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Ch238-Double Down

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“-and then you sold him off at an auction, and he was bought by a group of noblemen, for the purpose of torturing him to death,” Edmund summarized.

“Not to death exactly,” Sylver corrected.

“Right, you sold him off at an auction, for the sole purpose of being tortured,” Edmund said.

“You say it with this odd tone as if he’s some random guy I plucked off the street,” Sylver said.

He and Edmund were making their way to the shore, towards a specific spot in the unnaturally dense forest.

“So we’re up against a dimensional mage, being aided by a demon, that has a personal grudge against you,” Edmund said.

“Might have a grudge against me. For all we know he realized that the Cord is the one responsible for what happened to him. I was merely doing a job,” Sylver corrected.

Edmund was floating in the air, laying on his back, staring up at the cloudy sky, while Sylver sat on a thick sheet of ice that was being propelled through the water by an invisible stream of compressed heat.

“I almost forgot how much I missed your sense of humor,” Edmund said with a genuine smile.

“If he has a grudge against me, why didn’t he kill me?” Sylver asked.

“It’s been 5 years since he last saw you, it’s not impossible he didn’t recognize you,” Edmund offered.

“Could be memory loss… Not to mention he was blind the last time I saw him… I feel like Lola told me he died,” Sylver said, as his piece of ice reached the sandy shore.

Sylver made the ice stop, he then slid forward along the ice, and with the help of his robe was lifted into the air, and landed right on Ulvic’s back.

The wolf shade effortlessly traversed the rocky sand, while Edmund continued floating alongside them.

“What if he panicked? He saw you, got frightened, and teleported you away without thinking?” Edmund offered.

“My point is that we don’t know if he’s out for my blood specifically. Just because most people I work against end up blaming me for all of the consequences of their actions, doesn't mean Nautis is one of them,” Sylver said with a lame shrug of the shoulders.

“Right, your presence put a stop to a kidnapping operation that had been going for… 50 years, I think you said?” Edmund asked.

A moment of silence passed.

“So we’re up against a pissed-off teleportation mage that’s been holding a grudge against me personally for over 5 years, being helped out by a relatively competent demon, both of which are hidden inside an impenetrable fortress,” Sylver said with a tired sigh.

“If your description of the man’s magical prowess is to be believed, the only real problems are the last two things… Nautis has enough affinity with spatial manipulation for long-distance teleportation, which means that he could easily open a portal to the demon realm. So the fact that he hasn’t means the demon is only helping him out in small ways,” Edmund explained, as Sylver nodded along.

“Or perhaps Nautis understands the seriousness of opening a portal to the demon realm and understands that as a person living in Eira, it is his duty to die, before opening one, and-” Sylver choked on his words as he burst out laughing, and was then laughing too hard to finish his sentence.

People infinitely smarter than Nautis couldn’t resist demonic temptation, that shell-less snail didn’t stand a chance.

“He hasn’t opened a portal to the demon realm because his magic is too specialized,” Edmund offered, once he had calmed down enough to string a sentence together.

In Nautis’ defense, it wasn’t that he was exceptionally weak-willed, pathetic, feeble-minded, or mentally inadequate, the fact of the matter was that demons were damn convincing.

I’ll spare you, your family, and your friends! You’ll all live in luxury, who cares about a few evil noblemen being killed?

He killed your brother! His soul won’t be able to rest until you avenge him!

You’re rotting in a prison cell because of him! He’s out there drinking wine and eating fresh fruit, and so on and so forth, until the person being persuaded decides that the voice whispering in his ear has a good point.

“Still… A demon is a demon… The first hurdle is getting inside,” Sylver said.

“We already tested her shell, we can’t dig our way in. Unless we get extremely lucky and find a vein that isn’t filled with acid, going in through her sides is out. Which leaves either going in through the mouth, the rear entrance, or using the waystone again,” Edmund said.

“The problem with using the waystone is that either it will teleport us to a random spot, due to either the obelisk, or the fact that Tuli is healthier, or, Nautis is aware of the waystone, and the next time I try to use it, he will teleport us somewhere dangerous. The other two entrances are very likely guarded, or at the very least watched,” Sylver said.

“Even if we do find a way inside, the next problem is we don’t know what we’re up against. I could take those 6 in my sleep, they were all below 200, but what if he has an army? In my current state, I can maybe go against 40 men, but since Nautis can teleport people, he could just throw bodies against me until I run out of steam,” Edmund said.

It was a lot more obvious from a bird’s eye view, but Sylver was following a path of destruction. Half the trees here were dried out and dead anyway, the fact that someone broke down another quarter was barely noticeable.

Still, there was an arrowhead embedded into the ground here, a hole the shape of a fist there, a boulder cleaved perfectly down the middle over there, the rain washed away the most obvious evidence, but there was enough if you knew what you were looking for.

“For starters, we don’t know how long he’s been here. If he broke out 5 years ago, then it’s very likely he took his time, gathered resources, and now has an army of mercenaries. Or he’s only been at it for a month, and those 6 were the only people he could cobble together,” Sylver theorized, as he sent his shades out.

Edmund stopped laying on his back and turned his body the right way round.

“Is it possible Lola forgot to tell you about him? Or decided not to tell you?” Edmund asked with an uncharacteristically careful tone.

“Forgot is unlikely. She gave me a full report about everything that happened since the minute she received my letter. It’s possible I’m the one who doesn’t remember the section to do with Nautis,” Sylver offered.

“You usually carry those sorts of things with you, assuming you didn’t forget it-”

“My only copy was vaporized along with the rest of my body, and I didn’t think I would need it. This was supposed to be a vacation. We make sure Tuli’s still where I last saw her, spend a day sunbathing on the beach, talk to Poppy, have a feast at Novva’s place, pick up a couple of things at Torg, and glide back to Arda at a leisurely pace,” Sylver explained, as Ulvic slowed down a little, and changed the direction he was going.

“Unless you literally skimmed the page and missed it, I doubt you would forget reading about Nautis escaping,” Edmund said.

“I mean… He’s such a microscopic blip on my radar, there’s a chance I assumed he’s dead and skipped ahead when I saw his name,” Sylver said with a shrug of the shoulders.

“I see. So what’s the plan for dealing with this microscopic blip?” Edmund asked.

Sylver racked his memory, but try as he might, either he genuinely hadn’t read a single word about Nautis, skipped the section that would have been about him, or he ignored him so hard, that he literally pushed the news of his death out of his head.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Sylver found someone so repulsive that he willed their very existence out of his mind.

“What we could do is… The nobles that tortured him, had to keep him somewhere, right? Or if he broke out recently enough, we might get lucky with a wooden chair, or a table, and you know how difficult metal pliers are to clean,” Sylver said, as the calm expression on Edmund’s face hardened.

“You want to find a piece of skin, have me heal it so there’s more of it, then use that as a basis for a curse. Nautis dies without us having to set foot inside Tuli,” Edmund said.

“It won’t kill him, considering the distance and level of interference, but it will at the very least give him a debilitating migraine. Then again, it is possible Nautis isn’t in charge and is merely working for someone… actually… that’s a lot more likely than a demon helping Nautis,” Sylver said, as he realized that the last Nautis had been rescued, it was because Poppy needed him.

“Hmm…” Edmund said.

Now that Sylver said it out loud, it seemed downright moronic that either of them thought Nautis was in charge.

“Who’s in charge doesn’t matter. Saving Tuli is the number 1 priority, followed by defeating the demon number 2, and…” Sylver’s voice trailed off, as he tried to think of something for number 3, so killing Nautis wasn’t in the top three.

Ulvic disappeared into the shadows, Sylver landed on his feet and continued walking. The rocky ground was covered in wood chips, along with small metallic shards, that may have at one point been a piece of armor or a weapon.

Sylver and Edmund stopped in front of a giant moss-covered rock that had a huge chunk missing on its left side. The rain had smoothed it out, but it was evident that someone had pushed the rock to the left, presumably to hide something.

Edmund walked towards the boulder and placed his left hand on it. With a gentle push, the boulder rolled backward and revealed an enchanted copper hatch.

The metal looked as if someone had just finished polishing it, untouched by time, unlike the surrounding rock which was full of cracks, and scratches, which were full of slimy vegetation, along with what Sylver assumed were the corroded tips of metal pickaxes.

Edmund pushed the boulder again and made it roll out of the way completely. Half a second after he stopped touching it, the giant boulder stopped being weightless and sunk almost 10 feet into the wet soil.

The copper hatch had 3 gray-colored gemstones embedded into it, which were linked together in an impressively effective enchantment framework.

“No wonder you were smiling,” Edmund said, as Sylver walked over to the hatch.

The sound of metal grinding against metal swept away the disarmingly peaceful atmosphere of the semi-destroyed forest, and just as suddenly as it had started, it ended with a hollow thunk.

The hatch was flung open, and revealed a face that was missing an eye, an ear, and had a giant scar that covered more than half of his scalp.

“Edmund, it is with great pleasure that I introduce you to the man who made your rescue possible, Faust,” Sylver said with a gesture towards the one-eyed man.