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Ch092-Collaborate And Listen

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Sylver materialized right outside the dirt-covered wall and very slowly moved his hand towards it until he felt the metaphorical trip wire strain.

“There’s a spherical rock on the other side of this wall, do you mind telling me what the sigils at the very top of it look like?” Sylver whispered. Lorn moved through the dirt wall and poked his head out of it.

“Kind of like S.A.S. But there’s like a line on the top and bottom connecting the two S’s to each other,” Lorn said, as Sylver ever so slightly turned his hand clockwise and pushed a little harder.

“In the direction the A is pointing, there’s a sigil that looks like a circle with two dots inside of it. Directly before it, in the direction of the A-shaped sigil, is it shaped like a triangle with a line going through it, or like three squiggly lines?” Sylver asked. Lorn disappeared again and came back out.

“Three squiggly lines,” Lorn answered. Sylver smiled slightly at this and pushed a bit harder against the wall.

“There’s a wire sticking out of the sphere, what does the sigil it’s coming out of look like?” Sylver asked.

“Like the number 3, the bottom part sort of goes the other way, like a Z?” Lorn said. Sylver turned his hand counterclockwise and heard a very faint click.

The floating goblin skeletons directly behind him moved themselves against the wall and pressed together as much as they could. Sylver just barely managed to turn around and roll into a ball with his back towards the wall, before he was sent flying by the explosion. The remainder of his floating flesh and bones had covered his body as much as they could, taking the brunt of the explosive force.

As the pieces of floating flesh burned and turned into cinders and ash, they were released from Sylver’s grasp and were whisked away by the sudden draft that the explosion had created. It lasted for a couple of seconds before Sylver snuffed the fire out with a wave of his hand.

“No, no, that was on me. My hand slipped, it happens,” Sylver said very quickly and dismissively, as Lorn was about to start asking if it was his fault.

He got greedy because of finally being able to use something he hadn’t realized he missed and paid the price for it. Sylver glanced up at his HP and regretted it.

Health: 442/1,000

If he was being completely honest with himself, his pride took a bigger hit than his back did. Sylver shuddered as he felt a piece of bone move against his back because of a falling boulder, and felt it grind against his exposed spine for a second. Sylver’s cloak quickly spread itself out and covered his back and stopped the bleeding.

Sylver gave himself a second to gather his thoughts and turned into smoke and very carefully avoided the still-burning remains of the exploded barrel of tar. He materialized right on top of the giant tree that used to be the entrance/exit but was now laying on its side in multiple pieces.

Sylver spread his arms out to stretch and found that his left shoulder had been blown wide open. He decided he might as well get it over with and lowered his left shoulder down, while Spring appeared behind him and scooped out the rotten flesh inside with a thin dagger. Sylver’s robe tightened against the gaping wound and he breathed a sigh of relief as he no longer felt any pain in his shoulder.

Well, there was pain, but it was easy to deal with the physical pain of missing a giant chunk of flesh, as opposed to the eye tearing pain of having silver stuck inside of you. Sylver moved his hand upwards while looking towards the giant rubble-filled crater and…

“Gods fucking dammit! I wasted so much fucking time gathering all of those,” Sylver muttered to himself as there was simply too much weight on top of the giant pile of dead bodies he had gathered to get them out of there. If he used earth magic, he’d be out of mana by the time he had a hole big enough to get them out.

Small pieces of teeth, nails and horns managed to move through the cracks and crevices, but the bigger parts needed to be broken down but that would take too much time. Turning all of them into [Coat Of Carrion] liquid would require making physical contact with them, meaning individually touching them.

Sylver’s choice was made for him when he felt a disturbance with his mana, and very quickly turned into smoke and traveled towards the bandit cave entrance. A woman dressed in dull orange plate mail teleported directly on top of Sylver and stomped her foot on the swirling darkness. Sylver managed to gather himself into one piece and materialized, just as the woman finished doing something to her mace to charge it with magic.

“I come in peace, my name is Sor-” Sylver just barely managed to move his head out of the way as the woman threw her mace and obliterated the tree behind Sylver. He didn’t get a chance to so much as catch his breath, as the woman moved her hand to the left, and the macehead shook for a moment, before flying towards Sylver.

Sylver turned into smoke and split his torso into two and allowed the mace to pass through him, but didn’t account for the handle and was hit directly in his sore left shoulder blade. He fell onto his back and his robe shoved him downward, towards the woman, as the mace changed direction mid-flight and nearly crushed Sylver’s skull beneath it.

The woman moved her arm towards herself, as Sylver’s robe threw him in the air, and it passed underneath him and ended up in the woman’s hand. Sylver flipped in the air and landed on his feet, just as the woman teleported directly in front of him and swung at him from the top, downward.

Instead of dodging Sylver leaned forward and hugged the woman under her arms. Bright red tendrils exploded out of Sylver’s robe, and wrapped themselves around the woman, forcing themselves underneath her armor and stabbing her in the eyes, mouth, nose and any other soft parts they could find. Sylver didn’t try to lift her off the ground but held her in place as Spring angled his dagger underneath the back of her helmet and pushed it upward in a single smooth motion.

[Human (Warrior+Warrior+War Smith+Bronze Knight+Warrior) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

The tip of the dagger came out through one of the helmet’s eyeholes and was less than a finger’s width away from Sylver’s own eye. Sylver stood still, with his arms wrapped around the dead woman’s torso, as Spring pried open the back of her helmet and held it open. Sylver moved his left hand upwards and gently reached underneath her helmet and drained the remains of her health and mana through the back of her neck.

[Draining Touch (III) Proficiency increased to 62%!]

[Physical Endurance (II) Proficiency increased to 93%!]

[Coat Of Carrion (I) Proficiency increased to 3%!]

When the fuck did [Physical Endurance] get that high? Has it been active this whole time?

Sylver breathed a short sigh of relief as he grew skin on his back and finally stopped feeling his robe rubbing against his bones. Spring pulled the dagger out and held the woman’s body in place as Sylver let go of her and the tendrils coming out of his two daggers broke off and fell limp against her armor.

Sylver breathed in and then breathed out a dark cloud of smoke, which turned into a small spiral and forced itself through the dead woman’s visor and into her mouth and the newly created hole where her eye used to be.

[Zombie (Common) Raised!]

[Raise Zombie (III) Proficiency increased to 44%!]

Sylver placed his hands on the zombie’s shoulder and patted them as he used some water to wash away the blood leaking out of her helmet and the tendrils hanging all over her body.

“Go run into the cave and bash the first person you find in the head, alright?” Sylver asked. The bronze-clad zombie nodded and picked up the mace that had fallen on the floor and turned around and began to run towards the bandit hideout.

Sylver stretched his arms for a few seconds as he spread the woman’s HP around through his body. His robe twisted itself around his body as Sylver poured some water over it to wash away the blood. He pulled his mask off and saw that it was scorched to the point of turning from white to black, and handed it to Spring as Spring gave him an identical, but clean, mask back.

Sylver cracked his neck and his knuckles as 3 shades wearing robes identical to his materialized out of his shadow. The 3 shades turned into 6, then 12, then 24, and then one of them split into 16, while the other two stayed at 8. In total there were 33 figures wearing pitch-black robes and identical bone-white masks.

Sylver split the group into three, ordering 8 shades to stay near the exit and “guard” it, 8 to run directly behind the zombie woman, and 16 to come with Sylver to circle around and hit the camp from the other side.

Sylver heard the sound of a page turning as he looked directly above him and saw Lorn staring wide-eyed down at him and his multiple copies.

“What? They already know I’m here, might as well use the confusion to my advantage,” Sylver argued. Lorn merely shrugged his shoulders, before he disappeared out of sight.

Sylver and the rest of the shades stood in a circle and very quickly ran towards the middle, mixing and matching at random, until they all of a sudden began to run in their separate directions.

*

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[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

Sylver felt the faint connection between him and the zombie get severed as he continued to run through the dark green forest, even as he heard voices shouting behind him. His group of shades split into 2, 10 going with Sylver and 6 going slightly to the right.

Sylver grinned under his mask as Spring informed him the group chasing him split into two. He split his group of 10 into 2 groups of 5 and then scattered them into every direction short of running back the way they had come.

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Necromancer] has reached level 89!

+5AP

Sylver reached the edge of the river but didn’t slow down as he used the [Bracelet Of The Aurai] to run on the fast-flowing water. Sylver watched the group of 8 shades on the other side of the river split apart as they made contact with the rushing, and screaming, band of warriors.

The warriors were all oddly thin and were armed with daggers, rapiers, some sort of wobbly spear, metallic claws and-

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Necromancer] has reached level 90!

+5AP

[1 perk available for [Necromancer]]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 20 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

-they didn’t get a chance to use anything, as the shades lunged at them and yanked out the ignition device embedded inside of the bombs. From where he was running Sylver saw several of the slightly panicked warriors stop what they were doing to look at the smoking hole where a wooden bridge used to be, as chunks of their comrades splattered all over the nearby houses and fell into the river.

Sylver heard an explosion off in the distance but guessed that he wasn’t quite as lucky with the shades guarding the secret exit.

As the chunks of dead flesh and bone floated down the river and towards Sylver, he concentrated on his recently acquired perk and made the bobbling chunks fly into the air and follow right behind him.

There was a great deal of movement and shouting as Ulvic and his pack appeared out of one of the nearby houses and began to attempt to tear anyone within their vicinity. Sylver veered to the left to catch a few more fragments and allowed his robe to release its hold on the darts and daggers hidden inside it.

Almost as if they were tied to one another, the daggers flew out of Sylver’s robe and spread out around him, as if they were a cage. Sylver kicked hard off the invisible platform and landed on one of the wooden bridges.

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[??? (???) Defeated!]

…

It was hard to keep track of who was where, as notifications of defeated enemies flashed in front of Sylver’s eyes, as he ran towards the entrance of the cave, as did the rest of the panicked warriors. Sylver had them cornered and-

Only the fact that Sylver felt the mana building up below him gave him enough room to jump back and get out of range, as a wall of ice tall enough to completely seal up the cave entrance, exploded out of the river.

Sylver ever so slightly turned to the left as a giant ice spike missed him by less than a hair’s breadth, and exploded into pieces as it collided with the frozen water beneath him. He stepped right, then left, then two steps left, each time narrowly avoiding the spike of crystal clear ice.

A young man wearing a pale blue robe with an oddly dark complexion stood at the top of the wall of ice and looked down at Sylver. He stared right at Sylver, without so much as a twitch as a spike of ice came out of the ice beneath him and killed Reg behind him before he even finished materializing.

[Elf (Mage+Mage+Mage+Mage+Mage+Prime Elementalist) – 169]

[HP-4,900]

[MP-11,288]

Sylver glanced around, but couldn’t see anyone. Spring very quickly informed him that the ice was doing something, and they weren’t able to pass through it, even in the small cracks forming underneath it.

“So which one are you? Svental? Horst? Lourge? Which dog did they send this time?” the ice mage asked.

Sylver bowed in mock as the floating blobs of flesh behind him formed into a rough shape of a person and mimicked him.

“Horst the horstiest, at your service,” Sylver said with an amplified voice that made the puddles of blood that hadn’t been frozen by the ice vibrate and splatter.

“Liar!” the ice mage shouted, but he didn’t sound angry, he sounded oddly amused if anything. Sylver might have even heard a soft chuckle.

“I don’t suppose we could talk things out?” Sylver offered, as he lifted his masked face up to look at the ice mage, as did the Sylver-shaped loose collection of heads, arms, and legs. A bright red ax covered in pitch-black smoke appeared in Sylver’s hand as if out of nowhere. He threw it up into the air and a floating detached hand caught it.

“Do you really think after what you’ve done I-” the mage grinned at Sylver standing on a small wooden bridge as he almost casually stepped to the side to allow the shadow-coated ax to pass him by. “Just what I’d expect from a dog of the-”

The ice mage disappeared in an explosion of frost as Sylver pulled his frozen solid hand back and found that he couldn’t let go of the dagger. The ice mage’s eyes were wide open with confusion as he glanced down at the “Sylver” below and saw him standing perfectly still while surrounded by fallen chunks of flesh and bone.

To his credit, the ice mage didn’t waste a breath before waving his hands in the air and riddling Sylver’s body with spikes of ice. Sylver disappeared into a cloud of smoke, as his shattered mask fell off and clattered to the ground.

“You think I’ll fall for the same trick twice?” the ice mage asked the darkness around him, partially blinded by his own resulting snow that was now slowly falling down.

10 Sylver’s appeared out of nowhere and in perfect sync, holding an identical bright red dagger in each hand, and running at full speed towards the ice mage. The ice mage rolled his eyes as he turned on his heel and made a giant spike of ice appear in front of it.

The spike exploded out of his hand and much smaller spikes appeared near his feet and shot out towards the multiple Sylver’s all around him. Each spike landed true and kept going through the resulting clouds of pitch-black smoke, as the real Sylver clutched at his chest from where the spike had hit him.

“Typical, your kind always aim for the back,” the ice mage said, or tried to say, as the blood-red daggers continued to move towards the ice mage, and impaled him in the stomach, torso, thigh, shoulder, and side of the neck, and exploded with bright red tendrils. They bound the mage’s hands, head and yanked his feet together, and made him fall onto the ground into a growing pool of his own quickly freezing blood.

The mage tried to say something through the tendrils and bone shards wrapped around his throat and face, embedded deeply in his skin. Considering there were shards of bone stabbed in his eyes, and one that managed to get into his mouth and stab him in the tonsil, he was most likely trying to scream.

“Well fought!” Sylver shouted, as he ripped the frozen solid piece of skin covering the center of his ribcage, and threw it away. His pitch-black sternum glinted in the dim light one of the moons provided, as his robe covered the hole up and started to warm up what it could.

He walked over to the ice mage and used [Dead Dominion] to flip him onto his back, via the dead tendrils and bone shards.

“I’ll give you one chance to die painlessly. Bring down the wall of ice,” Sylver said in an oddly sweet and calm voice, practically whispering it into the struggling mage’s ear. The ice mage froze up and began to scream the same exact muffled sound that Sylver could tell by his soul was meant to be “never.”

“Good. At least you’ll die with dignity,” Sylver said as he stood up with a smile under his mask. He pressed the struggling man down against the icy ground as Dai appeared near him and stabbed the man directly in the heart.

[Elf (Mage+Mage+Mage+Mage+Mage+Prime Elementalist) Defeated!]

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

[Necromancer] has reached level 91!

+5AP

[1 perk available for [Necromancer]]

[Optical Illusion (III) Proficiency increased to 100%!]

[Optical Illusion (III) rank up available!]

[Coat Of Carrion (I) Proficiency increased to 9%!]

[Draining Touch (II) Proficiency increased to 69%!]

Sylver looked down through the ice below him and saw the faintest flickers of light, like fireflies trapped in a glass jar. Except these looked more like torches, and the ice that the mage had raised to fortify and defend, now acted to trap those inside.

It was too thick for anyone to teleport out of it, but if Spring was to be believed there was already a big enough crack for him and the rest of the shades to get inside.