-

-

Ch221-White Snow

-

-

Even if Tarragon hadn’t specified the meeting place, Sylver would have found him. To a person of Sylver’s specific composition, the ground might as well have had streams of liquid magma flowing through it.

With Tarragon standing in the middle of the chaos, a volcano of mana, engulfing his surroundings the way a cloud of ash would. As the level 417 [Ancient Druid] turned, so did every leaf, vine, and branch near him.

Sylver could almost hear his voice echoing out of the surrounding flora.

“Apologies for the late notice,” Tarragon said with a slight bow, as the man standing behind him stood up from the log he had been sitting on.

“Is this everyone?” Sylver asked as he looked around.

Tarragon gave him an apologetic smile, as he gestured at the only man standing next to him.

“This is Anice. He’s the closest thing we have to a curse specialist,” Tarragon explained as Anise quietly nodded at Sylver.

Anice had a pair of goggles around his eyes, and a strange-looking breathing apparatus around his mouth and nose. He was wearing gloves, and the skin on his face was a little too shiny. Going by the faint smell of mint, it was some sort of ointment.

“One of his classes is [Healer], so even if he does get poisoned, he should be fine, but I didn’t want to take any risks. The monsters here aren’t the kind we’re used to,” Tarragon explained, as he and Sylver started to walk down the road that would eventually lead them to the swamp.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Sylver asked.

As Tarragon moved, his influence moved with him. Sylver could feel Tarragon’s grasp on the grass behind them lessen, as he gained hold of the weeds in front of them. Sylver estimated his range to be in the 50 meters area.

“We are looking for a redheaded lady of the night,” Tarragon said.

Sylver waited for him to continue.

“Does she have friends, or are we sharing?” Sylver asked as Tarragon started to laugh.

Sylver had left Mora back in Faust’s sect, she was still recovering, and he wanted her there to make sure the sect had protection in the unlikely event they were attacked.

He doubted anyone would attack them while he was gone, the effects of the Night Fever were devastating, the sects were all busy fortifying themselves, to worry about a small fry like Faust, but he felt better with having Mora there.

“She almost certainly has friends. After we realized brothels were where the curse originated, we went to investigate them. She, along with 3 other women we’ve been able to identify, have been systematically moving around the Red Ring, presumably to infect as many people as possible,” Tarragon explained, as Sylver nodded along.

“Systematically?” Sylver asked.

“It certainly looks like it. Made the curse extremely hard to track down. We got lucky; all things considered. One of the patients Anise had been treating turned out to be patient zero for his district. Anise had a hunch and followed the metaphorical trail to a local brothel. There wasn’t anything obvious like a hex bag, but all the girls working there had very strange magic surrounding them,” Tarragon explained.

“Symptomless carriers,” Sylver said.

There was a pause before Tarragon spoke again.

“Quite right… We were looking at it backward. Because the children were the first to succumb to the curse, we had assumed they were the first ones to be infected. We had also been assured that it wasn’t a curse. They were very specific about that,” Tarragon said with a hint of annoyance.

“They don’t have a high opinion of magic here, do they?” Sylver asked.

“It’s understandable. Difficulty of getting inside aside, there’s not much for a mage to do in this place. They have a couple of spell blade types here, but those are basically warriors. They use their magic like a disposable throwing knife, they’ve got no respect for the craft. The only real mages these people have seen are us,” Tarragon explained as Sylver nodded along.

“And healing magic isn’t the memorable type,” Sylver offered, as Tarragon smiled at him.

The ground below their feet was uncharacteristically solid. Courtesy of several roots weaving into a sort of rug for them to walk on, that returned to their natural positions after Tarragon had finished walking on them.

“It’s memorable to the person regaining the use of their fingers, but aside from that, not particularly, no. Believe it or not, I’ve tried to have a [Pyromancer] accompany us. But I’ve been denied, the fewer people know about this place, and our somewhat secret alliance, the better. My grandfather started this whole thing... Apologies, I’ve forgotten what we were discussing,” Tarragon admitted, as Sylver smiled politely at the man.

“You were assured this wasn’t a curse,” Sylver said.

“Yes, that’s right. One of their [Healer] equivalents allegedly confirmed that a curse couldn’t be responsible. We’ve been told cultivators can diagnose curses and diseases by examining a person’s meridians, but it turns out it isn’t as foolproof as the locals believe it to be. Granted, we’ve never seen a curse like this either, but… Anyway, reinforcements are on their way. In the meantime, we can at least figure out the source of this curse,” Tarragon explained.

Tarragon continued talking for a while.

He spoke of his experiences dealing with curses in underground dwarven settlements, spent a while discussing the merits of using potions alongside healing magic and did his best to explain how a curse can spread without physical contact.

Sylver wasn’t sure how familiar with curses Anise was, but if Tarragon's explanation was to be believed, these people didn’t know shit about curses. Their only recourse against a curse of any kind was to blast it to smithereens with holy and healing magic.

In their defense, that’s the proper way of dealing with 99 out of 100 curses.

Sadly, Anise, and by the sound of it, the elves as a whole, weren’t educated enough to know that the curse they were trying to treat was the rare 1 out of 100.

This Night Fever like curse was very good. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t have to be. It just had to be better than the people trying to remove it.

They weren’t even tracking this curse, the only reason they were in this swamp was that Tarragon found a piece of a leaf inside the shoe of one of the missing ladies of the night.

They were tracking a leaf.

Which, to be fair, wasn’t that far off from tracking someone using a drop of blood.

Since there was a good chance they would get into a fight, Sylver decided to take this time to pick a perk for his [Swamp Lord] class. There wasn’t anything that would help him teleport through his mushrooms or anything that would boost his mana capacity or regeneration, but there were a couple that were promising.

One was called [Steady Growth] and would make any plant Sylver grew get stronger over time. But this meant Sylver would have to carry this plant around with him or come to where he left it to maintain it. He also got the feeling this perk would measure time in days, rather than hours, or minutes, and Sylver didn’t plan to sit still anywhere that long.

The second choice was better.

[Perk: Greater Greenhouse]

-User is able to cultivate plant matter as if it was in its ideal environment.

-Limited to [WIS/2]m

*User must have had physical contact with the plant matter.

It wasn’t anything new, technically speaking, but forcing a plant to grow when it didn’t want to required a lot of mana, and more importantly, effort and attention. This wasn’t quite as good as getting an upgraded version of [Fog Form], but it was certainly better than whatever the system would have chosen for him.

[Perk: Greater Greenhouse]

-User is able to cultivate plant matter as if it was in its ideal environment.

-Limited to [WIS/2]m

*User must have had physical contact with the plant matter.

Fuck, Sylver thought, as he suddenly gained awareness of every branch he stepped on. It was so annoying, it was almost disorienting, and the system took its sweet time before it provided Sylver with a metaphorical off switch.

He tested the perk and found that it gave him something a bit stronger than the current plant perception his [Chloromancy] trait gave him.

Once he touched something, it was as if he was still touching it, even when he wasn’t. Sylver could feel the small fish swimming underneath the lily pads, even when they were too small for his [Advanced Water Manipulation] to perceive them.

The group wasn’t disturbed as they walked.

It was hard to say if it was due to Sylver’s earlier “hunting,” or because Tarragon was blasting enough mana into their surroundings that even Sylver would have been wary of fighting him.

Or it could have been due to the witches flying above them. They were hiding their presence, but that was useless against Sylver, especially if someone is staring right at him.

There wasn’t any warning, or buildup, as Tarragon, Anise, and Sylver all stopped dead in their tracks, seemingly frozen in time.

Nine women floated down from the sky, and with their wands pointed at the three men, landed on the marshy ground.

They were all wearing a fuzzy dark green cloak, that blended them into the mess of moss and weeds, along with cone-shaped pointed hats, that were all hanging limply behind them.

They all had 1 line on their sleeves, except for one woman, who had 2 lines on her sleeve. None of them said a word, as they made a circle around Sylver and company, and began mumbling under their breaths while they moved their wands in a circular motion.

Sylver always liked looking at witch magic.

He didn’t like using it and would talk at length to anyone who would listen as to how inefficient it was, but he couldn’t deny it was pretty.

It had everything people imagined, sparkling lights, bits of smoke, it even made a fancy hissing sound. From Sylver’s point of view, it was a six-pointed star inside of a circle, and inside the six-pointed star, there was a triangle.

The triangle was just barely big enough to catch Sylver, Tarragon, and Anise.

Sylver couldn’t even blame the alleged curse specialist.

This curse was extremely powerful. Tarragon might have been able to stop it if he hadn’t been caught off guard, but Sylver and Anise had no chance.

Well, Anise had no chance.

Sylver on the other hand was enjoying one of the few perks of being born a full dark. The curse had more effect on Sylver’s robe than it did on Sylver.

Witch magic differed from other magic in the fact that it was meant to be done in a group.

Mage craft was a solitary activity.

One mage could help another mage’s spell, but it was very uncommon. Witches on the other hand practiced group magic exclusively. They were weak individually, some were downright defenseless if you separated them from their coven, but in exchange for that 9 tier 2 equivalent witches could cast 4th tier magic.

“We’re only here to talk,” Sylver’s voice said, from up above.

The witches snapped their heads up and saw an uncountable number of shadowy bodies standing on the tree branches, some armed with bows, others armed with swords, axes, and daggers.

It surprised Sylver how difficult it was to move. If it was just a bit harder, he would have slipped out of his robe, and tried talking to these witches while fully nude.

Thankfully, it took him only a couple of seconds to undo the curse on his robe.

“I’d like to have a word with you ladies,” Sylver said, as he walked over to Tarragon, and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Or I can remove the curse binding my friend here, and we go straight into action,” Sylver offered.

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

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

…

Sylver felt like a hammer had been lightly smashed into his forehead, as he saw the message appear 9 times, and going by the sudden uneasiness in the air, the witches had successfully seen Tarragon’s impressive level of 417.

And whatever Anise’s level was.

“Who are you?” the witch with 2 lines on her sleeve asked.

Sylver’s hood fell back, as he ever so slightly lowered his head towards the woman.

“Sylver Sezari. Necromancer, master of the dark arts, adventurer, and holder of several third-degree witch ranks,” Sylver said, as the witch hesitantly nodded back at him.

“Why are you here?” the witch asked. She had a bit of fuzzy black hair peeking out from underneath her hat.

“I’m here to see if we can help each other,” Sylver said while he pointed to himself. He gestured at Tarragon and Anise, “they’re here to track down a redheaded prostitute, who was purposely infecting people with the sleeping sickness,” Sylver explained and saw something peculiar in the witch’s face.

It wasn’t shock, in fact, it was the exact opposite.

“If you knew why we were here, why did you stop us?” Sylver asked as he tightened his grip on Tarragon’s shoulder.

With his immunity to their curses, he didn’t doubt himself, but Tarragon and Anise were a different story.

“We were going to make you think you found the girl’s corpse and would then scare you off with a level 800 monster before you had a chance to examine her,” the witch explained.

“I see… And that works?” Sylver asked as the witch gave him an odd look. “I get that it probably took you a month to prepare this curse, but… Anyway, would you mind keeping these two here for a bit?” Sylver asked as he decided not to question it.

The witch just stared at him.

“I swear on my mother’s blood I won’t raise my hand against you, except in self-defense,” Sylver swore, while he used his pointer and middle finger to cover his left eye.

He could almost feel the collective relief, as the witch he had been talking to nodded at him and gestured for him to follow her.