“Welcome to-”

Sylver went deaf from the sound and hoped the same happened to the other 4 people. The auditory illusion had been pushed to its limit, and was closer to a blast of air, as opposed to a sound at this level.

But a blast of air was a single push, whereas this was a continuous high-pitched screech.

As he ran, Sylver took note of his surroundings.

The space he was in was a large dome, where the ground, walls, and ceiling were made from a bright red material that had the texture of soft leather. The ground was perfectly flat, with no buildings or furniture in sight, save for a single square pillar in the middle of the room, on which a man dressed in red robes stood, clutching at his ears. He had been the one that had spoken when Sylver broke through the smoke.

At the bottom of the pillar were 3 creatures that could loosely be described as large human women.

Their skin was the same shade of red as the inside of the dome, to the point it would have been hard to see them, if not for the pulsing black veins bulging against their barely contained muscles. Their heads were bald, and the interlocking teeth in their mouths had grown so much that they reached down to their chin and obscured their eyes.

They were almost nude, save for scraps of clothing covering their chest and hips, and thick metal collars around their necks, that were attached by a chain to the square pillar on which the man in the red robe stood.

Sylver’s zombies ran past him in a loose group, and only 3 stayed with him as protection. As they got near the pillar, Sylver wondered where the corpses of the previous 11 zombies were.

The floor underneath him rippled, and as Sylver tried to put his weight onto his next foot, he felt it go through the now liquid floor. The two zombies on his left and right grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him as hard as they could into the air, as they sunk into the floor.

While airborne Sylver felt the bodies of the zombies move underground, and a fraction of a second later, saw their heads poke out of the ground near the 3 red women. The women’s mouths opened, and continued opening, as they unhinged their jaws, and faster than Sylver’s eyes could follow, they bit off the zombie’s head.

As Sylver flew through the air, he tried to find the man on the platform, but he was gone.

And as Sylver lost feeling in his left leg, he also noticed that the three red women had been unchained and one of them had devoured his second favorite leg.

Sylver ignored her and instead focused on the red woman attacking him from his blind spot, or rather, where a normal human mage would have had a blind spot.

Sadly, even with the fungus empowering him an undead magic user was no match for a blood frenzied vampire. He was ready for her, managed to catch her by the hand, and by the neck, but all his effort was for nothing, as the woman dislocated his shoulder and almost effortlessly placed his arm up to his elbow into her mouth.

She, and the one that ate his foot, both tried to push themselves away from him, to tear the broken bone with flesh away from the main body, but they both ran into the same problem.

Sylver was flung into the air, as the two women essentially launched him on account of the tangled strings connecting Sylver’s stumps to their mouths, or more accurately, to the limbs inside their throats.

With the surprisingly sturdy strings connecting them, the women were pulled along with him, given that Sylver weighed a lot more than he appeared.

Both women attempted to use their claws to slice through the string, but this wasn’t some simple steel wire that any old vampire could break, this was wire made by a creature that Sylver considered an equal.

Suffice to say, the women’s claws were useless, and all they did was tangle themselves up even worse. Sylver yanked his missing left hand as hard as he could, and he managed to pull the woman who tried to eat his hand towards him.

She used the hand that wasn’t covered in string to protect the back of her neck and tried to get Sylver tangled up in the string with the other. It somewhat worked, but it didn’t matter, since Sylver wasn’t planning on using his hands to attack them.

The frenzied woman tried to predict what Sylver would do, and pre-emptively prepared her free hand to catch Sylver’s.

She guessed wrong, as Sylver leaned towards her, and while she reached for his right hand, he lunged at her face and managed to sink his teeth into the side of her head. Sylver’s teeth cut through her leather-like skin and stopped dead when they reached her bones.

But it didn’t matter, since the thing Sylver was after was her ear. The red woman made a pained chirping noise, as Sylver further tangled the string, and bound her as much as possible.

Before he could finish what he started, a third pair of hands appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Sylver by the neck, so tightly that his vertebrate disconnected from one another. His body went limp for a second, less than a second, but it was enough time for him to lose his grip. The woman pulled him away and sent him flying to the ground.

He collided with the soft-looking ground with so much force that his skull cracked from the impact. But before he so much as bounced, the floor turned liquid again.

Once he was underground, Sylver felt the owner’s mana touch his own, and he was relieved beyond words that it wasn’t tainted with demonic energy. The red women creatures were tainted with demon magic, but the caster was thankfully clean.

Sylver quite literally breathed a sigh of relief as only his head popped out from the ground, at the feet of the red robe-wearing man.

Sylver’s ears were still deaf from the spell he used, but because of [Lesser Perception] he could hear the red robe-wearing man loud and clear.

This close to him Sylver could see that the robe the man was wearing was moving as if it was liquid. It was flowing downwards, in much the same way Sylver’s robe tended to look when he wasn’t actively manipulating it.

The vampire with glowing red eyes crouched down so he was looking Sylver in the eye.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

The vampire made a face, and reached out towards Sylver’s head with his hand, but changed his mind at the last second. A wise move on his part.

Sylver cleared his throat before he spoke.

“You seem like a man that can be reasoned with…” Sylver said.

The vampire stopped smiling, and his eyes went cold.

“I used to be,” it said.

While Sylver continued working on his disconnected foot and hand, via Mora’s enchanted strings, he suddenly felt something very strange. The two women he was trying to curse were already cursed.

Not just by the curse that made them vampires, or whatever it is they were now, but Sylver felt his curse sitting dormant inside their bodies. Which meant that the blood coursing through their bodies had come from someone that Sylver had cursed.

And the only person Sylver had cursed, that didn’t die, was Nautis.

Sylver got a better look at Nautis, and he was completely unrecognizable. Everything from his face to his body language, down to the way he controlled his mana was incomparable to the man Sylver had met before.

“You remember me… good,” Nautis said.

Wait, did Nautis have this accent in the past?

Also, Nautis was clearly not powerful enough to have been the one who built that demonic metal pillar. Which meant he was, as usual, working for someone else.

“Why are you summoning a demon?” you fucking moron, Sylver asked.

Nautis stood up from his crouch and walked over to the woman that had Sylver’s hand in her mouth. When he placed his hand on her forehead, she turned into a fine mist, and Sylver’s hand and the attached strings fell through her.

Sylver decided that since Nautis wasn’t in the mood to talk, he would have to persuade him. The “ground” Sylver was trapped inside was strong, but by no means unbreakable. The zombies were having a hard time with it, but they weren’t that far away from breaching the surface.

Very carefully Sylver sent a needle-thin tendril of fog from inside the woman chewing on his leg, and via [Fog Form] Sylver materialized directly behind her. His left hand hung limply from the strings coming out of his elbow, and Sylver stood on one foot while the other was being pulled towards his knee.

As he slapped his hand down onto the back of the woman’s head, the sleeve around Sylver’s arm exploded from the escaping steam.

The woman turned around and slashed Sylver through the face and neck with her claws. Her claws passed through a thin cloud of fog, but the woman from the back landed a direct hit on the very solid Sylver’s shoulder.

He crumpled to the floor, as his knee had shattered from the force, but before he could even start falling, the third woman kicked him away from the one Sylver had attacked.

While he was in the air, Sylver tried to use [Deadly Darkness] to create a platform for himself, but sadly, the solidified shadow didn’t have anything to grab onto, since the dome walls/ceiling were also liquid.

Sylver used [Fog Form] to dodge out of the way of the next attack and materialized as close to the ceiling as he dared, directly above the platform in the middle of the room. Sylver couldn’t fly, or float, his only means of not touching the floor was to use [Fog Form] to travel upwards.

The room was large enough for Will the wyvern to fly, probably, but he needed a running start, there wasn’t anywhere near enough space for that.

The woman Sylver had slapped was clutching at her head, while Nautis shoved the other red woman’s wrist into her mouth. He was probably trying to make her feed to dilute Sylver’s magic, but he was too late.

[Bloodied Demonic Thrall (Berserker + Bloodied Berserker + Unholy Berserker + Cannibal Berserker) Converted!]

The woman bit down on the red woman’s wrist and bit straight through the bone. The red woman screamed and tried to pull away, but the red thrall under Sylver’s control wrapped her arms around her and tried to bite her neck.

With something to anchor himself on, Sylver used his thrall’s shadow to pull him toward the remaining trio.

Sylver was about to reach Nautis when the man vanished into a cloud of red smoke. Sylver passed through the cloud and nearly collided with his thrall, which was now falling into the suddenly liquid floor.

“We can still talk things out Nautis!” Sylver shouted at the cloud of red.

The two red women's thralls that weren’t under Sylver’s control stopped moving, and Sylver’s thrall stopped sinking into the floor for a moment. The whole room went silent.

“Nautis?” Nautis asked, from his cloud of red.

Sylver used his thrall’s shadow to stay above the liquid floor.

“I’m willing to let you live if you help me!” Sylver shouted.

The keyword in that sentence was the “I” in “I’m,” because while Sylver might be willing to let Nautis live, there was a good chance Sophia wouldn’t be as kind.

“You think I’m Nautis?” Nautis or the man Sylver thought was Nautis, asked.

“Whoever you are! We can work something out where no one-”

“You bloody bastard!” the red cloud of smoke screamed, as it flew towards Sylver.

Sylver raised his hand towards the smoke, and his wrist made a clicking sound. As the smoke approached him, Sylver summoned an explosive into his hand and detonated it.

The result was that the cloud of smoke was dispersed and incinerated, while Sylver merely lost the skin covering his palm, and the edge of his sleeve got a bit burned. Without soft skin to keep the metal plates quiet, Sylver’s fingers rattled as he closed them into a fist.

“Bastard,” a voice said in a calm tone. Sylver almost turned to look at the remaining 2 red women thralls but saw movement in the edge of his vision before he did.

The man in the red robe was standing on top of the platform, so full of anger that his face was almost as red as his robe and eyes.

The two women that weren’t under Sylver’s control became even redder than they had been a moment prior, and faster than Sylver could blink, they tore his thrall into pieces.

“You fucking bastard,” the red robe-wearing man repeated, still calm, as he produced a wooden mask out of his pocket.

It was the kind that covered the mouth and left the nose and eyes exposed, and it had been painted to make it seem like the person had a giant red eye where his mouth should be. “Do you remember me now!” the man holding the mask asked.

Sylver waited a moment before he spoke. He searched around his head for so much as a hint as to who this mysterious, apparently not Nautis, stranger was.

“Not even a little,” Sylver answered honestly.