Ria didn’t say anything.

Sylver appreciated that in more ways than she knew.

Because the last thing he needed right now, was to have someone bicker with him over a decision he had already made and was now simply carrying out.

Ria didn’t say anything, but she was thinking it. Sylver didn’t even need his soul sense to know it, he could hear her making that clickity sound she did whenever she was thinking too much.

There wasn’t a bright flash of life as Aurick took the book, no thunder or lightning, if Sylver hadn’t seen and heard it screaming at him, he wouldn’t have known it was alive.

Aurick opened it, most likely to check that it was real, and even though Sylver saw his eyes moving in a way that suggested he was reading something, the page he was looking at was empty.

Sylver leaned forward, just a little, and ever so gently sent a paper-thin tendril of mana towards the book.

It felt…

Nothing… Sylver felt nothing when his mana touched it. He could feel the mana leaking out of the book, but in no way would Sylver describe it as sinister, or world-ending.

If anything, it felt kind of weak?

Aurick placed the book underneath his armpit and turned around to leave.

With Mora standing a few feet away, Sylver placed his hand on Aurick’s shoulder. Xalibur and Dog were sitting in the corner of the room, and Michael and the 4 strongest cultivators were standing near the window.

Aurick didn’t freeze, in fact, it took him a second to realize Sylver was preventing him from walking away.

The skin around Sylver’s knuckles tightened, as the mana in his hand started to build up.

If this isn’t the book, destroying it would mean the Sun Demon will eventually kill everyone.

If this is the book, I won’t be able to destroy it.

“Yes?” Aurick asked.

5 seconds of utter silence passed before Sylver nodded with his head towards Michael.

“Could you get him some pants, please? You’re about his size,” Sylver said casually, as he took his hand off Aurick’s shoulder.

There was no collective sigh of relief, everyone present either knew better or in the case of the cultivators near the window, didn’t notice the tension in the air.

Once Aurick put on a pair of pants, he left.

***

Sylver lifted his cup off the table as it began to violently shake. The workshop appeared empty, everything Sylver didn’t want to fall over had been placed in a padded chest that Sylver had enchanted to float half a centimeter off the ground.

He finished his tea, walked up the ladder, and joined Ria in watching the 8th mountain fall over.

As of now, there were only 4 left. The White Rat, the White Ox, the White Tiger, and the White “Palace.” The emperor’s sect didn’t have an official name, it didn’t need one, so the few times people discussed it with foreigners, they called it “The White Palace,” since it was a palace, that was in the White Ring, that was white in color.

Sylver hadn’t done anything of note while he waited.

He experimented with mushrooms and made a fair amount of headway, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was doing everything he could to distract himself, and for a day or so, it worked.

After that, Sylver felt like his head would explode from worry.

But then, Sylver decided to stop thinking about it.

It occurred to him that even without an Ibis, something must be keeping the planet spinning. The Sun Demon couldn’t be the first realm-ending disaster Eira had faced during the time the Ibis was gone, so clearly, all the realm-ending disasters have been stopped.

And as flimsy as that logic was, it was good enough for Sylver to trick himself into not worrying, and not thinking about, well, everything.

He was in the process of unleashing an ancient dragon into the world, compared to that, a Sun Demon was nothing.

If he was nothing else, Sylver was an optimist.

When it suited him to be one…

Sylver turned around and watched as a small girl did her best to climb the ladder, but she couldn’t close her hand into a fist to grab it properly. She tried to push herself up regardless, but she was having problems extending her legs all the way. The flicking white light in the girl’s left eye fizzled out, and she looked around the roof confused for a couple of seconds.

“Good morning. Would you mind sitting down here please,” Sylver said to the small girl, while he gestured at the armchair next to him.

The girl quietly nodded at him, as she finished climbing up the ladder, but before she could start walking, her left eye began flicking with a white light again.

When Ria told Chrys what she was actively guarding, Chrys excused herself from the dinner table, locked herself in her room, and then forced herself into the minds of the monks near Aurick.

As far as Sylver was aware, clairvoyants usually started with weak-minded creatures, and slowly and gradually, trained their way up to humans.

Chrys skipped a few steps and jumped straight to commanding monks, who were under the protection of a relatively powerful deity. Her control over them wasn’t perfect, but once Zelvash stopped screaming about how dangerous it was, he admitted that it was beyond impressive.

In hindsight, that was the wrong move on the old dark elf’s part.

Because Chrys ended up believing that she knew better than her clairvoyancy instructor.

And it certainly didn’t help that Lola didn’t see the problem with this. She even offered to buy Chrys some slaves to practice on.

Because Lola understood why Chrys was so eager to master her abilities.

Even if the book wasn’t real, or didn’t feel like the real thing to Sylver, it was a stark reminder of how vulnerable Chrys was. She trusted Sylver to keep her safe, she trusted that Lola would protect her, but she would rather risk her sanity, than not have the strength to keep herself out of the clutches of a certain group of people.

The girl with the glowing left eye stumbled towards the armchair. She walked as if she was blackout drunk, like a puppet whose strings were tangled up.

But, to her credit, she did make it to the armchair without any assistance. She slowly lowered her body onto the soft chair, and then adjusted her limbs so that they were all comfortable. The girl’s body went limp, as the glow in her eye became slightly brighter, and stopped flickering.

Talking is harder than living people realize. Just like walking, they do it without thinking about it, and because of that, assume it’s just as easy for everyone.

To an undead, walking can be a massive hurdle, and a good portion never managed to achieve fluent speech.

At the moment, Chrys could move, she could talk, but she couldn’t do both at the same time.

“I forgot it’s daytime here,” the girl said in her high-pitched voice, but with Chrys’ accent.

“8 down, 4 to go,” Sylver said with a gesture at the enormous cloud of dust in the distance.

The barrier extending out of the middle was clearly visible now. It distorted the light that passed through it and made the single mountain hiding behind it look significantly shorter than it actually was.

“Yeva said to tell you she’s trying to find a magic tutor for Benji. She asked if there’s anyone in Arda that you could recommend,” Chrys said, as Sylver closed his eyes, but couldn’t think of a single person he would trust to teach the young boy.

Lola was incompatible because she was an elf, Salgok’s magic was too closely intertwined with him being a dwarf, and Yeva obviously didn’t trust herself to teach her son…

“Ask for a tutor from the temple of Ra. Priests are very careful with their magic, and they’re the only people who won’t pass any bad casting habits onto him. I’ll find someone when I come back, he’ll just about finish stabilizing his mana core by that time,” Sylver said, as Chrys nodded along, and then the girl she was controlling made the sound of pen scribbling on paper with her mouth.

“How did Ciege react?” Ria asked.

She also wasn’t thrilled about Chrys practicing her magic on living human beings, but just like Lola, she could understand where she was coming from. The girl Chrys was currently talking through was contacted by Chrys directly because apparently, her mind was the right mixture of resilient, and weak. The girl chose to perceive this whole thing as training and refused any jade Sylver offered her.

“He was on the fence until he learned that Benji has an extremely strong affinity with fire. Now he’s been trying to get him to light a candle using magic,” Chrys explained, as Ria smiled at her.

“If you haven’t already, send someone to enchant the house against fire. Yeva probably already did it, but everyone always assumes children have better control over their magic than they actually do,” Sylver said, as he felt an odd churning in the lower half of his torso.

He didn’t have anything that could churn down there.

“Ging took care of it. And Salgok and Murdok double-checked, but don’t tell Ging. I…” Chrys’ voice trailed away, as Sylver stood up, and started looking around.

“What’s wrong?” Ria asked as Mora stood up from where she had been sleeping and began to grow as her body shifted into its 7-legged form.

“What’s going on,” the girl sitting next to Sylver asked.

Sylver placed his hand over his stomach, but the feeling didn’t seem to be physical.

He looked down at the confused, and due to the expression on Sylver’s face, frightened the girl.

“Tell everyone to-”

It wasn’t so much that the sound was loud, but rather the fact that Sylver felt the very air shake before he even started to hear the roaring.

Everyone currently standing on the roof, Sylver, Ria, Mora, Spring, and the girl whose name Sylver forgot to ask, were all transfixed by what they were seeing.

Off in the distance, where the last remaining 4 mountains that composed the Schlagen mountains stood, an impossibly large serpentine head was pushing its way upward.

Its jaw was unhinged, and open so wide that Sylver saw more teeth than head.

Sylver’s robe extended towards the girl in the chair, and formed a shield around her, as the reptilian creature pushed its head even higher.

Sylver saw the air shimmer inside the creature’s mouth, as Mora pulled him away from the edge of the roof by the back of his robe, and Sylver did the same for the girl sitting in the chair.

It didn’t make any sound, as the enormous pillar of pitch-black flame exploded out of the creature’s mouth like an erupting volcano, Sylver first saw the flames lick the top of the spherical Ki barrier protecting the whole country, and only then did the deafening screeching reach his ears.

There was another delay, as 4 unbelievably giant chains appeared out of nowhere, and like a fish in a net, pulled the smiling serpent's head back down into the ground.

Sylver and company remained where they were for a couple of seconds and then saw something land a few meters away from them.

It was a small droplet of dark red liquid.

Before Sylver could even finish forming the thought, dark red liquid started to rain down onto the roof. People below screamed in shock, as they stumbled over their own feet on the now wet ground and did everything they could to get under a roof.

Sylver handed the girl over to Mora, as he reached out with his hand, and allowed a droplet to land on his palm. The liquid was oily and stuck to his skin in a familiar way.

He didn’t need to be informed by [Dead Dominion] to know what it was, the smell alone was impossible to mistake for anything else.

Sylver looked up and saw that the “ceiling” of the giant dome that surrounded the Schlagen mountains was now filled with pitch black clouds that were raining blood down on the people below.

More importantly, the uncomfortable feeling in Sylver’s stomach was only getting stronger.