“Are you humming your own song?” Ria asked as Sylver realized where he had heard the melody from.

“In my defense, it is very catchy,” Sylver offered, as Spring, who was hidden inside his shadow, nodded in agreement.

The wooden badge on his left arm that signified his sect had accidentally turned around while he was moving, and the side with the symbol was now pressed up against Sylver’s arm, and couldn’t be seen.

Ria continued silently judging him, but eventually joined in on the humming. There was a light breeze that washed across the duo with the pleasantly fresh smell emanating from the river they were walking along.

The grass near the river was a beautiful bright green, the crystal clear water sparkled from the sunlight, wonderfully pink flowers floated down the river, having fallen from a large tree with pink petals, pink leaves, and slightly darker pink wood.

Sylver almost forgot what he was supposed to be doing, as he kept looking around, and admired the scenery. He preferred mountains, had a soft spot for sandy beaches and loved huge open areas, especially those underground.

It was hard to put into words what exactly made him feel so safe and at ease in a large open space, other than the fact that his whole army would have enough room to materialize.

Thankfully he wasn’t faking his limp, as it had been easier to just dislocate his hip. Right now he was slowly limping down the road near the river and used his trusty staff as a walking stick.

The reason he was doing this was that he didn’t want the group following him to lose him. He didn’t think they would be incompetent enough to lose track of a man walking down a straight road, but considering they were planning to rob an old man who was walking alone, he didn’t want to take any chances.

So Sylver continued to hum his own song to himself, as he walked down the road, and slowly, but surely, could feel the ground begin to soften, and the flora change. There wasn’t exactly a point where Sylver could say “this is the edge of the swamp,” but as he veered off the beaten path, and started to walk on the marshy land, he decided he had waited long enough.

As he leaned to the left, Sylver popped his hip back into place. He eyeballed the angle from which his pursuers were watching him, and used the cover of a particularly wide tree trunk to replace himself with a decoy. The masked shade continued limping ahead, while Sylver funneled his body down into the hole he had made near the tree.

He remained in [Fog Form] while he waited, and used the time to practice moving his senses from one edge of the fog to the other. It wasn’t the most efficient use of his time, but Sylver didn’t want to upset Ria and was getting a little tired of explaining the concept of preemptive self-defense to her.

It was easier to just let them attack first.

There were 4 of them, all men, all dressed in very similar-looking dark blue bathrobe-style clothing, and they were all armed with blunt weapons.

The man at the front had a dark red wooden club, the next had a wooden baton, the next had an oddly shaped pair of wooden knuckle dusters, and the last had a pair of sticks, joined together by a chain.

Sylver waited for one minute after the quartet had passed him, and then had his shade trip over nothing, smack its head on a rock, and then had the shade floating face down in the water, stay there.

The swamp made the fog Sylver was producing and using to travel look natural, he kept it thin so that it wasn’t obvious, but wisps of white gathered every time Sylver traveled over a rock or a branch. Sylver kept his distance from the men, who were keeping their distance from his supposed corpse.

They just stood there, staring at his floating lifeless body.

Sylver waited for about 10 minutes before he plain and simple ran out of patience. They were just standing there, like statues. Something about that didn’t sit right with him, but Sylver didn’t want to spend the rest of the day waiting for them to make a move.

He removed his mask while still in [Fog Form] and without making a single sound, materialized about 5 steps behind the mute quartet.

“Terrible, isn’t it?” Sylver asked, as all 4 of his pursuers flinched and froze in place for a moment, before they turned their heads away from Sylver’s supposed corpse, and looked at him instead.

“Terrible way to go,” Sylver repeated, as the man armed with the club turned away from him, and tried to look at the floating corpse, but found it mysteriously absent. He turned his head back to stare at Sylver.

“Died all alone, in the middle of this terrible swamp,” Sylver continued, as he took a single step towards the quartet, and they collectively took two steps back.

“Not a great place to die, a swamp. Then again, there are very few good places to die, let alone great places,” Sylver offered, as he took another step towards the men, and they collectively took a step back.

“But I think a swamp is particularly nasty. Insects, worms, vermin, and don’t forget all the plants, those terrible, terrible, plants,” Sylver continued, as he took another step towards the men, and followed it up with a second step that caused the quartet to nearly trip as they backed away from him again.

“Not to mention how isolated it can be. You can scream for help all you want, and no one would hear you,” Sylver explained, as a giant bubble formed in the muck on the left, and burst loudly enough that it made the quartet flinch.

Sylver moved his hands up to his mouth and cupped them around it.

“HELP! I’M BEING ATTACKED BY A DERANGED LUNATIC! HELP ME! SOMEONE, PLEASE HELP ME!” Sylver shouted, and amplified his voice just a bit to give it that extra oomph.

The men were all doing something to their souls so that Sylver couldn’t feel them, but the paleness of their faces was more than enough of a give for him.

Sylver let his hands fall away from his mouth, and made them hang loosely by his side.

He and the 4 men just stared at each other.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

Sylver’s head snapped so fast to look at the man who had used the skill, the bones in his neck made a sound. Well, they didn’t, but he used [Mirage] to make it sound as if they did.

“That’s incredibly rude, young man. Would you like a peak up my robe too to check for weapons? How about a gander at the contents of my bag?” Sylver offered, gestured down to his feet, and then pulled his bag by the strap to make it shake.

He turned his head towards the man he had assumed was the leader, the one armed with the club.

[Human – Beaten Monk – 197]

[HP: ??? – 100%]

[MP: 0 – 0%]

[Stamina: ??? – 99%]

[Corpse – N/A]

[Soul – N/A]

Great, a monk of all things…

Sylver adjusted his bag and then clasped his hands behind his back.

“I’m not looking for any trouble. But I have a habit of attracting it anyway. Is that what happened here?” Sylver wondered, but didn’t get a reaction out of them.

It had nothing to do with him not paying attention, or being off guard, Sylver plain and simple wasn’t fast enough to physically react to the man, as he closed the distance, and jabbed Sylver in the stomach.

Sylver realized he had misunderstood the situation the moment he felt a pulse of something pass through him, and couldn’t get his mana to move where he wanted it, or activate [Fog Form]. The man kept his wooden stick pressed into Sylver’s stomach, as the man wielding the two sticks tied together by a chain appeared behind Sylver, and started to strangle him.

Like a crab leg cracker, the man behind Sylver pulled as hard as he could, and Sylver discovered why these bastards were so confident, as he recognized the destabilizing magic coursing through him.

Witch hunters.

Ria reacted far too late, and by the time her spear tips came out of Sylver’s back and went to stab the man in the face, he had already taken a step back and was now trying to pull Sylver down to the ground. Sylver could see that both of the men had wild smiles on their faces, as one pushed his baton so hard that it punched through Sylver’s skin, and slipped upwards into his internals.

Meanwhile, Sylver landed on his back, and regretfully realized there was only one good way of dealing with these two.

As the chain around Sylver’s neck started working at cutting through this spine, he summoned one explosive into his left hand, moved it towards the man he was laying on top of, and moved his right hand’s explosive over to the head of the man pressing a baton into Sylver’s stomach.

Seeing the almost glad look on the man’s face as Sylver triggered the explosive, pissed him off more than any amount of lead simulating wood ever could.

[Human (Stricken Monk) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 50 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Human (Spinning Monk) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 40 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 30!

+5AP

[1 perk available for [Swamp Lord]]

Sylver felt pieces of his arms floating somewhere outside of his current range, his top head was missing a fairly large chunk, and the explosion had sent Ria flying, and Sylver had no idea where she was right now. Sylver reached up with his stub of an arm and managed to hook the splintered bone onto the handle of the shattered baton.

With a single tug, Sylver managed to dislodge the baton, and with the feeling of his soul being yanked out of him, he pulled the whole thing out. Thankfully it merely yanked his mana out and left his soul unmolested.

Health: 63/2,000

Stamina: 577/1,000

MP: 0/11,520

Sylver rolled out of the way, just in time to dodge the suddenly massive club being swung at him, and was further-flung away by the wave the thing created. The man lifted the club up into the air, and ate shit, as a blood-covered Aleri burst out from what remained of Sylver’s robe, and smashed himself into the man’s face.

The man stumbled back for a split second, as Uri materialized between him and Sylver, and tried to stab the man with his various spikes. They sliced through the man’s bathrobe but didn’t so much as scratch his skin, as several beetle-shaped shades exploded out of Sylver’s shadow, forced their way into the man’s face, and did their best to scratch his eyes out.

As they moved towards the man’s ears, nose, mouth, and a couple traveled to the holes on his lower half, Sylver was very unceremoniously grabbed by Ulvic, the wolf shade, as the beast ran away from the club wielder.

While being carried like some sort of bleeding toy, Sylver left a trail of explosives behind himself. From every single bomb, a shade materialized, picked it up, and charged at the temporarily stunned club wielder.

The first shade that reached the man was reflexively kicked away, as was the next, but the third one dived towards the man’s feet and managed to wrap its arms around his left leg. The suicidal shades lunged at the man, and when they saw the explosive touch the man’s skin, they detonated.

Sylver was so relieved by the influx of mana, that he almost didn’t realize there wasn’t a notification for the club wielder’s death. He turned his attention towards where the man had been and saw a man missing a hand wielding an impossibly large club in his other hand, which was right above Sylver and Ulvic and was coming down at them.

Sylver had Ulvic break down, and with this last drop of mana, was swallowed up by the wet earth.

Sylver dug for an entire minute until he couldn’t even feel the men’s presence. He didn’t need to wait to catch his breath, but he realized a moment later that he couldn’t just wait the man out. Ria was out there, somewhere.

Sylver made a hole so tiny that even a worm wouldn’t be able to crawl through it, as he sent his fog through it, and felt the moment the colorless gas made contact with open-air and connected to what little remained of Sylver’s earlier fog.

He appeared above ground for a fraction of a second, and every inch of his skin became covered in summoned explosives, as the club wielder tried to turn this into a game of whack-a-mole.

Unluckily for the club wielder, Sylver still had hundreds of shades waiting for their chance. As the club wielder tried to swing his club down at Sylver, Will materialized, and that momentary adjustment the club wielder had to make for the giant wyvern, destabilized him enough for Dai and Sho to kick him in the back of the knee.

The man folded over, as Reg brought four pressed together explosives directly into the grinning man’s face.

[Human (Beaten Monk) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 50 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

Sylver was left with a scorched pair of legs to stand on, and stood up on them, as he turned around to face the last one.

The man with the knuckle dusters just stood there, with his hands raised and ready to fight, as an uncountable number of shade archers materialized in a circle around the man, and fired their arrows at him.

It was hard to describe what happened.

The man’s feet remained where they were, they didn’t move an inch, and yet somehow, every single arrow either missed or just barely got close enough to nick his bathrobe.

More infuriating than that, the man had such a giant grin on his face, that if Sylver wasn’t currently in bits and pieces, he would have likely wouldn’t have been able to help himself and would have also been grinning.

The man changed his stance, his body was now pointed at Sylver and he-

[Human (Mitted Monk) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 70 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 31!

+5AP

[1 perk available for [Swamp Lord]]

[Mirage (III) Proficiency increased to 98%!]

[Arcane Insight (IV) Proficiency increased to 14%!]

[Vigorous Conditioning (III) Proficiency increased to 100%!]

[Vigorous Conditioning (III) rank up available!]

Ria left a trail through the fog as she descended down into the man’s head, 3 prong side up, like a nail disappearing into a piece of wood. The man’s whole body became lax, as his head began to slide down the perfectly smooth staff. His feet were still in the position they had been earlier, and it almost looked like he was simply bending down to pick something up while keeping his head level.

Ria wiggled the staff until she managed to get the impaled skull to slide off, and the man landed in such a way that Sylver could see through the hole in his head.

Ria spun herself fast enough that she became a blur, as the blood flew off her, as she floated towards Sylver.

Sylver stood there for a few seconds, and stared at the corpse in the distance, as he felt a pit form in the area where his stomach used to be.

“We have to go to Faust, right now,” Sylver said with a horrifying realization.