Jirni pointed at all the members of the Crown’s inner circle who like Morn had signed the Royal Decree yet were now complaining about the consequences of their own decision. Following that logic, they should receive the same sentence as the Royals, creating a power vacuum that would cripple the Court for months if not years.
“Also, it’s only thanks to my parents that we managed to recover the corpse of the god of healing before it was brutalized.” Peonia said. “They brought back Manohar’s equipment before it fell into enemy hands and found among them the diagnostic spell that he had devised.
“Without their quick thinking, instead of running away like a coward, the Dead King would have kept bantering like a conqueror in front of the whole Kingdom and we would have no protection against Thrud’s Skinwalkers.
“The King and Queen may have broken the law, but desperate times require desperate measures. Protocol can’t supersede good sense in war.”
After reading Jirni’s transcriptions and listening to Peonia’s words, the opinion of the Court was swayed once again. The two remaining factions merged into one that unanimously absolved Lith and the Royals from all charges.
“One last thing.” Meron said once he was back being the King. “If you really want the throne, dear cousin, the law allows you to undertake the same trial I did during my youth. If you pass it, I’ll gladly give my crown to you.
“Yet seeing you here, using my law against me tells me that you are a coward. You and I both know that Tyris was right. Had you taken the trial instead of me, I wouldn’t have to suffer your presence today and she’d have had you for dinner.”
Only the General understood what the King meant and the memory of Tyris’ threat turned him pale for days.Â
***
The god of healing received the honor of a state funeral the day after his death and was buried beside his mother, Sitri. The Manohar bloodline had been wiped out, but amid the chaos of the war, there was no place for long ceremonies.
His colleagues and ex-students from the White Griffon attended en masse, yet Marth, his wife, and Lith still managed to take the first row beside the Royals. Even Ilyum Balkor was there, shapeshifted into one of Jirni’s cousins to give his rival the final salute.
The funeral was brief because everyone needed to go back to protect the Kingdom. After Meron gave his eulogy to the god of healing, the crowd dispersed and the preparations for the war began.
Lith spent the days before Vastor’s marriage inside the tower, working like a madman. He and Solus had to complete the preparatory steps for all their projects.
Thanks to the dimensional magic of the tower, Lith had no problem expanding the Forge enough to contain Syrook’s corpse. He followed Faluel’s advice, using the ribcage to reinforce the chest piece and turning the Black Dragon’s skull into a helm with Second Life.
He used the rest of the bones to form a bastard sword big enough for his Tiamat form and stored the organs away to use them as ingredients.
Then, he used the Forgemastery spell, Infusion, to coat the Dragon scales and the blade with Orichalcum while he used Adamant for the corpses of the Vagrash and the Balor.
Even with the tower’s mines, turning Orichalcum into Adamant took time and Lith wanted to keep his purest metals there in the hope to obtain more Davross. Orichalcum was the only thing he had in abundance and only because the Royals provided him plenty due to his “relationship” with Peonia.
Replacing the missing parts of the corpses with Second Life and then coating them with Adamant was the easy part. Even coating the armor made of Dragon scales turned out to be a mammoth task since it was the first time that they had worked on something that big.
Between enchanting the golems and using Infusion on the blade and the armor, Lith and Solus failed so often that they had to move to the Desert whenever they decided to work on their equipment.
They had to return to the Griffon Kingdom from dawn to dusk in order to avoid arousing suspicion of preparing for defection.
Thanks to Salaark’s Creation Magic, every mistake that once would have meant wasting hours of work and dozens of kilograms of enchanted metal was now merely an annoyance that could be solved with the wave of a hand.
Both the hand and the annoyance were Salaark’s, of course.
“I swear that if you weren’t such a sweet child, I would have already knocked you unconscious for disturbing my work so often.” The Overlord was being literal since Lith had converted the Alchemical lab into a bakery for his stay in the Desert.
The sweets it produced satisfied her cravings and kept her in a good mood.
While in the Griffon Kingdom, Lith practiced Demon Grasp to refine his core while Solus worked on a breathing technique of her own. As long as her mana core was cracked she couldn’t refine it, but she hoped to find a way to replenish her core quickly without being dependent on her tower form.
Lith drowned himself with work to not think about Manohar’s death. He had lost a friend, a mentor, and his best shot at fixing his life force without the need to resort to forbidden magic to solve his reincarnation problem.
If it worked, he wouldn’t have to rely on luck and would remain on Mogar, yet he would still have to give up on his friends, his family, and even his powers as a Tiamat.
To make matters worse, the Verhen’s had become pariahs in Lutia.
The people who had never met Orpal and only knew his side of the story that he had broadcasted, blamed Elina and Raaz for everything.
The new citizens of Lutia considered them horrible parents who had driven their eldest son insane. In their frenzy to pin the blame unto someone, they held the Verhens responsible for every death that the Undead Courts had caused during the first night of war.
If not for the magical beasts, Rena wouldn’t have been able to walk on the streets without being bothered and Raaz now avoided the village. Many fights broke out on a daily basis already between his farmhands and those who accused the Verhens of the most heinous crimes.
He didn’t want to add fuel to the fire with his presence, not when Zekell already did that for both of them. One rumor was all he needed to hear to double his prices for whoever he didn’t like.
Triple if they messed with Rena and a complimentary solid beating if they came anywhere near Leria. His clerks were few compared to the villagers, but they were all as stocky as a bull and they came with hammers.
The ongoing conflict did wonders for the local healer and Protector’s family budget, but it made the air in the village toxic, dividing its people just like what was happening to the Kingdom.
Lith blamed himself for everything and most of his failures as a Forgemaster came from the heavy burden that weighed on his mind.
