The Green Ring didn’t look all that different from the streets down in the Red Ring. At least not architecturally speaking.

The main difference was that the Ki barriers were significantly more powerful. In fact, they were powerful enough that, under normal circumstances, Sylver wouldn’t have been capable of getting through them.

Luckily, he wasn’t walking in blindly, he had a plan.

Or something close enough that he felt confident as he walked up to the, oddly aptly named, Green Lion sect.

According to Xalibur, these monks were the local equivalent of [Healer]s, and at the moment, were spread thin dealing with the sleeping sickness, rampaging through every inch of the Schlagen mountains.

On top of that, they were also helping the people who had suffered during the “sinkhole.” So many different sects were affected, that it would have been disrespectful to give the event a proper name.

Even nearly 2 weeks later people were still finding dead bodies. When Tarragon had come to Sylver to ask for help, the death toll was nearing 4,000.

Sylver refused, and thankfully Tarragon had enough respect for him to understand that he wouldn’t say no unless there was a good reason.

But even with the monks spread thin, it wasn’t as if their sect was left unguarded. Doubly so since every single one of them was capable of using “healing techniques.”

As Chrys had said, their front gates didn’t have any doors. The only thing that separated the road Sylver was currently standing on, and the inner area of the Green Lion sect, was an odd-looking wooden structure.

Two thick wooden posts nearly touched the surrounding walls, and a thick piece of white rope hung between them.

As Sylver took a step forward, it felt as if he walked into a sauna.

As he took another step, his fingers and toes went numb, followed by a very unpleasant burning sensation on his face.

Sylver felt his flesh vibrate as he saturated it with his mana, and as he took another step forward, he felt his robe protectively tighten around him.

Sylver took another step forward, and as he lifted his arm up to his face, and saw that thin wisps of steam were escaping from the gap between his glove and his sleeve.

“Ria,” Sylver said under his breath.

The sensation was unlike any other.

Ria’s magic negating effect didn’t feel cold, but it’s hard to describe the instant absence of heat as anything other than cold.

Sylver stood perfectly still, as the liquid metal woman enveloped him, and inch by inch, cut his body and soul off from the outside world.

In any other circumstances, this would have been terrifying, even knowing she was on his side, Sylver still had to force himself to not do everything in his power to tear her off him.

He’d been sealed away before.

More than once.

And even though he knew for certain that he wouldn’t be trapped for long, the feeling of disconnect Ria was causing was as bad as water to a cat. The shades inside Sylver’s shadow threatened to revolt, as Spring rounded them up and forced them to stay in a spot that would be covered by Ria.

“You can move now,” Ria said, as Sylver slowly compelled his body to relax.

He looked down at himself and saw that Ria’s golden tendrils were covered by a thin layer of the SAM’s black worms, which made the dark chainmail just short of invisible against Sylver’s already pitch-black robe.

Sylver’s hands were covered in admittedly elegant-looking gauntlets, with matching pauldrons on his shoulders, and similar-looking sabatons on Sylver’s feet.

It took him a couple of steps before his body adjusted to its new center of gravity, and it was only now that Sylver realized just how much he had relied on his magic to help him walk. Between the weight reduction, the added friction, and the fact that Sylver’s robe acted the way a cat’s tail did to keep it balanced, Sylver’s movements were just a bit off.

The moment Sylver’s foot touched the ground on the other side of the gate, he felt a mixture of utter terror, along with an emotion that caused him to laugh so hard he threatened to tear some of the stitches inside of him.

Whatever deity was governing this piece of land was strong.

And more importantly old.

And if the incredibly violent rumbling sensation Sylver could feel at the soles of his feet was an indicator, it was very unhappy to see him.

Sylver slowly realized that it wasn’t that the ground was vibrating, but rather there were two bright green lion golems growling at him. Each one was the size of a 4-person carriage, made out of bright green stone, with heads as wide as Sylver as tall.

The two lions were sitting on matching giant pedestals, and although they were growling, they were still sitting down.

“I’m only here to talk,” Sylver explained to the two lion-shaped golems.

Their eyes were made out of bright blue jade, and while it could have been a trick of the light, Sylver could tell that their eyes were actually glowing.

“May I pass?” Sylver asked as the growling of the two lions became just a bit louder.

“I’ll take it that’s a no,” Sylver said, as the growling became even louder.

He took a step backward, and as he had expected, the growling decreased.

“I’ll give you two one last chance to let me pass. Because you’re not going to like what I’m going to do if you don’t,” Sylver offered, as he took a step forward, and as he expected, the growling reached such a high volume that the rope hanging between the two wooden poles above began to shake.

Sylver shrugged his shoulders, as he took one step backward, and then another. The growling stopped the moment Sylver’s other foot touched the ground on the other side of the gate.

Sylver sent Spring to Faust’s sect, while he remained where he was, in a staring match with two bright green statues.

“What’s the plan? You’re limited to your physical strength while inside, and no offense, but I don’t like our chances against those two,” Ria whispered into Sylver’s ear, as Sylver nodded.

“I’m not going to fight them, Ria,” Sylver said, as he walked over to the right wooden pole, and leaned on the wall it was almost touching.

“So, we’re going to wait for them to come to us?” Ria asked as Sylver shook his head.

“No… Look, this isn’t a strategy I normally use, because even I don’t like using it…” Sylver explained.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is it?” Ria asked with an almost tired tone of voice.

“It depends very heavily on your perspective. But personally, this is a 2? Maybe even a 1, because despite how it may appear, no one is in any danger,” Sylver offered, as Ria did that clicking sound she made from time to time.

“What are we waiting for?” Ria asked, with the barest hint of worry in her voice.

“One of the cultivators loyal to Faust has a 2-year-old brother... And I just sent Spring over to Michael, to see if the cultivator in question would allow me to have the child for a few minutes,” Sylver explained, with all the vague gesturing such an odd-sounding explanation required.

“To do what with?” Ria asked.

There wasn’t any worry in her voice, just confusion.

“To use as a… hostage… Basically… Any deity with this much firepower has to follow certain rules. And one of those rules is almost certainly, to not harm the innocent. And while I don’t know what this deity considers right and wrong, I know for a fact that a 2-year-old child can’t be anything other than innocent,” Sylver explained, with an almost embarrassed tone of voice.

“When you say, “almost certainly,” how “almost” are we talking about?” Ria asked.

Sylver peered through the gap between the wooden pole and the wall and saw that the green lion statue on the other side of the gate was staring at him.

“As close to absolutely certain as I can get, without being absolutely certain. Religions that don’t protect children don’t tend to last long. And if Xalibur, and Michael, are to be believed, these monks have been around for a very long time.

“I’ve only seen one old religion that didn’t care whether children lived or died, and it’s only because of that, that I can’t truthfully say I’m absolutely certain,” Sylver explained, just as a young man dressed in black, with a white skull mask covering his face, appeared a few steps away from Sylver.

He was carrying a very small human boy, dressed in a matching dark blue shirt and shorts.

“You have my word he’ll be returned safely,” Sylver swore, as he stopped leaning on the wall.

On a certain level, the fact that the older brother handed his only living relative over to Sylver, without any hesitation, disgusted him in ways that were hard to put into words.

Sylver made a mental note, there and then, to make sure, all the cultivators under Faust acted out of trust and loyalty, not whatever the fuck this was.

After the older brother left, Sylver very carefully moved the younger 2-year-old brother into his left hand. The people here were shorter than the people in Arda, and with Sylver’s body being bigger than the average person’s, the young boy was almost small enough for Sylver to hold in the palm of his hand.

“You’re going to drop him,” Ria said with that older voice she used when she calmed Rosa down.

“That’s the point,” Sylver said, as he turned on his heel, and walked to the edge of the gate. “I’ve got such a poor hold on him, that if someone were to do anything to me, why, this child might just slip out of my grasp and crack his ever so brittle skull on the hard hard floor,” Sylver said with mock concern, as he raised his right foot.

The twin green lion statues began to growl, as Sylver’s Ria-covered foot passed through the gate’s threshold.

The growling got so loud that the previously relaxed child in Sylver’s hand grabbed him by the front of his robe.

“Don’t worry… boy, they won’t bite,” Sylver said in as soothing of a voice as he could manage, as he walked through the gate, and felt the small boy relax again.

Sylver had been undead long enough that he didn’t remember what being touched by holy energy felt like. To him, it had always been the worst pain he had ever experienced. But it appeared to be a pleasant feeling to the living since the boy looked ready to fall asleep even with 2 lions growling near him.

The two lions stood up from their pedestals, as Sylver took two more steps forward.

“Oh wow, I’m so intimidated. I might just pee myself,” Sylver said as he took another two steps forward.

The lions were now growling so loudly that some of the pebbles littered on the ground were starting to shake.

Sylver turned on his heel and walked over to the lion on the left. It stared him down as he approached, it barred its teeth, and lowered itself, as if it was about to pounce.

“Don’t be afraid, look,” Sylver said, as he slapped his hand down onto the giant green growling lion’s nose. It flinched but otherwise didn’t move.

He rubbed his hand up and down the lion’s snout and angled the boy in his arms so he could reach it too.

“See. All bark and no bite. Isn’t,” Sylver lifted his hand and slapped it on the lion’s nose, “that,” he slapped it again, “right,” Sylver said, as he slapped the lion so hard across the snout, that sparks flew out due to Ria’s gauntlet. There was an ever so slight mark on the lion’s otherwise shiny stone nose.

“Is that necessary?” Ria asked in a barely audible whisper.

“No, but it’s fun,” Sylver answered out loud, as the two lions suddenly stopped growling, and returned to their original sitting position.

“What if they attack us?” Ria asked as Sylver laughed at the bright green statue’s face.

“They’re not going to attack us. Because the deity that resides here is a good deity, and good deities don’t do anything that would result in the death of a child. Because only evil deities would do something as disgusting as risking a child’s life. Even if I were to say something like “I’m going to kill 10,000 children after I leave,” this thing isn’t going to do anything,” Sylver said and felt an almost painful tightness all around his body as Ria sort of gasped.

He struggled to move for a moment, as Ria seemed to be frozen in fear.

“Can you please stop taunting it,” Ria communicated through a tense series of taps.

Sylver took his hand off the lion’s face, and with a slight grin, turned away from it, and started to walk down the road.

The main weakness of this strategy was that it didn’t work on priests.

Well, it did work on priests, but in the sense that their deity didn’t provide them with any power, because then it would be aiding in killing a child. But the moment Sylver did anything to them, they were no longer trying to kill Sylver, they were defending themselves.

The reason for this was that most deities were more concerned with how something looked, as opposed to how it actually was. When they are given the choice of saving 10 people by killing 1, they would always choose not to kill.

It was a morality that Sylver hated, because to him, results matter more than the method.

If you kill 1 person, to save 10, you have a net positive of 9. Assuming these people were strangers of course.

But to these sorts of “good” deities, they would only see the fact that they killed a man and would ignore the 10 deaths they could have prevented.

One of the reasons Sylver didn’t like using this strategy was because he didn’t come up with it. It never occurred to him to do this, until he saw a demon possess a 5-year-old girl.

The priests couldn’t physically stop the possessed child because it had explosives or something, Sylver didn’t remember the specifics, but he remembered the fact that the priests were all powerless against this demon.

They just watched as it made its way to the main altar.

And then they tried to kill Sylver because he stopped the child.

Every single one of those priests saved hundreds of lives every day, and they were willing to lose their healing magic, all because they didn’t want to snuff out one tiny life.

Obviously, not all religious deities were like this, but luckily for Sylver, this one was.

There were more bright green lion statues on the side of the path Sylver took, and because the deity controlling them knew Sylver wasn’t going to be spooked, they saved their strength and stayed silent.

Sylver saw men with hair so long they carried it in a bag on their back. They all wore identical featureless bright green jumpsuits, and as some of them turned around to look at Sylver, he saw that they had braided beards hanging down to their crotch.

Sylver nodded at them with a polite smile, as he continued walking towards the house Chrys said Owl, Hound, and Aurick were staying in. No one stopped him or tried to ask him what he was doing here. If anything, the monks looked like they went out of their way to not pay attention to him.

The building was quite small, and there were large rotted planks of shattered wood lying around everywhere, it looked like an abandoned storage house. It didn’t have any windows and only had 1 door.

With the young boy half asleep in Sylver’s left hand, he very carefully angled his body to protect him, in the event he was attacked, as he raised his right hand towards the door, and knocked.

After 10 seconds had passed, just as Sylver was about to knock again, the door opened enough for a single eye to look through.

“You alright there Aurick? You look kind of pale,” Sylver joked, as he placed his hand on the door, and pushed it open all the way.

As Aurick staggered backward, Sylver noticed 3 things immediately.

The first was that Aurick look identical to the current emperor. It hadn’t been Sylver’s imagination.

The second was that Lion had lost a ton of weight, along with his left leg, and his left ear.

And the third was that there was an extremely familiar-looking book, floating ominously above the unconscious trio. Milky white wisps of smoke came out from the book and flowed down into the noses of the Owl, Hound, and Lion, who were laying side by side on the ground.

The book had a bright red cover, and the edges of the pages were lined with a yellow metal that was the wrong color to be gold. On the front, there were words in a language Sylver didn’t know, alongside very well drawn, and very distinct, suns.

And if Sylver counted right, there were exactly 7 of them.