Sylver took another sip from his cup and then finished it. He waited for alcohol to spread out through his body, and leaned back in his [Deadly Darkness] seat. Bruno had a serene look on his face, while Faust looked like he wasn’t that far away from crying.

“I apologize for my choice of words… And for raising my voice… And for using those particular slurs. But in my defense, I did ask you never to bring that up. What was I saying?” Sylver asked calmly, as he put his cup down and kicked his feet up and was now floating on top of his own solidified shadow.

“That real high-elves consensually exchange empty pages,” Bruno said gently.

Sylver leaned so far back that he was almost lying down at this point. And while it was slightly disrespectful to Bruno and Faust, he got the feeling they preferred it that he fully calmed down and didn’t have a rage-induced aneurysm.

“I should have fucking left a plague to kill them all… Anyway… With high-elves, there are two kinds. Those that are born, and those that are made. Lola was born as a high-elf, because her mother was a high-elf, and her father was a high-elf.

“But if she has a child with, let’s say a normal elf, the child will be born an elf… Although, since she doesn’t have an Eldar tree, she’s also just an elf…” Sylver confused himself as he tried to figure out where the line was drawn.

“How does this relate to us?” Faust asked, and Bruno knocked his knee against Faust’s to not interrupt.

“Right, yes. Think of an Eldar tree as something that can store empty pages. And here is the really really clever part. When a high-elf dies, their soul is pulled into the tree. Their pages are then erased, and the fresh clean pages are handed out to the high-elves that are still alive. But,” Sylver said, and slightly sat up in his lounge chair made out of solid shadow.

“But if they’re just using the pages of their dead, there’s a finite amount. So what they do, and I can’t express just how amazingly intricate the magic they use for this is, they “make” regular elves into high-elves. They share their power, their knowledge, their magical affinity, abilities, the elf in question even undergoes a metamorphosis,” Sylver explained.

“They make a new high-elf, and use the pages the high-elf had as an elf to increase the number of pages they share between themselves… I see what you mean, they really are liches…” Bruno said, and Sylver nodded along.

“But even though they can do that, usually enough of them die of natural causes that there isn’t one high-elf that’s significantly older than the others. It keeps their numbers relatively low. They either have 10 old high-elves, or 100 young high-elves, usually somewhere in between that. It balances out is what I’m saying,” Sylver explained.

“So we need to become high-elves and outlive the others?” Bruno asked.

“Assuming I’m right, all we need is an Eldar tree to bind your souls to. You don’t need to be part of their shared soul, you’ll just be attached to it,” Sylver clarified.

“After everything… is it really that simple?” Faust asked.

Sylver shrugged his shoulders.

“The spell isn’t simple. Finding an Eldar tree isn’t simple. Although, Lola is taking care of things on that front. And if that doesn’t work out, the dark elves have more than enough saplings for me to force-feed powerful souls, and grow each of you your own Eldar tree to attach to.

“You also can’t imagine just how unique the combination of skills that are required to do this are. Maybe Aether would be able to do this, but even for him this would be tough,” Sylver said.

Everyone turned towards the sound of someone knocking on one of the secret entrance doors.

“Is it dinner time already?” Sylver asked.

“You spent an hour making ever increasingly disturbing comparisons,” Bruno said.

Sylver felt the anger he had just barely managed to bottle up make a squeak as the cork moved half a centimeter. Thankfully he had released enough pressure that it stayed where it was.

“I did yes… Anyway, you two go upstairs, and call Ria down here if you don’t mind,” Sylver said, as he stood up from his shadow, and pulled up his status.

***

[Skill: Undead Mastery (VI) [S]]

Skill level can be increased by raising undead. (Repeat raising of the same undead will not increase skill level)

I - Turn a corpse into an undead.

II - All undead under your control have +35% to all stats.

III - Upon death all undead will return 40% of mana through [Dying Breath].

IV – Duplicated shades will have 45% of the original’s stats.

V – Cost of raising humanoid undead decreased by 50%.

VI- At the cost of reducing HP to 0, the creature that delivered the most recent attack will receive a defeat notification.

*Quality dependent on the corpse.

*Quality dependent on the soul.

For [Undead Mastery] the choice was obvious and was almost a little strange that Sylver didn’t get it much much earlier. The best thing about it wasn’t just that it applied to his shades, zombies, and any kind of undead he created, but that it applied to Sylver.

Now he wouldn’t need to worry about tricking people of a lower level than him when he wanted to play dead.

To test it Sylver had Bruno attack him with a dagger and then activated the effect. Sylver feared that [Calamitous Abomination] would render this ability, not just useless, but dangerous to use, was thankfully unwarranted.

All Bruno got was a [Defeated!] notification, with a bunch of question marks for Sylver’s race, and classes. All Bruno knew was that Sylver was level 139.

Sylver waited for the nod from Ria before he moved on to the next skill.

[Skill: Mutating Override (II) [F]]

Skill level can be raised by overriding primal energy field.

I – Mutate biological matter by overriding its primal energy field.

II – Decrease the MP cost by 5%.

III – Increase range by 10%.

*Quantity of MP required dependent on rate, volume, and complexity of primal energy field being overridden.

The “like a limb coming back to life” analogy had outstayed its welcome a long time ago, but Sylver couldn’t think of a better way of describing it. The effect was exactly as written, a 10% increase, and not a 0.01% more.

Still, it was a great boon, and comforting in a way that was hard to describe. Even if something managed to nullify Sylver’s [Lesser Perception], they would then need to nullify his primal energy sensing ability. He could still feel an invisible limitation holding him back, but Sylver chose to focus on the positives.

“Before we go upstairs, can we talk?” Ria said as Sylver gave his neatly tucked away vials and powder satchels one final look over before he enchanted the backpack closed.

“Always,” Sylver said towards Ria.

She had figured out how to make her staff float and had developed the habit of sitting on it as if it were a floating ledge, with her feet dangling towards the ground.

“I would like to apologize for… assuming the worst. It was unwarranted, and I’m sorry,” Ria explained, as Sylver tightened the strap on his bag, and used his fingernail to etch a simple framework onto the leather hood.

“I accept your apology… But while we are on the subject, from your point of view, it was very much warranted. You found your friend’s corpse being stored away in a necromancer’s workshop. It would have been stranger if you didn’t assume the worst,” Sylver said, as Ria kept her head down and seemed to be very interested in how her feet swung back and forth.

“Why did I get a soul and she didn’t…” Ria mumbled, just quietly enough that Sylver wasn’t certain if she directed the question at him, or to herself.

Sylver silently carried on enchanting his bag, and then started working on the package he needed Faust to carry.

“Could you bring her back to life? Give her a soul too?” Ria asked, and this time was loud enough that Sylver could tell she was asking him.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Sylver answered.

Ria floated closer to him.

“How does it work? What do I need to give her a soul? Can I do it with the sigils I have inside the staff?” Ria asked, and Sylver continued enchanting the package.

“I promise I’m not being vague for the fun of it, but yes, and no. You have a soul, you can do it, you don’t have a mana core, you can’t do it. You are “alive” by my definition because you possess a soul, but by the definition the majority of people in Eira use, you’re a golem. In their eyes, you’re not a person or a creature, you’re an item, an object. Like a clock or a windmill,” Sylver explained, as he tightened the wrapping around the bundle.

“Can you do it? Give her life, a soul?” Ria asked, and Sylver felt a chill form within his chest.

“You wouldn’t like the result. Binding a soul to a soulless creature is a very difficult and time-consuming task. And because I don’t want to lie to you, I don’t possess the right skillset for it. My focus is on the biological, for her you would need someone with golem-related skills.

“Even then, people capable of imbuing an item with genuine life are extremely rare. Lola’s mother could do it, but even if Lola knows how to, she would need another couple thousand years’ worth of training,” Sylver explained, as he moved the box closer to him, and started shoving the wrapped up bundle inside of it.

“What would I need to do if I wanted to give her a soul? You said I have a soul; I can do it. I have mana, I can-”

“It’s not your mana. You’re like a wizard that uses a wand, the wood, and the mana crystal inside is what is interacting with mana to cast a spell. To breathe life into something, you need to want it so much that the world itself will get sucked into your desire and will help you. I’m not saying no, I’m saying that as far as I’m aware, you can’t,” Sylver interrupted, as he shoved the closed box into Faust’s bag, and placed his bag next to it.

“If I could do it, what would I need to do?” Ria repeated.

Sylver double-checked everything one last time while he thought the question over.

“Stay near her. Try to saturate her with as much mana as possible. Focus on who she is to you. It’s a long shot, and as far as I’m concerned, impossible, but… hundreds of impossible things happen every single day. What’s one more?” Sylver asked, as Ria wrapped herself back around the staff, and floated out of the way to allow Sylver to pass.

Sylver brushed his hair backward and pressed it down with some steam to make it presentable. He burned away the stubble growing on his chin, and checked that he wasn’t missing any teeth. Lastly, he reached into his pocket and looked at the two hollow half-spheres floating around in a mixture of acid and Sylver’s blood.

Since he didn’t need his eyes to see, there wasn’t anything stopping him from wearing colored contact lenses. He would have to experiment with how much he would be allowed to attach them to his eyeballs before they started to turn black, but that was for later.

Right now, he had a dinner party to host, and then he and Faust would be on their way to rescue Edmund.