Sylver Seeker

As far as makeshift explosives went, this was pretty good.

Edmund didn’t think so, but thankfully Sylver hadn’t made this to please Edmund, he made it to tear whoever tried to enter this bunker into tiny chunks.

When Edmund made a “bomb,” it’s more accurate to describe it as a delayed disintegration spell. Physical matter acts funny when it “burns” at the temperatures Edmund is capable of reaching, to the point describing anything he “burns” as “burning” is wildly inaccurate.

Sylver could see it in the way Edmund was trying to decide whether changing the positions of the pickaxe heads would do anything.

Edmund used his magic to move the explosion Sylver’s infinite bombs caused, into a small cube of carved iron. The cube was then placed into a box filled with nails, pickaxe heads, and whatever else Sylver found nearby that he thought would work well as shrapnel.

These explosives were then half haphazardly hidden throughout the bunker, Sylver couldn’t make them into a chain, but even if only 1 of them detonated, there was a pretty good chance the change in air pressure alone would set all the others off.

If the bunker was stronger than the combined force of the explosives, great whoever opened the door will be blasted by a highly compressed wave of air, filled with fast-moving metal fragments.

If the bunker is weaker than the combined force of the explosives, great, the whole thing will be torn apart, and whatever secrets it may have held will be lost among the copper rubble.

It did occur to Sylver that there might be something about Tuli hidden around here, but it wouldn’t change the fact that Sylver only had 1 way of healing her. Although given how quickly Tuli appeared to be healing, Sylver was hopeful that simply removing that rod from her spine will be enough.

Sylver did have the idea to coat the insides of the bunker with slow-acting poisonous mushrooms, but the problem with that is that Sylver had a hard time telling just how deadly a particular mushroom would be to a living person.

For this to work the infected person would need to live long enough to have contact with Nautis, but if it took Nautis a year to die, then there was no point in doing this. Sylver hadn’t had a chance to develop that aspect of his mushroom magic, he had wasted what little downtime he had trying to bend physical space using fucking fungus.

In short, an explosion was better.

It was direct, had a good chance of killing someone, and worked well as a message.

The message in this particular case was “Fuck You,” but it could also be interpreted as Sylver being more concerned with killing and destroying Nautis, as opposed to helping Tuli. The last part was a bit of a stretch, but it made more sense than that Sylver ruined a perfectly good bunker out of sheer spite.

Once all the explosives were primed, Sylver closed the hatch.

The sky was dark, not quite the dead of the night, but between the thick clouds blunting the feeble light of the moons, the surrounding forest gained a feeling of unease.

But, much to the woodland’s chagrin, the present company was unable to appreciate the eerie atmosphere.

Sylver could see in the dark as if it was the middle of the day, Edmund barely bothered to keep his eyes open, with how much information his mana sense provided him, Faust had a similar setup, albeit based on Ki, instead of mana, and Anna was incapable of experiencing fear.

There was a cold wind whistling as it brushed past the trees, hiding the presence of enemies, save for the fact that the darkness was practically infested by creatures of the night, more commonly referred to as shades.

“You mentioned lightning. What were the other attacks like?” Sylver asked, a bit louder than he intended.

One of the downsides of Sylver’s [Chloromancy] trait was that he had a keen awareness of the various plant life around him, including the plants being actively altered by whatever Fae was hiding inside them.

The alterations felt light, and more importantly, gentle, which meant it was likely that the Fae here weren’t one of the “wacky” ones.

The “wacky” Fae would have been giggling to themselves as they molded the tree trunks into phallic shapes, or made the leaves fall all at once, and kidnapped someone while the others were buried in an avalanche of green.

These Fae were “wacky,” instead of wacky because it was an act.

They only acted “wacky,” when they’re fucking with people, the second they sense a serious threat is approaching, their carefree attitude disappears, as if it was never there in the first place, and they move with the precision of a well-trained army unit.

It was a lesson Sylver learned the really hard way.

“What do you mean?” Faust asked.

“Did they attack you using physical projectiles, bolts of fire, ice shards, air blades, beams of light, or something else? We might be able to work out how many people we’re up against,” Sylver explained, as Faust stared off into space for a moment.

“Arrows and metal spheres about the size of an apple. The weird thing is, they weren’t moving that fast, certainly not fast enough that I couldn’t dodge them, and yet, every time I moved out of the way, I still somehow got hit,” Faust explained, as both Sylver and Edmund simultaneously slightly cocked their head to the side.

“After you got hit, was there any debris? Or did the arrows and spheres disappear after they hit you?” Sylver asked.

“Now that you’ve said it… No... I caught an arrow with my hand, but I got hit in the back of the head almost immediately, I didn’t drop it, but when I went to block the next attack, the arrow was gone,” Faust explained, as Sylver and Edmund shared a look. “How bad?” Faust asked.

“Not too bad,” Edmund answered with just a hint of worry in his voice.

Sylver on the other hand looked around, and then lightly tapped his foot against the rocky ground.

“Actually… This might even be a good thing,” Sylver said.

Edmund caught onto Sylver’s idea before he even finished thinking of it.

“Even with you storing the excess away in your bones, it’s still going to take a while. And we’ll have to fight them eventually anyway, why not take care of them now?” Edmund asked as Sylver rolled his eyes.

“Because one of us will have to stay close to Anna, to make sure she doesn’t get kidnapped, and even if we do kill them, Nautis will have time to reorganize his forces, or he’ll recruit people to replace them by the time we come back. Even if we win, we don’t really win, and even a minor loss on our side will eat up a ton of precious time,” Sylver explained.

“Given the distance, the density of rock at that depth, and the fact that you’ll have 3 people with you…” Edmund took a second to do the mental math, but his calculations were interrupted by Sylver.

“1 person. You’re going to take Anna with you. With your speed and altitude they’ll never catch you,” Sylver said, as Edmund lifted his head and looked up towards the cloudy sky.

“Even if they do, I’ll be capable of dealing with them,” Edmund said with a faint grin, that had a slightly sinister edge to it if you looked at it from the right angle.

“Going by context, Anna is going to be flown through the stratosphere, while Syl and I dig a tunnel?” Faust asked.

Anna initially looked as bored as she usually did, but that only made the small glint in her eyes even more obvious.

“You’re not claustrophobic, right?” Sylver asked.

“What if they have someone underground? Will you two be alright?” Anna asked.

Edmund chuckled at the question, as he liquefied his sword, so it had a more streamlined shape against his back. It now looked like an uncomfortably long shield.

“Syl is the absolute worst person to attack while he’s underground,” Edmund said with a proud smirk.

“We’ll be fine. They can’t use long-range attacks while we’re surrounded by rock so that only leaves close-quarter combat, which is both of our specialties,” Faust explained, while Edmund nodded along.

“I see,” was all that Anna said.

While Sylver worked on making a hole in the ground for Faust to fall through, Edmund tried to decide how best to carry Anna. Since he didn’t need to worry about her getting fried due to air friction, the only real problem was that Edmund needed at least 1 free arm to fly at a proper speed.

After a few seconds of consideration, Edmund decided the best way to carry the girl was by placing her over his shoulder, like a sack of potatoes. Neither of them were particularly pleased with this arrangement, but both of them weren’t the type to complain about something so minor.

“See you in a bit,” Edmund said, as he once again lifted his head to look up to the sky, and promptly disappeared.

Sylver and Faust watched as a trail of glittering yellow sparks appeared in the air, and became brighter and bigger, as the source of the sparks continued gaining altitude.

The sparks disappeared as Edmund passed through the clouds. Faust was about to turn away, but Sylver silently gestured with his hand for him to continue watching.

For a few seconds, nothing happened.

Sylver and Faust just stared at the dimly lit clouds and listened to the faint rustling of the surrounding trees.

The first thing they heard was a soft crackling sound, which was followed swiftly by a sound that could be described as slowed-down thunder. The clouds glowed with a bright yellow light, and a half second after it had appeared, the light began to move south, leaving a glowing trail behind it.

“Oh…” Sylver said.

“And you call cultivators flashy,” Faust said.

“At his full strength, he would be bright enough to turn night into day. We actually used it as a tactic once. There was an army marching through a desert, and since there weren’t any landmarks, they relied on figuring out their location using the suns and stars. Ed pretended to be a sun and made them veer off course. Took them almost 4 days to figure out what we were doing,” Sylver explained, as he went back to making a hole in the ground.

“I don’t know why, but I expected him to be a bit…” Faust searched around for a word, but couldn’t figure out how to phrase what he was trying to say.

“Intimidating?” Sylver guessed.

As if it was some sort of cold volcano, earth came out of the hole, and spread itself out around it, like a rocky anthill.

“Not intimidating, no… I don’t know, he seems so normal it’s throwing me off a little. Like he’s just a guy,” Faust explained.

“He is just a guy,” Sylver countered.

He gestured for Faust to jump down, as he reached the edge of the range of his [Advanced Earth Manipulation] perk.

Faust landed at the bottom of the hole, without making a sound, and Sylver materialized next to him a moment later. As the earth above moved to plug the deep hole, the two were plunged into darkness. Sylver made a sphere of light float above his head, out of habit, as opposed to any real need.

“The same way you’re just a guy,” Faust said.

“Everyone is “just a guy,” at their core. The people that claim to be more than that are off their rocker,” Sylver said.

“You know what I mean,” Faust said.

“I do. Ed and I wouldn’t be friends if he thought he was more than “just a guy.” I don’t get along with people who think they’re more than what they actually are. It’s why I can’t stand most [Hero]s, they think the fact that a god gave them a task means their desire to complete it is somehow more important than everyone else’s,” Sylver said, as he gestured at the wall covered in shattered rocks.

He touched the wall, and immediately a tunnel just barely tall and wide enough for Faust to walk through appeared. The trick here was to section off a piece of earth and compress it just enough for it not to touch the ceiling, floor, or sides of the tunnel. Once that was done, all Sylver had to do was touch the floating chunk of rocky earth, and absorb it into one of his [Bound Bones].

Sylver got past Faust using [Fog Form] and began working on the next section of the tunnel, while Faust walked towards the end.

There was no point digging down to bedrock, anyone capable of getting this deep, wouldn’t be hindered by an extra kilometer of stone.

Warriors are more or less useless in a fight that isn’t on land. They can fight underwater, with the right kit of enchanted items, but unless they are specifically trained for it, they won’t fight all that well.

When it comes to fighting in the air, in the sense of fighting against a flying opponent, they usually have 1 or 2 ways of dealing with them. Not to mention ranged weapons are a thing, bows, slingshots, spears, boomerangs, and so on.

Fighting underground is something only magic casters are capable of doing.

Even if they have the physical strength to shove rocks out of their way, moving underground is a nightmare, if you don’t have access to earth magic.

One of the main reasons Sylver tended to hide underground while his shades/zombie fought above, was there was a very small number of mages capable of digging this deep, and more importantly, Sylver had the advantage when he fought in enclosed environments.

Mages tended to use mid, to long-range attacks and were almost absurdly weak against someone hitting them point blank with magic, or in Sylver’s case, grabbing their necks with his bare hands.

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