Sylver Seeker - Chapter 248: Treading Water

There was a limit to how much [Black Mass] a [Petty] shade was capable of controlling.

It varied slightly depending on the shade, but as a whole 6.6 kilograms was the limit. Anything beyond that, and the liquid couldn’t hold itself up. It could still move, but it couldn’t float, and instead of launching itself forward by catapulting itself through tendrils, it had to crawl.

Like a worm.

It could also slither, somewhat, but for some reason that particular movement was difficult for Sylver’s human-based shades to grasp. They were capable of it while he directed them, but on their own, they could either float, launch, or worm crawl.

Sylver also discovered that the shades didn’t have access to their full sight while infused into [Black Mass], they could still see, but from what Sylver was able to understand, they were essentially blind to anything further than 10 meters away. Things became too blurry, Sylver guessed, after further experimentation.

He also found that when a blob of [Black Mass] was split in two, the shade was shoved into the largest half. Even when Sylver tried to force it to remain in the smaller half, it slipped through his metaphorical grasp. While that may seem like a positive, it sadly meant that the dark material was predictable.

Other downsides included the fact that although the shades inside the [Black Mass] could convert biological material without Sylver’s interaction, they couldn’t insert other shades into the [Black Mass] they created. Sylver was the only one who could shove a shade into the material.

While it was in its liquid form it was exceptionally weak to any kind of attack, and the process for it to turn from solid to liquid was slow. Not “slow” in the sense it took more than a minute, but slow in the sense turning a properly settled shield into a sword took well over 10 seconds.

In the middle of a proper fight, 10 seconds might as well be an hour.

But those were the only downsides.

That were more than made up for by the upsides.

For starters, even without Sylver empowering it, the weapons packed a punch. The fish down below didn’t stand a chance.

The [Black Mass] floated in the air and functioned like Edmund’s sword/weapons, or it could be wielded by a shade. [Greater Undead Armament] allowed Sylver to outfit the shades in all matters of weapons, armor, and other gear, but it required a substantial amount of mana to remain solid.

[Black Mass] on the other hand, up to 6.6 kilograms, was completely self-sufficient. In the same way Sylver’s shades could exist on their own, without a constant influx of mana, so could the [Black Mass]. And although the shades couldn’t take it with them into the shadows Sylver could store it away in his [Bound Bones].

Which meant that a single bone carried by the tiny flying Aleri could contain enough weapons and armor to outfit an entire shade army.

Or a regular army.

Or it could be used to create a giant physical barrier, that would protect who Sylver wanted to protect, or suffocate and stab to death the people he wanted to kill.

More importantly, it provided the creature/person wearing the [Black Mass] armor with the nonmagical stats of the [Petty] shade that was infused into it. Sadly the effects didn’t stack onto one another, but it cost nothing to maintain.

It didn’t need magic, didn’t need to be fed biological matter, and with just a simple brace on his left arm, Sylver’s Constitution, Dexterity, and Strength increased by well over 20%!

The effect wasn’t as pronounced when the [Black Mass] was used on/as a weapon, but it was still noticeable.

And what’s more, the armor didn’t need to be outside of him.

By the time Spring spotted the grouped together ships, Sylver had 4 layers of [Black Mass] armor wrapped around his needle, “heart,” and his real head and face.

The only reason he felt comfortable doing that was that [Black Mass] could conduct mana better than Sylver’s own flesh. It wasn’t perfect, but it was significantly easier to create more [Black Mass] than it is to grow new fingernails every time he used something stronger than 1st tier magic.

As to the new effect of [Mutating Override]…

Effectively, Sylver could “stretch” the primal energy of the [Black Mass] significantly further than he would have been able to before.

One of the books Sylver read about primal energy described it as a rubber band. There’s a length it’s most comfortable at, a length it can be stretched out to, and a length at which it will break.

And the same as a rubber band, the further it was stretched, the more strength was required to stretch it further or hold its length.

In terms of combat, this wasn’t particularly useful. Sylver could make the liquid flammable, flame retardant, resistant to cold, sticky, slippery, porous, impermeable, and most interesting of all, Sylver could make it resistant to magic.

The last part was an oversimplification, to say the least, because he could make it resistant to certain types of magic. Given that it was created by Sylver it was already resistant to dark magic, but with a fair bit of tweaking, the mass of black that he was physically touching could be forced to withstand positive magic attacks.

It wasn’t perfect, this wasn’t a less talkative version of Ria, but it would at the very least stop Sylver from completely shutting down from a single silver-tipped arrow.

But the real gem in this increase in malleability was that Sylver could use it in place of catalysts. He still needed diamonds, gold, platinum, and a variety of other inorganic materials for all the serious rituals, but with just a bit of tweaking, [Black Mass]could be used in place of a human corpse.

By “bit of tweaking” Sylver meant hours of tweaking, but in a pinch, he could now perform a ritual that required 10 dead human bodies, using only fish. It also meant healing was a lot easier since Sylver’s body very easily grew into the [Black Mass] but since Edmund was around, that wasn’t as big of a deal as it would have been before Sylver had found him.

As Sylver was about to suggest that Will descend, he instead had the flying wyvern shade fly even higher. Once he reached the point where there wasn’t enough air for his wings to push against, Sylver pulled him into his shadow and began to fall toward the distant water.

He had planned to see if it was possible to “fly” using wings made out of [Black Mass], but even with a 30-meter wingspan, Sylver was plain and simply too heavy for them. On top of that, because the liquid wasn’t a single solid muscle, the “wing” couldn’t contract properly.

Sylver could somewhat glide using them, but it was a waste of effort, [Fog Form] was easier, more effective, and didn’t require anywhere near as much attention as wings made of [Black Mass] did.

Sylver used [Advanced Water Manipulation] to soften his fall, and then created a platform out of ice to stand on. He could tell that one of the boats had spotted him, partially through his soul sense, but mostly because of the light they were using to signal at him.

Sylver didn’t know what they were saying but given that they hadn’t shot a cannonball at him, he had to assume it was a friendly greeting.

There were 5 ships floating side by side, attached to one another by several rope bridges. Sylver was approaching the ship on the very left, the second to smallest one.

As he got close enough that jumping to the ship was an option, a spotlight appeared a short distance in front of him and moved upward until Sylver and the piece of ice he was standing on were fully illuminated.

“Evening!” Sylver shouted towards the large group looking down at him from the ship.

“Evening!” a voice shouted back at Sylver.

“Permission to come aboard?” Sylver asked.

There was a pause, during which one of the women standing near the rail sprinted to what Sylver had to assume was the captain’s room.

She came back with the permission, and a ladder was lowered for Sylver to climb on.

When he put his foot onto the first step and heard the rail it was attached to creak from the force, he removed his foot and simply walked up the ship’s hull.

While he did that, Spring counted out the people on board the current ship, the 4 attached to it, and concluded that all 5 were trade ships.

When Sylver reached the top and stepped over the rail, he was greeted by a group of 15 young humans. All 10 of the men were shirtless, and covered in similarly styled tattoos, with only their faces being clear of ink, while the 5 women were covered by a thin cotton shirt, and had their hair hidden underneath a dark blue wrap.

“Is there any chance for me to take a look at your maps?” Sylver asked while he pretended to search around his robe’s pockets for gold coins.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

Sylver lifted his head and without letting the friendly smile slip off his face, stared into the eyes of the man who had tried to peek at his status.

“I’m not here to cause anyone any trouble. I just need some directions, and I’ll be on my way,” Sylver said calmly, and as non-threateningly as he was capable of sounding, while standing aboard the mostly dark ship, with a black endless ocean behind him.

But as usual, a man appearing out of nowhere, looking the way Sylver did, was understandably not someone people would trust the word of.

Luckily for everyone, before any form of tension had a chance to rise, a small thin cat with a crooked ear landed on the rail behind Sylver and rubbed its head against his elbow.

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Initially, only 2 people reacted to the cat doing this, but as they lowered their guard and relaxed, so did everyone else.

“Follow me,” one of the men said.

The group split apart at this, and Sylver did as he was asked, and followed the man.

It was dark aboard the ship, what little moonlight managed to pass through the thick clouds in the sky wasn’t enough to see, and the only real source of light was the ship’s wood, which was glowing just enough that you could see where the steps started and ended.

But between Sylver’s [Perfect Night Vision] and [Lesser Perception] he could see the ship as if it was the middle of the day.

Most of the people on board were either sitting or laying on their backs while staring at the sky as if they were about to fight it. Very few bothered to glance at the new pale face walking past them.

A couple looked like they were preparing themselves to jump overboard. Their cheeks were red with alcohol, or some other substance, and more than a few were quietly sobbing into the inside of their shirt.

The rest looked like regular sailors, in the sense they were alert, but at the same time, bored out of their minds.

The cat that was accompanying Sylver walked so close to his leg that he had to be careful not to step on it.

Ships of this size typically carried items that were far too “volatile” to handle being passed through a portal. Flying would most certainly be faster, but there were more than a couple of magical reagents that could only be stored in special containers, and those containers didn’t handle high altitudes all that well.

Most importantly, it was far cheaper to move a large quantity of materials by ship, than it was to move them in pieces by flight.

The sails had all been rolled up, and tied away, and going by the large chain hanging off the ship’s side, it was anchored in place.

The captains’ quarters were empty, but the man opened the doors anyway and gestured for Sylver to come inside. The man closed the doors shut and Sylver was left alone inside the low-ceilinged room. He didn’t quite have to crouch, but his hair was touching the ceiling, and he was most certainly going to hit the support beams if he wasn’t careful.

“You said you’re looking for a map?” a voice spoke from Sylver’s side.

It took him a second to put two and two together, as he walked over to the stool near the desk, and sat down.

“I need to get in contact with one of the colonies living underwater. I know there’s one in this general area, but I don’t know where it is exactly,” Sylver explained, as the cat nodded along.

“May I ask what for?” the cat asked.

“I need them to claim a small piece of the sea…And then keep people out of that piece,” Sylver explained.

“The piece of the sea that contains the “cave” your high priestess woman has been looking for?” the cat asked.

How, or why, the cat knew about Tuli, or Sophia for that matter, Sylver truly didn’t care at this point in time.

“I wouldn’t necessarily call her “mine,” but yes,” Sylver said.

It was yet another thing he and Kitty would talk about when he eventually reached that particular point on his to-do list.

“It’s unfortunate that you’re asking for a map-”

Of course it is.

“-because lack of maps is precisely the reason, we’re unable to move,” the cat said.

Sylver turned his head towards the double doors and watched as a short and thin man entered the room and closed the doors behind him.

He was dressed in a dull brown leather jacket that hung loosely on him as if it was something he inherited from his older brother. His dark hair was tied into a neat ponytail, and from what Sylver could see, he wasn’t carrying a weapon.

The short man stopped when he reached the middle of the room.

“This is Captain Lewit,” the cat said.

Sylver stood up from his seat and stretched out his hand to shake the captains.

“Sylver Sezari. Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Sylver said.

Captain Lewit’s fingers felt like sandpaper against Sylver’s skin, but surprisingly enough there wasn’t too much strength behind them.

“Likewise,” the captain said, as he gestured for Sylver to sit down, and while the man went to sit behind his desk, Sylver returned to his stool.

The small room was illuminated by the faintly glowing wood that made up the floor, walls, and ceiling.

“What can I do for you, Mr Sezari?” Lewit asked.

“He needs to look at your maps,” the cat with the crooked ear said.

“Ah…”

Captain Lewit leaned back in his chair and looked like he was about to kick his feet up onto his desk, but he stopped himself at the last second.

“The cat said you’re having a map related problem,” Sylver said to break the silence.

“That is certainly one way to put it… What would you be looking for if I were to give you my maps?” the captain asked.

“I need to talk to one of the underwater colonies in this area. And while I know there’s one somewhere west of here, I don’t know the exact location,” Sylver explained.

“Talk to them regarding what?” the captain asked.

“Regarding a personal matter,” Sylver answered.

The reaction Sylver felt from the captain’s soul wasn’t great.

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great in the sense that the captain was just barely aware of Sylver’s presence. He was drunk, or at least tipsy, but on top of that, he was also laser-focused on something that wasn’t Sylver.

“You wouldn’t happen to know how to repair a faulty sand atlas?” the captain asked.

Sylver shook his head.

“I can take a look at it, but I don’t even know what a sand atlas is, to begin with,” Sylver answered.

The captain leaned further back in his chair as he thought things through, while Sylver remained still, and merely waited.

“Pretzel,” the captain said.

“Yes sir?” the cat with the crooked ear, Pretzel, responded.

“Find Captain Leese and ask him if he would be willing to lend one of his Fins to our friend here,” the captain ordered.

Pretzel nodded at the man, jumped down from the table, and disappeared through a small square hole hidden behind one of the chests.

“Would you like something to drink?” Lewit asked, as he sat up straight, pulled out a half-empty bottle of a murky grey liquid, and began pouring it into a glass before Sylver had a chance to respond.

“Sure,” Sylver said, as he reached out for the glass nearest to him and waited for the captain to finish pouring his own glass.

The man had to lean forward quite to clink his glass against Sylver’s, due to how wide the table was. Sylver waited for him to drink first, and as the man swallowed the whole thing in a single breath, Sylver did the same.

It tasted faintly of lemons and orange peels, but despite the fruity flavor, it was strong enough that it almost hurt. Instead of allowing enchantment at the bottom of his throat to break the alcohol down into useable nutrients, Sylver let it sit there, to spread out into his system.

He wouldn’t get drunk from something like this, but it did loosen him up a bit.

“Do you know the worst part?” Lewit asked.

“I don’t,” Sylver said.

Lewit took a moment to finish his second glass, and Sylver did the same.

“Even if they fix the atlas, reconnect everything, it’s going to be years until the seas are even remotely close to being traversable. The winds have changed, and my navigator swears that the currents are shifting too,” Lewit explained.

“I don’t follow,” Sylver said.

Of course, the first person he would talk to after doing what he did was someone directly affected by it.

It would have been stupid to expect anything else.

“You saw the sea turn red?” Lewit asked as Sylver nodded.

“I thought it was something local when I saw it,” Sylver lied.

“As far as we can tell, it’s universal. We sent a messenger hawk out hours ago, and we didn’t get so much as a confirmation that they received it,” Lewit said.

“I take it your normal method of communication is down?” Sylver asked.

It was a pointless question because he already knew the answer.

“Communications being down is a problem, but it’s not the end of the world. But without functional navigation, we’ll be stuck circling the same spot for months on end,” Lewit said.

The main reason Sylver never got too close to boats, ships, or similar naval modes of transportation, was that he didn’t need them. The Ibis teleported him where he needed to go, and by the time he started to venture out on his own, he had a small army of shades and undead capable of flying.

The rare time he had something he needed in the sea/ocean, he usually flew to the location, and then just sunk to where he needed to be.

Aside from his fear of deep water, there were also plain and simple not enough good reasons to venture out into the sea.

The few times Sylver had to travel by ship, was a miserable experience. Everything was either coated in oily fat, or soaked in salty water, he distinctly remembered that it was teeth rattlingly cold every second of every day, and the part that pissed him off more than anything was just how long it took.

Not because the ship covered a great distance.

But because the ship couldn’t move in a straight line. They had to traverse an invisible maze and had to adjust for the wind, and the currents, and even then, they stopped every chance they had to get their bearings.

Because in Eira, getting lost at sea was effortless.

Not just because the islands tended to move around and hide in some cases.

Not just because the stars weren’t always trustworthy.

But also because Sylver had heard stories of insane levels of time dilatation. Sailors whose voyage was meant to last 3 months and ended up taking 11years.

As far as Sylver was concerned, you had to have several screws loose to interact with the sea, while it’s capable of interacting with you.

He wouldn’t go as far as to say messing with demons was a safer professional than being a sailor, but at least demons were a thing, they could be negotiated with, they were “mortal” to a certain extent, they could be hurt, could be killed, damaged, and so on.

The sea was the sea.

It wasn’t “malicious,” it didn’t pick sides, didn’t judge, couldn’t be beaten into submission, you couldn’t threaten it into serving you, the only thing you could do was prepare for it, and hope that when it did something unexpected, you were ready for it.

“What’s your backup plan if there’s no response?” Sylver asked.

Lewit had been staring at the bottle on his table while Sylver reminisced about his last voyage on the open sea.

“That’s what the other captains are currently trying to figure out,” Captain Lewit said.

Sylver stood up from his stool and ran his hands down his robe to straighten it out. Lewit seemed like a good man, and Sylver didn’t have all that much gold to pay him for the help.

“If you’re interested, I have a way you might be able to use to navigate. But I’ll warn you, it involves dark magic,” Sylver offered.

Spring had informed him that Pretzel was walking back to the office and that a person sealed off in wet bandages was following him.

“Does it involve human sacrifice?” the captain asked, with a perfectly neutral tone of voice.

If Sylver hadn’t felt the non-reaction in the man’s soul, he would have struggled to guess which way the captain was leaning.

“It doesn’t. All I would need is half a cup of blood, from 3 people with relatives in 3 different countries,” Sylver offered.

“And what would you want in exchange for that?” the captain asked.

He stood up from his seat, but he still had to look up to meet Sylver’s eyes.

“I’d like for you to smooth things over with Captain Leese. He’s hesitant about letting one of his crew leave,” Sylver explained.

Initially, Sylver had hoped to get a map and be on his merry way, but if what the men near Captain Leese were to be believed, trying to find the Fin’s home country without a guide was a fool’s errand.

Sylver’s initial plan was to get to the general area and then set off explosives on the surface, to get the attention of the nearest guard, scout, or someone associated with the underwater colony, and go from there.

But the problem with that was that he was just as likely to spook them away, as he was to get them to talk to him. A guide would make things much easier.

There was a knock on the door.

“Enter,” Captain Lewit said.

Two people entered the room.

The person Sylver had to assume was the Fin wore a thick wool coat, with matching thick wool trousers, with pale yellow bandages covering the entirety of their face, leaving only small silts for the eyes to see through.

The clothing, along with the bandages, was soaked through with water. It clung onto the fabric as if it was thick translucent glue, but despite how fragile the liquid seemed to be, not so much as a drop fell off it.

The other man looked much like Captain Lewit did, small, lean, and tightly wound the way men whose job involved pulling heavy things tended to be. He was shirtless, bald, and his left eye was slightly milky.

The shirtless man gave Sylver a very odd look, and for a moment Sylver thought he was about to fight him. But the moment passed, and the shirtless captain simply nodded at him, and went to sit on one of the other chairs scattered throughout the small room.

“He says he has a way to navigate,” Captain Lewit said.

“Will goats be enough?” Captain Leese asked in jest.

“I’ll take them if you don’t need them,” Sylver said.

“No goats, but we need blood from 3 people with families in 3 different cities,” Captain Lewit explained.

“Which cities?” Leese asked.

Sylver gestured towards the world map on the wall. It wasn’t to scale and didn’t have any important routes on it, merely the names of the cities and countries.

“Essentially, you’ll have 3 compasses, that point to the relevant family member. From that, you can triangulate your position, and at the very least reach dry land,” Sylver explained, as he tapped three random land locations on the map, and then tapped an empty spot in the Sinis sea.

***

The fact that the sailors were desperate soothed any concerns they might have had about Sylver taking their blood.

One was a mother who had a son in a place called “Yerth,” another was a man whose father lived in “Berick,” and the third was a man who had four brothers living in “Pere,” Novva’s city.

After the spell was done, the three bowls with blood were glued onto a table, and placed inside Lewit’s office, just to be sure rain or sea water didn’t ruin them. Sylver explained that they would stop working in 2 months, and very strongly advised them against tinkering with the magic, to figure out how it worked.

Captain Lewit spoke to Captain Leese in private, and Sylver was permitted to borrow Leese’s man.

The Fin man merely nodded at Captain Leese when he was instructed to lead Sylver to the underwater colony and disappeared to retrieve his belongings.

When he returned, the heavily clothed Fin man didn’t have a solid grasp of Eirish and spoke with an accent so thick that Sylver had a hard time understanding him. Captain Leese translated for him and explained that they would need to travel by boat, or underwater because he wouldn’t be able to find the colony from the sky.

The man was introduced to Sylver as Gregory Hyland.

The sum total of Gregory’s belongings all fit into a single tightly wound cloth bag, that he carried over his shoulder. He was skeptical about getting onto Sylver’s floating piece of ice, but he got onto it all the same.

The men from his boat waved goodbye to him, and Gregory waved back at them, as the large boats gradually disappeared from view.

When Sylver asked what the colony they were going to was called, Gregory said, “The Land Of Fins,” and then corrected himself and said “Finland.”