After walking inside his house, away from prying eyes, Lith made use of his newfound knowledge as a healer.
He used Invigoration to spot and fix all bone, muscular, and even intervertebral disc damages accumulated in his parents’ bodies over time due to their hard work in the fields and the aging.
He also used tier four magic to borrow them his energy and prevent them from feeling tired because of the treatment’s aftereffects.
“What the?” Raaz flexed his limbs, feeling the subtle changes his body had undergone.
“I feel full of energy and my knots have disappeared. It feels like I’m twenty again!”
“Glad to hear it.” Lith replied, hugging his father. “I have learned so much in just a month. The academy has shown me how short-sighted I was. There is no telling how much will my magical skills improve.”
He also performed a full check-up on Tista as well. She was always as fit as a fiddle, but Lith never stopped worrying about her.
They talked about his mock exam, of which Lith gave an accurate description, except for his encounter with the Scorpicore that he completely glossed over.
He put particular emphasis on having developed a good relationship with his teammates and with Phloria in particular.
The doctored version of his story was aimed to avoid them from worrying about him being alone in the academy. He hoped to help them overcome their long-standing sense of guilt due to Lith never having friends in the past.
His parents still believed that Lith had spent his childhood alone because the family needed money and food, forcing him to become a hunter first and a healer later. But that was only half the truth.
He had almost nothing in common with teenage mages, let alone with young children. Work had always been an excuse to avoid taking any unnecessary risk of blowing his cover.
After settling the matters with his family, Lith decided to take a walk in the woods. He needed some time alone, not only to sort out his chaotic feelings, but also to try to convert everything he had learned from the academy and its books into true magic.
Knowing that he could be under surveillance, he walked toward his private clearing in the Trawn woods using Life Vision, while Solus scanned their surroundings with all the senses at her disposal.
‘Aside from us and the animals, I can’t find anything else.’ She reported.
‘Same. I believe that it’s possible for the Queen’s men to have magical items that conceal their presence, but I doubt they can avoid all of our combined resources. I use true magic, while you, well, beats me what you use.
‘Bottom line, I think we are safe. Probably they have been sent to keep an eye on external threats, not on me.’
‘Yeah, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.’ Solus expressed her firs paranoid remark ever.
‘By the way, do you remember that before the mock exam I talked about a surprise?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, time to reveal my new gift. We need a special place, so I need you to follow my instructions.’
Lith cast his slipstream flight spell, moving in an irregular pattern toward the destination Solus had pointed him to. At the same time, both of them were scanning their surroundings.
Following them at such high speed while remaining covert was impossible. They soon reached the inner part of the woods, where months before they had assisted the three kings in their fight against the Wither.
It was still a wasteland, only grass and weeds had started to grow again.
‘We are in the clear. I didn’t notice anyone following us. Did you choose this zone because it provides no cover to our potential pursuers?’ Lith thought.
‘No, because it’s one of the few spots that can serve our purpose. Thanks to my sense of self, every time I regain a new ability, I always know how it works. This one is special and it needs a special place.’
‘What’s so great about this place? It’s depressing and more dead than Julius Caesar.’
Solus chuckled.
‘Did you ever wonder why the Wither moved in this direction every time it managed to escape?’
‘Normally I’d say it was just desperate, but I bet you have a better explanation.’
‘Bingo! I noticed it the first time we came here, but back then I couldn’t make head or tails about it. You see, with my mana sense I’m not only able to differentiate people, but also landscapes.
‘That’s because this world is literally full of mana, and some places more than others. During our travels, I noticed several spots were the world energy was much more abundant than usual, and this is one of them.
‘I believe that the Wither was looking for this place to leech the massive amount of world energy to stabilize its form.’
Solus detached from Lith’s finger in her usual spider form, reaching a clearing a few meters away before starting to burrow into the ground.
In front of his astonished eyes, a blue pulse lit the clearing. At every beat, something came out of the ground. It was like looking at a fast-forwarded video, where one could see a seed becoming a flower in less than ten seconds.
But in Solus’ case, the small pebble grew into a tower.
A puny, demolished tower, to be precise.
It barely reached 10 meters (33 feet) of diameter, with a single door flimsy enough to get carried away by a strong gust of wind. The tower only had the ground floor and no roof, debris covered it’s top, like it had collapsed on itself.
‘This is indeed a surprise.’ Lith was impressed nonetheless. ‘Does this thing come with any defense mechanisms? If so, wherever we go, we will always have a place to stay, avoiding humans and beasts alike.’
‘First of all, this is not a thing, that’s me!’ Solus was quite pissed off being treated as an object. ��And yes, I do have defense mechanisms. So, get your rude a*s inside, so I can activate them.’
Lith did as instructed, discovering that the structure inside was bigger than it looked from the outside. On his right there was a set of crumbled stairs going up, and another that seemed to go down unimpeded.
In front of him, there was a single door, leading to a bedroom almost identical to the one Lith had made build in his own house. Yet the bed was a king-size canopy one, and the room had a private bathroom, just like his room at the academy.
“Mass displacement?” Lith asked in amazement.
“Yes.” For the first time, he could hear Solus’s voice with his ears. “Only part of this form exists in our plane, the rest is actually in our pocket dimension. Do you like this piece of home away from home?” She was clearly eager for praise.
“Very, it’s an amazing replica. I can’t thank you enough for giving me a real toilet, it means the world to me.”
Solus giggled.
“You are welcome. But this is not the surprise, just part of it. Go downstairs, please.”
In the basement there were two more rooms, the first one was a perfect copy of the forgemastering training hall, down to the smallest detail.
“I was able to reproduce both the potion and the forgemastering labs, even their equipment.” She explained. “But I cannot create ingredients or consumables from nothing. Some things we can only buy them.”
Lith opened the drawer that was supposed to contain rings and amulets to enchant, but just as Solus had announced, it was empty.
“Not a problem.” He replied. “There is not much that I can do with my limited knowledge.
“Luckily, when I told Professor Wanemyre that I wanted to practice a bit on my own, she gave me a few rings and a bottle of the liquid required for drawing magic circles. We have enough for a few attempts to try and convert forgemastering into true magic.”
The only Forgemaster’s spell Lith had seen, was the one for enchanting dimensional items. He drew the circles and the runes with the utmost care, there was no one to help him in case something went wrong.
When he finished, he placed a pebble in its center. He wasn’t expecting to succeed, only to study the mana flow of the fake magic spell to later reproduce it with true magic.
So, instead of chanting, he used Invigoration to call upon the world energy and sent it to fill the magic circle. It was easy, and it didn’t affect his mana reserves since he was employing external energies.
Unlike Professor Wanemyre, he didn’t fill the circles to the brim. Being an experiment, the less energy the better, not to mention he wanted to avoid creating top tier rings after just a month.
According to the books, it was enough to provide mana to the circles until the air started crackling to obtain the lowest class dimensional objects.
Lith knew the thirteen runes and their spells like the back of his hand, he had performed them countless times during the lessons and on his own.
Remembering the characteristic feeling of each one, he weaved the runes’ incantations in rapid succession. In Lith’s mind, Wanemyre’s performance, although exceptional, was like a kid playing a piano one key at a time.
He was convinced that to maximize Forgemastering’s effects, the different spells had to complement and integrate each other, like in a magical symphony.
The runes rose in the air one after another, forming a perfect ring around the pebble in the blink of an eye. Lith then started to compress the mana inside the runes. Soon all the energy was encompassing the little stone, trying to seep inside.
Now it was the most critical moment, Lith had to force energy and matter to fuse together. Things were going smoothly, but in the back of his head, there was a constant alarm screaming at him that something was wrong.
Suddenly, the energy mass imploded, pulverizing the pebble. Despite being unable to escape, the mana gone wild still managed to burn the circle, leaving a crack on the floor.
“Ouch! That hurt!” Solus said.
“Sorry, my bad.” Lith said, embarrassed by his failure. “Any idea what has gone wrong?”
“Right off the bat, I can come up with at least eight errors you did.” She actually replied to his rhetorical question, leaving Lith in awe once again.
