Hours passed in the blink of an eye.

At some point, Sylver came up with the idea of making the tunnel into a hole, and while Faust wasn’t initially thrilled at the prospect, Sylver was able to bribe him by telling him he could go to sleep if they did this.

Healing magic fixes people physically, but drains them mentally, considering the amount of damage he had been healed from, it was a wonder Faust was as awake and alert as he was.

Right now, Faust was laying on his back inside a tube of hardened mushrooms, which were lined with soft mushrooms that functioned as pillows. Sylver initially tried to lubricate the outer layer using more mushrooms, but it turned out it was easier to just cover the tube in a layer of [Necrotic Mutilation], and have the substance pull itself forward.

The tendrils basically climbed through the hole and dragged Faust’s mushroom-enveloped body behind them.

Sylver in turn mostly stayed as a cloud of fog, the 50% reduction in MP regeneration was irrelevant, it didn’t take all that much mana to make the tunnel, the main limiting factor was the relatively short range of Sylver’s [Advanced Earth Manipulation].

50 meters sounds like a lot until you realize a single kilometer has 20 50-meters worth of lengths in it.

In terms of speed, Sylver had no idea. He didn’t care enough to keep track, and after the first half hour, time lost meaning.

Sylver dug a hole, went ahead, and while he waited for the Faust tube to reach him, he dug another hole and went ahead.

It was a simple and monotonous motion, which meant that Sylver barely registered what he was doing after a certain point, and all of his attention was instead focused on his thoughts.

He had made a list of questions to ask Poppy, and then he rearranged them, as a way of distracting himself from the uncomfortable question he didn’t want to ask himself.

What’s my angle?

Back when Sylver “negotiated” with Rose, he had the threat of a tortuously slow death, and on the flip side, Sylver couldn’t be threatened, because he cared more about finding Edmund, than he did about his own life or the lives of the people waiting for him in Eira.

One of the downsides of knowing what your priorities are is that it’s hard to un-know them. Sylver’s number one priority was not letting Edmund die. His second priority was not to die himself. Number three was finding more Ibis members.

Lola and the others were number four, if he had to let them die to find another member from the Ibis, it would break his heart, but he’d do it.

Since he knew his priorities, there wasn’t any confusion as to what would happen if Poppy threatened Edmund’s life. If she admitted that Nautis was working for her, and then told Sylver to stay away from him, or she would kill Edmund, Sylver would have to stay away from Nautis.

Then Tuli would be killed, and the ocean's worth of turtle blood would be on Sylver’s hands.

What made it all the worse, was that Edmund wouldn’t let Sylver make this choice.

Edmund was an optimist, in the most insulting sense of the word, if there was even a chance that he could save Tuli, he’d go for it without a moment of hesitation.

What makes Edmund’s optimism so goddamn weird is that he’d been wrong more than once.

It was one of those things Sylver never understood.

When Sylver took a chance and fucked up, he learned a lesson from his failure. The next time he had to make a difficult choice, he made the smart choice, as opposed to the “right” choice, as certain people put it.

Edmund didn’t learn shit.

He took a chance, and sometimes it worked out for the best, but sometimes it resulted in utter catastrophe.

And yet, Edmund was fine with that.

He wasn’t fine fine, certain failures haunted him to this day, but even with that whispering in the back of his head, he’d rather attempt to save everyone and fail, than merely save those he could guarantee the safety of.

Sylver was the sort of gambler who treated gambling like a job, he counted cards, he bet according to a strict cost/benefit analysis. If someone followed Sylver’s strategy, over the long run they would leave with more money than they initially came in with.

Edmund didn’t even bother looking at his cards and went all in.

The only reason he wasn’t considered a mentally challenged monster was that more often than not, he won. Royal flush, and everything.

People forget tragedies. No one wants to dwell on the death of a child, no one wants to think about the time Edmund’s failure resulted in a city being sucked into the demon realm. After a mere 100 years, no one even remembered the name of that city.

What they do remember, is the time Edmund defeated 300 sorcerers that were trying to bribe an ancient dragon into reviving a dead god.

What they don’t remember, or rather don’t know, is that Edmund could have simply killed an innocent woman, who had some sort of connection to the ritual or something.

Sylver himself didn’t remember the specifics, but he did remember getting into an argument with Ed about it. If Sylver was given that choice, the very concept of risking his own life, and the lives of everyone who would be killed by the revived god, just to save one woman, was absurd.

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More than that, it was irresponsible.

Or it would be if Edmund didn’t have a near-perfect track record.

A part of Sylver couldn’t care less about Poppy.

Edmund was here, whatever Poppy tried to throw at them, Ed would catch, and throw right back at her.

But as enjoyable as that line of thinking might be, the fact of the matter was that Sylver didn’t know what Poppy was capable of, and betting that Edmund could counter it was plain stupid.

But what else could he do?

If Poppy is an enemy, then what?

Just to start, she’s significantly more powerful than both Sylver and Edmund, and while skill and experience can overcome a certain gap of strength, the gap between them and the Poppy was more like a chasm.

And even if she wasn’t that powerful, she was rich enough to hire 100 high-level adventurers to guard her.

So, since the stick wasn’t on the table, the only thing left was some sort of carrot.

Which meant either being sent on a month/year-long quest or telling Poppy one of the many secrets Sylver had gathered over his long life.

Then again, Sylver didn’t know what Poppy was after.

Rose claimed she was the one responsible for everything Poppy had done, the mining camp Nautis built inside Tuli, Yeva’s kidnapping, handing out soul magic grimoires like they were candy, all for the purpose of summing a [Hero].

Allegedly, for the purpose of summoning a [Hero].

Truth be told, Sylver wasn’t 100% certain Rose had told him the complete truth back then. Partially because Sylver wasn’t interested in the whole story back then, he just wanted Edmund and a way to find more Ibis people, if they were out there to find.

Actually… Since Rose spoke about being limited by how much she could interact with that world, there’s a good chance the same rule applies to Poppy.

As was usual, Sylver wished he had been able to predict the fact that Poppy might get in his way in the future. Back then he’d assumed… hoped, that he’d never have to ever see them again.

Sylver stopped moving, as he heard a sound above him. He stayed as he was for about a minute, while he slowly reached out toward the sound with his mana.

Sylver dug around the large mushroom cylinder that contained a sleeping Faust until he had a room big enough for both of them to comfortably stand.

Sylver made the top half of the mushroom cylinder break apart, and he absorbed the floating pieces into his [Bound Bones] storage.

“We’re about to be attacked?” Faust asked as he quickly climbed out of his makeshift bed.

Considering he didn’t sound the least bit rested; he had spent the entire journey wide awake, pretending to be asleep.

“Oddly enough, no. We’re here,” Sylver said, as the rest of the mushroom tube broke apart and disappeared.

“Really?” Faust asked as the ground under his feet shook for a second, as Sylver turned it into a platform, and began to slowly move it upward.

The walls looked like they were melting, as Sylver moved the earth above them, down underneath them.

“Mages capable of manipulating the earth very rarely have offensive capabilities, it’s too slow of a magic to put up a fight against most things. Even if he has dwarves working for him, they know better than to attack a mage moving underground,” Sylver explained, as the sound of rushing water gradually became louder.

“Honestly, I was certain you would accidentally dig into a secret tunnel, or get attacked by giant worms,” Faust said to which Sylver responded by shrugging his shoulders.

“When we’re outside, run southwest as fast as you can. Once we reach the road, we should be safe,” Sylver explained, as Faust nodded at him.

The dirt became dark and wet, and just as it was about to start dripping onto the two men, the mud collided with an invisible barrier and moved out of the way.

Sylver used [Advanced Water Manipulation] to stop the rushing river water from filling up the hole they were standing in. Faust made a cutting gesture with his left hand, and the water above them exploded from the force and left behind a giant opening.

Sylver materialized above the river, and held the water out of the way, as Faust jumped into the air. The cultivator kicked the air and reached the riverbank.

He didn’t look back, as he jumped again, and more or less disappeared.

Sylver landed on a thick sheet of ice, and slowly floated towards the riverbank. He removed his hood, ran his hands through his hair, and then spread his arms out, to stretch them.

He even yawned.

But to Sylver’s surprise, no one had attacked the decoy.

He pulled the illusion-covered shade back into his shadow, as he was propelled out of the water, and landed on the riverbank.

Sylver was carried towards the road by Ulvic, who was surrounded by 4 more wolf shades, each of which was carrying a decoy Sylver on their back.

The suns were high in the air, which meant Sylver had dug through the night and a good half of the day.

The surrounding trees were oddly short, barely 10 meters, and a couple were as wide as Sylver was tall. They looked bloated as if someone had squashed a normal tree.

Ulvic and his wolves ran unimpeded, the trees were all so far away from each other, that the wolves could almost run at their full speed, in a straight line.

Once Sylver could see the paved road, he released the metaphorical breath he had been holding. If someone attacked them now, they would risk being attacked by the patrolling guards. The guards weren’t as unkillable as they were inside the city, but they were still plenty strong, within a certain range of the road.

As luck would have it, Sylver found Faust standing a few feet away from a group of 6 men, clad in full plate armor, with an emblem painted onto their round shields.

The 6 guards gave Sylver an odd look, as he summoned 2 wolf shades to act in place of horses, but aside from that, they kept to themselves.

With the road being just shy of empty, Sylver and Faust reached Poppy’s city in record time.

At some point, Edmund found them and flew down to meet them. Anna was dropped down into Faust’s arms, and he caught her and sat her down in front of him.

“I have good news, and bad news,” Edmund said, and the fact that his tone was so cheerful, meant that Sylver could guess with a fair amount of certainty as to what the bad news was.

“How many?” Sylver asked through gritted teeth.

“I counted about 300 adventurers, and maybe 3, or 4, thousand soldiers,” Edmund said.

He did his best to hide his grin, but he was close enough that the joy emanating out of his soul was almost infectious.

“What’s the good news?” Sylver asked as he slowed Ulvic down to a walk.

“You probably won’t have to talk to her,” Edmund said.

Sylver pulled Ulvic down into his shadow, as he fell, and landed on his feet.

In front of him, the road stretched out towards the sealed-shut city gates, archers, mages, and wizards stood at the ready on tops of the castle walls, and as Edmund had said, about 4,000 people were spread out near the gate, and wall.

Sylver slowly moved his gaze from one edge of the army to the other.

The soldiers were largely irrelevant, but if the fact that Edmund was grinning so hard that Sylver could see his teeth was any indication, the 300 or so adventurers were all pretty strong.

Sylver just watched, as a man on horseback broke out of the army, and galloped towards the Arch-Necromancer, Arch-Pyromancer, an ex-[Hero] legendary cultivator, and a woman who was the ultimate shield.

The man had a white flag tied to a tall pole in his left hand, and he was waving it with such vigor, that it was making the horse sway as it ran. The words “pure terror” came to mind, as the man got close enough that Sylver could make out the expression on his face.

“I HAVE A MESSAGE! I HAVE A MESSAGE!” the man screamed over and over again, while he continued waving the white flag around.

Of course you do, Sylver thought wearily.