Supreme Magus

by S.H.A aifu

MC is not an anti-hero or a hero.

14. 358

Read Supreme Magus - Chapter 358 Holy Crystal Part 1 online free - Novel Full

The Grey Wolf tribe only had twelve members remaining plus the chieftain and the shaman. Ragh'Ash had to think carefully about their strategy. Albeit lesser demons, their enemies were still demons.

Of the twelve orcs, four were just kids. Their bodies were yet to become able to endure the blessing of the holy crystal. The shaman decided to keep them close to her, so in case of emergency, she could turn them into living bombs and get rid of the tribe's enemies.

'As long as the tribe has women, we can always have more children.' Ragh'Ash thought. 'The only things that matter to our survival is the holy crystal and breaking the curse. Everyone else is disposable.'

The shaman used the crystal once again. This time she didn't panic. Ragh'Ash took her time to assess the enemy strength and position while using her knowledge of the territory to come up with a battle plan.

She was the only one capable of rational thought thanks to her Awakening. The others, just like Testa'Lhosh, were mindless brutes, incapable of escaping the clutches of their base instincts.

Against a smart enemy equipped with magical weapons like Sergeant Tepper's unit, the blessing of the holy crystal wasn't enough. She needed a foolproof plan. Literally. Otherwise those morons would screw up and leave everything on her shoulders.

According to her readings, the demons and the humans were apart, even if not by much.

'Sending more orcs would be just a waste of resources. I'll let them come here, where the powers of the holy crystal and my magic are at their peak. I'll leave the humans to the tribe while Testa'Lhosh and I will take care of the demons.

'The gods from above and from below are on our side. The two demons share the same body, making them a lesser threat than what I feared. We outnumber and outmatch them. Thanks to my new pet, our victory is already written in the stars.' Ragh'Ash thought.

Lith kept coming closer to the orc settlement, yet he met no resistance whatsoever. There were a few traps laid on the ground, but they were devised against animals to get food, not against a real enemy.

'Orcs are supposed to be stupid. They should have charged at us like mad bulls already.' Lith thought while using Life Vision to check his surroundings.

'I guess a shaman is a real game changer.' Solus pointed out. 'It's better to go back to the others and ask for more information. The Sergeant seemed to know more than what he told us. We should seek his advice.'

Lith mind nodded. He rushed back to the unit while Solus watched his back with mana sense, allowing him to move at full speed without any worry.

"How many orcs did you kill?" Liwell asked with a big smile on his face. Lith was so used to their ill concealed scorn that it gave him the creeps.

"None, that's why I returned. Something is wrong here. The orcs knew our position with enough precision to set an ambush, yet they aren't supposed to be able to use arrays." Lith said, leaving the unit confused.

"What's an array?" They asked each other, receiving only a shrug in reply.

"Also, they are supposed to be dumb. It that was true, they should either run away or come at us in full force. Yet nothing has happened. I feel like we are walking into a trap. Sergeant, could you please tell us what a shaman is capable of?"

"Sometimes in battle, you're forced to face the unknown, Cadet Lith. A shaman is a rare creature, even adventurers have a vague knowledge of them. Only the army possess detailed records and I have already shared with you more than I should." Tepper replied.

"As a fellow soldier, though, I can say that I think your observations are on point. The shaman seems smart enough to make use of their superior numbers. When you decided to continue the mission, you knew you would face a magician."

'The whole unit is green and he wants to send us against an unknown enemy?' Lith thought. 'Either he is overestimating himself or underestimating a magician.'

'Or maybe he is overestimating you.' Solus suggested. 'I think that at this point he is sure you are a magician and the army rules allow you to use your powers in case of emergency. Probably the Sergeant thinks that the two of you are more than enough.'

'I wish I shared his optimism. Until I know what kind of core the enemy has or the kind of tricks they are capable of, the only thing I'm sure of is that I can survive. I need to keep at least the Sergeant alive. Otherwise if the entire unit gets butchered, I could get blamed for it.'

The unit effortlessly advanced through the woods until Lith signaled them to stop.

"It's a trap indeed." He said jumping down from a tree without making any noise.

"The settlement has no guards and there are no signs of activity. The tribe consists of ten adults and four teenagers. Eight adults are spread outside what I presume is the shaman's tent and are armed to the teeth."

"What about the mana crystal?" Sergeant Tepper asked with eyes full of expectation.

"I saw no crystal." Lith lied. "Maybe it's inside the tent, I can't see through walls."

'The bastard knows about the crystal!' Lith inwardly cursed. Thanks to Life Vision and mana sense, Lith had now a clear idea of the enemy's strength. His comrades had only one path to victory.

If they managed to keep the orcs at bay they would win, otherwise it would be a slaughter.

Inside the tent, Lith had spotted a bright cyan cored orc that was likely to be the shaman, a very bulky individual at least two meters (6'7") tall, and four children that seemed to be around twelve years old.

Near to them, there was the biggest and most powerful mana crystal Lith had ever seen. He had hoped to keep its existence a secret to snatch it away during the fight. It was a priceless natural treasure with endless application to Lith's studies.

"There has to be a mana crystal, otherwise the shaman couldn't empower other orcs." Tepper said. "Orcs consider them gifts from the gods, they would rather die than leave one behind. The Mage Association highly values orcs crystals.

"They hope to understand the secrets of the shamans' powers by studying them. We have to retrieve it safely at all costs!"

"What is our priority?" Lith asked. "Wiping out the orcs or retrieving the crystal?"

"Your primary objective is to remain alive." Sergeant Tepper sighed. He had almost forgotten he was with cadets, not an elite force.

"The secondary objective is to wipe out the orcs. If we do that, the crystal will fall into our hands."

"What's a crystal?" Nhilo asked, relieving Lith from his burden.

The more he learned about the orcs the more the mission appeared suicidal in his eyes. Sending the cadets forward without warning them about mana crystals would just add insult to the injury.

Tepper briefly explained the unit the mana crystals' uses, properties, and volatile nature.

"With all due respect, I don't think we can do it, Sir." Nhilo said after Lith draw her a rough sketch of the orc settlement and the enemy positions.

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Chapter 359: Holy Crystal (Part 2)

"The orcs have the home advantage, are physically superior, and have a magician on their side. We can't set a trap without being noticed nor can we handle eight adults at once. Also, the children's position is highly suspicious.

"I don't think they are close to the tent to keep them safe, but rather to use them as sacrifices. A single one could throw our formation into disarray and doom us all. Not to mention we cannot even bombard the shaman's tent without the crystal exploding."

"I agree with your analysis, Corporal." Tepper nodded. "Their behavior is highly unusual, even for the presence of a shaman. The orcs were supposed to send another wave of warriors and attempt to escape after their second failed attack.

"Orcs being cautious is almost unprecedented. They regard humans as food, not enemies. Yet they are acting as if they are afraid of us. We need reinforcements. Lith, you can use dimensional magic, right?"

Lith nodded while watching his companions' expression turn to a mix of surprise, envy, and hate. Tepper noticed it too.

"He is not a noble. Lith comes from a family of farmers. He became a magician thanks only to his own hard work. Show some respect." The Sergeant's words left everyone dumbstruck.

To them meeting a magician of commoner origins was like finding a unicorn under a rainbow with a pot of gold in its mouth.

"Bring us back to the camp." Tepper ordered.

Lith attempted to open a Warp Steps, but the dimensional door quickly became unstable, shattering before it was fully formed.

"This is bad." Lith clicked his tongue. "Something like this has only happened to me once in the past. It means the orc shaman is preparing something big and powerful enough to upset the normal elemental balance."

'Solus, why didn't you warn me of the array?'Lith was surprised, it wasn't like her to make such a rookie mistake.

'There is no array.'She explained.'Nor any significant disturbance in the world energy. Quite the contrary, the air is really quiet and the mana thin.'

'How thin?'Lith asked.

'Not much, but now that you mention it, there is something wrong.'Solus needed to focus her mana sense to the extreme to separate the world energy into the six elements that composed it.

'By my maker! This is exactly the opposite of what that wyvern did. There is no abundance of an element this time. The earth magic in the air is less than half of what it should be. I can see it being siphoned towards the orc encampment!'

"Do you mean you can't Warp us back?" Tepper inwardly cursed. Even if he called for reinforcements, it would take them too long to find the unit's actual position.

"I think I can, but it will take time and effort. I need you to watch my back." Lith said to his comrades, but he meant those words for Solus alone. She was still tired from the overuse of her mana sense, yet Solus reassured him and kept watch.

"Now, my warriors! Receive the power of the earth god and become their avatars!"Ragh'Ash had used Invigoration though the mana crystal as if it were a part of her own body.

With the combined effect of Invigoration and the natural ability of purple crystals to absorb the world energy, the shaman had collected an enormous amount of mana. Ragh'Ash had called upon earth magic in particular, to make her pawns invincible.

The world energy seeped into the warriors' mana cores, temporarily boosting them from the red level to the yellow one. Such unnatural status would have been their demise if not for the orcs' peculiar physiology.

Their bodies contained very few impurities, allowing them to grow strong enough to withstand the power of an Awakened core, even if only temporarily. The crystal was a key element in the process.

It was not only capable of storing the necessary world energy, but it also kept it pure. If Ragh'Ash had attempted to give them her mana, it would be like poison to them. Only in its purest form could world energy be absorbed without being rejected.

The earth elemental energy coursing through the warriors' bodies would double the effects of earth fusion, making them immune to lightning and resistant to all the other elements.

Yet, it came with a price. Only the strongest orcs could survive their cores being enhanced not once, but twice. Ragh'Ash could see energy cracks appearing on the skin of five out of the eight warriors she had blessed. They only had a few minutes left to live.

'The weak can only blame themselves.'Ragh'Ash thought.'The demon's meat is too precious to be wasted on failures. Their death was only a matter of time.'

While the orcs charged towards the humans' position, the shaman and the chieftain followed them from a distance. Testa'Lhosh carried the holy crystal on his back, while the ground emitted a low rumble wherever Ragh'Ash stepped.

"Orcs incoming!" Vipli screamed on the top of his lungs from the top of a tree.

Lith inwardly cursed while pushing his willpower to the limit to compensate for the lack of earth elemental energy with his own mana. Finally, the Warp Steps appeared, but instead of being static as usual, its edges spun like a buzz saw. They emitted sparks every time Lith sent new waves of mana to prevent it from collapsing.

One after the other, the cadets rushed through it until only Nhilo and the Sergeant were left.

"We can't leave Lith behind! They will kill him!" As the commanding officer, Nhilo felt it was her responsibility to remain behind with him.

"That's why I'll stay here." Tepper said while throwing her through the Gate. "There's no need for us all to die."

"Indeed!" Lith used spirit magic to push the Sergeant away before closing the Warp Steps. When Tepper's face hit the boot camp's ground, he wasn't angry. Quite the contrary, he was almost moved to the tears.

"That idiot! Together we had a chance, alone he is as good as dead. Shamans can prevent an opponent from flying. Without Warp Steps, he has no way out. I misjudged Lith. He preferred to die a hero rather than see one of us die."

He ran to the HQ to request immediate backup. With him as a guide, the mages would only need a few minutes to reach the orc encampment. He could only hope Lith would survive long enough for it to be a rescue mission instead of a revenge one.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the crumbled Gate, Lith was overjoyed. He was wearing his Skinwalker armor again. The Gatekeeper sword was firm in his hand while Invigoration gave Lith back his strength.

"With no witness messing with my plans, I can pretend to be a hero and get myself a purple crystal. Two birds with one stone."

Lith took flight, weaving several spells at once just to be safe. Two orcs leaped toward him while swinging their weapons, only to be chopped in half like fresh fruit. Lith's flight spell made him even faster than he was with fusion magic, whereas the orcs were sitting ducks while in mid air.

'Worst case scenario, I can rain spells from the skies until they are all dead or I can run away if the unexpected happens. Killing non flying opponents is child play.'Lith thought.

He readied his sword for the second wave of enemies while pouring air magic into it to enhance its edge.

Ragh'Ash saw Lith descending upon her warriors and acted accordingly. Her hand touched the holy crystal, depriving the environment of the air element and causing the flight spell to fail. Lith crashed in the middle of the orcs who immediately surrounded him.

"Where the gods walk, the humans die!"Ragh'Ash laughed.

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Chapter 360: Fair Fight? (Part 1)

By watching the orc warriors' weapons coming down on the demon like they were the wrath of the heavens, Ragh'Ash could almost smell the sweet scent of Lith's blood in the air.

Which is why she was dumbfounded when a fireball exploded on the ground and sent the orcs surrounding Lith flying like leaves scattered by the autumn wind.

"How is that possible?"Ragh'Ash blurted out in her stupor.

The lack of air element prevented Lith from flying or casting powerful air spells, but there was more than enough to support a tier 0 gravity magic trick. Even the shockwave from a simple fireball was enough to buy him some space once his opponents had become weightless.

'I think we are in trouble.'Solus was worried.'The lack of earth magic already prevented us from Blinking. Now even flight and lightning bolts are sealed. What if the shaman can seal the other elements too?'

'That's the bad news. The good news is the same applies to them.'Lith watched some orcs trying to produce air blades, yet all they managed to do was waste their mana.

'Their coordination is nonexistent. We'll see who runs out of tricks first.'Lith's hands moved so fast that for a second even the shaman only saw a blur. Then, a volley of fireballs and several ice spears darted toward the mana crystal.

Ragh'Ash attempted to raise a stone wall and failed.

'Gods below! What have I done? I must protect the holy crystal!'She thought. She didn't have the time to nullify two elements and even if she did, it would make her completely useless in combat.

The only thing she could do was to push Testa'Lhosh and the crystal away with spirit magic while shielding herself with the thickest ice wall she could produce in the little time she had left.

She succeeded in saving both the crystal and herself, but it came at a terrible price. Lith had timed the two spells so that the fireballs would hit first, shattering the ice protection he knew she would have employed, so that the ice spears would find a clear path to the enemy.

Ragh'Ash was alive, but barely. Chunks of her flesh were missing because of the explosions and several spears had struck her despite her raising walls one after another. She was already healing her wounds with Invigoration, but the aftereffects would leave her weakened nonetheless.

'What an idiot!'Lith inwardly laughed.'Playing dirty is a game two can play. I want the crystal badly, but not if it costs me my life. By attacking it, I can force the orcs on the defensive.'

The orcs rushed Lith again. The demon's blasphemous act had pushed their rage to its peak, allowing their bloodlust to blind them. Exactly like Lith wanted. The orcs were a threat to his life only if they coordinated their efforts.

They attacked him as if they were alone, giving no consideration to their own companions' movements. Without tactics, the orcs were just an annoyance. Their crude weapons were nothing compared to Gatekeeper, their boosted cores granted them feeble abilities compared to Lith's bright cyan one when pushed to its limit.

Ragh'Ash's plan had only one flaw. Both she and Lith knew it, but only one of them could exploit it. Depriving the world energy of a specific element blocked the related spells, but it couldn't affect fusion magic.

Fusion magic didn't rely on external energy but on the elemental power its user naturally stored. Lith's air fusion could not only make him incredibly fast, but it was also channeled and amplified by the Gatekeeper's enchantment, boosting the sword's edge.

A single slash was what it took to cleave an orc asunder, along with the ax with which he had attempted to block. A single lunge would go clear through its intended victim and beyond, wounding those stupid enough to be near its exit point.

"Curse you, demon!"screamed in anguish as she ripped off the head of one of their youths to consume his flesh to regain her strength. The fight had barely started, yet the number of her warriors had halved and she was gravely injured.

Thanks to Invigoration, Ragh'Ash was able to instantly assimilate the food's nutrients and restore her strength. Testa'Lhosh immediately ran to her side. The chieftain was visibly worried for her.

Without the shaman, the tribe was as good as dead. The holy crystal would become a liability instead of a treasure. Testa'Lhosh's life depended on her.

"The warriors will not last long without my help."Testa'Lhosh said while delicately leaving the crystal by her side.

"Do whatever you need, but try to keep me alive. You still need a man to have offspring."The chieftain didn't trust her more than he would a nest of vipers. His words were meant to remind the shaman that the survival of the Grey Wolf tribe needed at least two orcs.

He didn't miss how Ragh'Ash moved her gaze from him to the remaining three youths. There was still a male left, which meant she still had options. Inwardly cursing his bad luck, Testa'Lhosh unsheathed his greatsword and joined the fray.

Aside from the holy crystal, the chieftain's blade was the only treasure of the Grey Wolf tribe that had survived the war. It was an enchanted weapon that had fallen into the orcs' hands after its previous owner had fallen into their stomachs.

Ragh'Ash nodded. Her powers activated the crystal once again, passing all the remaining energy she had stored within it to the chieftain. His core immediately turned from bright yellow to bright cyan, which Solus promptly reported to Lith.

'For f*ck's sake! I hate fair fights!'Lith inwardly cursed. Testa'Lhosh was at least 20 centimeters (8") taller than Lith and 30 kg heavier. Thanks to his Awakened like body, those 30 kg were all muscles.

Lith had no advantage against Testa'Lhosh, aside from his own equipment and training. In terms of sheer physical strength, the chieftain was like an adult fighting a prepubescent teen.

'How long until the balance is restored?'Lith hated forcing Solus to consume her remaining mana, but he had no choice. Only when all of Lith's skills were online again he could safely terminate the orc tribe.

'Earth is back to normal already. Air should support spells up to tier two.'Solus replied. She was already so weakened that only her natural senses remained. Solus decided to save the remainder of her mana for an emergency, just to be safe.

She could have used Invigoration, but unlike Lith's, it required more time and was dependant on her companion's status. Using it would not only leave her completely helpless for a while, but could also destabilize Lith's mana flow.

Solus couldn't stand by idly either, so she moved from Lith's mouth to his right hand and turned into her glove form. That way he could at least use her as a shield if the need arose.

The greatsword gave Testa'Lhosh the superior range, forcing Lith on the defensive. Their fusion magic was on par, so it was like neither was employing it. The chieftain was faster, stronger, and to make things worse he shouted orders that made the remaining orcs regain their sanity.

Ragh'Ash was now back on her feet, using the crystal to infuse one of the young female orcs until the youth screamed in agony. The shaman didn't trust the chieftain more than he trusted her. Ragh'Ash wanted to win, no matter the cost.

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Chapter 361: Fair Fight? (Part 2)

Meanwhile, the four remaining orcs surrounded Lith, threatening him with their weapons from every side. Their duty was to restrict the enemy's movements and create openings for the chieftain.

'Five against five. Once again, I hate fair fights!'Lith thought while unleashing his Death Call spell. Four tentacles made of darkness magic came out from his body, targeting the orcs like sharks following blood in water.

The warriors stood their ground, clubbing and slashing at the tendrils only to see their weapons getting covered in cracks. Darkness magic wasn't tangible, but its hunger was real. To not get eaten, the four orcs were forced to step back whenever Lith came too close to them while dodging the chieftain's blade.

Before the boot camp, Lith would have had a hard time against an opponent such as Testa'Lhosh. It still wasn't an easy fight, but the skill gap made it manageable. While the chieftain put all of his might behind each strike, Lith used his blade to deflect the opponent's by using the least amount of strength possible.

Between Death Call and Lith avoiding their mighty chieftain's blows by a thread, the orcs truly believed they were facing a demon. One of them had been grazed by the tentacles multiple times. The contact had sapped her strength and hastened her body's decay.

The female orc's skin was full of cracks, she knew her death would come in a matter of seconds. In her mind, the orc thought the demon was to blame. She had no idea it was all her shaman's doing. The warrior threw herself against Lith, disregarding what little life she had left.

The tentacles drained her life force and defused the explosion at the same time, but they weren't fast enough to prevent her from crashing against Lith and sending him towards the Chieftan's oncoming blade.

Cursing at his bad luck, Lith could only attempt a parry and watch it fail. Testa'Lhosh's blade clashed with the Gatekeeper, moving it aside. The lunge had enough power left to pierce the Skinwalker armor and penetrate into Lith's flesh while breaking his collarbone.

Lith would have fainted from the shock if he had not cut off his pain receptors at the last second. His left arm was now limp, blood came out profusely from his shoulder. The only silver lining was that the energy robbed from the dying orc was already mending the wound.

The problem was living long enough for it to matter.

Testa'Lhosh fearlessly pressed forward.

'The demon is doomed.'The chieftain thought. 'With only one hand and the blood loss sapping his strength, he can't avoid my blade anymore.'

"Follow your sister's example! Use the power of the gods to slay the demon!"Testa'Lhosh yelled. Three orcs meant three more free slashes, which equaled one dead demon. Easy math.

Lith had no idea what the orc had just yelled, but when Solus warned him about another enemy doing a suicidal rush from behind his back, their plan became evident. Lith knew what to do, but he couldn't afford to turn around, so he let Solus take the wheel.

The moment before the orc was about to strike, a stone wall emerged from the ground, stopping the enemy and his weapon at once. The orc had no time to be surprised by Solus's timely use of the earth wand with spirit magic.

The ethereal tentacles passed through a wall and seeped into his flesh, renewing Lith's strength at the expenses of the orc's life force.

"For the Grey Wolf!"Ragh'Ash yelled at the youth. The little girls screamed in agony and frenzy, the only thing she could think of was making the pain stop. She rushed toward Lith with the speed of a bullet.

The mana ravaging her body also gave her superhuman abilities. Lith and Testa'Lhosh cursed at the shaman in unison. Neither wanted to die. Whereas Testa'Lhosh saw only a death threat, Lith saw an opportunity instead.

Lith grabbed the stone wall Solus had erected and used gravity magic to turn Testa'Lhosh into the new center of gravity. The orc girl's feet leaped from the ground with great strength, almost making her fly but also leaving her exposed to gravity magic's effects.

She found herself falling towards the chieftain while Solus erected a second wall right in front of Lith. It was meant to be used as a foothold and a shield at the same time.

Testa'Lhosh had no idea what was happening, so he dodged the incoming bomb over and over, hoping to get rid of it. Yet the poor girl followed him like a curse.

Realizing he was doomed, the chieftain grabbed the girl and rushed between the two stone walls, to make sure that Lith would die along with him. Much to Testa'Lhosh dismay, when he got there, Lith was nowhere to be found.

In his place, there was what looked like an acorn the size of a fist. It was covered in runes of power which blinked faster by the second. Lith had Solus conjure one stone wall after the other and used them as footsteps to escape gravity magic's short-range and get to safety.

He had also left a Fire Root as a goodbye gift. The combined explosion of the girl and the Fire Root turned the stone walls into debris that flew in every direction like deadly bullets.

Once again Ragh'Ash had to prevent the crystal from being destroyed. This time she could at least conjure a great stone wall to protect the holy crystal and what little was left of the tribe.

Ragh'Ash immediately used Life Vision to find Lith.

'He's not on the ground nor in the air. Where the heck is he?'She thought.

The shaman used the power of the holy crystal to sweep the whole area, discovering that Lith was quite far from her position and was getting further by the second.

"How dares he to run away?"Ragh'Ash felt she was going crazy. The two remaining orc warriors had fled the moment they saw the living bomb converge to their position. They both considered a cowardly escape much better than a heroic death.

Ragh'Ash had no way to communicate with them and even if she did, the shaman doubted they would listen to her anymore. All that was left of the Grey Wolf were her and the two kids.

'What a cowardly, sly creature.'Ragh'Ash thought.'I can't follow the demon. The children are too weak to carry the crystal, even if I bless them a little. If I carry it myself, I'd be a sitting duck. At least I'm safe now.'

Yet actually she wasn't. Lith hadn't run away, he had seen the shaman eating and meant to even the field.

'Why would I rush in against an unknown opponent with a wounded body and my mana depleted when I can take a break?'He thought while eating some meat from his pocket dimension.

'I'll wait for the world energy to stabilize again, so I can have full access to my spells. How are you, Solus?'

'Much better, thanks. I think retreating was the right move. All that spellcasting and fighting had left you drained. How is your shoulder?'

'Perfectly healed. I'll use Invigoration to get back to my peak form before going in for the kill.'Lith replied. He had no idea what the shaman could do with her crystal, but he was certain Ragh'Ash would rather detonate it than leave it in his hands.

Lith used that time to sort through his Alchemic weapons. Even if Ragh'Ash siphoned elemental energy again, he could still use them, since the spells they contained were already formed. The problem was that unlike his own incantations, alchemical weapons could hurt their user.

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'I don't like this situation.'Lith thought.

'The shaman seems to always know where I am. She caught us unprepared twice, so it's likely that if I stand for too long in the same place, she may attack us from a distance.'

'Agreed.'Solus replied. She had regained about half of her strength, but they couldn't afford to wait much longer. If the Sergeant returned with the reinforcements the crystal would be lost.

'We need to aim for a quick exchange. We have to get there fast, before she can siphon any element so that we can Blink in for the kill.'

Lith nodded. That kind of approach was outside his comfort zone, but there weren't many options left. He took off, flying at full speed towards the location where he had killed most of the members of the Grey Wolf tribe.

Ragh'Ash hadn't gotten far. Moving the holy crystal was a delicate job. She couldn't fly with it. If anything happened and the spell was broken, the holy crystal would be lost. She just made it float a few centimeters from the ground, pushing it while she walked back towards the camp.

The silver lining was that thanks to the constant contact, she could sweep her surroundings from time to time to check on Lith's whereabouts. As soon as Ragh'Ash noticed him getting closer, she knew only one of them would come out alive from their next meeting.

"Go back to the village and hide! If I don't return within a few minutes, run away and never turn back!"Ragh'Ash ordered. The youths never thought, even for a second, that the shaman was doing that to protect them.

Her only purpose was to protect the last members of the tribe, who were too weak to be of any use in actual combat. Ragh'Ash had seen how Lith had turned her own living bomb against her orc warriors. It was a mistake she couldn't afford to repeat.

She watched the two youths disappearing in the woods as she pondered about her strategy. Ragh'Ash wasn't used to fight alone, without any warrior providing her assistance.

'The demons' magic is unpredictable.'She thought.'My only option is to overpower them quickly with the help of the holy crystal. If only that stupid beast helped us earlier, I wouldn't be in dire straits now. What kind of pet doesn't protect its owner?'

The earth trembled below her feet. It was the only sign that the creature was still following her. Ragh'Ash called it her pet, but its motives were still a mystery. It had helped her to survive many times, yet its timing was always unreliable at best.

Ragh'Ash placed her hands on the crystal, channeling air magic through it to conjure a huge storm cloud above her position. Monsters' mastery of magic was shallow. Due to their Fallen nature, they would seldom be able to research complex spells and would even more rarely pass them down.

In a 'might makes right' society, sharing knowledge or power was like digging your own grave. That limited the shaman's knowledge to the first three tiers of spells. Thanks to the holy crystal though, Ragh'Ash could replicate tier four spells' effect or at least equal their destructive power.

As soon as Lith spotted the shaman with Life Magic, he also noticed a pillar of mana going from the ground to the sky. The storm cloud was pitch black and covered a radius of 100 meters around the shaman's position already.

'She's stealing my thunder, literally!'Lith thought. He was actually scared by how fast Ragh'Ash had summoned such a huge thundercloud. It was something he was still unable to do.

'I wouldn't worry about that.'Solus chimed in.'There is something wrong with the ground below her feet. I thought the lack of earth element in the world energy was confusing my perception, but even now that the balance is restored the anomaly is still there.'

'What kind of anomaly?'Lith's paranoia sense was tingling. Life Vision showed him nothing but trees, grass, the shaman, and the crystal. Yet he didn't doubt Solus's words for an instant. He knew her senses were far better than his own.

'It's a blur, so I can't tell you what it is nor how strong it is, but there's something moving there. It could be some kind of spell, a creature, anything. Just be vigilant, okay?'

Lith mentally nodded as he charged the Gatekeeper with all elements but light magic. As soon as Ragh'Ash's eyes met Lith's, she unleashed a natural lightning so big that its flash turned the whole world white for a second, almost blinding her.

Lith was able to react in time only because he had done the same thing in the past. The moment he saw a pulse of Ragh'Ash's mana reaching for the thundercloud, he Blinked behind her back, aiming for her head.

Lith's timing had been impeccable, the precision of his lunge surgical. Yet instead of relieving the shaman's neck from the burden of its head, Lith was sent flying before he could even understand what was happening.

Something big and black had jumped out of the ground, as nimble as a shark after a seal. Solus had no way to describe it if not as a worm, but it was a worm like she had never seen before.

Its skin wasn't pink nor soft. The creature looked like made of obsidian, with several bumps and deformities all around its body like a lazy artist had given up the job halfway through.

The worm was as big as a bull and about 4 meters (13') long. Its gaping mouth was big enough to easily swallow an adult man whole. Solus could see it had multiple series of jagged teeth which somehow were rotating at high speed like a buzz saw.

It had been the impact between the teeth and the Gatekeeper to thwart Lith's death blow. When the clash happened, the enchanted blade managed to resist the teeth's destructive force, but it couldn't escape their grasp.

The centrifugal force had spun Lith and the blade as if for a split second they had been trapped inside a washing machine, before all the accumulated magic in the Gatekeeper had forced the creature to release its prey.

Between the impact and the spinning, Lith's vision was a blur. Yet the black worm wasn't faring much better. It writhed on the ground like a beached fish, spitting blood and teeth before reaching again for the safety of the earth.

'What the heck was that?'Lith and Ragh'Ash's thought in unison. Whereas Lith was wondering why the magical beast had interfered, Ragh'Ash's was shocked by dimensional magic.

Both the magicians recovered quickly from the surprise, moving on to their own plan B. Lith Blinked away, not giving the shaman the time to aim at him with a second lightning while Ragh'Ash's embraced the crystal starting to chant a second spell.

Lith threw against her several Fire Roots, to force her to interrupt her casting and focus on defending the crystal. Yet the moment the Alchemical tools touched the ground, small holes opened below them making them disappear.

When they exploded a few seconds later, they were already gone so deep that the explosion was completely muffled by the ground, sounding more like farts. Everything happened so fast that Ragh'Ash didn't even have the time to notice the threat.

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'Seriously, what the f*ck is that?' Lith inwardly cursed at the worm. 'There is no mention of such a creature in all the bestiaries I own. It doesn't seem an Evolved Monster but it's not dumb either. How strong is its core?'

'Unknown. I can't see the mana core just like I can't see its life force. I can barely pinpoint its location by following the anomaly it creates in my mana sense. Either that creature has special abilities or that black stuff covering its body it's not skin but a jamming device.' Solus replied.

'This means I'm not just facing a shaman, but also another unknown enemy. There's no way someone that can't even use dimensional magic has tamed or equipped the worm.' Lith was seriously considering to give up on the crystal.

Whoever had the talent and the means to shield something from Solus's senses had to be at least as good as her maker. Even if he managed to slay the beast, its owner wasn't an opponent he could take lightly.

Ragh'Ash completed her chant opening a channel between her and the crystal. Now she could not only access to all of its powers without the need of the physical contact, but also could use the crystal's energy like it was her own.

It was a desperate move for desperate times. The longer the channel was open, the more likely Ragh'Ash was to die from mana overload. Until then, she would have access to an almost infinite supply of mana.

The first thing she did, was to wrap the holy crystal with the strongest materials the ground had to offer. That way she could completely disregard its safety and focus on the demon.

'Incoming from your 4!' Solus warned Lith, who darted upwards just in time to avoid the worm's charge. It moved so fast, causing only such small trembling in the ground s mouth that without her warning Lith would have never noticed it.

The worm's mouth was wide open, which allowed Solus's spirit magic to feed it a generous serving of Fire Roots, Black Lotus' petals, broken lightning wands, and a sprinkle of green pepper.

As someone who had studied Alchemy during the last four years, she knew exactly what kind of ingredients were never to be mixed. Unless, of course, one wanted to trigger an uncontrollable chain reaction that resulted in the death of anyone in a ten meters (33') radius.

The first explosion made the worm squirm in mid aid, messing with its landing. It hit the ground with the same grace of a wet sock before starting to dance around like a firecracker. Smoke, blood, and teeth came out non stop as the explosions grew in frequency and power.

Lith had barely the time to grin at his partner's brilliance when Ragh'Ash raised her hand and unleashed a barrage of spells like Lith had never witnessed before.

The ground below him shot rock spikes as big as an arm, the air surrounding him became so cold that frost formed over Lith's clothes as a hail of fireballs and a lightning storm struck in every direction leaving him no way out.

The shaman's glowing eyes meant she too was using Life Vision. He couldn't Blink recklessly, if Ragh'Ash understood how to predict his exit points Lith's dimensional magic would become useless.

When Lith disappeared from her sight, Ragh'Ash turned around, expecting him being right behind her. She had no idea the spell had a limited range, so she assumed the worst and reacted accordingly. Yet Lith wasn't there.

He was nowhere to be found to be precise.

Since the worm's stone hide hid it so well from Life Vision and mana sense, Lith had Blinked behind it to use it as his cover. The worm was still writhing as it coughed smoke and blood, yet the creature refused to die.

The final explosion was strong enough to crack its shell, but not even that seemed to be able to put it down. The worm emitted high pitched noises that gave Lith the creeps. They sounded too similar to the cries of a newborn.

"there you="" are!"=""/"there Ragh'Ash yelled when the crystal revealed to her the demon's position. She didn't care for the worm, resuming the assault while calling forth another lightning from the sky at the same time.

'How can she have so much mana?' Lith inwardly cursed before Blinking away.

'The cold is so intense that if not for my natural resistance and the Skinwalker armor I would be already hallucinating.'

'It's the crystal.' Solus explained while keeping an eye on the worm. 'It's like she has a cyan and a purple core. The good news is that her body is already collapsing from the exertion. The bad news is that, at this rate, you will die before her, so please do something!'

Each Blink brought Lith higher until the rock spikes couldn't threaten him anymore. His survival took priority compared to giving away how Blink worked. Luckily, he had mastered true dimensional magic, so Lith could Blink while weaving another spell.

Ragh'Ash aimed the natural lightning for Lith's exit point, timing the spell so that he wouldn't have the time for another Blink. It was the flash accompanying the thunderbolt that revealed her the truth.

Its light was reflected on a throwing dagger near her feet. It wasn't an enchanted weapon, so not even Life Vision could detect it. She didn't have the time to wonder how long it had been there that her world turned upside down.

Lith was exactly where she had predicted, but the lightning wasn't. It was about to hit her instead. After each Blink, Lith had negatively charged himself to repel the incoming lightning and positively charged his set of throwing daggers while Solus spread them in a diagonal line with spirit magic.

Only a small part of the thunderbolt struck him, but thanks to earth fusion Lith managed to escape from the clutches of death. All the remaining energy followed the path of least resistance Lith had created, aiming for that last dagger Ragh'Ash had just noticed.

'Physics rocks!' Lith thought as he fell to the ground.

Fear froze the shaman to the point she couldn't even close her eyes. Yet much to both magicians' surprise, she survived. The worm that they had left for dead came out of the ground in front of her and shielded Ragh'Ash with its body.

Not even the black armor could resist the power of nature. The cracks caused by Solus's Alchemical cocktail expanded until it was destroyed, revealing the creature inside.

It was a Rock Worm, a magical beast pretty common inside underground dungeons.

'What the heck is it doing here and why did it save the shaman?' Lith inwardly cursed at the beast.

Ragh'Ash didn't have the time to rejoice. Her body was very close to collapse and for some reason, her strongest weapon had been turned against her. To make things worse, her pet had fallen too.

She had no choice but to use her last trump card. Every time a shaman used the holy crystal, their bond became stronger. The crystal gave them mana and they gave it bits of their life in return.

An expert shaman could feel those bits and use them to access the memories of the past shamans. It wasn't even a spell, it was simply another kind of exchange, a bit of life of a bit of the past lives of others.

Ragh'Ash could only hope that one of her ancestors knew a spell capable of killing the demon and that accessing it wouldn't cost her sanity.

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Ragh'Ash's mind delved inside the crystal, only to find her own dreams and ambitions. Then, she went deeper, finding more and more shards of light representing the memories of others. She ignored those which belonged to her mentor.

Ragh'Ash's teacher wasn't even a real shaman, she had been so weak that Ragh'Ashkilled her as soon as she came of age. Most of the lives she explored were equally insignificant.

'May the gods below eat their useless souls! How long has it been since there was a shaman rather than a crystal bearer?' Ragh'Ash thought. In her desperation, she had forgotten that shamans were rare.

What she was attempting required time, but that was something she didn't have.

Lith was sick and tired of this fight. The moment Ragh'Ash stopped her movements, he cast one of the tier five Battle Mage spells he had mastered with true magic.

'As long as she has that damned crystal, she has the mana core advantage. Yet despite her use of very powerful incantations, they were all low tier ones. If I can't beat her with quantity, I'll go with quality.'

Lith had prepared Burial Ground from the moment he noticed the thundercloud. Burial Ground was a versatile spell that could be used for both offense and defense. The reason he had yet to employ it was Ragh'Ash's ability to neutralize the elements.

Powerful spells were very delicate, the slightest imbalance in the world energy would render them little more than a waste of mana. Luckily, the shaman spaced out long enough for the spell to take form and make the crystal's siphoning ability useless.

Several pillars erupted from the ground at once, surrounding the orc. Each one of them kept growing in height, while countless stone spikes emerged from the pillars and extended in every direction. Some attempted to stab the shaman, while others connected with other spikes, forming new pillars that generated even more spikes.

Thanks to Life Vision, Ragh'Ash could see that the spell was a hybrid of earth and darkness magic. The stone pillars were a conduit for the dark energies, so even standing close to them was enough to sap her life force.

'Damn demon! I found the spell I needed only to not have the opportunity to use it.' Ragh'Ash thought. She had no time to focus on elaborate spells, the cage was getting smaller by second. Dodging the ever increasing number of spikes required her full focus.

She released a barrage of low level spells to make Burial Grounds crumble, but the darkness magic also acted as a shield, weakening her spells before they even hit. The cage repaired itself almost as soon as it was damaged.

The only thing that could counter a high tier spell was another high tier spell. Ragh'Ash's body was soon pierced by the spikes, that kept growing and ravaging her internal organs.

In a last ditch effort, she tried to make the crystal detonate, but it was too late. The exertion from using spells non stop had taken its toll. Even though her mind was still alive her body refused to obey. Her mana stopped flowing, her mana core had already started turning grey.

Her will extended no further than her thoughts while the cage shrank until all that remained of the orc shaman was mincemeat. As soon as Ragh'Ash died, Lith changed into his army uniform and stored the crystal inside Solus's pocket dimension along with the pieces of the Rock Worm's black armor.

Lith knew it was just a matter of time before someone arrived, he was preparing for the final act of his masquerade. He only kept the Gatekeeper outside, since unlike the clothes, he could make it disappear without anyone noticing.

"Don't play dumb with me." Lith said waking up the Rock Worm that was still unconscious after being hit by the lightning.

"If you were a human, I would have already killed you, but since you are a magical beast, I'll give you a chance. I know you can speak. Tell me what you're doing here and why you tried to kill me."

"If I do as you say, will you let me go?" The Worm asked.

"If you don't, I'll kill you right now." Lith replied.

'Solus, how strong is this thing?'

'Pretty strong for a magical beast. Its core is cyan, but what's more interesting is that it also has a dormant black core.' Solus warned Lith.

'Just like the Wyvern we faced at Xenatos.' Without the black armor, she was able to use her mana sense again. Her findings shocked her and sent a shiver down Lith's spine.

He immediately used air magic to make the beast float, afraid it could suck the life force of the plants to heal itself with its black core.

"I'm here for the crystal. My Master sent me to retrieve it." The Worm replied hoping to buy enough time to find a chance to escape.

"Otherwise I wouldn't have wasted my time with filthy orcs nor would I have saved that incompetent shaman time and time again."

"Your words make no sense". Lith replied. "Why didn't you just steal the crystal from the beginning if your aim was just to take possession of it?"

"Each of the Fallen races has a unique trait. The orcs have the ability to manipulate mana crystals as no one else can."

"Fallen races?" Lith asked. It was the first time he had heard such a term.

"Fallen races, monsters, lost children of Mogar. Different names for the same thing. Failures." The beast explained with a hint of rage in its voice.

"My Master has long researched for a way to imitate their talent to no avail. Even interrogating shamans proved to be useless. Their superstitions are so strong that it makes them immune to any kind of torture.

"So, after several failures, the Master decided to change his approach. First, I found a tribe with a shaman and a powerful crystal. Then, I followed the crystal and applied a marking spell to it.

"Every time the shaman used its power, the marking spell would leave behind a trace for the Master to follow. At that point, all that was left to do was to force the shaman to use all of her abilities before retrieving the crystal.

"It took me several years to trigger enough tribal wars to collect the data I needed, yet I never managed to force the shaman to use her most powerful abilities. At least until now."

"The Soul Exchange that Ragh'Ash used was the last piece of the puzzle, something only a skilled Awakened orc can use. I can't believe that after all my efforts to groom her and assure her survival, it was her idiocy that doomed us both."

The Master had given the Worm the black armor to make it impervious to magic and almost untraceable.

Almost.

The Master had no idea something like mana sense existed, nor that his minion would suffer so much damage that not even its black core could heal it quickly enough for it to matter.

"Who is this master?" Lith asked.

The Rock Worm wasn't a zealot. The Master had proved incapable of making it evolve and refused to turn it into an Abomination because it was still too weak. The creature owed nothing to their cause.

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'If I tell the Awakened the truth, that the Master is just a human, he'll have no reason to spare me. I have to bluff my way out.' The creature thought.

"The Master is a powerful undead. They are watching us even now! Kill me and they'll send their legions to avenge my death."

'Solus?' Lith asked.

'Nothing.' She replied after a deep scan with all her senses. She even analyzed the single elements composing the world energy which gave her a terrible headache.

'No trace of spells or even of other anomalies in the area. I can faintly see someone incoming though. I don't know the others, but one of them is Tepper.'

Lith pierced the Worm with the Gatekeeper, infusing it with enough darkness magic to turn it into dust.

'Why did you kill it? It could have still talked.' Solus asked.

'It would have just fed us more lies and we have no more time.'

The Sergeant and several mages arrived a minute later and circled around the area looking at the traces of the battle. Before joining them, Lith Warped Solus under his bed, just to be safe.

He had no idea if they would believe him, nor what tools the army had at its disposal to search him for dimensional items.

TThey were all surprised to see Lith in one piece and when he reported that the crystal was gone, their worries turned into suspicion. Lith told them most of the truth.

He only belittled his wounds, which Solus had replicated on the uniform before leaving, and explained how after the shaman's defeat, the Worm had swallowed the crystal before disappearing underground.

"Do you have any proof of your claim?" An elder mage asked him with a stone cold voice.

"I only have some pieces of its armor. They fell off when I tried to stop it with a barrage of spells." Lith handed them a black stone that left the mages stunned.

"This is Darwen!" One of them exclaimed. "It's a rare material capable of nullifying most detection arrays and resisting magic. How much did you get?"

"Not much. Just the pieces inside my ring." The rest was inside the pocket dimension, but judging by their smiling faces it was still quite a catch.

'Damn! I should have kept more.' Lith inwardly cursed at himself. 'The silver lining is that they will be more inclined to believe me now.'

The elder mage took Lith's ring as he stared in his eyes.

"Young man, this ring is an army property. We can break your imprint and check its content anytime. Do you realize that both the crystal and the Darwen you found both belong to the Kingdom? That you, as a Cadet, are one of its servants?"

Lith nodded.

"If we find you in possession of stolen items, you'll be charged with treason. Are you sure you don't want to amend your story?"

Lith nodded again.

"This is preposterous!" Tepper objected. "He risked his life for the unit. Without him, my Cadets and I would be dead. The Kingdom would have lost good soldiers, the crystal, and the Darwen. How can you doubt his word?"

The elder mage sighed.

'Commander Berion is right. The Sergeant is a naïve idiot and the Cadet can't be trusted.'

"Greed blinds even the best of us. Especially mages." The elder replied before casting a diagnostic spell that examined the content of Lith's body, with particular care for his mouth, stomach, and anus. They were the places where thieves hid their dimensional items.

After that, he chanted a short spell that broke Lith's connection to the dimensional ring and examined its contents. As the Cadet had stated, there were only the corpses of a few orcs and some Darwen pieces.

Sergeant Tepper looked at the elder with a fiery gaze as the mage's cheeks turned red from embarrassment.

"I'm sorry for doubting your word, Cadet Lith, but I had to be sure."

"No harm, no foul." Lith replied.

'My paranoia is once again the MVP.' He inwardly sighed in relief.

After they returned to the camp, Lith was stripped and searched again with the diagnostic spell. Only after interrogating him for an hour did they finally let him go. He never contradicted himself, because most of what he said was true.

When he returned to the barracks, the other cadets gave him the salute before extending their hands.

'Why do people only like me after I kill a lot of bad guys?' Lith thought.

'Because that's the only moment when it seems like you care for them .' Solus sarcastically replied after reuniting with him.

"How did you kill so many orcs?"

"How did you defeat the shaman?"

Were just some of the questions he had to reply to over and over for the rest of the day as the story of his battle become public knowledge. From the next day, his life returned to normal.

Until the end of the boot camp, he managed to outperform his peers without engendering any more ill will.

Him being a mage was a secret, so of course soon everyone knew about it. It made him pretty popular, especially with the female cadets, but not for the reason he hoped for.

The greatest deterrent against relationships in a boot camp were pregnancy and the lack of contraceptive potions. A mage was an obvious solution to the problem. At the end of every day, Lith would find a line of people asking for his help.

'I feel like a condom machine. All the work and none of the fun.' He thought multiple times, yet he never refused. It was a small price to pay to be universally appreciated.

Before the graduation ceremony, every cadet received two days of leave to reconnect with their families before being moved according to their career choices, if they had one, of course.

When Lith returned home, his family welcomed him like he was returning from war rather than from the camp. They weren't used to not seeing him for such a long period of time. Lith spent every day and evening with his relatives, especially with his little brother and his niece.

In those six months they had grown a lot and he felt he had lost so much. During the nights, he worked on a mana crystal and studied the Darwen he had recently acquired.

'Just like darkness energy is entropy and destruction, light magic is life and order. It allows giving shape even to what is shapeless.' Lith thought while creating small holograms of the monsters he had faced while telling fairy tales to the kids.

Sometimes he even projected for his family some of the animated movies he still remembered from Earth. He made up the voices with air magic. The holograms were all in shades of grey, the background was non-existent yet every time they had guests, they would always ask for an encore.

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Two nights weren't enough for a complete study of Lith's spoils of war, but they were more than enough for a preliminary analysis.

"If the violet crystal has something special, I'm not able to notice it." Lith said while storing it inside his tower.

"Guess both the Sergeant and the Rock Worm were right. The gemstone per se is just like any other, it's the orcs who have the talent to use it in odd ways. This leaves us with a dilemma.

"Even though Invigoration couldn't help me uncovering the crystal's secrets, it allowed me to sense the marking liquid this so called 'Master' applied to the crystal. This means I have to choose if to cut the magic gemstone into smaller parts and use it for my creations, or to keep it as it is to learn about the orc's way with the crystals.

"The two things are mutually exclusive. If I cut the gemstone, I'll also destroy the markings in the process."

"I don't think it's much of a dilemma." Solus replied. "Even if you manage to successfully cut the crystal, there's nothing we can use it for. Violet magic crystals are too rare to waste them on trivial enchanted items. It has to be a masterpiece.

"Even if we had the materials to make one, going public with a new weapon empowered by violet crystals right after the orc accident would be like putting a target on your chest, back, and nether regions.

"We have to let things calm down before doing anything. So, until we really need it to craft an artifact, let's keep it as it is."

"Agreed." Lith nodded with a sigh, adding the violet crystal to his collection of precious but still useless things. It consisted of the dryad's gifts, the various corpses he collected over the years, and the weapons he robbed from his opponents.

"I wish this was a video game. A timely chain quest would pop up and give me what I need the moment I need it."

The Darwen had proven to be a nasty client. To shield its user from detection techniques, it required to cover them entirely. It was very hard, but also brittle, making it easy to crack.

That was the reason why the shell protecting the Rock Worm was so rough. A more precise refining process would most likely cause it to shatter. It would also require a very powerful magic. Being the Darwen resistant to magic, even analyzing it had been a hassle.

"The best use I can find for it is to turn Darwen into fine dust and then coat some kind of ninja suit with it. I could save it for stealth missions since it's useless in battle. If only I could enchant it to improve its performances…"

"Not even the 'Master' could, so I think it's better to bide our time and not waste the Darwen on a pet project either." Solus really wanted to cheer him up, but didn't know what to say.

Even though he could now return home more often, leaving his family again made Lith sad. During his past life, the only thing he had ever wanted was to be a good brother to Carl and a good uncle to his brother's children.

Now he finally had the opportunity to live his dream, yet he had to leave it behind to pursue his new goals.

'If I take a break now, I'll no longer be the Kingdom's golden boy.' He thought.

'Now it's my best chance to access all the libraries and databases that back when I was just a commoner were forbidden to me. With the Association backing me and a badge from the army, there shouldn't be much outside my grasp.'

Lith Warped back inside his room. Aran and Leria were waiting for him right behind his door, knocking on it with their little hands.

"What are you doing up this early?" Lith asked them while pinching his nose to keep a headache at bay. All that noise was making him cranky. Mostly because he hadn't slept in a week plus studying the Darwen had required multiple uses of Invigoration in a row.

"Are you really leaving today, uncle Lith?" Leria asked staring at him with her big, puppy, chestnut eyes.

"Yes, right after breakfast." It was already the morning of the third day, he was expected to get back before lunchtime, which still left him a few hours. A wave of Lith's hand made plates and cutlery float on the table while steaming hot food came out of his pocket dimension.

The whole family was reunited for his return, even Tista had interrupted her travels to meet her big brother.

"Can't you stay here one more day? Pretty please?" How Aran had managed to have blue eyes was a mystery to Lith. Both the kids were beautiful and healthy. They would rarely get sick. Lith wondered if it depended on their parents having received his special treatment.

Leria had blonde hair with shades of black, just like her mother Rena, while Aran had the family trademark dark brown hair. They were both so small Lith could easily keep them on his lap at the same time.

"No, I can't. I'm really sorry." Lith replied. He then snapped his fingers, producing with air magic a jingling sound to alert the rest of the family that the meal was ready.

"I'll return as soon as I can. In the meantime, I've prepared a present for you." Lith gave them what looked like a Rememberer each. It was an egg shaped recording device, used to capture important moments in the lives of those rich enough to afford them.

The ones Lith had forgemastered, instead of projecting real events, were able to replay the kids' favorite fairy tale. Aran's was the adventure of Forgemaster Lith Jones and the last crucible. Leria preferred the story of Battle Mage Solus Van Helsing, the kick ass vampire slayer.

"You should have given them the Projector just before your departure." Rena scolded him. "The food will become cold before they get tired of it."

"It's unlikely." Lith shrugged. "The magic crystal I used only allows for one use every few hours. It will teach them moderation."

The children's happiness was as big as their disappointment when the Projector finished its tale and refused to play it again. After the breakfast ended, Lith hugged every member of his family before taking his leave.

"Take care, little brother." Rena said. "Always remember that no matter how many bad things you'll see out there, this house will always be the place you belong to. If you ever need our support, you'll find us here."

"Do whatever you need to return home safe." Raaz whispered in Lith's ear. "Your mother can't bear to lose another son."

Lith didn't understand his father's words until Elina asked him to bend down to caress his face.

"I know it's stupid of me after all these years, but if you ever meet Trion, tell him to come home. I just need to know he is all right." Her voice was almost broken.

'Is she really afraid that I'll disappear too?' The pain in Elina's words shocked Lith.

The moment he left home, his communication device appeared in his hand and Lith started to call in some favors. He arrived at the boot camp early, with plenty of time left to change into his uniform and make final preparations.

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When the mail arrived, everyone rushed to open their own envelope to discover their final scores. Most rejoiced, but some cried in despair. Among the girls, only Nhilo had been evaluated fit to become a soldier.

The other two and Liwell were forced to choose between becoming members of the administrative department or return to their civilian life. The rest of the unit had received a passing grade. Vipli and Nhilo were the only ones promoted to Non Commissioned Officers.

Nobody was surprised when Lith's grade was confirmed to be an M. What unsettled him was that, while for the others it was required to report to Sergeant Tepper, Lith had been summoned to Commander Berion's office.

Aside from his score, the letter didn't report any further detail.

"Don't worry, I'm sure there's a good reason for this." Vipli tried to reassure Lith. "It would make no sense making me an NCO and keeping you as a Private."

"Thanks. I hope you are right." Lith patted Vipli's shoulder before going to the Commander's Office.

'If I have to spend a year and a half starting from scratch, I might as well quit and they know it.' Lith thought.

'What could have gone wrong? Did I fail the psychological evaluation? Either that or I'm being punished for the crystal's disappearance. I can't think of any other reason to kick me out with such an underhanded ruse.'

Lith's paranoia once again took the wheel, painting himself into a corner before he could even reach Berion's door.

"Welcome, Mage Verhen. I didn't expect you so soon." The Commander's polite manners didn't surprise Lith.

'If he knows my family name, then he probably wants to avoid me making a scene.' He thought.

Commander Berion was a man in his early thirties. He was almost as tall as Lith, standing 1.8 (5'11") meters tall with pitch black hair and eyes. His pale blue uniform could barely contain his muscular body, giving each of his movements an impression of strength.

Lith gave him a salute, which the Commander returned before inviting him to sit down.

"Let's get straight to the point, Mage Verhen." Lith didn't like the Commander's flat tone, nor the fact Berion kept referring to him as a civilian mage.

"You are an outstanding individual. Alas, you are far from perfect. Your performances are controversial at best. You didn't develop any kind of bond with the members of your unit nor with your commanding officer."

The Commander handed Lith several complaints about him filed by the other Cadets and even by Tepper during the past months.

'I should have let them die in those woods.' Lith inwardly thought in outrage.

"Your psychological evaluation says you are emotionally detached and manipulative. In the light of all the circumstances presented to me, I can't make you an officer. You are unfit to lead even a small unit."

Lith gritted his teeth, waiting for the final blow.

"At the same time, you have broken every record of this and many other camps. You also risked your life to save your unit when you could have just run away. No one would have blamed you for leaving them for dead in such an impossible situation.

"Your bravery earned you gratitude, admiration, and provided the army with plenty of materials for our RD department." This time the Commander handed to Lith commendation letters from the Sergeant and his peers, asking Berion to ignore their previous complaints.

"This is why I'm promoting you to first Lieutenant."

"I thought you said I'm unfit to lead." The sudden turn of events left Lith in a daze.

"You sure are. Yet without a proper rank, you wouldn't even get a proper meal, let alone the clearance level necessary for the jobs I have been allowed to offer you."

The Commander steepled his fingers.

"Based on your evaluation, you are a perfect candidate for our secret services. I won't lie to you. It's a very hard job and a lifelong one at that. If you decide to accept, there will be no option for retirement or quitting. The only way out is feet first."

'Black ops squad, uh?' Lith thought. 'No way. I would be constantly monitored, either by enemies or allies, and would have no freedom of movement. The army is a tool for my ends, not the other way around.'

"I'm honored but I have to refuse, Sir. I don't think such a job would allow me to pursue my magical research nor to have a family of my own." Lith lied through his teeth. He would rather die than marry and have children.

Berion nodded without showing one bit of surprise.

'Always the family man, just like his file reported.' The Commander inwardly sighed. 'It was worth a shot.'

"Then I'm sorry to say that the only positions available to you are as a member of the Knight's Guard or the Rangers. My hands are tied."

Lith knew everything about the Knight's Guard. Phloria had talked about her father's unit until Lith's ears bleed. Solving crimes and protecting Royal Constables wasn't an alluring job. Lith would rather work for the Mage Association instead of being ordered about all day long for the rest of his life.

"Tell me more about the Rangers." Lith replied, making Berion smirk for a split second.

"The Rangers are an elite force, entrusted with great powers and responsibilities. Don't let the name fool you. It has nothing to do with hunting game or patrolling borders.

"Their duty is to travel through the Kingdom, to protect isolated communities from all kinds of threats, and to keep in check the monsters' population. If you accept, you will be assigned a vast area that you'll need to know like the back of your hand.

"If nobles abuse their authority in rural areas, where there are no mages or army members, your duty will be to uphold the law. If monsters infest a region, you'll have to get rid of them before they can swarm a populated area.

"Also, there are lots of no man's lands, where people settle in without paying their due taxes to the Kingdom or even respecting its laws. If you find such villages, they can only be offered two choices. To submit or die.

"Organized crime is already a plague. The last thing we need is a criminal country inside of the Country."

"Would it be the same region until the end of my service?" Lith asked. No matter how big an area was. Once he finished exploring it, Lith would turn into nothing more than a baby sitter.

"No, it would change after two or three months. Elite doesn't mean immune to bribery. Nobody watches the watchers, so they have to be rotated. Depending on how fast you work, you may even have free time. Rangers are allowed to go home and use Warp Gates, but their job is subject to scrutiny."

"I think Ranger would be the most suitable position for me, Sir."

"Are you sure?" Berion still needed to give Lith the final details.

"It's a very vexing duty. Since they have access to communication amulets, magic, and Warp Gates, Rangers act alone, unless they deem reinforcements are required. Prolonged isolation can take a huge toll on the mind."

Lith inwardly smiled at those words.

'With Solus by my side, I'm never truly alone. No partner also means no witness. I can do what I want, take whatever I want and nobody would ever know.'

"Affirmative, Sir. Before starting active duty, I'd need your help with one thing."

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Regharos city's region Boot Camp

The Cadet's graduation ceremony was an event celebrated not only by the new members of the Griffon Kingdom's army, but also by their commanding officers.

Finding diamonds in the rough and helping promising recruits to overcome their limitations was one of the most common ways for a Drill Sergeant to rack up merits. The success or failure of their Cadets could change their careers.

Trion Proudstar was still recovering from his clash with Phloria Ernas. She had kept her word. Neither she nor her family had made a move against him, but the army wasn't as forgiving.

Phloria was considered one of the most outstanding young officers. She had yet to fail an important mission and most of the soldiers she trained had become members of elite units.

Back when she was still a Cadet, Trion had done everything he could to make her flunk.

Now that their roles were reversed, every success Phloria achieved made him the object of harsh reprimands and contemptuous looks. To his superiors, Trion had failed to recognize her value. The more she rose in the ranks, the bigger the stain on his personal file became.

Trion's only source of relief was the camaraderie from his fellow Sergeants. They knew about his brother and understood his grief. Most of them came from messed up families and each had their own burden.

Making a stupid mistake wasn't an issue. As long as Trion was willing to learn from it, he would have their full support. The end of the semester also meant that they could finally relax and enjoy a slow meal.

The mess hall was filled with voices telling the most ridiculous anecdotes about their own Cadets. Spring recruits were considered the worst batch, since it usually consisted of nobles or lazy youths that had no idea what to do with their lives.

"This Cadet I had, Revkin, he was really a piece of work." Trion was bantering about his latest success. "Rough and undisciplined, but a real soldier to the core. The harder you taught him the faster he learned…"

He was about to tell his friends about how he had recommended Revkin for the rank of Lance Corporal, when an eerie feeling crawled up his skin. It was almost the end of the summer, so the climate was still hot, yet Trion felt a knot in his stomach.

It was a sensation he had never forgotten, like the cold drafts that plagued his room during winter when he was still a kid.

"Why suddenly so silent?" Asked Beligros, one of Trion's closest friends when he saw him anxiously look at the Mess Hall's entrance.

The answer walked through the door just a few seconds later, donning the deep green of the Rangers and the rank of First Lieutenant on his sleeves.

"By the Great Mother." More than one voice said while he passed in front of their tables. Most Drill Sergeants checked Lith out, envying whoever had been lucky enough to be his commanding officer.

Everything about how he moved and wore the uniform told them he had just graduated. Cooking up an officer right off a Cadet was usually a career-maker event. Some of the female Sergeants checked him out for less noble reasons.

It had taken Lith quite an effort to find Trion in the myriad of Boot Camps across the whole Griffon Kingdom. To get access to the right one without an official reason had cost him owing some favors. There wasn't much his connections could do.

Lith's influence outside the Distar Marquisate was almost none, yet it was a price he was happy to pay for his mother's sake. He had never realized how much suffering Trion's absence had caused Elina, otherwise he would have hunted his brother down years ago.

"Sergeants." Lith said as he gave them a salute after reaching Trion's table. It was unusual for an officer to salute NCOs first, but being freshly promoted Lith was paying them the respect their rank and seniority deserved.

All of Trion friends were pleasantly impressed by the courtesy the giant was showing them, so they stood up and returned the salute. All but Trion. His knees felt weak as the knot in his stomach was quickly moving up to his throat.

The scene in front of him was right out of his worst nightmare.

"What are you doing here?" Trion asked using sheer willpower to look into Lith's eyes as he braced for the impact.

"We need to talk." Lith's gaze wasn't angry nor menacing. His tone was flat, like he was just asking for directions in an unknown city.

"What are you doing, man?" Beligros whispered while trying to pull Trion up.

"He may be as green inside as he is outside, but he's still a superior officer and yours is a clear act of insubordination."

Trion wanted to reply, but his jaw was clenched so hard he couldn't speak. Then, the nightmare became reality.

"No need for formalities, Sergeant Beligros. After all, Trion and I are brothers." The whole Mess Hall stood up at those words, while Beligros turned pale knowing his disrespectful words had been heard.

'Dammit, I was just trying to make Trion move. Hope this guy doesn't hold a grudge' He thought.

"What do you want?" Trion replied with a hoarse voice. Whatever it was, he wanted for it to end quickly. He could almost hear the thoughts of all his peers, making cruel comparisons between the two brothers.

Lith was the tallest man in the room with his 1.83 (6') while Trion barely reached the average height of 1.65 (5'5"). To make things worse, he wasn't a scrawny kid anymore. Lith had the build one would expect from a veteran of an elite unit, not from a recruit.

Also, both his rank straight after the graduation and him being part of the Rangers were big tells for all those present. They meant he was a mage. Otherwise no matter how talented a Cadet was, being promoted above the rank of Corporal right after a Boot Camp was impossible.

"It's about our mother. She still worries about you. Do you mind telling me why in two years and a half you never bothered returning home or at least writing a letter?" The room fell silent. Lith was different from how Trion had pictured him.

Trion had always told them that his family had abandoned him, so hearing about a worried mother was mind-blowing news.

"Do you really want me to believe that she cares for me? After ignoring me for years, giving all her love and attention to her little, perfect son?" Trion's words oozed poison.

"Look, I know we never went along." Lith sighed, yet his brother's accusations left him unfazed. He didn't care for Trion's grievances. For all those years, he had believed him dead.

'What sort of world is it where you can't even trust assassins? During the plague, they threatened me to kill him unless I surrendered, yet here we are.'

"Neither of us deserves a mother like Elina and you know it. Don't let your feelings towards me cloud your judgment. She deserves better."

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"Is it true?" Trion asked.

"Yes, she is really worried about you. Mom just wants to know that you are…"

"Not that!" Trion stood up, lashing out the insecurities that he had left festering in the last six months.

"Is what that Ernas wench told me true? That everyone has forgotten about me? That I now have a niece and a little brother? That both of them were named after you?"

Lith needed a split second to understand who the 'Ernas wench' was. A Drill Sergeant couldn't get close to Jirni, unless she was investigating them. Which left Phloria as the only possible answer.

Lith clenched his fist, yet his tone remained polite.

"Rena stopped considering you a brother after you never returned from your graduation. She couldn't forgive you for making mom cry like that. Tista wrote you off the family list ever since you and Orpal said all those things about her.

"As for dad, he never talks about you. I don't think he hates you, Trion. More like he has lost all hopes. We do have a niece, Leria, and a little brother, Aran. Leria is the only one named after me."

On Mogar, it was custom to name a child with the same initial letter of the most esteemed member of the family as a good omen.

"Well, I guess it had to be expected. A humble Sergeant is no match for an almighty magician!" Trion's anger almost drove him insane. To the point he barely realized he was discussing family matters in public.

"I can't believe Rena sucked up to you that much! What did you give her in exchange for it?"

"Nothing." Lith's voice was losing its kindness and becoming colder by the word.

"She did it because I gave her a home, I protected both her old and new family, and because I delivered her firstborn. No one knew you became a Sergeant, simply because you never bothered telling us."

"I…"

"You are done talking." Lith cut him short, throwing his communication amulet on the table. "Either you promise me in front of all these people that you will come back home, or I'll call our mother right now and you'll explain to her your reasons."

Trion and all those present looked at the amulet with greed. Such an enchanted item was worth a year of their pay.

Trion hesitated for a second. If he called Elina and she started crying, his reputation would be destroyed. He had always pictured her to his colleagues as a cold hearted woman who had eyes only for her most talented child.

Trion knew it was a blatant lie. He said it for the same reason he had never returned home. It was the way he had found to get back at a family from which he had always felt left out.

Trion hoped to make them feel guilty and worried about his disappearance. Most of all, he wanted to hurt Lith. Yet it was clear he had failed. Lith still looked at him as when they were still kids.

Lith had taught to his older brothers that the flip side of love wasn't hate. It was indifference. Even when he was little, he would stare at them without really seeing neither Orpal or Trion. Lith would talk to his brothers with the same tone he used for strangers.

Be it pelts or meat, he would never bring anything for them. Whenever they were hurt or ill, Lith never intervened unless their parents asked him to.

"I'll go back home as soon as I get a leave. You have my word."

"Good." Lith nodded. "One word of advice before our business is concluded. Our parents love you, so I won't meddle with your relationship. Same for Tista and Rena. They are grown-up women who can fend for themselves."

Lith stepped forward as his eyes changed from chestnut to yellow and his pupils were replaced by a red light.

"The children, however, are another story. If when I get back I find out you have been anything but a loving uncle and brother, I will end you." Lith remarked his last words by letting out a sliver of killing intent.

Or at least that was the intention. He was already tired and cranky before Trion started to insult everyone Lith cared about, so the sliver turned into a flood.

The Mess Hall's lights flickered several times as an unnatural shadow covered the windows, making everyone present think they had dozed off into a lucid nightmare. In the darkness they saw distorted reflections of themselves staring at them with hunger, some even experienced their ghastly touch.

The Sergeants were all veterans, yet they found themselves covered in cold sweat and with their weapons at hand. They were pointed against their imaginary enemies, except for those of Trion's friends which were aimed at Lith.

"At ease, Sergeants." Lith snapped his fingers, using both gravity and spirit magic to force them to lower their blades. "Or does that mean you are assaulting an officer?"

At those words, the weapons were either stored inside a dimensional item again or let go onto the ground.

Lith spent the rest of the afternoon back at his base. Commander Berion had let him choose his first destination. Lith cross-referenced the information he had collected from the army's database with those from the Mage Association.

'Aside from Necromancy, there's not much about the study of the nature of souls and how to manipulate them, but it's a start nonetheless.'

Lith thought. 'Too bad neither my merits nor my clearance level grants me access to most of the tomes I'm interested in.'Lith collected all the lore and legends about the regions he could choose from before leaving the base.

'Commander Berion granted me a full day of leave to solve the matter with Trion and make my decision. I'll use this time to go meet Kalla one last time before leaving. With all her connections with the undead community, she could give me advice about where to start my research.

'I could also ask her help to develop an undead empty shell for Solus. Two birds with one stone.' Lith took out from the pocket dimension his communication amulet.

The last time they met, the Wight had warned him she would be busy with her experiments to attain lichhood and asked Lith to not reach for her unless he was in dire need for help.

Kalla's rune was lit, hence her amulet wasn't inside a dimensional item. Yet she didn't reply if not after several attempts.

"Sorry to bother you, Kalla." Lith said when the channel was finally open. "I just need a few minutes of your time, then I'll leave you alone. I…"

"A few minutes might be all the time I have left, Scourge." Her voice was barely a whisper. "I've been trying to contact you for months. My experiments… I'm afraid my most recent failure will also be my last.

If you manage to reach my lair before it's too late, I'll help you to the best of my possibilities. I can't make any promises."

'Those b*stards!' Lith cursed at the army clerks. 'While I attended the Boot Camp, they didn't reply to any call aside those from my family and noble friends.'

The only silver lining in that situation was that Kalla lived in the forest outside the White Griffon. Thanks to the Camp's Warp Gate, Lith could reach her in less than a minute. The only problem was that he was already months late.

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Lith hadn't seen Kalla during the last three years, they just talked from time to time when her communication amulet appeared online. Lith understood how difficult the process of safely splitting one's core was and he thought that endangering his friend's life just for a social visit was beyond idiotic.

Once he reached the White Griffon, Lith asked the Headmaster to have his teacher ring back. He didn't have the time to fly around the forest searching for Kalla.

Albeit short, his meeting with Marth provided him some vital information.

"I never met Kalla the Wight after Balkor's attack. I honestly believed she had died by the hand of a Valor." Marth replied when Lith asked him about Kalla's whereabouts.

"I would love to contact Scarlett, but she left the White Griffon for good. We have a new Lord of the Forest, Sentar the Thunderbird."

'That's why Kalla needed my help.' Lith thought. 'With Scarlett gone, there is no elder Awakened one that could cure her. Light magic it's one of the hardest elements to master.'

Sentar had conflicting feelings about both Kalla and Lith. The former she considered an undead, which made Sentar reluctant to even stand in her presence. The latter had the stigma of Scarlett considering him a possible threat.

Yet Sentar remembered how her former leader had considered Kalla a close friend, as well as how much M'Rook and Protector liked Lith. She brought him to the Wight's quarters without asking questions.

When Kalla had mentioned a lair, Lith's mind had pictured some sort of natural network of caves, maybe a dungeon. A place riddled with corpses and undead, respectively the failures and successes of her research.

The entrance was an arch made of stone that led to an underground passage. It was the only part Lith had imagined right.

The moment he stepped inside, he thought to have entered a penthouse back on Earth. The room looked like an antechamber realized to allow Evolved Monsters to move without having to shapeshift.

Everything was oversized, from the corridors leading to the other rooms to the over four meters (13') high ceiling. The floor was smooth, with no imperfection nor stain visible.

'This isn't a natural cave at all. Someone carved everything out with earth magic.' Lith thought in surprise.

"Thank the gods you're here!" A giant mass of brown fur charged at Lith like a truck. Lith wasn't scared, he had recognized Nok's voice. The moment the Byk hit him, Lith realized how wrong he was.

Even with Nok's momentum, the impact was too weak. The fur was full of white streaks and now that they were close enough, Lith noticed several bald spots.

"Follow me." Nok bit Lith's left sleeve, tugging him forward without even waiting for a reply.

Lith exploited that contact to use Invigoration. Nok was now an adult Byk. His huge build was proof he had at least inherited his mother's physical strength and of how well fed he had been.

'What the heck has happened to him? I can't find any trace of disease or injury on Nok, yet his life force is as weak as when he was just a cub. Did he suffer from Kalla's experiments too or what?' Lith thought.

They passed through a series of rooms. Each one was bigger than Lith's house and filled with state of the art equipment for all kinds of magical research. There wasn't a single inch in any room that wasn't filled with books or magical protections to prevent a failed experiment from causing a cave in.

The Alchemy and Forgemaster labs almost made Lith turn green with envy.

'Where did Kalla find the money to afford all of this stuff? I thought she was interested in Necromancy, not crafting arts.' Solus jotted down everything they had seen, hoping to recreate most of the machinery once she reverted to her tower form.

Some devices were an improved version of what she was used to seeing in the White Griffon's departments.

When they reached their destination, Lith had no doubt it was a Necromancer's lab. Several glass tubes were lined up against the walls. Each one held a corpse floating into a translucent preserving liquid.

The floor and the ceiling were covered with magic circles similar to those Lith had found during his own research about souls in the army database. They had been carved in the stone with darkness magic. Their purpose was to prevent the mystical energies from dispersing.

In a way, Necromancy was similar to Forgemastering. Creating higher undead required a lot of mana and each corpse could only be used once. The magic circles increased the odds of success by saturating the atmosphere of darkness energy, making it easier for it to condense into a stable blood core.

Kalla lied in the middle of one of the oddest circles Lith had ever seen. Her body was lying still on the floor with most of her bones and muscles exposed. Her Evolved Monster form was partially undead, so she had no need to breathe.

The small shroud of darkness that covered part of her skull and abdomen proved she was still alive. Lith rushed to Kalla's side, noticing that one of her eye sockets was empty.

Only the one still covered by the darkness was lit by the red light of undeath.

"So you managed to arrive on time." Kalla noticed Lith's presence thanks to his smell. She was running on fumes. The sight was the first thing she had lost days ago.

"Don't talk. Save your strength and let me see if there's something I can do." Lith used Invigoration on her and discovered an unsettling anomaly. Just like Nok, her body was fit as a fiddle, yet her life force was fading away as they spoke.

"I stand corrected. Tell me what happened here, otherwise you'll die healthy."

"There's not much to say." Kalla replied. "I had reached the final steps of my research. My body is now able to withstand massive amounts of darkness energy without being destroyed and my mana core has been freed from its cage.

"All that was left was to split it into two perfect half and store one into a magic crystal I prepared beforehand. It took me months to adjust its wavelength to match the one of my core. The trickiest part was…"

"What happened?" Lith cut her short.

"The splitting of the mana core was a complete success. Alas, the removing part couldn't have gone worse. I underestimated the task and paid the price. I believed that becoming a Lich was just like any other greater Necromancy spell.

"The magic circles I prepared are perfect to contain darkness magic, but are otherwise useless. The moment I brought one of the two new cores outside my body, it disappeared like smoke, leaving behind only its darkness component.

"It forcefully attempted to fuse back with the remaining half of my mana core, but it was already in a critical condition. To trigger the split, I exposed both my body and core to tremendous stress. The sudden imbalance almost killed me.

"From that moment, I grew weaker by the day. I tried all the light spells I know to no avail."

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"Even Invigoration is useless. Healing magic repaired my body, but every bit of energy I spend is lost forever. The only reason I survived this long is that I modified one of the circles in a last ditch effort. Now it's supposed to hold all kinds of energies, but it does a poor job.

"I didn't know what's wrong with me, so I had to make it a makeshift jack of all trades."

"Okay, now unless you have something medically relevant to say, shut up and let me think." Lith replied.

"Sorry, it's just that after being alone for so long, talking to someone that can understand my research…"

"Mom, what part of shut up you didn't understand? The shut or the up?" Nok scolded her. Kalla's eye glowed in silent annoyance.

Lith had no idea what to do, so he used his diagnostic spells first and used Invigoration later. Once again according to his magic, aside from being on the verge of death, Kalla was fit as a fiddle.

'This doesn't make sense. It sounds like one of those "The procedure was a success but the patient died" jokes.' Lith thought. 'I have one last card to play.'

Lith then used the Scanner spell. It was the fulcrum of tier five healing magic, the art of perceiving and manipulating all kinds of life forces. He had already turned it into true magic, but had failed to find a way to integrate it with Invigoration.

Unlike Invigoration, Scanner revealed to Lith in what pitiful state Kalla was. Her life force had stopped flowing. For some reason, Kalla's body was unable to replenish its strength or assimilate any kind of external energy.

Even when Lith attempted to share with her part of his life force, it did her no good. She was dying because her own body was slowly consuming itself in order to survive.

Her abdomen was what worried him the most. A small portion of it was completely black. Scanner was unable to sense any life force coming from it, but that was supposed to be impossible.

Invigoration confirmed the initial evaluation: there was nothing wrong with her physical condition. A second Scanner also produced consistent results: Kalla's body was starving and part of it was already dead.

It was the first time that Lith's trump cards were at odds with one another.

'Why couldn't it be something simpler? Like waxing a gorilla or teaching a crab how to give the finger?' Lith thought for long about the problem, but neither he or Solus were able to find a solution.

"Did you get caught in the aftermath of the experiment too?" He asked Nok. Since their conditions were similar, maybe the Byk could be able to provide him more clues.

"What gave you such an idea?"

"You look like crap." Lith replied.

'How tactful of you.' Solus sneered. 'His mother is dying; you could at least be gentle.'

'I have no time for niceties. I need answers and I need them now.'

"Oh, this?" Nok stood on his hind legs while looking at his battered fur.

"This is no one's fault. Since mom got injured, I had no time for hunting so I have skipped a few meals. My sis too refused to leave her side. Her hunger is worse than mine because if she doesn't eat, she doesn't get thinner. She dies."

Nok pointed his snout to a pile of dirty rags lying in a corner. It was a sour note in the otherwise pristine room.

"You sister?" Lith had forgotten about Kalla's vampire daughter.

"Lith, this is Nyka. Nyka, Lith. He is an old friend of mine."

The dirty rags stood up, turning out to be a woman in her mid twenties. Dust and mud covered most of her naked body. Her hair was disheveled, making it look like a mop too old to be still of use.

Her skin was white as milk, and so were her eyes. They had no pupil or iris, yet Lith could feel her staring at him.

"Why is she naked?" Lith asked.

"Because beasts do not care if I wear clothes and humans try to kill me no matter my attire." Her voice was raspy like she had a sore throat. Her body was flaccid and her hair white with a tinge of yellow.

'Compared to her, Nana looked like she was in her prime.' Lith was disappointed. Vampires looked nothing like he expected them. Nyka reminded him of one of the witches from the MacBeth play.

"Can you please feed her, Scourge?" Kalla asked. "With Invigoration, you can get your life force back while if Nok weakens any further, his core could suffer permanent damage."

Lith took out a lot of food from his pocket dimension, allowing the Byk to feast to its stomach content for the first time in weeks.

"Well yes, but actually no." Lith replied. "I haven't slept in a week and during the last two days I was busy with experiments. If I feed her, I might not have enough energy left to heal you."

'If I understand the underlying cause of Kalla's sickness, of course.'

'You and your experiments!' Solus scolded him. 'How many times have I told you to sleep once every two days?'

'Do you have any idea how much time I would have wasted that way?'

"I understand." Kalla interrupted their telepathic quarreling. "I've lost track of the time so often that my children…"

"Mom, shut up!" Both Nok and Nyka yelled as one.

Lith checked Nok's condition with Invigoration and was happy to see his body regaining its strength.

'What could have possibly happened to make even Invigoration useless? Why does the life force that I give Kalla go to waste?' Lith kept wondering while he alternated the use of his breathing technique and Scanner.

'Maybe it's just a coincidence,' Solus pointed out. 'But don't you think it's odd that the black area Scanner detects is partially overlapped with the one where Invigoration locates Kalla's core?'

'It's no coincidence, just idiocy.' Lith replied.

'Whose idiocy?'

'Mine!' Lith inwardly cursed at himself.

"I know what's happening." He explained to Kalla.

"To split and move your mana core you have 'destroyed its cage'. Said cage is your own life force."

"It makes sense. Both success and failure required for me to die. My survival has been an unexpected accident." Kalla pondered.

"The damage you have caused has permanently altered the flow of your life force, making it unable to connect properly with the mana core. That's why Invigoration is useless. The world energy has no way of being passed to your body anymore."

"Can you fix it?" Mother and children asked in unison.

"If I was at full strength I'd answer 'probably'. In my current condition, I don't even know how long will it take for me to collapse from exhaustion. Repairing such huge damage near the mana core is a very delicate job. Can you hold on for a couple of hours?"

"I think I have another couple of minutes in me." The shadows enveloping Kalla's figure shrank while the light in her remaining eye started to flicker.

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Cursing at both the army and his bad luck, Lith activated all of his Body Sculpting spells at once. He had modified the basic version learned at the academy into a true magic one with a few kinks of his own.

'The situation is bad. I have to alternate Invigoration and Scanner, otherwise one's readings will block the other's. Plus I have to fill the hole inside Kalla's abdomen fast. If I take my time as usual, she's as good as dead.'

In her attempt to achieve Lichhood, Kalla had damaged her life force, leaving a gaping hole that was slowly dissipating both her mana and life force. It also prevented her to use Invigoration since the mana would be drained by the hole.

Lith went all out from the start and conjured ten Chisels at once. The Chisels started to probe into the healthy life force. Kalla wasn't a slime but an Evolved Monster, which made her a unique living being.

'If she was a human, at least I'd know where to start. I have never studied a Wight's life force, dammit. It's completely different from what I have ever seen before.'

Watching at Kalla through Scanner was like trying to follow a rollercoaster constantly changing its physical form, going from liquid to solid without warning. Her partial undead nature made unnecessary for her to breathe or possess most organs.

On paper, it sounded really cool because it made her resistant to most kinds of energies. On the other hand, for Lith it was a nightmare. Her life force was a hybrid, composed of the physical form of her body and the shadow energy that enveloped her physique to connect the various parts.

Lith had to alter them both without killing her nor having enough time to study Kalla's unique nature properly. Even though Lith was in a rush, he needed to assess how bad the situation was, so he had the Chisels checking the edges of the black zone.

'The situation is worse than I expected.' Lith sighed. 'The life force around the damage has stabilized, but even just poking it's enough to make it bleed life force that disappears immediately. I can't collect nor save it. The hole is like a drain.

Solus, I may need your help.'

'There is not much I can do with a deep green core. I can barely use a tier five spell by borrowing some of your mana.' She replied.

'Don't worry, I just need you to use Spatula to collect the life force in case I make a mistake.'

Lith could have conjured and controlled more than ten chisels, but that would lessen his accuracy. Kalla was already with one foot in the grave, he couldn't afford to make any major slipup.

Manipulating life force was different from any other kind of spellcasting Lith had learned. It required to keep your focus at all times, exerting surgical control on your mana as well as on the patient's body.

In any other circumstance, Lith would have used Body sculpting to repair the damage by redistributing the life force without altering its flow. The problem was that the procedure was slow and Kalla had maybe a couple of minutes left.

'Since I don't have time, the fastest approach is to transplant life force from a healthy part to fill the hole. It will create a new one, but at least if I cover Kalla's mana core, her condition should improve.

If I'm right, it will buy me the time I need to fix her.'

First, Lith used one of his personal spells, Mould, to take a magical picture of the life force in Kalla's left paw in order to be able to restore it later once the emergency was resolved.

A paw was far from all vital organs, making it the perfect life force donor.

After he made sure that no permanent damage would befall his friend, the Chisels worked in unison on the left paw to remove the energy and brought it over the black area.

Even transplanting the life force of the same individual was a very delicate procedure. First, a Chisel had to disconnect each single block unit's connection to the paw. Then, a few Chisels would use mana strands to weave it to the healthy life force near the hole.

Lith had to be fast, otherwise the dead zone would drain the energy.

Lith hated that kind of procedure. It was more like butchering than surgery, so he also had to focus on minimizing the damages. For a control freak like him, it was a worst case scenario.

He could either rush things, maybe saving the patient, but leaving a mess behind that he would be forced to fix later, or bide his time and let Kalla die. Lith worked non stop, expending his mana so fast that he needed to use Invigoration right after the two minutes mark had passed.

Despite the situation, he sighed in relief.

'Since Kalla is still alive, I count that as a win.' Lith thought. The light in her left eye seemed to have stabilized, but she was still too weak to talk or simply she had no energy to waste.

Kalla could feel that something was wrong with her paw. She was progressively losing sensitivity. Yet she already had a hard time staying awake, so she considered it just another sign of her imminent doom.

The more time passed, though, the stronger she felt. Kalla understood that whatever Lith was doing was working the moment she regained her sight. She had been blinded for weeks, so her first instinct was to scream in joy.

Yet when she saw how bad her children's condition was, her joy turned into despair. The only thing that stopped her from trying to reach them was the sight of Lith, sweating bullets, who emitted enough mana to fight three Wights at once.

He was sparing no effort, going down to the last shred of energy before using Invigoration.

'I don't want to lose another friend. Kalla and I never spoke much but there's a connection between us. Maybe it's because we are both anomalies for our species, but she always gave me more credit than I deserved.' Lith thought.

'I'm glad to hear that, but promise me this time it will not end like with Protector.' Solus was worried about him. Both his body and mind were approaching their limits.

'I promise.' Lith replied, leaving her shocked. She knew how stubborn he was.

'I have learned my lesson back then. Exchanging my life for another is idiotic, but that doesn't mean that I will not do my best to save Kalla.' He emitted a strong burst of energy, sending his Chisels after the shadow energy that composed half of the life force.

Operating on the space near the hole was already hard. The slightest mistake would result in a partial or complete loss of the transplanted energy. Yet what he was about to do was even harder.

Lith had done all he could for the body, now he needed to restore the flow.

To do it, he had to attach small chunks of life force to the shadows and reconnect them to the damaged parts. Weaving mana threads on a moving target was as easy as killing an elephant with a pea shooter.

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It required for Lith to anticipate the life force's flow, so he could place the energy on its tracks and connect the threads a second earlier they collided. There was no space for mistakes, each procedure could only be a success or a failure.

So far, he had failed a lot. The hole in Kalla's abdomen was the size of a human head, while her paw had enough life force to fill a space ten times as big. Yet it was already almost depleted.

To use what little energy was left, Lith used Invigoration before every attempt to fix the flow. It increased his odds of success at the expense of his endurance. With each use of Invigoration, the smaller was the effect and the higher the burden on Lith's body.

Each burst allowed him to use his full focus as he had just woken up from a good night sleep, and to deplete his mana without worries. Soon, he started bleeding from his nose, then from the ears and lastly from his eyes.

The Body Sculpting surgery lasted a little less than five minutes. The final result was a crude patchwork filling the hole, while Kalla's paw was pretty much crippled. As for Lith, he collapsed onto the ground with the same grace of a rock.

The hit was strong enough to worsen his condition. The bleeding continued, forming a small pool of blood beneath his face.

"I wonder what he did to me." Kalla pondered. She was feeling better by the second, but it didn't mean much. It was just that anything was better than her previous near death experience.

Her abdomen felt like someone was stirring her bowels with a rusty razor while her left paw remained limp, no matter how much she attempted to move it. It was paralyzed, yet searing pain radiated from it.

"Pain, my old friend. You are the only true constant of life." She sighed. "I will not miss you once I ascend to the status of true undead. You are as clingy as annoying…"

"Mom!" Nok cut her monologue short.

"There's no time for your monologues, Nyka has lost it."

"Damned isolation! It seems I can't keep my mouth shut." Kalla said while turning around.

Nyka was on all four, near Lith's head, licking from the pool of blood. After the first taste, she shivered in pleasure and the feeding frenzy overwhelmed her. She had never tasted anything so delicious.

All the food she had previously eaten seemed to be rotten trash compared to that nectar. She drank the blood emitting slurping sounds, yet careful to not miss even a single drop.

"Nyka, stop immediately!" Kalla ordered while trying to get near her daughter. Her left paw refused to move, so she could only drag it on the floor while moving forward.

Nyka had already drained the pool, so she took Lith's head on her lap, caressing his jugular like they were long lost lovers. Her body had partially recovered from its starvation. The skin was no more flaccid, the wrinkles had disappeared.

Her full lips were of a deep red color, but it lasted only for a second before the blood covering them was drained and they returned to be milky white. A vampire had several ways of absorbing nourishment.

One was with darkness magic, but it was as tasty as airplane food so it was kept either as a last resort or as a combat option. Another was through the skin. Some of them bathed in blood, gaining from it strength and the same relaxation coming from a full day of SPA.

One of the two most favored methods was drinking it because it gave them pleasure.

"I just want some more." Nyka replied turning her fingers into claws and pricking on Lith's neck with them. Her eyes were now full black, the sign that her mind was overpowered by her hunger.

"Sorry, sis!" Nok charged at her like ram, yet Nyka swat him away like he was a fly, sending the Byk crashing against the south wall. Nok was just a magical beast, his strength and weight were meaningless in front of a higher undead.

'Dammit!' Kalla thought. 'My body still feels like a ragdoll filled with rusty nails. If I feed her or use magic, I could undo whatever Lith has done and kill us both. I must find a way to protect Lith and Nok. Neither of them can survive being fed upon.'

Kalla racked her brain in search of a solution while Nyka hissed in frustration. Lith's skin was not only sturdier than leather, but it also healed so fast that a single droplet of blood had yet to be spilled.

The vampire's patience had run out. Her mouth got close to the main artery, meeting a fierce resistance. A stone fist struck her in the jaw with the strength of a wild ox.

"Hands off the merchandise, sister!" Solus warned her. She was now in her glove form, holding the Gatekeeper sword against Nyka's heart. Both were floating in mid air thanks to spirit magic.

"Make one move and I'll kill you." She was using air magic to speak, just like the magical beasts did.

Between the hit and the enchanted metal pressing against her skin, Nyka came to her senses. The killing intent Solus radiated had triggered her survival instinct, allowing her to snap out of her feeding frenzy.

Nyka raised her hands in submission, but Solus kept pushing her away with the blade until Nyka's back was against the wall at a safe distance from Lith.

"I'm really sorry." The vampire sounded sincere, yet Solus kept infusing the Gatekeeper with magic, ready to pulverize the enemy.

"It's just that I'm so hungry and that blood was… spectacular."

"She never fed upon an Awakened before." Kalla explained. "To a vampire, the more powerful a being is, the tastier is their blood. Please, ring fairy, spare my daughter. This is all my fault."

"I don't give a damn about why she did it." Solus's voice held no kindness, only rage. "Until Lith wakes up, I'm not going to take any chance."

Solus had yet to finish the phrase that she was forced to reconsider her options. A low rumbling was spreading through the ground while the amount of mana in the room was skyrocketing.

Both Solus and Kalla were surprised. They had seen the phenomenon happen multiple times, but only for magical beasts. Lith's body was emitting a silver light, which became a small pillar piercing toward the sky.

"This is so wrong!" Solus darted back on Lith's hand, checking his body with Invigoration. The impurities in his body had reached once again his mana core, triggering the refinement process.

"This didn't happen to Tista, only when a magical beast turned into an Evolved Monster."

"I don't know who this Tista is, but if their core was below the cyan level then it's normal. Reaching the blue core is a major event." Kalla explained. "It marks the moment when a common magical beast can become the first member of a new species.

"Yet you are also right, this is wrong. Usually, only magical beasts and plants receive Mogar's help. The other races are not attuned with the world energy, which makes their Awakened undergo terrible suffering.

"It's because unlike us, their bodies are incapable of evolving. What really worries me, though, is that I have never seen a silver light. This doesn't make any sense."

In all the evolutions Solus and Kalla had witnessed, the light had always been of a golden color.

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"This is really interesting." Leegaain said while showing Milea the scene unfolding inside Scarlett's lab. The moment he had perceived the anomaly, he requested Tyris to share her vision.

"What does this mean?" Milea asked. "He's just going from cyan to blue, it's no big deal. Why the light pillar? It didn't happen to me."

"That's because you are human while he is not. What baffles me is that silver light. You see, back when I refined my mana core from cyan to blue, evolving from a Salamander into a Drake, I produced a black pillar. Tyris generated a white one and Salaark a red one."

The Dragon's words left her in a stupor.

"Are you saying that…"

"No, I'm not." Leegaain cut her short. "A different colored pillar means nothing until all tribulations have been overcome. What I'm saying is that a human never achieved Guardianhood and if I'm right they never will. Because whatever he is, he's not human."

From their respective viewpoints, Salaark and Tyris watched an enormous pillar of silver light descending from the sky above Lith's position. Until that moment, they had always dismissed his existence as an oddity. Now their interest was piqued.

If Lith knew what was about to happen, he would be grateful for being unconscious. Every major breakthrough was always more excruciating than the previous ones. Luckily, his body was refined along with his mana core, making it more resistant to pain.

So, when his nails fell off like invisible pliers had pulled them out, he didn't wake up. Neither he did when his bones broke or his flesh was turned inside out. It had already happened in the past, Solus was more worried about Nyka than about Lith's condition.

'I don't know what could happen if the vampire attacks him during the core refinement process. Maybe I should go back keeping watch.' Solus thought, yet found herself unable to move, just like everyone else in the room.

The magic lab that Scarlett the Scorpicore had borrowed Kalla was several meters underground, shielded from external influences by some of her best arrays. Nonetheless, the gigantic silver light pillar descending from the skies passed through them like they were thin air.

Solus had observed the evolution process of magical beasts several times and it always made her think of a giant finger of some god that came down to breathe new life in the evolving creature.

This time things went differently.

When the light pillar from the sky met the one originating from Lith, his heart withered at a speed visible at the naked eye until it resembled a giant dried plume. The blood flow stopped. The resulting agony was so intense that Lith woke up clenching his chest.

Solus could see impurities flow out of it like an invisible hand was squeezing them out. Then, when Lith was an inch from death, his heart absorbed the blood surrounding it and mixed it with the silver light, returning to its original size.

Solus noticed with mana sense that the renewed heart pumped not only blood, but also mana. She also used Scanner, to check Lith's life force for anomalies. The result was just as amazing.

'After his heart has been restored, Lith's life force's started to flow. It's no more static, maybe that's the secret behind the ability to shapeshift.' She thought.

Then, the same thing happened to the lungs. Lith opened his mouth to scream, it was like countless scorching daggers had pierced his flesh, but no voice came out. One by one, all of his internal organs underwent the refining process.

The flow of his mana and life force increased each time. When his brain shrunk to the size of an apple, Lith thought his life was over. He found himself wandering in a place where there was no light, no pain, nothing.

Only the quiet stillness he had experienced in death.

Everything was quiet, the time stood still. He had no idea how long it lasted, the only thing that gave him hope was the appearance of a small light representing his bond with Solus.

'If I can still feel her trying to reach me, then I'm not dead yet.' He thought.

When his brain recovered, Lith had no time to feel relieved or thank Solus. He knew the refinement wasn't over yet. All the impurities were now stored in his skin.

'This is going to hurt.' Lith clenched his teeth. He didn't know what would follow, but he was sure it wouldn't be nice. He took off the Skinwalker armor with a thought, to avoid it interfering with the process.

The impurities flooded Lith's skin until it turned black. They hardened on contact with air, making him resemble an obsidian statue. Cracks appeared all over its surface. He felt like every inch of his body was being dipped into burning oil.

Then, the black skin crumbled and fell. His flesh and muscles remained exposed for a long, agonizing second before a new one grew to cover him again before he could start screaming in pain.

"What the heck was that?" Solus yelled while checking Lith's condition. He was unconscious again. His physique was apparently the same, but the reality was quite different. The density of his body was on a new level, making it almost impossible to harm him with conventional means.

Solus could see him breathe mana and life force just like he normally did with air. Lith's mana core was now of a deep blue color. The amount of mana it stored hadn't changed much, but its quality had further improved.

With every breath he took, he would absorb a little amount of world energy, even without the use of Invigoration. His life force flowed freely through his every fiber, speeding up the recovery of his injuries.

"I have no clue." Kalla replied. "Magical beasts just evolve. Their body is like a cocoon they have to get freed from to reach the next stage. In Lith's case, it seemed more like torture. Like someone was forcefully replacing defective parts."

"Can't you help him?" Solus was the better Healer among the two, but she drew her strength from Lith and she didn't want to increase his burden.

"I never heard about this 'life force' Lith kept talking about and my children always shut me up. My body feels like is held together with leaves and spit. I'm afraid that if I use magic, I may fall apart." Kalla shook her head.

"My studies are more oriented towards Necromancy rather than Healing, but light and darkness magic are two sides of the same coin. I'm also a fast learner, so if you could explain to me what he did, I may be able to find a way to help us both."

Solus explained to Kalla the foundations of Body Sculpting and how to cast Scanner with true magic.

"Fascinating!" Kalla replied after a few hours of lecturing. "I have no idea what you have just said but sure sounds impressing. Maybe I have underestimated the importance of light magic in Necromancy.

"Seems I will have to start over from scratch. If my hypothesis is right, I failed because I have no control over my life force. I need to learn light magic before trying again."

Kalla asked Solus several questions, to which she replied as well as she could.

Solus was trying to describe to her how to manipulate the mana to achieve the Scanner spell when Lith woke up.

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"How long was I out cold?" He asked while clenching and releasing his fists several times. There was something off with his body.

"Almost three hours." Solus replied. "Which is odd, I expected you to need at least eight hours to recuperate. How do you feel?"

"Like there's an itch I cannot scratch. A needle in the back of my skull." Lith noticed Nok lying on the floor, still unconscious. He had so many things to ask but so little time.

First, he healed the young Byk, then proceeded to fix the mess Kalla's body was.

'Wish I could speak and treat her at the same time. My day leave is almost over, I must make use of every single second I… What the f*ck?'

To Lith's surprise, he could not only perceive Kalla's life force with much more clarity than before, but also understand where he or she had messed up. It was more about listening rather than seeing.

Life force was like a song performed by a living being and every defect was a sour note. Lith listened to the melody played by the Wight's body, guiding its flow along its intended path instead of trying to force it.

The patchwork covering Kalla's mana core soon became a smooth surface, even leaving a few energies to spare that Lith redirected to the butchered left paw to hasten its recovery. The procedure required over an hour but neither Lith nor Kalla noticed the passing of time.

Lith was engrossed by his new ability and used it to heal his friend while deepening his understanding of Body Sculpting at the same time. Tier five Healing magic hadn't become easier all of a sudden. Scanner was the same spell as before.

Yet the blue core allowed him to obtain a whole new set of information that made it possible for him to understand the breath of life rather than discovering it with a trial and error process.

Kalla instead focused on herself, trying to put into practice what Solus had explained to her. Lith's touch made it easier for her to sense her life force. It was like a gentle massage over her soul that was easing her pain.

When Lith was done, Kalla felt exhausted but relieved. Somehow, she knew her life wasn't in danger anymore and her paw, albeit was still limp, had stopped hurting.

"There." Lith said. "Everything should be all right. Take a few days to rest. No magic allowed. You core has yet to settle in the new life force. If I were you, I'd wait until your paw works again. A few weeks should suffice."

"A few weeks?" Kalla grumbled. She had never taken such a long break from her research. A few hours at most. She wanted to object and bargain her way out, but after looking at her children's condition she decided to comply.

"I understand you are in a rush. What do you need my help for?"

Lith sighed, hoping she would believe him, before explaining to her both his reincarnation problem and the need to get Solus a body. If Kalla was surprised, she didn't show it. Nok and Nyka were another story.

Their mouths almost fell onto the ground hearing Lith's words. To them, lizards becoming dragons was something plausible. They were used to Scarlett stories, where she slaughtered princesses and rescued kidnapped trolls.

Reincarnation and a girl in a stone were too far fetched to believe though.

"Coming to me was the right move." Kalla replied after pondering for a while. "I just don't get why you have submitted to the humans' army."

"I didn't submit." Lith scoffed. "My problem can't be solved with a single spell or a generic artifact. If I had to find a solution all by myself, not even the extended life of an Awakened one would be enough. I have only one attempt at achieving my goal.

I must make it count."

"True." Kalla admitted while tapping her chin with a single claw. "Scarlett has amassed centuries worth of knowledge, yet even something 'common' like Lichhood is a huge gamble. Without her books, I wouldn't even know where to start."

"That's my problem. I have no starting point. That's why I had to make the humans think they need me more than I need them. Between the Mage Association and the Army, I have now access to countless tomes but it's still not enough.

"They don't trust me enough to let me read the books I need. I need to play my cards right and use my status to access otherwise forbidden areas." There were countless ruins in the Griffon Kingdom.

Some were just piles of dust and debris, others were places of power. Such areas were still protected by powerful barriers and only the army mages knew how to disable them. Why waste years to open a door when you could just borrow a key?

Lith showed Kalla a map, pointing to her the regions he could choose for his assignment as a ranger.

"My plan is to pick one of the less populated areas with the greatest number of ruins. The others have already been thoroughly explored. Hoping to stumble into a secret relic that no one but me is able to find would be nothing but wishful thinking.

"Joining the army gives me access to the list of the ruins and to the methods to access them. The problem is that there are too many of them. Can you at least point me in the right direction?"

Kalla limped to one of the libraries, pointing to Lith a thick book with a deep green cover.

"I would pick it myself, but without spirit magic I have only claws. Doctor's orders." She smirked. Lith took the book and started to flip through it.

"Can you really understand this gibberish?" The tome was filled with odd runes he had never seen before.

"Of course not. Who has the time to learn a dead and buried language? Put some mana into it." Kalla replied.

Lith did as requested and observed the runes rearrange themselves in the common language the three Great Countries shared.

"This is amazing!" Lith blurted out in envy. "How did Scarlett managed to do this?"

"She didn't. She, uhm, liberated most of these books from a mad Lich, but this is a story for another time. Read from page 290."

The chapter told the story of a forgotten race, the Odi. Millenia ago, their magical and scientific knowledge had allowed them to defeat all illnesses. Their empire grew in wisdom and power, until time was the only enemy they had left.

The Odi became arrogant and attempted to find a way to achieve eternal life. According to the book, they started experimenting on the lesser races to develop a method to transplant the conscience from an old body to a young one.

Thousands of lives were lost during the experiments, but in the end they succeeded. It marked the beginning of their end. Until that moment, the Odi had believed that everyone would benefit from the research.

That they would use the lesser races as a source of spare bodies. Their upper echelons had different plans. They considered such an idea revolting and aimed to preserve the purity of their bloodline.

While commoners would receive a lesser body, the nobles started to buy children from the less fortunate among the Odi to use them as vessels. It didn't take long for a civil war to break out, nor for the so called lesser races to exploit it to exterminate the Odi for good.

"The Odi laid the foundations to Lichhood." Kalla explained. "Maybe in one of their ruins you can find some clues to follow in their footsteps. Even if it doesn't work for you, it could always prove useful to your ring fairy to escape from her cage."

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According to the book, during the time the Odi civilization was at the height of its prosperity, they ruled over a vast area in the north that was now part of the border between the Griffon Kingdom and the Gorgon Empire.

The borders were one of the most dangerous sectors, since even if the two countries were at peace from centuries, small and medium sized battles were a common occurrence.

Most of Lith's patients when he worked at the Academy were soldiers stationed in the north. After copying everything relevant to his research Kalla had to offer, she and Lith discussed for a while what was the best place to start his assignment.

"She's not a ring fairy, by the way." Since their last mind fusion Lith was aware that, by saving Protector, he had accidentally revealed Solus's existence to him. Kalla had witnessed both the conversation between the Ry and Solus back then and her protecting the unconscious Lith now.

Keeping Kalla in the dark was pointless if not even stupid. The more she knew, the more helpful she could be. It was the reasoning that had led Lith to tell the Wight his whole story.

"She's a person, just like me and you. Solus, these are Kalla, Nok, and Nyka. Guys, this is Solus, my partner."

Solus had conflicting feelings about that situation. On one hand, she was happy about becoming an active part in Lith's life. He had already introduced her to his sister. Kalla and her children were the first friends he had made aware of her existence.

On the other hand, Kalla learned about Solus years ago, so it didn't mean much.

"Nice to meet you, Solus. Scarlett told me a lot about you. You are the first cursed object she has ever spared. Even though after seeing you in action, I don't think you are a cursed object."

Maybe it was because of his pampered life, but Nok was a simple minded creature. It didn't take him much to recover from the surprise and accept Solus as a friend.

"How do you fit into something so small? Is it painful? How do you eat? What are your favorite foods? Can stones copulate? How many cubs do you have? Do the two of you have an offspring together already?"

Some of his questions were shallow, others were personal enough to make her blush.

Last, but not least, she didn't like Nyka. During the time Lith had been unconscious and she explained Body Sculpting to Kalla, the vampire had cleaned herself with darkness magic. Once she was sure her mother was safe, she had gone hunting.

Now she had raven black hair and emerald green eyes both emphasized by her pale skin. Nyka's body wasn't milky anymore but of a light rosy color. Solus could appreciate all the changes proper feeding had triggered because the vampire was still stark naked.

She wasn't a stunning beauty, but undeath gave her smooth, delicate features and kept her body toned without a shred of body fat. It also made her soft curves perky beyond belief.

Every one of her movements was graceful and sensual, making Solus turn green with envy. Yet that wasn't the reason why Solus didn't like Nyka.

"I'm so sorry, big sister. I had no idea he is already taken. I'm really sorry for feeding on your thrall without your permission." The vampire said giving Solus a deep bow.

'I'm not a goddamn parasite, I'm a symbiote!' Solus thought in outrage. 'Our relationship is already complicated, hearing her calling Lith a thrall irks me to no end. Yet if I clear her misunderstanding, she'll resume looking at him like a juicy steak.'

Kalla didn't miss how socially awkward her daughter was.

'If she ever wants to mingle with humans, she must learn their ways. I might ask Lith to bring her along with him, once he is done with the army.' Kalla thought.

"I think the best region to start your research is the Etochian one." She said. "It's mostly composed of no man's lands, which will give you the privacy you need, and it holds several ruins. I know because I have been there.

There are several undead communities in the area that I can introduce you to." Kalla took out of her dimensional amulet small fragments of white alabaster. They turned into white dust that Kalla used to draw several runes on Lith's palm.

The glowing runes lasted only for a moment, leaving Lith's skin immaculate.

"If you ever meet undead, do not fight them. Just channel pure mana into your hand and the runes will resurface. Consider it a letter of recommendation of sorts. When I manage to get in touch with Scarlett, I will ask for her help.

She's likely to know more than me. Scarlett may be able to help you narrow your search."

"Thanks, Kalla." Lith replied. Despite all the good news, he was still worried. His body felt off since the moment the refining process had ended. At first, Lith thought that having his body undergone major changes, it would take some time for him to get used to them.

However, the feeling was only getting worse. Lith used Invigoration on himself, finding nothing unusual. Then he switched to Scanner, examining his own life force. There were several scars from when he had saved Protector.

No matter how hard Lith tried, he couldn't get rid of them. Everything seemed fine again, so Lith stopped using his eyes and tried to listen to the melody produced by his body.

'So many sour notes. I guess each one represents the life force I lost forever. Sounds almost like a requiem.' Lith inwardly sighed. 'Wait. Solus, do you hear that?'

'Yes.' She replied while sharing his senses. 'It's like there is a second melody on the background.'

Lith focused on the new melody, it sounded like a joyful allegro. After several attempts, Lith managed to reduce the volume of the main life force and to turn up the second one.

Along with the tune, his life force also changed its appearance. If before it resembled a colossus made of red lego bricks and erector set, now it looked like a sealed star. There was an outer shell made of black bricks while the inner part was composed by a stream of raging energy originating from a sphere that he supposed being his mana core.

'What the heck? How is it possible for me to have two life forces? Why don't I feel any different?' Lith thought.

'It's better if you open your eyes.' Solus suggested.

Lith did as instructed, discovering that his body now stood slightly over two meters tall. It was covered in thick curved black scales while his hands and feet ended in razor sharp claws.

'Solus, what happened to the Skinwalker armor? Tell me I didn't destroy it. It's too expensive to lose it in such a stupid way.' Having a monstrous body scared Lith much less than the thought of having wasted money.

'Don't worry, I stored it away the moment you started to change. Look at yourself into the mirror.' She replied while conjuring a reflecting surface made of ice.

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Lith could notice that his appearance resembled the one he had assumed in the past while trying to save Protector and when he faced the Clackers in the forest. It lacked the horns, the wings, and the tail.

His face was a black slate with no nose or ears. Two yellow eyes were open, while the slits for the other four, albeit being recognizable, were wide shut. Lith tried multiple times to open them but to no avail.

"Damn, I look like a demon." When Lith spoke, he revealed a mouth filled with sharp fangs. It wasn't visible before because the scales covering his face matched to perfection.

"Remarkable." Kalla said. "You've already learned how to shapeshift and you did it on your own at that. Scarlett tried to teach me, but it was too complex. Plus, I deemed it useless. I have no desire to change my physical appearance just to please others."

"I didn't learn anything." Lith was deeply confused. "Protector explained to me how to do it, but I always failed in the past. After my core has become blue, I seem to have developed a second kind of life force. Do you have one too, Kalla?"

"No, or at least is what I think. Before today I never heard about life force, but I'm pretty sure that not even in Scarlett's crazy stories was ever mentioned someone capable of natural shapeshifting.

"It's something that has to be learned. You can't just take any form you want. Before shapeshifting, you are supposed to be able to visualize every single detail in your mind. To know your imaginary body like the back of your paw.

Let me check one thing." Kalla placed one of her claws on Lith, using Invigoration on him.

"Whatever this form of yours is, is useless. You are not stronger nor faster than before. Even your mana core is unchanged. Sure, the scales may offer you some protection, but I can't see any value in sticking out like a sore thumb."

After checking his condition with his own Invigoration, Lith agreed with a sigh.

"Unless I want to murder someone in broad daylight and pin it to a monster, this form is as useless as a third nostril." He activated Scanner again, focusing on the original melody and returning to his human form.

Right after the transformation, Lith coughed uncontrollably for a few seconds.

"What's wrong?" All those present asked in unison. An Awakened one getting sick was something unheard of.

"I don't know." Lith replied with a hoarse voice. "Seems my new form suffers from acid reflux or something. I had a burning sensation in my throat the whole time."

Lith left Scarlett's lab after giving everyone a present. A book about Body Sculpting for Kalla, a lot of food for Nok, and a glass of his blood for Nyka. Kalla's blood was toxic for the undead and she had explained to him how Awakened blood was a powerful delicacy for vampires.

Much to Nyka's dismay, Kalla stored it for a rainy day. For a vampire, even a small amount from a blue cored Awakened was the equivalent of several liters of blood from normal humans.

Lith returned the teacher ring to Marth before going back to his living quarters in the military camp. He spent the hours left of his day leave sleeping, to recover part of his strength. Between the breakthrough and treating Kalla's life force, he was exhausted.

The next day, when he went to Berion's office to announce his final decision, the Commander had a deep frown and his fingers were drumming on a thick folder.

Berion grumpily replied to the salute and left Lith standing on attention for a few minutes before talking.

"Lieutenant Verhen, do you know what Article 16 of the code of military justice states?"

"It is forbidden for any soldier, NCO, and officer to assault in any way a fellow member of the army." Lith quoted from Soluspedia.

"So you do know the code." Berion stood up, piercing Lith with a steel gaze.

"Then how do you explain what you did in the mess hall of Regharos' boot camp?"

"I simply gave Sergeant Proudstar our mother's regards." Lith couldn't believe the Commander was making a fuss for such an insignificant reason, nor that Trion could be stupid enough to report him. It would only make a fool of himself.

"I don't care about your brother. I'm talking about all the people you sent to the hospital." The Commander's icy tone left Lith unfazed. His words, not so much.

"I beg your pardon? I didn't throw a single punch nor spell."

"Son, I have been young and stupid too. I can understand that you wanted to teach him a lesson, but you went overboard. Only active soldiers are trained to withstand killing intent. Kitchen staff are basically civilian.

Your little show made some faint, some puke their guts out, while the less fortunate now have white hair and blabber about monsters dwelling in the shadows."

'Oh f*ck!' Lith thought. 'I was so angry back then that I completely forgot about kitchen staff. Yet it's hard to believe that a sliver of killing intent could have done so much damage.'

"This folder contains the medical files of all the people you have injured. Their medical bills will be deducted from your pay." The Commander's index tapped on the stack of paper.

Lith pretended to be contrite, but he couldn't care less. He could make as a Healer in a day what the army paid him per month.

"At ease, Lieutenant. I hope you have made your decision. Otherwise, a few days in solitary will teach you not to disgrace our uniform."

Lith took out from his pocket dimension the map of the Griffon Kingdom and showed Berion the Etochian region. The frown disappeared from the Commander's face and was replaced by a worried expression.

"Are you certain, Lieutenant? I wanted to assign you a harsh environment as punishment but that's too much."

Noticing Lith's confusion, Berion smirked.

"I'm not worried about the borders. There are plenty of good soldiers there that can help you if the necessity arises. Nor I'm not worried about monsters or magical beasts. I read your file, I know you're a survivor. What worries me are these."

The Commander pointed at the various ruins Lith and Kalla had studied earlier.

"Do you know why we give to the Rangers the passcodes to the lost cities? Because they are part of your patrol duty."

"Does someone live there?" Lith was more confused by the second.

"Of course not. No citizen of the Kingdom lives there. Have you ever wondered why even though so many centuries have passed, the arrays are still working? How we managed to learn how to bypass them safely?

"It didn't take any effort on our side. Everything was engraved in multiple languages on the pillars surrounding the lost cities. Those who created the arrays, left all the necessary instructions to keep them active.

"Your duty consists also in checking that the magical formations are functional and not letting the ruins become a threat to the Kingdom. Those arrays weren't built to keep people out, but to keep the things that spawn in the lost cities in."

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Judging from Commander Berion's tone, his words were meant to warn Lith about the danger the lost cities represented. Maybe he even hoped the young Ranger would reconsider his choice.

Lith's curiosity was piqued, instead.

'How many secrets does the Griffon Kingdom keep from its citizens?' He thought. 'I can understand sweeping Necromancy under the rug. It's a branch of magic too dangerous to let it fall in the hands of nobles with more money than life left.

'Heck, even Balkor is something that better stays forgotten. If the story of what happened to him becomes public, small villages like Lutia would either smother their children's talent for magic or lose any trust in the Crown.

'But this? Why a bunch of ruins is deemed so dangerous? Why have I never heard anything about them, not even at the Academy?'

"With all due respect, Sir, but if the lost cities represent a threat to the Kingdom, why are they still standing? I doubt the combined forces of the army and the Mage Association can't bring them down, even if one at the time."

"Excellent question, Lieutenant." Berion nodded. He liked Lith not showing any fear for his personal safety and only thinking about the safety of their country. Alas, what he mistook for loyalty was just Lith's innate scientific curiosity.

Misunderstanding or not, the real reason for Berion's earlier anger wasn't the incident with Trion, but it's consequences. Rumors about the events at Regharos had spread like wildfire, attracting the interest of several high officers.

The Commander wanted to keep the existence of his golden goose a secret for as long as possible. Any meritorious act a subordinate performed would generate merits for their commanding officer.

So far, Lith had caused Berion a lot of trouble for little return. The purple crystal disappearance, Sergeant Tepper's complaints, and now an assault against fellows Non-commissioned officers. Berion had invested in Lith, but if someone stole him, it would have been all for naught.

"Cleansing operations have been conducted multiple times with poor results. Once in a while, we have to cull their numbers to prevent them from overpowering the arrays. That's why we need you to check their threat level.

"The problem is that there is no way to exterminate them for good. We tried and failed on several occasions over the centuries. Those things are hard to define. They are neither alive or undead. Even after wiping them out, they keep respawning.

"As for destroying the lost cities, it's too big of a risk. Our mages have assessed that, whatever created those things in the past, still lingers up to date. Those ruins are like a giant living array that has corrupted the very earth they were built upon.

"They hold an incredible amount of magic power that somehow never runs out. If we destroy those cities, we could create an even worse threat. Not to mention that all the knowledge they hold would be lost forever."

Lith was now even more eager to explore those ruins.

'It's like the library of Alexandria built on top of a nuclear reactor.' He thought. 'I wonder why Awakened ones never solved the issue. Is it because it's beyond even their capabilities or do they just not care? It's also possible they are the reason behind the constant respawn of the creatures.

'It would make sense if the Awakened ones want to keep others away from the prize.'

"I expect you to depart immediately." Berion handed to Lith a dimensional amulet shaped like the Ranger's Crest. It contained everything he could need during his travels.

"Remember to always report your position at least thrice a day. We need to know where you are and what are you doing. It's especially important before you enter one of the lost ruins or an unmapped city.

"Never underestimate the dangers of the border regions. There a lot of deserters from both the Griffon Kingdom and the Gorgon Empire living there. In the past, we have lost a lot of promising Rangers because of their carelessness.

"Don't hesitate to call for backup. The real strength of the army resides in its numbers. Feel free to get from the armory whatever you may need. Good luck, Ranger Verhen."

After exchanging the salute, Commander Berion offered Lith his hand. Lith was surprised by the gesture, but he shook it nonetheless.

'Seems he has high expectations for you.' Solus pondered. 'It doesn't match with my idea of a Ranger being like a beat cop, though. I mean, what can he possibly hope for you to achieve in the wilderness?'

'We'll find out.' Lith followed the Commander's advice, restocking his supplies of food and Alchemical tools. There was no weapon or armor that outperformed his current equipment, which was disappointing.

Lith left the camp, reaching the city of Belius with the Warp Gate. It was the biggest settlement in the region. Belius was a fortress city built in front of a narrow pass between two mountain ranges that formed a natural border separating the two countries.

On the other side of the pass there was a twin city, Relius, flying the Gorgon Empire's flag. Lith was stunned by the amount of magic in the air. There were countless arrays in place, preventing the use of dimensional magic, flight, and even spells above tier three.

Lith could sense a dissonance in the air that gave his mana core an ill feeling.

He had never seen so many protections since he had left the Royal Palace.

'Paranoid much?' Lith realized how hypocritical it the word sounded coming from him the moment he thought it.

'Yeah and for a good reason.' Solus pondered. 'Both cities must prevent the enemy from building a dimensional corridor that would make all the weapons and walls in the world useless. Dimensional items make smuggling anything an easy feat.

No wonder they are banned here.' She had attempted accessing her pocket dimension just to find it sealed.

Even leaving Belius proved to be not an easy feat. Lith had to fill a lot of paperwork to be recognized as the newly appointed Ranger of the region, had to declare everything he had stored in his army and personal dimensional amulets.

Much to his dismay, he found out the Mage Association had a way to undo his imprinting on the enchanted items and could verify Lith's claims.

"Are you sure you want to leave right away?" Asked a clerk of about twenty years of age after making an inventory of Lith's possessions before returning the amulets to him.

"Belius may have strict regulations, but it's one of the most beautiful cities of the Kingdom. Once you get out of the gates, it could be weeks before you have a proper bed and meal."

"Thanks, but no thanks. Without my magic, I feel naked." Lith replied. "I can't wait to get out of here."

The man nodded, opening a Warp Gate that brought Lith right outside the city walls.

"Lucky b*stard."

"Noble scum."

"F*cking as*hat."

Those were just some of the words that welcomed his arrival, together with numerous spits onto the ground to emphasized their contempt.

Even the city guards were about to join the crowd until they noticed the traveler was alone and donning the green of the Rangers. They hastily swallowed their own phlegm giving him a salute.

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Lith could understand why his appearance had caused so much anger. The city had many gates and each one had a queue several hundreds of meters long that was getting longer by the minute.

Merchants, travellers, even residents had to pass several checks to get in or out. The Warp Gate was a fast lane, usually reserved for nobles and high officials. Lith ignored them, activating Life Vision to check if he could take off.

'What the heck?' His surprised expression was mistaken by some of those present as an indignant one, which prompted them to resume their swearing. Lith couldn't care less about them and spun around himself to make sure his eyes weren't playing a trick on him.

The arrays weren't in a fixed position. Unlike the academy and the Royal palace, they could only be described as a maelstrom. The magical energies covered the whole city at all times, but they also change their size and height with no warning.

Lith watched a mage flying above the city, until the array became like a hurricane and reached for the sky. The poor fellow fell like a rock, crashing on a rooftop with deadly consequences.

"Move along, sir. Otherwise you may be run over." The guard's voice woke Lith up from his stupor. He walked away double time, eager to find a better viewpoint which would allow him to study Belius.

The city was surrounded by walls made of stone that stood twenty meters (66') high with evenly spaced observation towers built along the perimeter. Each one of them was topped by blue magic crystals the size of a person.

Lith and Solus observed the arrays for a time, watching them shift like a tide. Whenever one of the spells the formations were meant to negate were used, even from a considerable distance from the city, the towers would detect it.

They would then produce a lightning of mystical energies invisible to the naked eye marking the mage as a target. The arrays would shapeshift accordingly to the information received killing their victims almost instantly.

Thanks to his heightened senses and the tall tree he had climbed, Lith was able to spot from a distance several towers placed along the mountain range, spanning as far as the eye could see.

'By my maker, those towers are relay points for Belius' arrays.' The revelations flabbergasted Solus.

'Yeah, they also allow the sealing magic to pinpoint its target and send an alarm signal.' Lith pondered. 'The corpses of the idiots we've seen trying to bypass the city checks have all been promptly collected.'

He had no idea what was actually happening but he could see a Warp Steps and several humanoid figures appear where the trespassers had fallen just a few seconds after their demise.

Everything happened too fast to be a coincidence, so Lith assumed that, just like for the Academy, elite guards could ignore the arrays and move freely.

'An almost living magical formation capable of changing its shape. To think that Yurial always nagged about Wardens being useless.' A sad smile appeared on Lith's face while thinking about his lost friend.

'I wish he were still alive, here with us. I could finally say to him "I told you so".'

Lith jumped down on the ground, landing with a roll to break his fall. It couldn't actually harm him, but he was still in an area were air magic was negated by the arrays. Neither his armor or spells could justify him being unscathed so he had to play the elite soldier card.

Lith had to run for over one kilometer to escape from the boundaries of the array. Only then he was able to take out from his pocket dimension the map of the Kellar region and put it inside Soluspedia replacing the one of the Distar Marquisate.

'We have up to four months here.' Lith thought. 'Let's plan our patrol so to give priority to the lost cities.'

The Kellar region was mostly uncharted. Aside from big cities like Belius, small settlements would pop up as fast as they would disappear. In the north, a cold wave was enough to freeze to death whoever didn't possess a properly insulated house.

Monsters would run rampant, slaughtering small villages for a midnight snack. Last but not least, there were the Rangers like Lith. Most of those small settlements were illegal, a safe haven for bandits, deserters, and all those who had an aversion to paying taxes.

They enjoyed the safety the army's patrols ensured, just like the comfort of using the roads paved by the Kingdom to connect rural areas with the main trading cities. Yet they took everything for granted and considered the harsh life in the north reason enough to be exempted from paying their dues.

In case such settlements were discovered by soldiers, one of the two had to disappear.

Lith was flying high enough to check with Life Vision a large area while he moved towards his first destination, the fallen city of Kaduria. The landscape was different from what he was used in the Distar Marquisate.

While his birthplace was mostly comprised of cultivated lands and woods filling the space between the populated areas, Kellar was mostly barren. It was still late fall, but snow already covered the ground and the tops of the few trees Lith encountered.

Ever since he departed from Belius, he met no farms nor villages. The frozen earth was full of rocks, making it unfertile without a considerable amount of effort. The area Lith was currently in was too far from the main road for any kind of trading to be profitable.

The only life forms he met were animals looking for food. Winter was coming and those without enough fat reserves were bound to meet a bad end. After several hours of flight, Lith was starting to feel tired.

'I have yet to recover completely from treating Kalla, tonight I'd like a good night sleep. Solus, did we meet a mana geyser on our way here?'

'None, but I believe that even without an external energy source I can at least form the ground floor of the tower.' She replied.

'Are you asking me to sleep while you work your a*s off? No way, we're in this together. Either we both rest or I use Invigoration.'

'Or we could sleep there.' Solus pointed at him the smoke coming out of several chimneys visible on the horizon.

'F*ck me sideways!' Lith cursed. A human settlement was the last thing he wanted to meet. He used the army's communication amulet to call his handler.

"Ranger Lith Verhen calling the Nest, do you copy?"

"Loud and clear." Said a feminine voice coming from the other side. Unlike Lith's amulet, the one provided by the army was engraved with several green mana crystals which, among many other things, strengthened its signal.

The gemstones emitted a series of flashes, scanning his surroundings.

"You deserve your reputation, Ranger Verhen. Covering so much ground in a single day is praiseworthy. Please give me a brief report of your findings." It was a polite way to ask him to prove he hadn't ignored his patrol duty.

There wasn't much to say, but Lith had taken note of all the unmapped landmarks he met on his way. He was certain they had been left out on purpose, some were too obvious to be missed, unless one was blind, deaf, and dumb.

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The handler was pleased, or at least it was what Lith hoped for. He could hear her taking notes the whole time.

"I called because I met a human settlement. Do you have my position?"

"Positive. Call me back once you are done. Do not lower your guard. Based on the images collected it's a medium sized village, so it's likely to be run by a renegade mage or a deserter."

"Once I'm done doing what?" Lith said. "If I get down there, either will be a massacre or they'll run away as soon as I leave. If our purpose is collecting taxes, then it's better for me to stay away from the village and let you do your job."

"Negative. Our duty is not collecting taxes, but ensure the safety of the citizens. You must make sure that no one there is forced to stay against their will or is being subjected to the practice of illegal magic.

"Taxes are just an excuse to prevent bureaucrats from bothering us with budget issues. In the wilderness we are the law, young Ranger. Today, you are the law. So get down there and call me back once you are done. I expect a full and detailed report."

Cursing at his bad luck, Lith descended to the ground. He activated Life Vision while Solus activated mana sense. They could perceive about 100 life signatures but no arrays or magical protections of sorts.

'Do I go there incognito or do I keep my uniform?' Lith pondered.

'Incognito? How exactly?' Solus chuckled at the idea. 'Aside from your uniform, you only have light clothes suitable for disguising yourself as a farmer or a hunter back in Lutia. Your skin and hair are too dark to pass yourself for a man of the north.

'Also, you have no backpack. No one in their right mind would think you got here by chance. With your build and well fed appearance, they wouldn't believe you are lost or have been robbed either.'

As it happened most of the time, Solus was right. Lith had not bothered packing disguises or makeup.

'Point taken. I'd say it's better to check the outskirts of the village before going deeper inside. It's unlikely we'll meet a dangerous opponent, but after Nalear I don't like the idea of getting surrounded again.' Lith thought.

He was surprised by the lack of watchmen. The path to the village was clear, making things too easy to be true. The closer he got to the settlement, the more Lith became aware of his surroundings.

The houses were made in hardwood and looked solid. Lith could smell a fresh coat of tar mixed with other substances used to fill gaps between wood to insulate the heat and prevent drafts.

'Two things. One, this isn't a makeshift camp. It's been made to last. The lack of guards doesn't make sense. Why are they not afraid of hungry monsters or magical beasts raiding the place for food? Two, how did my predecessor miss all this?'

Lith stopped the moment his eyes caught an anomaly near his left foot. There was a thin tripwire a few centimeters above the ground. He followed both extremities, one at a time, discovering they were tied up to trees, not to an alarm.

He focused on his sense of smell, detecting a lot of metal lying around coupled with a sour scent. Lith used air magic to float above the ground and by following the scent he discovered several traps, all coated with poison.

'This should be Death Pepper.' Lith thought after licking a greasy substance off a sharp blade placed at the height where the thigh of an average man would be.

'It's a nerve paralyzing poison that kills fast but leaves the meat available for consumption since it loses effectiveness when cooked. They say it even gives the game a spicy flavor, hence the name.

It makes you wonder if these nice villagers have a taste for human flesh.'

Soon Lith understood the trap maker's pattern. Tripwires were actually double traps. If one noticed them and stepped over them, they would fall into a spike pit, the same if they missed it.

All the other traps were connected to long wires running towards the village that Lith imagined being alarms to announce the hunter that dinner was served. He could have disabled them, but it would also mean leaving a trail of his passage that could alert anyone returning to the village after him.

Once he got close enough to the settlement, the matter became even more serious. Life Vision spotted the last line of defense. The traps right before the village were all comprised of enchanted poisoned blades.

'What the heck is this? The set of the Texas chainsaw massacre? Why I always stumble into hornet's nests?' Lith had already lost his patience. The situation was a waste of time for him. He only wanted to reach the ruins and learn from them as much as he could.

'The villagers may just be trying to defend themselves.' Solus replied. 'Also, you need merits to obtain access to top secret tomes. I get you are tired and cranky, but we have to play this by the book.

'First impression matters. A poor job could trigger an internal investigation and further slow us down.'

Lith took a few deep breathes to calm himself before moving forward. He reminded himself of the words of both his handler and Commander. His actions would be investigated and evaluated, so he had to be smart.

The outer rim hosted only livestock and carriages. The small houses were actually barns, henhouses, and stables.

'This is good news. Over half of the life forces are harmless animals. The odd thing is what do they need all these carriages for? Why do they have so much wheat? There isn't a single plot of cultivated land here.' Lith thought.

The sun had yet to set, but the daily activities seemed to be already over. All the human life forces were in the middle and inner rim. Those in the middle rim seemed to be already asleep, while the people of the innermost rim were assembled in the biggest building, located at the center of the town.

The buildings in the middle rim were even smaller than those in the outer one and with much better locks. The doors were barred and secured with a heavy chain. They had a chimney but no windows. Life Vision revealed two individuals lying still on their beds.

At that point, Lith had no need to check inside the houses. All the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place but one.

'Seriously, how could a Ranger miss this place?' Suddenly the missing landmarks on the map acquired a new significance. Lith walked towards a man that was approaching his position while Solus refused to believe in Lith's cynical conclusion.

She left his right hand, assuming liquid form to sneak under the door. The two inside were a boy and a girl of undefined age. They had their wrists chained to a metal pole placed right behind their bunk.

Their hair was disheveled, stained by several streaks of coagulated blood. Solus used Invigoration on them to check their condition. Both the youths suffered from severe malnutrition. Their bones were cracked in multiple points, their bodies covered in bruises and lacerations.

During the fifth year at the Academy, when Lith had worked in the ER of several hospitals, they had seen this kind of injury several times, but seldom with such deliberate cruelty.

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The kids were covered with thick blankets to protect them from the cold, since they were completely naked. Looking at the bloodstains on the sheets and the pavement, Solus felt aghast realizing the kids were left "ready to use."

Lith approached the man without emitting a sound. He used his Hush spell to make sure no one would disturb them. The guy was tall, at least 1.78 meters, wearing warm fur clothes and a broadsword on his side.

Lith smirked noticing the blade was not enchanted. He was eager to put his new body to test.

"Good evening, sir. How is this village called?" Lith asked with the casual tone he would use to converse about the weather.

The man turned around while unsheathing his sword. His pale skin became even whiter for the surprise, but his movements were smooth. The slash missed Lith's nose by a whisker.

"I'll overlook your rudeness this once." Lith was having a hard time keeping a straight face. The sword moved like in slow motion to his eyes. "Put down your weapon and tell me what I want to know. Otherwise, I'll sheathe it up your a*s."

The man swept his unkempt blonde hair off his eyes, unable to believe he had missed such an easy target from so close. His nervousness turned into panic when the man noticed the Ranger badge over the foreigner's heart.

"The Ranger! The Ranger is here already!" The man screamed on the top of his lungs before blowing a bone whistle which produced an ear piercing sound.

"What do you mean with 'already?'" Lith asked while grabbing with his bare hand the blade that was still pointed at his face. The man was surprised no one had responded to the alarm, but grinned before twisting an pulling away his sword.

He had expected the Ranger's fingers to fall off, yet the blade didn't move an inch instead. No matter how much strength he used. Even grabbing the hilt with two hands proved useless, it was like the broadsword was stuck into a vice.

Lith suddenly let go of the sword to appreciate his own unscathed skin.

"Seems that normal weapons can't hurt me anymore, not even those razor sharp like yours. What's this?" His palm was covered with a greasy substance that smelled like sulfur. Lith's skin tingled while his immune system neutralized the substance.

"Rot oil? Do even goons use poison now?" As the name implied, rot oil was a toxin that would make any open wound fester and difficult to treat. Without the help of a Healer, a single cut could lead to the death of even a magical beast.

The man was terrified. He couldn't understand how neither the sword or the poison was effective. He struck at Lith with all of his strength, only to almost lose the grip on the weapon.

It felt like hitting a rock. Lith was tired of playing. The nameless man's actions spoke volumes about what kind of village was that and how it went unnoticed until that moment.

Lith disarmed the man with spirit magic and fulfilled his promise. The nameless man gargled blood while the pain from growing a steel tail ravaged his body. Solus returned to Lith's hand, sharing with him the visions from the house.

'Please, save them.' Was the only thing she said before seeking comfort in their telepathic bond. The sight of the youths' miserable state had shocked her. Solus wanted for that horror to disappear forever.

'As you wish, milady.' Lith raised the nameless man as a Death Knight and armed it with the poisoned blade. A Death Knight was an undead whose well preserved body retained the dexterity it had in life.

Also, by mixing spirit magic while creating the blood core, Lith was able to impart to it some basic notions of fencing. Master and servant took their time, killing everyone who walked outside the main building or lived in the middle rim without being a prisoner.

With each corpse, Lith's small army grew in numbers.

"Surround the zone. Kill whoever tries to escape." The Death Knights obeyed in silence. They formed groups of three covering each door and window.

Lith could hear joyful music coming from inside the huge building that occupied most of the town square. He could almost distinguish several voices laughing and bantering.

"Open up! Ranger corps!" He screamed a second before kicking down the entrance. Its metal hinges broke like they were aluminum foil while the huge wooden door crashed on the ground with a booming sound.

The room inside was well lit, its temperature warm. Braziers were evenly placed to provide comfort and allow to cook the food to one heart's content. The place reminded Lith of Lutia's arrangements for the Spring Festival, making him nauseous.

On his left, along the wall, there was a long table filled with all kinds of delicacies. Behind it were sitting four people that he assumed were the rulers of the village. On his right, there were several smaller tables that could accommodate two people at most.

Between the tables, there was space enough to allow the slaves to satisfy each of their masters' wishes. All those present were skimpily clothed, some stark naked. It was easy for Lith to distinguish the victims from the tormentors.

The former were thin, with dead eyes that had lost hope. The latter was annoyed by his appearance and unsheathed their weapons.

"The door was open." Said a red haired woman with a seductive smile. She was one of the leaders. Until a moment prior she was enjoying the attentions of a couple of boys that could be at best the same age as Lith.

She raised a hand to calm her underlings, her eyes never leaving Lith's.

"I'm sure we can find a compromise. If you weren't interested in your share of the fun, you would have already called for backup and we would be surrounded. Instead, here you are, all alone.

We aren't unreasonable people. All we ask you is to stay out of our business and we'll make your permanence in the north as pleasant as profitable. We do not discriminate, to each their own."

Lith had already noticed that the slavers were both males and females. According to Solus, the females had stronger mana cores, but aside from the one speaking, none was above the yellow.

"I have a counter offer." He replied. "Those who want to live have to go down on their knees, face against the wall. All the others can consider their lives forfeited."

Single-handedly taking down a village of marauding slavers would fetch him a lot of merits. Yet even if he would gain nothing from it, he would do it anyway. Solus had never asked him anything before. Lith wasn't going to let her down.

A woman sitting at one of the front tables weaved a tier three spell, unleashing a lightning bolt against Lith's back. He simply extended his right hand capturing the energy and forcing it to assume the form of a sphere.

"You call that a lightning?" He said with a disgusted expression. "This is a lightning." He pointed his index finger releasing a stream of electricity that turned the mage and her table companion into charred corpses.

Marauders and slaves were now covered in cold sweat. Lith wasn't releasing any killing intent but they couldn't shrug off the feeling that something was wrong. Everyone knew magic, either because they used it or they had endured its effect to be disciplined.

Whatever the Ranger was using, it wasn't magic.

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"Stand up, vermin." With a snap of Lith's fingers, the two marauders' corpses came back to life, sending the whole room into a panic.

"Last chance. Face against the wall or die." Most of the slaves took those words as their cue. They tossed away the food trays they were holding, jumped off the lap of their masters, or just stopped standing like dolls and rushed to the nearest wall.

Whoever tried to stop them was struck by an ice bullet in the middle of the forehead and raised from the grave.

"You can't be serious!" One of the leaders, a muscular man almost 2 meters (6'7") tall, stood up with an indignant expression on his face and a huge enchanted great sword in his hand.

"Mage or non mage, there's thirty of us and just one of you. You can't hope to come out of here alive!"

"And you shouldn't have roasted a whole pig." Lith's reply made no sense until the dead beast stood up from the giant silver tray it was resting upon with red glowing eyes. It crashed the apple in its mouth and jumped at the burly man's throat.

Fear and surprise got the best of him, giving the undead pig the moment it needed to bite its prey's neck. One fell and yet a few seconds later two stood up.

Some of the marauders couldn't stand that madness anymore. Taking advantage of the distance from the mad Ranger, they jumped against the nearest window in an attempt to save their own lives.

They landed on the snow covered ground with thick glass shards piercing their exposed skin. They gritted their teeth to withstand the pain and the cold invading their bodies when the groups of undead that Lith had left on watch obeyed their master's order.

Three against one wasn't a fight but a massacre. The first undead would aim for the limbs, the second would stab at the chest, and the last would make the head roll. Blood spurts stained the pristine snow while painting the outside of the building red.

The dining hall was silent, so the sounds of battle and gurgling death cries resounded like thunder.

"I'm not alone, by the way." Lith explained with a smirk.

"All your comrades who are not here didn't run away, they joined my cause. I made them an offer they couldn't refuse." He pointed at the undead that now stood in front of the slaves ready to protect them.

The female leader glanced through the window behind her making a quick estimate of her odds of survival.

'He is still just one man. Superior Necromancy is not something a greenhorn can learn. Once the Ranger is dead, his minions will be stringless puppets.' She thought.

"There's no need to fight. We managed to reach an agreement with your predecessor, I don't see why it should be any different this time." She said while gesturing under the table, giving the other leaders the order to step away from the windows and take out their wands.

Lith had no idea what the signals meant, but thanks to Life Vision he didn't miss the sudden appearance of the Alchemical items.

'Be careful, those wands are military grade. Maybe even a goodbye gift of their late associate.' Solus said. 'With a blue core you can overpower weak spells, but the peak of tier three is still beyond your abilities.'

Lith spread his arms, one aimed towards the marauders and the other towards their leaders, releasing a barrage of ice shards. The attack was so sudden that the occupants of the front rows died before having the opportunity to react.

Only some of them were lucky enough to be unwillingly shielded by their companions and managed to flip the tables to use them as makeshift shields. The three remaining leaders dropped to the floor the moment Lith moved a finger, saving their lives by the skin of their teeth.

"How the heck does he do it?" The last man among the leaders yelled to be heard above the noise of shattering glasses and the thumping sound of ice piercing the wood.

"No chanting, no signs, and his projectiles are able to curve in mid air!"

"It's a War Mage, you idiot." Instead of wasting her time whining, the female leader was wearing her armor as fast as she could.

"We must have stumbled into a rich kid with tier four rings. Just one of them is worth more than this miserable pile of flesh and wood we call village. This is a blessing in disguise. If we kill him, the three of us are set for life. Dead men don't get any share, if you catch my drift."

Greed lit the eyes of the three leaders, who changed their wands from lightning to ice. The words "collateral damage" and "friendly fire" suddenly had a nice ring to them. They raised their arms and heads above the vertically flipped table, ready to open fire.

While they were discussing, Lith had stopped his spell. He Blinked behind the tables, catching the terrified criminals by surprise and stealing their hearts. Literally. His arm pierced their chest, leaving behind a blood core that turned the fallen into his faithful servants.

The undead would kill everyone on their path, taking position right in front of the slaves to protect them at any cost. Lith hadn't forgotten about his promise to Solus. Her wish was their command.

When the leaders came out of their hiding spot, their men had been decimated. They shoot at Lith, only to watch him Blink away while their darts created more corpses. The dead keep rising, forming a barricade that stopped any stray bullet.

"Thanks. Your help was unnecessary, though. I would have killed them anyway. You are the only ones I need to spare for interrogation." Lith appeared behind the leaders, making them flinch.

They turned around, but he only needed a flick of his wrist to cause a spiral fracture in their wand wielding arm with spirit magic. The Alchemical tools fell onto the ground while their owners writhed in agony.

Pain blurred their vision with tears they couldn't stop.

"How did you do it?" The woman didn't feel blessed anymore.

Her arm was twisted from the wrist to the shoulder. All she had worked hard for years was crumbling in front of her eyes and the corpses of her followers were staring at her with deep hatred. It was like they were blaming her for their demise.

"Magic." Lith replied with a second flick that broke the remaining arm in the same manner. The only reason why Lith had wasted so much time talking was to weave all the spells he needed, keeping them ready at a second's notice.

The three surviving marauders remained limp on the floor. Without arms, without soldiers, and surrounded by monsters led by an even more monstrous Ranger, they felt that any further struggle would be pointless.

Only after checking that no one of the slaves was about to die and that all the bandits were dead, Lith released his Necromancy spell. He then called his handler to give her a full report of the events.

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"Set the temporary Warp Gate. We need to talk." Her voice was seething with anger. Lith took out from the Ranger amulet the metal frame and assembled the portal. Once it was powered by his mana and several mana crystals, it took just a few minutes for her to arrive along with a few army mages.

The prisoners needed immediate help. The Gate needed much more power to allow the transportation of so many people to Belius where they would receive proper care. After a quick sweep of the place under Lith's guidance, the army personnel was shocked.

Rangers were an elite unit. However it was hard to believe, even after seeing it with their own eyes, that so many criminals had been eliminated without a single casualty.

"Are you insane?" Lieutenant Kamila Yehval, Lith's handler, was on the verge of a massive headache. She was a woman in her late twenties with long black hair held up in a ponytail. She had almond shaped eyes which made her quite cute to Lith.

"You were supposed to make your report as soon as you assessed how dangerous the situation was. Your brash actions put yourself and the civilians into danger. Why didn't you ask for back up?"

Maybe it was because of Phloria, but Lith had a thing for authoritative women. Now that he could see in person, she wasn't only a sweet voice, but also quite attractive.

"Because the first hostile I engaged revealed the organization had a deal with my predecessor. They knew a new Ranger was about to arrive. I managed to take them by surprise because I reached this place sooner than they predicted.

"I thought that, if I called for back up, their associate could alert them and give them the time to dispose of the hostages and flee." Lith lied through his teeth. He had made up the story while waiting for her.

His real motive was to not have witnesses. The slaves had no notion of magic, while the marauders could claim he was the reincarnation of Arthan the Mad King and no one would have believed them.

Lith predicted that based on the Royal Constable who would handle the case, the three prisoners had from a few days to a week left to live. The Kingdom's justice was as swift as brutal in such circumstances.

"You have a point. Still, you should have contacted me. Had you failed, the army would have lost a Ranger and those people their lives." Kamila said with a sigh.

"How did you manage to kill so many on your own?"

"I pick my allies among those who cannot betray me." Lith executed a short chant that raised an undead.

"A divide and conquer strategy. Very smart of you using their numbers against them."

'Maybe he is not one of those idiots with the hero complex.' She thought while smiling in approval.

"This level of mastery in Necromancy isn't listed in your file. We'll have to update it later."

"I hope we can discuss it over dinner. I don't know any good place in Belius, so I'd be in your care." Lith replied with what he hoped was his best charming smile.

"Are you hitting on me?" Kamila giggled.

"Well, yes. We have the same rank and your voice will be my only contact with the civilized world for the next months. I think we should know each other better. Also, I hope you wouldn't deny a lone Ranger his only wish."

"Kid, do you have an idea how old I am?" She was still giggling and had yet to say no. Lith took it as a good sign.

"Twenty, maybe?" He squinted his eyes, like he was concentrating really hard on the answer. Lith's Warp Gate flashed for a second, allowing the Royal Constable to join them. It took her but a second to read the mood.

"Flirting on the scene of a massacre is a bit cliché, but it usually works to break the ice. At least for me."

Lieutenant Yehval stopped twirling her hair and stood at attention.

"Constable Ernas. It's an unexpected pleasure to meet you so far away from home." Lith said giving her a salute.

"At ease Lieutenants. I'm a fan of your work, Lith. So when I heard you were involved, I asked the case to be assigned to me. Take me to the prisoners, we have much to discuss."

Lith accompanied Jirni to the cellar where the red haired bandit was detained.

Her arms were still shattered, making it pointless to cuff her. Her feet were chained to a wall, giving her barely enough space to stretch her legs.

"Constable Jirni Ernas. Are you ready to talk?" She asked with a flat tone.

"I'll tell you everything, but I want a deal. I don't care what you do with the others, as long I walk away free and with working arms." Her face was strained from the pain, yet she looked at the Constable with defiance.

'If I talk, I'm a dead woman. There's nothing this wench can do to me that the Ranger hasn't already done.' The marauder thought.

"Deal or no deal, you will talk." Jirni replied with a cruel grin. She struck the prisoner with her extended fingers in the space between the neck and the collarbone. The criminal coughed a few times before attempting to curse at her warden.

No words came out of her mouth.

"You see, dear, if you hit the nerve cluster located there, first the victim goes numb, then they experience an unspeakable agony." Lith took a mental note of Jirni's words. He could see the prisoner turning paler. The pain had yet to kick in, but the fear was already there.

"Now, while we wait for the confession, do you mind telling me if there's something serious between you and that pretty officer?"

"I just met her." Lith shrugged. "Why do you ask?"

"I know it's none of my business, but please, humor me. Is there a Lady Verhen waiting for you at Lutia?"

"No. Otherwise I wouldn't ask my handler for a date." Lith resented the allegation. He had never cheated on any of his past girlfriends.

"Perfect!" Jirni exclaimed with glee. "You know that I always cheered for you. I still think you and Phloria would make a perfect couple. She was so happy when Friya told her how worried you were about her happiness."

Lith became red, while the prisoner tapped her foot. She was now eager to talk. Jirni had more pressing matters at hand, so she ignored her.

"Let's be honest, dear. You are a magnet for troubles, just like I was at your age. First day on the job and you stumble into a nightmare. No matter how much we roam the world or how many people we kill, the void inside those like us never disappears.

We are monsters, but it doesn't mean we have to remain alone." She took his hand into hers.

"The Kingdom needs us to keep the real monsters at bay. You can find your place in the world if you stop being scared of hurting others and accept yourself for who you are. Think about this the next time you get a leave. Phloria is single at the moment too." Jirni winked.

Lith left her to her job after promising Jirni he would keep in touch. Before he left the village to resume his patrol, Kamila gave him a new portable Warp Gate and her contact rune.

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Before leaving the slavers' village and resume his flight towards the Fallen City of Kaduria, Lith would have liked to spend some more time with Kamila. However, she was too busy supervising the rescue operations.

Some of the prisoners were in desperate conditions and the army needed all hands on deck. Lith took care of those whose health was beyond the help of normal Healers. Thanks to Invigoration, he could resupply their life force and fix their bodies so fast that as long there was still a spark of life they could be saved.

'Solus asked me to save them, not just to delay their demise. I've kept my word at the best of my abilities.' He thought.

The other Healers clicked their tongues at Lith's "Speed Healing" session, thinking he was doing a poor job to rack up merits fast and leave them to fix his mess. Rangers had a bad name. Not because they were easy to corrupt or cruel people.

Their ill reputation was due to their poor social skills, usually coupled with a contempt for teamwork. In a system were relying on others to watch your back was the norm, Rangers worked alone.

"He picked the worst cases and spent a few minutes per patient." One of the Healers said while double checking Lith's work.

"Let's hope the terminator had at least the decency to stabilize their conditions before leaving. I swear, Rangers belong with beasts, not with humans. They…" The words died in his mouth when the diagnostic spell gave its report.

Aside from the malnutrition, there was no sign of injury, neither past or present. The scars had disappeared and the bones, albeit thin, showed no sign of previous fractures. The Healers were so shocked that, even knowing it was a breach of the protocol, they went to Lieutenant Yehval to ask about Lith's identity.

"The patients- they-" The main Healer was so excited he was at loss of words. "Some of them were in such a state we could only ease their pain and wait for the inevitable. Now they are fit as a fiddle. I would like to ask the Ranger to take me as his apprentice."

The man was double Lith's age, but he didn't sound embarrassed at the idea of serving under someone so young.

"I'm sorry, Captain." Kamila replied. "Until the end of his tour, I can't disclose any of the Ranger's personal information. I can relay your message to him, though."

'He's so young yet has already reached the rank of First Lieutenant.' She couldn't avoid feeling a tinge of envy considering it had taken her a decade to obtain the same promotion.

'Healer, Necromancer, ruthless warrior…' She thought while watching at the corpses whose head had been ripped off or the heart removed from the chest.

'I wonder how many other things he is good at.' She giggled while looking at Lith's contact rune on her personal communication amulet.

Meanwhile Kamila planned on calling him as soon as his rune went back online, Lith was speeding through the barren lands of the north. His journey was dull. He didn't meet any settlement even after flying for hundreds of kilometers at a height that allowed him to check far and wide.

Kaduria was relatively close, yet Lith didn't plan on going there. At least not before resting. The moment Solus's mana sense spotted a mana geyser, they checked the surrounding area for kilometers, making sure that any life form in its proximity was just an animal.

After meeting Gadorf the Wyvern, Lith didn't trust much Evolved Monsters too. He was now reluctant to expose Solus's existence even to magical beasts. First Scarlett and then Nalear had tried to take her away from him. Both had almost succeeded.

He wouldn't allow for a third time to happen. Once the mage tower was formed, Lith had Solus activating her cloaking abilities and hid the tower underground. Only then he allowed himself to relax.

"Thanks for saving those people." Solus's wisp form appeared in front of him looking for an embrace which he didn't hesitate to offer her.

"Don't mention it, partner. Is it me or the thing inside your wisp form has grown bigger again?" At first, when Solus gained the ability to materialize herself inside the tower, she was just a firefly the size of a tennis ball.

Over time, the wisp had become big enough for them to notice that something solid was at its center. Its nature and purpose were unknown, but after their last fusion, Lith supposed it was the embryo of Solus's light body.

"No, you are right." She replied. "Now that your mana core has upgraded to blue, my nourishment has become even better. I can't wait for my core to become bright green, if not even cyan!"

In Solus's mind, the former was the threshold to obtain the body made of light, the latter was the one where she expected to gain a true physical form.

Lith took note of her words and started to use Accumulation. Thanks to the combined effect of the mana geyser and the tower, he could absorb much more world energy than usual with every breath.

Refining his core would help Solus to promote her own even faster.

"I won't enter Kaduria until I've properly recovered. My body is a mess after not sleeping for so long. Using Invigoration so many times only made things worse. First thing, I'm taking a bath. Giving that scum such a clean death made me feel dirty inside. I wish I could have made them suffer more."

"Take your time. Would you like something in particular for dinner?"

"No offense, Solus, but your cooking sucks. Until you can smell or taste, everything you prepare is a coin flip at best. Also, why aren't you joining me? I know you enjoy a good bubble bath with hydro massage every time we are back in the tower."

"Yes, I do. I prefer to take them alone, though." She replied while flying toward the kitchen she had just created.

"Your behavior doesn't make sense. The whole tower is your body. Even if the wisp is away, we can talk, you can watch, and we can interact. Why are you acting shy all of a sudden?"

'Maybe because if the wisp is away I'm not forced to watch?' Solus thoughts oozed sarcasm. 'Does he not realize he's not a little kid anymore just like I'm not a naïve little girl? I don't know if Lith is so dense towards me because he considers me like a sister or what.'

'Or what.' Lith replied honestly, making Solus and all the lights inside the tower turn beet red.

'It's not that I'm shameless, but we spend every single second of the day together. Plus, because of our mind fusion, you know all the most embarrassing details of all my lives. At this point, modesty is as useless as a third nostril.

'Sorry if my request made you uncomfortable, it's just that I'm used to having you by my side. I miss you already.' Lith closed the bathroom's door before stripping.

His words made Solus's mind spin in turmoil, forcing her to rush outside the tower and getting as far as she could before allowing herself to think again.

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'F*ck me sideways! I forgot that inside the tower our mind link is stronger than usual. Thinking or speaking is almost the same thing. I wonder what he will think of me now' Solus spent the next minutes reviewing her blunder.

Every time she replayed Lith's last words, she could feel her heart flutter. After she regained her composure, she went back.

"It was nice seeing Jirni again." She said pretending their last conversation never happened. "She hasn't aged a day. What do you think about her words? Maybe you and Phloria could give your relationship a second chance."

"Maybe, maybe not." Lith said with a sigh. "I don't want to see her right now. Life isn't a romance drama where people can break up countless times and make up like nothing ever happened. The next time we break up will be the last.

"Either I open up and tell her the truth she still doesn't know or I can spare us both the inevitable sad ending. Phloria is the first person I had a true relationship with. It wasn't just about having fun or sex. She…"

Lith couldn't bear to finish the phrase and Solus knew well why.

It happened after Nalear's attack on the White Griffon. Between the slave items, Yurial's death, and having killed many of their schoolmates, Lith's companions were on the verge of a mental breakdown.

They were all living under the Ernas' roof, together with Lith's family, searching for a way to cope with their trauma. Lith was the one faring the best, but not by much. Having been split from Solus, Yurial's death, and receiving his notebooks weighted on Lith's mind.

Quylla was having the worst of it, requiring assistance 24/7 just to prevent her from self harming. Phloria was tormented by the ghosts of those she had killed, Yurial included. It had been her decision of saving Jirni first that spelled his doom and she couldn't forgive herself for not finding a solution to an impossible situation.

After sundown, she would see their faces in every shadow, making the guilt unbearable to the point that tranquilizers had little effect. Lith had to spend the nights sitting on a chair next to her bed, caressing her head until she would fall asleep.

His touch was the only thing that calmed her. Lith would hold her hand for hours to make sure her dreams would be free from nightmares. The days passed and Phloria's condition improved. Yet he would remain on the chair, keeping her at arm's length.

A few nights before the academy would resume, Phloria mustered the courage to confront him.

"Why are you doing it again?" She asked.

"What exactly?"

"Why do you keep your distance from me? You are so close, yet there is a divide between us. Would it kill you to at least sit on my bed?"

"I- I can't." Lith replied.

"You can't or you won't? I can understand if you blame me for Yurial's death, I do the same." She clenched the blankets, her firm tone just a cover for the underlying fear. Fear of being hated, of being rejected by those she loved because of her weakness.

"It's not your fault nor Quylla's. My reasons are my own and believe me when I say you don't want to know them."

"We have been together for months now and you still don't trust me? Is that the reason you always refuse to touch me?" She was hurt by his silence. She knew Lith had lots of secrets, but she had waited for him to open up.

Phloria knew that he was like Nalear. Lith and the mad Professor were the only two mages she had ever seen emitting an aura without the use of any spell. Phloria was very close to the truth, she just lacked the term Awakened one to fill the picture.

"No. I told you after Balkor, you just didn't listen! I'm not like you. I'm a monster. You have no idea how hard it had been keeping you safe from me, from all the sh*t that's my life."

"I never asked you to protect me! I'm not a child, I'm a woman now. The only things I asked from you were to love me and let me be part of your life."

"Easy to say when you know nothing! Nothing about love or me. Those are just words and words are cheap!"

"I know a lot of things!" She replied. "I know that Nalear was strong and fast, just like you. That the aura you emit when you go all out is not normal. That somehow, somewhere you lost a brother that's not part of your family. I know all these things because I was always by your side."

Lith was taken aback by Phloria's words. Yet he didn't budge.

"You don't understand. We are both emotionally vulnerable right now. If I take a step forward, we'd do something we will regret forever."

"How can you say that? What gives you the right to decide what I will or will not regret?"

Lith was so tired of that charade. Yet he had to pick his words carefully. It was the second time she was offering herself to him and he was pushing her away again. She deserved a proper explanation.

"Turn off the lights, please." Phloria did as instructed, making the room turn dark. Passing clouds obscured the moonlight from time to time, giving the room an eerie feeling.

Lith stood up, taking a few steps away from the bed, letting the left side of his body be basked in darkness.

"I was serious before. You deserve someone better than me. Someone that can make you happy. I can't because I'm not like Nalear, I'm much worse. I'm a real monster." He took a deep breath, letting the abyss inside him step out of its boundaries.

Solus had described Lith the form he would take while fighting in dimly lit spaces and with a bit of training he had learned how to conjure and to block the shadows that would cover him like a shroud, changing his appearance.

Phloria gasped when she saw three yellow eyes opening on the darkened face, the hand turned into vicious claws, and the skin covered with black scales the edges of which were burning hot.

Lith could see her face turning pale as a ghost, her eyes turn watery. It was what he wanted, yet he felt his heart squeezed by an invisible vice.

'It's over now. I'll release a bit of killing intent to make her faint. Tomorrow she'll hope this is just a nightmare. Even if she remembers anything, no one would believe her story, not even herself. With all she has gone through, everybody will think it's her trauma talking.'

Lith released waves of violent mana expecting her to scream, to cry and call for help before passing out. Phloria stepped out of her bed, wearing only her nightgown. In the moonlight, she looked like a fairy as much as he felt a monster for crushing her feelings once again.

Lith waited for her to run away, so he could strike her from behind and make her lose consciousness. That way the events of that night would remain etched in her mind without compromising his cover. All according to plan.

Phloria didn't run. She walked slowly, covering the distance separating them until they were in front of each other.

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"Does it hurt?" Phloria said caressing the scaly side of his face. A silent tear streaked down her cheek.

"What?" It wasn't much a question. More like the way Lith blurted out his surprise. Phloria seemed to be immune to his killing intent.

"I'm so sorry. I had no idea you were going through something like this alone. Does it hurt when you transform?"

"Yes." He replied overwhelmed by her kindness. The shadows surrounding Lith shattered, making him human again.

"I remember our conversation well. You told me that if I thought you could make me happy, we would have continued from that point. I love you, Lith from Lutia and I know you can make me happy. The only question is: am I able to make you happy?"

She kissed him gently, shattering all the walls he had erected until that moment to protect himself from the world. Despite all that she knew, despite all that she had seen, Phloria was still in front of him.

Not afraid of what he was, but of being pushed away. It was something that Lith had never imagined, not even in his wildest dreams. She was accepting him unconditionally.

"You make me happy." He replied with a hoarse voice, struggling with the unknown emotions that were bringing a part of his dead heart to life.

Phloria hugged him tightly, feeling that the divide between them had disappeared. Lith was clinging to her like a boyfriend for the first time since they had got together. She gave him a deep kiss while undoing the ties on her shoulders that kept her nightgown on.

She took a few steps back, allowing Lith to stare at her body without letting go of his hands before pulling him slowly towards the bed.

Lith shook his head trying to push the memory away. He understood why Phloria broke up with him. They had gotten to a point of their lives where their goals diverged. Their feelings hadn't changed, yet they both needed their space.

"So are you really calling Kamila?" Solus rushed to change the topic. Lith's pain was her own. She had never meant to make sad memories resurface after so many years.

"Of course I am! I may be bitter, lonely, and grumpy but I'm not dead. If after our first date things go well, I may even spend the evening of my birthday with her. My family can have morning and afternoon, but I need some me time."

Lith's seventeenth birthday was approaching. It had no significance to him, yet it could be used as leverage to get a few days of leave if he played his cards right with Kamila.

Lith prepared for himself a big dinner comprised of his favorite foods, leaving Solus to take care of only the vegetables. There was no way she could screw that up. As soon as he finished, he went back to his private quarters.

The room didn't resemble his academy apartment anymore, it was mixed with parts from his house back on Earth. The library contained his favorite books that Solus had managed to salvage from his memory and in front of his bed and on the ceiling, there was a huge TV screen.

It was actually just a flat-screen. Lith had no idea how a TV was made so neither could Solus replicate it. What she could do, was to project the movies he loved the most. He was on a tight schedule, but after months of isolation and the horrors she had just born witness to, Lith decided that Solus deserved a little RR.

They watched the first movie of the "The Madrox" trilogy together, an old sci-fi blockbuster. It was Solus's favorite since it was the only movie available with a happy ending.

"Why do you remember the first one so well while the other two are but a blur?" She asked while watching the final bout between the main character dressed like a priest and the ruthless Agent Doe.

"Because most of the time sequels are hot garbage." They were sitting close to each other, with Solus leaning against his side.

The next morning, Lith found her sound asleep in his bed right next to him.

'I really don't get it. All that fuss for the bath and then she has no problem snuggling against me or get cuddled to sleep. I guess women will always remain a mystery.' He thought while exploiting her lack of consciousness to not embarrass her.

The rest of the trip to Kaduria was eventless. The further he got from populated areas, the more often he met small woods. Whenever Life Vision showed him a significant number of creatures, he would check the area for monsters.

Lith only met animals and very few magical beasts. They looked hungry, but most of all, scared. He bartered some food for information.

"Why is this zone deserted? There's water, trees, yet I couldn't find a single bird nest or burrow. Is there something dangerous here I should know about?"

"Indeed." Replied a brown Byk gobbling up the raw meat offered to him. "Winter is coming, otherwise no one would be so desperate to go near Death's City to search for food."

"Do you mean the dead city of Kaduria?" Lith pointed towards his destination that lay only a few kilometers away.

"Not a dead city. Death's city." The Byk corrected him. "I suggest you go back. Nothing good ever comes out of those cursed walls. My mother always used to warn me to stay away from it. She said that hunger is much better than joining the shadow people."

Lith tried to learn something more, but the Byk had never ventured near Kaduria. He only knew what his mother told him and her stories seemed made to scare children.

It took Lith a few minutes to reach the ruins. The problem was they were no ruins at all. Inside a translucent golden dome, resided one of the most beautiful cities he had ever seen. All the buildings were several stories high and made of white marble that reflected the sunlight illuminating even the innermost alleys.

The roofs were painted a pale blue, each one hosted a small spire holding a masterfully cut magic crystal on its top. Like most cities of the Griffon Kingdom, Kaduria was built in layers.

The most external one was outside the city walls. Lith could see farmers tending the lands that were devoid of snow despite the harsh climate. Small cottages were built in the proximities of the farmlands, from which he could see women and children taking care of the cattle.

Past the city walls, all the houses were made of stone. From the high ground, Lith could distinguish a residential area, a market district, noble houses, and in the center of the city, there was a small castle.

"This doesn't make any sense." The vision flabbergasted Lith. "These people are funnily clothed but are alive as much as I am. Why does the Griffon Kingdom keep them sealed instead of trading with them? This city is a marvel of magic."

Not even the series of arrays composing the golden dome could hide the mystical web enveloping Kaduria. The spires with their mana crystals acted as relay points for some sort of complex magical formation.

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Lith watched in amazement with Life Vision enormous amounts of energies moving from one crystal to another. They would course through the buildings and then into the ground before returning to the spire stronger than before and be passed to the next crystal.

The castle hosted only a small number of spires, but they were the tallest and the magic gemstones they contained were as big as a horse. The noble district had more spires, but their size was significantly smaller.

The farther from the castle, the greater the number of spires became and the smaller the crystals' size. It was some sort of cascade effect that made no sense to Lith, yet it filled his mind with wonder.

He called his handler to make sure of being in the right place.

"Are you there already?" Kamila's voice was surprised. "The good news is that at this pace you'll finish your first patrol in no time. The bad news is that I have to report you for not giving out your position earlier.

"Remember, at least three calls a day. It's of the utmost importance for us to be able to follow your movements and to know where you camp."

'There's no way I'm going to gift the Kingdom the location of mana geysers.' Lith inwardly cursed. 'I'll have to set a fake camp every time to not arouse suspicions.'

"Sorry, with all that happened yesterday, I forgot to give my daily reports." He lied through his teeth.

"Don't worry. I'll cover for you this time."

"What kind of city is Kaduria? Why is it sealed?"

"Every one of the lost cities is unique. Kaduria is classified as 'the Shadow City'. Judging by your relaxed tone it must be in its light phase. Working people, smiling children, gorgeous architecture. Am I right?"

One of the farmers had noticed Lith. The man waved at him while saying something that the array blocked out.

"Yes." Lith waved back.

"Well, don't get used to it. In a while it will turn into the shadow phase and things will get nasty."

"It will be hours before sundown. What am I supposed to do until then?"

"I said shadow phase, not night phase. The city constantly switches between two different states regardless of the sun." Lieutenant Yehval assumed a lecturing voice that irked Lith.

Suddenly the sun inside Kaduria disappeared and it started to rain. The phenomenon left Lith in a daze since the sky outside was clear. He saw the city walls crumble while all the buildings fell apart as if a meteor shower was coming down instead of water.

The soil inside boiled and sizzled like each raindrop was a powerful acid. The friendly farmer melted in front of his eyes, like a wax figurine left too close to a fire. His eyes popped in bloody tears while his mouth screamed in pain.

Lith stared at the man's jaw which elongated until it reached the stomach level. In a few seconds, all that was left of the farmer was a black puddle. The sky inside the array was now pitch black.

The energy of the internal array was now amassed into a small black star made of smoke that was trying to escape from the golden dome surrounding the city by spreading toxic fumes.

"I guess it has just switched to the shadow phase." Lith said while watching the black pool on the other side of the array rise up, taking a humanoid form. It was a pitch black three-dimensional shadow.

It had no features outside red glowing eyes and a wide open mouth that revealed a white space inside. The shadow farmer's eyes were filled with pain and hatred, a mix that Lith knew all too well.

It rammed against the array, punching at the barrier to reach the other side. The golden surface produced sparks at every hit, but it didn't falter. The shadow farmer's hands shattered instead, bleeding what looked like black blood.

The shadow opened its mouth, emitting a screeching sound strong enough for Lith to hear despite the array. All the nearby shadows swarmed towards their companion, who had started hitting the barrier again with the stumps and his head.

"What are these things? Undead?" Lith asked while the crowd in front of him hammered the array with growing force until it started to ripple.

"Negative. Undead we know how to dispose of. These things do not die, no matter what you do. We call them Shadows."

'Sounds like a load of bullsh*t.' Lith thought. 'Solus, what kind of mana core do these guys have?'

'They have no core.'

'What? It's impossible! All sentient things have a mana core.'

'Well, the Shadows don't. They have no mana flow, no life force, nothing. They are just a black mass of unknown energy.'

Lith activated Life Vision just to discover that Solus was right. Life Vision would show him the world in greyscale, while the stronger the energy of a being, the lighter the colors with which they would appear.

Even undead would manifest an aura in a scale of colors, while the things in front of him were just black spots.

"How do I assess the threat level?" Lith noticed a small crack appearing on the barrier. The number of creatures was increasing with each passing second and so was the pressure they exerted on the array.

"Never stand in front of the Shadows. Even if the threat level to the Kingdom is low, a big enough group can crack the barrier and pass through it. If that happens, an emergency squad will be summoned and you will be held accountable.

Just move outside their line of sight, they have almost no memory."

Lith raised an earth wall, watching through it with Life Vision.

As soon as he 'disappeared', the Shadows stopped attacking the array and dispersed.

"As for the threat level…" Kamila continued. "…you have to check the black star. Tell me when you have visual."

Lith flew above the very top of the barrier, until the black star was right below his feet.

"Whatever it is, it looks like bad news."

"Because it is. Unlike the shadows that mind their own business unless provoked, the black star constantly assaults the array. It gets stronger over time, so I need you to stay there and call me if during the shadow phase you notice cracks."

As soon as Kamila completed the phrase, a small crack appeared on the dome.

"Consider yourself called." Lith replied while a cold shiver ran down his spine. The leak was barely visible, yet the black star's aura made him feel small and irrelevant. Not even while facing Scarlett or the Small World he had experienced such pressure.

"Are you sure? Let me check." The army's amulet scanned the surroundings, highlighting the crack while it kept expanding.

"Bad news it is. You need to get inside Kaduria and cull the numbers of the Shadows."

'Not such bad news.' Lith thought. 'I was going to explore the city anyway. This gives me the perfect excuse to stick my nose where it doesn't belong.'

"How do I do that?"

"It's simple, you just need to kill every one of them twice. Once during the light phase and another during the shadow phase. The recommended protocol is to enter during the light phase, kill everyone on sight, retreat and then get back in during the shadow phase.

"The Shadow of someone whose human form has been recently killed will be weaker and dumber, making it easy to wipe them out."

"Is the opposite true too?" Lith's curiosity was piqued.

"Yes, but while Shadows are aggressive and have unusual abilities, humans are just humans. They'll run rather than fight."

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"Is that really something I can do alone?" Lith asked in disbelief. "They may be just humans, but taking on a full city? Isn't it too much?"

"Negative. For unknown reasons all the humanoids inhabiting Kaduria are unable to use magic. Otherwise the army would never send a single Ranger instead of a battalion. As long as you keep your distance and avoid getting surrounded, it should be easy."

'Good to know. Even if I had to face a few weak magicians it wouldn't be a problem. The army has no need to know that, though.'

"Do I have to take down even the children?" This time the question was serious. In his mind gender, age, and race were irrelevant. There were only enemies and allies. Yet killing someone in cold blood for no reason felt wrong even to him.

Also, he remembered well Commander Berion's remark about his psychological evaluation. He needed to show to have a conscience beside Solus.

Kamila's voice paused for a second before answering.

"Affirmative. I know it's not an easy task, but consider this. Not a single Kadurian is really alive. Even if they were, you saw what the black rain does to them. If you slay them in both the human and shadow form, the cycle will be broken for a while.

"Consider it as a way to give peace to those poor souls. A short relief from pain is better than nothing." Kamila's words resounded with compassion, making Lith wonder what could have happened in her past to make her sympathise with the Shadows.

"Do Shadows have any known weaknesses?"

"Their human form is weak to light magic while their shadow form is weak to darkness magic."

"Healing magic kills them?" Lith found the idea absurd.

"Yes, but in such an excruciating way that more than one Ranger remained traumatized after the mission. My advice is to refrain to employ this method unless strictly necessary."

"Thanks, Lieutenant Yehval. I'll call back right before going in."

"Keep me posted." She said before ending the conversation.

'This is really interesting.' Lith thought while watching the army of Shadows wander at random along the ruins of Kaduria. Life Vision showed him that each one of them was tethered to the Black Star which was still drilling its way through the array.

'What do you think about this, Solus?'

'That it's a frigging nightmare!' She replied. She had remained silent during the conversation out of shock, not because she had nothing to say.

'Those poor people have been trapped for centuries into some kind of cycle of death and rebirth. The black rain doesn't just kill them, it's a torture to them. Their eyes in Shadow form are pure madness. Whoever did this to them is as cruel as crazy!'

'Agreed.' Lith nodded. 'You missed my point, though. If what you say is right, if they retain some form of memory, then it means their souls are bonded to this place. By exploring the city, we may find a clue to cure my condition.'

'Yeah, sure.' Solus didn't share his enthusiasm. 'Except they are not bonded to this place, otherwise the array would be useless. They are bonded to the Black Star. Do you remember how artifacts that steal and corrupt souls are called?'

Lith sighed at his own stupidity. The idea of being even one step closer to a solution had clouded his judgment.

'I guess a sealed item that endlessly tortures a whole city is the very definition of cursed object. I'm curious about how it works and how the cycle empowers it over time.'

'I'm not.' Solus had a disgusted tone. 'I can't wait to leave this place. Everything here feels wrong. How can you accept so easily the idea of slaughtering innocents?'

'What's the alternative? Politely ask the Black Star to not puncture the barrier and to not spread its curse? We don't know what happened here. Maybe they are innocent or maybe they made a deal with that thing that bit them in the a*s.

'We only have two alternatives. Wash our hands of the problem and let someone else deal with it, or do our job and maybe understand something about the Black Star that will help me. Either way the army can't allow the Black Star to escape and neither can I.'

They had to agree to disagree. They spent some time by watching the cracks on the dome getting bigger and studying the barrier. The golden dome was the sum of dozens of concentric arrays. Each one was cast so that those inside strengthened those outside and vice versa.

Their brilliant intricacy amazed Solus to no end. The arrays were woven one above the other, giving to the final result the appearance of an elaborate tapestry made of mana rather than a simple magic circle.

Such powerful formation needed a massive amount of mana to be sustained. Once Lith was certain the barrier would hold, he descended to the ground to study its power source. Kaduria was surrounded by equally spaced small buildings that somehow provided a constant flow of world energy.

'This is unbelievable!' Solus's excitement was so great she forgot being disappointed in Lith's lack of mercy.

'Do you mind explaining to me what's so great about a bunch of stones?' Life Vision only showed him a complex array protected inside what looked like an elaborate altar. Its design was much more refined than those Gadorf the Wyvern used.

On its surface there were drawings correlated with inscriptions he wasn't able to read. The pictures by themselves were too vague, depicting a lot of people carrying a stone to a temple.

'The city of Kaduria is built over a mana geyser. This explains a lot.'

'This explains nothing. Please, elaborate.'

'The reason why such a strong barrier can last without the use of a single crystal is that the altars are capable of redirecting the energy coming from the mana geyser under Kaduria. It draws the world energy away and uses it to fuel itself and all the arrays sealing the city.'

Lith felt a cold shiver running down his spine. Whoever had the mastery to redirect a mana geyser to the point that neither Life Vision or mana sense could detect it, had to be a real master of magic.

Yet not even them had been able to deal with the Black Star for good, leaving it in the care of posterities.

'It means they were either very trusting or so desperate they had no other choice. I think you are right, Solus. We'll stay here only long enough to make sure there's nothing valuable for us.'

'That wasn't my point at a… What's that?' Among the many lines leading from the altar to the dome, there was a thin red string. They followed it until the base of the mystical formation. It was part of a single array that had nothing to do with the sealing.

Lith called Kamila again. Something smelled fishy.

"Is the shadow phase already over? That's weird, it usually lasts more than an hour." Lith had called way sooner than she expected.

"No, it's not. I'm calling to report an anomaly. I just found a detector array that has no connection to the main structure and leeches energy from the altars. Is it one of the army safeguards?"

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"No." Kamila's voice went from surprise to worry.

"Tampering with the barrier is a capital crime. I am certain there is no detector array because the barrier already includes one that warns us if the Shadows breach through or if the Black Star is about to escape. Can you show it to me?"

Lith chanted an array revealing spell, aiming it precisely at the red string. It made the hidden formation visible. It surrounded the whole barrier while remaining at its fringes.

"I can't believe no one ever noticed it, nor that you also know Warden magic. Do you even sleep at night?"

Lith would have liked to flirt with her a bit, but saying something like: "Only when the company isn't good" on the army communicator could lead his superiors to change his handler with a middle aged man with a deep love for beer and cheese.

"Sometimes." He replied while smirking. Kamila's full body 3D hologram appeared from the amulet to take a better look at the situation. She was wearing a white shirt and a pencil skirt that emphasized her slender legs.

"I'll report this immediately. I recognize the design. Whoever left it, gets notified every time the barrier is opened. It represents a breach of classified information like the schedule of the cleansings and the Rangers' patrol frequency. Great job spotting it."

Lith was aware that without Life Vision or mana sense, the extra array would have been as good as invisible. Its presence added another unknown variable to the scenario.

'With my luck, the b*stard is already keeping an eye on me.'

His grumblings were interrupted when the vapors surrounding the Black Star disappeared, leaving in its place a miniature sun. Wherever its rays shone, the buildings rebuilt themselves while the Shadows were slowly turned back into humans.

The blackness of their features was washed away on the ground until it became a normal shadow, following rather than possessing the body which projected it.

"Time to go in." Lith returned to his starting point, right in front of the farm belonging to the man that had weaved at him an hour earlier. He chanted the spell that released the barrier, slipping inside before it closed behind him.

The farmer looked at him with a surprised expression for a second.

"how did="" you="" get="" in="" stranger?=""/"how The man said. (AN: Translated from ancient Kadurian)

Lith smiled and waved at him while pretending to have understood his words.

'Dammit. Why there is no translate spell or a convenient mind link when you need it? Things would be much easier if we were able to communicate.'

Lith's plan was simple. He would always pick the same entry point and start killing from the inside of the city. That way, he would notice if the humans retained a memory between cycles based on their reactions, while leaving the inhabitants of the outer rims neutral to his presence.

If he started attacking from the outer rim instead, he would meet increasing resistance with each assault he launched and his chances of studying the phenomenons related to the Dark Star would be zero.

Hundreds of kilometers away, location unknown.

The opening of the barrier surrounding Kaduria activated the red array, which signaled to its owner by lighting a small gem on one of his many bracelets.

"Another Ranger already? It took me quite some effort to convince the last one to leave the Black Star alone. Let's hope this one is more reasonable. I'll make him an offer he can't refuse…"

"Nice. Now you not only keep messing with Tyris's turf, but also you talk to yourself. I regret having Awakened you more with each passing day." An old voice filled with contempt cut the younger one short.

"You sound and act like a madman. You should study magic instead of meddling with forces you do not understand."

"I'm not mad, uncle!" The array's owner replied with a high pitched voice. "Madness is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. By following your method, I'll become as powerful as you at best…"

"You wish." Said the older voice with a sneer.

"…and by that time, I'd be an old coot that has wasted his whole life amassing power instead of using it!" The young Awakened's tone was filled with outrage.

"There are no shortcuts to power, Treius. Only to your own ruin."

Treius ignored his uncle's words, opening a Warp Gate that would lead him to Kaduria in no time.

Lith walked past the farmer, replying to his barrage of gibberish with a smile and a nod of the head.

'I could knock him down and steal his clothes to go unnoticed. The problem is I have no idea if they will become a shadow too once the next phase begins nor what could they do to my Skinwalker armor.'

Like the rest of the city, the high walls surrounding it were of a pristine white. There were guard stations near the massive gate leading inside Kaduria, but they were both empty. There was no one patrolling along the rampart, nor archers inside the hidden alcoves in the wall.

The weather was mild enough for everyone to wear short sleeves. Many people stared at Lith, pointing their fingers at his heavy clothes. He hid in a corner, to make his Skinwalker armor take the appearance of his farmer outfit.

The city was bustling with activity. Some people moved goods to and fro the inner rims, others were assembling in a procession until all the houses were empty. No one locked doors or windows.

Lith Blinked from one alley to another, walking only when the crowd was big and busy enough that no one would notice his passage. He tried listening to their conversations, but none of the words they used was recorded in the books inside Soluspedia.

Once he reached the merchant district, Lith understood that something was wrong with the city. Despite the sunny day and the many people coming from the outer rim, all the stalls were closed except for some food vendors.

They wouldn't even ask for money. They just offered their products to whoever stood in front of them. The smell of grilled vegetables and meat made Lith's mouth watery, until he imagined them turning into shadows and ripping his stomach from the inside.

'I don't know what's happening, but I have an idea about what the light phase is for.' Solus pondered after Lith Blinked to a vantage point to better observe the cascade of energy going from the castle to the ground.

'In their human form, the Kandurians have a mana core, but they all start almost grey. The whole city is a lie. The Black Star is using them to fool Mogar into believing there is life to nurture.

'The spires are siphoning the mana geyser to slow down the cores' recovery process while amplifying the collected power thanks to the crystals' resonance with the world energy. Those people are like fruits. They ripen over time, until the Black Star gathers all the energy for its next attempt to escape.'

'Then why killing the fake Kandurians twice weakens the cursed object? Can't it just create more puppets?' Lith considered the implications of Solus's word from multiple angles. Even the method of choice to supply the barrier was now twice as ingenious.

'I don't think they are fake. Only living beings have mana cores. By destroying their bodies, the army forces the Black Star to consume part of his powers to restore them. Those people are nothing but a flesh rope in a tug of war between the Kingdom and the Black star.'

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