“Are you sure, you’re sure?” Sylver silently tapped out, as Spring’s half returned from scouting, and merged with the half in Sylver’s shadow.

“I don’t know if the tattoos are painted on, but they have the same necklace as Sophia, and the robes look identical. You could always ask them,” Spring offered, as Sylver sent a tendril of fog down into the rain gutters.

Which for some reason were now connected to one another, to the point Sylver could travel from one end of the city to the other without once having to be out in the open.

Almost as if some sort of rich and powerful high-elf “suggested” that the architect guild do this while they were rebuilding Arda from the monster outbreak damage.

Sylver materialized in one of the few dark and grimy alleyways left in this rebuilt city. Apparently, the architect guild wasn’t all too fond of dark alleyways, on account of how often people were robbed in areas such as these. And in their defense, fair enough, even if it was a little annoying for Sylver.

Sylver had a myriad of plans to force the two followers out of hiding, but he went for something he hadn’t done for a long time.

He spun the umbrella hooked on his wrist around and lost his grip. It flew forwards, and bounced off the wall on the left, and landed with a splash in a puddle on the ground.

With a hand clutching at his heart, or where a human would normally have a heart, Sylver fell down to his knees and started to mutely gasp repeatedly, as if he was trying to breathe but couldn’t.

He did this for exactly 30 seconds before he allowed himself to fall face-first onto the oddly clean rocky floor. He lay still on the ground, with the blunt pebbles pressing up into his face, and after a couple of seconds, turned the liquid in his mouth froth, and used [Advanced Water Manipulation] to make it ooze out.

The fuckers waited an entire 2 minutes, and 50 seconds, Spring counted, before they teleported right above his possibly dead body.

“Sweet Ra have mercy, I can’t believe-”

“Are you two following me?” Sylver asked.

He turned over onto his back and stared up at the two priests standing over him.

Sylver tried to use [Arcane Insight] but all the skill told him was that they both had a lower level than him, nothing else.

“I told you! I told-”

Both of the priests' magics limply crackled, as the umbrella the shade crouching in the puddle behind Sylver canceled out their attempts at teleportation. The two priests couldn’t focus their eyes, as they tried again, and again, and again, to teleport away.

Sylver used his shadow to throw himself upwards and managed to grab the two by the throat with either hand. He lifted them off their feet and pressed them up against the wall, with two daggers floating eye level with each man’s eyes.

“Were you two following me?” Sylver asked, calmly, and politely.

He felt the priest on the left gather mana into his hands, and Sylver just short of crushed his throat in warning.

“Don’t make me ask a third time,” Sylver said, calmly, and politely, as the four daggers floated an inch closer towards the eye they were pointed at.

“The head priest-” Sylver pulled the man who had spoken away from the wall, close enough that the daggers touched his eyelashes, and slammed him back against it, so hard that the stone wall cracked from the force.

“Yes! We were following you, we were ordered-”

It happened so fast that Sylver could tell by their souls they didn’t even feel it until he let go of their throats.

Twin blades of [Necrotic Mutilation] slithered out of Sylver’s sleeves, and with the speed and force of a whip, cut through the left man’s right arm, and the right man’s left arm.

Before they fell, or so much as started to bleed, [Necrotic Mutilation] caught the two severed limbs, and made them disappear, as Sylver forced [Bound Bones] to accept the holy magic saturated arms into itself.

“I don’t care who you are, don’t ever follow me,” Sylver said, as he let go of the two throats he had been holding, and let the two short, compared to Sylver, men, drop down to the ground.

Sylver coated his hands in [Necrotic Mutilation] and formed a blunt ridge around where his knuckles were. As the two priests realized one of their arms was missing, they immediately tried to lift their remaining hands up towards the wound to heal them, and Sylver spoke while they focused on healing.

“Talk to Ging if you want to organize a meeting,” Sylver explained, as the two priests continued mutely healing their stump of an arm. Their eyes were panicked and wild, but they were so focused on healing that they seemed to be moments away from entering a tranquil zone of calmness.

Sylver punched the one on the left, so hard that his lower jaw tore away from his mouth, and flew into one of the dirty puddles on the floor. The priest started to scream with the kind of unsettling gurgling noise only a man with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and slapping against his throat could manage.

The other priest lost his concentration, and his gaze was initially fixated on the unintelligible priest splattering blood all over his nice white and red robe.

“Next time I find anyone following me, I won’t be as gentle,” Sylver explained to the only priest that still had a lower jaw.

He had pressed himself up against the wall as if he was about to start crawling upwards to get away from the situation.

Sylver snapped his fingers in front of the priest's face, and when that didn’t do anything, grabbed him by the jaw, and turned his head until he finally looked Sylver in the eye.

“Do you understand me?” Sylver asked. He felt the priest attempt a nod and he let go of his jaw.

As he turned his head back, to stare at the screaming jawless priest, Sylver punched the man in his hand across the face, so hard that his lower jaw tore away from his mouth, and landed in the dirty puddle in the distance.

Sylver shoved the very recently un-jawed man towards the ground, and as he walked away from the two blood-covered, jawless, gargling priests, stepped onto both of their jaws with a sickening, tooth splattering, crunch.

***

As Sylver materialized outside the dungeon entrance, he heard himself making a clicking noise with each footstep. Upon inspection, he found that he had a molar stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Sylver used [Dead Dominion] to pull it out, and then floated it towards one of the garbage bins.

Sylver handed the guard his adventure’s badge, and the man gave Sylver a very odd look.

“You’ll need to have this updated,” the guard said, as he waved Sylver along.

Sylver nodded that he would, and entered the dungeon.

Lola had mentioned a “path” but Sylver thought she was being rhetorical, but there it was…

A path made out of threads, that were glowing bright enough that it was impossible to miss them.

As Sylver walked down the path, he lost count of the number of dormant barriers he passed through. Every single one felt powerful enough to keep Sylver at bay for days, and there were at least 50 layers of them.

And that’s not mentioning the thousands of tiny souls Sylver could feel following his every move above him, he felt as if he could make a perfect 3 dimensional model of the ceiling from how many there were.

Sylver did his best to ignore the ones hiding in holes underneath the thread path he was walking on, but he took extra care to make sure he didn’t step onto any of them. Sylver followed the thread path lower and lower into the dungeon. Someone had dug a tunnel, but it didn’t have the feeling of someone using earth magic.

The last hurdle to pass through was a serpent that was coiled in such a way that it blocked up the only tunnel forward. Sylver just stood there, as the body began to slowly move, and opened up a gap just big enough for the “serpent” to push its head through.

It’s face was covered in scars, its left eye was white and blind, and its slightly open mouth demonstrated shark-like daggers for teeth.

[Royal Guardian – Venom Lord – 392]

[HP: 444,710 – 72%]

[MP: 0 – 0%]

[Stamina: 61,654 – 92%]

[Corpse – Inferior]

[Soul – None]

As the skill name suggested, it left out the information that wasn’t relevant, all the blanks or vague classes were ignored and only the things Sylver needed to know remained.

The serpent’s tongue flickered out of its mouth for a split second, while it continued to unblinkingly stare at Sylver.

It nodded at him, apparently satisfied with him, and then pulled its head back into the folds of its most likely enormous body. Rays of light shone through the gaps it gradually created until it got to the point that Sylver had to block the light out with his hand.

With the tunnel open, Sylver pressed on and found himself standing on a path laid out in small white stones, with a field of bright green grass on his left, and a field of golden wheat on his right. He looked ahead, and saw a very familiar house in the distance, with a seemingly endless field stretched out behind it.

Sylver looked upward and found the entire ceiling covered in multicolored hexagons. Sylver watched as a spider with a magical symbol carved into its carapace crawled out from one of these hexagons, and then watched as it crawled along the ceiling, and disappeared into a different hexagon.

A couple of these hexagons were glowing with a bright light, like the path inside the previous tunnel, and created the illusion of daylight.

At Spring’s suggestion, Sylver looked away and looked down, and saw a small girl wearing dark blue overalls staring at him. She had a very small spider sitting on top of her head, it was gold-colored, and the abdomen was spiky in such a way that it almost looked like a golden crown.

“Is Bruno home by any chance?” Sylver asked the little girl.

“He’s up in the hatchery. Wait inside the house, I’ll go get him,” the little girl ordered, and gestured towards the house standing in the distance.

She looked upwards for a moment and seemed to concentrate. Sylver somehow managed not to flinch as a giant dark brown spider landed on her back, and then using its thread lifted her high into the air. Sylver followed her with his eyes and watched as the spider pulled her into one of the hexagonal holes.

“Syl? Is that you?” someone asked.

Sylver looked towards the source of the sound and saw a small pudgy woman standing in the doorway of the house. She had a gold-colored spider on her head, but with a much bigger and spikier abdomen.

“Tera?” Sylver asked, and saw the expression on the woman’s face brighten up as if someone had just presented her with the best gift ever.

“Why am I asking, of course it’s you! Slinky wouldn’t have let anyone else in without asking first,” Tera said, as her form shimmered for a moment, and she appeared a mere inch away from Sylver.

Now that she was this close, Sylver realized she wasn’t fat, although she had gained weight, she was pregnant.

“Bruno will be back in a bit, but come inside, have some tea, I’m dying to hear where you’ve been for 5 years. Did anyone tell you about the farm?” Tera asked, as she practically dragged Sylver along with her.

“Tragedy, but from the ashes, and all that. If you ask me the ones we have now are even better, they’re not as fluffy as the originals were, but the originals had this odd smell about them, the current variants all smell like fresh grass. I’ll leave it to Bruno to give you the tour. Did you get taller? Did you by any chance bump into Leke on your way back?” Tera spat out question after question, as they passed the threshold of the house, and Sylver was sat down into a chair made out of a shiny material he couldn’t identify.