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Ch270-Chasing Waterfalls

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There was a kind of waterfall made of glowing, almost white, but with a hint of blue, sand.

Mora, Lostal, and the two guides kept their distance from the bottom left “star” that surrounded the enormous stone face high high above them.

It didn’t look particularly big from a distance, at least not enormous, but from this close-up Sylver had to estimate that the square face was as wide as the city of Arda was.

The hole the sand came from was a very neat square, about 30 meters in height and width, and the sand that came out of it floated through the air as if it was floating.

Although “floating” might be the wrong word to use, since the sand acted more like smoke, it spread out, and sort of dissolved into the air.

Sylver picked up a rock from the floor and tossed it into the stream.

There wasn’t any sound as the rock fell into the stream and didn’t come out of it.

Sylver floated a stick into his hand and very slowly pushed it into the stream.

He couldn’t feel the movement of the stream, like the almost blinding glowing flowing sand wasn’t there. And stranger still, unlike the rock, the stick came out of the stream completely unaffected.

Sylver walked away from the stream and turned towards the two guides.

“I’ll ask just in case, but do either of you know what you’re supposed to do if you want to go through with the trials?” Sylver asked.

The two men looked at him, turned and looked at each other, and shook their heads “no,” towards Sylver.

“Alright, just wanted to make sure… So, you just come here, pat yourself on the back for becoming a man, and then travel back?” Sylver asked.

The two of them waited a few seconds, whether to double-check that they heard and understood the question properly, or merely to make it seem like they had, and then nodded “yes.”

“Great,” Sylver said to no one in particular.

He turned back to the stream again and looked around in his [Bound Bones] until he found a human foot. He wasn’t sure where he got it from, but he summoned it into his hand and tossed it into the stream.

It passed completely unimpeded through the stream as if it wasn’t there and landed on the ground. But as Sylver made it float back into his hand, he immediately noticed something incredibly strange.

The foot was clean.

Aside from the dirt it had landed in.

When Sylver summoned it, it had dirt under the nails, there were scuff marks on the heel, but although it was “clean” the dried blood was still there.

Sylver summoned an iron nail, pushed it into the foot, and threw it into the stream again.

It fell out as if the stream wasn’t there, but there wasn’t so much as a trace of the nail.

Sylver pressed his palm over the wound, the slit on his hand opened, and through a thin blood vessel he replaced about 50 ml of the blood inside the foot with his own. He also made sure to leave a few droplets outside of it, to check if living tissue would act as an insulator.

But for all his caution, the foot fell through the stream without any reaction, and Sylver’s undead “blood” inside and outside the human foot was completely untouched.

He already had a good guess as to what was happening, but just to be certain, Sylver summoned one of his daggers into his hand. He pushed so much mana into the metal instrument it began to bend from the magical pressure, and as he tossed it into the stream, the dagger almost sounded to scream.

What little scarps came out were rusted beyond recognition, and even as Sylver tried to float them over to him, they dissolved into the air.

Sylver looked inside his [Bound Bones] and summoned the rib of a horse.

He placed a wooden chair, a metallic mug, one of his daggers, and a brand-new notebook inside of it.

He tossed the bone into the stream and rolled his eyes as the smoking horse rib fell out from the bottom of it.

The bone was covered in cracks, was so hot that the bone marrow inside was bubbling and leaking out, and as Sylver reached into it with [Bound Bones] he found that his metallic mug and dagger were gone, and only the wooden chair and notebook remained.

“Fuck you,” Sylver mumbled towards the stream of faintly blue fast-moving sand.

He lifted his hand up to his face, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He hadn’t given it much thought, but since the moment he set foot into this place, he had yet to see a single piece of metal.

The only metal he did see belonged to Lostal or other dead foreigners, and the thing every single piece of armour and weaponry had in common was that it was enchanted.

Spring summoned a female shade he deemed the least valuable, one of the pirates that was barely following orders, and after he gave the woman a second to fully solidify, he shoved her into the stream.

She stumbled through it and landed on her face underneath it. After a couple of seconds, she stood up and walked back to Spring.

Her headscarf was still there, as were the rest of the cloth rags she had been given to cover herself with, but the dagger and the copper handles of her garrotte had disappeared.

Spring sighed, as he moved the vast majority of the heavily armoured army into Mora’s shadow and had the named shades strip down to their underwear.

While he was at it, Spring got 2 apple-sized balls of [Black Mass], one of which was empty, while the other had a [Common] shade inside it, and threw both into the stream of sand.

Thankfully both balls landed on the ground without any issue, so at least Sylver had that.

Spring had a shade that was wearing metal armour infuse itself into a ball of [Black Mass], but while the ball reached the ground, the metallic armour didn’t.

The reason Sylver was pinching his nose was that although the metal supports he had in his hands, legs, and other pieces of inorganic material inside him were quite easy to remove, there was one rather important piece of metal that he wasn’t comfortable with taking out of his body.

The needle that, to quote his [Deathless] perk, “unless the needle is destroyed, you will not die,” which he took to mean that if it was destroyed, he would “die.”

What that meant for an undead lich’s soul, that was inhabiting a human body that is so heavily modified that it would be disingenuous to call it “alive,” he didn’t know, and he wasn’t too eager to find out.

Sylver had 2 ideas, neither of which he particularly liked.

Idea 1 was to leave the needle with Mora, and hope that in the event she was attacked she was able to get away.

Sylver trusted his trusty companion, trusted her with his life, but he couldn’t even imagine how on edge he would be if his needle was out of his sight, out of his reach, and 1 single lucky shot away from being broken.

With that in mind, idea 2 was slightly less bad, purely since he’d at least know where the needle was.

Sylver’s robe moved Ria into his hand, and he looked at the metal woman who was in a deep coma. He was certain the sand wasn’t going to work on her, but the part he wasn’t certain about was whether she would be malleable enough for him to get the needle into her.

On top of that, he wasn’t certain about was whether her magic-blocking ability would seal the needle away to such an extent that Sylver would lose connection with his body and would get stuck inside.

He hoped that simply embedding the needle into Ria would be enough for her to protect it from the sand, and that by maintaining physical contact with the needle, his soul wouldn’t get disconnected from his current body.

Sylver summoned a fork into his hand, removed one of the prongs, and then cut it down the middle so that he was left with a small piece of metal, that was roughly the size of his needle.

He placed the fork fragment in the dead centre of the underside of Ria’s gold bar, and in terms of hardness, it felt like he was pushing the fragment into the skin of a watermelon.

As Sylver slowly pressed the metal fragment into the metal, the gold bar softened, and now felt more like clay. Sylver covered Ria in a mushroom shell, in case she became liquid, and once she was fully encased he attempted to magically affect the fork fragment and was relieved by the fact that he could no longer feel the metal fork prong fragment.

If he wasn’t actively looking at Ria with his eyes and went by his mana sense, he wouldn’t have been able to tell that there was a piece of metal embedded into Ria’s metal body.

Sylver pushed Ria into the stream with his own hand, so he had direct contact with her just in case something did happen, but lucky for both, the sand ignored Ria, it ignored the small metal fragment embedded into her skin, and it ignored Sylver’s undead hand.

Just like the female shade said, the white sand felt fuzzy. Like putting your hand into a pillow filled with warm goose feathers.

Aside from feeling “fuzzy” Sylver couldn’t say much else about the white sand.

Given the location, his best guess was that the sand was the result of an artifact, or possibly a relatively powerful deity.

One that was so focused on preventing people with metallic weapons from entering its inner sanctum, that it didn’t have enough power left over to bless the sand.

Sylver turned towards Lostal while he considered how best to handle the Ria and needle situation.

She was in a coma so he could simply hide her inside his chest, but what if she decided now was the time to wake up, found herself in a dark and wet place, and as she burst out of his chest snapped his needle into two.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. You, Mora, and these two are going to wait here until tomorrow’s sundown. If I’m not back by then, Mora will get you out of here, and take you to the closest village,” Sylver said to Lostal, who nodded his head.

Sylver turned towards the two guides and gestured towards Lostal.

“Anything happens to him; the horse is going to come to your city and kill everyone. If you try to run away, prick him with a slow-acting poison, or so much as look at him in an unfriendly manner, the horse will know, and it will come to your city and kill everyone. Do you understand me?” Sylver asked the two green-skinned guides.

Both of their faces had thin fish-like scales underneath their skin, which made most of their face immobile, and left them with a permanent calm expression.

And although Sylver couldn’t get a proper read on their souls, he could see it in their faintly glowing eyes that they were, very rightfully given the circumstances, absolutely terrified of him.

After a short pause, both men nodded that they understood.

As Sylver’s needle slowly moved down his arm, through his elbow, wrist, and finally came out from the tip of his thumb, he realized that there were 2 more inorganic things he wanted to take with him.

[Xander’s Waystone] and the [Rune Of Infinite Summoning] that was the source of his explosives.

But taking them with him meant wrapping Ria around them, and although she certainly felt malleable enough to do it, he was worried moving her around too much would break her.

She’d explained in the past that she didn’t have 1 single thing that was a “brain,” and that all of her was the brain, but now that she wasn’t actively moving the pieces around, Sylver was concerned that if he moved the pieces around too much, it’d lead to something synonymous with brain damage.

He made a small incision in his shoulder, took out both the amber-coloured waystone, and the pale white rune, wrapped them together in a small blob of [Black Mass] and tossed it towards Mora, who caught it with her mouth and swallowed it.

Since he was at it, Sylver moved all of his belongings that he spread out amidst several bones into a single human tibia, which he also tossed towards Mora, who swallowed it and placed it in the same place as the waystone and rune.

With that handled, Sylver got back to putting his instant kill toothpick into a comatose metal golem, that could theoretically wake up at any moment and was just as likely to throw the needle out into the disintegrating sand, as she was to swallow it whole and trap Sylver’s soul inside.

But his stomach seemed, if not happy, at least neutral, towards the idea, so at the absolute least this wasn’t the stupidest thing he had done today.

As Mora, Lostal, and the two guides walked into the jungle to find a good spot to camp, Sylver stood in front of the stream of deadly sand and couldn’t help but grin at the thought that this of all things would be the end of him.

Ria was pressed against his chest, so the needle was sandwiched between her and Sylver’s skin, and in the worst-case scenario, he would hopefully be able to absorb it into himself, and then slow down the sand’s deteriorating effect long enough to find a safe spot to hide and wait for Edmund to rescue him.

As Sylver lifted his foot to step into the stream of potentially life-ending sand, Spring did the silent shade equivalent of coughing into his fist.

“What?” Sylver asked out loud.

“The black thing Ria made?” Spring said.

“What black-” the faintly glowing metal bar of black was placed into Sylver’s hand by his robe. “Fuck…”

“Can’t leave it with Mora since it could kill her. Too risky to break a piece off to see if the sand affects it,” Spring thought out loud.

Sylver turned the ever so faintly glowing bar of black metal around in his hand.

It had a similar feeling to it that Ria did, but where Ria’s magic blocking effect was even and consistent, the one that surrounded the black metal felt…

Not weak or inconsistent exactly, but not as thorough? If Ria’s effect was 100%, the black thing was at 30% or 20%.

“The worms SAM was made from were alive… It stands to reason that even if Ria’s magic did alter the worm’s physical form, they would still be living?” Sylver asked as if there was anyone around who knew enough on the matter to agree or disagree with him.

He stared off in the distance as he tried to make a decision, and as he felt the black metal bar shiver in his hand, he looked down at it and saw Ria and his needle.

Except Ria and Sylver’s needle were pressed tightly against his chest.

Sylver undid the binding, moved Ria into his left hand, and kept what was once SAM in his right.

Both of them were a brilliant gold colour, both had Sylver’s needle embedded partially into the wider part of their metal bars, and no matter how much mana Sylver tried to inject into them, both golden metal bars had a complete and perfect none-reaction.

“SAM? Do something if you can understand me?” Sylver asked to the metal bar in his right hand.

It didn’t respond, its soul was still absorbing fragments, but Sylver could feel a sort of metaphorical hand reaching out.

Like it was trying to grab at something outside of itself, but it wasn’t aggressive with the grabbing, it was more along the lines of a toddler sticking its arms out.

Sylver’s curiosity almost got the better of him, and he prepared to reach out to the searching hand, but he caught himself and pulled his soul away from the now golden-coloured creature.

Every question Sylver had was collected, noted, and stored away for a later date, when Ria was awake enough to answer them.

“Stay like that until I say otherwise,” Sylver ordered the golden copy of Ria.

He couldn’t say for certain if the creature that used to be SAM understood his command, there was very little certainty as a whole in this situation, but if it had mimicked Ria as a result of his conversation with Spring, then he hoped it would understand the command long enough for Ria to wake up, and sort this nonsense out.

Sylver pressed Ria back against his chest, and placed, what was once SAM, and was now a perfect replica of Ria, on his back, so it covered his spine.

He had no intention of using the replica as a decoy, but he wanted it to be close enough to Ria for her to talk to it if she could, but not so close that it would kill Ria if it violently lashed out.

Sylver looked at the stream of glowing sand, and waited for his thoughts to settle down, and then waited to see if there was anything he else he forgot or overlooked.

In theory, he could make a hole in the wall via abyss magic, and like a worm make his way through the wall until he reached the other side. Aside from the extremely unlikely probability of Sylver successfully making a tunnel without accidentally crawling face-first into the flowing sand, there was also no guarantee the correct path was “forward.”

Technically speaking he was looking “up.”

He was facing the mountain’s peak, from the inside, and even though Sylver could feel Eira’s real gravity being altered, he didn’t trust himself enough to not to get lost and make a giant loop inside the rock.

His only real concern was his needle being eaten away, and even then, there was a good chance that since the needle was “him,” the sand would interpret it as being living.

He was obviously going to do his absolute best not to find out for certain, but the fact that it felt like something that was possible alleviated a small amount of Sylver’s fear.

When he entered the sand stream, it was surprisingly pleasant.

Like bathing in boiling water, except the warmth reached all the way inside him.

He walked a total of 10 steps and then found himself standing in a large room with a ridiculously high ceiling. Despite his short walk, Mora felt like she was miles away.

The sand flowed along the walls, floor, and ceiling, and pooled at the wall Sylver had come from.

On the floor in front of him, the “floor” from his perspective and current gravity, a path made out of stones carved to resemble large square footprints connected the ledge Sylver was standing on, to the next platform.

Sylver walked slowly, one step at a time, but to his surprise, he reached the other side without the stones breaking underneath him. He couldn’t see what was below the flowing sand, but if he had to guess, it was nothing good.

There was a faint smell of burned apples in the air, and while the sand itself didn’t make any sounds, there was some kind of distant whistling, almost a groaning sound, but high-pitched.

Now that he was on the other side of the room, Sylver looked back and saw that he was standing on the wall of a giant square-shaped bucket. And that the spot he came from was the “bottom” of the bucket, where the sand that ran down the sides pooled together.

As Sylver turned back around, the previously empty flat platform now had a pedestal in the middle of it, with a gauntlet made of black glass, and a hole in the wall that looked just the right size for the gauntlet to fit.

Sylver walked over to the gauntlet and looked inside of it.

From the middle of the palm to about 5 centimetres above the wrist, there were a series of thorns, curved downwards, towards the fingers of the gauntlet. The gauntlet itself was tall enough that it had a bend for the elbow, and looked like it was going to stop halfway up the bicep.

“If this was meant to make the wearer bleed, the thrones are too short. So it’s either meant to cause pain or poison,” Sylver said as he leaned to the left.

Carved into the gauntlet, he saw a snake, that inside its stomach had a scorpion, spider, frog, and given the context, the last strange-looking creature was likely some sort of ant.

“Pain induced by poison,” Sylver added.

Spring peered down the hole in the wall.

“There some sort of jelly,” Spring said.

Sylver tossed the shade a wooden chair leg, Spring caught it, and used it to poke at the jelly.

“Acid?” Sylver asked.

“That’s one word to describe it… It feels like it might be alive though. So probably a slime meant to eat away anything that isn’t that gauntlet,” Spring answered, as he looked at the smoking tip of the wooden chair leg and pushed the rest of it into the jelly.

It didn’t have a chance to even smoke as the “acid” made it disappear.

Sylver peered down the gauntlet again and then lifted both of his hands up to inspect them.

The gauntlet was meant for a right hand, but Sylver had a feeling he wasn’t going to be able to get his arm back once he shoved it into the gauntlet.

He summoned 15 kilograms of [Black Mass], compressed it as much as he could, and very gently pushed the arm-shaped blob into the glass gauntlet.

As he had predicted, the thorns pierced the dark blob, injected a light green liquid into it, and one finger at a time something analogous to sharp fish scales pointed towards the fingers lifted up inside the gauntlet, and clamped down hard on the fake arm.

He experimentally wiggled around the [Black Mass] inside, and although the thorns pumped it full of poison with every movement, the gauntlet itself was surprisingly unrestrictive. The fingers in particular had enough room to comfortably hold and pen, and even write.

And as Sylver lifted the gauntlet off the pedestal, he was once again surprised by how light it was. Despite how thick the material was, and how large the gauntlet was, it felt like it barely weighed 100 grams.

He walked over to the hole in the wall, with his gauntlet in hand, and inserted it into the hole the way a person might insert a key into a lock. He kept waiting for the acid to slip in through the openings at the hinges, but the gauntlet reached all the way to the end of the hole.

The glass gauntlet made a clinking sound as the fingers found the lever, and with a hopeful smile on his face, Sylver turned the gauntlet and turned the lever upside down.

Nothing happened.

He returned it to its original position and turned it the other way.

Nothing happened.

He turned it in a complete 360 circle clockwise, did the same anti-clockwise, and turned it about 20 times clockwise, and as he pushed the gauntlet further inside, the false fingers figured out that the lever was a ring as big as a melon attached to the wall.

Sylver summoned more [Black Mass] and wrapped it around his arm, connected it to the [Black Mass] inside the gauntlet, and as he pulled at the gauntlet, the gauntlet pulled at the ring, and as the ring moved away from the wall, he heard a distant hollow thump.

He continued pulling, and he heard a second thump, the ring came away from the wall it was attached to by about a centimetre, and as Sylver continued to pull, steam began to rise from the over-enchanted [Black Mass], and when one of the [Black Mass] tendrils wrapped around his shoulder snapped off, he stopped pulling.

There was a single distant thump.

“If I cut off one of their arms, attach it to my arm at the wrist… Fuse the elbow joint so it’s all one bone… It’d be pointless, their fingers wouldn’t hold under that much pressure… And if I leave, and come back, this will probably become a different test…” Sylver thought out loud.

In theory, Mora’s strings that he had inside of him could be strong enough for him to pull the gauntlet out with the ring, but if his grip slipped and the acid splashed all over him?

The very thought made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Sylver thought about it for about a minute, before he resigned himself to his fate.

“You’re not getting my good arm though,” he said to the gauntlet, as it let go of the ring, and slowly came out of the hole.

As the [Black Mass] inside slithered out of it and returned to his robe, Sylver dislocated his thumb on his left hand and forced the muscles in his palm to rearrange the height of his fingers.

A few seconds later he had two right hands, and with an annoyed grimace, began to insert his formerly left hand into the right-handed gauntlet.