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Ch226-Comes Around

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Sylver only had one chance.

At least, that was what his gut told him.

Aurick, formerly known as Nameless, was 2 and a half steps away from Sylver.

And luckily for Sylver, the boy was just that, a boy.

He was inexperienced.

Everything in Sylver’s body language conveyed that he was reaching for a handshake. From his warm and polite smile to the angle of his shoulders, to the way he turned his hip, all Sylver wanted was to shake the boy’s hand.

The trick to this specific move was eye contact, inexperience, and trust.

And a fair bit of luck.

But mostly the first 3 things.

It would have been better if Sylver hadn’t shoved the door open, but he couldn’t change the past, and if Aurick’s confused but unafraid face was anything to go by, he still didn’t see Sylver as an enemy. The small child cradled in Sylver’s arm might have helped with that perception.

Even as Sylver’s hand just missed Aurick’s, the boy didn’t notice, and simply moved his hand upwards to catch Sylver’s.

Sylver maintained eye contact, as his hand finished being raised, and it was only when he felt the subtle warmth of Aurick’s neck, did he finally allow his eyes to leave Aurick’s.

It was a simple move, as far as moves go.

While pretending to reach for a handshake, reach higher, and grab the person by their exposed throat. Aurick was dressed in a white shirt that was far too large for him, like a child wearing his father’s clothing. There wasn’t anything to stop Sylver’s hand from making direct contact with his throat.

As Sylver’s hand began to close, Aurick’s eyes widened in shock, as did Sylver’s.

In Aurick’s case, it was because he realized that Sylver was about to grab his neck, whereas Sylver was shocked because he couldn’t grab Aurick’s neck.

It was as if there was a repelling force, countering every joule of force Sylver attempted to exert on the boy’s neck.

They just stood there for a few seconds, staring at one another in utter disbelief.

By the time Aurick snapped out of it, Sylver was moments away from snapping the tendons in his fingers from trying to crush the boy’s neck.

But despite his immense toughness, when Aurick reached up to pull Sylver’s hand away, Sylver barely felt it. Between the strength his body naturally possessed, aided by Sylver constantly saturating his flesh with mana, Aurick’s attempt to move Sylver’s hand away felt as if it was being done by a small child.

Just as Ria’s tendril reached the book, Sylver’s eyes widened once again as it dawned on him what was going on.

Aurick turned away from Sylver and saw that the previously open, and floating, book was now being forced closed, and Ria was trying to pull it towards Sylver. Aurick had turned because the book was making a faint, but unmistakable, whooshing noise.

As if a distant whistling gale was subsiding.

A sound came out of Aurick’s mouth, but it wasn’t a word, it was more like someone trying to fit a whole sentence into a single syllable. The boy turned around unimpeded as if a gauntlet-wearing hand wasn’t trying to strangle him.

Uncertain as to how to deal with this specific issue, which was now reaching for Ria’s tendril to presumably pull it away from the book, Sylver turned his body sideways, and with all the force he could muster, threw Aurick into the air, away from the wooden shack.

It’s hard to describe how it felt to throw a person who was moving around, while at the same time being harder than anything Sylver had ever touched. Aurick didn’t scream, he only had enough time to gasp, as he saw Sylver’s form becoming increasingly distant with every passing second.

While Ria worked on closing the whistling book, Sylver ran over to the three unconscious bodies on the floor and summoned his ax into his hand.

Mid swing Sylver realized he was about to make a 2-year-old child witness something children shouldn’t see.

Sylver just barely managed to turn his body, so the boy didn’t see what happened when a razor-sharp ax, handled by an experienced necromancer, reached its destination.

Sylver had hacked open enough human skulls that he knew the sound by heart, and the sound his ax made wasn’t the sound of Owl’s head being split open.

It sounded eerily similar to the sound a man’s bones made when he caught an ax’s blade with his bare hands.

Hand, in this case, singular.

Sylver looked down and saw 3 pairs of unnaturally red eyes staring up at him, and then saw that Lion’s hand had blocked the ax from splitting Owl’s face down the middle. Sylver dared a glance towards Ria, who was gradually pulling her liquid gold away from Sylver, towards the floating book.

“Take however much you need, just close it!” Sylver shouted at the slightly frightened metal golem.

Sylver’s shouting caused a chain reaction, as the boy in his left hand started to scream, then Lion, Owl, and Hound started to scream, and as Ria removed her Ki negating threads from Sylver’s legs, he started to scream.

There isn’t a way to describe the “pain” undead feel when someone attacks them with holy magic or holy Ki in this case.

Even saying “it’s the worst pain imaginable, multiplied by 100,” doesn’t quite describe it. Holy magic doesn’t attack the soul, at least not in a way that would fall into the realm of “soul magic,” but what holy magic does is attempt to force the dead creature’s dead soul into a living state.

Describing the resulting feeling as “pain,” is the equivalent of comparing a campfire to an erupting volcano.

Granted, pain is subjective, and what is debilitating to some, is but a flesh wound to another, but as a rule of thumb, if you ever want to make an undead creature back the fuck off, blasting it with holy magic works 99.99% of the time.

Thankfully, Sylver had been around for a while, and during his lengthy time in this realm, he had had the displeasure of being captured by various churches, temples, cults, and other holy magic wielding groups.

To make a series of extremely long and gruesome stories short, Sylver’s pain tolerance, when it came to holy energy, was much higher than the average undead’s.

Was he screaming so hard his throat was bleeding? Yes.

Would he have pissed himself if he still had a bladder? Probably yes.

But regardless of everything else, he remained upright and standing.

Sylver didn’t hear the sound the book made as Ria completely engulfed it, he didn’t even hear the sound his ax made as Lion’s hand went limp, and even when Ria returned to him, and covered up his legs, it took Sylver a couple of seconds to compose himself.

With tears flowing freely, and a disgusting amount of bloodied vomit soaking into the front of Sylver’s robe, he used the doorframe to maintain his balance, and then proceeded to stagger towards the edge of the barrier. If he collapsed here, he wasn’t sure if Ria would be able to drag him out.

Relative to Sylver’s current position, the “entrance” was quite literally on the opposite side of the circular bubble-shaped Ki barrier he was in.

Sylver’s understanding of Ki barriers wasn’t perfect, he knew if you hit them hard enough they shattered, but he hadn’t been interested in the specifics.

Did he regret not learning more about them?

No.

Because in the past, the rare time he had to get through a Ki barrier, he had more than enough firepower to brute force his way inside.

Did he regret it now?

Also no.

The best way to describe what Ria did, is to imagine an electrified fence. Ria acted like an insulted pair of gloves, Sylver simply pulled the charged wires apart, stepped through the gap he created, without touching either wire and then allowed the wire to snap back into place once he was on the other side.

The only issue was that the 2-year-old terrified child in Sylver’s hand protested being covered in liquid gold metal, but he was a child, even Ria was strong enough to stop him from struggling for the 2 seconds Sylver needed to jump through the barrier.

Once he was on the other side, Spring materialized next to Sylver and took the screaming kid out of his hands, as Sylver collapsed to the floor.

“Get back to the sect, tell Michael everyone is to guard you with their life and stay close to Mora until I come back!” Sylver ordered as Ria tried to get a word in, but before she could say anything, Sylver vomited an obscene amount of purple-colored blood onto the stone floor.

“Now!” Sylver shouted as the gelatinous ooze on the floor flicked with light for a moment.

Sylver turned onto his side and watched as Spring rode away on Ulvic, with a crying 2-year-old in one hand, and a balloon-shaped staff in the other.

Once they were out of sight, Sylver laid on his back, and with purple tinged froth leaking out of the corners of his mouth, stopped moving.