in this case, isn’t too big of a problem, as powerful as this metal toothpick may be, it wasn’t even close to killing Tuli. Worst case scenario, it would set back her awakening by a couple of centuries, as long as the shell was intact, everything else would grow back eventually.
Sylver did another lap around the obelisk and then looked around for a ladder or staircase, leading downward.
He discovered a locked door embedded into Tuli’s bone, made out of metal, and had a thin layer of lead spread throughout the locking mechanism.
Edmund silently landed behind Sylver and cocked his head to the side as Sylver gestured at the door.
The young man grabbed the door by its edges, and in a single practiced motion, pulled it out of the bone, along with the metallic door frame. Inside there was a spiral staircase, leading downwards. Edmund went in first, and Sylver followed after him.
Slowly, but surely, Sylver and Edmund made their way down the spiral staircase and were stopped by a thick metal door that was surrounded by wooden planks.
Edmund grabbed the hilt of his sword, as Sylver slowly opened the door. The rusty hinges moaned as Sylver did so, and by the time he had it open all the way, the room was dead silent, and all 6 men were staring right at him.
[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]
“I don’t suppose there’s a chance you lot have no clue what the giant metal obelisk above us is doing there?” Sylver asked with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]
A man on the left stood up from his seat.
The interior of the room was bizarre. Because it looked like the world’s most average bar. The floor was covered in wooden planks, as were the 4 walls, as was the ceiling, it was as if someone had simply made a copy of a regular bar, and placed it down here. Including the man standing behind the bar, there were 6 men here.
[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]
“Elvish?” Sylver asked in Elvish since speaking in Eirish hadn’t resulted in a response.
[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]
Sylver heard the sound of a piece of flint being struck come from Edmund, and the next thing he knew, the man on Sylver’s left was screaming while clutching at his engulfed-in-flames face.
Both Sylver and Edmund had a plan as to how to handle the room, this wasn’t their first time fighting together, but what they didn’t plan for was for the 6 men to be teleported away before the fighting even started.
Sylver jumped into the air, just as a giant hole opened up in the space beneath his feet. The portal underneath him turned out to be a trap, as an impossible-to-control torrent of pressurized water shot upwards, and pushed him into a second portal directly above him.
Edmund had a bit more luck on his end, as he managed to dodge to the side, instead of upward. When he saw that Sylver was already halfway through the portal, he flew towards Sylver and pushed the two of them the rest of the way through.
With the benefit of hindsight, that was an incredibly risky, fucking stupid move on Edmund’s part, but the man acted on instinct because he was as worried about losing Sylver, as Sylver was worried about losing him.
Normally with these sort of portal attacks, the person being attacked is teleported into an active volcano, into outer space, to the bottom of the ocean, somewhere where their death is just short of instant.
But instead of any of that, Edmund and Sylver found themselves in broad daylight, with wispy white clouds above them, and a shiny blue sea around them, marred only by a large green circle, directly below them.
On the one hand, Sylver was thrilled that he wasn’t going get trapped underwater, where he would slowly lose the ability to move, and then slowly go insane while he hopelessly waited for Edmund to rescue him.
On the other hand, Sylver had recognized the mana signature of the portals.
Normally that would be great news, better the demon you know, than the demon you don’t, and all that bullshit, but Sylver had a fundamental issue with knowing this particular piece of information.
Because, in a certain sense, it meant that Nautis was Sylver’s “nemesis.”
And that particular teleporting pants-shitting crybaby didn’t deserve to have the Sylver Sezari as a “nemesis.” Some kind of limp slug creature was more in line with what Nautis deserved, not even a slug, a snail that’s too weak to make its own shell, that lies about being a slug out of pure embarrassment.
Thankfully, as Sylver and Edmund started to fall, Sylver saw something in the corner of his eye, that considerably brightened his mood.