Sylver Seeker

Sylver double, triple, and quadruple checked his work.

He wasn’t doing this to buy time, he decided to open the box, and that was that.

It was more to do with the fact that undoing a 4th-tier seal, with barely enough mana to be considered 2nd-tier, was fucking hard.

And yes, while there was a fair amount of overlap between undoing a 10th tier seal, and a 4th tier seal, there was still more guesswork involved than Sylver would have liked.

10th tier seals were arguably easier to remove, than 9th, 8th, and so on.

A magical seal, regardless of tier, is simply a combination of several magically retardant components. The purpose of those is to slow down the magic a mage would use when trying to break the seal open and increase the amount of mana required.

In some cases, the mana requirement could be increased to such a high degree that the seal can be considered to be “unbreakable.”

Right now, if Sylver tried to use brute force with his current mana regeneration, it would take approximately 9 years of continuously pouring mana into the thing, until it eventually opened up.

Alternatively, he could take the time to figure out the combination of mana retardants the seal was made out of so that he could make a mixture of components that would neutralize them. But that wasn’t an option right now.

The components weren’t the type you could buy in the local alchemist’s store. Not to mention the fact that Sylver wasn’t familiar enough with the materials a 4th-tier seal would use, and he was worried he would accidentally strengthen it instead.

A 10th-tier seal was easy in that sense because Sylver was intimately familiar with all 3 possible magical retardants that it could be made out of.

But on the bright side, more often than not, seals were built with mages that used positive mana in mind. Which meant that mages that primarily used negative mana could, theoretically, ignore the retardants, and remove the seal as if it wasn’t made out of the positive mana equivalent of lead.

Sylver checked his calculations a fifth time, as he opened and closed his hand, and gradually saturated his finger bones with mana.

He focused on the box he was sitting in front of and moved the small stack of calculations out of the way, as he very carefully placed a single page on top of the seal. The drawing on the page was a rough copy of the seal, with 5 small holes in the paper.

Sylver didn’t even need to say anything, as Ria placed her golden hand on top of the page and touched the seal using the holes in the paper as a guide.

“When you feel it vibrate, start turning it counterclockwise. It will be very hard to turn it at first, but the moment you stop feeling resistance, turn it clockwise, as hard and as fast as you can,” Sylver explained, as Ria quietly nodded at him.

“What should I do?” Faust asked as Sylver took a moment to look up at the one-armed cultivator.

“Just stand there and look impressed,” Sylver said, as Faust chuckled.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how amazing is this?” Faust asked.

Sylver thought the question over for a second.

“8-ish? For reference, the thing I did for you and Bruno is about a 5. I’m manipulating raw negative mana, with the kind of precision that every reputable mage would say is impossible,” Sylver explained, as Faust raised an eyebrow at him.

“So, in your eyes, removing a magical seal is almost twice as impressive as creating two bodies?” Faust asked as Sylver nodded at him.

“This is impressive in a different way. That was impressive because of how clever it was, this is impressive for how much practice a person would need to do it,” Sylver explained, as Faust shrugged his shoulders, and gestured for Sylver to continue.

“What happens if you mess it up?” Ria asked quietly.

“4th tier seal, 11 centimeters in diameter, multiplied by the half centimeter thickness… Depends on how badly I mess up. Worst case scenario, it will react with the mana inside my body, and I’ll be cannibalized by my own magic,” Sylver explained, as he placed his hands on either side of the seal and cupped them around it.

Ria chose to keep her follow-up questions to herself, as the waxy seal started to vibrate so hard that it made the leather-bound box it was keeping closed shake hard enough that Faust had to lean down to hold it in place. Not a great start.

There wasn’t anything fancy, no dazzling lights, no showers of sparks, not even a lightning bolt, just a very uncomfortably intense buzzing sound.

For an entire minute, no one moved, breathed, or so much as blinked.

As the buzzing suddenly stopped, Ria turned the seal clockwise, and yelped quietly when it turned into a liquid, and almost instantly evaporated. The blank fabric wrapped around the box did the same.

Like a water balloon that burst, a light pink liquid leaked out of the box and was quickly followed by a pale hand. Sylver grabbed the hand, while Faust tried to get a grip on the box’s lid to open it, but everywhere he touched it, it just disintegrated in his hands, as if it was made out of sand.

Sylver’s robe helped him get a better grip on the slimy hand he was holding, and he was very careful as he continued pulling at it, and inch by inch, pulled a small woman out of the black leather-like box, that was crumbling to pieces with every passing second.

Sylver just barely caught a glimpse of the birthmark on the girl’s shoulder blade, because he couldn’t take his eyes off the thing she was clutching with her other hand.

She was holding a small red ball, about as big as an apple. Inside there was a small ship, that was spinning in a lazy circle.

Sylver was pulled out of his trance, as the nude girl he was sliding along the slippery floor started to cough and belched out a stomach full of the same liquid she had been swimming in.

Sylver released her wrist, as she continued to cough, and further added to the mess on the floor. Both Sylver and Faust just stared at her, as she arched her back like a cat, and vomited out the last bit of gelatinous fluid.

“Where am I?” the girl asked with a strangely familiar accent.

There wasn’t any panic in her voice, her question almost sounded casual.

No one got a chance to answer her, as she seemed to lose all strength, and her body went limp.

The only thing left from the box was a pile of smoldering black and grey sand, that was dissolving in the very liquid it had previously contained. Sylver didn’t even think about it as he walked around the unconscious girl’s body and picked up the small sphere she had been clutching.

As he pulled it out of her hand, the boat inside the sphere stopped turning in a lazy circle, and now pointed at her. Faust placed a towel on top of her to cover her up, as Sylver continued staring at the small red sphere.

“She’s breathing,” Faust said, with a gesture towards the ripples on the wet floor she made as she breathed out through her nose.

Sylver pocketed the small red sphere, as he tried to focus on the girl, and discovered something very unpleasant.

He couldn’t see her.

He could see her with his eyes, but to his mana sense, and his [Lesser Perception], she didn’t exist.

Faust tucked the towel underneath her, as he lifted her from the wet floor. Her long blond hair was glued to her scalp in a wet clump, her face was littered with freckles, but what stood out the most was the odd strength in her limbs.

There weren’t any muscles of which to speak off, but her hands and feet swung with a heft that shouldn’t be there.

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