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Ch169-Nice Guys Finish

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The fact that Sylver no longer had a human digestive system, aided him in more ways than one.

For starters, he no longer had any craving for food. Even water wasn’t strictly speaking necessary, as Sylver’s skin now absorbed enough moisture from the air to provide him with all the liquid his body could possibly need.

His body’s gradual change also greatly reduced the need for sleep. There was still a certain unavoidable amount, but now he could stay awake for weeks, as opposed to days. Months were still out of the question, that required altering his brain chemistry, or completely abandoning his flesh, neither of which Sylver was currently willing to do.

Other changes included his blood thickening to the consistency of honey. A change that would be fatal for a normal man, but in Sylver’s case, it simply made bleeding out exceptionally difficult.

To accommodate for the dense liquid pumping through Sylver’s veins, his lungs adapted and became significantly thinner, and formed a cyclical structure within themselves. Essentially, Sylver’s “lungs” now absorbed a very large quantity of air, condensed it into a tiny sphere, and then stored it away within a sealed-off section to process when convenient.

Hypothetically speaking, if he wanted to, Sylver could release all the stored away gas in an extremely fast, and explosive, burst. He’d done it a couple of times in the past, but the problem with using it, is that the range was extremely small, and 6 out of the 7 times he used it, knocked out his front teeth.

It also meant Sylver once again had to alter the muscles in his chest and abdomen, to move in a believable pattern to make it appear as if he was breathing.

Other improvements included joints that “suggested” the direction they should bend, but didn’t enforce their suggestions. Aside from fingers that now felt like they belonged to Sylver, it was also great to finally be able to look behind him, without having to turn his body around.

Sylver also regained the ability to see ultraviolet, and infrared light, and although it was limited, he could somewhat sense magnetic fields.

But probably the best part about regaining his old body, and old biology, was that Sylver no longer had any need to use the bathroom, ever. Whatever wasn’t absorbed by his impossibly efficient “stomach,” was condensed as much as Sylver’s current magical abilities allowed, and would systematically get vaporized.

In the past it was something he did once every couple of years, but now that Sylver was still surrounded by the living, that all needed food to survive, he was going to continue eating. To keep up appearances, for social reasons, and because he enjoyed the process of eating, and now wouldn’t need to worry about one of its drawbacks.

The other upside to no longer being bound by his biology was that Sylver had no shit with which to shit himself, as Poppy, Lily, and presumably, Rose stepped out of the wall and were now standing about a foot away from Sylver, and Chrys’ unconscious body.

Poppy was dressed in a dull pink robe, although the design wasn’t one Sylver had ever seen before. The belt around her stomach had been wrapped back and forth, and the bow directly behind her was big enough that Sylver could see it sticking out on either side of her body.

The robe went down to her feet and covered both of them completely. The only parts of her skin that were visible were her hands, and her neck and face.

In terms of age, Poppy appeared to be somewhere in her 20s, possibly early 30s. Given that all three of them looked human, Sylver didn’t see any problems with comparing them to human women.

Lily was dressed in a very pale white shirt and shorts, that were somehow simultaneously dark and light enough that it almost bordered on grey. Sylver wasn’t certain if it was due to her height, but she looked almost like a child, especially when she was standing next to Poppy and Rose, who were both at least 2 heads taller than she was, and were significantly more “womanly” than her.

Other than the lines on her face, Rose looked identical to Poppy, as if someone had taken a picture of her, and simply added a couple of features to make her look older. She wore a bright red jacket and trousers, both of which had thin wavy lines of white painted on them.

They also all had the exact same shade of blond. Lily’s hair was just barely down past her ears, Poppy’s was down to her shoulders, and Rose’s was tied into a neat braid that seemed to reach halfway down her back.

Sylver spoke before he had realized the thought had finished forming.

“You’re not sisters, you’re the same person,” Sylver said, and once he said it, the extremely weird connection between their souls was clear as day.

“Technically speaking, no,” Poppy said, with a grin that matched Lily’s.

Rose was also smiling, but it didn’t go anywhere near her eyes.

Poppy and Lily, on the other hand, looked like one of those giant fluffy dogs that just got handed a delicious bone, with small pieces of meat still stuck to it. Lily was even bouncing on her feet a little.

Wordlessly, Lily bounced her way over to Chrys, stopped only by Sylver’s large frame blocking her path.

“Without sounding disrespectful, she needs to touch her,” Poppy said, and Sylver looked up from the top of Lily’s head, who seemed to be looking through Sylver.

“She’s younger than I thought… They started experimenting on her when she was 2 years old, they replaced her left eye,” Lily said, and Sylver was surprised to hear a grown woman’s voice coming out of her mouth. It almost didn’t match her face and size.

Sylver stepped out of the way, and pressed himself against the wall, as he watched Lily place her hand onto Chrys’ right shoulder.

The following occurred within the span of 3 seconds.

But to Sylver’s dismay and regret, his eyes were sharp and fast enough that he saw everything in great detail.

It was like watching someone step onto a soft-boiled egg, except instead of a nice yellow yoke, Chrys’ fucking skull tore out the top of her head, and flew towards the wall. This happened because her head had begun to shrink, from the size of a melon, down to the size of a large orange.

For a split, mother fucker, of a second, Sylver’s god damn highly sensitive mana sense informed him of every rib, plastic blood vessel, pump, chip, metal graft, prosthetic, implant, liver, kidney, spine, tooth, tongue, tonsil, and wire, that exploded out of the tiny baby now laying where Chrys used to be.

By the time all the flying bits of blood and gore-covered technology reached their respective ceiling, wall, or floor, a completely unmarked Chrys lay on her table, with no scars, no gaping wounds, and not so much as a drop of blood on her.

The bits of metal and plastic collided with whatever it was they were flying towards, and a couple bounced off, but all of them eventually clattered to the floor.

Through some miracle, not a single bit of high-speed tech had hit Poppy, Rose, Lily, Sylver, or Chrys.

“I can’t do anything about birth defects, but there’s only 2 that are a real problem, and you have enough medical knowledge to correct them,” Lily explained, as Sylver remained glued to the spot, and was once again glad he no longer had a stomach to empty because even for him, this was disgusting.

Sylver searched around for an unlabeled jar within his head that contained all the memories of the various cults he had hunted down. Specifically, the “mutilations” they performed on their sacrificed victims.

Sylver referred to them as “mutilations,” because there wasn’t a word that properly described the sheer amount of “damage” done to the bodies. Even then, it wasn’t the resulting “damage” that disgusted Sylver, it was the “method” that the damage was done with, that revealed itself to Sylver when he performed the autopsy.

And then read the step-by-step instructions in one of their “holy books.”

Sylver took a very deep, and completely unnecessary, breath before he allowed the information attempting to flood his mind to enter.

He noticed right away that Chrys was breathing, that she had a rock steady heartbeat, that she was starting to open her eyes, and could even tell that she was flexing the muscles in her arms and abdomen, she was trying to sit up. Very gently, but also very quickly, Sylver placed his hand over her eyes and pushed her down until the back of her head reached the bundle of towels he had made into a pillow.

“Everything is fine, but please keep your eyes closed,” Sylver explained, as he felt Chrys double down on sitting up and used [Deadly Darkness] to stop her arms and legs from moving, as Sylver felt out her head, and found the sweet spot.

A spark of yellow jumped from the tip of Sylver’s pinkie finger and disappeared into Chrys’ cheek. Her body went limp as she went back to sleep.

“I know passing out wasn’t possible, but I expected a little more,” Lily said, as Sylver gave himself an extra handful of seconds to gather his thoughts and double-check that the lid on the jar was tightly shut.

“You moved her body back in time, before the first surgery, and then moved it forward… Her mind isn’t that of a newborn’s, so how-”

“With all due respect, it isn’t going to make any sense to you. For reasons we can’t explain, it also isn’t going to work on the hand fragment you have hidden inside your robe,” Poppy explained, as Sylver’s robe spread out along the floor, and gathered up the many many loose fragments of metallic bone, spine, teeth, an eye, what looked like segments of a small intestine, a split open metal mesh skull, and more bent needle looking devices than Sylver could count.

Anything that didn’t contain lead was absorbed into Sylver’s [Bound Bones] storage, and the remainder was very gently gathered into a wooden chest and placed in the corner of the room.

Sylver did all this, while Rose, Poppy, and Lily silently watched him.

“Alright. I will show you to a room where you can do this privately. Poppy, I’m guessing you’re setting up the gate?” Sylver asked calmly and gestured at Lily and Poppy in turn.

“Show me where you want it,” Poppy answered, equally calmly.

“The others aren’t going to be as… explosive… but tell them to bring a towel, just in case,” Lily said, with a grin that showed off her unnaturally white teeth.

“As for me, I’ll go destroy the book,” Sylver finished, as all three “sisters” nodded at him.

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Ruslana might have had a couple of questions, such as; who are these women?

Why are they here?

Why does everyone need a towel?

Why are your eyes shaking?

What do you mean to finish packing up? You said to leave everything behind?

What do you mean shut up and do as you ask?

Instead, she nodded, and quietly and quickly got to work.

By the time Sylver had finished gathering what he needed from their storeroom and was on his way to an isolated area to destroy the book, there was already a line outside the room Lily was in, organized by how much healing each individual would need.

Excluding children, because the dark elf adults refused to let themselves get healed until all the kids were better. In terms of mood, there was a mixture of quiet contemplation, uncontrollable sobbing, laughter, and celebratory screams of joy, as each previously half-dead crippled child, walked out of Lily’s room and ran to tell everyone how great he felt.

In times like these, Sylver wished he had been born with the ability to heal people.

Thankfully, he’s had some time to become accustomed to who and what he was, and he quickly stopped wishing for something impossible to change. Instead, Sylver chose to be happy that his people were happy.

And that, technically speaking, they were being healed because of Sylver. He indirectly healed them, by driving Rose into a corner and forcing her to ask her sisters for help.

The spot Sylver chose was the lowest floor this dome had, and the place with the highest concentration of dark energy. As Sylver crouched down onto the floor and started using [Deadly Darkness] to carve the necessary framework into it, Rose spoke up.

“I had planned to leave instructions, regarding how to use the eye, but they would be a hindrance, more than a help…” Rose said.

Sylver paused for a half minute, to consult the blueprint in his mind, and went back to carving the floor into an enormous hexagon.

“She’ll figure it out. With her talent reaching 10th tier is a matter of “when,” not “if.” And she’ll have access to the best clairvoyants Eira has to offer,” Sylver said, as he floated a small vial of some kind of blue dust and sprinkled it over one specific Q-shaped sigil.

He continued in silence until Rose broke it again.

“I was always envious… That you could just decide not to involve yourself with something, and then actually follow through,” Rose said.

“It’s a lot easier than it looks. The issue most people have with walking away from something is not knowing where they’re going. I know I don’t need to be a part of whatever it is that’s going on with you because my priority is Edmund. I don’t need to know about whatever Chronomancy you, or Poppy, or Lily, have at your disposal, because I know that messing with time never ends well,” Sylver explained, as Ria crawled up from the inside of his robe and perched herself on his shoulder.

“Poppy mentioned that my people were the ones who built the gun and loaded it. What did she mean by that?” Ria asked.

There was a pause, and silence, with only the sound of Sylver’s dagger scraping the metal floor. He very gently nodded his head, and Rose began to speak.

“Your people are the ones who discovered teleportation. It’s the reason they managed to remain hidden for so long. After a point, they decided that they had perfected it, and started attempting to extend their reach. Instead of traveling further, they decided it would be easier to travel deeper,” Rose explained, as Sylver nicked his thumb, and willed the gelatinous blood to ooze out, and spread inside a different sigil.

“There was an accident… I can’t tell you the details, but the result was that chunks from Earth ended up here. Amidst those chunks, were people, very very smart people, who now had access to magic. They lived together for a while, time passed, as it does, and they forgot where they came from, and why they were here,” Rose continued.

“Things are fuzzy for a long time, but the result is the world drowning, and being a lot closer to the sun than it used to be. Poppy believes that this is due to your people’s technology, that the world was teleported closer to the sun somehow. It would certainly explain the way the positive and negative energy ended up being distributed, but there are clues that contradict this theory,” Rose continued to explain, as Ria lightly swayed on Sylver’s shoulder, as he made a particularly deep cut in the metal, and poured blood into it.

Since Poppy was handling the gate, and Sylver saved mana, he might as well use a small portion of his hand to get rid of the book properly.

“They loved you. All of them Abel, Lambert, Mylese, Kolids, Markow, Jimedy, Tribian, you wouldn’t be you, if they didn’t love you with all of their hearts,” Rose said, and Sylver could feel Ria’s reaction by the way she fidgeted her footing on his shoulder, as well as the response in her soul.

“I know, he already said-”

“Yes, he did, but you see everything he says through a filter. Because you’re worried it’s all just sweet talk and empty promises. The person you’re currently sitting on is a great deal of things Ria. More than you can ever imagine. He was great enough that most of the world didn’t believe someone like him could exist. But he isn’t a liar,” Rose said, and Sylver himself almost scoffed at her words, but Ria’s quiet and sincere silence made him feel childish for it.

“He does lie… And he is very good at it… And he’s smart enough to handle juggling multiple lies at once,” Rose explained, and now Sylver couldn’t help but scoff.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Sylver said, as he pulled out the hand with only the middle finger remaining, and dipped the tip in the small puddle of blood.

“But he doesn’t lie to family. Not unless it's necessary. Even if it’s at a great cost to himself, he won’t lie to family,” Rose said, and Sylver knew exactly what she was referring to.

Sylver waved the suggestion away with the excuse that Ria is young, and wouldn’t understand, telling her about the time he purged an entire continent would bring no benefit to either of them, just discomfort.

Sylver stood up from his crouch and brushed himself off for a couple of seconds.

With a snap of his fingers, the framework carved into the floor started to glow with a pale golden light. The light rose, like glistening smoke, and kept going higher and higher, until it reached the ceiling, and burned an identical framework into it. The small lamps embedded in the walls began to flicker.

With another snap of the fingers, the light fumes turned dark. It was like someone had snuffed out a campfire, the air went from warm and inviting, to cold and frigid, the hand in Sylver’s hands wagged its single finger, like a dog wagging its tail, as the lights in the walls flickered one more time, and finally gave up and remained turned off.

With another snap of the fingers, the floating darkness disappeared into itself and left behind traces of something darker. More black smoke rose from the floor, and wrapped itself around the floating darkness, before the darkness spread, like blood seeping through a bandage.

Sylver spun his hand’s single finger in a tight circle, and as if yanked by an invisible net, the floating darkness gathered into a bird’s nest of a mess.

Like cotton candy spinning around a stick, the darkness spun and spun, getting thinner and thinner, tighter and tighter, with each and every passing second.

Finally, when there was only a toothpick thin noodle spinning around midair, Sylver brought his thumb and forefinger together, and the noodle became shorter and shorter, until only a marble, just barely bigger than a dried pea, remained.

Sylver felt Rose release a breath behind him and felt a similar reaction from Ria, which confused him as much as it worried him.

Sylver gestured at the dried-up pea, and like pasta getting stretched, it became thinner and thinner, as it became wider and wider. The end result was what looked like a piece of paper, that someone had managed to paint such a dark black, that it looked like someone had torn a hole in reality, in the shape of a rectangle.

Sylver took a step towards the rectangle and felt Ria shrivel away from it, to the point she almost crawled down his back.

“What’s wrong?” Sylver asked, and felt his skin crawl as Ria spoke with a fear in her voice that he’d never heard before.

“There’s nothing there,” Ria stated, with a thin tendril stretched out towards the floating dark rectangle.

“It’s just 6th tier abyss magic. Or rather, a low-tier variation of it. Imitation, to be frank, the real thing doesn’t just float around, at this distance the difference in gravity would have torn me to shreds already. You’re safe Ria, I wouldn’t do something that I thought would hurt you,” Sylver explained and took another step towards the admittedly ominous-looking floating sheet.

Ria remained glued to the back of his shoulder, and at this point wasn’t even peaking over it.

“Touch it with a small piece. It isn’t going to do anything to you. You’ll pass through it, only the book inside of you will disappear,” Sylver said, but his words appeared to be falling on deaf ears.

“Ria… What exactly are you afraid of?” Sylver questioned, and the silent way in which she scurried up onto his shoulder and stretched out a razor-thin tendril, hurt him in ways he couldn’t put into words.

He had scared her into doing something she didn’t want to.

The tendril stopped, just a half-centimeter away from the floating page, which had now stopped spinning and sat perfectly still in the air.

As if swatting a fly, Ria moved her tendril through the sheet, and absolutely nothing happened.

This success emboldened her, and she swung her tendril through it again, she made it thicker, and now moved it through the sheet slowly, up, down, left, right, from the front, from behind, completely and perfectly fine.

Relief flooded her soul, and with the excitement of a small child on a sugar rush, Ria leaped from Sylver’s shoulder, towards the floating sheet. Sylver saw her body expand the faintest amount mid-flight, as the book forced itself open. She passed through it, and landed on the floor, in a puddle of giggly bright gold liquid metal.

“It felt so strange but-”

“YOU HAVE TO FIND THEM!” screamed a voice so impossibly loud that if it wasn’t coming from within Sylver’s head it would have torn his eardrums to shreds.

“MUROMETS! POPOVICH! NIKITICH! YOU HAVE TO KILL THEM ALL!” the voice screeched, and nearly brought Sylver to his knees from the sheer intensity of it.

He gestured with his hand, and the floating sheet of nothingness slammed down into the floor and left behind a perfectly cut rectangle.

“FIND SVYATOGOR! HE IS THE ANSWER!” the otherworldly creature roared, as Sylver’s floating rectangle moved in a circle, removing the very metal and framework keeping it contained, searching for the source of the sound.

Without being able to use his mana, Sylver was blind and guessing where the scrap of paper had to be.

“DO NOT BELIEVE SOLNOSHKO’S LIES! DO NOT TRUST AURICK! HE IS-”

The instant silence was so empty, that it was arguably worse than the seemingly impossibly thunderous voice.

They just stood there, half stood in Sylver’s case, as the rectangle halfway inside Ria made a popping and crackling noise, like a moist campfire, before finally returning to the shape of a tiny dried pea.

Sylver made a split-second decision, charged up the hand in his hand, and threw it at the shivering pea. Like a giant turd being sucked down a small but powerful toilet, the hand disappeared into the pea.

The pea followed suit and disappeared in on itself.

They all remained as they were.

Ria in a motionless puddle on the floor, Sylver half crouched, with his hand extended from throwing his other hand, and Rose still standing in her corner, not moving a single muscle.

Sylver was the first to recover.

Because he had felt like a massive weight he hadn’t known was there had just been lifted from his head and shoulders.

Aurick.

That was Nameless’ name. That was the name Sylver had heard, that had knocked him out. He didn’t know how, but he knew for sure that that was the name one of the men in Nameless’ group had said.

Sylver walked over to Ria and found that despite appearances, she was rock solid, and he lifted the solidified puddle and cradled it against his chest.

“Everything is fine, we’ll talk about this later,” Sylver said quietly, to the terrified disk-shaped metal woman.

He turned towards Rose.

“And with that, “The Story Of The Seven Suns” is no more. I would like to say it’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” Sylver said, as he walked over to the sealed shut door, and waited for Spring to open it for him.

He left the room, and during the trip towards the upper layers, explained to Ria that he wasn’t going to discuss what he heard the book fragment say and that if she never mentioned it ever again, he was going to keep the lecture on following commands very brief.

The negatives of today were as follows:

Sylver no longer had his mana charged hand.

Which was upsetting, but not exactly the end of the world. Even if his trump card against Rose was no longer present, he wouldn’t have won against Poppy either, so it wasn’t a major loss, in the grand scheme of things.

The positives of today were as follows:

Sylver had completed his end of the deal with Rose and had destroyed the book.

The dark elves had all been healed and were now in tip-top shape.

Chrys was alive and healthy, and Rose was going to provide her with one of her eyes, a great boon to a clairvoyant.

Poppy was just about done with opening the gate, although she would have to start from scratch since she and everyone had been distracted by the book fragment.

This might have been a shity, shity, shity, shity, interfering sunlight, cannibal mango eating, fucking [Hero] having, book from another world, GUNS, child torturing, weird sex golem calling itself “Sylver,” LEAD SHOOTING, motherfucker of a realm, but…

All that was left was to give “Sylver” the instant death wand, wait for Poppy to finish opening the gate, and Sylver could finally go home and save Edmund.

“You know what Ria?” Sylver asked the slowly melting metal woman.