Ch222-An Apple, A Day

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Ch222-An Apple, A Day

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Sylver kept the apple in a sealed wooden box he had made. He doubted something created by an enthusiastic spirit would get crushed by accident, but it would be stupid to take that chance.

It was an apple after all. A fruit that was meant to be sliced and served.

Without access to the Cat’s information gathering services, Sylver didn’t have the faintest clue as to how to approach this situation. He had expected some help from the witches or the spirit, but both seemed content to let Sylver figure everything out on his own.

His current “plan” was to walk up to the emperor, and simply ask him if this apple tasted like cherries. As stupid as it sounded, this was a tactic that had worked a couple of times. If anything, it worked more often than it had any right to.

Other ideas required finding someone close to the emperor that held a grudge, but that idea fell flat when Sylver considered the chances of someone of such a high position being anywhere near the Red Ring.

Sylver spent their entire walk from the swamp to the Blue Rat sect, trying to figure out a way to have a fragment of the apple end up in the emperor’s mouth.

Xalibur did mention that “Sylvar Senary the friendly necromancer” would be invited into the emperor’s court, but the emperor had died since then, and Sylver wasn’t sure how the current one felt.

Even if he was invited to see the emperor, would being the equivalent of a minor celebrity be enough for the emperor to trust a fruit Sylver gave him? Knowing Sylver’s luck, the current emperor had a fucking allergy to all red fruits.

On the other hand, if Sylver had a full day where the emperor was unconscious, he could end this “adventure” in a couple of minutes.

Or rather, he could have, if Faust was still around to help him. It wasn’t as if the emperor didn’t have guards.

Sylver could ask Lola to send him some S rank adventurer parties, ones that would be comfortable with toppling a rather large government and wouldn’t tell anyone afterward.

If they do tell someone, who gives a shit? No one is going to believe them, and even if they do, so what?

The high king might even give us all a medal for it.

Sylver could play it straight. “I have a mythical fruit that will grant those that consume it unimaginable power!” Sylver would say, while the skies thundered dramatically in the background.

I could have a high-ranking noble come here, and have them present the fruit to the emperor as a gift?

Then what? Watch the nobles get executed when the emperor falls into a coma like sleep?

Have them present the fruit, and then get them out of the country before the curse kicks in?

Not a bad idea, but would the emperor even recognize foreign nobles as being important enough to accept a gift from them, without checking it for poison?

If Faust was here, he could have asked the cultivator if he was able to sense anything malicious inside the apple but calling Faust back wasn’t an option.

I should have asked the spirit to make it look gold. Sylver thought bitterly.

But Sylver doubted the spirit would go for it, golden apples were a whole other story, completely separate from the shiny red apple. If he had asked for a fruit to grant him power, then it would have been gold.

Similar to gods, stories gained strength from the people who believed in them.

Sylver had known a handful of mages that tried to increase their power by having bards sing songs about their great deeds, but as they had later theorized, there’s a difference between a story that forms naturally and one that is forced to form.

Because it was a type of sorcery.

As far as Sylver was concerned at least. Bards were usually sorcerers, in all his years Sylver had only met a handful that could be classified as mages, the rest all used their magic without being fully aware of it.

The magic fae and spirits used was unreliable, and as Sylver was being shown for the 100th time, inconvenient.

On the bright side, he did get the cursed apple for free. The spirit was so excited at the mere prospect of participating in the downfall of a powerful figure, that it didn’t even try to haggle for Sylver's gold, gems, or anything.

But it wasn’t as if the apple came without any restrictions. The fruit had to be “eaten,” which meant shoving it down the emperor’s throat wasn’t an option.

Sylver had learned from past experiences, that while locking someone up and starving them until they ate the cursed food was an option, dehydrating them until they drank from a specific cup wasn’t.

Spirit magic didn’t adhere to any concrete rules and tended to function when it “felt like it,” to quote the Ibis’ head of sorcery.

“Would you like to come inside for some tea?” Tarragon asked, as Sylver was pulled away from his thoughts, and focused on the elf.

They were outside the Blue Rat sect’s gates, and the guards had already opened one of the doors.

Come to think of it, there is one person who might be able to help me.

“I’d be delighted,” Sylver said, as Tarragon gestured for him to follow, as Anise excused himself and left the two men alone.

***

Rosa didn’t so much as flinch as Sylver suddenly appeared next to her. Sylver had waited until she was done changing before he used [Fog Form] to enter her room.

“What do you want?” Rosa asked under her breath. The room was tiny, with just enough space for a bed, and a small square chest that doubled as a seat.

“I need to talk to you. We can talk here, but I think we would both prefer to talk somewhere else,” Sylver whispered back.

Rosa buried her face into her pillow for a moment, and Sylver had to lean back as she tried to heal her tiredness away.

“Is it urgent?” Rosa asked.

“It is,” Sylver said.

He might be called to rescue Fobur Plateforged at any minute, and aside from that, he was also worried that Owl might decide to check up on the box Anastasia had been in.

“Tell Tarr someone in your sect was poisoned and you need a [Healer],” Rosa said, as Sylver nodded, and disappeared.

***

The woman elf had dark bags under her eyes, and her ears were drooping so much that she almost looked like a pale dark elf. The guards standing near the doors opened them as Sylver turned around and walked inside Faust’s sect, and Rosa followed behind him.

Rosa kept her head and hood down as she walked down the long stone path and was careful not to let the staff she was carrying tap against the ground as she walked.

As Sylver gestured for her to enter the room he had enchanted, he saw the woman elf freeze. The walls, ceiling, and floor were covered in glowing sigils, that were very clearly drawn in blood.

She looked up and locked eyes with Sylver, and he could tell she was on the cusp of making a comment, but thankfully for both of them, she decided against it and walked inside. As the Sylver shut the door behind him, the sigils flickered with yellow-tinged light, as the glass jar in the middle of the room filled with a dark brown liquid began to bubble and froth.

“This is vile,” Rosa said to an unconcerned Sylver.

“But effective,” Sylver countered, as he gestured around the empty room. “Do wait a bit before speaking about anything you wouldn’t want someone to overhear.”

It wasn’t actually a soundproof enchantment but given Rosa’s reaction, he didn’t feel like explaining that it was meant to boil people’s blood. Anyone who wasn’t meant to be in this room would feel a faint burning in their fingertips, followed by steaming blood exploding out of their eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and every other conceivable orifice.

He learned this particular spell, or curse, depending on who you ask, from the same man who taught him how to create blue fire using water. The man in question used this “spell” to make an oven that cooked meat in seconds, whereas Sylver used it to create a section in his home that no one but him, and some bloodless undead, could enter.

He rarely used it because of how much of a mess it made, but just like with all dark magic, the more specific the curse, the harder it was to block. The undetectable people listening in would need the equivalent of 6th tier magic to not get their blood boiled.

“You’re here to ask the emperor for a safe place to grow your Eldar sapling into a full tree,” Sylver said, as Rosa did her best to not react, but failed spectacularly. Her wooden staff made a groaning sound from how hard she gripped it; the muscles of her jaw threatened to cut their way out of her face.

“My shades went through everyone’s things while I had tea with Tarragon. And I thought to myself, “what would healers need with a metric tone of mana probing equipment?” Then I thought, “isn’t a dormant volcano a perfect spot to grow an Eldar tree?” Then I remembered that you’re not part of the Council, and therefore any place you settled down, would need to be able to withstand the Council attacking it,” Sylver explained, as Rosa just stared at him with her now bloodshot eyes.

The part he didn’t mention was the part where he didn’t have anything to do while he waited for Rosa to show up and decided to try to use [Greater Greenhouse] perk to grow himself a tiny Eldar tree sample.

He then decided to check if it was pure enough to track the Council’s Eldar tree and instead discovered that there was an Eldar tree within walking distance.

Rosa was hiding the sapling somewhere very close by, north of the Schlagen mountains.

Sylver and the woman elf spent about a minute looking at one another. Rosa’s eyes initially darted all over the place, searching for an exit, but she realized the room they were standing in was exactly as sinister as it initially appeared.

Sylver hadn’t set it up with that in mind, but as Rosa’s mana began to move towards her head and chest, he was glad for it. She might have been pretending to be a professional [Healer] but the fact that she blended in so well with the others meant Sylver wasn’t completely safe.

“How do you know about Gorynych?” Sylver asked, and Rosa looked like she was about to have a heart attack. The fact that he felt her use her healing magic on herself only made him more worried.

“I need to sit down,” Rosa said, as Sylver tapped his foot and extended his shadow towards the elf woman. She didn’t so much sit down, as much as she slumped into the pitch-black chair.

Sylver continued standing where he was, while Rosa took long, slow, deep, breaths, while she held one hand against her chest.

She looked like she was about to say something, but she instead lowered her face into her hands. At first Rosa took another deep breath, but it was very shaky, and rightfully so given that she started sobbing immediately after.

Sylver remained where he was and searched through his [Bound Bones] storage for something resembling a handkerchief. The closest he found was a pillowcase, but thankfully Rosa stopped crying before Sylver had a chance to pull the large piece of cloth out.

She used the sleeves of her robe to wipe her tears, and after a couple of slow deep breaths, her face stopped tensing, and the redness on her cheeks and eyes began to subside.

“Why me?” Rosa said to herself. “6 generations worth of effort, and I have to the one where it all goes wrong. My grandfather died for this, for the first time the finish line is in sight, and I’ve ruined everything,” Rosa said in an indifferent tone that worried Sylver even more than the crying had.

Sylver waited for a while, mostly because he couldn’t figure out what to say, and-

“Just talk to him,” Ria said, as she pocked a tendril out of Sylver’s back, and then pulled the rest of herself out of Sylver’s robe. “If there’s one person in this world that can solve any problem, it’s him,” Ria said, as Rosa lifted her head to look at the black and gold girl-shaped liquid metal woman.

“What is this?” Rosa asked with a vague gesture towards Ria’s floating body.

“This is Ria… She’s a golem…” Sylver said awkwardly.

“Talk to him. He likes you, I’ve seen how he acts to people he doesn’t like, just tell him what’s going on,” Ria almost begged, as Rosa continued staring at her golden mask of a face.

Ria’s voice didn’t sound normal, the pitch was lower than usual, and her tone felt… motherly? Was she mimicking someone?

“You’re not with the Council?” Rosa asked as she continued to calm down.

“I’m not,” Sylver answered simply, as Rosa leaned her head back, and fanned her bloodshot eyes with her hands.

There was a fair amount of snot clinging to her right sleeve, and apparently she had been wearing makeup because there were smudges of it on her palms.

Has she been holding this in since I spoke to her in the carriage?

“I don’t know what to do. I just-I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Rosa said, as she stopped trying to sit properly, and simply slumped against the back part of Sylver’s shadow.

He had to adjust the angle of her seat, so she didn’t just slide off it.

“Tell me the whole story, Rosa. Take all the time you need,” Sylver said, as he sat down opposite her.

***

Ria was 100% imitating someone she knew.

From her choice of words to the subtle mannerisms, to the way she held Rosa’s hand and coaxed her into a calm state of mind.

Not that Sylver was complaining, he wouldn’t have been capable of doing this.

He didn’t have a soothing voice, or a relaxing appearance, Sylver’s mere presence tended to put people on edge, so much so that he considered leaving Ria and Rosa alone to speed things up. Sadly, that would ruin the blood-boiling spell, so the best Sylver could do was not look menacing.

Rosa’s story wasn’t a good one.

The elven “royal family” was divided.

On the one side, you had the “official” head of household, the “king” of the high elves, who coincidentally controlled the Council.

On the other, you had Rosa’s family, people with fancy titles, but no actual power, or freedom. They were only alive because their great, great, grandfather had some sort of extremely special magic, that the Council couldn’t do without, and Rosa’s family’s safety was being used to motivate the old man.

Rosa never met him and didn’t even know what his magic was.

All she knew was that this man’s wish was for his family to be free, but the only way to do that was to detach themselves from the Councils’ Eldar tree. Except the only way to do that without getting killed, was to transfer their attachment from the Council’s Eldar tree to a different one.

Which was easier said than done, given that there was only one Eldar tree currently in existence.

Rosa started to tear up when she tried to talk about her mother, so Ria asked her to skip that portion of the story. Suffice to say, Rosa’s mother did some terrible things to give her daughter permission to leave their home.

Tarragon and all of his elves were all on the side of Rosa’s family since quite literally every single significant sect was part of the Council.

Except for the emperor, or according to Rosa, only the previous emperor.

The new one was allegedly unaware of the deal her family had made with the old cultivator, all those years ago.

The deal had been that they would plant the Eldar sapling here, and in exchange for protection, the emperor’s family would be granted a high elf’s near infinite lifespan, with no strings attached.

But the current emperor was too busy grieving to hear her out, without his silver amulet-wearing advisor’s presence to listen and speak for him.

Sylver leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes for a while.

The good news was that he wasn’t taking anything away from Rosa. The protection the previous emperor had promised, was already off the table, so the fact that Sylver would be destroying that protection, was irrelevant and didn’t need to be mentioned.

The bad news was that he still didn’t know what the council was after. What their end goal was, or even why they were going out of their way to control an isolated country full of cultivators. Rosa didn’t know either, all she knew was that the council promised eternal life to those that joined willingly.

Worst of all, Sylver didn’t know how to help the elf woman.

He had planned to handle the Council eventually, but Rosa didn’t have time to wait. Once Tarragons’ reinforcements arrived, she was supposed to return home.

Rosa couldn’t stay here, she would be hunted down and caught, and even if she ran, there was nowhere for her to go. There was Arda, but even if she had Tarragon’s whole team with her, they wouldn’t make it.

Sylver’s [Lesser Perception] informed him that Ria was looking right at him, with an expectant look on her golden mask of a face.

She thankfully had enough sense not to make an offer only Sylver could make, but she hinted at it enough times that Sylver got the message.

Ria wanted Sylver to save Rosa and her family, by offering them the same protection he had given the dark elves. Along with the same promise to help them grow their own Eldar tree.

But Sylver didn’t want to do that.

While it would be nice to have a family of high elves working for him, along with their supporters, Sylver wasn’t trying to build a country.

He didn’t even know where to put the dark elves, let alone what sounded to be thousands of elves. Plus, if the council was as big as Rosa made it sound, it would be a massive effort to destroy it.

Then again, Lola knows where their Eldar tree is…

But telling Rosa about what Lola was currently doing was dangerous. Frankly, doing anything to help her would make the Council focus on him more than they already had.

More importantly, any sort of disruption to the elves would be dangerous, since they are one of the few things standing between Arda and the invading Krists.

As to who “Gorynych” was, he was apparently someone the Council had been searching for as long as they existed.

She had asked if Sylver knew the name on a hunch, and as she explained, she did it in the hopes of getting a reaction out of him. So she could sell him to the Council so her family would have more room to move.

In short, Rosa had nothing to do with the sword and shield prophesy that involved the emperor and Faust’s bride.

She didn’t have a secret weapon to kill the emperor, didn’t know about what the Bucklers were up to, or that they were the ones who hired the witches to create the curse Tarragon’s group was trying to cure, she didn’t even know why the mountains were toppling over.

Sylver sat up straight, opened his eyes, and looked at an oddly unconcerned Rosa. He decided to be honest with the woman.

“Could you wait 10 years?” Sylver asked.

Ria reacted by cocking her head, and Rosa just blinked at him.

“Wait for what?” Rosa asked.

“You’re being held there against your will, but you’re not being tortured. Your great, great, grandfather sounds like he might be, but you and your family aren’t, right?” Sylver asked.

“Yes,” Rosa said coldly.

“You’ve done me the courtesy of being honest. So, I’ll be honest in return. I can help you-”

“We’ll do anything,” Rosa interrupted, as Sylver held up a finger and continued speaking.

“But I can’t help you right now. What I came here to do takes precedence,” Sylver said flatly.

If someone other than him had said that Rosa would have argued with them, and tried to further explain her point, but because Sylver looked and spoke the way he did, the elf woman couldn’t do anything other than slump her shoulders and stare down at her legs.

Ria continued to look at Sylver, as she floated over to him, and placed her hand on top of his.

“Is there anything I could say to change your mind?” Ria tapped out against his hand.

“Ed comes first, you know this,” Sylver answered.

He had initially asked to speak to Rosa with the intention of giving her the red apple to give to the emperor, but now…

“Why 10 years?” Ria asked.

“I don’t know how long it will take Lola to handle everything, so 10 years is just so she has breathing room in case things get complicated,” Sylver answered, as Ria shifted into her staff form.

“Wait, your staff is a golem?” Rose asked.

The sheer absurdity of her statement pulled her out of her depressive mood.

“My main mode of transportation is a seven-legged spider that pretends to be a horse,” Sylver added with a straight face, as Rosa tried to hold back her laughter, but ended up cackling into her hands.

“10 years,” Rosa repeated after she had calmed down.

“I’ll tell you something Rosa, but I want your word you’ll keep this to yourself,” Sylver said, partly because he didn’t want to finish this conversation on a sour note, but mostly to cheer Ria up.

“You have my word,” Rosa swore.

Sylver paused for a moment before he spoke.

“I consider the Council an enemy. And historically speaking, my enemies don’t tend to last long. They will be handled, but after I’m done here,” Sylver explained, as Rosa nodded at him.

“If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know,” Rosa said, as she stood up from Sylver’s shadow and started to clean the snot and tears out of her sleeves.

“You wouldn’t happen to know a secret tunnel that led straight to the emperor’s room, would you?” Sylver asked jokingly, as Rosa shook her head.

“There’s allegedly a passage the previous emperor used to visit his concubines, but it’s more of a rumor than anything else,” Rosa said.

“I see…” Sylver said.

Rosa looked significantly calmer than when Sylver had initially seen her inside her carriage.

She didn’t look happy, but given the circumstances, it would have been stranger if she did.

Rosa made a show of ruffling her hair, pulled her belt out, and redid it the wrong way round, while Sylver worked on undoing the writing on the walls.

With [Dead Dominion] it was as simple as waving his hand, the walls and ceiling would need to be repaired, due to staining, but Faust’s sect had more rooms than members, so it wasn’t that much of an issue.

After Rosa had left, Sylver walked up to the roof and sat down on the ledge facing the Schlagen mountains.

He just stared at the 10 mountain tops, as if he could make the next one fall by force of will alone.

But the 10 tall mountains remained as they were, almost as if they were mocking him.

Sylver pulled the shiny red apple out of his robe, and slowly rotated it in his hand. If not for his ability to perceive primal energy, he wouldn’t have known just how powerful the curse he was holding was.

He remained where he was for the whole night and did nothing other than stare at the apple in his hand, while he digested all the information he had available to him.

If he looked at his situation from a certain angle, he had already won. All he needed to do was wait the emperor out.

Whatever happened to Sylver, didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Anastasia was far away from the emperor and was under the protection of a ridiculously experienced, and ridiculously motivated, cultivator. Sylver didn’t like comparing his strength to his allies, because he very rarely liked the outcome, but as long as he was focused, Faust was a force to be reckoned with.

Even the people he had spent a couple of weeks training were no joke.

As long as Sylver didn’t fuck anything up on his end, the dragon was basically free.

Just as he finished this thought, he felt an uncomfortable softness on his skin, and a half second later realized his previously empty hand was now holding an envelope.

Reluctantly, Sylver opened it, and read the contents.

The Buckler’s had apparently decided against waiting for the Blue Tiger sect’s sigil and were instead going to give their prison break a shot right fucking now.

Sylver considered not going, but then Owl would know he didn’t care about Fobur and would get suspicious.

But if Sylver was being completely honest with himself, he wanted to do this. Because at least this way he was doing something.

Even if it was just a simple prison break.

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