As a creature that didn’t need to breathe Sylver almost didn’t notice that the “air” was almost entirely composed out of a mixture of nitrogen, and carbon monoxide. Because of that, the air felt stuffy, and when Sylver opened his mouth to yawn, coated his tongue with the faint taste of rust.

What little vegetation remained was an unpleasantly dark brown color, partially due to spilled blood, but mostly because of the various toxins flowing freely along Sylver’s feet.

Chrys had mentioned it at some point, the various mages stationed in Arda created some sort of enchanted gas, that functioned like an invisible balloon, and moved massive clouds of suffocating gas around.

Sylver had hoped to pick up a few corpses on his way to the storm, but the last attack was from the north, everything on the southern side had long since been scavenged clean by slimes and other opportunistic monsters.

Mora walked a bit stiffly on the flat paved road, her balance was off, and her ears were twitching as if she was trying to fan herself with them. To her, walking through this cloud of death felt a lot like walking through cobwebs, it didn’t hurt, or kill you, but it was a very unpleasant feeling all the same.

The mages maintaining this spell told Sylver that the clouds were dispersed once a day and that if Sylver wanted to survive walking through them, he would have needed to wait 14 hours.

Teleporting was also out, there wouldn’t be much point in having this sort of defense if the enemy could simply teleport past it. The only way out was to either wait or tell the guards you and your horse are undead.

Sylver had considered taking Bravo with him, to teleport him directly into the storm, but he decided against it. Sylver was in a rush, but he wasn’t going to put one of Lola’s people in danger just to save himself an hour of travel.

Sylver patted Mora on the side of her neck as she hesitantly walked through the unpleasantly light air.

When they were finally outside the range of the suffocating cloud, Mora took a deep breath, and as she breathed out, became longer, taller, and shifted into her 7-legged form.

She lifted her front part for a moment, as if she was rearing, and then exploded upwards without making a single sound. On either side, Sylver saw the glimmer of suspended in air strings, that she used like bow strings to propel herself higher and higher.

The movement might have appeared abrupt, or downright violent, but from where Sylver was sitting he had honestly felt more motion from the creature when she was walking on the flat road.

***

Normally when he had nothing to do, Sylver would allow his mind to wander.

But this time, he didn’t do that. Even before the train of thought started, he could see where it ended, and instead of trying to force the tracks into a positive direction, he decided it was better not to get on the doomed train at all.

Inner peace was not something Sylver was capable of. Not really.

He didn’t know if it was a character flaw, something that happened because of Nyx’s training, the result of his desire to be ready for anything, or if this was simply how everyone was, and the only difference was that they were better at lying to themselves.

“Found what?” Ria asked.

It took Sylver a couple of seconds to unclench his jaw, so he could speak.

“What?” Sylver asked.

“You just said you found something,” Ria said.

“I didn’t…” Sylver pinched the bridge of his nose and didn’t let himself get annoyed. “I didn’t say anything Ria,” Sylver said.

“I am certain I heard you-”

“I promise you I didn’t say anything… Are you sure the sound came from me?” Sylver asked.

Ria made that clicking noise for a few seconds.

“It came from your abdomen,” Ria answered with a confused tone that made her statement almost sound like a question.

“I think-”

“Shhh,” Ria said.

Sylver took a metaphorical deep breath and maintained a calm state of mind.

“That wasn’t your voice,” Ria said. Sylver just nodded his head.

She made that clicking noise again, and then she repeated what she had heard.

“…fou-Nd…” even with Ria making the sound so loud that it hurt his ears, Sylver just barely heard the actual word.

“What did you hear the second time?” Sylver asked.

Ria responded with the sort of sound sand made when it was poured into a metal bucket.

If Sylver hadn’t been actively listening for it, he never would have heard the almost inaudible “turned.”

“You said the sound came from my abdomen?” Sylver asked.

“It did, yes,” Ria said.

A good 10 seconds of somewhat awkward silence passed.

“Alright… Let me know if you hear anything else,” Sylver said.

“Am I intercepting a signal of some sort? Are two mages communicating or something?” Ria asked as Sylver shrugged his shoulders.

“I doubt it. With that kind of thing, decreasing the distance as much as possible is vital, the only way you would have been able to intercept it is if there was someone directly below us, trying to talk to someone directly above us,” Sylver explained.

“What about some sort of magical distress call?” Ria asked.

“I would have felt it,” Sylver answered.

“Well, it wasn’t electronic…”

“I see,” Sylver answered, and tried to get back to staring into space.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but his best guess was less than a minute.

“Why are you burning him, instead of just healing him? You said he’s “alive”, so why can’t you use healing magic on him?” Ria asked.

The last thing Sylver wanted to do right now was to talk about the man he was actively doing his best not to think about. But at the same time, he could tell Ria was worried about something and wanted to talk to get her mind off it. Whether it was the voice she had just heard, or something else, Sylver didn’t know.

“Any sort of foreign magic will interfere with his body repairing itself…” Sylver explained.

“I see… Is he like you?” Ria asked.

“In what sense?”

“I mean, is he… Does he care who gets hurt? Or is whatever he’s after the only thing that matters?” Ria asked.

“You phrased that very strangely. Just because someone hurts people to get what they want, doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care,” Sylver answered.

“How would he have handled the whole dragon thing?” Ria asked.

Sylver didn’t need to think too hard about it, because when the question was “what would Edmund do?” the answers tended to be very similar.

“He would introduce himself to the emperor and tell him directly that he wants to free the dragon. If the emperor refused to help him, Ed would challenge him to a duel. If the emperor refused to duel him, Ed would give him 3 chances to fight him properly. And then he would kill the emperor, and whoever else tried to stop him from freeing the dragon,” Sylver explained.

“What if he wasn’t strong enough to do that?” Ria asked.

“See, that’s the neat thing about him, he’s always strong enough to do that. And the rare, rare, time he’s not, he’ll find a way to win anyway. Eventually…” Sylver said with a wry smile.

“But what if he wasn’t? What if he knew he would lose if he tried to fight the emperor head-on?” Ria asked.

“Well… If he somehow knew 100% for certain he couldn’t win in a head-on fight, he would warn them about me. And when I say “warn,” I do mean warn. Ed doesn’t threaten people like that, he doesn’t really threaten anyone at all. He merely explains the consequences of not doing as he asks,” Sylver said.

Sylver felt a tightness form in the back of his throat.

“That’s a threat, that’s the legal definition of a threat,” Ria said.

“It would be a threat if I did it. But Ed always means it in the sense “if I don’t succeed here, they’re going to send someone who will.” I’m not explaining it properly… See… We specialize, we never send someone to do something they’re not suited for. So these hypotheticals are pointless,” Sylver said.

He had to blink away excess liquid that had formed in his eyes.

“By “we” you mean the Ibis,” Ria asked, and Sylver nodded.

“Edmund is a good man,” Sylver said with just a hint of a crack in his voice. “You’ll like him, trust me.”

Ria didn’t say much after that, and Sylver managed to fully calm down by the time he saw the edge of the storm.

***

It was as good of a spot as any.

A relatively empty field, with only a handful of trees tall enough to interfere, which were promptly cut down using Mora’s strings.

The previously sunny white sky had turned a boring gray, and darkened Sylver’s surroundings, to the point it almost appeared to be nighttime.

Hurricanes in Eira were only loosely related to their Earthen cousins.

For starters, hurricanes in Eira didn’t have a circle of calmness in the middle. The mechanics were similar, hot, and cold air mixed together, spun, and were then directed by the closest relevant deity to either harmlessly destroy a small section of a forest, or suck up a disrespectful village.

At least that was what people believed.

The truth of the matter was that all storm-related deities wished to cause death and destruction.

Thankfully, areas that were close enough for a tornado to destroy had already been destroyed, and the same was true for floods, hurricanes, and landslides. There’s no such thing as a truly safe place in Eira, so people settled where they could, and natural selection handled the rest.

There wasn’t anything in the surroundings to point at and prove the area Sylver was standing on was once a village, but that was the feeling he got anyway.

In front of Sylver was a platform made entirely out of mushrooms. They were hard as a rock, and looked like marble, except instead of being white, they had a sickly red color to them.

Edmund’s coffin was in the middle of the platform, closed and glued in place, with a funnel-shaped mushroom growing from the spot where Edmund’s heart was. The mushroom looked like it was made to catch rain, if not for the fact that it was one single solid mushroom and didn’t have any empty space in the middle for rainwater to gather.

He could tell the deity was wary of him, people that purposely walked towards a hurricane usually knew what they were doing. Those that were able to predict the path the hurricane was going to take and were waiting for it to come to them, were doubly so.

But luckily for Sylver, a hurricane of this size wasn’t easy to move. Or more accurately, it wasn’t easy to change where it was going. It was a bit like a giant ship, even if you pull up the sails, it will take a while for it to come to a complete stop.

There wasn’t much to do at this point.

The reason Sylver couldn’t just jump into the hurricane and call the lightning to him was that he wasn’t powerful enough to fully redirect it if he were struck.

So he did the safe thing, and simply sat and stared at Edmund’s coffin, and waited for a bolt of lightning to wake him up. The coffin was specially made for Ed, the metal was conductive enough that Sylver often times used it as a shield to protect himself from fire-based attacks.

Lightning was a little trickier, Ed’s magic needed a couple of seconds to kick in, and when it came to something as fast as electricity, that typically meant it passed through the coffin and disintegrated Sylver’s arms.

Thankfully, the fact that it couldn’t be moved once Sylver set it down somewhere, and was as indestructible as anything could be, more than made up for that.

Total Level: 173

[Koschei-10]

[Necromancer-100]

[Swamp Lord-63]

CON: 200

DEX: 110

STR: 110

INT: 466

WIS: 272

AP: 25

Health: 1,988/2,000

Stamina: 840/1,000

MP: 17,996/18,640

Health Regen: 23.34/M

Stamina Regen: 20.00/M

MP Regen: 11,407.68/M

A mere 9 points stood between Sylver and having 500 in intelligence.

He didn’t even pretend to consider an alternative, and for once, just sat back, and enjoyed the feeling of having a seemingly all-powerful system shine and polish his mana channels.

Sylver stretched his arms and legs out and allowed his mana core to take its time, to adjust to its new limbs.

CON: 200

DEX: 110

STR: 110

INT: 491

WIS: 272

AP: 0

Health: 1,988/2,000

Stamina: 840/1,000

MP: 18,521/19,640

Health Regen: 23.34/M

Stamina Regen: 20.00/M

MP Regen: 12,019.68/M

Mora was walking in a circle around the ritual site, out of sheer boredom, since the middle of a hurricane wasn’t a good place to play around with Aleri. The bird shade would be fine, but Mora could get fucked up if she got caught up in it or was struck by lightning.

She got spooked when Sylver suddenly stood up.

The reason he stood up was because he found a perk that was perfect.

It was exactly what he wanted, needed, and the only drawback was so… depending on appearance, it might not even be a drawback at all.

[Perk: Mage Cap]

-Increase INT by 100.

-Increase WIS by 50.

*While wearing the [Mage Cap].

The perk was so good that it seemed too good to be true.

On the other hand, today was going to be one of the best days of Sylver’s new life.

Even if he couldn’t wake Edmund up, the fact that he managed to confirm that he wasn’t stranded all alone out here, was a victory in and of itself.

With an enormous smile on his face, Sylver accepted the perk and waited for the system to inform him as to how to operate it.

[Perk: Mage Cap]

-Increase INT by 100.

-Increase WIS by 50.

*While wearing the [Mage Cap].

Sylver moved his hood out of the way and willed the headgear to life.

Through [Lesser Perception] he could see exactly what was happening at the top of his head. Sickly-looking red worms crawled through Sylver’s shiny white hair, and as if they were some sort of dehydrated creature’s fingers, reached for the sky.

The end result was that Sylver looked like he was wearing a bright red crown. And by “bright red,” Sylver meant that it was almost glowing from how bright it was. The tips were blunt, and the mushroom’s texture made the thing look as if it was made out of poorly polished metal.

A wave of nausea somehow managed to force itself through Sylver, and he almost collapsed onto the floor and had to be helped by Spring to remain on his feet.

The world spun for about a second, but once the spinning stopped, and Sylver’s body remembered that it didn’t have anything to feel nauseous with, he felt a rush of power. Like a magical wave shattered itself against him, his mana channels exploded with size, and where there used to be creeks, there were now rivers.

Sylver moved his head in a circle and relieved the pressure that had built up in his neck.

“I am on a fucking roll today!” Sylver boasted as he discovered that with a bit of fiddling, he could make the messy crown into something more controlled and presentable.

The only problem was the color, but considering what it did, it wasn’t even that bad. Sylver honestly kind of liked it, with his pale face, white hair, and black robe, the splattering of red almost fit.

He raised both of his hands towards the air, and with a giant grin on his face, shouted towards the oncoming hurricane.

“I’m-”

Sylver very vaguely saw the projectile appear, but the truth of the matter was that he had lowered his guard, just the tiniest amount, just enough to make his enjoyment a little more joyful.

The slathered with acid sphere shattered Sylver’s lower jaw and ended up tearing it off completely. Sylver’s tongue lamely fell out of his mouth, and the underside touched the acid residue on what was left of his jawbone.

Sylver used [Dead Dominion] to float his jaw back to him and stored it away in his [Bound Bones] storage, for safekeeping.

Teeth were a bitch to fix.

Off in the distance, far, far, away, Sylver saw a man-shaped creature smiling at him, with a leather sling hanging limply from its single muscular arm. The creature looked like someone had cut a muscular giant down the middle and glued the right half together with a deformed dwarf.

All the others had a similar look to them, as if someone was building people out of whatever happened to be nearby, giant heads, arms for legs, enormous arms, with biceps bigger than the creature’s entire body, and a creature that was nothing but fat rolls.

Sylver turned to look at Edmund’s coffin, and as the metallic sphere flew back to the half-man it missed Sylver’s head, and he turned back to look at the army of freaks.

Mora made a sort of hissing sound as she fully extended her limbs and started preparing her strings.

Sylver didn’t try to speak while missing a jaw and let Spring speak for him.

“FUCK THEM UP!” Spring screamed with an uncharacteristic amount of indignation in his voice, as he disappeared into the shadows, and joined the army of shades heading towards the army of Krists.

Sylver doubted his battle cry would have been any better, and after he put on his mask, to protect what was left of his face, and to stop his tongue from flapping around, he charged at the oncoming army.

The smart thing to do was to run away and find a different storm.

But this was his storm, they had broken his jaw, and if these rejects thought they could get Sylver Sezari to run away with his tail tucked between his legs, they had another thing coming.

Just as the one-armed sling owner readied his fancy acid-covered ball, Sylver disappeared into the loose soil.