Sylver Seeker

Chapter 224: Rock Bottom (1/2)

When he was younger, Sylver looked down on anyone who claimed to be itching for a fight.

To Sylver, a fight was an obstacle, nothing more.

Anyone who went out of their way to place obstacles between themselves and whatever it is they wanted, was an abject moron, as far as Sylver was concerned.

For the large part, he still held that opinion.

He had seen far too many people die because they didnt go for the kill and fought fairly, to ever really enjoy a fight.

But there was a point where Sylver understood what they were talking about.

At times life can be overwhelming, with too many problems that all need to be resolved urgently, all at the same time. And they all require your full undivided attention, despite your undivided attention being in short supply.

During those times, having something so simple as kill this guy, before he kills you, is such a small and manageable problem that its hard not to love every second you spend solving it. If a person is stressed enough, they might go as far as to prolong the solving of this simple problem, just so they can savor it.

Because once the problem is solved, the opponent is dead, you no longer have 1 simple problem to solve, you have 50 different problems, and you have no idea which one to start with.

Sylver never did that.

Never.

He valued his time too much, and try as he might, even when his life was on the line, he never stopped looking at the bigger picture.

Even now.

Even as a ridiculously giant pillar was descending on him, he didnt forget why he was here, and what he was going to do after he got out.

Sure, on a certain level, every ounce of his attention was focused on coming up with a plan so as to not get crushed like a fucking ant, or worse, get trapped underground, but Sylvers every ounce, didnt include the ounces in the back of his mind, that were tasked solely with worrying about Edmund.

These hidden ounces werent new. The back of Sylvers mind was always worried about something, its why he had to drug himself into a coma to rest properly when he was the Arch-Necromancer, and why he drank himself into a blackout at every available opportunity.

There had been 2 explosions.

The first had been near the base of the stalactites. It made them fall down and left the ceiling of the cave flat.

The second explosion, from what Sylver was currently seeing, had been used to make the square shape between the tunnels fall as a single, solid, block. The simplest way to imagine it is if someone hung a big square block on 4 pieces of rope, and then cut all 4 pieces simultaneously.

The important thing was that the block of stone currently falling towards the ground, and the people on the aforementioned ground, including Sylver, was a single solid piece of stone.

Why was this important?

Because falling rubble had a metric fuck ton of air gaps, gaps that a person with the ability to turn into gas could have easily traveled through, but a solid piece of rock didnt have any gaps.

Sylver considered his options.

He had a fair bit of time, the block of stone was falling down relatively slowly, compared to how fast Sylvers hearts were beating, and how quickly his somewhat panicked mind was processing information.

The block of stone was square, but the cave/city was slightly wider than the rock, so if he went to the edges, he wouldnt be crushed.

The first problem with that was that Sylver wasnt sure he could cover that distance before the stone fell onto him. The second problem was that the demonic cultivators were already doing that, and he didnt want to go near them.

But even if Sylver made it to the edges, and the demonic cultivators/guards didnt kill him, what was his next move going to be? The block of stone was flush with the walls, it was practically sliding down them, Sylver was certain it wouldnt leave any gaps when it finally landed.

Aside from the fact that it was going to land up against the only exit, Sylver also suspected that the tunnels/staircase they had used to come down here, had explosives in the walls/ceiling, and were blocked off.

There was a vomit-inducingly powerful stench of bananas in the air, which Sylver guessed was due to the liquid explosive held inside the urns.

Digging down into the ground was an option. But then what? It wasnt as if Sylver was standing on soft soil, if anything, the block of stone falling onto him was softer than the stuff underneath him.

[Advanced Earth Manipulation]was next to useless in this environment. Moving dirt around cost a lot of mana, moving solid rock out of the way would burn Sylvers mana channels to a crisp before he had dug 100 meters.

[Xanders Waystone] was an option.

Sylver could find a spot to stay still, and within a couple of minutes, he would be inside Tulis corpse. The main problem with that was that it would take Sylver months to get back to the Schlagen mountains.

Actually, if I get Chrys to tell Lola to send her teleportation mage over to Tuli, he could just teleport me straight back here Has it been 20 days since Faust and I came here?

Yes, it has.

So, I teleport into Tulis corpse, find a way out, or just have the teleportation mage teleport into Tuli, and then come back here.

With a plan in hand, Sylver felt a whole lot better about his current predicament.

It wasnt perfect, Fausts sect and Mora would be left alone for at least a day, not to mention Sylver would have to figure out a way to get into the Schlagen mountains without Faust, but at the very least being buried deep underground wasnt on the table anymore.

But the waystone was Sylvers trump card. It was a last resort, when a situation was so impossible that there were no other alternatives.

Sylver felt the hair on his arms stand up straight, as something brushed up against his soul sense, in a way that let him know that something had sensed him sensing it.

Alright, theres almost certainly a soul-based demonic cultivator nearby. Why wouldnt there be?

Any ideas? Sylver asked Ria, even as he started channeling his mana towards the small waystone hidden within the shoulder area of his indestructible ribcage.

If we hide in the dungeon below, and the entrance becomes obstructed, wouldnt the dungeon create a new way out? Ria asked, in such a casual tone of voice that it took Sylver a whole 5 seconds, which is a long time when youre in the process of being crushed, before he registered what she said.

It will either already have a path that leads to the surface, or it will be forced to create one Sylver said out loud, as he shifted his vision towards the area Ria had been looking at.

Sure enough, off in the distance, there was a giant hexagon in the middle of the city. And while Sylver couldnt see that far away with perfect clarity, he was willing to bet there was a small hexagonal hole in the middle of that hexagon.

As Sylver started running towards it, he sent a shade ahead, and the shadowy creature came back with somewhat strange news. The hole inside the hexagon was circular, not hexagonal, but according to the shade the edges were rough, and it looked like someone had tried to drill through the hexagonal hole.

A falling stalactite passed through the area Sylvers body had been a split second earlier, as he reformed his body 5 steps closer to the hexagon and dungeon entrance. All around him he felt, and heard, people getting crushed and skewered by falling arrow-shaped stones, and a couple had even been close enough to enter the range of his [Dead Dominion] perk.

Sylver reached behind himself and pulled Rias staff out of the back of his robe. He stopped running for a moment, planted his feet firmly on the ground, and threw the spear-shaped woman as hard as he possibly could. She had to nudge her path a couple of times to avoid falling rocks, but she reached the hexagon and started working on opening it.

There were 2 cultivators between Sylver and Ria, one was very obviously a demonic cultivator, he had a dark red horn growing out of the spot his left eye should have been, while the other was a lanky guard.

For whatever reason, the two put their differences aside and focused on the necromancer running straight at them, that wasnt bothering anybody.

Sure, he did throw something that looked like a spear at them, because he didnt care if Ria killed someone on her way to the hexagon, but aside from that, he hadnt done anything to these two, extremely angry men.

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

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

The demonic cultivator swiped his left hand at Sylver, and Sylver saw that the space near his hand compressed into a sphere. It inverted and reflected light the way a droplet of water, or a magnifying glass, would.

As the weird-looking sphere began to fly towards him at an unfair speed, Sylver summoned 4 shades to stand directly in the spheres path.

The sphere created a perfectly smooth hole in the first shades chest, and as the shade died and became a cloud of black smoke, a smaller cloud of smoke came out of the sphere.

The demonic cultivator was swarmed with shades, they surrounded him in a literal pile of shadowy bodies. Their daggers couldnt scratch his skin, but more importantly, every time the man killed one of them, another one appeared to replace it.

The guard pointed his glowing green sword at Sylver, but just as the man steadied himself to enter the Ki bubble Sylver was presumably in the middle of, an archer shade materialized directly behind him, and shoved a dagger into the base of his defenseless spine.

[Human (Path of The Rending Gale) Defeated!]

Sylver felt an influx of mana as the demonic cultivator created a displacing sphere around his body and killed the entire pile of shades. He summoned a couple more to stand between him and the cultivator, as he used the excess mana to run right past him.

With the giant pillar of stone descending on everyone, you would imagine everyone would be deafened by the sound of rock grinding against rock, right?

Turns out, the hollow-sounding clang of the mechanism responsible for opening the small elevator was distinct enough that Sylver nearly shit himself as every single living soul inside this soon-to-be-destroyed city focused on Ria, and just as quickly, focused their attention on Sylver.

Before the sound, everyone had been occupied with their own thing, mainly running towards the edges of the city, so as not to get crushed by the fucking massive boulder.

Aside from the demonic cultivators that had given up on the idea of surviving and decided to kill as many people as they could instead. The guards were similar, except they focused on killing as many intruders and demonic cultivators as possible before they were crushed to death.

But now, everyone had a collective goal of getting to the ever so slowly rising elevator.

Now, the big problem with this, is that Sylver was a mage, more specifically, he was an undead mage, and while some of his physical capabilities were above average, his speed wasnt.

A woman with a mouth on the top of her bald head, which was open and due to its position, made it look like she was wearing a crown made out of teeth, appeared near the tiny opening, and in the next moment tried to grab Rias staff, presumably to force her to open the thing faster.

Sylvers robe got a tight grip on all the daggers it could find, and in a reluctant movement, shoved the daggers into Sylvers torso. Sylver didnt gasp, but his whole body twitched violently for a split second, as it tried to register all the damage, and then had to start over, as the various daggers were twisted.

Despite his lung equivalent having a gaping hole, [Hares Great Escape] felt like a breath of fresh air.