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Ch211-All Bark

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It sounded like rushing water, but in the violent way an intense river stream sounded, as opposed to the almost peaceful sound of a waterfall.

Which was a perfect analogy for what Sylver was seeing in front of him right now.

It was a river of insects, crawling over each other, to the point they appeared to be more liquid, than a great many solids. They were on the ceiling, the walls, the floor, it was almost as if Sylver was watching an enormous shadow edging towards him.

“Confined space combined with a giant swarm of very small enemies… Not bad…” Sylver said, as he raised his hands towards the oncoming danger, and flexed his shoulders as the two slits on his palms snapped open.

In an almost explosive puff, the metaphorical shadow the creatures created, was replaced by a literal shadow, courtesy of Sylver’s [Draining Blight].

The corridor was barely 3 meters in height and width, Sylver had more than enough mana to completely cover the entire corridor in his HP draining smoke. 

Which he did.

There was something almost satisfying with killing so many tiny creatures.

It reminded him of his past when warriors of varying strengths banded together in an attempt to defeat him and dropped dead before they even finished explaining whether Sylver killed their son, father, brother, or some other relative.

Although these insects just made a sort of squeaking sound, a bit like mice, but a much higher note. 

“I almost feel bad for them,” Ria said, as Sylver started to walk forwards, while the insects continued getting killed from coming into contact with Sylver’s smoke, and thanks to [Dead Dominion] were promptly shoved off to the sides, to give Sylver enough room to walk.

Out of pure curiosity, Sylver purposely allowed one to pass through the smog unharmed and had Mora bind it, and bring it to him.

[Meat Scarab – Flesh Scraper – 4]
[HP: 20 – 100%]
[MP: 0 – 0%]
[Stamina: 60 – 100%]
[Corpse – Petty]
[Soul – N/A]

The small creature struggled against Mora’s reinforced threads, but Sylver could already tell it had no chance of escaping. He was familiar enough with insect biology to recognize that this thing’s internal structure was built solely to provide strength to its 3-piece mandibles.

Two were hook-shaped, while the third one at the bottom was slightly flat. This thing would hook itself into its target and would slice away a tiny piece, and presumably get shoved out of the way as thousands of [Meat Scarab]s behind it rushed in to do the same.

Death by a thousand cuts, essentially.

Its exoskeleton was oddly rough, almost sandy, and only a thin layer of oil made it shiny, and somewhat slippery. It was about the size of a small shirt button, and with its 6 legs spread out, could just barely cover Sylver’s pinkie fingernail.

Ria may have felt sorry for them, but Sylver had firsthand experience when it came to getting covered by a swarm of tiny seemingly pathetic opponents.

He’d been torn to pieces before, but there’s something uniquely unpleasant about being torn apart from the inside out. Once was enough, Sylver tended to repeat certain mistakes over and over again, until he learned his lesson, but he had all but sworn never to underestimate something small enough to crawl into his belly button.

Although he doubted they would survive their attempt to chew on his exceptionally toxic flesh, they certainly seemed willing to try. As a rule of thumb, anything that appeared swarm-like tended to be suicidal in its attempt to kill the intruder.

Sylver squashed the struggling [Meat Scarab] between his thumb and forefinger, and tossed it off to the side, where it was quickly absorbed into the ever-growing blob of [Necrotic Mutilation] following behind Sylver and Mora.

By this point in time, it was more than big enough to completely block up the corridor, and Sylver estimated that in its solidified version, the enormous mass of black and green-tinted gore would be about 2 meters thick.

He didn’t bother raising any of them as zombies, they would cost more mana than they were worth, and more importantly, assuming Sylver wasn’t the first to encounter them, whoever was ahead of him already had a way of dealing with them.

Since their mandibles didn’t feel to be enhanced by Ki or mana, a cultivator with a thick layer of Ki armor around his body could probably walk through this mess as if it wasn’t here. If not for Mora, Sylver would have done the same, his layered soul armor might as well be made out of solid steel as far as these bugs were concerned.

He did plan to eventually implant one of the skulls into Mora’s body, but he wasn’t sure if she would be capable of manipulating her soul fast enough to use the soul armor properly.

At this point it was as effortless as breathing for Sylver. He was already puppeteering his body, now all he had to do was simultaneously puppeteer the 5 inflated souls to match his limbs. The hands were the only genuinely difficult part; Sylver had to either walk around without moving them or inflate the souls so much that he had trouble physically grabbing something.

It had to be like a glove around his hands, in an ideal world, but at the moment only his palm was protected, his fingers were sticking outside the soul armor’s limit. Once he made a fist, he would be fine, but when he went to grab something or someone, his fingers would be out in the open.

Out in the open in this case meant protected by a very thick layer of [Necrotic Mutilation] armor, enhanced by mana, and made out of extremely strong bones. Sylver wasn’t certain how well the joints of his fingers would fare, but he didn’t like the thought of having his digits chopped off. The more nerve endings something had, the more annoying it was to repair.

As Sylver continued walking through the dark corridor and considered whether it would be a good idea to cut a finger off every other day, to build up a stockpile of replacements, he suddenly felt a sudden chill in the air.

It was cold enough that it crystalized his [Draining Blight], and made it fall to the floor.

As Sylver continued walking forward, the cold increased, while the number of [Meat Scarabs] attacking him became less and less, until finally they stopped trying to attack him, and were instead shattered when Sylver accidentally stepped onto their frozen corpses.

[Draining Blight (VI) Proficiency increased to 66%!]

They crunched under Sylver’s boots as he continued walking forward and scratched against the floor as the giant blob of [Necrotic Mutilation] dragged them along.

He had to store what he could away into his [Bound Bones] storage, as the amount of mana required to keep the blob of liquid gore got close to matching Sylver’s mana regeneration. Even if it was a useful weapon in a confined space, Sylver was already wasting a ton of mana to keep himself warm, and the blob would be one broken femur away from exploding out of his body.

Without any warning, a custom-made sweater appeared on Mora’s body. 

Along with a small hat that had a fluffy pom-pom at the top.

Sylver turned around to look at her with his actual eyes, and the miniaturized spider-shaped demon vessel lifted her left leg and gestured for them to continue forward.

Sylver chose to simply nod at the creature and carried on walking through the ice-covered corridor.

Sylver could feel that the “cold” they were experiencing wasn’t genuine. Ria was warm, even without Sylver’s mana to heat her up. This place was somehow siphoning heat away from Sylver’s and Mora’s bodies. He could almost feel the direction the stolen heat was being carried off to, and while Sylver could mess with his own primal energy field to counteract this, he chose not to.

It only cost about 2500MP per minute to maintain his body temperature, and even if it did get colder, at worst Sylver would lose some skin to frostbite. The pieces of himself that he referred to as his “internal organs” were mostly entirely solid, the cold wouldn’t impede them in any way.

Footprints appeared on the ice Sylver was walking on. From the distance between each matching footprint, Sylver had to guess that the owners of these footprints were running. At least 5 people, but very possibly more, considering there were several seemingly matching footprints that had varying depths.

Meaning that either they were throwing something heavy from one person to the other, or there were simply people of a similar height, with different weights, wearing the same sized shoe.

Although that doesn’t explain why they were running… Considering the possibility of traps, you would assume they would-

“There’s something very strange coming towards us,” Ria said, as Sylver turned on his heel, and simultaneously reached out with his mana and a thin tendril of [Necrotic Mutilation].

What he felt with his mana was hard to put into words, but the important thing was that the tendril lost its temperature at a nearly impossible speed, and shattered midair into a cloud of sparkling gore flakes.

Sylver felt an odd pride at the fact that Mora reacted a split second before he did, and was already two steps ahead of her, as he diverted his mana into his legs, and began to sprint down the corridor, away from the invisible coldness.

It felt surreal to run away from an enemy that Sylver could just barely sense, let alone actually see, and when mixed with the fact that neither he nor Mora made any sound as they ran, made it look a bit ridiculous.

Sylver couldn’t say for certain for how long he ran, 22 minutes and 51 seconds, according to Ria, but he eventually arrived at a very large open area.

The ground was covered in a thick layer of snow, but more importantly, the air was breathable here.

Or rather, it would be, if it wasn’t teetering on the edge of liquifying the oxygen in the air.

The room he was in could be described as a large empty sphere. Counting the passage Sylver had come through, there were 11 other openings, all of which were currently empty, but had footprints leading either in or out of them.

Sylver rubbed his [Necrotic Mutilation] gauntleted hands together, as Mora silently used her strings as makeshift snowshoes, and followed Sylver as he walked towards the closest corridor on his right. The walls and floor were covered in tiny scratches, and while it was faint, Sylver could feel traces of dried blood.

Sylver and Mora both froze as they felt a presence appear on their left.