Ch211-All Bark

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Ch211-All Bark

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It sounded like rushing water, but in the violent way an intense river stream sounded, as opposed to the almost peaceful sound of a waterfall.

Which was a perfect analogy for what Sylver was seeing in front of him right now.

It was a river of insects, crawling over each other, to the point they appeared to be more liquid, than a great many solids. They were on the ceiling, the walls, the floor, it was almost as if Sylver was watching an enormous shadow edging towards him.

“Confined space combined with a giant swarm of very small enemies… Not bad…” Sylver said, as he raised his hands towards the oncoming danger, and flexed his shoulders as the two slits on his palms snapped open.

In an almost explosive puff, the metaphorical shadow the creatures created, was replaced by a literal shadow, courtesy of Sylver’s [Draining Blight].

The corridor was barely 3 meters in height and width, Sylver had more than enough mana to completely cover the entire corridor in his HP draining smoke.

Which he did.

There was something almost satisfying with killing so many tiny creatures.

It reminded him of his past when warriors of varying strengths banded together in an attempt to defeat him and dropped dead before they even finished explaining whether Sylver killed their son, father, brother, or some other relative.

Although these insects just made a sort of squeaking sound, a bit like mice, but a much higher note.

“I almost feel bad for them,” Ria said, as Sylver started to walk forwards, while the insects continued getting killed from coming into contact with Sylver’s smoke, and thanks to [Dead Dominion] were promptly shoved off to the sides, to give Sylver enough room to walk.

Out of pure curiosity, Sylver purposely allowed one to pass through the smog unharmed and had Mora bind it, and bring it to him.

[Meat Scarab – Flesh Scraper – 4]
[HP: 20 – 100%]
[MP: 0 – 0%]
[Stamina: 60 – 100%]
[Corpse – Petty]
[Soul – N/A]

The small creature struggled against Mora’s reinforced threads, but Sylver could already tell it had no chance of escaping. He was familiar enough with insect biology to recognize that this thing’s internal structure was built solely to provide strength to its 3-piece mandibles.

Two were hook-shaped, while the third one at the bottom was slightly flat. This thing would hook itself into its target and would slice away a tiny piece, and presumably get shoved out of the way as thousands of [Meat Scarab]s behind it rushed in to do the same.

Death by a thousand cuts, essentially.

Its exoskeleton was oddly rough, almost sandy, and only a thin layer of oil made it shiny, and somewhat slippery. It was about the size of a small shirt button, and with its 6 legs spread out, could just barely cover Sylver’s pinkie fingernail.

Ria may have felt sorry for them, but Sylver had firsthand experience when it came to getting covered by a swarm of tiny seemingly pathetic opponents.

He’d been torn to pieces before, but there’s something uniquely unpleasant about being torn apart from the inside out. Once was enough, Sylver tended to repeat certain mistakes over and over again, until he learned his lesson, but he had all but sworn never to underestimate something small enough to crawl into his belly button.

Although he doubted they would survive their attempt to chew on his exceptionally toxic flesh, they certainly seemed willing to try. As a rule of thumb, anything that appeared swarm-like tended to be suicidal in its attempt to kill the intruder.

Sylver squashed the struggling [Meat Scarab] between his thumb and forefinger, and tossed it off to the side, where it was quickly absorbed into the ever-growing blob of [Necrotic Mutilation] following behind Sylver and Mora.

By this point in time, it was more than big enough to completely block up the corridor, and Sylver estimated that in its solidified version, the enormous mass of black and green-tinted gore, would be about 2 meters thick.

He didn’t bother raising any of them as zombies, they would cost more mana than they were worth, and more importantly, assuming Sylver wasn’t the first to encounter them, whoever was ahead of him already had a way of dealing with them.

Since their mandibles didn’t feel to be enhanced by Ki or mana, a cultivator with a thick layer of Ki armor around his body could probably walk through this mess as if it wasn’t here. If not for Mora, Sylver would have done the same, his layered soul armor might as well be made out of solid steel as far as these bugs were concerned.

He did plan to eventually implant one of the skulls into her body, but he wasn’t sure if she would be capable of manipulating her soul fast enough to use the soul armor properly.

At this point it was as effortless as breathing for Sylver, he was already puppeteering his body, now all he had to do was simultaneously puppeteer the 5 inflated souls to match his limbs. The hands were the only genuinely difficult part, Sylver had to either walk around without moving them or inflate the souls so much that he had trouble physically grabbing something.

It had to be like a glove around his hands, in an ideal world, but at the moment only his palm was protected, his fingers were sticking outside the soul armor’s limit. Once he made a fist, he would be fine, but when he went to grab something or someone, his fingers would be out in the open.

Out in the open in this case meant protected by a very thick layer of [Necrotic Mutilation] armor, enhanced by mana, and made out of extremely strong bones. Sylver wasn’t certain how well the joints of his fingers would fare, but he didn’t like the thought of having his digits chopped off, the more nerve endings something had, the more annoying it was to repair.

As Sylver continued walking through the dark corridor and considered whether it would be a good idea to cut a finger off every other day, to build up a stockpile of replacements, he suddenly felt a sudden chill in the air.

It was cold enough that it crystalized his [Draining Blight], and made it fall to the floor.

As Sylver continued walking forward, the cold increased, while the number of [Meat Scarabs] attacking him became less and less, until finally they stopped trying to attack him, and were instead shattered when Sylver accidentally stepped onto their frozen corpses.

[Draining Blight (VI) Proficiency increased to 66%!]

They crunched under Sylver’s boots as he continued walking forward and scratched against the floor as the giant blob of [Necrotic Mutilation] dragged them along.

He had to store what he could away into his [Bound Bones] storage, as the amount of mana required to keep the blob of liquid gore got close to matching Sylver’s mana regeneration. Even if it was a useful weapon in a confined space, Sylver was already wasting a ton of mana to keep himself warm, and the blob would be one broken femur away from exploding out of his body.

Without any warning, a custom-made sweater appeared on Mora’s body.

Along with a small hat that had a fluffy pom-pom at the top.

Sylver turned around to look at her with his actual eyes, and the miniaturized spider-shaped demon vessel lifted her left leg and gestured for them to continue forward.

Sylver chose to simply nod at the creature and carried on walking through the ice-covered corridor.

Sylver could feel that the “cold” they were experiencing wasn’t genuine, Ria was warm, even without Sylver’s mana to heat her up, this place was somehow siphoning heat away from Sylver’s and Mora’s bodies. He could almost feel the direction the stolen heat was being carried off to, and while Sylver could mess with his own primal energy field to counteract this, he chose not to.

It only cost about 2500MP per minute to maintain his body temperature, and even if it did get colder, at worst Sylver would lose some skin to frostbite. The pieces of himself that he referred to as his “internal organs” were mostly entirely solid, the cold wouldn’t impede them in any way.

Footprints appeared on the ice Sylver was walking on. From the distance between each matching footprint, Sylver had to guess that the owners of these footprints were running. At least 5 people, but very possibly more, considering there were several seemingly matching footprints that had varying depths.

Meaning that either they were throwing something heavy from one person to the other, or there were simply people of a similar height, with different weights, wearing the same sized shoe.

Although that doesn’t explain why they were running… Considering the possibility of traps, you would assume they would-

“There’s something very strange coming towards us,” Ria said, as Sylver turned on his heel, and simultaneously reached out with his mana and a thin tendril of [Necrotic Mutilation].

What he felt with his mana was hard to put into words, but the important thing was that the tendril lost its temperature at a nearly impossible speed, and shattered midair into a cloud of sparkling goreflakes.

Sylver felt an odd pride at the fact that Mora reacted a split second before he did, and was already two steps ahead of him, as he diverted his mana into his legs, and began to sprint down the corridor, away from the invisible coldness.

It felt surreal to run away from an enemy that Sylver could just barely sense, let alone actually see, and when mixed with the fact that neither he nor Mora made any sound as they ran, made it look a bit ridiculous.

Sylver couldn’t say for certain for how long he ran, 22 minutes and 51 seconds, according to Ria, but he eventually arrived at a very large open area.

The ground was covered in a thick layer of snow, but more importantly, the air was breathable here.

Or rather, it would be, if it wasn’t teetering on the edge of liquifying the oxygen in the air.

The room he was in could be described as a large empty sphere. Counting the passage Sylver had come through, there were 11 other openings, all of which were currently empty, but had footprints leading either in or out of them.

Sylver rubbed his [Necrotic Mutilation] gauntleted hands together, as Mora silently used her strings as makeshift snowshoes, and followed Sylver as he walked towards the closest corridor on his right. The walls and floor were covered in tiny scratches, and while it was faint, Sylver could feel traces of dried blood.

Sylver and Mora both froze as they felt a presence appear on their left.

A small black sphere rose out of the snowy ground and slowly turned towards the trio, as 2 slightly smaller black spheres appeared above the first 1.

He barely heard the sound of all 12 corridors suddenly getting slammed shut as his body warmed up from sheer anger, as he realized what he was looking at. And although she had no idea what had pissed him off so much, Mora wordlessly joined in on hating the 3 small spheres.

[??? – White Shadow – 243]
[HP: 140,510 – 100%]
[MP: 0 – 0%]
[Stamina: ??? – 62%]
[Corpse – Greater]
[Soul – N/A]

Even if he couldn’t see the creature’s expression, Sylver had a feeling the monster was feeling smug. It moved unimpeded through the fluffy snow and very likely assumed that Sylver wasn’t moving due to confusion.

The reality of the situation was that Sylver knew exactly what was going on, as the biggest black sphere disappeared, and the other two quickly followed after.

Sylver grabbed Mora by her torso and threw her as hard as he could towards the ceiling, as the invisible creature lunged at him.

Sylver’s robe successfully blunted the clawed swipe from the left, as Sylver left the protective and sticky garment behind, and had his body thrown towards the source of the attack. He severely misjudged the location of the creature’s face and felt his [Necrotic Mutilation] covered torso collide with the back of the white creature’s paw.

There was an unmistakable bark, as the monster tried to fling Sylver away from its face and was instead surprised to find no resistance from the man who had collided with it. Sylver materialized directly above the bear’s head, and without making a sound, used both his hands to throw his summoned ax at it.

The sound of bone giving way to an extremely sharp, and magically enhanced, ax, was followed by an instantaneous fountain of blood, as the ax that had been plugging the hole it had made, promptly disappeared.

As Mora lifted Sylver up into the air, he spread his arms out and summoned a bit over 30 bombs. The bear below growled, as it decided to ignore the strange cloth wrapped around its left paw, and instead lifted its black nose and eyes up towards Mora and Sylver.

The blood leaking out of its head was freezing almost instantly, but enough had spread that Sylver wouldn’t have trouble tracking the beast.

As he reached the ceiling, Sylver braced his legs, as the shades hidden within the shadows of the thrown explosives, ignited them.

Sylver was simultaneously blinded and deafened, as the bombs sent a painful shockwave that made his head ring, as he kicked away from the ceiling, and flew towards the monster.

Amidst the cloud of snow, fur, and crystallized blood, Sylver saw an enormous, clawed paw coming for him. Ria’s staff made a sound similar to a bell, as it flew towards the claws, and successfully managed to apply enough force to slide them away from Sylver.

The fur was sharp enough that it sliced the rubber sole of Sylver’s boots, as he landed on the snarling beast’s head, and with a single twist of the leg, snapped his right leg’s femur.

Before this point, the sphere had been almost pristinely white, but as the blob of [Necrotic Mutilation] spread out as far as it could and showered the surroundings in its green gore, Sylver was once again caught by Mora’s strings, and like a bungee jumper, was flung back towards the ceiling.

The monster was missing large chunks of fur, and amidst the blood, quickly solidifying [Necrotic Mutilation], and soot from the explosives, Sylver could very clearly see his opponent.

[??? – White Shadow – 243]
[HP: 71,192 – 51%]
[MP: 0 – 0%]
[Stamina: ??? – 53%]
[Corpse – Greater]
[Soul – N/A]

Sylver once again braced his legs the moment he reached the ceiling, but this time was aided by Mora’s strings, as he kicked off the ceiling, and like a crossbow bolt, was shot towards the monster. Sure the poison would get it, but Sylver didn’t want to just sit around waiting for it to die.

He now understood that it wasn’t a bear, and was either a fox or a wolf, it was hard to tell with all the blood and with how thick the coat of fur was. Frankly, Sylver was surprised the explosions did so much damage.

But even if it wasn’t the same species as the thing that welcomed him to that shithole of a realm, the fact that it was using the same “you can’t see me if I cover my nose and close my eyes” tactic, was enough of a similarity for Sylver to hate it with all his heart.

Sylver spun in the air to get as much force into his ax as possible, as he felt Mora’s strings frantically wrap around his legs and could hear the spider creature chirping at him inside his head. As Sylver threw the ax and let Mora pull him away, he watched as the furry creature below melted.

Or at least that was how it appeared from Sylver’s point of view. The melting was followed by a cleansing gust of snow, that buried Sylver’s [Necrotic Mutilation], the fox’s blood, and all the soot the explosions had left behind.

All that was left was pure white snow and an ever-increasing number of small black dots.

Ria flew past Sylver as she went down, and-

[??? (White Flake) Defeated!]

[??? (White Flake) Defeated!]

-tore two small foxes apart as she accidentally flew through them. The explosion of blood from the decapitated one splattered on the foxes nearby, and marked them bright red, amidst the white snow, and matching white foxes.

Sylver stretched his hand towards the robe Ria had hooked and was now flying towards him, as a grin spread along his face.

“You’re gonna regret that!” Sylver shouted, as he snapped his fingers towards the army of foxes and created a checker pattern as his shades materialized amidst the tiny furry creatures.

[??? – White Flake – 100]
[HP: 20,000 – 100%]
[MP: 0 – 0%]
[Stamina: ??? – 0%]
[Corpse – Petty]
[Soul – N/A]

Uri, the shade that was essentially a giant sea urchin, had the most immediate success. She simply extended her spikes as far as she could and skewered enough [White Flake]s that Sylver couldn’t see what was happening because of all the notifications flashing before his eyes.

As Ria arrived at the ceiling with Sylver’s robe, he continued hanging upside down by his legs, while he watched the carnage below.

It was a blood bath.

Sylver didn’t even need to listen to the panicked cries of the split apart foxes below to know they regretted trying to overwhelm him with numbers.

Because Sylver had more shades than they had body mass to split into separate creatures.

And more importantly, Sylver’s shades were fearless, and had very little issue with friendly fire, amidst all the red, white, and black, chaos going on around them. Because of the size differences, the majority of them couldn’t even tell if they were stabbing blood-soaked snow or one of the foxes trying to bite at their legs.

They just stabbed, gouged, grabbed, pulled, tore, and everything they could to kill everything within their reach. Spring would later admit that he was just as pissed off as Sylver was, partially due to Sylver’s own anger, but mostly because seeing these things reminded him of helplessly watching that bear throw Sylver around.

But as Sylver’s anger gradually cooled down, these things had nothing to do with that bear, or that realm, and Sylver understood that on a rational level, he simultaneously felt his body gradually heat up.

With every notification informing him of another slain [White Flake] Sylver felt the temperature of the air increase. Not enough for the snow or ice to melt, even though the steaming hot fox blood had helped with that a fair amount already, but Sylver was using less and less mana to keep his body warm with every killed fox.

Mora even helped out a bit.

She threw her strings like a lasso at the foxes, lifted them in the air, and then allowed them to fall, and as a result, snapped their necks. A few had tougher necks than she expected, and for those she simply slammed them against the walls, until they died.

Once she realized there wasn’t any danger to them, on account of Sylver’s shades surrounding them on the ceiling, she pulled one dead fox all the way up, and quietly produced a proboscis and sucked the blood out of it.

Sylver continued sitting on the string swing Mora had made for him and finished connecting his robe to his body.

[??? (White Shadow) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 80 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 51!
+5AP

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 52!
+5AP

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 53!
+5AP

[Necrotic Mutilation (IV) Proficiency increased to 24%!]

[Arcane Insight (IV) Proficiency increased to 30%!]

Sylver watched as the various blood-soaked corpses melted into the ground, along with the snow, ice, and had to shield his eyes as the ceiling he was inches away from started to glow with bright light.

Sylver grabbed Mora and Ria and jumped down to the floor, while Spring gathered up the defeated shades and stashed them into Sylver’s shadow.

He used [Lesser Perception] to look at the light above without being blinded. As if it was liquid, a line of light appeared on the wall on Sylver’s right, and flowed down the wall, until it reached one of the closed-off corridor entrances.

There was only one entrance that had a blue arrow next to it, that pointed inside, and the one that opened just now was on the marked entrance’s left.

Sylver ignored the open passage for the time being and healed his shades as he walked over to the marked door and placed his palm flat against it.

He felt up the wall and gradually moved lower and lower until he found what he felt was the right spot. Trying to cut through the door would take hours, this was better.

Sylver pressed his pointer finger up against the metallic wall and very gently started making a hole in it using a beam of abyss magic. According to Ria, he stood perfectly still for over 12 minutes and 59 seconds, before he said a word.

“There should be something similar to a latch inside,” Sylver said, as he removed his finger from the barely visible hole.

It was about as big as a toothpick.

Sylver grabbed hold of the staff as he angled the “head” part towards the hole, and metaphorically speaking held his breath as Ria sent a tendril down the hole.

“I kind of expected a reward chest or something,” Spring commented, while he and Sylver waited for Ria.

“I genuinely don’t think this is a dungeon… Or if it is, it’s a very strange Ki dungeon… You also have to keep in mind we aren’t supposed to be in here,” Sylver said, as he pressed his ear up to the wall, and heard very faint clicking sounds.

Ria’s face formed on the liquid gold between the three ribs.

“I need a piece of that floating green thing you use,” Ria said, as Sylver produced a tiny drop of [Necrotic Mutilation] from the tip of his finger.

Ria very gently took it from him, and Sylver could feel it as she formed it into a string, and slowly pushed it through her tendril, and the hole.

She then molded the string onto the bottom of something.

“Move it upward, and just a bit away from you. Just a little. And… Stop. Hold it there please... Now push it up, as hard as you can,” Ria said, as Sylver manipulated the tiny droplet of dead matter and heard a very unpleasant sound of metal scratching on metal.

The metal doors opened with a painful whine, they were reluctant and didn’t want to open. Sylver felt like he was forcing a crying woman’s legs apart, as the door slowly lifted, and Sylver deemed the gap big enough for Mora to fit through.

Although she was afraid of getting separated from him, Mora walked underneath the gap and nervously waited inside the corridor. Sylver continued pushing against the mechanism inside, as Ria slid herself out of the hole, and nodded at him.

He wouldn’t have been able to do it if he didn’t have [Fog Form].

The perk was teleportation, with the main limitation being that Sylver needed to be able to physically access the location he wanted to teleport to.

He released the metaphorical breath he had been holding, as he lost his grip on the tiny piece of [Necrotic Mutilation] that had been holding the door open, and in the next instance appeared inside the corridor, with the Ria staff safely in his hand, a split second before the enormous slab of a door slammed shut.

Sylver stood up from the floor, as Mora just happily stared at Sylver, all while mentally complaining about what would have happened if he messed up the timing.

The air was breathable now, although there was a very strange smell that Sylver didn’t recognize and couldn’t find a good comparison for.

They walked in silence for a while, until Sylver felt something at the edge of his [Dead Dominion] perk. He pretended he didn’t and continued silently walking towards it. As he had guessed by the shape and feel, it was a human corpse.

The corpse was fresh, as in, it was still warm.

A quick pulse of mana revealed the cause of death.

Poison.

Specifically, poison that had been ingested.

Sylver lifted the man’s head and ran his finger over the small bump on his broken nose.

“One down, one to go,” Sylver said, as he concentrated on the boy’s body, and managed to force his mana into him, enough to make [Bound Bones] work on him, so he wouldn’t have to carry it around with him.

“Are you saying this is one of the heirs?” Ria asked, as Sylver reached into the man’s shirt, and pulled out a necklace with a blue symbol that was identical to the ones painted underneath the blue arrows they had followed to get here.

“I’m pretty sure it is. Anyway, we still need to find the other one. But we’ve been here, what? A couple of hours and we’re almost done?” Sylver asked.

“5 hours, 32 minutes, and 10 seconds,” Ria answered, and Sylver now regretted complaining about his poor time tracking skills to someone who, respectfully, was essentially a very fancy clock.

“Anyway, we’re halfway done. The rest of this quasi dungeon will be just as easy,” Sylver said, as he heard muted, but worrying, click in the distance.

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