“You were right, it’s a pentagonal pyramid. Each side on the ground is half a mile long, and I couldn’t tell how high the tip is, but it’s higher than 2 miles. Do you know what this is?” Ria asked, as Sylver felt around the ground with his mana, and started walking alongside the invisible barrier.

“It’s a witch coven. Were you able to see what was inside? Any people?” Sylver asked as Ria made a faint clicking noise before responding.

“I managed to stitch some of the moving image fragments together, I think I saw people, but they were all blurry. I counted 10 buildings, I think, it’s very hard to tell,” Ria explained, as Sylver continued walking alongside the invisible barrier, held together by the pebbles embedded into the ground.

“That would be due to spatial magic. The word “witch” has two meanings, the first is a female wizard, just a person who uses a wand. This is the second type, the one that is a sorcerer, they make deals with demons, fae, or some sort of spirit, and in exchange get to use very fancy magic us mere mages are incapable of,” Sylver tapped out, as he ever so gently reached out with his hand towards the barrier but was careful not to actually touch it.

“So now what?” Ria asked with a significantly more relaxed tone of voice.

She thankfully understood that if Sylver wasn’t panicking, then there was no reason to panic. And Sylver wasn’t panicking, because his gut had decided there was no real reason to panic.

“I’m going to try talking to them, and we’ll go from there,” Sylver answered, and continued silently walking alongside the line of pebbles in the ground.

He walked until he found a spot where the mana felt extra dense, and since Ria couldn’t clearly see inside, he could do little but hope that he was standing at the entrance.

“Hello! I am Sylver Sezari! I am a [Necromancer]! I would like to apologize if I was hunting near a hallowed ground or something along those lines! I am not from around here!” Sylver shouted at the completely lifeless forest in front of him.

He could feel the barrier, but as with most witch magic, it was messing with every sense that he possessed, so he couldn’t even say for certain he wasn’t shouting at the back of a storehouse.

“I mean you no harm! I just want to talk!” Sylver shouted and waited for a minute to see if someone would respond.

“I possess several extremely rare herbs and spell components from a very distant land, and I am more than willing to trade!” Sylver shouted.

He knew they were in there; he knew he wasn’t a lunatic that was shouting at nothing in the middle of the night, and yet that’s what it felt like he was doing.

Sylver’s experience with witches wasn’t great.

After he got it into his head that he had some sort of bloodline magic that was based on witchcraft, he went out of his way to reach out to several ancient and powerful covens.

Although 11 out of 14 of them tried to kill him, and 8 succeeded at least once, the 3 that were interested in talking to him taught him quite a lot.

Admittedly they taught him the same thing the ones that killed him taught him, and that was to keep his distance from those that used magic they didn’t understand. Witches weren’t stupid, that would have been one thing, they were extremely clever and crafty, and after a couple of purges, the ones that survived were very dangerous.

But they didn’t know what they were doing, they put their trust into whatever creature offered them magic, and worked their way up from there. Sometimes it ended in a plague, sometimes in several towns disappearing without a clue, sometimes they had an orgy and infected one another with poisonous fluids, and sometimes they lived happily ever after.

A coven big enough to erect such a barrier was at the very least 20 generations old, very likely more. As with most magic users, witches benefited from a form of immortality.

In the majority of cases that Sylver had studied, their ancestors remained as spirits, to aid and guide their daughters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, up until the coven was discovered and their sacred burial grounds were destroyed.

They weren’t quite liches in that regard, but Sylver would be lying if his final lich ritual didn’t have elements of witchcraft.

“I’m going to leave now! And I’ll steer clear from this area from now on! If I accidentally stumble into your territory again, talk to me, let me know!” Sylver shouted and tried to figure out if his next words were a smart thing to say to a group of witches when he had no idea what kind of witches they were.

If they were the unreasonable type, they would likely come after him for knowing where they live. If they were the reasonable type, they would understand that Sylver was simply saying this in the event they weren’t reasonable.

“If you leave me alone, I will leave you alone! If you don’t, I will tell everyone who will listen where you are, and I will personally provide them with enough lead-lined shields and swords to kill you 10 times over!” Sylver shouted, and even though his face remained relaxed and neutral, he prepared himself for an onslaught of hexes and curses.

He stayed completely still for another minute, as he waited for someone to come out to talk to him, attack him, or possibly ask him who he thinks he is.

When nothing happened, he turned his back towards the barrier and started to walk away.

“That’s it? You’re just going to threaten them and leave?” Ria asked, and Sylver was mildly amused by the fact that she couldn’t seem to decide if she was surprised, frightened, confused, or worried.

“I didn’t threaten them, I simply informed them of my intentions… Alright, I did threaten them, but when dealing with a group of an unknown level of strength, you’re better off puffing out your chest and making yourself bigger than you actually are,” Sylver explained, as he continued walking, but his [Lesser Perception] was laser-focused on the barrier, and coven, behind him.

“What if they perceive you to be a big enough threat that they have no choice but to attack you?” Ria asked as Sylver pulled the shade archers he had scattered around the treetops back into his shadow.

“Then they will attack me. It’s a gamble Ria, most things are. But if you come up to them and meekly ask “please don’t hurt me,” best case scenario they take pity on you, and leave you alone,” Sylver said.

“Alright.”

“You have to think of it like this… Most people, and by extension groups, do things that help them and avoid things that harm them. If there’s more harm fighting me than help, then they won’t fight me. If they think I’m weak, there’s no harm in fighting me, they might decide I’m worth the experience, or the blood, or what have you,” Sylver explained, as Ria took note.

“So you have to make yourself look big enough that there’s more harm fighting you, than whatever help your death, or imprisonment, might provide them. But what was the point of apologizing? I don’t believe that made you appear strong in their eyes,” Ria asked.

“In my personal experience, it’s mostly the weak people pretending to be strong that are rude. Aside from the insane ones, most high-level mages, cultivators, witches, and what have you, are very polite and reasonable… Or they’re idiots, but idiots very very rarely live long enough to be considered strong,” Sylver said, as he was now far enough away from the barrier that he felt comfortable using [Fog Form].

“But that Head Of Commerce person from the Green Rabbit sect was rude to you? He was strong, so how does that work?” Ria asked, and Sylver was once again reminded she wasn’t native to this realm.

“These people live in a literal protective bubble… Do you remember when we spoke about governments having a “monopoly on violence?” And how, because of magic, Ki, and various other methods of attaining strength, it’s impossible for any one person, or organization, to have a monopoly on violence in Eira?” Sylver asked as Ria made a clicking noise for a second or two.

“Yes. You’ve mentioned it a couple of times,” Ria answered.

“This is going to sound a little odd, but because of the strength disparity between different people, everyone can be considered their own organization. So I’m not just some guy telling them to leave me alone, I am a potentially equally powerful organization, telling them to leave me alone…

“Countries, think of countries, interacting with one another. They have to be polite beyond measure because any kind of war is unthinkably detrimental to them,” Sylver explained and could feel that he only further confused Ria.

“But you’re rude to people all the time?” Ria asked, and Spring prepared himself to back her up, in the event Sylver tried to deny it.

“I’m not… I don’t… I’m not perfect Ria. There have been plenty of times where I should have shut my mouth and acted meek and submissive, but you have to keep a couple of things in mind. The first is that I am too old to deal with most people’s nonsense. The second is that I am admittedly not always as calm and reasonable as I advise other people to be,” Sylver said.

“Do as I say, not as I do,” Ria quoted.

“Exactly! But most importantly, even if I’m “weak” I’m still strong enough to put the vast majority of people that I meet into the ground. I’m only rude when people are wasting my time, aren’t being respectful, or they were rude to me first,” Sylver explained.

“So, in conclusion, be polite and respectful, until the other person isn’t polite or respectful?” Ria summarized.

“Yes. You can always be rude later, but it’s difficult to be polite after you’ve told them to go fuck themselves… Look, I know what I’m doing. They attacked me first, if anything I should have been ruder towards them,” Sylver said, as the two shade wolves carrying the soul armored corpses appeared out of the surrounding trees and ran behind Sylver.

Sylver started with the rat and decided its skull would be big enough for the spell framework.

“Are you certain they won’t come after you? You gave them your name,” Ria asked, as Sylver carefully decapitated the rat, and used [Dead Dominion] to separate the skull from the brain and fleshy parts.

“It’s a gamble. But more importantly, and if you learn only one thing from me, it should be this. Don’t take shit from anyone. Admittedly, sometimes you’ll have to take shit from people to get what you want, but once you’re strong enough, it becomes a choice, and not a requirement,” Sylver explained, as the small skull in his hand started to smoke from the framework being burned into it.

***

Sylver felt a sharp pain in his armpit, as he finished working on the snake’s skull. He had initially tried carving the framework onto its skin, but Sylver fucked it up, and had to try his luck with the skull.

By the time he was done, he had a rat’s skull, a snake’s skull, a bat’s skull, a dog’s tooth, and a bear’s claw. Sylver was almost excited to have so many pre-stretched souls to experiment on but carrying 3 skulls around somewhat dulled his excitement.

There was a reason Sylver didn’t use a spine as a belt, didn’t have skull shoulder pads, avoided anything that looked bone-like, aside from the one ring, and went out of his way to keep his minions as “alive” and presentable as possible.

One of Sylver’s zombie guards had been so lifelike, that Sylver had several men approach him asking to marry her. Admittedly, Sylver couldn’t blame them, he wasn’t fond of zombies, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do everything he could to make the best zombie imaginable when he needed one.

Nyx never cared that much, the only good thing about Humpty and Dumpty was their absurd strength and the fact that they didn’t smell.

Sylver’s small group of guards on the other hand always wore the most fashionable clothes Sylver’s shades could procure, had all of their teeth, were indistinguishable from the living at first glance, and Sylver went out of his way to hide the stitches and spell framework.

Because for every single proper necromancer, the kind Sylver respected, and enjoyed spending time with, there were over 100 crazed corpse fuckers, humping the dead back to unlife, and walking around smelling of shit and decay.

Vampires had a similar issue. People very rarely remembered the polite pale doctor who visited the town and provided them with a cure for a disease. They instead tended to write century-spanning stories about the feral gore-loving neck sucker that killed 2 sheep and tried to rape a farmer’s daughter, before the aforementioned farmer killed him with a rusty pitchfork.

So carrying around 3 skulls, along with a tooth and a claw, didn’t sit right with Sylver. The claw was almost alright, but the tooth was as bad as the skulls.

No one would see them, they would be well hidden within his body, but Sylver knew they were there.

[??? (???) Defeated!]

[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 50!

+5AP

[1 perk available for [Swamp Lord]]

“They’re so weak!” Spring complained, or rather, continued complaining, since he hadn’t really stopped.

After Sylver had scouted out the river and found nothing of significance, he drew a mental circle around the witch coven, and then expanded it by several kilometers, just in case. The spot he ended up “hunting” at had significantly fewer, and weaker, monsters than those near the witch coven.

“Still better than dealing with witches,” Sylver repeated, as he looked through his choice of perks.

Just as Spring was about to begin complaining again, they both turned their heads towards the incoming shade.

Sylver’s hearts stopped beating as he waited to see which one it was, the one that meant someone had finally asked for him, or the one that meant that Faust was in deep shit and needed Sylver’s urgent help.

Thankfully, it was the one that meant that the Bucklers have likely decided he could be trusted, and Sylver was only a few short steps away from finding the shield ancestor girl.

With a small mountain of floating boxes, overfilled with body parts, Sylver crawled out of his thorn-covered hiding hole, and with a bright smile on his face, made his way home.