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Ch176-Long Lunch

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Somewhat surprisingly, the meeting with Ruslana and Zelvash was so fast and nonsense-free that Sylver spent the entire 10 minutes waiting for something to go wrong.

But nothing did.

Sylver explained to the two that the area he planned to house them in was too dangerous and that there wasn’t a good place to house them at the current moment in time.

Frankly, neither of them seemed all that concerned about it.

In Ruslana’s words, they had food, water, a safe place to sleep, the children weren’t dying from disease, and their biggest complaint was that Eirish was difficult for the adults to wrap their heads around.

When Sylver told them that they were going to stay at Ron’s Rest until he returned, Ruslana honestly looked a little relieved. Zelvash seemed miffed, and tried to ask to come along with Sylver, and bring 8 dark elves with him, but thankfully took no as an answer.

***

“Can I ask you something?” Lola asked as she walked out of the portal Bravo had created.

Bravo had the rare ability of being able to read the room, and left Lola’s office without either of them having to ask.

“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you’re not going to ask about the thing I said you’re better off not knowing?” Sylver asked.

Lola rolled her eyes, and sat down on her chair, as Sylver sat down in the seat on the other side of her desk. Aside from a few new paintings that showed Lola smiling and shaking hands with various men and women, and an odd rat-looking creature, not a whole lot had changed.

The workshop had been rebuilt, but other than the walls being a bit thicker and sturdier, to Sylver’s poor memory it was all the same. He vaguely recognized some of the people quietly working away, but apparently becoming a little taller, and disappearing for 5 years, was enough to make people forget who you are.

“No. If you think it’s better I don’t know, then it’s better I don’t know… Regarding the Krists…”

Lola’s voice trailed off as she moved her hand over the desk, and a small metallic box appeared on it.

Sylver moved it closer to himself and very carefully opened it up.

Inside he could see 2 light grey cylindrical pieces of metal, that were ever so slightly thicker on one side, like a carrot.

He extended his mana towards the two metal rods and applied pressure on them while he searched for a way inside.

When that didn’t work, Sylver picked one up with his hand and then tried to snap it open. For something this small, and thin, the amount of pressure Sylver had to exert until it broke into two didn’t make sense.

The quiet clink he heard as the other rod snapped into two inside the metal box, also didn’t make any sense. Sylver was careful initially, as he inspected the interior of the metal with his mana, but when he couldn’t feel anything, he tried to tear the piece apart using magic, if only to get some kind of reaction out of it.

Just when Sylver thought he was about to feel something, the metal half turned into extremely fine sand in his hand. No matter how hard Sylver sifted through the sand with his mana, he couldn’t find anything, he wasn’t even entirely sure if the thing was metal or not.

“Going by the fact that your shadow has already reached the door, you couldn’t find anything,” Lola said.

Sylver glanced behind himself and saw that in his anger, he had accidentally pushed his shades away from him, and pulled them back in place.

When he turned back to look at Lola, a second open box was on the table, with an identical pair of metallic rods.

“How many of these do you have?” Sylver asked as he did his best to get as much of the sand into the first box, and then took one of the rods from the second.

“About 20 on my person, and nearly 1,000 down in storage. The military sent these to everyone with so much as an F rank [Appraisal] skill, but even Leke didn’t get anything,” Lola explained, as Sylver used [Arcane Insight] on the rod in his hand.

[N/A]

He tried to use it on the rod in the box.

[N/A]

“Why exactly are the Krist’s such a threat?” Sylver asked as he put the rod in his hand back into the box he had taken it out of.

“Quantity. They win through sheer numbers. Hundreds, upon thousands, of bodies throw themselves at swords, spears, arrows, magic, and eventually the blades dull, the tips bend, the walls break, the mages get tired, and that’s it. Whoever can, runs away, and the rest either die or are converted into one of the Krists,” Lola explained.

Sylver could do little but nod.

Throwing bodies until the opponent just plain and simple couldn’t swing their sword anymore was a time-consuming, but effective, strategy.

“Not to mention the sabotage from the inside…” Sylver added.

“That too. Most of the adventurers that go to fight them, do so with a suicide capsule. Initially, they used poison, but after someone saw a Krist shaman rip a woman’s tongue out, and then shove his hand down her throat to scoop out the liquid, everyone started to use explosives. Same material as the ones you summon, except the trigger is magical, not mechanical,” Lola said, with an odd tone that sounded as if she was telling a joke.

“I miss when wars were a battle of attrition to see which army would starve first. Things were so much simpler back then…” Sylver said, as he closed the lid on the box, and leaned back in his seat.

Lola waved her hand over the two boxes and made them both disappear.

“I miss when my biggest worry was that I mixed up the delivery dates. The cats haven’t been, shall we say agreeable, with the fact that I took over, but they do what they’re told. The Cord is a lot harder to handle, the people only in it for the money have been fantastic, but the ones that do what they do for fun, those kick up a fuss like you wouldn’t believe,” Lola explained, in an attempt to steer the conversation away from the topic she herself had brought up.

“I’m sure Romeo has a handle on things. Lycanthropes are very protective of their territory, even more so of their partners,” Sylver said casually and was disappointed at the lack of surprise in Lola’s voice.

“Did he say something to you, or are you just guessing?” Lola asked.

“In case you forgot, I can read souls. Werewolves are a bit tricky, especially the recently infected ones, the animal blood muddles everything up, but he does that thing they all do, where he follows you with his head, and not just his eyes,” Sylver explained.

He had studied the curse, and for a brief period of time lived among them, as a guest, and even more briefly, as a leader.

“Yeah… He’s cute, and I love how loyal he is, but… after Olds…” Lola adjusted herself in her chair.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sylver offered.

Lola considered his words and then shook her head.

“These things happen… His parents were part of the Council. And while old Lola would have remained optimistic, possibly to the point of idiocy, Lola the Silver Lich’s partner can’t afford that kind of optimism…” Lola explained with a smile that didn’t go anywhere near her eyes.

“You didn’t…”

“I didn’t. I considered it... But I couldn’t go through with it. What if I’m wrong? Not to mention, even though it could have been a trap from the very beginning, I still have feelings for him. The smart thing to do is to wipe out the Council, and then I’ll know for sure if it was a ruse from the start,” Lola said, in a tone that sounded way too similar to a certain necromancer she was friends with.

“Good plan… But you met Olds before I left the dungeon?” Sylver asked.

“I met him during the time it took you to fly from the dungeon to Arda. Which… Look, I’ve got everything under control, tell me you’ve got some dark magic solution for the Krists,” Lola said, and with a wave of her hand summoned a sheet of paper and a pen in front of Sylver.

“Kill them until they die?” Sylver offered lamely.

“I’ll pass that along to the military, it will revolutionize how wars are fought,” Lola said with a faint smile in her voice, but not her face.

“If they’re a genuine threat, I’ll fly to their island, and figure something out. But honestly, Arda is so well protected right now that even I would struggle to break through. A bunch of mind-controlled mortals won’t stand a chance. Zombies, maybe, but people that die from running out of air? Just surround Arda with a vacuum or something, or pour carbon monoxide on them, they’ll drop dead before they get anywhere near the walls,” Sylver offered and was surprised by the fact that Lola looked surprised.

“Seriously?” Sylver asked, as the woman took the sheet she had offered Sylver, and started scribbling something down on it.

“We tried poison, but they were immune, how did I watch you knock out a group of men using dry ice, and not think of this?” Lola mumbled to herself.

Sylver leaned back in his seat and briefly closed his eyes.

“There’s that… what the fuck was it called. Ash-something… It’s at the tip of my tongue, light yellow rock, smells like rust, but-”

“Ash-foam?” Lola guessed.

“That’s it, ash-foam. Mix it 1-part white cherry pits, 10-parts water, 5-parts ash-foam, mix it until it turns dark yellow, heat it up, pour about half a cup worth into a pressurized bottle, and after it cools down, pure carbon monoxide grenades. Or big barrels, and just throw them from the walls, I guess,” Sylver explained, as Lola stopped what she was writing, and started noting down the recipe.

“There’s a catalyst to speed up the process… it’s… either osmium, copper, or zinc. I can’t remember, but it’s one of those three… Maybe chromium, but try osmium first… Ask Bruno, there’s a chance he’ll know. Maybe Faust too, cultivators are always brewing one pill or another, he might be a bit more knowledgeable about alchemy than I am. Honestly, just get a handful of mages, and have them do it manually, it’s not that hard,” Sylver said, as Lola kept writing on her sheet without looking away, and summoned a fresh one to continue writing.

“While we’re on the subject, a nice big moat is always a huge pain in the ass to deal with. You have to build a bridge out of corpses to get the zombies to the wall, even worse if it’s filled with predatory monsters, but don’t use anything poisonous, always go for the simple big teeth that tear flesh away types. Get Bruno to make aquatic serpents, to swallow enemies whole,” Sylver offered, and saw that Lola wrote what he said down word for word, but crossed out “aquatic serpents.”

Lola stopped writing and looked up at Sylver.

“I don’t think a moat is possible, the elevation is all wrong…” Lola said.

“You know what, there’s a spell for burning corpses, I saw that girl I was with use it once… The Pixie party. If you modify the framework a bit and spread ash-foam around the walls, you could make the corpses produce carbon monoxide, get a self-sustaining cycle going…” Sylver explained, as Lola summoned him a sheet of paper and gave him his own pen, as she moved her own to the side, and got a fresh sheet, to write a letter on.