Chapter 213 Rising dread
Silas sat on the ground, hunched over his kit, working meticulously to try and create the card from the recipe he had copied. The teenager had used a silence card around himself so that he would not be distracted by any sound, as he could not afford any distractions whatsoever.
Each of them were feeling the immense pressure of the situation, but Silas more so than any of them. He was not accustomed to working through his fear and nervousness, yet that is exactly what he had been doing for the past… he didn't even know how long it had been.
Silas had not slept in so long, yet he had been underground and surrounded by fog the entire time so he had no idea whether it was day or night. His watch had broken within the first hour, so he couldn't even keep track of the passing time.
All he knew was that he had created cards in the absolute worst conditions of his life, and if he had failed even once in any of those circumstances, he would have died. When Nero came to save him, Silas felt a huge flood of relief as he thought the danger was finally over. It was as far as berserkers were concerned. Nero cut them down like nothing. But that was only followed by a much more dangerous obstacle in their path, bringing him back to where he started.
So he tuned out everything and focused only on making cards. Truthfully speaking, many times throughout the past few hours, Silas felt like he couldn't do it. He couldn't do what was required, and he couldn't make these ancient cards on his very first attempt despite how good or bad his eyesight might be.
Yet each time something like that happened, he was reminded of the fact that he had even made an Eldrim card when he wasn't even a Neophyte! Since he had done the impossible once, he could do it again - and that is exactly what had happened so far. Now he just needed to continue the trend and do the impossible one more time.
Bael placed a small vial next to containing blood, and Silas ignored it as if it were nothing. Since Bael could heal ridiculously fast, he was the clear target to draw blood from for his purposes. In case he actually ran out of papers then… then Bael would need to contribute a little bit of his skin. Silas didn't like thinking about that.
What he didn't know was that behind him, Bael and Nero looked grimly out into the fog. The blood pool had arrived, and once it touched the wall of ice, it slowly began to rise. Since Nero and Bael couldn't do anything else, they just kept making the ice wall thicker and thicker so that it would survive longer, yet Nero couldn't get the image of the rising blood pool out of his mind.
If it truly filled the entire height of the wallway, how dangerous would it be? That was a question Nero did not want an answer to.
Since expanding the wall did not require too much attention from Nero, he began to go through Silas' grimoire. He needed to come up with other possible solutions. He was not resigned to just dying.
He could actually come up with quite a few different solutions, but the problem was that the level of the blood pool was just too high. Even the smartest and cleverest strategy would end up failing in the face of sheer.
"Ba- Bael, I'm going to need yo- your help," Silas said with a trembling voice. "I don't have enough papers. I'm… I'm going to need a replacement. I need-"
"Just tell me how much you need and from where," Bael said, interrupting him. "We don't have time for hesitation."
"Human… human skin is not really suitable but if we had to make do… then I'd need the softest skin on your body."
"Softest skin is on the lips I think," said Nero. "But that won't be enough. The skin on thighs or the arse will do. Remove your armour, I'll do it."
Nero had skinned animals before, but this was hardly the same thing. He was not looking forward to cutting Bael, but Silas couldn't do it and Bael seemed to have the grit to tolerate it. Considering he had the greatest chances of recovering quickly from such a wound, it could only be Bael.
Without any hesitation, Bael removed the lower half of his armour, revealing legs thick with muscle.
"Bite something and don't move," said Nero as he held out not the dagger he got from the Vault, but his own. Being too sharp was not a good thing, as Nero needed to feel the resistance of the skin and muscles to know exactly how deep he was cutting.
Neither of them acted slowly or made a fuss. Nero used cryoflame to freeze off all the hair on Bael's leg, making him look like he had waxed before immediately putting his knife to the skin.
Bael grunted, and the smell of blood leaked into their small enclosure, making Silas more nervous and Nero more determined. With incredibly steady hands, Nero cut a round strip around his whole thigh, before delicately yet swiftly cutting the skin loose from the leg.
There was not nearly as much blood as Nero might have expected.
Bael used water to wash his own skin before handing it to Silas, who tried not to vomit. It helped that he hadn't eaten anything in a long time.
"How much time do you think it will take to make the card?" Nero asked.
"If I rush, about ten minutes," Silas said as he tried to steady his trembling hands. He had never held someone's skin before.
"That's great. You've improved a lot it seems. You have two minutes."
"But that's-"
"Two minutes, don't waste a single second!" Nero said firmly as he saw the first crack on the glass wall form.
Bael ignored his bleeding leg and put his armour back on, all the while he continued to supply water to the walls to turn into ice. But the problem was that they were running out of space. They were already almost pressed up against Silas. If it was getting hard to breathe, it wasn't because of the intensity of the situation - they were literally running out of air.
Behind them, Silas was working as quickly as he could, doing his best to minimise his mistakes. But that was impossible.
Each time he made a mistake, he just began again instead of trying to fix it, because they genuinely didn't have time.
There was another loud crack, but Silas didn't hear it, nor did Nero urge him to hurry up once more. He only kept his eyes locked on the pool of blood, which had risen waist high by now. Yet more daunting than the fact that the pool was rising was that Nero could see the blood seeping into the crack.
It was as if the blood had a mind of its own, and it was desperate to get to them. Nero might have been imagining it, yet he felt like the blood did not want to let them access the next chamber, whatever it was.
More cracks formed, yet there was nothing more they could do. Nero and Bael were already breathing out fog, and Silas was much too focused to even notice the changes taking place.
There was another crack, and this one was particularly loud. More importantly, it cut from one end of the wall to the other, meaning the blood could seep through it. Nero was about to attempt to fight the blood with his flames one more time, out of desperation, when Silas suddenly yelled, "I did it!"
The teenager held up a shoddy looking card that looked like it might wilt under its own weight. Yet Nero could read its name clearly. Test3 was successfully made.
Then Silas' eyes rolled in the back of his head and he collapsed. Nero and Bael moved quickly, one grabbing Silas while the other grabbed the card. Without wasting a moment, Bael stuck the card to the door and channelled energy into it, and the door slowly turned backwards.
Yet the duo did not have the patience for that, so they pushed it open and went inside… only to encounter another door. This one was not a chamber door, but an aetherically sealed one, with a scanner on the side.
Bael placed his hand on the scanner, hoping against all odds that it would work. It did not.
With a developing sense of dread that Nero tried to keep suppressed, he placed his hand on the scanner. There was no reason to expect the door to open for him when it didn't for Bael, yet…
"Genetic marker S-28 identified," a fading voice said, and the door in front of them opened. Nero rushed inside, only to be pushed back out.