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Ch165-Turning Point
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Despite the overuse of the metaphor, it was hard not to use it.
On account that Sylver literally regained the feeling in a lost limb.
If not for the fact that his head had just been sliced into two, and only the top of his ribcage stopped the blade from going any lower, Sylver would have started laughing like a madman.
Sylver pushed his hand through the wooden box, which crumbled away as if it were made out of sand, and now had a solid grip on the ash white dried up hand. He got down onto his knees so as to get out of the curved blade currently sticking out of the bottom of his throat.
By the time he was back on his feet, his split-open head had snapped back into place, and only a razor-thin scar down the middle of his face remained from the death blow.
Sylver pulled the blood that had leaked out of him back into his body and dusted himself off as he looked around.
It looked like a painting.
A silvery skeleton standing with his jaw wide open, with a small heap of dust in each hand. He had a serene look of shock on his face, although that was more to do with Sylver reading the skeleton’s body language, than any actual changes to the bone structure of his face.
Directly in front of him was a robed figure with a flat face, wielding a scythe. The scythe wasn’t made for it, the way it held it was awkward, if not for the overwhelming amount of physical force behind it, it would have been ripped out of its hands when it made contact with Sylver’s skull.
Both were motionless, save for the slight fluttering Grim’s robe made. Sylver had frozen their bodies, not their clothing.
“Come out, please. I can see you,” Sylver said quietly towards the direction the creature whose face he hadn’t had a chance to see was hiding.
It didn’t move, it didn’t run away, but didn’t come out from wherever it was hiding.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am a necromancer. Among other things, I am capable of using soul magic. It’s how I made these two stop moving, I disconnected their souls from their bodies. I am now going to count to three, and if you keep hiding, I’m going to start permanently severing the connection to their bodies. They’ll lose all feeling and control over their left hand,” Sylver explained to the hidden creature.
The 6th tier spell he had used to restrain everyone was binary, it either worked, or it didn’t. Distance was a factor for this spell, but the creature hiding away was still well within Sylver’s range.
Meaning there were two possibilities for why he hadn’t been able to freeze it.
The first possibility was that it didn’t have a soul, which wasn’t true, considering Sylver could feel it. Whatever that thing was, it was very much alive.
Which meant that it was the second possibility.
That it was stronger than Sylver, either in terms of strength of soul, very unlikely, or quantity of mana.
And if that was true, it begged the question, why wasn’t it attacking him?
“One,” Sylver said, and immediately felt motion from the hidden creature.
It stepped out of nowhere like it was hiding behind a wall, except there was no wall. Just empty space.
Which was very odd, considering Sylver now realized there was a third option he had forgotten about.
That it was immune to magic.
“If you try to attack me, I’m going to shred their souls into nothing, while I surround myself with enough heat to vaporize everything within a kilometer of me,” Sylver warned, as the robe-wearing creature stopped crouching and now stood at its full height.
It was short, its head came up to about Sylver’s stomach, but the limbs weren’t the right size for its height.
“Please let them go,” the creature asked.
It had a woman’s voice, albeit with an odd tone that wasn’t quite a child’s or an adult's. As if it wasn’t used to speaking in this language, or any language for that matter.
“No. I’ve been in a similar situation before, and I can’t afford to have them attack me while I’m distracted. Despite how it may appear, I just want to talk. If you answer my questions honestly and don’t try to hurt me, I will leave you all in peace,” Sylver offered.
The reality was that, while the hand had a ton of mana stored inside of it, the spell keeping Grim and the silvery skeleton in place would only last for an hour at his current rate of use.
Less if he wanted to have enough mana to open a gate into Eira, alter his body, fix Chrys’ body, and maybe make one more sentient shade.
But even with the time limit, letting hostages go was a mistake Sylver only had to make four times.
“Do you have a name,” Sylver asked, and felt something akin to revulsion from the robe-wearing maybe creature.
“Eve,” the creature hidden underneath her wrappings and hood said.
“You’re an Everest unit, aren’t you?” Ria asked as she formed a disk on Sylver’s shoulder to amplify her voice.
“I am Eve,” Eve answered coldly.
“What’s an Everest unit?” Sylver asked.
“It’s an android that can survive and operate in extremely hazardous environments. The facility where they built and tested them was located inside of mount Everest,” Ria explained, and Sylver nodded along.
“I am Eve,” Eve repeated.
“I’m Tod. What are you doing here Eve?” Sylver asked before Ria tried to force Eve into admitting she was an Everest unit.
Eve stayed quiet for a whole 5 seconds before she decided the best course of action was to answer.
“We are in the process of purifying the area of contaminants,” Eve explained, and Sylver found out that she either ignored his hand gesture to continue or couldn’t actually see him.
“Why are you doing this?” Sylver asked.
“So that the death lords can gestate without any interference,” Eve explained, and Sylver’s shock stopped the gasp before it could even reach his throat.
“Death… lords? Each one of those three things is a death lord?” Sylver asked in a completely calm and relaxed voice and even managed to point towards the large box housing the three eye-covered creatures, without his hand shaking.
“What do you mean by contamina-”
“Wh-why-why would you do that? Why would anyone do that? Three? You have three death lords, and you’re feeding them souls? Why? What possible reason is there to feed a death lord?” Sylver asked hurriedly and caught Ria completely off guard by interrupting her with his stuttering questions.
The answer that Eve gave didn’t make Sylver come close to fainting because of one reason, and one reason only.
He already fucking knew it. It was the same reason anyone ever did crazy and extremely dangerous shit.
“To create a god,” Eve said, with absolutely no shred of regret, fear, joy, or hesitation.
“What do you mean by contaminants?” Ria repeated, as Sylver just stood there staring at Eve and considered the wisdom of killing her, the other two, and then spending the rest of his hand’s mana to lock this whole thing up as tightly as possible.
Actually just leaving this realm with the dark elves would be quicker and safer.
“Creatures and persons that have black magic inside of them. They-”
“Why the fuck are you trying to create a god? Why?” Sylver interrupted Eve’s answer and quite honestly didn’t even realize she had been speaking.
“So that we may create the Garden of Eden,” Eve explained and moved for the first time since she had come out of hiding.
She spread her arms out as if she was about to give Sylver a hug.
“Fair enough…” Sylver said calmly. As Eve lowered her arms.
“Are you the one who stopped the planet from turning?” Ria asked, and broke the lingering silence.
“Yes. A series of precise nuclear strikes were used to create the necessary force to cancel out the spin,” Eve answered, as Ria fully slithered out of Sylver’s robe and now sat on his right shoulder.
Sylver in turn was focused on the hand in his hands and was in the process of feeling out the faded tattoo on the hand’s wrist.
“That’s impossible,” Ria said, as Sylver ran his pitch-black fingernail along the tattoo and couldn’t feel so much as a trace of Nyx’s mana in it.
Which was strange considering it had been drawn using her blood.
“When did it happen?” Ria asked, and Sylver looked up as Eve made a strange noise.
“9 years and 2 months ago,” Eve answered, and Sylver got to hear Ria scoff for the first time since he’d met her.
“You’re lying! There’s no way-”
Sylver patted Ria with his free hand and whispered at her.
“It’s a golem that went insane. Don’t be angry at it for getting numbers wrong,” Sylver said, and at this point was already one foot out of this whole conversation, situation, and this realm.
“What’s your serial number?” Ria asked, and Eve responded with a series of letters and numbers that Sylver didn’t even attempt to keep track of.
“She’s not an Everest unit… P4414, that’s the paranormal research division, but they were all destroyed years ago,” Ria said quietly, with a confused, and partially horrified tone in her voice.
“I see,” Sylver said, without looking up from the hand in his hands.
“Why are you so calm about this! She’s the one who destroyed this world!” Ria said a little too loudly, just short of shouting directly into Sylver’s ear.
“First of all, calm down,” Sylver said and could tell by the way Ria’s body practically shook on his shoulder that she decided to ignore his sagely advice.
“Do you even understand what this means? Garden of Eden, she’s from Eden’s Garden, they gave her a mission to ruin this planet. She’s the reason this whole planet is toxic to the dark elves!” Ria explained, and Sylver had to suppress the urge to shrug his shoulders.
“If someone were to open a gate to another world, would you do anything about it?” Sylver asked, and Eve made a noise again, the same one she made before she told Ria the world stopped turning 9 years and 2 months ago.
“Yes. Grim will destroy anyone and anything attempting to enter or leave. If someone were to attempt to open a “gate,” as you put it, he will intercept it and will destroy anyone and anything attempting to enter or leave,” Eve explained, and confirmed that Rose did indeed want Sylver to die in the process of returning to Eira.
If I didn’t meet the dark elves, I never would have gotten Nyx’s grimoires, and I would have likely attempted to open a gate, and then would have died… Did Rose make a mistake? Did Poppy and Lily do something to save me? Did I get lucky?
“You’re Eve, the harvester model is Grim, what’s the relief unit called?” Ria asked.
“His name is Sylver. He is the one in charge of the anti-life device,” Even explained, and Sylver wasn’t even sure how to react.
On the one hand, what the fuck!
On the other hand, fuck it, it doesn’t even matter at this point.
“By “anti-life device” I take it you’re referring to this?” Sylver asked, and held his own hand up.
“Yes, but you have destroyed the casing,” Eve said, as Sylver lowered his hand back down.
Eve and Ria spoke to each other about something, but Sylver was far too unfocused to hear what they were saying. Spring would later tell him that they were discussing the fact that Eve was technically Iris and all the other AI’s in The Garden, or as Ria explained, she was akin to the queen of a bunch of nobility that they all answered to.
“The uh…” Sylver was so frazzled at this moment that it took him several seconds to find the spot where he kept the small box full of Nyx’s grimoires. He held it up so Eve could see it. “Do you have anything like this somewhere here?” Sylver asked, and once again heard Eve make that strange noise.
It sounded like someone tapped their finger on a pane of glass.
“If you release Sylver, he will be able to show you,” Eve offered.
Despite everything, Sylver couldn’t sense any malice from her or any of them. The most malicious person in this room was Ria, and that was mostly because Sylver wasn’t reacting to everything the way she was.
The truth of the matter was that Sylver didn’t care.
Once death lords, and more importantly a god was mentioned, he was already out the door.
You don’t live long enough to be considered “ancient” by sticking your nose into everything mildly interesting, you did so by knowing when it was time to make like a tree and get the fuck out.
Sylver debated the merit of checking to see if Nyx really was involved in all of this, and decided that even if “Sylver” tried something, Sylver would be able to stop him using the mana in the hand he was holding.
Sylver gestured at “Sylver” and the shiny skeleton disappeared immediately. A half-second passed before he reappeared directly behind Eve.
The fact that Sylver could tell that he could shrug off “Sylver’s” teleportation spell with ease put a slight smile onto his face. Sure the amount of mana in the hand was limited and running out with each passing second, but for now, Sylver got to experience a small portion of his power as a lich.
With a nod, he stopped blocking “Sylver’s” spell and allowed himself to be teleported.
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The room was small, cramped even, but even without looking around or inspecting it, Sylver could tell Nyx hadn’t been here.
Even if several of her grimoires were.
Along with Adema’s.
And Edmunds.
And Sylver’s.
All sitting very neatly inside of a metallic bookshelf, with small carved-up boxes sitting right underneath them.
And unsurprisingly, there was a small amount of empty space on the left side that looked to be missing exactly 21 books.
To the right of the bookshelf, Sylver saw a tiny wooden desk and chair, far too small for him to sit in, but about right for Eve’s height.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here, and guess that you don’t remember why you want to get to the Garden of Eden? And everything is sort of fuzzy past a certain point in your memories,” Sylver asked out loud, as he walked over to the bookshelf and used [Deadly Darkness] to lift all the books, and placed them into the chest each small box underneath them turned into.
“Yes,” Eve answered, and Ria calmed down.
The switch from seething and panicking to cool as a cucumber that just had cold water dumped on its head almost made Sylver laugh.
“You figured it out. You know what happened here,” Ria asked, as Sylver continued putting books into chests and then minimized them and hid the small boxes inside of his robe.
“Sort of. I’m still fuzzy on the details, but I think I can see the big picture,” Sylver explained, as he lifted his foot up for a moment, and then brought it down onto the floor.
The wispy darkness that surrounded each and every single inch of the room disappeared in a wave of bright yellow light and revealed a perfectly clean and shiny metallic floor, wall, and ceiling, that looked identical to the one Sylver had found Ria inside of.
“They can’t exactly confirm it on account of being insane, but here’s the ongoing theory,” Sylver said, as he held up one of Sylver Sezari’s grimoires and shook it until faint wisps of yellow-tinged smoke fell out from the pages.
“As I mentioned before, dark energy has the property of driving people insane. To be specific, it will drive anything with a soul insane, given enough time. And it appears that Eve, Grim, and “Sylver” all possess a soul that has been affected by dark energy,” Sylver explained, as he dropped his grimoire into the Sylver chest, and then minimized it and hid it away.
“But what about the nukes?” Ria asked as Sylver gave up on doing this slowly and properly and simply pushed as many grimoires as he could fit into a single chest, and then minimized it, to sort out later.
“Best guess? This world was already like this when she became “alive” if you will. Her mind filled in the blanks, or maybe she found a place that had all the technology she needed to do it, it really doesn’t matter,” Sylver explained, as he shoved the last book away into a half-empty chest and hid it protectively inside his robe.
A part of him was crying from seeing so many of his family’s possessions sitting around here collecting dust, with only 3 insane golems to watch over them.
The other part of him just wanted to get as far away from them, as fast as possible.
“Why doesn’t it matter?” Ria asked, as Sylver walked over to the small desk, and pulled the first drawer open, and could have sworn he heard a gasp from behind him, but he ignored it and carried on searching through it. Sylver turned to Ria and almost started to whisper when he remembered he could just tell her via tapping.
“Because we are not getting involved with this, and are going to leave,” Sylver explained while he continued to rummage through Eve’s desk.
Apart from a small book that seemed to have a bunch of scribbles in it, there wasn’t anything in the desk. The book’s cover was made out of hard black leather, and it had a golden plus sign painted on it. Someone had scribbled all over the words inside to make it unreadable.
“Please do not take that from me,” Eve said, in a tone of voice that made it sound like she was crying. Sylver put the book back where he took it from and closed the drawer.
“But we have to stop her!” Ria practically shouted, with how hard she was tapping against his bicep.
“Why?” Sylver asked.
“She’s going to make a god! You’re afraid of gods, we need to stop them!” Ria argued as Sylver let out a long and tired sigh.
“She’s not going to make a god, certainly not from 3 modified maybe death lords. There’s more to a god than just a bunch of souls being condensed. More importantly, we will be fine if we leave,” Sylver explained and looked down at the hand in his hands.
If I teleport to the dark elves, that will chew through at least half of the available mana…
“She’s going to kill everyone!” Ria argued as Sylver did the mental math to see if teleportation was on the table or not. Right now he was basically extending his possession into the hand in his hand, teleportation might not be something he could cast using just one hand.
“Not everyone, just the creatures with dark energy in their system. Once we get the dark elves out of here, the only people left are the elves and high elves, most of whom are either full of positive energy, or they don’t have any mana in their bodies at all and are neither positive nor negative,” Sylver explained, as he considered the wisdom of what he was about to do.
“Most?” Ria asked, and Sylver gave himself a second to decide how to approach this. He decided being honest would keep things simple.
“Some of the people living down in the Roots, maybe the Trunk, possibly Branch, might have enough dark elf blood in their system that they have dark energy in their bodies. It would explain why only some people get kidnapped by the Angels, Eve and her crew only kidnap the ones with dark energy,” Sylver explained.
“But since the Garden isn’t magic savvy enough to know this, they believe they are stolen at random, and some people are simply lucky to survive walking around at night. Then you have Serpents imitating Angels and whatnot, and now the dark is dangerous for anyone and everyone. A few people will die Ria, but then Eve and her lot won’t harm anyone,” Sylver finished, as he turned towards Eve and “Sylver” who were both just standing there staring at him.
“But the god! And the-”
“Is this because you think you’re responsible for her? For what she is going to do once we leave, and will keep doing until only people with positive energy in their bodies are left? Alright, let’s stop her, how do you suggest we do that?” Sylver asked, all while looking Eve right in the eye.
Or the rough area where her eyes would be if her face wasn’t hidden by a bunch of wrappings.
“Vaporize her! Vaporize all of them! Put a stop to it!” Ria said.
“Sure, not a problem. What about the death lords they’re keeping contained? How do you suggest we deal with them? Or do we just let them loose to do exactly what Eve was going to do? Except they’re death lords, so they’re not going to stop until everything is dead,” Sylver asked, as he mulled over the exact words to use when he made his offer to Eve.
“…”
“What will killing them achieve? Revenge for all the people who are already dead and are part of the death lords? You need to think with your head Ria, not your heart,” Sylver cautioned, as he released his hold on Grim, and saw the golem immediately join Eve and “Sylver.”
“They’re committing genocide,” Ria mumbled out, but even she could see that there wasn’t any point trying to argue with Sylver about it. He had checked out of this whole thing the moment the word “god” left Eve’s mouth.
“They are. But this isn’t my world. Come to think of it, this isn’t your world either. It’s theirs, and neither of our businesses. I won’t say what’s happening here isn’t upsetting, but there’s nothing to be done about it,” Sylver answered, and could almost feel the exact moment Ria shut her emotions down.
After being unable to save the people who looked after her, and more likely having to watch them slowly age, wither away, and then die, the natural response is to do everything in your power to prevent that from happening. Ria was good like that, it was part of the reason he liked her so much.
She’ll get over it, Sylver thought coldly, as he finally came up with an acceptable deal.
He held up the hand with the tattoo on its wrist.
“Are we in the Garden right now?” Sylver asked. Eve nodded, as did Grim and “Sylver.”
“I would like to be escorted to their “tree of life”. I’m going to look at it, I’m probably going to take a sample, and then you’ll escort me to where the dark elves are hiding,” Sylver said slowly and carefully and got to watch as Eve cocked her head to the side.
“Afterwards, you’re going to help me and the dark elves leave for another world. And once everyone is safe and sound on the other side, I’m going to give this back to you,” Sylver answered, as Eve appeared to prepare to say something.
Sylver lifted the hand up to his mouth before she could, and bit down on the hand’s pinkie, and ripped it off.
He pushed it down his throat with his tongue without chewing and swallowed it.
“You have my word it will work exactly as it had before I took it out of the box,” Sylver explained, as he felt like someone had just slashed his stomach open with the world’s coldest dagger.
“Do we have a deal?” Sylver offered, and extended his hand, his actual hand, not the hand missing a pinkie hand, towards Eve.
Sylver couldn’t put it into words, his insides were getting shredded with each and every passing second, it hurt his soul as much as it hurt his body.
“Your terms are acceptable,” Eve answered, as Sylver’s legs threatened to give out, but he managed to stay upright.
[Koschei] has reached level 7!
+5AP
+Perk [N/A]
+Trait [Abomination]
[Koschei] has reached level 8!
+5AP
+Perk [N/A]
[Koschei] has reached level 9!
+5AP
+Perk [N/A]
As they shook hands, Sylver felt relieved that he decided to resolve things peacefully.
Because if Eve’s soul was to be believed, she had the kind of power that rivaled the Silver Lich. Mana charged hand or not, if they fought, Sylver’s chances of winning were slim to none.
Sylver had considered asking them to help with Rose, but it felt like a very very bad idea to mix gods from another world, with a bunch of crazy golems that were trying to create a god.
But he could handle Rose on his own. Not to mention, he wanted to be sure that she had fucked him over on purpose before he started a war with a god that had 2 god siblings to back them up.
All things considered, aside from the barely bearable pain in his abdomen, Sylver had a good feeling about this.
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Ch165-Turning Point
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Despite the overuse of the metaphor, it was hard not to use it.
On account that Sylver literally regained the feeling in a lost limb.
If not for the fact that his head had just been sliced into two, and only the top of his ribcage stopped the blade from going any lower, Sylver would have started laughing like a madman.
Sylver pushed his hand through the wooden box, which crumbled away as if it were made out of sand, and now had a solid grip on the ash white dried up hand. He got down onto his knees so as to get out of the curved blade currently sticking out of the bottom of his throat.
By the time he was back on his feet, his split-open head had snapped back into place, and only a razor-thin scar down the middle of his face remained from the death blow.
Sylver pulled the blood that had leaked out of him back into his body and dusted himself off as he looked around.
It looked like a painting.
A silvery skeleton standing with his jaw wide open, with a small heap of dust in each hand. He had a serene look of shock on his face, although that was more to do with Sylver reading the skeleton’s body language, than any actual changes to the bone structure of his face.
Directly in front of him was a robed figure with a flat face, wielding a scythe. The scythe wasn’t made for it, the way it held it was awkward, if not for the overwhelming amount of physical force behind it, it would have been ripped out of its hands when it made contact with Sylver’s skull.
Both were motionless, save for the slight fluttering Grim’s robe made. Sylver had frozen their bodies, not their clothing.
“Come out, please. I can see you,” Sylver said quietly towards the direction the creature whose face he hadn’t had a chance to see was hiding.
It didn’t move, it didn’t run away, but didn’t come out from wherever it was hiding.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am a necromancer. Among other things, I am capable of using soul magic. It’s how I made these two stop moving, I disconnected their souls from their bodies. I am now going to count to three, and if you keep hiding, I’m going to start permanently severing the connection to their bodies. They’ll lose all feeling and control over their left hand,” Sylver explained to the hidden creature.
The 6th tier spell he had used to restrain everyone was binary, it either worked, or it didn’t. Distance was a factor for this spell, but the creature hiding away was still well within Sylver’s range.
Meaning there were two possibilities for why he hadn’t been able to freeze it.
The first possibility was that it didn’t have a soul, which wasn’t true, considering Sylver could feel it. Whatever that thing was, it was very much alive.
Which meant that it was the second possibility.
That it was stronger than Sylver, either in terms of strength of soul, very unlikely, or quantity of mana.
And if that was true, it begged the question, why wasn’t it attacking him?
“One,” Sylver said, and immediately felt motion from the hidden creature.
It stepped out of nowhere like it was hiding behind a wall, except there was no wall. Just empty space.
Which was very odd, considering Sylver now realized there was a third option he had forgotten about.
That it was immune to magic.
“If you try to attack me, I’m going to shred their souls into nothing, while I surround myself with enough heat to vaporize everything within a kilometer of me,” Sylver warned, as the robe-wearing creature stopped crouching and now stood at its full height.
It was short, its head came up to about Sylver’s stomach, but the limbs weren’t the right size for its height.
“Please let them go,” the creature asked.
It had a woman’s voice, albeit with an odd tone that wasn’t quite a child’s or an adult's. As if it wasn’t used to speaking in this language, or any language for that matter.
“No. I’ve been in a similar situation before, and I can’t afford to have them attack me while I’m distracted. Despite how it may appear, I just want to talk. If you answer my questions honestly and don’t try to hurt me, I will leave you all in peace,” Sylver offered.
The reality was that, while the hand had a ton of mana stored inside of it, the spell keeping Grim and the silvery skeleton in place would only last for an hour at his current rate of use.
Less if he wanted to have enough mana to open a gate into Eira, alter his body, fix Chrys’ body, and maybe make one more sentient shade.
But even with the time limit, letting hostages go was a mistake Sylver only had to make four times.
“Do you have a name,” Sylver asked, and felt something akin to revulsion from the robe-wearing maybe creature.
“Eve,” the creature hidden underneath her wrappings and hood said.
“You’re an Everest unit, aren’t you?” Ria asked as she formed a disk on Sylver’s shoulder to amplify her voice.
“I am Eve,” Eve answered coldly.
“What’s an Everest unit?” Sylver asked.
“It’s an android that can survive and operate in extremely hazardous environments. The facility where they built and tested them was located inside of mount Everest,” Ria explained, and Sylver nodded along.
“I am Eve,” Eve repeated.
“I’m Tod. What are you doing here Eve?” Sylver asked before Ria tried to force Eve into admitting she was an Everest unit.
Eve stayed quiet for a whole 5 seconds before she decided the best course of action was to answer.
“We are in the process of purifying the area of contaminants,” Eve explained, and Sylver found out that she either ignored his hand gesture to continue or couldn’t actually see him.
“Why are you doing this?” Sylver asked.
“So that the death lords can gestate without any interference,” Eve explained, and Sylver’s shock stopped the gasp before it could even reach his throat.
“Death… lords? Each one of those three things is a death lord?” Sylver asked in a completely calm and relaxed voice and even managed to point towards the large box housing the three eye-covered creatures, without his hand shaking.
“What do you mean by contamina-”
“Wh-why-why would you do that? Why would anyone do that? Three? You have three death lords, and you’re feeding them souls? Why? What possible reason is there to feed a death lord?” Sylver asked hurriedly and caught Ria completely off guard by interrupting her with his stuttering questions.
The answer that Eve gave didn’t make Sylver come close to fainting because of one reason, and one reason only.
He already fucking knew it. It was the same reason anyone ever did crazy and extremely dangerous shit.
“To create a god,” Eve said, with absolutely no shred of regret, fear, joy, or hesitation.
“What do you mean by contaminants?” Ria repeated, as Sylver just stood there staring at Eve and considered the wisdom of killing her, the other two, and then spending the rest of his hand’s mana to lock this whole thing up as tightly as possible.
Actually just leaving this realm with the dark elves would be quicker and safer.
“Creatures and persons that have black magic inside of them. They-”
“Why the fuck are you trying to create a god? Why?” Sylver interrupted Eve’s answer and quite honestly didn’t even realize she had been speaking.
“So that we may create the Garden of Eden,” Eve explained and moved for the first time since she had come out of hiding.
She spread her arms out as if she was about to give Sylver a hug.
“Fair enough…” Sylver said calmly. As Eve lowered her arms.
“Are you the one who stopped the planet from turning?” Ria asked, and broke the lingering silence.
“Yes. A series of precise nuclear strikes were used to create the necessary force to cancel out the spin,” Eve answered, as Ria fully slithered out of Sylver’s robe and now sat on his right shoulder.
Sylver in turn was focused on the hand in his hands and was in the process of feeling out the faded tattoo on the hand’s wrist.
“That’s impossible,” Ria said, as Sylver ran his pitch-black fingernail along the tattoo and couldn’t feel so much as a trace of Nyx’s mana in it.
Which was strange considering it had been drawn using her blood.
“When did it happen?” Ria asked, and Sylver looked up as Eve made a strange noise.
“9 years and 2 months ago,” Eve answered, and Sylver got to hear Ria scoff for the first time since he’d met her.
“You’re lying! There’s no way-”
Sylver patted Ria with his free hand and whispered at her.
“It’s a golem that went insane. Don’t be angry at it for getting numbers wrong,” Sylver said, and at this point was already one foot out of this whole conversation, situation, and this realm.
“What’s your serial number?” Ria asked, and Eve responded with a series of letters and numbers that Sylver didn’t even attempt to keep track of.
“She’s not an Everest unit… P4414, that’s the paranormal research division, but they were all destroyed years ago,” Ria said quietly, with a confused, and partially horrified tone in her voice.
“I see,” Sylver said, without looking up from the hand in his hands.
“Why are you so calm about this! She’s the one who destroyed this world!” Ria said a little too loudly, just short of shouting directly into Sylver’s ear.
“First of all, calm down,” Sylver said and could tell by the way Ria’s body practically shook on his shoulder that she decided to ignore his sagely advice.
“Do you even understand what this means? Garden of Eden, she’s from Eden’s Garden, they gave her a mission to ruin this planet. She’s the reason this whole planet is toxic to the dark elves!” Ria explained, and Sylver had to suppress the urge to shrug his shoulders.
“If someone were to open a gate to another world, would you do anything about it?” Sylver asked, and Eve made a noise again, the same one she made before she told Ria the world stopped turning 9 years and 2 months ago.
“Yes. Grim will destroy anyone and anything attempting to enter or leave. If someone were to attempt to open a “gate,” as you put it, he will intercept it and will destroy anyone and anything attempting to enter or leave,” Eve explained, and confirmed that Rose did indeed want Sylver to die in the process of returning to Eira.
If I didn’t meet the dark elves, I never would have gotten Nyx’s grimoires, and I would have likely attempted to open a gate, and then would have died… Did Rose make a mistake? Did Poppy and Lily do something to save me? Did I get lucky?
“You’re Eve, the harvester model is Grim, what’s the relief unit called?” Ria asked.
“His name is Sylver. He is the one in charge of the anti-life device,” Even explained, and Sylver wasn’t even sure how to react.
On the one hand, what the fuck!
On the other hand, fuck it, it doesn’t even matter at this point.
“By “anti-life device” I take it you’re referring to this?” Sylver asked, and held his own hand up.
“Yes, but you have destroyed the casing,” Eve said, as Sylver lowered his hand back down.
Eve and Ria spoke to each other about something, but Sylver was far too unfocused to hear what they were saying. Spring would later tell him that they were discussing the fact that Eve was technically Iris and all the other AI’s in The Garden, or as Ria explained, she was akin to the queen of a bunch of nobility that they all answered to.
“The uh…” Sylver was so frazzled at this moment that it took him several seconds to find the spot where he kept the small box full of Nyx’s grimoires. He held it up so Eve could see it. “Do you have anything like this somewhere here?” Sylver asked, and once again heard Eve make that strange noise.
It sounded like someone tapped their finger on a pane of glass.
“If you release Sylver, he will be able to show you,” Eve offered.
Despite everything, Sylver couldn’t sense any malice from her or any of them. The most malicious person in this room was Ria, and that was mostly because Sylver wasn’t reacting to everything the way she was.
The truth of the matter was that Sylver didn’t care.
Once death lords, and more importantly a god was mentioned, he was already out the door.
You don’t live long enough to be considered “ancient” by sticking your nose into everything mildly interesting, you did so by knowing when it was time to make like a tree and get the fuck out.
Sylver debated the merit of checking to see if Nyx really was involved in all of this, and decided that even if “Sylver” tried something, Sylver would be able to stop him using the mana in the hand he was holding.
Sylver gestured at “Sylver” and the shiny skeleton disappeared immediately. A half-second passed before he reappeared directly behind Eve.
The fact that Sylver could tell that he could shrug off “Sylver’s” teleportation spell with ease put a slight smile onto his face. Sure the amount of mana in the hand was limited and running out with each passing second, but for now, Sylver got to experience a small portion of his power as a lich.
With a nod, he stopped blocking “Sylver’s” spell and allowed himself to be teleported.
*
*
*
The room was small, cramped even, but even without looking around or inspecting it, Sylver could tell Nyx hadn’t been here.
Even if several of her grimoires were.
Along with Adema’s.
And Edmunds.
And Sylver’s.
All sitting very neatly inside of a metallic bookshelf, with small carved-up boxes sitting right underneath them.
And unsurprisingly, there was a small amount of empty space on the left side that looked to be missing exactly 21 books.
To the right of the bookshelf, Sylver saw a tiny wooden desk and chair, far too small for him to sit in, but about right for Eve’s height.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here, and guess that you don’t remember why you want to get to the Garden of Eden? And everything is sort of fuzzy past a certain point in your memories,” Sylver asked out loud, as he walked over to the bookshelf and used [Deadly Darkness] to lift all the books, and placed them into the chest each small box underneath them turned into.
“Yes,” Eve answered, and Ria calmed down.
The switch from seething and panicking to cool as a cucumber that just had cold water dumped on its head almost made Sylver laugh.
“You figured it out. You know what happened here,” Ria asked, as Sylver continued putting books into chests and then minimized them and hid the small boxes inside of his robe.
“Sort of. I’m still fuzzy on the details, but I think I can see the big picture,” Sylver explained, as he lifted his foot up for a moment, and then brought it down onto the floor.
The wispy darkness that surrounded each and every single inch of the room disappeared in a wave of bright yellow light and revealed a perfectly clean and shiny metallic floor, wall, and ceiling, that looked identical to the one Sylver had found Ria inside of.
“They can’t exactly confirm it on account of being insane, but here’s the ongoing theory,” Sylver said, as he held up one of Sylver Sezari’s grimoires and shook it until faint wisps of yellow-tinged smoke fell out from the pages.
“As I mentioned before, dark energy has the property of driving people insane. To be specific, it will drive anything with a soul insane, given enough time. And it appears that Eve, Grim, and “Sylver” all possess a soul that has been affected by dark energy,” Sylver explained, as he dropped his grimoire into the Sylver chest, and then minimized it and hid it away.
“But what about the nukes?” Ria asked as Sylver gave up on doing this slowly and properly and simply pushed as many grimoires as he could fit into a single chest, and then minimized it, to sort out later.
“Best guess? This world was already like this when she became “alive” if you will. Her mind filled in the blanks, or maybe she found a place that had all the technology she needed to do it, it really doesn’t matter,” Sylver explained, as he shoved the last book away into a half-empty chest and hid it protectively inside his robe.
A part of him was crying from seeing so many of his family’s possessions sitting around here collecting dust, with only 3 insane golems to watch over them.
The other part of him just wanted to get as far away from them, as fast as possible.
“Why doesn’t it matter?” Ria asked, as Sylver walked over to the small desk, and pulled the first drawer open, and could have sworn he heard a gasp from behind him, but he ignored it and carried on searching through it. Sylver turned to Ria and almost started to whisper when he remembered he could just tell her via tapping.
“Because we are not getting involved with this, and are going to leave,” Sylver explained while he continued to rummage through Eve’s desk.
Apart from a small book that seemed to have a bunch of scribbles in it, there wasn’t anything in the desk. The book’s cover was made out of hard black leather, and it had a golden plus sign painted on it. Someone had scribbled all over the words inside to make it unreadable.
“Please do not take that from me,” Eve said, in a tone of voice that made it sound like she was crying. Sylver put the book back where he took it from and closed the drawer.
“But we have to stop her!” Ria practically shouted, with how hard she was tapping against his bicep.
“Why?” Sylver asked.
“She’s going to make a god! You’re afraid of gods, we need to stop them!” Ria argued as Sylver let out a long and tired sigh.
“She’s not going to make a god, certainly not from 3 modified maybe death lords. There’s more to a god than just a bunch of souls being condensed. More importantly, we will be fine if we leave,” Sylver explained and looked down at the hand in his hands.
If I teleport to the dark elves, that will chew through at least half of the available mana…
“She’s going to kill everyone!” Ria argued as Sylver did the mental math to see if teleportation was on the table or not. Right now he was basically extending his possession into the hand in his hand, teleportation might not be something he could cast using just one hand.
“Not everyone, just the creatures with dark energy in their system. Once we get the dark elves out of here, the only people left are the elves and high elves, most of whom are either full of positive energy, or they don’t have any mana in their bodies at all and are neither positive nor negative,” Sylver explained, as he considered the wisdom of what he was about to do.
“Most?” Ria asked, and Sylver gave himself a second to decide how to approach this. He decided being honest would keep things simple.
“Some of the people living down in the Roots, maybe the Trunk, possibly Branch, might have enough dark elf blood in their system that they have dark energy in their bodies. It would explain why only some people get kidnapped by the Angels, Eve and her crew only kidnap the ones with dark energy,” Sylver explained.
“But since the Garden isn’t magic savvy enough to know this, they believe they are stolen at random, and some people are simply lucky to survive walking around at night. Then you have Serpents imitating Angels and whatnot, and now the dark is dangerous for anyone and everyone. A few people will die Ria, but then Eve and her lot won’t harm anyone,” Sylver finished, as he turned towards Eve and “Sylver” who were both just standing there staring at him.
“But the god! And the-”
“Is this because you think you’re responsible for her? For what she is going to do once we leave, and will keep doing until only people with positive energy in their bodies are left? Alright, let’s stop her, how do you suggest we do that?” Sylver asked, all while looking Eve right in the eye.
Or the rough area where her eyes would be if her face wasn’t hidden by a bunch of wrappings.
“Vaporize her! Vaporize all of them! Put a stop to it!” Ria said.
“Sure, not a problem. What about the death lords they’re keeping contained? How do you suggest we deal with them? Or do we just let them loose to do exactly what Eve was going to do? Except they’re death lords, so they’re not going to stop until everything is dead,” Sylver asked, as he mulled over the exact words to use when he made his offer to Eve.
“…”
“What will killing them achieve? Revenge for all the people who are already dead and are part of the death lords? You need to think with your head Ria, not your heart,” Sylver cautioned, as he released his hold on Grim, and saw the golem immediately join Eve and “Sylver.”
“They’re committing genocide,” Ria mumbled out, but even she could see that there wasn’t any point trying to argue with Sylver about it. He had checked out of this whole thing the moment the word “god” left Eve’s mouth.
“They are. But this isn’t my world. Come to think of it, this isn’t your world either. It’s theirs, and neither of our businesses. I won’t say what’s happening here isn’t upsetting, but there’s nothing to be done about it,” Sylver answered, and could almost feel the exact moment Ria shut her emotions down.
After being unable to save the people who looked after her, and more likely having to watch them slowly age, wither away, and then die, the natural response is to do everything in your power to prevent that from happening. Ria was good like that, it was part of the reason he liked her so much.
She’ll get over it, Sylver thought coldly, as he finally came up with an acceptable deal.
He held up the hand with the tattoo on its wrist.
“Are we in the Garden right now?” Sylver asked. Eve nodded, as did Grim and “Sylver.”
“I would like to be escorted to their “tree of life”. I’m going to look at it, I’m probably going to take a sample, and then you’ll escort me to where the dark elves are hiding,” Sylver said slowly and carefully and got to watch as Eve cocked her head to the side.
“Afterwards, you’re going to help me and the dark elves leave for another world. And once everyone is safe and sound on the other side, I’m going to give this back to you,” Sylver answered, as Eve appeared to prepare to say something.
Sylver lifted the hand up to his mouth before she could, and bit down on the hand’s pinkie, and ripped it off.
He pushed it down his throat with his tongue without chewing and swallowed it.
“You have my word it will work exactly as it had before I took it out of the box,” Sylver explained, as he felt like someone had just slashed his stomach open with the world’s coldest dagger.
“Do we have a deal?” Sylver offered, and extended his hand, his actual hand, not the hand missing a pinkie hand, towards Eve.
Sylver couldn’t put it into words, his insides were getting shredded with each and every passing second, it hurt his soul as much as it hurt his body.
“Your terms are acceptable,” Eve answered, as Sylver’s legs threatened to give out, but he managed to stay upright.
[Koschei] has reached level 7!
+5AP
+Perk [N/A]
+Trait [Abomination]
[Koschei] has reached level 8!
+5AP
+Perk [N/A]
[Koschei] has reached level 9!
+5AP
+Perk [N/A]
As they shook hands, Sylver felt relieved that he decided to resolve things peacefully.
Because if Eve’s soul was to be believed, she had the kind of power that rivaled the Silver Lich. Mana charged hand or not, if they fought, Sylver’s chances of winning were slim to none.
Sylver had considered asking them to help with Rose, but it felt like a very very bad idea to mix gods from another world, with a bunch of crazy golems that were trying to create a god.
But he could handle Rose on his own. Not to mention, he wanted to be sure that she had fucked him over on purpose before he started a war with a god that had 2 god siblings to back them up.
All things considered, aside from the barely bearable pain in his abdomen, Sylver had a good feeling about this.
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