Ch200-Let’s Keep Things Simple

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Ch200-Let’s Keep Things Simple

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Without his need for eyes, there wasn’t a need for blinking.

Despite that, Sylver couldn’t tell when the exact moment of transition had occurred. It was seamless, there wasn’t a middle, just Sylver standing in the wooden building, with the boy on his right, and the next, he’s standing on top of a giant empty space.

Sylver was standing on what looked like black glass, like impossibly clear onyx.

Above him, there was nothing, just endless black, like a cloudless night sky, but without the stars.

It was the same for the area between the floor and the sky, there was nothing there, no rocks, trees, animals, structures, nothing.

Stranger still, Sylver couldn’t see where the light was coming from. His body was illuminated, but the angle was vague, as he turned, his shadows remained the same as if his light source turned with him.

“An endless void of nothing, fitting for a heartless witch,” Sylver’s challenger, Izan, said.

Despite the supposed endless void, there wasn’t any echo, Sylver heard Izan’s voice loud and clear. He pushed his sense of wonder to the back of his mind for the moment, and instead covered his arms in a thick layer of [Necrotic Mutilation].

“You should have attacked while I was distracted. I can’t say it would have given you a fighting chance, but now I doubt you’re going to so much as scuff my shoes,” Sylver said with a gesture towards his oddly upbeat opponent.

Izan had a huge smile on his face, and now Sylver could loosely see the family resemblance.

“You’re that guy’s grandson…” Sylver guessed, and turned out to be right, as Izan nodded.

“Are you ready witch?” Izan asked, and Sylver felt like he had been slapped across the face.

“Just so I understand, you were waiting for me to be ready?” Sylver asked.

He wasn’t even angry.

Well, he was, but his anger was being superseded by a mixture of confusion, and self-pity.

“Of course I was waiting for you! Are you ready?” Izan asked as he took the same stance he had taken before they had been moved into this area.

“Did you not hear me when I said that I'm going to cut your face off when I win?” Sylver asked as he continued to lose what little enthusiasm he had to begin with.

Sure, he had been pissed off about the way he had been treated, but this was just disrespectful. They weren't treating him like an opponent, like a threat.

“You're not going to win,” Izan said, with the exact facial expression the head of commerce had as he confirmed that Sylver was indeed the witch drawn on that bounty paper.

Sylver lifted his hand up to his face and scratched his chin with one of his claws. He had a plan in mind to build some distance, so he had time to finish expanding his bear soul armor, but the boy had just stood there, and watched him.

“Are all martial artists like this? Because the one I fought previously attacked before I realized what was going on,” Sylver asked, as Izan’s smile slipped away and was replaced by anger.

He glanced at the wooden nametag on Sylver’s arm before he responded.

“Enough talk! Are you ready?” Izan asked as Sylver shook his head.

“Actually, I need another minute, my back is sore,” Sylver said uncertainly, as Izan just quietly nodded his head.

Sylver just stood there, staring at Izan, while he tried to wrap his mind around this.

How are these people alive?

“So, just to be extremely clear, no one above level 200 will try to fight me, and everyone that does try to fight me, will always wait for me to prepare myself?” Sylver asked and could feel that Ria was as confused as he was.

“Are you ready?” Izan asked.

Sylver didn’t have any eyes to roll, but he would have rolled them.

“I need another minute,” Sylver answered, as he crouched down to the floor, and placed his hand on it.

Even using the bear soul like an ice pick, he still couldn’t break the mirror-polished onyx. More interestingly, despite appearances, it was very rough to the touch, as if it was very fine sandpaper.

“Are you ready?” Izan asked, as Sylver placed his ear against the floor, and tapped it with his knuckles.

It didn’t absorb any sound, it was as if it was frozen in time, completely motionless. Sylver had a sudden idea as he stood up from the floor.

“I get it, you know I can’t kill you, and because of that handicap you wanted to handicap yourself to make it fair, right?” Sylver asked, desperate to make sense of this disrespect.

“Are you ready?” Izan asked, as Sylver adjusted his stance, and turned so his left shoulder was towards Izan.

“Well, it’s still not fair. Most of my “techniques,” as you would call them, are meant to kill, or cripple, I’m rather limited when it comes to subduing someone. Especially when I can’t use poisons, since if I use too little it won’t work and will be embarrassing, but if I use too much, it will kill you, which I can’t do,” Sylver explained, as his robe unraveled, and went from its silky-smooth appearance to a dark cloud of wooly blackness.

Somehow Sylver could tell that the darkness behind him wasn’t hiding him, given the strange way he and Izan were both illuminated.

“Are you ready?” Izan asked as Sylver rolled his metaphorical eyes.

“For your own sake I genuinely hope I’m misunderstanding everything,” Sylver cautioned, as his ax magically appeared in his left hand.

The [Necrotic Mutilation] wrapped around his arm slithered down onto the ax and coated it.

“Are you ready?” Izan asked as he started to very slightly bounce up and down on the balls of his feet.

“Sure, I guess we-”

Izan’s shin passed through Sylver’s neck as if it wasn’t there.

Because it wasn’t.

As Izan continued flying due to the massive amount of momentum he had built up, Sylver materialized on his left, and just watched him fly away.

The moment Izan’s feet touched the floor, he disappeared again, and once again his shin passed through Sylver’s neck, or more accurately, the spot where his neck had been a fraction of a second before he used [Fog Form] to move out of the way.

He was ready for the next attack, was on the lookout for the trick, or trap, or feint.

Sylver allowed Izan 4 more attempts, all while he kept a close eye on his status.

[Human – Way Of The Red Rabbit – 192]
[HP: 140,690 – 100%]
[MP: 0 – 0%]
[Stamina: 56,771 – 68%]
[Corpse – Common]
[Soul – Petty]

“Each one of your jumps and kicks costs you 5,000 stamina. You have another 13 or 14 kicks left… Are you taking this seriously?” Sylver asked as Izan did the exact same thing and somehow managed to appear surprised when Sylver’s head didn’t magically go flying.

Sylver’s ax floated near his back, as Sylver crossed his arms over his chest, and stared at Izan judgmentally.

Sylver dodged another kick to the neck.

“Why did they allow a retarded child to fight me? Are the witches you’re used to facing that weak?” Sylver asked as Izan attempted yet another kick to his neck.

“Fight like a man!” Izan said through gritted teeth.

Sylver hoped his body language did a good job of conveying how confused he was.

“This is me fighting like a man. This is how men fight, in case you weren’t aware. Unlike you, I’m taking this seriously. You have another 7 kicks left, you fucking idiot,” Sylver explained, as Izan, yet again, harmlessly passed through Sylver and flew away from him.

“6 kicks, I’m just… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but can you please try something else? I was trying to prove a point here, and this is just-”

There was the briefest pause as Sylver used [Fog Form] to dodge Izan’s attack again.

“-pathetic. I won’t say I was pumped up for this fight, but I expected,” Sylver vaguely gestured around with his hands, “to at least get taken seriously,” Sylver finished, as he dodged yet another relatively quick kick through the neck.

“Is this normal for a cultivator?” Ria asked as Sylver shook his head.

“I think he only knows one move. But then what was the point of-”

Sylver dodged another attack from Izan, even though what he was doing at this point couldn’t be considered “dodging,” in Sylver’s opinion. If he hadn’t made the mistake of not taking a stupid fight seriously in the past, and died as a result, he would have stopped using [Fog Form] and just leaned out of the way.

[Human – Way Of The Red Rabbit – 192]
[HP: 139,941 – 99%]
[MP: 0 – 0%]
[Stamina: 26,192 – 31%]
[Corpse – Common]
[Soul – Petty]

“-challenging me? Did you think being faster than me meant I would be helpless?” Sylver asked, as Izan’s shin once again passed through a Sylver-shaped cloud, as Sylver’s physical body materialized out of Izan’s range.

The truth of the matter was that Izan’s kick was very powerful. If his leg connected with Sylver’s body, the damage would be significant. Just from the way the air was moving around the boy’s feet made Sylver weary, it might just be a kick, but it was a very dangerous kick.

Sylver still had his bear soul armor, which should protect him from any kind of widespread damage, but there was no telling what exactly Izan’s technique would do.

Izan brought his arms close to himself and took a very quick deep breath. Sylver didn’t even need to look at the boy’s status to know exactly what he had done.

[Human – Way Of The Red Rabbit – 192]
[HP: 129,741 – 92%]
[MP: 0 – 0%]
[Stamina: 83,000 – 100%]
[Corpse – Common]
[Soul – Petty]

“Big words for someone only dodging,” Izan countered, as Sylver considered if giving himself eyes to roll would be a good idea.

He had a feeling he would be rolling them quite a bit while he was here, fighting these cultivator motherfuckers.

“Only been dodging? What gave you that idea?” Sylver asked as Izan’s foot passed through the space Sylver had been a moment prior.

Another 7 kicks nearly separated Sylver’s head from his body, before Izan felt an ever so faint tension at the edge of his right hand.

Izan lifted his hand up to his eyes, and in the weird illumination provided by this weird place, could see something sparkling on the tips of his fingernails. He wiped his hand on his bathrobe and brought his hand up to his eyes again. As he did this, he felt the area he had rubbed ever so slightly get pulled in the direction he moved his hand.

“You bastard!” Izan shouted, as Sylver just stared at him with a confused look on his bandaged-covered face.

“What did you think I was doing? Just waiting for you to tire yourself out?” Sylver asked, as Izan once again came rather close to decapitating him with his leg, but simply cut foggy air instead.

Sylver lifted his hand and pointed it at Izan’s face. He closed it into a fist, and Izan’s eyelids started to jitter.

Izan attempted another kick at Sylver’s neck, which was dodged with the same ease as all the previous kicks.

“Can you at least try to punch me? You have less than a minute left. I’m still going to cut your face off, and pull your teeth out, and-”

3 consecutive kicks were dodged as Izan managed to predict the spot where Sylver had moved to but hadn’t accounted for the fact that Sylver could travel back to his original position through the same tendril of fog.

“-slice away your fingernails, and carve up your chest, and-”

Sylver lost count of the number of lightning-fast kicks he effortlessly dodged, but it was at least 10. Using [Fog Form] without a couple of seconds of rest gave him a terrible migraine.

He didn’t know if this was due to the system being upset at him using the perk incorrectly, or if it was backlash from his regeneration rates increasing and decreasing so quickly.

When he first gained the perk, he felt like throwing up when he tried to use it more than once, but with his new body, he could do it about 10 times before it started to hurt. Even then, it didn’t hurt, it was just disorienting.

Izan’s eyes closed all the way, and even from how far away he was, Sylver could see the shiny resin coating his eyelashes.

“What is this!” Izan shouted as he tried to pull at the gunk gluing his eyelids together but quickly realized his fingers would get glued to his face if he continued doing that.

Sylver had noticed right away that the air in this area was sterile, and more importantly, dry. There wasn’t the usual moisture he had become accustomed to, and somewhat relied on, so Sylver had to wait for the boy to produce some for him.

He wasn’t sweating as much as he hoped for, but every single breath sealed his fate, as did passing through Sylver’s uncharacteristically dense fog.

“Figure it out yourself, you dumb fuck!” Sylver shouted back, as Izan blindly kicked at his head, and was surprisingly close, except for the fact that Sylver was already far away from him.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you use magic like this before,” Ria asked, as Izan clutched at his throat, which had razor-thin lines appearing on it.

“It’s nothing special. Back when I was wasting my time banging mushrooms together in an attempt to teleport, I ended up discovering several interesting strains. This one produces a candy floss like resin, that gets rather hard when exposed to air,” Sylver tapped out, as Izan’s sleeve tore at the seem as he tried to pull his hand away from his body.

“Now I remember, you made yourself a chair out of it,” Ria said, as Izan tried to place his feet into the same stance he had been using since the start but found something constricting his legs.

“You’re going to want to push out with your Ki. But the second you do, I’m going to appear in front of you, and punch you so hard you’ll swallow your teeth,” Sylver called out, as Izan stopped struggling against the invisible thread like resin and turned his head to look up at Sylver.

“I thought you were going to wait for him to become immobilized by the resin?” Ria asked, as Sylver shifted the [Necrotic Mutilation] on his forearm down to his hand and made his fist a bit thicker.

“I am, but my goal is to end this as quickly as possible. I don’t know how resistant the resin will be to his Ki, but there will be a small window where he’s defenseless while he changes the way it's distributed. Unlike mana, he’ll need to suck all his Ki in, to then push it out. Cultivators are generally more powerful than mages because they can compress their strength into short bursts, but they’re very weak when moving their Ki around,” Sylver explained, as Izan just stared at him.

“I still don’t understand why you kept using the same move,” Sylver asked, as Izan experimentally tried pulling his legs apart, but now the linked together resin was thick enough that it was clearly visible.

***

Sylver stood up from the boy’s mutilated body and looked around the empty space.

Even when he sent shades out to find the edges, it just kept going. He even tried flying into the air to find the limit, but it just went on forever. Interestingly enough, there wasn’t any change in temperature, pressure, or anything that Sylver or Ria could feel.

“How do I get out?” Sylver asked.

Izan was very much alive, but understandably, he hadn’t been able to withstand the pain.

If he had fought Sylver properly, he would have possibly administered a painkiller, or more honestly, Sylver might have just scarred his face and left it at that.

But no, he chose to treat this as some sort of game, and never once did anything other than try to sever Sylver’s head using his leg. Some might call that admirable, but Sylver called it stupid, and a waste of time.

A massive waste of time.

The kid had guts though, didn’t say a word as Sylver peeled his face away, in long thin strips, carved jagged scars onto his chest, pulled out his teeth in a checkered pattern, and lastly carefully removed his fingernails.

All the damage was cosmetic, and in a few months’ time Izan should be able to do everything he used to be able to do, albeit with a permanently ugly face, and the kind of scarring usually received from being mauled by a wild animal.

Ria’s utter disgust at Sylver’s action blunted the microscopic joy he felt at winning, and if he was honest with himself, this didn’t feel like a win. Sylver almost felt like he was the one that had lost.

Almost, being the keyword here, because Sylver was the one who was in perfect health, and Izan was the one who was going to have to wear dentures.

Halfway through mangling his ears into asymmetric blobs, Sylver had something of an epiphany but sadly couldn’t get the unconscious boy to confirm his theory.

Was the reason he only tried kicking due to him saying he would “sever Sylver’s head with a single kick?”

“As the one who had been challenged, you need to ask him if he would like to surrender,” the boy Sylver had brought with him said.

Sylver searched for him with his vision and found the boy standing a few feet away from him. His body was barely visible, the way that woman’s had been when Sylver was fighting within the arena at the Garden.

Except, after testing several times, Sylver had confirmed that this space hadn’t been made using Ki, or some kind of technology, even if he couldn’t be specific, he was willing to bet his left arm that this was made using extremely powerful mana.

Meaning that these people weren’t just suicidal assholes, they were also hypocrites.

Sylver crouched down near Izan’s head, and very carefully, jolted him awake. Just as before he didn’t scream, didn’t curse, just stared at Sylver with this sickening look of resolve.

“Will you surrender?” Sylver asked the boy, who mutely shook his head from side to side.

“Then I’m going to have to get fancy,” Sylver said, as he flicked his hand and several [Necrotic Mutilation] tendrils slithered out from underneath his sleeve.

He placed his hand down on the boy’s stomach and advised Ria to look away as the tendrils started reaching into his belly button.

***

Without his need for eyes, Sylver wasn’t blinded by the sudden influx of light, but he did feel slightly disoriented as he once again saw color around him.

Izan was screaming bloody murder, as Sylver pulled his hand away from the boy’s stomach and allowed the large group of healers to take him away.

“He’s fine! I didn’t cripple him! He won’t have another solid bowel movement for the rest of his life, but once he puts on a diaper he can continue cultivating!” Sylver shouted, as he stood up from the floor, and adjusted his robe until it was a bit more presentable.

There wasn't any blood on him, he knew what he was doing, was careful, but the resin wasn’t as willing to listen to him as Izan’s blood was. He looked around, and Sylver saw something even more revolting than what he had just done.

The head of commerce, Izan’s grandfather, was smiling at Sylver.

“As Usual, You Barbarian Witches Have No Honor!” the head of commerce said, as Sylver turned around to face him.

“Why did he keep trying to kill me with a kick?” Sylver asked, as the head of commerce just shook his head, and giggled like a child.

“What Kind Of Question Is That?” the head of commerce asked, as Sylver forced himself to calm down and move along.

Sylver guessed the reason Izan had been resilient to torture was that listening to this man talk was worse than anything Sylver had been capable of inflicting on him. Until Sylver started moving his internal organs around that is.

“Are you buying this stuff or not? We have other people to see,” Sylver said, as he gestured and looked at the ingredients, and had a sudden idea.

“As I Have Told The Boy, I Am Willing To Pay You Half A Kilogram Of Red Jade For Everything,” the head of commerce said, with a gesture towards Sylver’s boxes.

Sylver leaned down and whispered in the boy’s ear.

“Is that a good price?” Sylver asked as the boy shook his head.

“It’s worth at least 800 grams of red jade, but we should-”

“He says they’re worth 800 grams of red jade. But I’m going to want 900 grams, for trying to trick us,” Sylver said at the head of commerce, who just looked at Sylver the way a person would look at a small yapping dog.

“No,” the head of commerce said, as the boy at Sylver’s side started to speak, but Sylver spoke over him.

“If you change your mind, it will cost you a full kilogram. You know where to find us,” Sylver said, as he made the boxes float over to him, and turned his back to the head of commerce, and made the boy at his side turn with him, by gently grabbing him by the collar of his bathrobe.

The boy was squirming, and in the end, Sylver almost lifted him off the ground, as he kept trying to persuade Sylver into accepting the price the head of commerce offered.

“This is a good lesson for you, always be willing to walk away from the negotiating table. Especially when the other side isn’t willing to negotiate,” Sylver quietly told the boy, who continued trying to persuade him into going back there and getting at least half a kilogram of red jade.

Sylver was surprised he hadn’t thought of this before and was even more surprised that Faust didn’t come up with this himself. Since Faust recognized the ingredients needed for a potion, wouldn’t that mean he knew how to make such a potion himself?

***

The next sect they visited was the Red Dog sect, and they were significantly more reasonable. They paid exactly what they had said they would pay, or more accurately, what Sylver had been told they were willing to pay by that friendly barkeep.

But just like the Green Rabbit sect, Edmund’s tracker didn’t react. Sylver had had Spring investigate the northeast corner, and there wasn’t anything obvious there. It was mainly a large garden, with a lot of rabbits, but no green fire, and no sealed vaults. If Edmund was there, he was very well hidden.

Sylver had an idea as to how to get a better look at this area, but he wanted to confirm a couple of things with Faust first. He needed to know if his “I can sense a great evil somewhere here! You’ve been cursed by a witch! I can feel the curse coming from there!” routine would work on these people.

His gut feeling was that, yes, anyone who hated witches this much, probably hated the idea of being cursed by a witch. But if Sylver tried this, and they didn’t believe him, and somehow proved he was the one that planted the bag of bones there, he would lose all credibility.

If he did it right, he would have unrestricted access to all the areas Edmund’s tracker had pointed at.

The boy carrying the small box full of bright red glowing rocks stared at them as if he couldn’t believe they were real. There were even a couple of bright green rocks mixed in there.

The boy was confused at Sylver’s question, regarding why Izan didn’t try anything other than kicking. And in his attempt to explain, Sylver discovered a very frightening fact.

The people here didn’t just specialize, they hyper-specialized. Every sect had its own “style,” or “build” as the boy put it, and they allocated their attribute points, perks, skills, classes, and everything system-related, into perfecting a single move, a kick in this instance.

Because according to the boy, anything less would be worthless at higher levels. Since the moment they were born, these people planned their future as if they were already immortal. First, they mastered one move, one single swing of the sword, one single punch, one single kick, one single uppercut, and only then did they learn something else.

Even the disfigurement Sylver had caused Izan was nothing more than a tiny bump in an impossibly long road. He might have not been aware that Sylver’s disfigurement was permanent, but even the best curses had a half-life.

Assuming Izan lived long enough to see a curse made by Sylver Sezari fall apart.

Then again, if all he did was practice kicking, and sat around absorbing experience from jade stones, there was a good chance he would live that long.

Not all sects were as insane about specialization as the Green Rabbit sect, but Sylver had somehow managed to stumble his way into one.

He also learned that his bounty wasn’t “official” so to speak. In the sense that if he was in an area that belonged to an allied sect, no one would be able to challenge him for his bounty. The Green Rabbit sect had simply decided to honor the Blue Mongoose’s sect’s bounty.

Under normal circumstances, a person would have to offer Sylver some kind of prize if they wanted to challenge him. But as with countries, each sect had its own set of rules, and as luck would have it, the default rule seemed to be “fuck witches.”

The only exception were areas that weren’t directly controlled by any sect, such as the swamp where Sylver had been attacked. In those areas, there were no rules.

Hopefully, people would be less interested in challenging him for his bounty after hearing about Izan, but all Sylver could do was wait and see.

The circumstances weren’t ideal, but all things considered, given that no one above level 200 would try to challenge him, Sylver had a rather good fe-

Sylver threw the boy as hard away from himself as he could, as the spell finished enveloping him.

He didn’t close his eyes, he had no eyes to close, and with Ria quickly slithering onto his back and spreading around his body, Sylver recognized the magic trying to whisk him away. It was the same magic responsible for him and Izan being moved to that empty place.

It was only when Ria had finished covering him, that he realized it wasn’t trying to pull him away somewhere but was instead trying to bring something to him.

When the spell was done Sylver looked down at his tightly closed fist, covered in an intricate net of gold and black, and felt his hearts stop as he forced his fingers open.

It was a torn sheet of paper, so thoroughly soaked in mana, that it was hurting him from the contact.

It had a single word written on it “TRADE,” in such an old Eirsh dialect that Sylver almost couldn’t read it.

But as Sylver stared at the paper, he understood 3 things.

The first was that Edmund was here.

The second was that these people had an actual dragon guarding them.

And the third was that it seemed like the dragon wanted something from him.

NEXT CHAPTER 

(AN: Hah! You thought it was going to be 30 chapters of beating up random cultivators! But it was me brick on the acceleration pedal!)