Sylver Seeker

Chapter 224: Rock Bottom (2/2)

Sylver nearly dislocated his kneecap with how hard he pushed against the unsteady ground, his body refused to bend the way he wanted it to, and he had to claw at the seemingly frozen in place falling stalactite to pull himself over it.

Sylver didnt make any sound as he moved, he kept one eye on Ria, and kept the rest of his eyes on the ever-changing path he was following.

The woman cultivator had grabbed Ria by the staff piece furthest away from the 3 ribs, and Sylver moved as much [Necrotic Mutilation] armor to his legs as he could manage. The woman cultivator tried to twist Ria, and Sylver dislocated his right foot as the rock he had used wobbled the wrong way.

As the woman cultivators hand began to glow a disgusting light blue color, 15 shades armed with bows materialized around her and shot her nearly point-blank right in the head. The arrows didnt do enough damage to kill, but they distracted the woman, who shielded her face with her hands, as Sylver got closer and closer to Ria and the woman cultivator.

Unfortunately, a different demonic cultivator got to them first.

His face and hands were normal, but there were weird bumps underneath his bathrobe. The man kicked the woman with the tooth crown in the stomach, and then his legs bent the wrong way at the knees and threw the woman up in the air.

She didnt fly very far, a sharp stalactite pierced her through the shoulder on its way down.

As Sylver finally arrived at the slightly arisen platform and managed to get his hand onto Rias staff, about 30 or so cultivators surrounded him and the bumpy cultivator.

Sylver reached with one hand towards the mans face, and as the cultivator tried to lift his arms to catch Sylvers hand, Sylver used [Fog Form] and materialized inside the elevator, with Ria in tow.

Without Ria forcing it open, the tube-shaped structure started to move down, the 40-centimeter opening became smaller and smaller. Sylvers [Lesser Perception] let him see a portion of the chaos happening above him, as the various cultivators tried to force themselves through the tiny opening, but like crabs in a bucket, kept getting pulled away, and presumably, killed.

The vast majority of them were screaming, some might have been trying to ask Sylver for help, but their begging was lost in an ocean of unintelligible shrieking.

4 people had their arms in the 20-centimeter-tall gap, and as it shrank, they realized the predicament they were in. Their enhanced and focused pushing to get inside became a terrified attempt to pull their arms out.

Sylvers robe stopped him from falling over as the floor disappeared from underneath his feet. The giant flat pillar finally reached the ground, and had forced Sylvers cylindrical elevator into the ground, the way a nail might be hammered in.

All was silent and Sylver-

A dark yellow arm appeared on the ceiling and was followed by a matching dark yellow face, and head. The mans mouth was open, he was trying to say something, but Sylver simply reached out towards the nearest wall, and sent a pulse of mana into the metal material.

The man tried to scream as his airway was suddenly blocked, while his arm went completely limp. Sylver gently reached up with his dagger, stabbed him in the eye, and pushed until he pierced his brain.

[Human/??? (Way Of The Wisp) Defeated!]

The blood tried to trickle down onto Sylver, but he simply held it where it was using [Dead Dominion], and then converted the head and arm into more [Necrotic Mutilation] material.

A lot of people assume that if a person phasing through solid matter suddenly stops, they simply get cut into 2, by a metaphorical guillotine.

But as Sylver knew, from multiple firsthand experiences, it was more like being turned into a statue, except even being turned into a statue wasnt as painful. When your flesh, bones, and blood is being transmuted into stone, your body has some idea as to whats going on, it hurts, but at least youre not caught off guard.

Having some asshole mess with the density of the wall/ceiling youre trying to phase through, and thereby disrupting your very delicate magic/Ki technique, is so sudden, that in some cases the person goes insane.

Sylver had met several mage apprentices in Ademas healing ward who lost a finger and had a complete mental breakdown. Sylver had been consulted on some cases since Ademas theory was that the reaction had something to do with the soul, and as it turned out, she was half right.

Sylver wasnt aware of primal energy then, and it was only much later that he and Edmund discovered that a large number of spells that allowed a mage to walk through objects did so by altering that mages primal energy.

Sorcerers and creatures that used wild magic didnt have this problem, which was why when Sylver wanted to travel through solid matter, he had his team of wraiths extend their wild magic onto him.

After the initial lurch downward, the elevator hadnt moved. Sylver guessed that the mechanism had been broken, but it didnt really matter.

He had been worried that this dungeon was dormant, or even dead, but as he felt the primal energy in the walls slowly begin to move, he extended his shadow and sat down on it.

Dungeons, as a rule, couldnt have a blocked-off section. Every room/area within a dungeon had to have a path to the outside world and the core. People far more interested in dungeons than Sylver explained that a closed-off area would be the equivalent of a blood clot for a dungeon.

And that if the closed-off space persisted for an extended length of time, the dungeon would simply die. It had something to do with the way their bodies functioned, and that a core needed direct access to every inch under its control.

The exception to this were doors, or structures that were meant to be opened, but even then, there was a limit to how small a room within a dungeon could be. The bigger and stronger the dungeon, the bigger the minimal volume it could have closed off by a door.

The Ibis expert on all things dungeon-related also explained that they could hold their breath, as he put it. They did this whenever they sensed creatures nearby, that the dungeon wasnt ready to lure inside.

That little trick made them extremely difficult to find and was the main reason very very few brand new dungeons had ever been discovered. A brand-new dungeon could hide its entrance for several days, even weeks, as some people hypothesized.

But as they got bigger, the length of time they could close themselves off from the outside world became less and less, until someone either discovered it, or it became so large that it couldnt hide for even a second.

But they couldnt do that if a creature that wasnt part of them was inside. Once anything that wasnt under the dungeons control entered it, it couldnt close its entrance until that thing either became part of the dungeon or died.

The Ibis expert compared this to a gag reflex, except it wasnt something a dungeon could ever train itself to ignore.

I think its broken, Ria whispered.

Give it a second, Sylver answered in a normal tone of voice.

Everyone above them was dead, or too far away for Sylvers soul sense to feel them. Even if there were people alive above them, Sylver was in a dungeon now, and he knew from personal experience that you needed a lot of power to break into a dungeon.

The kind of power that couldnt be killed by a falling rock.

Unless you phased through the walls, but any dungeon worth its salt would have done what Sylver did, the only reason that guy had been able to get through, was that the dungeon entrance hadnt finished closing completely.

What do we do if its broken? Ria asked while Sylvers robe pulled out the daggers lodged in his torso, and Sylver worked on stitching them closed.

Its already doing something Ria. Any second now the elevator will violently move downward, and then we will simply walk through a very recently carved out tunnel, all the way to the surface, Sylver said, and just as he finished speaking, the cylindrical room they were sitting in, moaned as the metal material bent.

Except, instead of moving downward, as Sylver had assumed, the thing shot upward, with so much force that Sylvers knees almost buckled. His robe helped him stay upright, as the top portion of the room gradually turned cone-shaped, and Sylver realized that the dungeon had decided to kill 2 birds with one stone.

It was going to create a path to the surface and get rid of the only thing inside of it, in a single motion.

As Sylver walked to the middle of the room and kept his eye out for one of the walls suddenly bending to crush him, he had a very unpleasant thought.

Before he could ask Ria to confirm, he heard the sound outside the cylinder change. Previously the sound had been very steady because the cylinder was moving through solid rock, but now the noises outside were less consistent, as if the thing was digging through loose soil.

Sylver summoned three pairs of brightly colored bathrobes, and in the span of 10 seconds, his robe dismantled them and weaved them into a Sylver-sized robe. Sylver hid his mask away and had the robe move up to his head until it covered his face completely.

Sylver patted himself down as he forced his body to shrink, and felt his various self-inflicted wounds tear further open, as his skin tried to fold up to accommodate his bodys new proportions.

Sylvers soul sense and [Dead Dominion] reacted simultaneously, there was a mixture of corpses and living creatures above him.

His body shivered as it forced itself into an even smaller form, and just as he finished braiding his robes colorful fibers into a belt around his waist, the floor disappeared from underneath Sylvers feet. His [Bracelet Of The Aurai] created a foothold in the air for him to stand on.

The walls fell away from the center, like a blooming metallic flower, and as Sylvers [Lesser Perception] ignored the bright light, he saw where he was.

There wasnt a good word in Eirish to describe it.

The language didnt possess the flexibility to explain the sheer scale of the damage.

Far in the distance, Sylver saw tall earthen walls that surrounded the enormous square platform Sylver was standing on. It took him a second to realize that he wasnt looking at walls, but rather, he was seeing the edges of the hole he was in.

It looked like someone had lifted the top layer of soil, the one where people lived, removed a giant square chunk of the rock it had been sitting on and then allowed the top layer to fall.

Sylver lost count of the number of corpses nearby, and he even felt a lump form in his throat due to the sheer level of grief Ria felt as she examined her surroundings.

Everyone was too busy clutching at the bodies of their dead relatives, fathers, wives, or children, to pay any attention to the average-sized man covered from head to toe in bright blue fabric.

Off in the distance, a house that had been on the edge of the square hole toppled over, and Sylver could tell Ria had seen the small moving wrapped up bundle fall out of a screaming womans arms as she fell to her death.

Sylver was too far away to do anything and going by the almost physical pain emanating out of Ria, she knew that even at her full speed she wouldnt reach either of them in time. Rias vision was glued to the falling woman, while Sylver looked around for an empty spot to leave the hole without being noticed.

Sylver flinched when he heard a sound from the dark tunnel underneath him and bolted towards the edge with the fewest houses and people.

Sylver blocked out the sounds of wailing as he ran past the wounded and dying, he couldnt have helped them even if he wanted to, and on top of that, he didnt have long until his body returned to its natural size.

The tip of Sylvers nose went numb, as he felt a faint wisp of healing magic settle on him. He wasnt sure if Tarragon knew it was him, but it didnt matter, the elf was too busy healing everyone to focus on a single person.

Sylver reached the edge of the wall by the time Tarragons elves started teleporting down into the square hole, and he climbed up the almost perfectly smooth sheer surface while hiding underneath several illusions.

He was unlucky in the fact that the wall he was climbing up was on the opposite side of the rising suns, but again, there were too many people in need of urgent help for anyone to bother with one barely visible man.

As he reached the top, Sylver looked back and saw that he hadnt been the only one who had escaped. There were 5 people, 4 that changed the way they appeared every time Sylver blinked, and a 5th that Sylver recognized by his posture.

It was Hound.

And slung over his left shoulder, was an unconscious boy, who bore a striking resemblance to the current emperor of the Schlagen mountains.

They disappeared a half second later.

Sylver turned around and sent Spring out to find a path to Fausts sect.

***

Ria hadnt said a single word during the whole trip home.

She was furious.

Whether she was furious with Sylver, herself, or with the people responsible for a giant chunk of the Green Circle getting destroyed, Sylver didnt know.

Sylver knew exactly how she felt.

Except he wasnt angry at the death that had resulted from Hounds rescue operation, assuming the explosives had been part of his plan, no, Sylver was furious at himself, for falling for such an obvious trap.

Any second now, he would reach Fausts sect, and he would find nothing but corpses littered amidst the smoldering remains of the main building.

But to Sylvers surprise, everything was fine.

The guards at the main gate greeted him as they opened the doors for him, and Sylver felt Mora awaken from her nap.

Everyone was alive, and well, and nothing was out of place.

Well, not everything.

The fake box Sylver had hidden deep underground was missing.

But aside from that, everything was fine.

Sylver was going to have a very interesting talk with Owl, Hound, and Aurick soon, but that was after he patched himself up, showered, and had a few hours of shut eye.