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Ch218-What’s In The Box

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An entire minute of dead silence had passed since Owl had said that they wanted him to help them defeat the new emperor.

A faint smile tugged at the edges of Owl’s mouth, as Hound continued staring at Sylver as if he expected him to lunge at them. Even if Hound didn’t think the man sitting in front of him was a threat, he still took his job seriously.

“So?” Owl asked.

Sylver placed his hands in his lap, as he leaned forward slightly.

“You’re a very fortunate man if all the people you dealt with agreed to help you kill an emperor without asking questions,” Sylver said, as the faint smile on Owl’s face turned into a full-blown polite grin.

“Does it matter? You already have the blood of two innocent men on your hands. What’s one more?” Owl asked as Sylver chuckled.

“Guilt? Is that your angle? Since I already killed 2 innocent men, if I stop now, their deaths will be meaningless? Wouldn’t telling me they died for a good cause work better? Tell me the current emperor is a demon wearing a man’s skin. That in his free time he rapes, tortures, that he’s a vicious animal, who hates the things I love, and loves the things I hate,” Sylver said with an almost bored tone of voice.

Oddly enough there wasn’t any change in Owl’s face or his soul.

Hound probably wouldn’t have heard a word Sylver had said, even if he wasn’t deaf. He was fixated on Sylver, the way a starving dog would be fixated on a giant slab of meat. His grey hair was tied in a firm ponytail, which made his face look sharper than it actually was.

“I don’t need to convince you, because I know what kind of person you are,” Owl answered.

Sylver rolled his eyes and could almost hear the muscles tighten in Hound’s neck.

“Sure you do,” Sylver said.

“You care deeply about the people you consider friends and are completely disinterested in the lives of those you don’t. I also know that you don’t have any alternatives when it comes to saving Fobur Plateforged,” Owl explained.

A sly smile gradually appeared on his face, as Sylver continued to blankly stare at him.

“Assuming that’s true, this is still the emperor we’re talking about. I’d like to know I’m not part of a suicide mission. Why do you want him dead?” Sylver asked.

“You’re overestimating your involvement… How about this, we’ll tell you everything we expect from you, and after that, you can decide whether or not you’re comfortable with it,” Owl said, as Sylver sat up, and winced as he felt one of the stitches on his spine pull at his skin.

“As long as you don’t say something like “now that we’ve told you our plan, you can either join us or die.” Can you promise me you’re not going to say that?” Sylver asked as Owl nodded.

“That’s not how we do things. If you choose not to help us, you will be allowed to leave unharmed, no questions asked. But then you will have to find and rescue Fobur without our assistance,” Owl explained with just a hint of a laugh in his voice, as Sylver scrunched up his face.

Sylver was pretending that Owl was talking about Edmund, as opposed to Fobur, because for whatever reason they seemed to think that Sylver was willing to die for this Plateforged fellow. Which was good, because that meant that their only bargaining chip was actually completely hollow.

Sylver had to play pretend with them because he wouldn’t win against Hound.

Difference in raw power aside, there was something about Hound that made Sylver’s gut twist into a knot. The last couple of times he’d had this feeling, he had been right to avoid fighting. And deeply regretted the rare times he’d ignored it.

Sylver wasn’t even sure if winning was on the table.

Sure, he couldn’t lose, but surviving and winning were not the same thing. If he knew what he was up against, maybe, Sylver would risk a confrontation with Hound, but as it stood, he had no choice but to resolve this kerfuffle without violence.

“Alright,” Sylver said, as Owl nodded at him.

“In a few hours, a man will cross the eastern border. He will be carrying a package. We want you to meet this man and swap a decoy package with his. You will then hold onto that package until the grand auction is over,” Owl said.

“Are people going to try to steal that package from me?” Sylver asked as Owl made a so-so gesture with his giant spade-sized hand.

“If everything goes to plan, no. The package you will hold will be one of many. We hope that you will be overlooked and ignored, on account of being less, shall we say, prominent,” Owl explained, as Sylver just nodded at him.

“Then what?” Sylver asked.

“Then we will ask you to bring the package to a specific location,” Owl explained.

“That’s it?” Sylver asked with a tired sigh.

Great, they’re going to use this as blackmail to force me into doing other shit. Just what I needed.

“Regarding your part in helping us defeat the emperor, yes. As for rescuing Fobur Plateforged, that is a bit more complicated,” Owl said, as Sylver gestured for him to carry on. “The head of the Blue Tiger sect will be found dead in his room in a week or so. He will have killed himself out of grief, on account of the death of his last 2 remaining heirs, and-”

“I was told the Blue Tiger sect had more than 30 heirs?” Sylver interrupted.

“It used to, yes... After the head is found dead, a vigil will be held for him. High-ranking guards that defend the border, and defend the location where Fobur is held, will have no choice but to abandon their duties to see to the burial of their sect head. The ones that remain will all be low level, and inexperienced,” Owl explained.

“So, I will be able to just walk in, grab Fobur, and walk out?” Sylver asked as Owl nodded at him.

“That’s the idea, yes. There are 30 people who will be breaking in at the same time as you, so your only job will be to find Fobur,” Owl said.

What happens if I say no right now?

Either they leave me alone, or try to kill me… If I attack them first, I could probably get enough blood to track them… Then again, Owl can teleport, and Hound is faster and stronger than I am…

Do I lose anything if I agree to this? I’ll have to watch over a box containing a powerful weapon or something, but other than that? Faust can fight off the people coming after the box, so corpses for me, and XP for him.

I’d have to go through with the jailbreak, but I could just walk in, look around, walk out, and say I found Fobur dead. Or I could rescue him, I’ve got enough of his blood to track him.

Is there a way I could ask about the girl without letting them know why I want to find her?

Sylver placed his palm flat against where his stomach used to be and was almost surprised to find it perfectly relaxed.

“I have a few more questions,” Sylver said with a warm smile.

***

Green curtains, green curtains, Sylver repeated to himself over and over again, as he walked from one barrier-enclosed building to the next.

He was looking for an abandoned building, with dark green curtains. For whatever reason, even the “ghost town,” as Owl referred to it, still had perfectly functional barriers, that required Sylver to physically walk from one building to the next.

Spring was doing it too under the guise of his skinsuit, but even if Sylver could have multiple Springs, he only had the one skinsuit.

He made a mental note to create more when he had time.

“You’re going against the emperor, a man you yourself described to be “incredibly powerful,” because your stomach didn’t hurt when you considered it?” Ria asked as if Sylver’s answer was going to change just because this was the 4th time she was asking it.

“Once again, I am open to suggestions, and alternatives. From where I’m standing, in exchange for moving a box from one place to another, I have an excuse to be around the Bucklers,” Sylver silently tapped out, as Ria told him that this house didn’t have green curtains either.

He had initially tried to have her ride on Aleri, to find the curtains that way, but enough of the houses had roofs that stuck out that Ria couldn’t see the windows, so they had to find it the old-fashioned way.

“The healer elves?” Ria offered.

In her defense, although she questioned Sylver’s digestive-based decision-making 3 times already, she always had a new idea.

“I will obviously talk to Tarragon, but they wanted an answer right there and then, and I answered yes. If he knows something about the shield girl heir, good. But what if he doesn’t? Until we know for certain, we shouldn’t assume anything,” Sylver explained, as Ria went quiet again.

They walked past 10 buildings before she spoke again.

“Why don’t they remember you? Do you not find that suspicious?” Ria asked.

Sylver scratched his chin, as Spring informed him he hadn’t found the house with the green curtains.

“They might have traded their memories away. Or it might be part of a ruse unrelated to me. Or it’s part of their master plan to deceive me. Honestly Ria, stop trying to overthink everything. Sometimes weird shit happens, and it has nothing to do with you,” Sylver said, as he passed yet another house that lacked green curtains.

“Alright… So, do you actively decide not to worry about it, or is it natural?” Ria asked.

“You get used to it. Or rather, you don’t have a choice when you have to multitask thousands of things. Worry about the things you can control and forget about the things you can’t. The moons don’t look right to me Ria. Something is off about them, but I don’t know what. Can I do something about the moons looking weird? No. So I’m not going to waste my time thinking about it,” Sylver explained, as he leaned in through the barrier, and told Spring to come back.

“Weird how?” Ria asked, as Sylver rolled his eyes and started spreading his mana out to search the house.

“Weird as in, there’s something off about them. I can’t be any more specific than that, the vast majority of my magic doesn’t require knowing the positions of the moons. I would go so far as to say it might be my imagination,” Sylver said, as he used [Fog Form] to enter the house and materialized on the second floor.

His shadow extended towards the pile of rubble and very gently pushed the bits of oddly heavy wood out of the way. Bit by bit, Sylver uncovered the package he was meant to carry to the eastern border.

It looked like the kind of thing a bard would use to carry a delicate lute, except it was maybe three times as big. Sylver had to guess that it was meant to contain a Warhammer, battle-ax, or a large spear, or maybe some sort of rectangular shield.

As he used his [Deadly Darkness] shadow to stand the package up, he placed his hand on his face and massaged the area above his eyes.

“They’ve got a 4th-tier mage working for them, fan-fucking-tastic…” Sylver said to no one in particular.

His shadow placed the package upright against the wall. It was rectangular, about the size of a door, but a bit smaller, and thicker. It was covered in a very cheap-looking black leather, with scratched-up and rusty metal edges.

There was a very distinct piece of blank fabric wrapped around it as if it was a gift. The middle bit that would have been a bow instead had a wax-like seal, that was a very peculiar shade of red.

Sylver crouched down and moved his face towards the wax seal until his nose was almost touching it.

“Is this bad?” Ria asked, as Sylver reached out with his hand, and tapped the tip of his finger against the outer rim of the wax seal.

“Assuming the decoy is identical to the real thing, they’ve got some really serious shit locked up in here,” Sylver said, as a tendril of [Necrotic Mutilation] extended out of his chest and began to wrap itself around the package.

As Sylver stood back up, the package floated into the air and followed him as he began to walk down what remained of the stairs. It was only now that he noticed that the weight distribution inside the thing was off.

He spun it around while he walked, and it didn’t feel like any sword or shield that he knew of. Stranger still, the way the weight was spread out almost felt familiar. A thin layer of lead inside the package prevented him from peaking inside.

The seal was fake, but Sylver was worried there was a trap inside, that would let the man he was swapping packages with know he couldn’t be trusted.

Sylver hid the large rectangular box floating above his head using an illusion, and while it wasn’t completely invisible, it was transparent enough that the few people out in the street this early in the morning didn’t notice it or pretended not to notice.