‘White Ladies are weak to fire. According to the gazillion books I consulted recently, they burn like gasoline. I don’t know what kind of relationship these two have, but if they coordinate their attacks I’ll be in a pinch. I must even the field.’ Lith thought.
The Mage Slayer ignored the White Lady’s grievances and jumped at Lith’s spell, incapable seeing past the meal served in front of itself. Lith dispelled his air dome and struck with the Gatekeeper sword infused with darkness magic, the only element Mage Slayers couldn’t feed upon.
The creature was unable to scream, but its eyes went wide as the enchanted metal pierced through the orange gas, creating a gaping hole the size of a soccer ball on its chest for a split second.
‘Solus, wasn’t his heart supposed to be there?’ Lith asked. Their vengeful heart was the source of all the powers a Mage Slayer had and also their weak point. Only a physical weapon could destroy it, but finding it wasn’t easy.
The undead could move it freely inside their gaseous body, even while they were fighting.
‘Yes, it was. Now it’s in the nether regions.’ She replied. Lith’s Life Vision was blinded by the magical gas that made up the Mage Slayer’s body, but her mana sense was keen enough to follow the heart’s movements.
The White Lady had never stopped hurling new water. She was using it to shape a water cage to drown Lith. He was an adult, so he was bound to taste like horseshit, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Lith blocked the lunge of the Mage Slayer, interrupting both its attack and its spell while unleashing a stream of lightning from his hand. The electricity traveled through the water and entered the White Lady’s mouth, setting her ablaze from the inside.
It wouldn’t have been so easy under normal circumstances, however the starvation had turned her flesh into dried meat, making it even more flammable than a White Lady already was.
The undead turned into a pyre while screaming in agony. It took her less than a second to be reduced to a pile of wet ashes.
Now that Lith could focus on a single opponent, he conjured a thick layer of spirit magic around himself. It would be useless against a gaseous opponent, but the enchanted blade the Mage Slayer was using was physical.
Lith used spirit magic to envelope the sword more each time it clashed with his Gatekeeper, making it slower as his grip over the blade of the enemy became stronger. The Mage Slayer wasn’t able to use fusion magic and with its sword being constantly pulled in random directions, it was unable to complete a single spell
Soon the second undead was at Lith’s mercy.
Spirit magic kept its blade locked to Lith’s left hand while the Gatekeeper in his right hand cut through its body so fast that its heart was perfectly visible, no matter where the Mage Slayer moved it.
Lith cut the heart into small pieces and kept cutting it until the smoke stopped regenerating. Unfortunately, the sword disappeared as soon as the undead was vanquished.
A Mage Slayer’s physical body actually consisted of two parts: the heart and the blade.
‘It’s very odd, Solus. According to the books, the sword should be an exact replica of the blade master’s weapon. Yet in the pictures we found, their enchanted weapons had nothing special. I’d remember so many runes.’ Lith thought.
‘Yeah. It’s likely due to Huryole being very ancient. If the Mage Slayer was centuries old, maybe so it was the Forgemastering process they used when it was still alive. It’s too bad that conjured blades have no pseudo core. We might have learned a lot.’ She sighed.
‘Look on the bright side. If the path in front of us continues in a straight line, those creatures would have reached the exit in no time and then we would have been forced to come here to slay them.
‘Not only did we save ourselves a trip, but we also might get deeper inside the city than anyone else has ever managed to!’ Lith replied, regretting his words the moment he thought them.
‘Way to jinx it, Lith.’ Solus chuckled, hoping that for once they would be lucky.
Before moving on, Lith searched the room. The dormitory was a long rectangular room, at least 100 meters (330 feet) long with four-poster beds lined up against the wall. In front of each bed, there was a dimensional chest, ready to be imprinted.
‘This is even odder. According to Professor Wanemyre, a magical item that’s not imprinted can’t last long. Then how can these dimensional chests be in perfect condition?’ Lith thought.
‘Maybe they are also full!’ Solus said.
‘I told you to look at the bright side, not to start daydreaming. This is barely the third room. We might as well be like the hundredth visitor or something.’ Lith still imprinted one of the chests to probe its contents.
It contained a chamber pot, some kind of odd looking pajamas, and a set of items for personal hygiene.
‘This place must be very old if they expected the residents to use chamber pots. It means they had yet to discover how to use mana crystals to obtain tap water.’ Lith thought.
Their path continued in a straight line only for a few more rooms. Lith found a training weapons warehouse, an office filled with paperwork written in an unknown language, and a canteen bigger than the village of Lutia before they came across a crossroads.
At that point, Lith checked his pocket watch and started to draw a map. During his past visits, he had never managed to get very far due to his busy schedule and the abundance of monsters.
According to the army’s information, every time a monster was killed, it was sent back to square one, near Huryole’s core. Also, the city was built on multiple levels and all the rooms would be shuffled every time the labyrinth rearranged itself.
Lith had no idea what floor the city core was on, nor where the good stuff might be stored. Yet the prospect of finding ancient artifacts and studying the pseudo core of a being capable of resurrecting its minions without taking away their free will drove him to continue his search.
After several more offices, pantries, and even an inner garden bigger than a football stadium, Lith was about to run out of time. He started to run and avoided searching the rooms hoping to find something useful.
When he stumbled into a Forgemastering lab, Lith knew that it would be his last stop. There were so many enchanted items that they almost blinded their magical senses. The Forge in the middle of the room was made of an unknown metal.
One second it was white with black veins all over it and the next second it was black with white veins. The Forge was solid, but its surface constantly changed, as if there were two colliding forces battling for dominion over it
Lith struck it with the hilt of the Gatekeeper, making it emit a crystal clear sound he had never heard before.
‘Solus, this thing isn’t made of Adamant, right?’ He asked while placing his hand on the Forge and using Invigoration.
‘Nope. I have no idea what it is, but its mana flow is magnificent.’
Lith couldn’t agree more. Unlike his Adamant Forge, the one in front of him was able to draw in the world energy and compress it to the point it almost had a pseudo core even though it wasn’t enchanted.
