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Ch252-Sunk Cost

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At some point, they must have copied Sylver’s intellect because they stopped trying to get close to him, and instead built as much distance as they could.

Obviously, they didn’t copy all of his intellect, otherwise, they would have simply left.

But they were smart enough to notice that their curse that mirrored damage wasn’t working and that they were significantly faster than Sylver when it came to moving through water.

[Deep See Imitation (N/A) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 40 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 68!
+5AP

Thankfully Sylver didn’t need to be fast.

He had people to be fast for him.

In this case, the “person” was a shade that looked like an unnaturally hairy rat, named Cory, that could manipulate bodies of water. And with a bit of instruction, was able to propel Sylver’s summoned explosives directly into the faces of the unsuspecting [Deep See Imitation]s.

[Deep See Imitation (N/A) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 80 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 69!
+5AP

That trick worked, for a while, but eventually it got to a point where the imitations had figured out how to detonate the explosives before they reached them.

But by that time, the number of imitations had been whittled down to 4.

All of them had Sylver’s red crown, [Mage Cap], a thick layer of protective black armor, [Black Mass], the ability to move water and rock, [Advanced Water Manipulation], [Advanced Earth Manipulation], they controlled the flora growing on the boat and the rock, [Novice Chloromancy], and if the wriggling sensation Sylver felt whenever he got near them was to be believed, they also had access to [Mutating Override].

Initially, Sylver tried to chase after them, he burned through half of his mana doing that, but as one of the imitations nearly slashed his face open with a [Black Mass] dagger on a string-type attack, he realized just how good this situation might be.

They were copying his Skills, his Perks, and most importantly his Traits.

And while Sylver didn’t want to get too optimistic, there was a chance one of them might copy a trait he had very recently acquired.

[Trait [Corrupting Abomination]
-By your actions, you have marred your very essence, and have created an abomination.
-By your actions, you have marred the essence of the world, and have created an abomination.
-Your existence will lead to further calamity.
-Whoever kills you will receive your total levels.
-Current amount of levels being offered: 179.
-Anyone that is successful at seeing your status will be informed of this.

Sylver kept his face neutral, but all four imitations sensed the change in his approach.

They went from being cautious predators to frightened prey. But somehow Sylver doubted anything as convenient as nearly 200 levels would land this easily in his lap, so instead of abandoning his quest, he decided to ignore the imitations as much as he could and to only kill them when it was necessary.

The four imitations had surrounded him, to an extent, one was directly below Sylver, two blocked his left and right side, and the fourth floated in open water, on the same level as Sylver.

The only open direction was up.

Or, at least, that’s what it looked like, until Sylver began to sink, and the imitation below him panicked and abandoned its position. It tried to manipulate the rock Sylver was sliding against, but between Cory’s explosives, and Sylver’s rock manipulation, the sharp spikes were barely an inconvenience.

There were a few minutes where the 4 remaining imitations couldn’t decide if it was a good idea to follow him or not, and sadly, for them, they ended up chasing after him. Their main mode of attack was pulling large chunks of stone out of the wall, coating them with spikey [Black Mass], and dropping them onto Sylver.

They tried to time it so Sylver wouldn’t have room to dodge, but they seemed to not have a full understanding of Sylver’s purpose down here.

Instead of dodging out of the way, he attached himself to the bottom of the largest boulder and simply rode it down. The boulders that followed glued themselves onto Sylver’s, and while he did have to move around a bit as the boulder turned, he managed to remain underneath it.

The imitations made several attempts to get past him, but as soon as they were underneath Sylver, they seemed to suddenly remember that they needed to keep their distance.

Most of the time, they didn’t do anything.

They did manage to burn his robe a little when they created a plant that secreted acid, but because the acid wasn’t enchanted, [Advanced Water Manipulation] was more than enough to handle it.

The number of intact ships increased the further Sylver went down. The falling boulders dislodged some of them and caused the large wooden ships to float upward. Sylver’s rock eventually got caught on a particularly sturdy sideways ship hull, and he had to abandon his trusty sinking tool.

The 4 imitations…

The 31 imitations, decided that was a good moment to attack him.

A group of 5 swam directly at Sylver, they reached for his throat, and the moment they made physical contact, he sucked the life out of them, and replenished his mana.

…

[Deep See Imitation (N/A) Defeated!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 70!
+5AP

[1 perk available for [Swamp Lord]]

The next group of 10 were taken out by Cory directing explosives at them. They were so far below Sylver’s level he didn’t even get a notification for killing them.

The remaining 12 developed a survival instinct and maintained their distance with the 4 from before.

Sylver saw a lot of weird shit on his way down.

Crystal clear sea urchins that were the size of caravans, with spikes so long that they could easily be used as spears. Starfish as big as tents stretched themselves over the rock as if they were chewing living gum.

A group of flatfish with mirrors on their backs followed Sylver. At first, he looked at his reflection and fixed his robe and hair, but when he saw his reflection blinking when he wasn’t, he threw an explosive at the fish to scatter them.

Eventually, Sylver noticed that the boats weren’t placed randomly and that they were stacked in a pattern as if they were bricks. They were embedded into the rock wall, inside of holes that were just wide enough for the ships.

Just like the ships above everything that could be stripped from them had been. Whether these ships could sail he couldn’t say, there weren’t any holes in the hull, and aside from missing a sail, and being full of water, they looked fine to him.

Just as Sylver got accustomed to the many boats, they disappeared. The pattern of boats embedded into the wall ended at exactly the same elevation.

Moving ships around wasn’t inherently difficult, or making holes for them, but in this case, the distance they were from the sea surface meant someone put a lot of effort to get them here. And the sheer number of them meant whoever did this had been doing it for a long time.

Sylver's copies stopped dead when Sylver sank below the line of ships. Almost as if there was an invisible barrier blocking their path. Sylver slowed his fall and watched the 16 Sylvers hovering just above the invisible line.

He doubted they were going to sit and wait here if he continued downward.

Sylver summoned 50 explosives, molded the bombs into 1 sphere, wrapped the thing in a thin layer of [Black Mass] to make it aerodynamic, and made the dark material open up like an umbrella to catch the updraft.

It flew upwards with incredible speed.

Just as before the imitations used Sylver’s magic to force the explosive to detonate prematurely.

Sylver was pushed down by the shockwave, and the 16 imitations above were smashed against one another as the bubble of superheated steam floated into them. They might have screamed, but it was hard to hear over the sound of the ringing in Syvler’s ears.

[Deep See Imitation (N/A) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 50 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 72!
+5AP

[1 perk available for [Swamp Lord]]

[Perk: Mage’s Might]

[Perk: [Mage’s Might] has been removed!]

[Perk: Ka Of The Half-Lich]
-Increase MP by 150%.
-Increase MP Regeneration by 50%.
-Increase Mana Conductivity by 25%.
-Increase resistance to [Positive Energy] by 15%.

The [Mage’s Might] perk was in front of Sylver for the time it would have taken him to blink before it was replaced by [Ka Of The Half-Lich].

Sylver waited for the inevitable pain of having his mana channels stretched out into their new size, but despite floating in wait for well over a minute, the pain never came. At most Sylver felt a faint warmness spreading out from his chest, but the feeling wasn’t even uncomfortable, let alone painful.

Total Level: 182
[Koschei-10]
[Necromancer-100]
[Swamp Lord-72]

CON: 200
DEX: 110
STR: 110
INT: 500
WIS: 281
AP: 45

Health: 1,877/2,000
Stamina: 881/1,000
MP: 18,792/33,000

Health Regen: 23.34/M
Stamina Regen: 20.00/M
MP Regen: 27,307.50/M

For a while, Sylver merely floated in the water and checked to see if the numbers in front of him were real. He knew the system had done something to him, his mana channels were wider and stronger, but why didn’t he blackout from the pain?

Was the system waiting for the most uncomfortable moment? If it wanted to kill him, distracting him enough to make him lose focus on the spell preventing the water pressure from crushing him would be enough, so what was the purpose of waiting?

…Since the first perk was given to me automatically, and the replacement was given without my say-so, is the system incapable of harming me because then it would be actively working against me?

Or are my mana channels already so large that the relative increase in size is too small for me to notice?

Or was my lack of conductivity somehow the issue, and now that it’s higher I’ll no longer suffer?

Sylver was tempted to drop all 45 points into Intelligence to see if it would still hurt, but as curious as he was, he was very well aware that being right in this case would mean having his brain explode out of the back of his crushed head.

He got [Mage’s Might] for his Intelligence getting to 500, and subsequently got [Ka Of The Half-Lich] because of his [Necromancer] class.

He still had to choose a perk for reaching level 70 with [Swamp Lord], but again, he was concerned any kind of alteration right now would result in the worst-case scenario.

For the time being Sylver simply adjusted the amount of mana he provided his robe, doubled the strength of the skintight barrier keeping his body in one piece, and saturated his insides with so much mana that if he wasn’t who he was, his bones would have melted.

As he continued his descent, Sylver began to understand why the imitations refused to follow him beyond the ship line.

There was something down there.

Something big, big enough that Sylver didn’t feel wrong comparing it to Tuli.

But surely there weren’t two unfathomably large creatures, in the same sea, mere days of travel away from one another.

But, regardless of what he was sensing, Sylver pressed on and continued to make his way downward.

***

The rock wall was smooth.

Not smooth in the sense that someone had cut it cleanly with a blade, but smooth in the sense that something had rubbed against it enough times that anything sticking out was worn away.

As he ventured lower into the underwater crack the stream of hot water evolved from a nuisance to an actual obstacle.

Even with the giant bump in mana capacity and regeneration, there was a limit to the amount of heat and force Sylver was capable of dispersing. On top of that, there wasn’t any point delving this deep if he had to spend all of his mana on staying alive and didn’t have any mana left over to move or defend himself with.

Sylver hoped that Medusa and Euryale were people he could talk and negotiate with, but it would be moronic to approach them without having some way of protecting himself if they turned out to be aggressive.

Going by how competent their contract read, Sylver estimated that there was an 80% chance those two were calm, reasonable, and more interested in coming to a mutually beneficial solution than they were in killing everyone and everything that approached them.

Although there was a hint of bitterness in the contacts. They went out of their way to hurt, but not actually kill¸ Tristen and Amelia. Which meant there was a chance they had done this out of a sense of “justice” or something equally difficult to negotiate around.

And it goes without saying, anyone living here, had to have at least 1 screw loose, but regardless of all that, Sylver felt confident in his optimistic 60% chance of coming out of this without having to kill anyone.

After an unknown amount of time sinking along the rock wall, Sylver arrived at the source of the pressurized boiling water.

Metal cylinders, wide enough that Sylver could walk inside them without crouching, snaked through the rock wall and wrapped around one another, like tangled rusty vines. They were all held together by squashed metal nails, a countless number of 2-meter segments pressed to one another to form a continuous pipe.

Hot steam leaked in thick streams from between the segments, the spots where they were connected, and as the shades returned, they informed Sylver that this mess of hot leaking metal didn’t seem to have a beginning or an end.

Sylver wrapped his left hand around in mana and placed it onto one of the pipes. It was made from some sort of iron alloy, but he couldn’t identify the odd structure of the metal or the odd blue hue the metal underneath the rust had.

But the most disturbing thing about the pipes was that there was something familiar about them.

Sylver’s attempt to figure out the source of the steam ended up being a waste of time, there was no discernible pattern to how the pipes were laid out.

His option was to either stay above the pipes, pick a direction at random, and hope he saw something akin to an entrance, or he could continue going down until he found something.

Given that going down would use less magic than trying to swim sideways, while being blasted by over-pressurized steam, Sylver chose to go down.

Deeper.

He was deep underwater, deep inside a crack, and was about to drop even lower, through a net of metal pipes.

“How did that kid do it? Or the girl?” Spring asked.

“There probably used the secret entrance,” Sylver said.

“Because if you’re barely capable of doing this, they… unless they had fancy perks and skills that made this easy for them…” Spring thought out loud.

“Or they had those, yes,” Sylver answered under his breath.

There was more than enough space for him to get between the pipes, but the rising hot water created odd currents that Sylver’s [Advanced Water Manipulation] struggled to adjust to. It was like trying to walk on a swaying ship, but about 50 times more difficult, and significantly more dangerous.

The spaces between the pipes narrowed the further he went down until it got to the point Sylver was just barely able to squeeze himself through without touching the painfully hot metal.

Eventually, his robe was pushing him through while he compressed his shoulders and chest as much as he could, like some kind of pissed-off cat, and by the end of it, Sylver’s choice was either to stop pushing or crush his upper skull to pass through the tiny gap.

Sylver stared at the gap, then lifted his head and stared at the slightly larger gap above him. Both were barely visible because the hot water made everything wavy, and the bubbles got in the way.

Sylver wanted to take a deep breath, but he was underwater, so he couldn’t even do that.

He looked back down at the narrow gap beneath him.

“Alright, fuck it,” he said, as he flattened out hand, and made a swiping motion at the 3-meter-wide pipe.

Just as he prepared to make the second cut, to finish the V-shaped hole for him to enter through, the deafeningly loud sound of boiling water and whistling steam moved away from him.

The pipes all stopped producing heat, and as Sylver noticed that there was a green-tinged liquid escaping from the cut he had made, he was once again deafened as metal whined from being bent and screeched as metal scratched against metal.

Sylver was sent flying by the sudden shifting currents, and just barely managed to block a hit to the back of his skull with his hand. He stopped his body from being thrown around, just long enough to notice that the previously disorganized spaghetti mess of pipes were now all parallel to one another, in a spiral formation.

Sylver was effectively inside of a giant tube, woven out of smaller pipes.

He placed both hands over the back of his head, pulled his knees up to his chest, and did his absolute best to condense his body into a ball. As he expected, a powerful current from above began to push him down through the tube.

Fragments of wood, rock, and metal whizzed passed him and collided with the walls of the pipe.

He was inside the tunnel for less than a minute but given the speed at which he felt he was traveling; he could only imagine how deep underground he was now.

Sylver was eventually slammed against the bars of a metal cage. The water pushed against him and pinned him to the metal bars, with enough force that he couldn’t move. Sylver looked around with his [Lesser Perception] and saw that there was a metal wheel on the other side of the metal cage.

He reached for it with a thick tendril of [Black Mass] and the infused piece of material covered the wheel, and very slowly turned it anticlockwise.

Bits of rock and metal slammed against the metal bars, shattered, and continued flying down the tunnel. One piece of metal nearly pierced Sylver through the chest, but thankfully his robe caught it.

Sylver used all the magic he had been recently given and inched his way toward the [Black Mass] covered wheel. The shade infused into it told him it could feel the water being sucked into the space around the wheel.

While the shade worked on opening what Sylver hoped was a door, Sylver used his abyss magic to cut the top and bottom of the metal bars he was pressed against. He managed to slowly wiggle his arm into place and used the tip of his middle finger, and his big toe on his foot, to produce short bursts of abyss magic.

Just as Sylver finished cutting a space wide enough for him to pass through, the door the [Black Mass] had been opening opened, slammed against the wall, tore off its hinges, and in the blink of an eye disappeared down the tunnel with a painfully loud clanging as it bounced from wall to wall.

Sylver tried to freeze the water above him, but even with his new mana regeneration, the flowing water melted the ice faster than Sylver could create it. His attempt to grow a plant or fungus to block the water had the same problem, the current was too strong for the flora of Sylver’s magical ability to survive long enough to do anything.

Sylver said a silent prayer to Igri and put what little mana he had left into his limbs. He jumped, if you could call it that, towards the door, and was sucked into the open hole.

He tumbled through it, through the metal corridor, until eventually something loud slammed against the metal walls, and the current disappeared altogether. The water Sylver’s limp body was floating in was absorbed into the metal walls, and Sylver was left lying on the ice-cold rusty floor, soaked in seawater.

Every joint that could be dislocated had been, and as Sylver was lifted to his feet by his robe, it simultaneously forced the joints back into their respective sockets.

Sylver rolled his neck, and after opening his eyes, saw a glowing line on the ceiling, that illuminated the tunnel just bright enough that he couldn’t get [Perfect Night Vision] to work.

Sylver placed his hands on the small of his back, leaned back, waited for his spinal column to fix itself, and as he leaned forward, vomited out 4 times his body weight of foamy water. His robe

He took his first breath since coming to Finland, and for a couple of seconds, just enjoyed not being wet.

“Living metal. Who does that remind you of?” Sylver asked, as Spring materialized next to him, and accepted the [Black Mass] coated dagger.

“It doesn’t look like the dungeon,” Spring said, as Sylver started to walk down the direction the stream of water had sent him towards.

“Maybe it changed to adjust for being in a different realm,” Sylver offered.

“Or it’s unrelated to the dungeon in the other realm. And everything so far is just a series of coincidences,” Spring said.

Sylver stopped walking and turned to look disapprovingly at the shade.

“…”

“It could be!” Spring argued as Sylver continued walking down the dimly lit tunnel.

They both walked in silence. Spring sent the shades out to map out the area, and filled out Sylver’s mental map. To describe these tunnels as a “maze” felt like an understatement.

Mostly because they didn’t adhere to the physical limitations of space, and Sylver’s map gradually became incomprehensible, as 9 different tunnels passed through the exact point in space, without joining together.

Sylver fiddled with the [Xander’s Waystone] hidden inside his chest, since his shoulder blade was no longer indestructible, and was relieved to see that it wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary.

Absolute worst-case scenario, he had a way out.

In this section of the dungeon at least.

Assuming this was a dungeon.

Sylver turned around to the sound of creaking metal and saw a figure step out of the wall.

The figure was dressed in green trousers and a thick green jacket, that had splotches of darker and lighter green on it, with a matching green dark green helmet that was tied onto its head by a strap underneath its chin. It looked like a human man, roughly six feet tall, and aside from being here, the only other thing that was out of place with it was how much hair was hanging down its back. It reached down to the back of the man’s knees.

The hair was a very unpleasant brown color, not quite the hue of fresh excrement, but the sort you might associate with poorly cured leather or a piece of wooden furniture that had too much sealant applied to it.

“You wouldn’t happen to know Medusa or Euryale?” Sylver asked, as the figure reached behind itself, and produced a small dagger. It had an edge on only one side, with a segment on the other side meant for sawing wood or bone.

“I’m only here to talk,” Sylver explained, as the hair hanging out of the back of the man’s head retracted into his helmet.

As it did so, the man moved the way a puppet would, his posture went from limp and unstable, to something significantly sturdier.

He flipped the knife in his hand, so the tip was facing downward.

[Lucy – Fur Puppet – ???]
[HP: N/A – 100%]
[MP: N/A – N/A%]
[Stamina: N/A – 477%]
[Corpse – Inferior]
[Soul – None]

Sylver rolled his eyes at the useless information, and as the figure ran at him, he lifted his arm towards it and made a circular gesture with his finger.

Spears the width of toothpicks exploded from the floor, walls, and ceiling, and within a fraction of a second, the running figure lost the ability to move.

The toothpick-sized [Deadly Darkness] spears pierced every available inch, with the only exception being the head. The solid shadow wrapped around the man’s head and helmet and forced his slightly open mouth closed.

“Again. I’m only here to talk,” Sylver explained, as he slowly walked over to the suspended creature.

The man’s eyes were locked in place, it was staring at the floor, and as Sylver forced it to lift its head, so it was looking at him, he couldn’t see so much as a spark of life inside its milky-white eyes.

“Lucy? Can you hear me?” Sylver asked.

The hair sitting inside the man’s skull tried to come out through the hole in the back of his head, but Sylver’s shadow was too hard for it to get through.

“Blink if you can hear me?” Sylver asked.

He waited for a good minute, but even though the thing had eyelids, it wasn’t moving them.

Sylver got an idea, hated that he was probably right, and with a heavy sigh switched to English.

“Blink if you can hear me,” Sylver said.

Nothing.

“Do you know anyone named SAM? Or Ria?” Sylver asked in English and then repeated in Eirish, and then repeated in the odd elvish dialect the people in the Garden used.

He repeated his questions in Dwarvish, demon tongue, and did his best to speak the few Earth languages he knew that weren’t English.

He even tried asking the names of the doctors Ria had spoken about.

But there was no further reaction from the haired beast.

“Lucy? You in there?” Sylver asked as he snapped his fingers in front of the possessed man’s face.

Sylver placed his hand on the man’s cheek and felt the worms inside his skin come to life, as they tried to burrow through the man’s skin, into Sylver’s. They made a squealing noise as they died upon contact with Sylver’s hand.

“Listen Lucy. Or whatever you are. I’m looking for Medusa or Euryale. I’m not here to fight, hurt, or kill anyone, I can here to speak and negotiate,” Sylver explained, as the worms retreated away from his hand, and tried to escape through the man’s face, nose, eyes, ears, but an invisible force forced the hair like creature to remain inside.

“Once I speak to them, I will be out of your hair,” Sylver repeated with a momentary grin, as the worms started digging through every surface they could find, to escape the trapped body.

Sylver waited, he gave “Lucy,” the worms, the man, the whatever, more than enough time to come to a decision.

[Lucy (Fur Puppet) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 10 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Draining Blight (VI) Proficiency increased to 93%!]

[Black Mass (IV) Proficiency increased to 11%!]

[Arcane Insight (IV) Proficiency increased to 64%!]

In terms of mana, Sylver got just enough to break even with the mana he used for [Draining Blight]. But in terms of health, he managed to heal just about every single torn muscle in his upper body and had enough left over to heal some of his bones!

On a certain level, Sylver recognized that there were too many obstacles on his path to speak to Medusa or Euryale. But at this point, he was too curious to turn back, and given how insanely saturated with negative energy this place was, he honestly couldn’t imagine anything beating him down here.

Sylver waited for the [Black Mass] to finish converting the man’s body, and confidently began to walk further down the metal pipe maze.