At some point during the joinery, Sylver remembered he had 10 attribute points to distribute, but he wanted to consult Faust on something before he used them.

The way those cultivators managed to slither past his perception wasn’t normal. He would have known if they were teleporting, and simply being fast didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to sense them.

Mora was still asleep by the time they reached the area the Blue Tiger sect controlled. Sylver didn’t understand the specifics, but she was experiencing something akin to backlash from using her string to trap the blue robe heir.

In an odd way, Sylver was happy to hear that. He wasn’t happy that his companion was exhausted, but it was akin to discovering that you and a close friend were both allergic to the same thing.

Sylver had Spring walk ahead of him, and he gave the skin suit wearing shade a crude bright blue mask to wear, as he approached the main house of the Blue Tiger sect. Both Sylver and Spring spent a while walking around the area, to scout it out.

Sylver had planned to have the 2 corpses show up in a semi-respectful way, but as he leaned down to inspect a copper serving tray and felt a piece of metal drag against his spine, he changed his mind.

Spring entered a public bathroom, snapped a tiny [Bound Bone] that contained the two corpses, removed his skin suit, assimilated it into himself, and then returned to Sylver’s shadow.

There was utter chaos as a man desperate to piss discovered the two partially mutilated heirs sitting on the toilet and screamed loud enough that Sylver didn’t even need a shade to confirm the bodies had been found.

Sylver mixed himself into the crowd, as much as possible given his height and appearance, and while one group ran towards the screaming, Sylver joined the other group, that was quickly moving away from the screaming. Once he was outside the area owned by the Blue Tiger sect, Sylver made sure no one was following him and made his way towards Faust’s sect.

***

The fact that the barrier was weak enough for Spring to almost pass through it, worried Sylver, but he chose to remain optimistic.

But as he walked through the barrier to Faust’s sect, as usual, his optimism was stomped on.

When he left, the sect was composed of a walled-up piece of land, with a beautiful double gate serving as the entrance. Inside there was a 1 to 2 story building, if you count the roof, and more recently, a bunch of martial arts practice equipment had been built into the wonderfully green grass on either side of the path in the middle.

What Sylver was looking at right now, couldn’t even be described as ruins.

There was an enormous tear in the ground like someone had ripped the earth open. Debris of the completely destroyed building was littered throughout the opening, along with Faust’s training things, and thanks to [Dead Dominion] Sylver could also tell that there was blood down in the fissure.

Sylver could hear a ringing in his ears, as he felt a tightness form within his chest. Ria was saying something, but the only thing Sylver could focus on was the destruction someone had brought to the place he had considered his temporary home.

The home he had forced his way into and accepted the responsibility for, which had been torn to irreparable shreds. Sylver tried to take a deep breath, but he had neither the lungs nor the calmness required for such an action.

It wasn’t even anger he felt right now, anger was-

Sylver’s neck made a cracking noise as Ria forcibly turned his head. A man dressed in black, with a white mask shaped like a skull was standing near him, and it took Sylver an embarrassingly long time to compose himself enough to hear what the boy was saying.

“Master Faust has asked me to escort you to the new sect,” the boy said, as Sylver kept his gaze fixed on the boy’s eyes, and gradually turned his body towards him.

“What?” Sylver asked, and with every second cooled down enough to think straight.

“We have moved, Master Sylver. Master Faust has asked me to escort you to the new sect headquarters,” the boy repeated, as Sylver unclenched his fists.

“Lead the way,” Sylver answered, as the boy nodded at him, and gestured for him to follow.

Sylver vaguely recognized the boy, even with the mask and concealing dark bathrobe-like clothing he was wearing. He wasn’t certain which one he was exactly, but he could tell by his soul he was one of the kids from Faust’s sect, and not just a random kid wearing the sort of thing people expect “necromancers” to wear.

The black robe was fine, that was a very fair stereotype, but the skull-shaped mask almost felt like he was mocking him. All of Sylver’s masks were an oval shape, and if they were carved, they never resembled a skull.

But the mask the kid was wearing looked as if someone had taken one of Sylver’s plain white masks, and then scaled it down to fit a child’s head and carved it into the shape of a skull. Sylver also saw that the boy wasn’t wearing his wooden carving on his arm and was instead wearing it on his hip.

They walked in silence, Sylver had questions, he had a lot of questions, but he decided to save them for Faust. The suns had finished setting by the time they reached the new sect headquarters.

The entrance was a brilliant green, with a giant white skull carved into the painted wood. Two fully grown adult guards stood on either side of the entrance, and after a nod from the boy in front of Sylver, moved to open the gates.

Similar to the old place, the new one had blood splattered everywhere. There was blood soaked into the grassy ground, on some of the roofs, between some of the stones in the path, and inside the thick wooden walls, which were in the process of being repaired.

Sylver lost count of the number of white skulls he saw as he followed the boy towards the 5-story building, but he also saw a familiar symbol a couple of times as well.

Although the color was different.

Once again, two guards opened the doors for them, and Sylver saw a one-armed Faust choking on his tea as he turned his head and saw Sylver standing there. His left sleeve had been folded and sewn shut, so the stump wasn’t visible. He was also wearing an eyepatch on his right eye, and there was a line of very poorly sewn stitches on his neck.

He was missing a piece of his right ear, and while Faust did look good with a shaved head, the burn mark on his temple ruined it.

Faust coughed into his only hand while Sylver stared at him.

“Do you want the short version or the long version?” Faust asked as he wiggled his stump towards the table, and a cup levitated towards the empty seat and was filled by a similarly floating tea kettle.

“Why a skull of all things?” Sylver asked as he walked over to the table, and with a flick of his hand, created a chair for Ria and Faust to sit on.

Faust somehow managed to look simultaneously ashamed, and completely unconcerned, as he shrugged his shoulders.

“I thought it would be… Look, I’ll be 100% real with you, I was in a very strange headspace when I took this place over, and it didn’t occur to me how the skull thing would look. But by the time I realized it, half the servants already had it tattooed on their foreheads, and my thought process was that the symbol doesn’t really matter, so why not a white skull?” Faust explained as Sylver pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I did all of this?” Faust asked, as Sylver kept his head down, and tried to wish away the migraine forming inside his head.

Spring spoke in Sylver’s place.

“They attacked you, you defended yourself, and then you came here, killed their leader, and now you own everything they used to own,” Spring explained, as he made himself comfortable in his seat.

“I mean… yes, but it was a whole thing. I sacrificed my arm, Michael nearly died, even Xalibur and Dog had their moment… You were gone for a week, and I managed to conquer a Green sect! I caught a sword with my teeth Syl. You should have seen me, I was magnificent. All that shit Bruno said about feeling more alive than ever before, I finally get it,” Faust explained, as he gestured with one hand, and wiggled his stump.

“All the fights I fought before, win, lose, my heart was never in it. I didn’t care, but now… You really should have seen me, I had the whole underdog thing going, I was outnumbered, they had better equipment, I didn’t even have a sword, and I still won. I’ve never slept well, I don’t remember if I ever told you that, but I slept like a log after this Syl,” Faust continued, as he enthusiastically waved around his hand.

“You said servants, are they actually servants or are they slaves?” Ria asked, as Faust refused to calm down and seemed like he was going to explode if he didn’t have someone to tell his epic tale of conquest.

Which, if you summarized it, was the story of one guy beating up a bunch of other guys.

Riveting stuff.

“Honestly, both, kinda. They’re technically speaking my property, but the land their houses are on is owned by them, and I think they are allowed to sell that land to other servants, but I haven’t really looked into it. I doubled everyone’s wages, salaries, what have you, and apart from a couple of families, everyone seems content to stay here. To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not all that sure what they all do?” Faust explained with a confused look on his face.

“Is there going to be revenge or something? Is the Blue Mongoose sect going to attack you?” Sylver asked, as he stopped pinching the bridge of his nose, and straightened his back.

“Nope, I won this place fair and square… They might attack you, specifically, for being a witch and all that. I recommend going somewhere public with that elf healer you mentioned. Make it look like you have friends in high places. How did it go with your thing?” Faust asked as he looked Sylver up and down, and despite Sylver’s best efforts, could tell he wasn’t doing too hot.

“Pretty standard… You might have to fight a cultivator wielding an ancient [Hero]s artifact, in a couple of weeks, possibly months, maybe days,” Sylver explained, as Faust’s eye widened at his words.

“Ah… So we’ve both been busy,” Faust said, in a tone that suggested that the thing he had been busy with was as interesting as the thing Sylver had been busy with.

Sylver laughed to himself, as he got exactly the non-reaction he expected from a man who used to be a [Hero].

“I need to patch myself up. Is there a private place for me to do that, while you tell me how exactly you conquered a whole sect within a week?” Sylver asked.

Once again, there was something almost childlike in Faust’s smile.

As Faust led Sylver to the 5th floor, which had been converted into a room/workshop for Sylver, he began explaining how it was a calm and ordinary day, when the entrance was smashed open.