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Ch249-Back Again
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The language barrier was formidable, but not insurmountable.
Gregory wasn’t a talkative person, which made things harder, but he was no match for Sylver’s highly acute soul sense.
But due to his dislike of small talk, the “conversation” was mostly Sylver saying a word, or a name, and then making an educated guess as to why Gregory’s soul had the reaction that it did.
He liked Captain Leese. He didn’t like Captain Lewit. He neither liked nor disliked Sylver.
He like “fish,” although his understanding of the word seemed to be different than what Sylver meant.
Gregory liked being out of the water, but he didn’t like walking.
He also didn’t like to talk, because it was a physically uncomfortable action for him. Sylver realized fairly quickly that Gregory wasn’t making sounds with his mouth, the noise came from his abdomen.
From what Sylver was able to puzzle out, certain areas on Gregory’s skin could vibrate at very high speeds, high enough that he could make a noise that sounded like a man’s voice, using the water surrounding his body as an amplifier.
Interestingly enough, Gregory didn’t consider what he was doing to be “magic,” and his reaction to “light magic,” and “dark magic,” was completely neutral. He either didn’t understand the difference or didn’t care.
Gregory had a wife and possibly had children, but Sylver couldn’t say for certain.
In regards to how he was going to find his home, the answer was “path.”
When Sylver tried to dig deeper into the word Gregory had mumbled out, the Fin man showed the first sign of annoyance. He repeated the word “path,” and only said it louder each time Sylver tried to quiz the meaning out of him.
Sylver’s somewhat educated guess was that the man could see the minute temperature differences in the water, and was using that as a navigation tool. Now and then he touched the fast-moving water with his hand and absorbed it into the mass of water soaked into his clothing.
He was “tasting” the sea, the way a snake might taste the air with its tongue. He seemed to rely on that more than his sight, given that he changed course only after dipping his hand into the water.
The rare times that Sylver ventured into one of these underwater colonies, there was always a team of guides and interpreters alongside him. They handled just about everything for him, to the point Sylver’s only real job was to keep them safe and look menacing when they asked him to.
Gregory’s non-reaction to seeing Spring, and Aleri, was strange, but it made sense when Sylver figured out that he was interpreting everything he saw happen above water as “above water nonsense.” He lumped everything from boats to magic, to Sylver’s shades into the same basket, and made the conscious decision not to bother with understanding it.
Sylver not only empathized with that but the amount of respect he had for the well-covered man increased exponentially.
The guy was here to do a job, and that was all he was here to do.
On what could be described as a whim, Sylver mentioned that “The Council” told him that the weather was normally very stormy in this area. He slid it in there, mixed among his ever-ongoing monologue of random words and phrases that were meant to illicit a reaction from the Fin man.
It wasn’t too far off from how Sylver conducted interrogations.
The main difference was that Gregory wasn’t tied up, and there wasn’t a team of exceptionally enthusiastic torturers standing a short distance behind Sylver, downright drooling at the idea of continuing what they had started.
Sylver’s opinion regarding people who enjoyed hurting others wasn’t what could be described as positive, but, he had a soft spot for people who loved their job.
Gregory’s reaction to the word “Council” wasn’t nothing, but it wasn’t enough for Sylver to tell if he had merely heard the name from someone, or if he was only simply surprised that Sylver was involved with them.
Since the water and thick clothing blocked all attempts to discretely search Gregory’s person for a silver and white stone piece of jewelry, Sylver couldn’t rule out the possibility that Gregory was an enemy.
But, even if he was, as long as he got Sylver to Finland, there was no reason to hurt him.
Only possibly as a precaution, to mask Sylver’s movements from the Council, but if he did that he would need to kill Captain Lewit and Captain Leese, and if he tried to do that, he’d likely have to kill all of their crew as well.
Sylver’s little ice boat had gotten streamlined from sailing through the salt water. There was a handrail around the sides, that Gregory held onto whenever he reached down with his hand to touch the water. Sylver stood on the back portion of the makeshift ice boat, and when he wasn’t saying words at Gregory, he was enjoying the disarmingly calm silence of the open sea.
Now and then Aleri would return with news of a distant piece of driftwood, or a particularly large fish swimming near the surface, but aside from that there wasn’t much going on.
They continued sailing for a little under a day. They sailed through the sunrise, sailed as the suns slowly moved through the sky, and just as the suns started to set, Gregory tried to say a word that came out too garbled for Sylver to guess what it was.
He repeated the word a second time, and very limply gestured with his hand downward.
Sylver had no idea where they were.
He was somewhere westward of Tuli.
But that was all he could say.
There weren’t any physical landmarks that he could see, nothing about this portion of the sea looked different from the hundreds of miles of water they had traveled through, and even with his mana flaring to the point that the water on the surface started to boil, Sylver couldn’t feel anything even remotely magical about this spot.
He would have flown right over it and kept flying if he had been on Will.
Gregory said something, a different word, but it sounded like the sound people made when they cleared their throat.
As the Fin man began to unbutton his wool coat, Sylver reached out toward him with his hand.
“I can store those away for you. Everything will be safe in this piece of bone. Just break it when you want the things to come out,” Sylver offered while holding a seagull’s wing bone.
The material he used to experiment with [Black Mass] mainly came from fish, and other aquatic life, but some came from the floating dark fluid shooting down passing birds.
Underneath his coat, Gregory’s body was tightly wound with dark brown bandages. As he removed his pants, Sylver saw that even his legs were fully wrapped in the drenched cloth.
The water that had so stubbornly been sticking to his clothing rushed down the moment Gregory stopped touching it. The liquid had the consistency of oil, and it stained the clear glass-like ice they were both standing on with a deep brown color.
Sylver did as he said, and stored both pieces of clothing away in the bird bone, and then wrapped it up in a piece of thin leather. In theory, the bone should stay whole when they dived down, but given the pressure of the water, he couldn’t say for sure.
He explained this to Gregory, but the man just mumbled a single word in response. Sylver handed him the leather-wrapped bone and began to undress.
Sylver’s shoes disappeared, along with the gloves he tended to wear, the various bits of sharp weaponry spread throughout his robe were stored away, and when all was said and done, Sylver was left with a fuzzy bundle of cloth wrapped around his torso, and held together by 5 separate [Petty] shades controlling a total of 14 kilograms of [Black Mass].
His pale arms and legs were exposed to the elements, and his head was uncovered, save for a thick piece of streamlined [Black Mass] molded over the back of his neck.
“You good to go?” Sylver asked Gregory.
In response, the Fin man stepped off the ice boat and plunged into the water.
Sylver stood on the edge of the thing and looked down at the glistening liquid.
From where he stood, it almost looked inviting.
The water would be cold, but with the sunset, and the unimaginably peaceful quiet, floating around without a care in the world would be almost therapeutic.
But Sylver did have a care.
And he was far too aware of the fact that the sea was deep, to take even the slightest consideration of relaxing seriously.
The thing about being flung into open space is that it’s painful but consistent. You fly and fly, and fly, and eventually, you either hit something or get caught by something. After a few days of drifting through outer space, it even becomes somewhat pleasant, assuming you get over the pure terror of floating away from your home planet.
Sinking in the ocean on the other hand.
It only gets worse.
The pressure increases until even your bones start breaking, and then it keeps going and keeps going, and every single time you think it cannot possibly get any worse, it walks right past your expectations, and then keeps on walking.
And unlike open space, you’re never alone.
Tiny creatures you can barely see crawl on your torn open skin, they burrow into your bones, a passing mass of seaweed tangles itself around you, fish of all shapes and sizes take a nibble at what little is left of you, everything is sharp, pointy, slathered with poison and venom, and it’s so fucking dark that you have no choice but to focus on the noises.
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Sylver lifted his left foot and held it over the edge of the ice boat.
A lot of thoughts went through his head, very logical reasons as to why he should turn back, and send Edmund down instead, but because Sylver was aware of his fear, he had prepared himself for his ever-convincing bullshit.
In the sense he had ordered Spring to shove him off the boat if he didn’t jump off himself.
And to Sylver’s embarrassment that was exactly what ended up happening.
With [Advanced Water Manipulation] there wasn’t really anything to be afraid of, it took more effort to walk a step than it did for Sylver to have his body pushed out of the water.
But instead of taking a final deep breath, the way a smoker might smoke one last cigarette, Sylver used his magic to pull himself further downward.
He started working on his body quickly, he was careful, but he had to get past this point as fast as he was capable of, just to be certain he didn’t change his mind.
Reluctantly, Sylver opened his mouth and closed his eyes as a stream of compressed oxygen began to escape out of his mouth and nose. While he did that, his robe expanded and soaked up the water, and only when there wasn’t a single dry inch left, did it return to its normal size.
Although it sounded impossible, Sylver’s arms and legs became even paler than they were before, and as the skin tightened around his muscles and bones, it attained an ethereal glow. The bits of metal Sylver had embedded into his bones, were visible through his just short of translucent skin.
Slowly but surely, Sylver sunk deeper and deeper into the water, and when the final bubble of oxygen left his mouth, he accepted that this was happening and made the decision not to dwell on it more than he had to.
A fair distance away Sylver could hear a very odd noise, a scratching sound, along with the hiss of compressed water escaping something.
With [Perfect Night Vision] Sylver could see his dark surroundings clear as day, for all the good it did him. His surroundings were mostly compromised of small flecks of something floating in the water, blocking his sight the way falling snow might.
The source of the sound was Gregory.
The Fin man had removed the bandages covering his body, and Sylver saw that his skin was covered in curly squashed spikes. They almost looked like hair, except they were much thicker and wider, and as they extended and began to paddle against the water, Sylver understood that every single one of these things was both a weapon and a tail.
If you removed the arms and the legs, Gregory would look like a squished giant sea urchin. The bag he carried with him was somewhere inside his backside, but it was completely invisible due to all the spikes surrounding it.
They both merely stared at each other for a while, and when Gregory spoke the voice almost caught him off guard.
“You ready go?” he asked.
His voice was clear, and while it seemed to come from everywhere all at once, Sylver was glad to understand him properly. His Eirish wasn’t perfect, but it was more than passable.
Sylver nodded his head and followed Gregory down towards Finland.
***
The change was slow, gradual, and thankfully boring.
Aside from a faint numbness, Sylver’s body was handling the ever-increasing pressure better than he could have hoped.
Even his eardrums were still intact.
Gregory slithered through the water, in a certain sense of the word. He kept his hands by his sides, his legs were fused together by the interlocking curled spikes, and the flat spikes pushed him through the water the way a snake might push its way through sand.
Sylver’s method of traveling through the water was nowhere near as elegant. He covered his head with a blunt cone made of [Black Mass] and then extended the black liquid down onto his body like a cloak, to streamline him as much as possible.
He then had the [Black Mass] spread open, the way an umbrella might, and then close, to provide thrust. Since the shades infused into the material provided all the energy it needed to move, Sylver didn’t need to use any mana and was able to rest.
As much as it was possible to rest while being on full alert and surrounded by liquid death.
Their journey to the bottom of the sea was unexpectedly peaceful. The rare time that something swam close enough to them for Sylver’s soul sense to feel it, the creature was small, weak, and very clearly more concerned with swimming away from something, than it was with swimming towards something.
It was difficult to estimate how long their journey from the surface took, between the pitch darkness, and the complete lack of landmarks, Sylver couldn’t confidently say if they had swum for a few hours, or a couple of weeks…
Probably not weeks, but it was long enough for Sylver to get accustomed to not having to pretend to breathe.
When they reached the bottom of the sea, Sylver was surprised to find that it looked the same as it had the last time he ventured deep underwater.
Giant crumbly sand rocks made up the ground, and odd-looking slimy deep black vegetation grew amidst the various cracks and crevasses. The flora was small, thin, and short, everything looked like dark human hair in one way or another, gently swaying in the dense flowing water.
Just as Sylver was about to ask which direction they needed to go; Gregory began to climb down one of the cracks in the ground.
Sylver froze at the realization, just plainly lost the ability to think, or move, and every fiber of his being begged him to leave, to swim back to the surface. His hearts ceased to beat, his throat filled with bile, and he simultaneously experienced hypothermia and heatstroke.
Sylver, or the Silver Lich, as he is known in myths and legends, almost began to cry at the prospect of making his way down a crack in the ground, deep, deep, deep, underwater.
A part of him almost started to beg Gregory not to go down there, to show him a different route, but luckily for Sylver, his pride was a significantly stronger motivator than his sense of fear.
Without so much as a gasp or a shaky breath, Sylver walked over to the crevice Gregory was climbing down and followed after him.
Each inch he descended down the crack made him rethink his entire life, and the various choices he had made that led to this particular moment in time. If Sylver were a more religious man, by the 10th meter, he would have found God.
Gradually he lost sight of the surface, of the underwater surface, but Sylver managed to keep his panic sealed away enough to appear and act as if this wasn’t one of the most horrifying things that had ever happened to him.
He felt as if he was dragging a squealing dog towards something that terrified it, but as much as the animal wriggled, snarled, and attempted to twist itself free of its owner’s grip, Sylver's grip on his fear was ironclad.
Sylver was prepared to climb through miles of rock, but his preparations were in vain, as his [Advanced Earth Manipulation] informed him that there was a tunnel a few meters below him.
Gregory sunk to the floor of the tunnel, and Sylver followed suit.
The ceiling was covered in cracks, some looked natural, while others were very obviously cut using a straight-edged instrument. The walls, and floor, were all curved in a cylinder, and the surface felt like it was made of glass. The dim red glow of Sylver’s [Mage Cap] illuminated his face just enough for him to see his red reflection on the floor.
The things on Gregory’s skin began to wriggle towards one side of the tunnel, and shortly after, Sylver began to feel the gentle current increase in speed and strength.
Gregory began to float away from Sylver, who had glued his feet onto the floor, and as Sylver released his grip on the surprisingly slippery tunnel floor, he just barely managed not to crash into the spikey Fin man.
Gregory showed off his swimming capabilities by effortlessly dodging out of Sylver’s way, whose massive and heavy body spun, and threatened to smash his head against the floor and ceiling, but after only a couple of seconds of tumbling through the dark tunnel, Sylver managed to right himself into a stable position.
Once the initial shock passed, flying down the tube at a breakneck speed was somewhat fun. He was still keenly aware that he was deep underwater, underground, and could tell that the tunnel was bringing him even lower, but if he pushed all that aside, this was pretty great.
But then the speed kept increasing, and it gradually lopped back into being frightening again.
Sylver could still use [Fog Form], but the problem with that perk was that it turned him into fog.
Which is just gaseous water.
And given that gaseous water is slightly less dense than liquid water, and significantly less dense than water under extremely high pressure, if Sylver allowed his body to turn into gas, it was unlikely there would be anything left to turn into a solid.
On top of that, Sylver was about 90% certain he would be capable of maintaining the spell that prevented his body from being crushed by the water, but he didn’t want to test his abilities at this moment in time, in this specific location.
At some point, the water reached its maximum speed, and just as it was about to go from terrifying, to boring, a shiny metal frame appeared on the floor. It was a ramp that allowed the water to pass through but pushed all the things that were wider than Sylver’s finger up toward the ceiling.
It was smooth and slippery enough that he didn’t lose any skin from sliding along it, and slowly but surely the tunnel split into two. One tunnel continued forward, while the other, the one Sylver was being pushed into by the metal frame, pushed him upward.
Without much warning, Sylver found himself in a giant glass bowl, and he and Gregory were sliding along its edges, gradually losing speed as the stream that had been pushing them along dispersed. The glass bowl had the same spaces as the metal frame that brought them here, a sort of spiral, and as Sylver managed to catch a glimpse of his surroundings, he saw hundreds of eyes watching him helplessly slide along the smooth glass.
A group of 6 people came out of the same tunnel Sylver and Gregory had come from, and they also began to slide along the edge of the glass bowl.
As they lost speed, Sylver and Gregory travelled lower down the bowl, until the spike-covered Fin man finally kicked himself off the glass surface and floated in the middle of the thing. Sylver had to wait a bit before his body lost enough momentum for him to stand up, and swim off the glass.
Sylver followed Gregory down the hole at the bottom of the bowl, and they ended up standing inside a giant cage. The top part led back into the bowl, and the fast-moving stream of water, and similar-looking humanoid creatures floated near the floor and walls of the cage.
They were mostly armed with spears, some had 2 prongs, some went up to 5, and a couple of the people Sylver assumed were guards were armed with very odd-looking spearguns.
Gregory did all of the talking, while Sylver mutely waited for something to happen. The language they spoke was barely audible to Sylver’s ears, the frequency of the sound was so high that couldn’t hear the vast majority of the words.
The few he did hear sounded like a very distant whistle.
But luckily, he didn’t need to hear what they were saying to understand them. Through his soul sense, he figured out that the guards had no issue with Gregory and had a lot of issues with the person he brought with him.
The simple conversation turned very quickly into an argument, and the two guards behind the one Gregory had been speaking to joined in to shout over the spike-covered Fin man.
The guards were all dressed in identical clothing, a thin cloth-like blue jumpsuit that hid every inch of their bodies from sight and only left small slits where their eyes were.
Sylver’s skin began to crawl, and he looked around until he made eye contact with a human woman floating way in the back of the gathered crowd. She was staring at him with such intensity that Sylver could only assume that she knew him, or had fallen madly in love with him in on sight alone.
As Gregory’s argument with the 3 guards escalated to him pressing himself up against the cage bars, the human woman swam over to them.
As she got closer, Sylver saw that her hair was bright green, and he could tell that he knew her.
“Edna?” Sylver asked without much confidence in the word.
“…”
“You took me on one of my first adventures six years ago? Helped me with that thing with the island? We met again in that dungeon? With the elves? I helped get everyone out?” Sylver said, still not completely sure he was speaking to the woman he was thinking of, as opposed to a completely unrelated green-haired woman.
[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]
“Sylver Sezari? Necromancer and adventurer?” Sylver offered, and the almost fearful look in the green-haired woman’s eyes was replaced by a slightly too joyful recognition.
“I thought you died!” Edna said, as Sylver instinctively floated a step back from her.
“It’s a long story,” Sylver answered.
“Do you have your guild card with you?” Edna asked.
It took a while for Sylver to find the thing, but thankfully, Gin had been kind enough to get Sylver a new card before he left and went through the trouble of making Sylver store it away when he was packing for his short holiday with Edmund.
After Sylver handed Edna the card, she spoke, whistled rather, at the guards standing guard, and shortly after that, the cage opened, and Sylver and Gregory were allowed into the city.
Edna was saying something to Sylver, Gregory was either following them, or had left, and the reason Sylver couldn’t for the unlife of him focus on either of them was that he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Welcome to Finland!” Edna said with a cheery tone, as the country in question was now in sight.
Once Sylver’s eyes had adjusted to the light, he desperately wished that they had gone blind instead.
Finland was a country composed of enormous hexagonal glass stalactites hanging from the perfectly flat ceiling, down to the half-sphere dome-shaped ground. Hexagonal glass bridges connected the glass upside-down towers, and unmistakably, Sylver could see “The Tower” standing as tall as it had been when he had first seen it.
Except it wasn’t “standing tall” it was “hanging long,” since its base was on the ceiling, and the top presumably reached the very bottom of the glass dome.
Everything was illuminated in light so bright that if someone told Sylver he was outside, and it was daytime, he wouldn’t have doubted them.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Edna asked, as Sylver reached his hand up to his face, and pinched the bridge of his nose so hard the skin threatened to tear.
“Fucking unbelievable,” Sylver mumbled to himself, as he reminisced about a time in the past when he could set out to do something, and simply did it, without any detours or distractions. “Just fucking unbelievable,” Sylver repeated to himself.