With her weak mana core, Solus was the benchmark of the group, except when it was Nyka’s turn to handle light magic.
It was always a vexing experience for the vampire and her blood core, requiring her to feed often. Yet she needed to do it in order to better understand the powerful darkness magic that flowed inside her body instead of blood.
Usually, Lith would use the gathering to share his knowledge and further strengthen his foundations of magic, but this time he focused on himself the most. The problem with breakthroughs was that he needed to get used to his new strength, both physical and magical.
The array exercise allowed him to learn about the changes his mana core had undergone and how to regulate his mana flow without causing an explosion while trying to light a match.
After a while, he and Solus tower Warped back to the Ernas mansion. He needed to make sure to not kill the next person he hugged and Orion’s training dummies, which had the same durability of a human body, were the perfect subjects.
Much to his surprise, the guards at the gate had a message for him.
“Great Mage Verhen, you have visitors from the army waiting for you in the lounge, yet Lady Quylla needs to speak privately with you before anyone else. She’s been pretty clear about this point.”
Lith nodded and went to Quylla’s room, where according to the guards she was waiting for him.
‘I wonder what she needs me for. I doubt she has already made up her mind about me being a hybrid. It’s more likely to be related to the army’s envoy. Probably she wants to make sure that our versions about Kulah’s events match.’ He thought.
“I’ve got your message. What’s the emergency, Quylla?” Lith asked.
“I never got the opportunity to return this to you.” She replied, handing the book about the Mana Reactor back to him. Quylla was so nervous that she was unable to stop fidgeting. Even clasping her hands together didn’t help.
“That’s hardly a reason to be worried.” He shrugged.
“No, you don’t get it. We’re about to give our report. If I hand this book to the army, they’ll ask me where I got it. Since I was held prisoner, I’ll be forced to tell them that I got it from you.”
“And?” Lith kept missing her point.
“And once the army explores Kulah and finds the safe near the Odi’s life pod, they might wonder if such a big container was really meant for a single book. In their shoes, I would expect to find all the information regarding all the Odi’s successful projects, not just one.
“You could end up in trouble because of me.” She said.
“You’re right.” He nodded, moved by her concern. Her brain seemed to have a hard time making a decision about their friendship, but her heart didn’t seem to care.
“Thanks, but there’s no reason to worry. I was going to hand everything that I found back there over to the army anyway. That kind of knowledge is toxic, but it’s not up to us to decide what to do with it.
“You’re really a genius, little one. There were really three books in that safe.” Lith said while ruffling her hair out of habit. Back then he had been in too big of a rush to hide the safe before the fight and there had been too many witnesses once he had regained consciousness.
He couldn’t expect everyone to be dumb, blind, and deaf so he knew all along that it was a matter of time before he would be forced to choose between giving up on the tomes or being charged with treason.
Lith had already copied the contents of the body-swapping book, so he no longer needed the original for his purposes.
Quylla became stiff under his touch, yet she didn’t push away his hand.
“I’ve done my best to read and translate the book about the Mana Reactor, to make sure that there’s nothing written in there that might help you with your life force.” She said.
“Thank you for your kindness, but it was clear that such a monstrosity couldn’t help…”
“I couldn’t be sure until I read it.” She cut him short. “Countless times wrong things have been modified to do some good, but sadly this is not the case. You were right, the Reactor can only be used to produce mana, not life force.
“By the way, these are the Odi dictionaries that I’ve compiled during my studies. Some of the terms they use do not have an equivalent in our language nor in modern magic, so most dictionaries can help you translate a poem, but most of the magical jargon gets lost in translation.”
Quylla handed a couple of books thick enough to stop more than one bullet to him.
“Feel free to borrow them. Aside from you and me, no one knows that I wrote these vocabularies.” Quylla had never underestimated Lith’s intelligence, so she was well aware that he might as well have made copies of whatever he wanted.
It was her way of telling him that if he needed to research the Odi language, the army might take notice if he started to consult Odi magic dictionaries and that even though she wasn’t sure if she wanted to help him, Quylla didn’t want him to get caught either.
“What are we going to say to the army’s emissary?” She finally asked.
“The truth. Well, mostly.” He quickly added after noticing her flabbergasted expression. “We’ll tell them that we defeated that monster together and that I did most of the job. Damn, this really feels like being back at the academy.”
Lith’s attempt to make her laugh failed. Quylla’s expression became even more serious and her feet restless.
“Is it because you’re not human that you’re this strong? Like when you saved Yurial from the assassins or when you killed the Abomination in the forest?” She asked.
“No. I told you. I wasn’t able to shapeshift back then.” He replied.
“Have you ever considered us as your friends? I mean for real? Or was even that a deception?”
“The truth?” Lith asked and she nodded for him to reply.
“Not at first and not for a long time.” He said, making her turn pale.
“I don’t expect you to understand how hard my life was, nor how thick-skinned I am. Yet I want you to know that after Balkor’s attack, I started to grow fond of all of you and that now I consider you one of the few true friends that I have.”
Lith stored the dictionaries inside his pocket dimension and then told Quylla how he was going to explain the fight with the Odi to the army’s envoy. She was amazed by how short and precise his report was, not finding a single weak point in it.
Lith and Solus had prepared it together, interrogating each other in turn to find weak points in their story. In the doctored version of events, once the Mana Reactor had been shut down, the three of them had employed hit and run tactics to make the enemy run out of juice by exploiting the Odi’s need to take them alive.
In this story, Phloria had detonated the body-swapping machine only to inflict the death blow. It explained everything, from how they all survived to all the battle marks that remained in the room.
