Ch176-Long Lunch

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Ch176-Long Lunch

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Somewhat surprisingly, the meeting with Ruslana and Zelvash was so fast and nonsense-free that Sylver spent the entire 10 minutes waiting for something to go wrong.

But nothing did.

Sylver explained to the two that the area he planned to house them in was too dangerous and that there wasn’t a good place to house them at the current moment in time.

Frankly, neither of them seemed all that concerned about it.

In Ruslana’s words, they had food, water, a safe place to sleep, the children weren’t dying from disease, and their biggest complaint was that Eirish was difficult for the adults to wrap their heads around.

When Sylver told them that they were going to stay at Ron’s Rest until he returned, Ruslana honestly looked a little relieved. Zelvash seemed miffed, and tried to ask to come along with Sylver, and bring 8 dark elves with him, but thankfully took no as an answer.

*

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“Can I ask you something?” Lola asked as she walked out of the portal Bravo had created.

Bravo had the rare ability of being able to read the room, and left Lola’s office without either of them having to ask.

“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you’re not going to ask about the thing I said you’re better off not knowing?” Sylver asked.

Lola rolled her eyes, and sat down on her chair, as Sylver sat down in the seat on the other side of her desk. Aside from a few new paintings that showed Lola smiling and shaking hands with various men and women, and an odd rat-looking creature, not a whole lot had changed.

The workshop had been rebuilt, but other than the walls being a bit thicker and sturdier, to Sylver’s poor memory it was all the same. He vaguely recognized some of the people quietly working away, but apparently becoming a little taller, and disappearing for 5 years, was enough to make people forget who you are.

“No. If you think it’s better I don’t know, then it’s better I don’t know… Regarding the Krists…”

Lola’s voice trailed off as she moved her hand over the desk, and a small metallic box appeared on it.

Sylver moved it closer to himself and very carefully opened it up.

Inside he could see 2 light grey cylindrical pieces of metal, that were ever so slightly thicker on one side, like a carrot.

He extended his mana towards the two metal rods and applied pressure on them until he found a way inside.

When that didn’t work, Sylver picked one up with his hand and then tried to snap it open. For something this small, and thin, the amount of pressure Sylver had to exert until it broke into two didn’t make sense.

The quiet clink he heard as the other rod snapped into two inside the metal box, also didn’t make any sense. Sylver was careful initially, as he inspected the interior of the metal with his mana, but when he couldn’t feel anything, he tried to tear the piece apart using magic, if only to get some kind of reaction out of it.

Just when Sylver thought he was about to feel something, the metal half turned into extremely fine sand in his hand. No matter how hard Sylver sifted through the sand with his mana, he couldn’t find anything, he wasn’t even entirely sure if the thing was metal or not.

“Going by the fact that your shadow has already reached the door, you couldn’t find anything,” Lola said.

Sylver glanced behind himself and saw that in his anger, he had accidentally pushed his shades away from him, and pulled them back in place.

When he turned back to look at Lola, a second open box was on the table, with an identical pair of metallic rods.

“How many of these do you have?” Sylver asked as he did his best to get as much of the sand into the 1st box, and then took one of the rods from the second.

“About 20 on my person, and nearly 1,000 down in storage. The military sent these to everyone with so much as an F rank [Appraisal] skill, but even Leke didn’t get anything,” Lola explained, as Sylver used [Arcane Insight] on the rod in his hand.

[N/A]

He tried to use it on the rod in the box.

[N/A]

“Why exactly are the Krist’s such a threat?” Sylver asked as he put the rod in his hand back into the box he had taken it out of.

“Quantity. They win through sheer numbers. Hundreds, upon thousands, of bodies throw themselves at swords, spears, arrows, magic, and eventually the blades dull, the tips bend, the walls break, the mages get tired, and that’s it. Whoever can, runs away, and the rest either die or are converted into one of the Krists,” Lola explained.

Sylver could do little but nod.

Throwing bodies until the opponent just plain and simple couldn’t swing their sword anymore was a time-consuming, but effective, strategy.

“Not to mention the sabotage from the inside…” Sylver added.

“That too. Most of the adventurers that go to fight them, do so with a suicide capsule. Initially, they used poison, but after someone saw a Krist shaman rip a woman’s tongue out, and then shove his hand down her throat to scoop out the liquid, everyone started to use explosives. Same material as the ones you summon, except the trigger, is magical, not mechanical,” Lola said, with an odd tone that sounded as if she was telling a joke.

“I miss when wars were a battle of attrition to see which army would starve first. Things were so much simpler back then…” Sylver said, as he closed the lid on the box, and leaned back in his seat.

Lola waved her hand over the two boxes and made them both disappear.

“I miss when my biggest worry was that I mixed up the delivery dates. The cats haven’t been, shall we say agreeable, with the fact that I took over, but they do what they’re told. The Cord is a lot harder to handle, the people only in it for the money have been fantastic, but the ones that do what they do for fun, those kick up a fuss like you wouldn’t believe,” Lola explained, in an attempt to steer the conversation away from the topic she herself had brought up.

“I’m sure Romeo has a handle on things. Lycanthropes are very protective of their territory, even more so of their partners,” Sylver said casually and was disappointed at the lack of surprise in Lola’s voice.

“Did he say something to you, or are you just guessing?” Lola asked.

“In case you forgot, I can read souls. Werewolves are a bit tricky, especially the recently infected ones, the animal blood muddles everything up, but he does that thing they all do, where he follows you with his head, and not just his eyes,” Sylver explained.

He had studied the curse, and for a brief period of time lived among them, as a guest, and even more briefly, as a leader.

“Yeah… He’s cute, and I love how loyal he is, but… after Olds…” Lola adjusted herself in her chair.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sylver offered.

Lola considered his words and then shook her head.

“These things happen… His parents were part of the Council. And while old Lola would have remained optimistic, possibly to the point of idiocy, Lola the Silver Lich’s partner can’t afford that kind of optimism…” Lola explained with a smile that didn’t go anywhere near her eyes.

“You didn’t…”

“I didn’t. I considered it... But I couldn’t go through with it. What if I’m wrong? Not to mention, even though it could have been a trap from the very beginning, I still have feelings for him. The smart thing to do is to wipe out the Council, and then I’ll know for sure if it was a ruse from the start,” Lola said, in a tone that sounded way too similar to a certain necromancer she was friends with.

“Good plan… But you met Olds before I left the dungeon?” Sylver asked.

“I met him during the time it took you to fly from the dungeon to Arda. Which… Look, I’ve got everything under control, tell me you’ve got some dark magic solution for the Krists,” Lola said, and with a wave of her hand summoned a sheet of paper and a pen in front of Sylver.

“Kill them until they die?” Sylver offered lamely.

“I’ll pass that along to the military, it will revolutionize how wars are fought,” Lola said with a faint smile in her voice, but not her face.

“If they’re a genuine threat, I’ll fly to their island, and figure something out. But honestly, Arda is so well protected right now that even I would struggle to break through. A bunch of mind-controlled mortals won’t stand a chance. Zombies, maybe, but people that die from running out of air? Just surround Arda with a vacuum or something, or pour carbon monoxide on them, they’ll drop dead before they get anywhere near the walls,” Sylver offered and was surprised by the fact that Lola looked surprised.

“Seriously?” Sylver asked, as the woman took the sheet she had offered Sylver, and started scribbling something down on it.

“We tried poison, but they were immune, how did I watch you knock out a group of men using dry ice, and not think of this?” Lola mumbled to herself.

Sylver leaned back in his seat and briefly closed his eyes.

“There’s that… what the fuck was it called. Ash-something… It’s at the tip of my tongue, light yellow rock, smells like rust, but-”

“Ash-foam?” Lola guessed.

“That’s it, ash-foam. Mix it 1-part white cherry pits, 10-parts water, 5-parts ash-foam, mix it until it turns dark yellow, heat it up, pour about half a cup worth into a pressurized bottle, and after it cools down, pure carbon monoxide grenades. Or big barrels, and just throw them from the walls, I guess,” Sylver explained, as Lola stopped what she was writing, and started noting down the recipe.

“There’s a catalyst to speed up the process… it’s… either osmium, copper, or zinc. I can’t remember, but it’s one of those three… Maybe chromium, but try osmium first… Ask Bruno, there’s a chance he’ll know. Maybe Faust too, cultivators are always brewing one pill or another, he might be a bit more knowledgeable about alchemy than I am. Honestly, just get a handful of mages, and have them do it manually, it’s not that hard,” Sylver said, as Lola kept writing on her sheet without looking away, and summoned a fresh one to continue writing.

“While we’re on the subject, a nice big moat is always a huge pain in the ass to deal with. You have to build a damn bridge out of corpses to get the zombies to the wall, even worse if it’s filled with predatory monsters, but don’t use anything poisonous, always go for the simple big teeth that tear flesh away types. Get Bruno to make aquatic serpents, to swallow enemies whole,” Sylver offered, and saw that Lola wrote what he said down word for word, but crossed out “aquatic serpents.”

Lola stopped writing and looked up at Sylver.

“I don’t think a moat is possible, the elevation is all wrong…” Lola said.

“You know what, there’s a spell for burning corpses, I saw that girl I was with use it once… The Pixie party. If you modify the framework a bit and spread ash-foam around the walls, you could make the corpses produce carbon monoxide, get a self-sustaining cycle going…” Sylver explained, as Lola summoned him a sheet of paper and gave him his own pen, as she moved her own to the side, and got a fresh sheet, to write a letter on.

*

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Aside from the fact that, in Tamay’s words, Sylver’s methods were primitive, cruel, and “beastly,” she agreed with Lola, and a man who Sylver had to assume was part of Arda’s military, that it would work.

Especially when they managed to build a magic nullification perimeter around Arda, which was already in the process of being built, but likely going to be moved up the priority queue if the higher-ups agree with Lola’s proposal.

Sylver left Lola and her assistant, who honestly looked more like her friend than her subordinate or anything, to figure out where and how to get the necessary quantity of ash-foam required to suffocate the attacking Krists to death.

Sylver on the other hand had dinner with Chrys, Ria, Misha, and Masha. The meal was simple, for Chrys’ sake, who for the first time since Sylver had known her actually looked like a little girl for a second.

They talked about nothing during the meal, most of the conversation was Chrys asking Misha about what kind of food Maul could make. It was then that Sylver realized that all three women had coincindentally in the past been incapable of eating food.

It was only when Sylver finished his meal, that Misha and Masha stepped out and Chrys began to talk.

“You’re going to need me when you go to the Schlagen mountains,” Chrys said as if it was an undeniable fact.

“…”

“I didn’t do it on purpose. This thing makes me know things, I can’t help it,” Chrys argued, with a gesture towards her left eye.

The eye that had previously belonged to Rose, the [Hero] from another world.

“It makes you know things, but not the fact that my answer is no?” Sylver asked.

He saw Chrys bite her tongue for a moment, as she considered whether or not to say what she had planned to say.

“Faust will protect me,” Chrys offered, again with that same tone of an undeniable fact.

Sylver crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the girl, who looked like she was 12, but spoke with an adult’s voice. Even if he was never going to say anything, so as not to hurt her feelings, it rubbed him the wrong way.

“Faust has been living here for 5 years. It would be cruel to ask him to uproot himself and come with me to a distant land,” Sylver explained and could feel that neither Ria nor Chrys seemed to consider this an issue.

“He’s been drinking himself to death, ever since his fiancée broke things off. Lola coddled him too much, it will do him good to go do something useful,” Chrys explained.

“What did I tell you about-”

“Masha told me. Ging thinks so too. Chloe said that if it weren’t for his body, he would have already been dead from alcohol poisoning,” Chrys said, and Ria bobbed up and down a little, which was her way of nodding.

“…”

“There are over 300 sects over there, and any one of them could have been the one that the [Jester Hero] fought and damaged his sword against. They’re secretive by nature, you would have to check each one individually if you went alone,” Chrys explained.

“I have a way of tracking Edmund. I get into the city, use the tracker, and rescue him, no extremely frail clairvoyant needed,” Sylver said.

He could feel that Chrys didn’t know this since this was the first time she had to stop reading from a mental script and had to actually think things through.

“Lola doesn’t have any contacts over there. And without someone on the inside, you’re going to have a hard time getting in,” Chrys said, and Sylver now struggled to guess what information Lola had told her, and what Chrys was being told by her clairvoyancy and her eye.

“Chrys… Just… No… Alright? Can you trust that I know what I’m doing?” Sylver asked, almost pleading with Chrys to drop the subject.

“I want to help you… Unassailable, untouchable, unbreakable, unreachable. Strong enough that you never have to fight again… Everyone you care for safe and off-limits. If I help you find Edmund faster, you’ll be able to go find the next person faster. And the next and the next, and then you’re done, and there’s no more fighting,” Chrys said quietly as if she could see all the dominos lined up right in front of her.

If the dining room wasn’t dead silent, Sylver doubted that he would have been able to hear what the girl had almost whispered.

“Let me tell you what will happen if you come with me. At some point, something is going to go wrong, because something always goes wrong, and you will be kidnapped, hurt, or possibly killed. And in all 3 cases, I’m going to take it personally,” Sylver said quietly.

He kept his voice calm and steady and took a brief pause when he remembered that despite how she sounded, Chrys was still a child. And as he realized this, he realized now wasn’t the time to explain to Chrys that Sylver was a monster.

Sylver stood up from his seat and walked over to Chrys. He crouched down near the floor so he was at eye level with her.

“Chrys... I do things, the way I do them, for a very good reason. This is how the Ibis was as successful and as powerful as it was. We specialized. The healers stayed inside, and healed the wounded, the researchers researched, the clairvoyants predicted the ends of the realm, and so on and so forth,” Sylver explained.

“We don’t send a healer to the front lines, we don’t send a clairvoyant to rescue someone, we don’t send a geomancer into the middle of the ocean, everyone was always used in places and positions that suited their strengths. You’re not a fighter. You’re a clairvoyant,” Sylver explained and nearly said “you’re a child,” and caught himself just in time.

“Faust will protect me,” Chrys repeated.

“Alright. What if he doesn’t?” Sylver asked.

“He’ll protect me,” Chrys repeated.

“Hypothetically speaking, someone sneaks up on him and knocks him out with a hammer to the back of the head. Now what?” Sylver questioned.

“I would warn him before he got hit,” Chrys said.

Sylver briefly looked down and gave up on his initial point.

“Cards on the table… I don’t want your death weighing on my conscience. Despite how I may appear, despite how it may seem sometimes, I am a very emotional person. We’ve only known each other for a few weeks, and you were unconscious for the majority of the time, but I don’t want a person under my protection being in a position where they could get hurt,” Sylver explained and made sure Chrys was looking him in the eye as he said it.

“I want to help you,” Chrys said, with a slight tremor in her voice.

“You can help me by staying here. Figure out how your eye works, and when I return, tell me where someone else from the Ibis is. Help Lola handle the war with the Krists. Help her track down the Council. Once we have their Eldar tree under our control, it’ll make…”

Sylver’s voice trailed off as his eyes went blank, and he stopped looking at Chrys and instead stared through her.

“Oh fuck,” Sylver said with a self-satisfied purr in his voice, as Ria made a sound.

Sylver lowered his head again, as he returned his focus to Chrys.

“Sorry about that… Are you afraid of me leaving you here?” Sylver asked as he had another realization.

“Yes,” Chrys answered, and Sylver could do little other than sigh.

“It’s Lola, isn’t it? She doesn’t look at you like you’re a person, and you’re worried that means she doesn’t care about you,” Sylver asked, as he remembered the cold and detached way with which Lola had conducted herself when they first arrived in Eira. In her defense time was of the essence, but you can only ever have 1 first impression.

“Listen… Lola is a high-elf. A real high-elf. One that could outlive everyone and everything, and she’s well aware of that… They don’t consider other races to be… important. To them, humans are like mice or goldfish. Dwarves are like cats, and other elves are just barely above dogs, or something along those lines.

“They don’t hold contempt for other races, but they never really bond with them. I’m immortal. More than that, I’m older than her. Her people place a lot of value on a person’s age. To the point a mentally decrepit high-elf has more value to them than a perfectly healthy high-elf, that’s 10 years younger than the other one. I wish I was joking,” Sylver said and could tell by the way Chrys was cocking her head she couldn’t see where he was going with this.

“She will warm up to you, I promise. Initially, it will be because you’re someone under my protection, but eventually, she’ll forget that, and simply care for you… If you want to help me, help Lola so she isn’t drinking herself to an early grave while I’m gone. Faust too, if you have the time,” Sylver offered, and could literally feel as he struck a chord inside Chrys.

“Alright… I can do that,” Chrys said, as Sylver felt relief flood through him, and a second later realized the feeling was coming from Ria. Seems like she also didn’t want Chrys to go with him.

Sylver stood up from his crouch and waited for the unsettled fluids inside of him to settle down.

“Where are you going now?” Chrys asked, as Sylver slowly leaned left and right to help the fluids settle.

“I’m going to have another chat with Zelvash. And if they’re willing to give me a tiny piece of their Eldar sapling, I’m going to make Lola a marker to track down the Council’s Eldar tree,” Sylver explained, as he lowered his hand towards Chrys.

“Oh… Is that why you said fuck?” Chrys asked, and Sylver felt Ria flinch while sitting on Chrys’ shoulder.

“Don’t swear. But yes. The spell I use to track via blood is very flexible… I never tried to use it on Eldar trees, but I can’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t work in theory,” Sylver explained, as the plates and cups on the dinner table, all mysteriously vanished as several white blurs whizzed around it.

They walked all the way to the front door before Sylver got another idea.

“It’s probably going to take me a while to convince Zelvash to let me touch their Eldar sapling. Why don’t you go tell Lola about the tracker I’m going to make, and I’ll go talk to Zelvash? Sound fair?” Sylver offered.

“I would be delighted,” Chrys answered.

Sylver waited for Ging to get Romeo to come over, and Chrys left with the lycanthrope. Sylver went to try and convince Zelvash to part with one of the 12 Eldar saplings they had stolen from the Garden’s Eldar tree.

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