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Ch201-One Loose End

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Sylver had been careful not to crumple up the page any more than he initially had. There were 7 creases on it, from the way it had appeared in his fist, and another crease from when he tried to fold it into 2.

He continued staring at the page, as Faust continued pacing back and forth on his left. It was the middle of the night at this point, most of the sect was asleep, two were keeping watch near the entrance, and Sylver had provided them with a light source in the form of a glowing carved-up plank of wood.

The ink with which the word TRADE had been written was a very dark blue, dark enough that it appeared black. The size of the page and the two rounded corners on the bottom left and right meant it had been ripped out of a pocket notebook.

The tracker in Sylver’s pocket confirmed that the mana this page was emanating was the same one that had messed up the sword the [Jester Hero] had given Lola.

Whether that meant that the mana belonged to Edmund, Sylver couldn’t say for certain.

It felt like Edmund’s mana, but considering they were dealing with a [Hero], possibly a dragon, and Rose the ex-[Hero], who is to say one of them couldn’t make a convincing imitation?

This could be part of Rose’s ploy to fuck Sylver over one last time, it could be part of the [Jester Hero]s long term plan, it could be that the dragon is clairvoyant and knew exactly what buttons to push to make Sylver come here.

Sylver still had the [Dead Man’s Last Stand] burning a hole in his pocket, if there was ever a time to use it. A dragon’s corpse could do wonders for him.

“Ron said the [Jester Hero] killed a dragon before he came to Arda,” Sylver mumbled, as he searched around his [Bound Bones] storage and found the report Lola had written for him.

Faust stopped mid step and turned to look at Sylver, who was carefully reading through the first couple of pages. He flipped ahead to the end, where the less concrete information was and found the “killed a dragon,” near the very bottom of the list. The rumor was recent, very recent, and Lola seemed to believe it wasn’t very likely.

“The [Hero] came from the south and traveled north. There’s a dragon’s nest just south of Silia, it would have been on the path he took,” Faust said, as Sylver went back to the first page and reread the report.

“Could be…” Sylver murmured, as he continued reading.

Faust returned to pacing back and forth.

There wasn’t too much of a debate or conversation to be had.

He came here to find Edmund. And someone seemed to have Edmund. And they seemed to want something from him.

If they know enough about me to know to entice me with Edmund’s mana, surely they would ask something I would be able to achieve with my skillset?

Sylver reached up with his hand and scratched his bandaged-up face.

“I could go,” Ria offered.

Sylver turned his head towards her, as did Faust.

“I’m immune to magic and Ki, I could fly over there and tell you if it’s a trap or not. Or just pass along a message,” Ria explained, as Sylver considered her words.

“So, we’ve agreed the dragon’s nest is where the source of the barrier is, right?” Faust asked.

Sylver took Edmund’s tracker out of his pocket and activated it. The needle spun twice before it turned towards the “middle” of the Schlagen mountains.

With the mana-soaked piece of paper, Sylver had enough mana to track Edmund about 90 times. He activated the tracker 5 times while they walked towards Faust’s sect, and Ria confirmed 2 things.

That Edmund was moving.

And that after suns went down, he stopped moving, and the tracker was pointing to the center of the Schlagen mountains.

He put the tracker away after Ria had recorded the exact position, just in case.

“I appreciate the offer, but no. Dragons are… there’s a trick to talking to them. Although since this one approached me, it might be a bit more lenient…” Sylver thought out loud, as Ria asked the question he was just about to ask.

“Why did it limit itself to a scrap of paper, and only one word?” Ria asked.

“And why did it only contact me now? I’ve been here for a couple of days already, was it waiting for something? Is it because I was transported into that empty space? The way Izan described it, it sounded like it was empty because of me,” Sylver said.

“I asked Xalibur, they call it a challenge field. Or challenge arena, doesn’t matter, you said yours was empty? No statues, no walls, no mountains, nothing?” Faust asked as Sylver shook his head.

“Just black glass under my feet… It tried to read my mind, but couldn’t, you’re thinking that was how it found me,” Sylver confirmed, as Faust shrugged his shoulders.

“Aside from potential death, what’s stopping us from going there right now?” Ria asked.

“The center is inside the “White Ring,” which while not strictly locked down-” Sylver gestured with a tired hand for Faust to continue.

“-will be a hassle to enter, especially while the whole country is on high alert, and doubly so for someone trying to get to where the source of the barrier is,” Faust explained, as Sylver went back to staring at the mana-soaked piece of paper.

“Why “trade?” Why that word? Specifically. And why use such an old dialect? Is it to check if I’m old enough to know it?” Sylver asked.

“Are you old enough to know it?” Ria asked.

Sylver tapped the first letter of the word TRADE with his finger.

“It’s not Eirish, not exactly, it’s one of the precursor languages. The only reason I know it is because most of the good grimoires were written in it. Apart from Nyx and I, there were only a couple of people who could read it, aside from those that lived long enough to have spoken it. But it doesn’t make sense,” Sylver complained, as Ria and Faust continued trying to speculate what Sylver now realized was irrelevant information.

“I’m going to try and talk to it tomorrow morning,” Sylver said with a suddenly relaxed tone.

“What if it’s a trap?” Faust asked, and Sylver could do little but nod his head.

“What if it is? I need to find Edmund. From all the methods currently available to me, I believe Edmund is with the dragon. If I decide not to go see the dragon, what do you suggest I do instead?” Sylver asked.

Faust opened his mouth for a moment as if to speak, but he knew what Sylver would say to counter his suggestions and questions before he even said them.

Ria’s form shivered for a moment, as she practically shouted the words out. Sylver would later want to hit himself for not thinking of something so obvious.

“We don’t have to go to the dragon,” Ria exclaimed, as both Sylver and Faust turned to look at her.

“We can have the dragon come to us…” Sylver finished.

***

This high up in the air, Sylver got a bird’s eye view of the land that surrounded the Schlagen mountains. He had initially thought there were only 5 peaks, but now he could see there were 12 of them.

Each peak was nearly identical to the other, or it had been originally, every single one had been infested by people and looked closer to an anthill than a mountain top. The design was most definitely human, dwarves wouldn’t have built such tall buildings, and wouldn’t have been so wasteful with what little space they had to work with.

There were large rope bridges that connected neighboring sects, and even now Sylver could see people walking along them. Each bridge seemed to be wide enough for 2 horse carts to pass each other.

But what made them stick out in Sylver’s eyes, was the way they weren’t centered. Either the bridges had been built first, and someone built the sect buildings second, or there was a reason they made them longer than they had to be.

Sylver looked around himself one more time before he sat down on the invisible platform his [Bracelet Of The Aurai] created for him.

“How come you don’t have more tools like this?” Ria asked and broke the silence that could only be obtained when sitting hundreds of meters in the air. 

They were high enough that some of the clouds reached low enough to wash over them.

“Are you asking about enchanted tools in general?” Sylver asked.

“Yes. A wand or something, or an enchanted sword,” Ria said.

“The main drawback is that enchanted items leak some mana. For a competent mage, that may be enough to track me, and in the case of monsters, it would make sneaking up on them nearly impossible. Then there’s the possibility of someone stealing my weapon and using it against me,” Sylver explained.

“Does that happen often?” Ria asked as Sylver chuckled at the memory.

“Once is enough. It’s… to say it’s embarrassing to be killed by your own weapon, is an understatement. And as you might have noticed, I try to avoid direct confrontation. If I have something seriously powerful with me, leaking mana all over the place, I might as well walk around with a giant target on my back. My illusions, and decoy shades, work so well because there isn’t that much differentiating me from them,” Sylver said.

Even though there wasn’t any noticeable change in the air, Sylver’s gut reacted to something. He looked around but went back to relaxing a moment later.

“What about your umbrella?” Ria asked.

“It’s a special case. I uh… in my time teleportation was rare. And limited to a very small number of mages, that straddled the line between mage and sorcerer, because of how much intuition their magic required. In hindsight, I took it more personally than I should have. The umbrella was built with mana leakage in mind. Lola used very specific, and very rare crystals and any other kind of enchantment would require years upon years of research and development,” Sylver explained, as he affectionately tapped the area on his back where the umbrella was hidden.

There were a couple of minutes of silence, during which Sylver and Ria just sat there, floating in the air, waiting for something to happen.

“Do you have anything enchanted you wouldn’t mind breaking?” Ria finally asked, as Sylver looked through his [Bound Bones] storage and couldn’t find something magical for her to deconstruct. 

He clicked his tongue.

“There’s stuff in my workshop, and Lola has more defective enchantments than she knows what to do with. Did you figure something out?” Sylver asked as Ria’s soul shrugged its shoulders.

“I’m missing something. I have a theory, but I need a magic item of some kind to experiment on. I feel like something changed in the ribs, but I can’t be sure… How long are you planning to wait?” Ria asked, as Sylver looked up at the sky and then just lay down on his invisible platform.

“Until the sun goes down. You saw it yourself; he’s being moved around; the dragon is obviously patrolling the area. If it’s patrolling the outside, that’s a different matter… Having said that, it being outside the barrier would make more sense, given the donut shape of the barrier,” Sylver said, as Ria corrected him.

“Not if your tracker is correct. Even allowing for a 10 percent error, it’s still more likely to be inside than not. If you have a sheet of paper, I can draw you the tracking lines on a map, and show you how they intersect,” Ria offered, as Sylver was reminded about the paper he had been given and reached into his pocket to take it out.

It was very carefully being held between two pieces of glass. It still hurt Sylver from how dense the mana leaking out of the paper was, but the glass helped direct it, so it wasn’t leaking towards his face.

“Was it you who asked about seeing a real dragon?” Sylver asked, as he turned the paper over and looked at the blank backside of it.

“That was Chrys. Faust mentioned dragon nests, are those something anyone could go to?” Ria asked as Sylver laughed to himself before he answered.

“They are, but it’s… like going to see a dormant volcano. You will be safe most of the time, but someone will be the unlucky bastard that goes to it when it explodes. I’m sure Lola will be able to find a dragon that’s weak enough that I would be able to protect Chrys, in the unlikely event we catch it in a bad mood,” Sylver explained, as he turned the glass-encased paper over again.

“You said there’s a trick to talking to them. What’s the trick?” Ria asked, as Sylver placed the glass onto his chest and spread his arms out to let them rest on the invisible platform. 

This high up even with the suns it was cold, or would be, if Sylver wasn’t covered in a thick layer of his robe, and was using a spell to warm his flesh up.

“You have to be polite, but keep it short and to the point, you have to be tough, but not aggressive, you need to be humble, but proud, the trick is adjusting your approach as you figure out what the dragon’s personality is.

“Which is a lot harder than it sounds. Because if you’re too aggressive, when you need to appear meek, that’s it. You don’t get a second chance… Unless you’re a lich that can make himself a new body,” Sylver explained, as Ria understood his uncharacteristically somber tone.

“I see… What language is this anyway?” Ria asked, and a small metallic tendril tapped against the piece of glass holding the page in place. Sylver lifted it to look at it again.

“It doesn’t have a name. Or rather, it’s called Eirish, but comparing this to modern Eirish is like comparing a tree to a piece of paper. There isn’t even a direct translation, this language requires context, trade is just the nearest word in modern Eirish, TRADE is typically used when-”

Sylver just barely managed to sit up as he felt the magic finish enveloping him.