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Ch207-Be Polite, Be Efficient

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The reactions gave it away.

The dog and rat switched from attacking Sylver, to stalling him.

At the same time, they figured out Sylver’s extremely limited range for his abyss magic. Every time Sylver tried to breach that 5-meter gap they maintained, they worked together to force him away.

If this were a normal fight, Sylver would have easily sacrificed an arm, leg, head, or two, in exchange for getting a good hit on his opponent.

But this was a fight where Sylver’s soul was on the line, and while his body was quite simple to repair and piece together, anything equating to so much as a scratch on his soul would be beyond problematic. Now that Sylver was aware of how their inflated soul magic worked, he had prepared himself as much as he could, but it was still a very dangerous fight for him.

The rat in particular was annoying to deal with, that little whip-like tail was faster than Sylver’s reaction, only the fact that Ria protected Sylver’s side saved him from getting his soul cleaved in two.

Sylver had sent Spring away to catch the owner of these monsters, but the shade returned almost immediately on account of the fact that he couldn’t see them. They left no footprints, made no sound, and even though he was materialized, Spring couldn’t see anyone.

As the rat monster spun midair and made his tail whip move in a corkscrew fashion, Ria just barely managed to move to Sylver’s left to block the attack. As the rat landed and started to prepare for the next attack, Ria disappeared from Sylver’s side and missed the small rodent’s body by a hair’s breadth. 

Even as she tried to at least smack it with the back end of the staff, the rodent had already launched itself away from her, and Ria was forced to return to Sylver’s side to protect him from the next attack.

For a split second, Sylver thought he was safe behind the tree separating him from the rodent, but as he should have known, the rat’s tail passed through the large trunk without so much as disturbing a leaf.

Ria once again saved Sylver’s unlife, and Sylver was forced to dive out of the way and gave the owner of these monsters even more time to run away and hide. As he landed on the mushy ground and splashed himself with slimy algae, Sylver got an idea he should have gotten much sooner.

Sylver summoned his ax into his hand, and as he dodged out of the way again, swiped it through the water beneath him. The ax turned from its usual muted black to a vibrant green, as Sylver landed on a tree trunk, and felt the wood he had magically reinforced crack under the force he exerted onto it with his foot.

His aim was off, by quite a bit, but the rat wasn’t concerned enough with Sylver’s ax to dodge it, it probably didn’t even notice the metal instrument harmlessly bounce off its inflated translucent soul armor.

Sylver’s [Novice Chloromancy] very likely paid for itself just now, as Sylver wasn’t confident that he would have had enough plant-related know-how to do what he just did.

The green moss that had been on the ax, and was thrown off it, splattered all over the rat’s small real body, and within seconds started to do what Sylver had instructed it.

The rodent squealed with pain as the moss quickly spread from a single speck and reached its face. Its nose was filled and plugged up, its eyes were blinded with green, and because Sylver wasn’t in a great mood, the plant entered the creature from the other side, and similarly started to irritate every soft spot it could find.

The rat made a final attempt to get Sylver, but Ria blocked it, and once again exploded towards the rodent, and pierced its torso.

[Common Otso (Marsh Scout) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 40 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 48!
+5AP

The dog monster barely had a moment to react, as Sylver simply threw a twig at it, and forced the piece of wood to grow with explosive speed. The majority of the wood shards missed, but a couple managed to get the dog in the thigh.

More importantly, the distraction gave Sylver all the time he needed to deftly get close enough to the dog to use 2nd tier abyss magic. The ray extended out of Sylver's finger like a small beam of black light, and promptly “pierced” the monster through the neck, and split it into two as Sylver flicked his finger upward.

[Common Otso (Marsh Guardian) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 40 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

With a gentle tug, Sylver made the rat and dog corpse fly towards him, as he threw them towards the waiting shade wolf, who was in the process of having the bear tied onto its back. Sylver left the corpses for the shades to deal with and instructed them to follow behind him when they had gathered all of them.

Meanwhile, Sylver focused on catching up to the person who had made all of these things. He jumped from tree to tree and kept his eyes and ears as open as his soul. As Spring had said there weren’t any footsteps, a convenient trail of blood, or even pieces of bright red fabric that had accidentally gotten caught on the various bushes as the person made their getaway.

The only thing Sylver had to go on was his gut, and that the two monsters had gone on the defensive when he spotted their owner.

Sylver moved in the direction the monsters had been most protective off, as stupid as that was, and he couldn’t even be proud of himself for finding them, because it was pure stupid luck.

The moonlight created a faint flash of light in the distance, as it reflected on something shiny the person was wearing, and Sylver just happened to be in the right spot to see it. With the direction confirmed, as well as the person’s presence, Sylver summoned Aleri, the 6-winged bird shade, and sent the dagger-wielding shade ahead of him.

The flying shade covered the distance Sylver would cover in almost a minute, in under a second. Sadly, with the target being invisible to the predatory shade’s eyes, he could do little but fly in a random pattern near the ground, in the hope of hitting something.

But apparently Sylver’s luck with the moonlight reflection wasn’t repeatable, as Aleri did very little other than fill the dark swamp with a whistling noise created from the dagger moving faster than it had any right to.

Spring made a very quick note to have an aerodynamic dagger made for Aleri, as Sylver arrived at the spot he had seen the flash of light. There was a hole in the leaves above, a large branch had fallen and created an opening.

It was impossible to miss, which meant that whoever Sylver was chasing wanted Sylver to see the flash.

“I JUST WANT TO TALK!” Sylver shouted with an enhanced voice, as he questioned whether he was actually chasing the creator, or if he had been foolishly running after a shiny chipmunk or something.

As someone who utilized decoys on an almost daily basis, Sylver felt oddly conflicted at being tricked like this. On the one hand, it was nice to see the practice hadn’t died out, on the other hand, Sylver hated having his strategies being used on him.

Sometimes.

But this was not one of those times where he enjoyed seeing just how effective he would be against someone as knowledgeable and capable as himself. Instead, Sylver was slightly disappointed in himself and pissed off for falling for such a simple and stupid trick.

As Aleri disappeared into his shadow, Sylver felt the faintest wisp of mana brush up against him. He turned his body towards the direction the wisp had come from, and without a word, started to run.

It was faint, for a minute or so, and then Sylver felt so much mana, that he decided that even if he found the source, he wasn’t going to fight it. He ran and ran, and just as suddenly as he had started running, he stopped dead in his tracks. He was surrounded by trees and mushy weed-infested earth. 

Very carefully Sylver leaned down, and using a branch on the floor, pushed the fallen leaves away.

There were pebbles with barely visible symbols carved into them, conveniently hidden underneath the leaves. As Sylver brushed more leaves out of the way, he found more pebbles, all of which were neatly lined up against an invisible edge.

“What the fuck is this?” Ria asked.

The fear in her voice startled Sylver, he knew he should be afraid, but why was she?

“What are you talking about specifically?” Sylver asked, with a forced calmness he didn’t feel.

He had decided the moment he saw the third pebble he was just going to leave, the only reason he wasn’t running away right now was that he wanted to see what had set Ria off.

“Can you not see it? It’s like a kaleidoscope, the sky is on the left, the house is upside down, and everything is moving around like mirrors are floating everywhere,” Ria explained, as Sylver’s eyes opened a little wider.

That’s right, she isn’t affected by magic…

“Would you mind flying high into the air, and checking how big this thing is? It should be a five-sided pyramid,” Sylver asked, and without a word, Ria flew out of his robe and disappeared through the foliage above.

Sylver very gently brushed more leaves out of the way, and with each carved pebble, hoped Ria was going to bring back some good news.

Because actual witches were difficult to deal with, even the good ones. Then again, this kind of soul magic is very rarely developed by not kidnapping toddlers and sticking them full of needles until something happened.

While the symbols on the pebbles themselves didn’t appear demonic, Sylver’s gut informed him that these weren’t the friendly type of witches. 

While he wished to remain optimistic and hoped that this was one of those “there are only women here, you need to have sex with all of us, for a ritual or something” covens, Sylver’s gut told him not to hold his breath.

As Ria descended into the back of his robe, he let go of the stick he was holding and stood up.