Ch174-Anything You Can Do (1/2)

-

-

Ch174-Anything You Can Do 

-

-

“It all started… I mean, really started… 3 years ago? About 3 years ago. There was a monster outbreak, they broke down the walls, nearly destroyed the city, it was terrible,” Lola said, as Sylver continued to quietly operate on one of his clones.

Next to him were several different trays, one filled with hearts, another filled with livers, another filled with kidneys, another filled with stripped clean bones, and the last was filled with miscellaneous pieces, eyeballs, spinal discs, ligaments, tendons, and cartilage from the knees and shoulders.

Sylver kept the SAM worms off to the side and decided to inspect them while Ria was busy watching over Chrys. The technology aspect wasn’t all that interesting to him, but the curse was worth dissecting.

“The first 2 years… I’ll be honest with you, not much happened. I expanded the workshop, made connections, hired people I thought would be useful, developed new enchanted gear, and visited Ciege and Masha to make sure everything was alright with them… Oh, uh… Bruno and Tera are engaged. They live down in the dungeon now,” Lola mumbled out, as she slowly but surely pushed herself upright, and shrugged off the blanket.

Sylver felt his skin crawl as Lola cast some sort of spell on herself. 

She yawned for a while, and then rubbed the sleep and hangover out of her eyes. She looked around for her bottle of black ale, but when she couldn’t find it, because Sylver hid it away, she simply reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled a brand new one out.

“In the dungeon?” Sylver asked, as he very carefully used [Dead Dominion] to move the trays full of his own corpse parts out of Lola’s sight.

“Do you remember how he was cross breeding those creepy spiders? And he planned to crossbreed them with cows, bees, and snakes?” Lola asked, with an odd look on her face.

“Fuzzy yellow cows, yes I remember.”

“Well, he did it. Half a year before the monster outbreak, he had a small herd of them. And in his defense, the calves were adorable. He planted a field of flowers, and they would roll around in them and would then walk around covered in pollen. Their milk was very nice too, not quite honey-flavored, oddly enough it tasted lemony, but in a good way,” Lola said, as she yanked the cork out of the bottle with practiced ease, and took three long gulps from it.

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“But when the monsters attacked, they killed all but one of them. Bruno managed to defend himself and his now fiancé, but the fluffy cows were slaughtered. He had a fair amount of money saved up, the milk was worth its weight in gold, and he requested several items that I recognized to be almost the exact components you used when you created Spring,” Lola continued.

Sylver used the [Necrotic Mutilation] tendrils coming from his sleeves to remove the skin on the clone’s stomach and quietly floated it over into the skin bucket.

“Zombie bee cow chimeras. They went out of control and-”

“No, no, I stopped him before he got started. Sat him down, talked things out, drank, and at some point, he got this glassy look in his eyes. He sort of looked like you do sometimes, but it wasn’t as… what’s a good word… focused. When you’re angry, at least you know how to direct it or hold it in until you find some unfortunate bastard to let loose on. With Bruno… He was just angry, he lost the cows, and he nearly lost his family,” Lola explained and took another swig from her bottle.

Given the small size of her body, and that the ale was meant for dwarves, Sylver didn’t even want to think about just how often she must have drunk it to develop such a strong tolerance.

“But since we’re being honest, I’m partially responsible for what happened… During the monster outbreak… No one died, but there was this moment, this enormous living rock thing… It nearly got me, it nearly got Olds, Tamay nearly lost her leg… at first, I tried calming Bruno down, but the more he spoke the more I realized, I should be angry. I nearly died, to a fucking floating stack of boulders,” Lola said, and Sylver could feel her mana gaining an edge, even as she did her drunken best to keep it contained and close to her.

Sylver nodded as he finished working on the clone, and pulled another one out of his [Bound Bones] storage.

“After the dust settled, I walked around, saw my workshop in ruins, Bruno scooped up what little remained of his herd, the fact that no one died is a miracle. But half my people were without homes, half couldn’t stop crying, a couple nearly lost their minds, one of the children was this close to being eaten alive…” Lola explained as Sylver forced himself to focus on the task at hand.

“But what really did it was the fact that this place was untouched,” Lola said and gestured around with her free hand at the ceiling of Sylver’s workshop.

“The gates looked new,” Sylver said.

“They were the only thing that broke. So many people were rushing in to get onto your land, that they ended up breaking the gates. Someone made a painting later, your mansion standing alone, untouched, surrounded by smoking rubble,” Lola said.

“What were the guards doing during all this?” Sylver asked.

“Fighting. Despite what they claim, their invincibility isn’t infinite. From what I’ve been able to gather, the people living in Arda pay a tax with their experience, which is converted into whatever it is the guards use to power their skills and perks. It gets stockpiled, and whenever a guard needs more power to subdue someone particularly strong, they use a small portion of that saved up power,” Lola said.

“Novva mentioned something about that… So Misha and Masha let everyone inside?” Sylver asked, as he pushed his fingers into his clone’s chest, and pulled the ribcage open. He started to carefully cut around the heart.

“At my request… Anyway, the important thing is that I nearly died, people I cared about got hurt, and also nearly died. And as I floated above the city, and stared at your sparkling clean mansion, I thought…”

Sylver looked up to see that Lola’s hand was shaking, and some of the ale in the bottle had spilled and splattered on the floor.

“What a perfect fucking analogy. The rest of us eat shit, while what’s yours is completely untouched. I can’t describe to you how angry I felt. That because a bunch of noblemen were too fucking greedy to pay to reinforce the walls, that because a bunch of worthless adventurers wussed out and ran away, that because the fucking Cord was more than willing to do nothing and then profit from the destruction, I nearly lost what little I have,” Lola said, with a tone that sounded like she was either about to cry or burst into laughter.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Sylver said with all the sincerity he could muster.

“Faust wasn’t affected. He single-handedly defended everything he cared about. Which made me ask the question “why does he get to come out of this unscathed?” The answer was obvious. And the answer is the same for you, and Misha, and Masha, and Ging, and the rest of your household. My mother tried instilling this into me when I was young, but it never… I just didn’t get it,” Lola said, as she lost steam, and went back to speaking in just short of a whimper.

“It would have been stranger if you did. Layla was fierce. And if your brother is to be believed, protective to a fault. The fact that you had any kind of wariness is surprising in and of itself,” Sylver said, as he yanked his clone’s heart out, and went to work on getting the liver out without damaging it.

“You really don’t remember me, do you?” Lola asked.

Sylver waited a couple of seconds, partially because he was focused on not ripping the worm-infested liver into two, and partially because he genuinely tried to shake his memory again.

“No, I don’t. I’m not lying to you. Why would I lie? To do what? To Lower your self-esteem to make it easier to manipulate you? So you feel too insignificant to leave me? To what, so that-”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Lola interrupted, and managed to plant her feet on the floor, but had to steady herself using the table she had been sitting on previously.

“How did you mean it then? Because the way I understand it is that you don’t trust my word. I don’t remember meeting you when I visited Layla. I remember that I gave her one of Nyx’s gems, I remember her giving me Oska’s staff, I remember a small elf boy, who got his arm ripped off by a wolf monster, but I don’t remember anyone else. This isn’t your fault Lola, it is entirely mine,” Sylver explained, as Lola nearly toppled to the floor as she tried to take a step towards Sylver, but Spring appeared nearby and slung her arm over his shoulder.

“I forget things. I’m not Aether, I can’t remember the exact text in a book I glanced at thirty years ago. For me to memorize something, I need to essentially sit down and work at it for weeks, maybe months. Spring’s memory is better because I made it that way, but he doesn’t see what I see unless I point it out to him,” Sylver looked up to look Lola in the eyes.

As he saw that she was on the verge of crying, Sylver shoved the anger back down into its proper place.

After spending months surrounded by people who didn’t know, and didn’t trust him, having someone he cared about so deeply doubt him struck a very raw nerve.

“To make a long story short, I took over the Cord and the Cats. Kitty and her group work for me now, and the Cord is no longer the Cord, they don’t have a name,” Lola explained, as Sylver gave her a second to see if she was joking.

“You brought the Cats and the Cord under heel in just 5 years?” Sylver asked.

“3 years. Well, 2 years, 3 months, but basically 3 years,” Lola explained.

“…” 

Sylver straightened his back, and the brittle liver split into two, due to all the holes the SAM worms had left.

“A lot of people helped me. Bruno included. The Cats were divided since the start, Kitty was supposed to die, and because her kits were too young to take over, there were several factions prepared for all-out war. Wuss helped me figure out which one was most likely to win, a bribe here, a bribe there, a critical hit by Faust here, a political slap to the face by Novva there, and suddenly their options are to either accept me as their leader or lose everything,” Lola explained.

Sylver had a look on his face as if he was waiting for the punchline. The way Lola was smiling, it was exactly what she had wanted to see.

“The relationship between the Cord and the Cats is one of sticks and glue. Without the Cats’ information network, the Cord can’t function. No one knows who’s who, and it took less than a month for me to manipulate the flow of information to make it seem like one of my people was the new leader of the Cord. I used their own perfect isolation against them,” Lola said and managed to hobble her way over to Sylver.

Sylver flicked the blood off his hands and pulled the [Necrotic Mutilation] tendrils back into his sleeve.

Lola just stared at him, with a completely unreadable expression on her face, and some sort of enchantment that made it impossible for Sylver to read her soul.

“You’re going to say I put everyone in danger, and then you’re going to ask what I would have done if my attempt had failed. All I can say is that I made a decision. I decided that if I allowed Arda to remain weak, eventually something would destroy it. And… I already had a giant target on my back,” Lola added, and Sylver really didn’t like the look in her eyes as she mentioned the target on her back.

It looked like… like it was his fault.

“You were targeted? By who?” Sylver asked.

“Other than me, have you met a single high-elf since you came here?” Lola questioned, and used Spring to steady herself to stand at her full height.

She took another drink from her bottle as Sylver thought the question over.

“They’re reclusive by nature,” Sylver answered, and could feel in the pit in his stomach he wasn’t going to like what Lola was about to say.

“They are. But in this specific case, it’s more to do with the fact that there’s only one Eldar tree, in the whole entirety of Eira. Just one. Not two, not seven, just the one single, extremely well hidden, extremely well-guarded, Eldar tree. Or at least there was… until a certain quasi princess successfully found a perfectly preserved Eldar sapling inside a dungeon,” Lola said.

Sylver just looked at her, on account of the fact he had no idea what she was talking about.

“And when the council investigated everyone who so much as knew about the dungeon, they discovered that there was someone “masquerading” as a high elf. And when they found out that the aforementioned fake was the head of a giant workshop that was selling “ancient elvish secrets,” they decided it would be best if she were to be replaced by an actual “high elf.” They came in while Arda was weak from the monster outbreak, and only the fact that I was a ball of paranoia and rage saved me that day,” Lola said, and Sylver felt the ice at the pit of his stomach warming up.

“The uh… what was her name…”

“Rosa,” Spring said.

“Rosa, that’s right. From the dungeon, the demon sent me into. Where I found the [Dead Man’s Last Stand], Faust, and Bruno. The one guarding the entrance, the elves, they asked if I was with the council,” Sylver said, as he barely managed to recall the experience.

Lola reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a smashed to pieces metal band. There was a white stone embedded into it, that Sylver recognized.

“Agents of the council. You would think they would be easy to find, given that they all wear such an easy-to-identify mark, but if someone has this, that means that there is no conceivable way of getting them to talk. Trust me, we’ve tried,” Lola explained, as Sylver placed his left hand on his face, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Can I just have one day where I’m not involved in some grand conspiracy? I just want to keep my people safe, and find Edmund. Is it too much to ask, not to be involved with talking cats or some sort of shady underground organization? What does the council want exactly?” Sylver asked, and Lola’s expression went almost completely blank.

“I don’t know. No one knows. I know they sent 22 different groups of assassins after me. I know they paid the cats a medium-sized fortune in an attempt to find you a year ago. I know a third of the upper echelon of the Cord were all council agents. But as to what their long-term goals are, I have no idea,” Lola explained.

She looked over Sylver’s shoulder, and completely ignored the pale man that looked exactly like him being operated on, and gestured towards a loosely formed sphere of green. It was very slowly spinning above a bowl filled with a sickly brown liquid.

“You’re tracking the [Hero]?” Lola asked, and the word was enough to bring Sylver out of his racing mind, and shift his attention back to reality.

“Not the [Hero], I’m tracking Edmund,” Sylver explained, as if it should have been obvious.

Lola pretended to cough into her fist, but she instead nearly threw up from the sheer quantity of alcohol sitting in her otherwise empty stomach.

“Normally I would suggest that you eat something to sober up, but I gather this is the only reason you’re not crying about the sword,” Sylver said apologetically.

“What sword? I don’t know anything about any swords,” Lola said, and Sylver caught her as her knees gave out. He used his solidified shadow so Lola could sit down, and let her use his arm as something to hold onto.

It was only now that Sylver noticed that Lola was barely bigger than Chrys. If not for her naturally increased density as a high elf, she would have likely weighed less than Chrys did.

“I can’t leave Arda. None of us can. They know about everyone Syl. Ciege, Salgok, Misha, Masha, even Ron is a target. The only thing keeping them at bay is that Arda is as impenetrable as a city can get because it’s mine,” Lola said quietly.

She almost whispered the words into Sylver’s ears, as if she was afraid someone else might hear her. Sylver was about to say something, but Lola lifted her head, and with a contagious smile spoke first.

“But I’m handling it. Those council bastards are no match for me. I’ll find where they live, and I’ll kill them, and I’ll kill their families for messing with me,” Lola said, as she lifted the bottle up to her mouth, and finished it.

“Because I’m Lola fucking Aeyri!” Lola shouted, and proceeded to throw the empty bottle against one of the stone walls.

Sylver tried to wake her up, to talk a bit more, but it was all in vain. Whatever it was she had done to sober herself up enough to speak to him earlier clearly was a one-time trick. He sent Spring to help Ging put her into one of the empty beds upstairs, and carried on working on preparing everything he needed to speed up his body’s conversion.