Anima Academy [Complete]

[Requiem_Jeer]

No update next week.

[Peter Wood]

Peter looked at Teach go towards the place where the townsfolk were traveling to. "How fast is that, you think?" He asked Faron.

"I'm not sure." The elf admitted. "Twice as fast as when we were with him? More?"

"Three times." Illivere said with confidence. "He is using large amounts of mana to increase his speed."

Right. Teach had explained that while the magically boosted training week had given the group a huge boost to their physical abilities, the development of their mana heart was not accelerated any more than any other magically intensive training would be.

Yeah, Evoker's Dance generated mana based on how strong you were, so generating force mana was super fast now, but the mana heart was the key to so many things! Well, Teach would point out that it was really only two things, he called them mana capacity and mana throughput, but that second one was a big deal. It determined how powerful you could make an active spell. It determined how quickly you could build up power in a curse or spellweave. It determined the strength of mana voids you create, which determined whether your negative magic could disrupt something. It determined how quickly you could charge an enchantment or shape an object. Domain magic was special, which was why it was the key to using the biggest spells, but you need setup for that.

Teach didn't know of a way for a wizard to build up their mana heart faster. If he did, he'd be Heroic-ranked by now. Most methods turned you into a sorcerer, which was why people become sorcerers, because you get the powerful mana heart of an old wizard right away and only get stronger from there. Spirit mages could just contract themselves extra power, Shamans by getting more spirit pacts, druids by sucking up more to their bosses, and clerics by suckering in more worshipers to feed their god mana, taking a cut for themselves.

Teach talked a lot about getting stronger, is the point. Peter got the impression that Teach wanted the group to get stronger so they could keep up with him, which was awesome.

Still, for now they had to just keep the civilians safe. But first… Peter went over to the gnoll corpses. Taking out his knife and axe, he chopped the chest in two spots and then cut into the gnoll's throat, revealing the crimson orb that was the monster core. It was in the same spot as it was in most tribal monsters, behind and slightly below the collarbone. Touching it, Peter focused on the technique that Teach had been trying to teach them.

As Teach put it, monsters may have been made of impure mana, like most things, but the mana didn't behave normally. It was less like it was impure, and more that it was mixed. Catching sight of a monster spawning was not easy, but it was also not impossible. They flow outward from their cores, and the monster core condensation spell reverses this process, causing the corpse's mana to flow back along the same channels that it flowed forth to spawn it. It was negative magic, which meant that Peter wasn't very good at it. Unlike every other kind of magic, negative magic didn't shake the primary drawbacks of active magic, as far as Peter knows anyway. So he focused on the image in his mind of the gnoll's body flowing back into the core he was touching, while generating a mana void around the core to force it to actually happen.

After about thirty seconds of focusing, the corpse began to rot quickly, only him paying careful attention could see how shreds of unmelted gnoll flowed into the core in the middle while the rest turned into sludge. The sludge was something that happened when you imperfectly absorbed the corpse. Even Teach leaves some sludge behind when he uses it, as the cores of weak monsters aren't worth the care and attention it takes to do it perfectly.

Peter strained his mana senses on the orb, trying to assess how much stronger it was after he condensed it. Maybe… a fifth more potent? Pretty bad, but that was his first time trying it out. He'll get better. He looked at his team, who had also taken the opportunity to practice. "Hey! Let's compare cores, the winner gets to do the big one."

Faron was always up for a competition, and Illivere wasn't quite as enthusiastic but loved testing herself against others. She won most of the time, because she was awesome, but she also always took Peter seriously in those contests, trying to impress him. It was one of her more attractive traits, right next to the fact that she was absolutely gorgeous. Hanna just went along with anything that the other three group members agreed to, only speaking up when there was a disagreement.

With the four cores next to each other, it was a lot easier to figure out which condensed core was more potent than the others. Specifically, Illivere's was notably stronger, a fifth beyond his own. Faron did the worst, but not that much worse than Peter, while Hana was somewhere between Peter and Illivere's cores.

There were enough gnolls for each of them to get three or four more attempts, and the cores were stashed inside a clay jug that Hanna created out of the ground. Illivere scratched an enchantment to reinforce it with an etching tool, Hanna dried it out, and Illivere finished the improvised container by painting a waterproofing enchantment on top of it, empowering both enchantments after she was done. The jug was placed inside one of Faron's expanded bags. He usually carried the extra ones where the group kept items that didn't belong to any one of them, because he was huge and could carry the extra weight the best.

Cleanup finished, Peter led his team to the column of refugees, who had started moving again while they were handling the corpses. After a quick jog, they were once again in the front, walking along and keeping an eye out for any monsters ahead.

The old guy walked along slowly, so slowly. It made Peter want to run ahead and scout for dangers. But he didn't, as Teach told them to stay with the group and protect them. The old guy cleared his throat. "Tell me, children: "Peter's eye twitched at the address. "-what are your thoughts as to our plight? Professor Toomes, as powerful as he is, seemed quite angry with us."

"He's not." Hanna immediately said, defending Teach. "The Professor was just annoyed at his plans getting disrupted."

"I suspect that he dislikes politics." Illivere volunteered. "Even a weak army he could rout on his own… " Teach was also very explicit that he was terrible against armies and swarms, which he then turned into a lesson about how you never finished learning magic. It was why he spent most evenings with his nose in one of Grandteacher's books that he brought along. Peter suspected he was just a nerd, though. He was reading about the weather last night, after all. "He could be expelled from the Adventurer's guild. Unless Jurta is without the guild."

"They do have it." The old guy confirmed.

"It's troubling." Faron said. "But the idea of having to just let the soldiers do what they will… I'm not sure if that's enough to stop me."

Illivere hummed. "Ex-adventurers can't take on quests legally. Mr. Toomes would need to retire from Adventuring or move to a country without the guild. With you, the mage-knights are always an option."

"Ah, when you're a foreigner to a place, you have to be careful." Hanna said. "You represent your home when you're abroad, and if you commit crimes, that could start a war if it's serious." What?

"No way." Peter said. "Anima's stayed out of war for over a century. Nothing we do is going to start one, we'll be fine."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that, sonny." The old guy warned. "Word gets around when you get random mages on the run, you know. It doesn't take that much money to get the Adventurer's guild to track them down and bring them to trial, and Anima just disavows criminals, letting the locals punish them as they want. Maybe it's different in places like Jurta, but I wouldn't know anything about that. Our laws are fair." He finished with a huff. What kind of crazy laws do they have in Jurta?

Illivere continued. "Interfering with a country's military is different. An army should expect to fight whoever's around when they invade, but attacking them?" Illivere let that sink in, shaking her head. Another thing that Peter liked about Illivere was how she could convey twice as much as Peter could with half the words.

Still, he couldn't wait for Teach to come back. Yeah, defending the refugees was proper hero stuff, but after moving at the pace Teach sets, walking just dragged on and on…

----------------

[Illivere Oathsworn]

Illivere silently walked at the front of the column, focusing on the telepathic network she had set up with some of the hunters. If they spot a monster, she'll know immediately and direct everyone to act.

It was a bit curious, how Mr. Toomes took it upon himself to scout the mountains. If there really was an army there, any kobolds that were present would be easily rooted out and killed. There was no reason to do so. Even more, taking half of a day just to play messenger? For free? It was an odd decision for an Elite Adventurer to make. Most adventurers were very mercenary, who made their decisions on what to do based entirely on potential profit.

Then again, Mr. Toomes seemed to be rather wealthy. Sure, he occasionally acted frugally, sharing tips by example on how to get extra income off of quests, but he had a distinct habit of spending his money freely that you usually only saw in born nobility. Illivere didn't order it herself, but she did see the background check Father did on her teacher out of curiosity. His family wasn't particularly wealthy, being simple tomb keepers. Fourth son, he became an Adventurer at the age of fourteen, after going through the free year of magical education all citizens were entitled to at age 13. Five years later, he bought himself tuition at age nineteen and graduated with honors after three more years. That was eleven years ago, and most of that was in a team; while safer, that was known to be a less profitable route as an adventurer. While it was not… impossible for him to just be very good with money, the amount of money he fronted equipping everyone… He must have had quite the nest egg.

What was Mr. Toomes' goal? Hanna has some nebulous goal related to helping her homeland, Faron wants to become a famous knight, Peter wants to become rich, on top of that silly crush on her. Even Illivere had her end state planned out, gaining as high a position in the Financial ministry as possible while Father was there to speed things along. Illivere wasn't sure exactly how long she could adventure, but club activities could last until at least the end of her education, which will have to be enough.

Illivere turned her attention towards the refugees. Their morale had recovered some, after the complete slaughter of the gnoll tribe. About half of them were dwarves, which contributed to the slow pace that was set, but they seemed to be pleased enough discussing things with their neighbors.

"Oh, I worked in the fields to the south." Said one dwarven man. "It wasn't work to be proud of, but everyone pitches in come harvest season, you know." His conversation partners all nodded sagely. "Now, when the fields were busy growing, that's when I did my real work: carving." He brought out an ornate wooden flute. "My family's been making instruments for generations. I miss the old home, but my grandfather taught me enough that I've got a few pieces like this." He brought it to his lips and started playing a tune that Illivere recognized. It was something Mr. Toomes had whistled once, when he cooked a meal in the field with his camp equipment.

Illivere found herself humming along as one of the other dwarves started singing along. Apparently the tune was a ditty about how a full kitchen had an ingredient missing for every meal of a nine course meal, with each verse being a story about how they either procured it or a substitute ingredient. Five courses in, and the flute-playing dwarf threw her a second flute, just as ornate as the last but carved differently.

Illivere didn't know how to play the flute, but after stowing her spear into the loop of leather on her back, she created a mental link with the flute player and played just as he did, the active magic as easy as walking. After another course, she broke the link and used her new flute-playing skills to join along,

Illivere was fluent in dwarven, but admittedly she wasn't terribly familiar with how they sang. Each line was quick, structure was there, arcane rules as to when to rhyme and when to repeat were clearly there but it went too fast for Illivere to pick out exactly what they were.

At the end of the song, there were some cheers for an encore, but Illivere's musical skills were too new to use in any way but playing that exact song, or perhaps playing from sheet music. She used a cleansing spell to clean out the wooden flute from the spittle and returned it to the craftsman. "That was pleasant."

"It's always nice to see culture when you least expect it." The dwarf said, grinning. "I wouldn't think an adventurer would know how to play a flute, much less that song."

Illivere smiled softly. "I'm not a typical adventurer." She said evasively.

"I'll say." Said another dwarf, older and more rugged. "You don't usually see young ones like you carrying mithril."

"Our teacher is generous in many ways." Illivere deflected.

"Can't argue with that, Angus." Said an old woman right next to the old man. His wife? "That big shot adventurer is delivering news a hundred miles out of the goodness of his heart."

With some more grumbling, Illivere drifted away from the conversation once more, unslinging her spear and taking note of the condition of the enchantments.

Enchanting was, in many ways, basically drawing magic pictures. It only lasted so long, no matter what you tried. Paint flakes and washes away, etchings erode and chip, and metal gildings rust and wear away. Even the most enduring enchantments, made with gold filigree, could only last the centuries they theoretically could if you put the item in a vault somewhere and left it alone. As such, maintenance was the name of the game. She traced the mana circuit, and eventually confirmed that it was in perfect condition, just like it was that morning. It was worth checking anyway, as she did stab a few gnolls with it.

The mental link she had affixed with curse magic communicated a flash of panic. Where? Illivere focused on the connection, looking ahead and to the opposite side of the column. A great roar rang out from that direction, and the mental link snapped with a surge of pain. Illivere winced at the unpleasant stimulus.

"Trouble." She sent to her team. "Group up at the first quadrant."

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

No chapter next week. Instead, posting Psychoprotective in a new thread... which will probably be crossposted here too.
------------------
[Hanna ???]

The 'trouble' that Illivere detected was one of the hunters dying horribly to some kind of monster. This wasn't something she informed everyone with words, but instead… Well, it was kind of like using words.

If you got really good with mind mana, you could infuse a single word with multiple contexts as part of the mental link. It was somewhat similar to how your understanding of what someone said changed based on their tone of voice. The way Illivere projected the word 'trouble' made it immediately apparent that it was directly relevant to what everyone was doing, which was keeping an eye out for monsters. On top of that, it also included a note of regret, close to grief, that this monster was found by one of the searchers getting killed. But at the same time, that grief was more perfunctory and not heart-felt, so it wasn't Peter or Faron that got killed. It did not, however, include any panic, so there was not an immediate danger to anyone else, so it was someone who did not have anyone else nearby.

When all of those contexts were layered onto the same word, the intent was clear: one of the refugee hunters just died to a monster. As Illivere was very skilled in telepathy, these contexts did not need to be deciphered, but were instead immediately understood. Peter said of it once, when he was attempting to be poetic, called it 'a breath of meaning in a single word'. He then ruined the poetry by explaining that he meant she could fit in so many words in that one word that you'd need to take a breath after saying it all. If you ignored him doing that, it wasn't bad.

Of course, the reason Illivere was so skilled was because her father deliberately involved a spirit in her conception so as to give her that attunement. Hanna, on the other hand… was the opposite. Her attunement was a side-effect; an imperfection, but a manageable one.

Once they had rallied and started running in the direction of the monster, Hanna privately thanked Professor Toomes for his lessons on how to run properly with enhanced strength. She would likely be tripping all over the place without that.

The monster was not one that Hanna recognized. It was a tauric monster, with a humanoid torso atop a quadrupedal base. The base resembled a boar, vaguely, with the tusks jutting out from the front without bothering with a jaw. The torso was thickly muscled and stocky, making Hanna think of a dwarf. The head, on the other hand, was pig-like, beardless and with a snout and general expression that was almost artfully ugly. As if someone took pains to create the ugliest possible visage. It was also twenty feet tall.

"It's a Garnoar!" Called out Faron. Hanna felt a trickle of panic as she had no idea what she was supposed to know about them. "No magic, just meat!" He added. Oh. That made things easy.

…Well, it made things simple anyway. That was an awful lot of muscle the monster was using to charge at them, after all. Illivere sent a battle plan via telepathy, and with her role decided, Hanna started converting force mana as fast as she could, filling her spellweave to go off at precisely the correct time.

Faron had already shaped a force mace, and Peter strengthened himself and activated the enchantments on his axes. The beast started to wind up his meaty fists and, on cue, both boys went forward, going into the monster's reach and slamming their weapons on the front legs of the garnoar. At the same time, Illivere charged with her spear, planting it in the ground directly in front of the beast. With the setup complete, Hanna unleashed her Gravity's Hammer spell.

While the beast buckled a little bit from the impacts to his legs, his weight suddenly multiplying ruined any chance he had of recovering from that impact. His torso plummeted to the ground, its momentum completely absorbed by the dirt embankment it created from sinking into the ground and driving Illivere's spear through the "throat" of the boar-ish body and into the torso… where the enchantments on the spear tip promptly exploded in the guts of the monster.

The monster, not yet dead, roared again and swung its arms around to attempt to squash Illivere as it started to stand up. Illivere was able to brace herself for her weight multiplying, and as a result she was unharmed from the Gravity Hammer… but she still was immobilized for a moment.

Illivere was struck with a fist large enough to fit her inside, launched away from the force at a great speed. Hanna ran after her, hoping that she was still alive. As long as she was alive, she could be fixed.

"Good luck." She whispered, knowing that her other teammates couldn't hear her. Hopefully, Peter and Faron could manage to win.

Illivere flew over a hill, which gave Hanna some hope. Her trajectory seemed unnaturally fast given the power of the hit, so there was a good chance Illivere managed to use Bounce, one of the emergency spells Professor Toomes taught them to reduce the damage.

Over the hill, Illivere was laying down on a patch of grass, fortunately there weren't any trees nearby that spot so she sank into the soft dirt beneath the greenery. As a wizard with a life attunement, Hanna was much more capable of discerning someone's health at a glance than someone without that advantage. The pattern of life mana that underlaid Illivere's body was cracked and shifted, bones broken by the impact of the fist and delicate lines that connected the disparate parts burst from the collision with the ground.

Without magical intervention, survival was impossible. With the curses woven soul deep, she'd starve before she could recover her mobility, given the presumed state of her mana heart after using it to mitigate damage. With proper healing magic? Several minutes that they didn't have. As such, Hanna gave her a dose of life mana to start things before examining the area around them.

Professor Toomes was too far away to sense what she was doing… and the only one here was Illivere, who was very unconscious. So… it should be safe. Hanna took a deep breath and took out her special ritual knife, the one brought with her from home, focusing her mana before plunging it into her own navel.

"I have to work fast." Hanna said to herself, gasping as she wrenched the knife back out. The wound did not bleed, instead wisps of life mana escaped and Hanna guided the fragment of her soul she just stabbed loose into the cloud of mana, coalescing the cloud into the fragment.

"There." Hanna said. The fragment had turned into a wooden doll, long limbs like a willow tree coming out of a round knot of wood. "Your name is Willow Knot." The new wood spirit chirped in recognition of their name. "Keep Illivere hidden until I return." She ordered, pointing to her friend. The spirit transformed into a tree, lifting and concealing Illivere within the trunk and feeding her curses a steady drip of life mana from their own supply to keep her alive and healing.

That should hold for at least an hour. Now, to help Faron and Peter. Hanna turned and ran towards the battle. She could do this!

----------------

[Faron Wavecleaver]

After launching Illivere far away with a meaty impact of its fist, the monster roared and attempted to do the same to Faron and Peter. Peter jumped clear, but Faron's stance was too grounded for such a quick dodge, so instead he swung his force mace to intercept the attack, discharging the shape to provide enough power to parry the heavy fist. An explosion of force launched Faron back, clear of the monster's reach.

Faron was beginning to suspect that this monster was out of their weight class. Garnoars were normally rated as Veteran-minimums, but with teamwork, their magical gear, and the physical training Professor Toomes put everyone through, Faron was reasonably certain they could handle it.

Indeed, the gaping wound that it now had crippled the beast's mobility, so it couldn't charge like they normally could. But if the monster wasn't killed, it would eventually recover. Further, it still could manage a stumbling gait, and those massive fists were a serious threat even with the wicked tusks effectively disabled.

Against this kind of foe, large, brutish, with no natural armor but dense muscle and mana cultivation, the best weapons are metal or force. The best defenses against a heavy but not particularly fast attack are stone and water. Given the compromised mobility and that the attacks are assumed to be frequent with little wind up… metal and water.

Converting mana was a matter of finding a point of commonality between the two mana types you're converting between. The harvested force of striking and moving from the Evoker's Dance mana binding ritual was reasonably versatile for this. Water was constantly in motion, and even the greatest forces couldn't get it to do quite what you wanted. Through that understanding, Faron converted large amounts of mana and surged it forth on his body, wrapping it around himself in a stable protective vortex.

Metal, on the other hand, was like clay, but molded with fire instead of water. Even then, it was force that bent the stubborn mana into the desired shape, and with that understanding, the force mana crystallized into existence. Faron shaped the ephemeral pure mana into a greatsword, and actualized it into reality as fine steel, sharpened beyond any whetstone could manage without an enchantment of its own.

Properly armed and armored, Faron charged the monster, who had lurched towards Peter to attack. Peter was the only person who didn't already have some kind of previous combat training of the group, so he copied Professor Toomes more closely than anyone else did. Tiny bursts of active magic to allow for otherwise impossible dodges, using his axes to score small cuts on the fists as he avoided each hit. He couldn't do both that and cast curses on the monster, so Peter leapt backwards right as Faron's shaped greatsword cut deeply into the rear left leg of the monster. Pivoting on his heel, Faron dodged the kick that the garnoar lashed out with in retaliation, flexed the mana in his sword to re-sharpen it, and readied a stance to receive the monster's next lurch.

Peter, on the other hand, took the opportunity to run away, shouting "Illivere!" As if Hanna didn't already tend to that… that horny bastard!

The monster turned around and attempted to backhand Faron across the field like he did Illivere. Faron ducked low, curling his body to avoid it, and then came back up like a spring, lashing out at the monster's armpit to cripple the limb. A massive meaty hand attempted to enclose around Faron, the other hand trying to hold him in place for the next attack. The churning waters that Faron had shaped around himself couldn't quite fend off the sheer strength of the monster, but Faron reversed the flow of the inner half of his armor, violently expelling the outer half. This maneuver gave Faron enough space to slip down back to the ground, and with a mote of will Faron's weapon returned to his hand in time for a strike at the tendons of the wrist before the monster could retract the limb.

Leaping back to gain some space, Faron re-assessed the situation. He was now alone against the monster, who disabled if not killed Illivere in a single punch. Both of his teammates had gone to support her. Initial assessment: He's in the soup.

But it was not all hopeless. The monster had most of his limbs damaged, and could only move short distances with a lurching gait. It was unarmed, and completely focused on Faron's destruction. A one on one duel… Other advantages include the fact that Faron had already primed his spells to best counter his enemy's strengths and exploit their weaknesses. He had no significant injury, and he only had to reshape one and a half spells.

Faron took another fighting stance as the monster turned its entire body to face him, glaring and snorting its rage. Faron focused his mana, transforming it into the most ephemeral of mana aspects. Life was growth, the eternal crucible that turns base materials into matter and motion. With that understanding, force becomes life. Life was not blind, it saw the world and adapted, gaining understanding through observation. Through that understanding, life becomes mind.

With that mana, Faron focused his mind on his opponent. His awareness of every motion of the monster as it started to stumble forward was enhanced, and the rest of the world began to fall away.

Faron couldn't properly tell you how long he spent locked in battle with the garnoar. Each offensive maneuver was met with a cut, each attempt to cede ground was countered with an offensive maneuver of his own. Every motion provoked a precise response, as water splashed away any grazing blow.

What he did know was that after twenty-six exchanges, the monster had one of Hanna's enchanted arrows fly into one of the many cuts in its hide that Faron had made and penetrated deeply enough that the resulting explosion seemed to have finally defeated the great beast.

After the focusing curse wore off, it was time to assess. "Where's Illivere?" Faron asked Hanna, glancing at Peter behind her.

"She's safe." Hanna responded. "There was a spirit I persuaded to watch over her."

Really? Convenient. "Well, where's the core in something like this? Near the head? The heart? Which heart?"

Peter goes to the slumped body, still wary that it may be faking its death, but he squinted at it, presumably focusing his mana senses, which were the second keenest in the group. Illivere had the keenest, of course. "I think… here." He took out his axes and hacked at the boar half's ribcage, coating his arm with mana and plunging it in after opening a section. He focused more, and slowly, the body of the garnoar rotted, eventually becoming a black sludge that sublimated into nothingness.

Hanna, having had left for Illivere when Peter was busy, returned at that point with Illivere and a small life spirit. "Thank you for your assistance." Faron said to the spirit, clasping his hands together in the mudra of praise. It was an old custom, but spirits tended to like that sort of thing.

"Aw shucks." The spirit said bashfully. "It was nothing." It seemed… young.

Illivere looked at the rotting monster corpse and… well, Illivere didn't emote much, but the way she set her eyebrows as she closed her eyes was equivalent to someone rubbing the bridge of their nose in frustration. "We could have saved the tusks. Peter."

Having finished condensing the core, he turned to Illivere happily, which was quickly killed when he registered what she said. "...Oh. Sorry."

"It's alright." Illivere said, waving it off. "They aren't that valuable anyway." Seeing Peter's mood bounce right back, she continued. "Good work. It could have gone more smoothly, but this is the durability of a veteran-ranked monster. We will need to minimize our exposure to counter attacks when facing beasts that we have not properly measured. "

Faron nodded in agreement. "Yeah, but this has got to be the strongest monster we've ever faced."

Peter's good mood spiked at the reminder. "Yeah! On top of that, there's no way Teach softened it up. This was all on us, as a team." Pretty words for someone who left Faron to fend for himself.

Ah, he's just being a little bitter. Faron wanted to go and check on Illivere too, and the mental focus spell wouldn't have worked nearly as well if Peter kept battling. It worked out.

He wonders how Professor Toomes will react when they tell him?

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

As it turned out, Fort Waller already knew about the invasion. Which was why Casimir got an immediate audience with General Ironspine when he ran at full speed to the citadel, braking over a single half mile leap by converting his speed into force mana which was shoved within his mana heart. It wasn't a fast, effective, or easy method of slowing down, but it did allow him the peace of mind that you get when you have the energy to run away if things go south.

"You're asking a lot of me, with such a fantastical report." The general said after Casimir's explanation.

"Believe me or not." Casimir said. It wasn't his country. "The facts remain: There's a big tunnel through that mountain range, and there are kobolds there." Casimir tapped the map in front of them. "You have a few thousand refugees traveling here to hide from the Jurta Federation's army. That army has seized a sizable chunk of your food supply, and they have fortified that tunnel."

"Armies have been trying to use monsters as allies for centuries." The well-dressed dwarf explained. "You expect me to believe that Jurta's pulled it off?"

Casimir waved his hand noncommittally. "Eh, it might be more that there's an intelligent monster manipulating Jurta."

"Like that's any better." General Ironspine groused.

"Well I've already gone above and beyond my actual job." Casimir said, turning to leave. "Good luck with the invasion."

"You're not going to try and upsell me?" The general asked, not nearly as amused as he tried to make himself sound. "Will wonders never cease."

"I kill monsters, not people." Casimir replied, lingering at the door. Most of the time, anyway. It's not an ironclad rule. "Besides that, I'm busy. If you're interested in hiring mercenary adventurers, I'll wait for you to draft a request and drop it off at an Adventurer's guild."

The general's eyes narrowed at the deflection. "What did you say your quest was, again?"

"I didn't." Casimir retorted. At the general's hardening gaze, he elaborated. "If you must know, I'm tracking down revenants. It's nothing y'all have time to deal with."

"Revenants…" Muttered General Ironsides as he went through the papers on his desk. Plucking a particular document, he turned it over to face Casimir. "These?" Indeed, sketches of Magnus' stone face and Luci's wrapped visage were depicted in a standard Adventurer's guild bounty notice.

Casimir's eyes widened in surprise. Those were already out? "You're well-informed." Casimir complimented. "Yeah, those revenants."

The general looked once more at the document. "This is important: Are they in this region? What are you following?"

Casimir shrugged. "They died at the Wounded Wastes, I was going to scope it out."

"That's a dangerous place." The general noted. He stood up and went to a filing cabinet, disarming a security measure before opening it and plucking a folder out of it. "According to my sources, the mana-draining properties of the wastes have been diminishing over the last year." Casimir nodded. They had destroyed the massive ritual the Soul-Devouring Dragon had going to cause that, after all. "However, " Crap. "-it has since returned to full strength, starting about two months ago." Magnus could easily restore the waste's properties if he was so inclined. Looks like he was there.

Casimir held his hand out, requesting the document. The general considered it, and must have decided there wasn't anything sensitive in the folder as he handed it over after a beat. The folder had a few technical details about how the effect was measured and exact figures, and it contained a more detailed map than Casimir had, but otherwise it pretty much just said what the general said it did. Spending a moment to magically memorize the map, he passed the folder back. "Thanks for the warning." Hopefully David still has the insulated suit…

"It doesn't sit right with me to not reward you for the information you've provided, little as it was." The general replied. "Is there anything else you've left out that could be relevant?"

Ah, that was his angle. It wasn't exactly a secret, so… "Only that the last time they were seen, they were directing kobolds in cooperation with some human patsies assisting with whatever they were doing." Understanding dawned in the general's expression. "Odds are low that they're helping Jurta directly, but 'low' is not 'zero'." Actually… "Their confederates had encrypted orders. Here's one of the coded messages, if you find something similar, send me a copy through the guild and I'll decrypt it for you. I only have one code wheel." He may not be as good at ciphers as Master Southwind, but he knew how this one worked now.

After accepting the sample, the general stroked his full beard as he considered this new information. "Strange times are upon us, Adventurer Toomes."

"You said it." Casimir replied before leaving.

----------------

The column of refugees had made… less progress than Casimir expected, but it wasn't any of his business how fast they were moving.

His students all rushed towards the front of the column as he approached, and Casimir could hear the tones of mind magic Illivere was using to keep a sensory network active. Good initiative, enlisting the ones that were already scouting for the column.

"Any trouble?" He asked.

Faron stepped forward to report. "A few monsters, nothing we couldn't handle." He gestured to the spirit nestled in Hanna's collar that smelled of life, nearly indistinguishable from Hanna's underlying mana affinity. It was tiny, as spirits go, despite the potent mana strength Casimir could smell from it. It was probably compressing its size, which was odd behavior, but not unheard of. "This is WIllow Knot, a spirit that Hanna found and befriended."

Casimir nodded along to the explanation. "Spoils?" He asked.

"We're still traveling light, so we only took cores." Faron explained.

"Makes sense. There were a few monsters along the trail I took care of, so it should be safe-ish for us to move on." Casimir said. Moving to Mr. Alderman, Casimir handed off the reply to their missive. "Short version: They're ready to shelter you, and they're sending two hundred soldiers back down the road to escort you." Casimir shrugged. "That's the best I can afford to do."'

"Nevertheless, thank you." replied Mr. Alderman. "Your students were a huge help. You don't see monsters as fearsome as garnoars often around these parts, so with that dispatched, I believe we can handle ourselves from here on out." Wait, they killed a garnoar?

Casimir looked towards his students, focusing his senses on them. It was a bit difficult to discern exhaustion after using life mana to remove it and injuries… but he could see that Illivere had a rather significant life mana buildup, now that he was looking closely. "Hm. I'll be on my way then."

Fortunately, his students had already started binding more mana, anticipating his next instructions. They're well-trained. He took a position alongside them and started binding more of his own. Thrust. Throw. Throttle. Sway. Swing. Twist.

The process takes about thirty minutes of mindless repetition, wastefully moving with strength that could crush stone, and speed that would normally create cracks of air as his limb passes. But instead, that force is compressed within his mana heart, and the motions impact the environment as if he was dancing to the slowest of songs.

After the comforting strain of a mana heart fit to bursting emerged in his chest, he turned to his students. "Are you ready to leave?" At their confirmation, he turned away from the refugee column, having passed them by completely recently enough to still be visible. "We've got not much further to go until we reach Krallent, we should get there by lunch tomorrow. Follow me!"

With that, he burst into motion, going at a rather sedate pace in comparison to his travels to the citadel, but his students ran after him in a dead sprint, struggling to keep up with the pace he set. They should, he was going faster than before… but so were they.

One of the many unsubstantiated theories, or rather, one of the claims of certain cults, was that killing monsters automatically granted a portion of their strength to their killers. This was… difficult to verify. The thing that distinguishes mana cultivation from augmentation curses was that the mana in question integrates so thoroughly within the body that it cannot be distinguished from the body's natural mana. Meaning, it has the same ratios of mana that it would normally have, the absolute quantity of mana has just increased. Sorcerers are an exception, as an experienced one can scarcely be distinguished from a spirit, their mana is so heavily purified into their chosen aspect. This provides similar increases in durability, strength, flexibility, reflexes, etcetera that normal mana cultivation provides, but it's much more detectable.

There were anecdotal accounts aplenty for this phenomenon… but there were other methods that were proven to create mana cultivation, and all of those anecdotes included those methods, too. Channeling mana, allowing one's mana heart to dissipate, subsisting on a high mana diet, sleeping in high-mana areas, recovering from wounds with healing magic… All of these things are proven to increase mana cultivation. It was another reason why his students were as strong as they were, growing up in Anima gave them a head start. Training there was several times as effective as similar effort done here, as well.

But even with all of that, you always heard stories about experiencing new strength after defeating a monster much stronger than they were. Most of those stories were easily attributable to themselves merely gaining confidence from overcoming such a great trial, or not bothering to measure their progress for months until after the event, or the healing treatments also restoring old wounds to fighting shape. Others… were the kinds of tales that kept the claim going. His students gaining a notable improvement to their speed right after defeating a monster like a garnoar… another anecdote for the pile?

It might just be his imagination. It wasn't that much faster, and they could just have improved their efficiency with the force magic they're using to increase their speed. But it does make him wonder what would happen if he brought them to battle Magnus or Luci… or their master. In all likelihood, they'd just die.

Which was the dangerous part of the tales. Facing creatures beyond you is something that should be avoided as much as possible, and risking one's life for some unproven idea that it would provide strength is not behavior that should be encouraged.

Still, the idea of increasing the strength of his students to the point that they could join him into being a proper team… It held an appeal he could not deny. In fact… if he spent some time slumming quests as a negative mage with them, learning alongside… he could qualify for Archmage.

But such thoughts were for after this matter was resolved. After all, he still wasn't sure he was going to survive this.

----------------

Krallent was a large but mana-poor mining town, the smokestacks of smelters creating a better marking of it on the map than any grand structure or useful sign would. Rich, with a large demand for enchanted goods. Casimir spent a month escorting a merchant who had brought over one thousand air purifier masks last year and they sold out within hours. In fact… several people were still wearing them, even if most of them had probably gotten broken by now. Was there an enchanter here now that maintained them? Or did the merchant just make another trip?

One of the quirks of being in such a mana poor area was that the local monsters were all pretty weak. But as a place that's fairly distant from their neighbors, there were a lot of them. It was a vital resource of the Kerrite Queendom, so it had a substantial military garrison, but it also had a very large and active Adventurer's guild. Such details were something he noticed last time he was here, so it was the perfect place to deposit his students while he went gallivanting off to the Wounded Wastes.

The Adventurer's guild in this city was a large stone structure that was well-decorated with metal patina-covered flourishes, the green color of the rust creating a distinctive style that the town used as a common motif. As they approached, Casimir's keen hearing picked out a note of excitement that a big shot adventurer had come to town.

"Did you hear? He fought half the adventurers here and beat them all at once!" Whispered an impressed teenager to his friends.

"We couldn't fit any more men on that table, but he lifted the whole thing with one hand!" Recounted a flabbergasted warrior to the other folk who were loitering outside.

"Don't you go thinking you can tie a man like that down, Eulice." Warned a middle-aged woman to a younger one. "That's the kind of man who has a girl in every town, and you don't want to be in that spot. Trust me, I know."

Ah, David had beat him there. Well, he knew that was a risk when he stopped to help those refugees.

Unlike the standard for large guilds, the entrance of a foreign adventurer immediately drew attention. It was mid-afternoon, so the crowd wasn't big, but odds were good that David mentioned that he was meeting someone at some point, so the crowd was primed. One of the main reasons elites and heroes got epithets was so that they could have instant reputation even when they've never been somewhere, a way for far-flung locales to hear about the strong and trust that they can handle whatever weird quest drew the adventurer to the location.

Casimir was not the biggest fan of the system, so he almost never introduced himself with it. Still, he had dressed to impress, wearing full combat gear, and stubdurium was not a type of metal they could mine around here. In a mining town, exotic metals drew attention.

Casimir walked confidently to the front desk, with the small line stepping aside to allow him passage. He handed over paperwork to the older human at the front desk, his bald head gleaming with sweat due to the warm weather. "I've got a few things to handle here. First, is there any news on that bounty?" He asked, gesturing to the bounty notice he had included in the stack.

"Yes, we've been expecting you, Mr. Toomes." The old man said, reaching under the counter and fetching a leather folder. "This came in yesterday from the central office. The reward has been expanded a bit, and an additional team has indicated that they will be pursuing this."

Casimir looked through the contents of the folder, all transcriptions from long-range communication spells. Oh wow, that's twice as much as it was when he left… "The Scourgebreakers?" Casimir said. "Yeah, that's a good team."

"They did decide to pursue it independently, but they're thousands of miles away, so they'll be pursuing what leads they can over there." The old man said.

"On to the next matter." Casimir said. "David's here, right? David Smith?"

"He arrived last evening, yes." The old man confirmed. "I don't know where he is right now, but I'm sure he'll be back at some point."

"Right." Casimir replied, nodding. "I'll stick around here until he gets back then. On to the last matter." He gestured to his students. "This team is made of freshly-promoted standard ranks, and I'll be leaving them here with your hospitality to help out with the local quests for a while. Two weeks at least." He pointed to the part of the paperwork where their current rank was listed. "Just give them whatever, their skills are all here on the assessment."

He looked over the paperwork. "That shouldn't be an issue, we have quite the backlog to go through. We'll keep them plenty busy."

"Good." Casimir said with a grin. "They are my students, so treat them well." Unspoken but understood in that kind of thing is that if the kids end up getting in serious trouble, Casimir's willing to let the guild send him the bill if they can't cover it. "Okay students, the first thing I want you to do is to come up with a new name. Toome's team worked well enough in Anima, but in the wider world, you're going to want to start getting reputation. I can get away with being mostly anonymous because even if people don't know me on sight, they've all heard of my exploits, but if you want the big money, you need to get recognition from rich clients."

His students immediately went into a huddle. Turning back to the old man, he waved and walked away from the counter.

"If he's not in the building… I have some time to pick up some street food." Casimir concluded. He left the building.

"You!" Shouted an angry but familiar voice.

Casimir turned towards the voice, only to see a stubdurium-capped staff flying straight towards his face.

Ah. He's here.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

To most people, even most adventurers, David Smith was an example of an invincible warrior, with the strength of a giant, the durability of a steel golem, and the speed of an aviost, able to move faster than the eye can follow while powdering stone with each blow, while ignoring anything anyone can do to stop him.

However, that was all because the man was a force attuned sorcerer, and an experienced one, so despite being pretty terrible at magic, he had the raw power to fuel barriers with the strength of castle walls, strike with the impact strength of a meteor, and fly with the speed of an arrow.

This did not, to be clear, improve his ability to actually hit people with that stick of his. That isn't to say that he was unskilled at staff fighting, but it was his weakest area. Well, besides his general incompetence at anything that wasn't combat. But maybe he's improved.

Casimir twisted out of the way of the jab, focusing his mana senses to get a better image of what David was doing. "Hello, David." Casimir said, pretending to be bored as he ducked under his follow-up swing, flipping away when David transitioned to a sweep.

"I told you I was going to kick your ass the next time I saw you, Toomes!" David said with a sneer as he continued to attack. Casimir drew his stiletto, focusing force mana into the verenium blade to make it into a weapon capable of parrying his monster of a staff.

"I remember that." Casimir replied. "But I also recall correcting that you were going to try to kick my ass."

David roared at the insult, Casimir remaining silent as he leapt and jumped around the town, avoiding David's attacks with the slimmest of margins. Normally, this kind of thing would swiftly end up with both of them in jail, but around here the buildings were significantly more durable than most places, and life was boring enough that Casimir's biggest worry was that the spectators would get too close and end up getting their heads knocked off.

"Isn't that the big-shot adventurer everyone's talking about?"

"He's not landing a single hit!"

"Who is that nimble fucker that he's trying to kill?"

"What metal is that he's using as armor?"

"Is this guy an even bigger bigshot?"

After leading him on a merry chase all the way back to the Adventurer's guild, Casimir figured David had plenty of chances. Meeting the man's eyes with his own, Casimir used an old trick that he didn't use much, as it didn't work one whit against monsters. His eyes flared with mana, and to David's eyes, the world exploded in colorful lights. It didn't stop him from swinging his staff, but the opening bought by that trick gave Casimir just enough time to strike exactly once.

"Urk." David looked down at Casimir's knife embedded in his heart. "You suck." He said before Casimir withdrew the blade. Blood was kept inside his body with a glittering force barrier, and he stood there while Casimir healed the otherwise mortal injury. "Okay, let's get inside."

"After you." Casimir said. He wasn't falling for that one again.

With an insufferable smirk, David sauntered into the adventurer's guild like he didn't just lose the fight.

…Prick.

----------------

David was greeted like a guy who bought the whole place drinks last night, which was Casimir's guess on how he got so popular so quickly. Seeing his students still at a table, Casimir tapped David on the shoulder and gestured over to them. "Come on, one last thing before we get down to business."

David sneered at the prospect, but went along without any other complaint.

Now, Casimir looked like a pretty ordinary guy, if you ignored his adventurer gear. Even with it, he didn't look too special if you were too much of a layman to know quality armor when you saw it: a little tall, brown hair. Fit, but with no muscle group standing out over the rest. David, on the other hand, was built like you imagined a hero was: tall with large shoulders, with just enough facial hair to seem rugged rather than something he was deliberately growing.

His students were going over a quest notice that they had selected, but Casimir deliberately did not look into it. This was their best chance to prove they could do things without him holding their hand. "Teach?" Asked Peter.

"This is David Smith." Casimir said, gesturing at his old teammate. "He's Luci's little brother, and we're going to check some stuff out, see if we can track her down. You'll be on your own, but…" He took out a crystal from one of his pouches. It was scored in the center, easily broken into two. He did so and tossed one to them. "Channel mind mana into that and it'll open a connection to me. Just keep in mind I'll be days away before you do, and it's fragile."

Communication spells were… troublesome. Each method had glaring flaws, and while most of them could be addressed by just making specific places to send and receive messages, if you wanted something portable, that was an entirely different kettle of fish. Range issues, throughput limitations, interception vulnerabilities…

This twofold telepathy crystal's limitation was primarily cost and durability. It was only good for three minutes or so of messages, either one medium-sized report or a dozen exchanges of sentences. After that, the connection between the two halves frays from the strain. On top of that, it'll decay over time even if unused, only lasting something like ten days after separation.

But if you wanted something portable with a range measured in hundreds of miles, it was the best you could get.

After some perfunctory greetings between David and the kids, David went to fetch his stuff that he stashed in one of the guild's rooms. After they left and started hopping back and forth along the buildings over the street to escape the crowds, David finally spoke up: "So where, exactly, are we going?"

"First, we need to stop so I can bind mana. You've gotten better." Casimir said. "I'm pretty spent from that battle. After that, we're headed to where Luci died. The giant enchantment's started back up again, so there are good odds there's something going on there."

David grunted as he absorbed the information. "But is it related to Luci?" He said rhetorically.

"We'll just have to find out." Casimir replied.

----------------

The Wounded Wastes was over a day away even at elite speeds, so they had plenty of time to catch up.

"Those tentacles creep me out." David said, shuddering. "They kept wrapping around my waist and thighs when I got close."

Casimir hummed as he cooked lunch for the two of them using Magnus' cookware. "I didn't have that problem, but then again I wasn't there long." After a beat, he added: "Also, they're not tentacles. They're arms. There's a difference."

"You can just go screw yourself." David replied. "No one cares."

"Hana cares." Casimir corrected.

"She can screw herself with her tentacles then." David said with finality.

Casimir grunted as he served the mealbread. "You know, there's a reason I never hesitate to jab my knife into your vital organs whenever we spar." It's because he's a prick. "Lunch is on." He finished with a glare, daring David to criticize the food.

After the blissfully silent meal, David's bravado seemed to vanish, bleeding into an exhausted melancholy. With a deep sigh, he said: "Luci would have knocked us both on the head by now. Twice at least."

"We'd deserve it." Casimir agreed. After another moment of silence, he put his hand on David's shoulder. "We'll put her to rest. I have a plan."

"Oh? We're the weakest two of our team." David groused. "How are we supposed to deal with two people who are both stronger than us? We don't have backup that's up for the job. The environment's going to favor them, too." He was correct, assuming they were in the wastes.

Casimir snorted. "It's not about strength. I couldn't match the raw magical power you four could throw around, that's true." He patted the crate of potions. "But I'm a wizard. If my current strategies aren't enough, I read up on new ones." Sixty top-quality domain bombs was a lot of mana, after all.

"Sure." David said, skeptical of the crate of potions. "Let's keep going."

"Yeah, yeah." Casimir said as he finished packing up the mess kit. Glancing in the distance, he paused. That cloud formation... "Hm. Get your coat, it's going to rain."

David looked in the same clouds. "I guess that looks kind of rainy. You sure?"

Casimir nodded. "You still have the enchantment against lightning strikes on it?" At David's negative response, Casimir cast a curse on him to repel lightning.

"Shouldn't you use a stronger curse for lightning strikes?" David asked. Even he could sense mana decently if it was entering his system. "That shit's powerful."

"Nah." Casimir said. "I've been reading up, remember. Natural lightning will always strike the easiest target. It doesn't take much protection to make literally anything else around you an easier target." That book on weather was useful for more than one reason. Actually… "I hope you brought a good tent." He added. "We'll be sleeping in that storm."

"We can't avoid it… why?" David asked.

"Reasons." Casimir replied. At David's raised brow, he elaborated. "Wizard reasons."

David gave up on that line of questioning. "Let's just go."

----------------

The Wounded Wastes was… a wasteland. It was kind of difficult to describe without going into petty details. The land was cracked and pitted, crumbling to dust at the faintest touch. It made it quite difficult to walk, with your feet sinking a foot inside. The wind was still, the air thin and choking.

There was a massive mana void in the center of the place, sucking in mana from a great distance. If this was a natural formation, this would be nigh impossible to survive, every living thing adding to the dust of the land as they suffocate from the toxic air.

Fortunately, it was not. The massive enchantment that sustained that void was created, which meant that each mana type that it drew in had to be added to the array separately. The Soul-Devouring Dragon was a master at his specialty, so he covered pretty much all of the usually used sources, and most exotic aspects could be partially drawn in by similar aspects that were more common, as they represented mixtures of other kinds.

However, there was one flaw. Casimir theorized it was a challenge that was eventually left to be a deliberate backdoor. Cold aspected mana was kind of strange, one of the closest things that existed to being 'natural' negative magic. It was incredibly difficult to generate, as you could only create it through fire mana, and you basically… twisted it into a mirror image of itself. It was difficult to explain, but when you drew out spell matrices that used cold magic and compared them to fire magic versions of those spells, the mirroring was much clearer. As a side-effect to this, it was thaumaturgically impossible to create a negative magic enchantment that drained both kinds of mana, and no one with any sense makes a protection that can be defeated by fire.

So, one of Casimir's proudest accomplishments was the Negative Shield curse, a carefully calibrated cold curse that significantly interfered with negative magic attacks in your immediate area. It didn't do much to protect your spells from being broken up, but against the passive draining field of the Wounded Wastes? Easy. It did have the problem of draining your mana fairly steadily, and the chill was kind of uncomfortable. But it sure beats being sucked dry from a dragon's masterpiece.

"Hate this place." David said grumpily.

"Everyone hates this place." Casimir said dismissively. "You're getting it easy."

The pair of them were flying above the dusty wastes, as the ground was too fragile for any kind of rapid movement. The only thing aboveground that resembled a landmark was the central plateau, a hidden fortress inside the most inhospitable terrain in the known world. The stone was black, crafted from coal that was inured to the mana void through necromantic techniques. Casimir always thought it a little odd that the flammable rock was as receptive to necromantic enchantments as much as plants or old bones were, but it was, so it was what the Soul-Devouring Dragon's lair was crafted from.

David settled down near a dust pit adjacent to the plateau. "This was the entrance, right?" He asked.

"It was the one we used the first time, yes." Casimir agreed. "But I'm not going through that again."

"It was awful." David said. "You wouldn't think that dust could be sharp, but this shit proved that wrong."

"The fucker mixed glass into his entrance pit." Casimir explained. "He was a dragon, he didn't care." He shrugged. "We cleared it out on the second go around, but they probably refilled it."

"So where are we going inside then, if you're so smart?" David said sarcastically.

Casimir pointed upwards. "There's a freight entrance midway up the plateau. You'll need to break it open, but it's a heck of a lot better than digging through that shit." They were only able to thoroughly explore the place after killing the dragon, after all. David missed that bit.

"Now you're speaking my language!" David said, dashing up the wall.

Casimir followed him, and focused his magical senses. "It was this high! Go around!" He shouted. He brought out an incense stick, packed densely with mana, and set it ablaze as they ran around the circumference of the plateau.

"Where is it?" David shouted.

"Shut up! I'm trying to concentrate!" He shouted back. He paid close attention to the trail of fire mana he was leaving, the smoke freezing into dust while being drawn into the coal walls. He listened carefully to the flickering light and crackling sounds of the mana as it was absorbed by the ritual. After moving around three-fifths of the way around, his mana senses picked up the telltale sound of the fire mana being moved around something. "There!" Casimir said, turning around instantly with some force magic and going to the right spot. "David! It's right here!"

"Took you long enough!" He shouted back. Unslinging his staff, he jabbed it at the spot Casimir was pointing at, creating a focused and directed explosion of force on the designated spot. The hidden door exploded inward, revealing exactly what Casimir expected: a bunch of random crates that were going to slowly rot and turn into dust now that they broke containment.

David's eyes lit up. "Loot! I knew this place had to have loot."

Casimir chuckled. "Never change."

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

The crates didn't hold much. Mostly weapons and armor, and not particularly expensive varieties, either. Very good steel, but nothing more exotic than that. "The crates will keep for a few hours, David. We need to scout the rest of the place. It's not that much money."

"Hrmph." David grunted as he stacked all the crates to take up as little space as possible rather than being accessible. "I know a guy we could get a good price for bulk arms and armor from. This is a good payday."

"Fine, I'll preserve it." Casimir said. Walking up to the stacked up crates, he took out his heavy etching tool and drew a protective circle around them. After attaching the extended handle, he repeated the circle on the ceiling. It was cruder for the rushed construction, but it didn't need to last that long. He pumped the circle full of cold-aspected mana and turned back around. "Let's go." He growled as he disassembled the tool.

"One more." David said, picking up the last crate and tossing it on the pile. "Okay, let's go."

One drawback of the protective cold curse, shielding them from the massive negative magic enchantment, was that stealth was basically impossible to anything with even trace amounts of mana sense. Even the really limited ones can usually pick out fire and cold mana. The constant inflow of fire mana from the sun made it one of the most ubiquitous in nature.

So Casimir wasn't entirely surprised to, when they found a room that looked halfwar defensible, that the inhabitants had set an ambush. The room was, to his recollection, one of the bottlenecks of the floor plan, a way between the outer ring of chambers and the interior cavern. The design wasn't anything that would impress a military engineer, but just because it was only moderately defensible didn't make it not one of the best places in the plateau to stage a battle in.

The monsters were pretty much exclusively undead, and advanced varieties to boot. Barbed Skeletons, Crypt Lords, and Bone Knights made up the vast majority of the force. The whole point of the massive negative energy ritual was to create powerful undead en masse, so this was an expected outcome. They had to wait until the annual undead army had marched off to wreak havoc before investigating the first time for a reason.

…Huh, in hindsight, that could be the why of how the revenants were formed… They destroyed the enchantment, so probably not, but if they had some kind of fallback enchantment they had missed in their search… It doesn't address the soul drain issue, though.

Nevertheless, this was exactly the kind of fight that David was most suited to. Barbed skeletons were named such because the mana absorbed from the passive mana voids that all undead possessed by just existing had turned their bones coal black, and with the strength of their bodies at its peak, it started to grow small spikes to reinforce its structure.

With each strike, David left at least one skeleton as dust in the wind. The armor and weapons the skeletons wielded at the direction of the crypt lords did not materially affect the outcome, merely increased how much mana David needed to use to accomplish this task. As much as Casimir insulted the wastefulness of David's simple applications of mana, he did have the experience of a seasoned warrior allowing him to correctly judge exactly how much mana he needed to inflict the desired amount of damage through those simple methods. Bone knights had a bit more fighting skill than barbed skeletons did, and were stronger, but it was not enough in the face of David's raw power.

That said, Casimir did have his own job to do: kill the crypt lords. Crypt Lords were the most dangerous among non-revenant undead in that they had the ability to cast magic. Specifically, negative magic. Counter-magic wise, they didn't have the power to bother David nor the expertise to do anything to Casimir's well-woven magic, but they didn't need to disrupt their spells when they could just cast Deathbolt, Soul Drain, or in the case of a force sorcerer like David, Stilling, to support their armies.

The ambush had five crypt lords. Not enough to really constitute a proper undead army, but enough to be difficult to deal with efficiently. As such, Casimir drank one of the life potions, twisting the mana within and casting it out between the crowd of undead and the crypt lords. Doing such things was difficult given that he had to dedicate at least three-fourths of his attention to deflecting weapons away from the parts of his body that weren't armored, but David needed a few moments to establish a foothold in the battlefield.

Flowers bloomed with vitality out of apparently nothing, the tiny seed he had thrown along with the mana exploding into lush vegetation that was objectively more alive than anything within a hundred miles.

The undead collectively turned away from them, attention diverted by the massive chunk of life mana. Even the crypt lords redirected their spells to casting to the mass, withering a few flowers at a time with deathbolts as they whittled down the distraction Casimir had created.

"Just like last time!" David shouted, laughing at the stupid undead as he doubled the pace of his rampage of skeletal destruction.

"Monsters never learn!" Casimir shouted back as he leapt up to the ceiling and walked along a trail of force barriers towards his targets. Monsters generally left things like regular plants and animals alone, reserving their relentless destruction only for the works of men. The undead were an exception to this rule, seeking any and all sources of life mana only to devour it in the name of growing ever stronger and hungrier.

Crypt lords weren't completely stupid, though. The other skeletons were, but not them. When one of them noticed that Casimir was closing in, it turned the deathbolt it was gathering and turned it on Casimir.

Casimir brought out his greataxe from the enchanted bag he kept it in, using it to shove himself out of the way of the spell. Kicking off of a new force barrier, he swung the blade downward onto the crypt lord's skull, shattering both that and the ribcage in a single stroke.

Between that violence and the fact that the other crypt lords had depleted about three fourths of the distraction's mana, the undead proceeded to ignore the rest of it and re-prioritize killing the intruders.

Still, the distraction had served its purpose, and while carrying around his greataxe to crush the curse-resistant, stab-proof negative mages as they actively try to kill you wasn't Casimir's favorite kind of fight, it was the one he knew he was getting into.

After thirty more seconds that felt more like ten minutes, the last of the barbed skeletons was smashed to pieces at about the same time the last dregs of life mana from the distraction was drained away by the ritual. "Did you have to use a life potion that powerful?" David asked after he caught his breath.

Casimir turned his attention to the wounds David suffered, healing them up as he answered the question. "Given the odds of there being at least one more group of strong undead to fight? Yeah, I think I did. We can't afford to be too tired after this."

"You could have told me that earlier." David said, checking his gear for damage.

Casimir took one of the bombs that Hana provided for this venture. "Top yourself up." This one was unenchanted, so it was a simple matter to cut the top of the jug open. "It's not potable, so soak it." He warned.

Sticking his hand in the gelatinous mass within the jug, David focused on drawing the mana within into himself. It wouldn't be the first time he's cannibalized one of their bombs to replenish his reserves, and it won't be the last… unless they get really lucky and/or unlucky, of course.

The bombs had eight times as much volume as the other potions, but the density was a little less for stability reasons, only having about five times as much mana as the smaller products. With the inefficiencies introduced from him absorbing it without consuming it, he likely could only draw in about two-thirds of the mana for his own use. Fortunately, as a sorcerer, it's easy for him to just store it within his depleted mana heart without any other complications.

David presented his filthy hand to Casimir. "This shit is gross." By the look of it, it was made from some very disgusting ingredients, so that tracked.

A quick water spell removed the sticky gunk that used to be stuffed full of force mana. "You good?" Casimir asked.

"Yeah, that was a pretty powerful bomb." David said in agreement. "How many of those do you have?"

"Nine more, but I've already armed some of them." Casimir said. "Let's get into the main chamber so we can disable the enchantment. We'll be more thorough this time."

"I'm coming, I'm coming." David said idly as they walked through the checkpoint.

----------------

The central chamber of the plateau was massive. Large enough that a dragon could fly, if they didn't mind never being able to fly straight for longer than a few seconds and thus never be able to come up to speed. The walls, if they were properly illuminated, would be the color of ash, as while coal manages to keep its structure even in while exposed to the negative magic ritual, it loses the flammability that usually makes it useful in blacksmithing, with the appearance changing to appear half-burned to reflect this.

Casimir could see just fine, although as he wasn't using proper vision to do so, color was not among the things he could sense right now. Navigating purely on mana sense was not something that was ordinarily reliable. However, in such a mana depleted area, Casimir's keen senses could pick out the mana of an ordinary needle in comparison to the wide expanse of nothing.

Oh, also he could sense the shape of his immediate surroundings just by feeling the aura of cold his negative magic protection created. David just turned on the light crystal he has on a circlet, illuminating a small portion of the area around him before the light was devoured by the enchantment.

As for enemies… as expected, it was just more undead. It's not like anything else can survive in the place for long. Unlike the checkpoint, there were a collection of lesser undead as well. Ghouls, regular skeletons, and even a massive quantity of the most basic of undead, the zombie. At a glance, it looked like the necromancer guiding things had deployed half of their stronger undead to defend the checkpoint, as there was an equal amount here on top of the additional fodder.

The central throne/lounge chair that once held the Soul-Devouring Dragon was gone, replaced by a raised dais that held a more ordinary throne, where sat the one that restored the place: a Lich.

Liches were massive pains to fight, revenant wizards whose cores could be miles away from their bodies, defended by a dungeon that hasn't been found, and you couldn't kill them without destroying that. Unlike other powerful undead, their bones were bleached white, with runes drawn into each bone of a shade of black so dark, it gave the illusion of endless depth.

The good-ish news was that Casimir didn't recognize the lich. He had reviewed the Guild's roster of outstanding revenants, and this particular runed skull didn't match any of the known ones. This means that it was likely relatively recently created. The bad news was that Casimir didn't recognize it, and thus had no idea what specialty this particular lich favored.

"Well well well…" The skeleton's voice was high pitched, feminine. "I see some handsome men have decided to pay little ol' me a visit."

David chuckled at the coquettish tone the lich used. "Hey hag, you got a name?"

"Hm. I must correct myself: Some uncouth brutes have barged into my home." The Lich said, her eye sockets glowing as the lich started to stand up slowly. That infirmity is pretty ordinary for liches, but it confirmed that they weren't a curse wizard. With a wave of her hand, the oppressive atmosphere of the Wounding Wastes suddenly faded, as she bent the negative magic enchantment. "I am Petranis Shorebreaker, Archmage of Malice." Ah, that rang a bell. She was a veteran-ranked enchanter, but unless becoming a Lich significantly increased her magical knowledge, she hasn't been dead long enough to become an Archmage. She was one of the Soul-Devouring Dragon's last victims before that fateful battle.

"She's not an Archmage." Casimir informed David. "She's an enchantress though, and who knows what modifications she's made to the place." Negative magic enchantments were usually used to draw ambient mana to power some other effect. Originally, all it did was create and strengthen undead, but with the mind of an actual enchantress… sky's the limit.

"I am too!" She shouted, offended. Gathering fire mana in her hands, she completed her spell and released it: "Fireball!" She called out as she launched the promised dense sphere of fire mana.

Theoretically, it was a weak enough spell that Casimir could just barrel through it, cutting it with his verenium knife to disrupt it and trusting in his fire protections to keep him unharmed. However, Casimir had a bad feeling, so instead he leapt upwards, intent on going over the army of undead to take out the lich and her crypt lord attendants.

True to his instinct, the fireball multiplied to ten times its size as it traveled the distance to where David was. "Shit!" He exclaimed as he jumped with far more speed than he needed in the name of getting the hell out of the blast radius.

The fireball exploded into a massive column of flames, illuminating the chamber completely with a roaring sound as the unnaturally still air was violently shoved around by the magic. "Do you see my power?" Petranis exclaimed. "Fighting me within my fortress will be the last mistake you ever make, adventurers!"

Casimir, ducking into a tiny alcove on the chamber wall, opened up telepathic communication with David. "We're in trouble." He sent.

"You think!?" Was David's irritated reply. A massive, drawn out booming sound echoed throughout the chamber as he used Vocal Tremors at the highest levels of power he was capable of. If that sound didn't completely drown out anything else, Casimir was sure he'd be hearing bones shatter as the wide area spell devastated the undead army.

"Just stay on the defensive." Casimir instructed. "I have a plan."

 

[Preier]

Great story and good job on the world building.

I especially liked the fine details in the curse casting.

Thank you for sharing your stories.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Casimir did not have a plan.

It was more that he had a few ideas. Nothing that could be considered a "plan", per se. Fortress-style enchantments had many weaknesses, but they also had innumerable strengths. At any moment, she could turn the negative magic drain back on, absorbing whatever David and Casimir cast to oppose her. At the same time, the fact that it wasn't on meant that she could use that mana to augment her more direct spells.

This was on top of the fact that she had a reasonably impressive undead army backing her up. There were six crypt lords directing the more martial horde, which was much reduced after David's magically-augmented scream. The zombies and lesser skeletons were all destroyed, while the rest were weakened by the expensive but effective spell.

Even without the extra fodder, there were still scores of barbed skeletons and dozens of skeleton knights, each equipped with good steel arms, enchanted by the Lich to resist the negative magic field… and also be constantly chilled to the lowest possible temperature that doesn't compromise the steel. The previous set of undead had those too, but all the enchantment accomplishes is that it makes it moderately more difficult to heal damage inflicted by the weapons, so it wasn't a big deal.

Undead were fairly curse resistant primarily by the fact that their very existence created a mana void that siphoned mana in an area around them. This meant that a curse that was not specifically designed to withstand this, and then perfectly executed, would just get consumed, usually within seconds.

Revenants, on the other hand, did not work this way. It was because they retained their magical abilities, which meant they had to be able to store mana that wasn't immediately digested. As such, he could normally curse Revenants without any problems beyond the usual when you were dealing with a monster that did not have conventional anatomy to disrupt.

Liches were an exception to this exception. Because their 'soul' was kept far away from them, their bodies were closer to animated stone than they were to being a creature. It was why enchanter liches were the second-nastiest variety behind negative mages, as they could inscribe their craft directly on their body. That wasn't to say that it was impossible to curse them, but it's extremely difficult.

So it was with intense focus that Casimir, after drinking another one of the mind potions, steadily wove curses over the senses of the crypt lords, allowing David to jump around like a flea around the massive fireballs that Petranis tossed around with little to no regard for collateral damage. The enchantments on the undead's metal armor did, in fact, allow them a level of protection from the fire, but this just meant each explosion destroyed fewer of them.

The chanciest part of this was the fact that crypt lords were capable of casting Stilling, an anti-force spell that was supposed to pin down their targets so the fireballs and blades of the undead could kill them. While David could just overpower the drain by using stronger spells, resisting six coordinated efforts to that effect would quickly exhaust him.

Casimir wasn't quite sure how effective David's experiences over the last year was in terms of his casting skill and for his mana capacity, but one mistake, on either of their parts and he was toast.

Once Casimir finished the fourth curse ruining the crypt lord's ability to target either of them, Casimir knew that the danger zone had passed. He finished casting the other two and then tweaked all six curses with a pulse of mana, transitioning the spells into their pre-set second stage right before Petranis started casting another fireball.

The skeleton mages, positioned in a defensive circle around the lich, immediately perceived the gathering mana as a threat to their mistress, and simultaneously tore the fire mana out of the caster's grip, casting Detonate right as the spell approached the zenith of its mana build up.

Petranis exploded, bursting into flames. Unfortunately, the blaze did not get amplified by the area's enchantments; it must be something she does deliberately. As she screamed, Casimir used his default followup whenever any of his gambits succeed: when the enemy is distracted, go for the kill.

He leapt from his hiding spot, bringing out his greataxe and, with the enchantments tuned for concussive force, shattered half of the crypt lords in a single swing and killed two more with the shrapnel created from the destruction of the first three. Crypt Lords were actually a little less durable than skeleton knights, and given that they weren't wearing armor like their minions were… it wasn't hard to destroy them if you could get a hit in.

Petranis was made of sterner stuff, however. "Insolent dog!" She spat. "You will regret this!" She built up even more fire mana. From the rotational motions of the mana, Casimir identified the spell as Flame Wave, and as such he created a brief illusion of him remaining in place while he leapt far away from the Lich's spell.

Proving that her fire mana amplification enchantment was something she actively initiated, the flames immediately roared to life as she used the fact that her protectors were mostly destroyed to bathe her surroundings in orange flames. The last crypt lord was immediately incinerated, as was the illusion Casimir used to stop her from canceling the spell.

Petranis laughed at the apparent success of her spell. There were enough ashes around from the destroyed skeletons alongside enough discarded armor and weapons that it was not immediately apparent that she had failed. "Your curses are useless! Now that The Last Gasp is dead, it's time to finish this!"

"Fuck off!" David shouted as he skirmished with the skeleton army. "I'm not scared of you!"

"You should be, boy!" Petranis shouted back. "Your vaunted sorcerous might is nothing before mine!" Casimir felt the giant enchantment that covered the majority of the chamber shift, the massive well of power shifting its flow into different parts of the matrix.

Unfortunately for her, a side-effect of blasting everything surrounding you is that there are no longer any minions capable of watching your back. So sneaking up behind the lich was a quick and easy matter.

While a lich's body was merely a puppet, a way to enact their malevolent will on the world without risking the safety of their core, that didn't mean it wasn't still connected to that core. Wherever she had stashed her core, it was likely near her 'Master', which is exactly where Casimir needs to go in order to resolve matters. How were the Soul-Devouring Dragon's victims becoming Revenants? Who was behind their coordination? Where did this 'Malice' enter into things?

"Now, you-URK!" Petranis said, interrupted by Casimir jamming his stiletto into the back of her spine. With a follow-up effort, her head popped completely off her body, and Casimir gripped the skull as he focused very intently on the tiny, nearly imperceptible connection. Nearly, but not quite.

"There." Casimir whispered, right before the connection vanished. "She's cut her losses!" He shouted at David. "I got a read on her location, though!"

"Yeah, that's great!" David shouted back sarcastically. "Help me with these skeletons you limp-dicked asshole!"

"Yeah, yeah." Casimir said, stashing the skull in his bag. "We've got quite a bit of work to do still."

They'll need to be extra-thorough this time.

----------------

Casimir never did find out what Petranis had set the enchantment to before she rabbited, but the fact that they didn't need to work around the negative siphon meant that destroying the entire plateau was a relatively simple matter. Hopefully, the mana that was stored by the negative array will help restore the land as it bled out into the environment.

"Did you really have to use four of those bombs?" David asked as Casimir was admiring the rubble. "I know we're going to get a good payday for this, but those looked expensive."

Casimir shrugged. "Those bombs are Hanna's contribution to this." He explained. "Giving her legs some proper revenge seemed appropriate."

"I guess…" He said, still unhappy about the waste.

"Also, I needed to do a lot of work to make sure I only needed four." Casimir added. "I'm just glad I paid attention when Magnus explained how to properly collapse cave systems." It involved creating fault lines, weakening slices of rock that multiplied the amount of damage well placed bombs could inflict. It was much more efficient than bombs or stone magic alone.

"Well, where are we going?" David asked as he shouldered his 'loot chest', a travel chest that he had the best space-expanding enchantment he could find placed on it. They had, of course, stuffed all of the salvageable steel inside of it. "Because if we want a good price on this kit we need to head to Holsvich."

Casimir went through his mental map of the mainland. "Never heard of it. How far is it?"

"It's this little farming village about four days from here." Assuming David meant the measure they used when they were still a team, that meant it was around sixteen hundred-ish miles away. With just the two of them, they could make the trip much faster if they booked it. "The village is useless, but it's also where my buddy's staying for the next couple months, on account of him wanting to be with his new wife." Honestly, it's like every other piece of news Casimir receives about adventuring associates involving them getting married or having kids these days. David negligently shrugged, not really caring about the news. "He'll probably end up paying us to deliver the stuff to whoever he was going to sell it to."

Casimir considered it. "We don't have that kind of time, man." He eventually said. "Let's just stash it at a guildhouse somewhere and pick it up later."

"Well hold on, maybe it's on the way." David said, which was unfortunately reasonable. "Again, where are we headed?"

Casimir pointed. "Her core was about two thousand miles thataway."

David took a moment to orient himself, bringing out a map out of his bag. "So… about here?" He said, pointing to what seemed to be the right spot. At Casimir's nod, David brightened. "Great! Holsvich is here!" He tapped a place that wasn't exactly on the way, but it was only two hundred miles or so out of the way. Not that far. "So we can make a stop on the way, rest up, enjoy some local hospitality, and be on the way in the morning!"

Casimir considered the plan. It was a lot more reasonable than he'd come to expect from David. In fact, the man seemed to be unusually keen to visit this nowhere town. Well, the best way of plumbing this mystery is to just play along. "Alright, sounds like a plan. Start binding and picking out a town to stay tonight in. We can go a few hundred miles before sundown, after all."

"You got it!" David said cheerfully. What had gotten into him to make him so happy? It couldn't be the money…

----------------

"...A Heroic quest?" Casimir questioned the guild bureaucrat. It was the closest guildhouse to the Wounded Wastes, inside Bonewall Citadel. Part of a 'Holy Queendom' by the name of Helelistan, it was primarily concerned with securing the region from the annual undead invasion from the wastes. An invasion that will no longer be occurring.

"Yes, it's a heroic quest." she replied. She was a middle-aged woman, dark-skinned like humans tended to be in this part of the mainland. Darker than elves usually were, although Casimir supposed Faron would actually fit in quite well here. Were there local elves? "The last time the guild sent someone to check out that deathtrap, half an elite team died." Casimir winced at the reminder. "We've been trying to get the Gold Hunters to go back and do a more thorough job, but they refused. Apparently, the only one who can get people in there and has any understanding of how to stop it is on sabbatical." She spit into a nearby spittoon. "What's worse, the local General's been dropping hints that we shouldn't be trying to prevent an army of ravening undead from ravaging the countryside. Got to justify his budget, after all."

Casimir and David patiently waited for the bureaucrat to finish her rant on the sins, negative qualities, and inadequacies of the local military authority. Eventually, she remembered that she had a job to do. "Now, why do you ask about this particular quest?" She had, at some point, brought out the quest folder to wave around as a prop.

"Oh, we're claiming the reward." David helpfully explained.

"It wasn't worth a heroic quest." Casimir assured her. "It was just a lich and maybe a fifth of an invasion force? Not much at all." He pulled out Petranis' skull for proof.

"We also destroyed the repaired array." David continued.

"The whole plateau's rubble now, really." Casimir added.

"Does this mean I can finally make Elite?" David asked, excited.

Casimir looked at him. "Well, I guess you've improved enough for it. Even if you still can't solve any problem that can't be hit with a stick."

Godsmacked, the bureaucrat stood up shakily. "I better go get the Guildmaster."

----------------

After another entire day of moving as fast as they could, monsters be damned, they made it to the sleepy little farming town of Holsvich.

"Made it." David said, breathing deeply as they took a moment outside the rudimentary walls. Casimir scanned the top of the wall for soldiers, and while they were there, they didn't seem to be at all bothered by David's rapid arrival. How often did he come here?

The gate was closed, but one of the soldiers waved them up, so the pair of them merely hopped on top of the wall. "Welcome back, Sir Smith." greeted the one with good armor. "Who's your friend?" Well, that confirms that he lives here, at least.

David laughed. "Ah, this asshole's just someone I'm working with. Just stopping by on the way to a job." Casimir nodded to confirm David's words.

"I'm pretty much empty of mana, David." Casimir pointed out. "Is this place safe? It's not very well-fortified."

"The local army does a pretty good job keeping the monster population suppressed." David said. "They mostly raise cattle out here." Ah, that's quite the endorsement. Herds of livestock are very hard to maintain, and if they were successful, that meant the army was quite effective.

"Right. So I assume you have accommodations arranged?" Casimir asked.

"Yeah, yeah." David said. "You can sleep in the guest room." He has a guest room?

Casimir followed David as he hopped along rooftops, eventually landing at a large house. "I'm home!" David shouted as he walked straight into the door without a care. A beautiful woman carrying a baby ran to the sorcerer, tears of joy on her face.

Ah. That explains everything.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

No update next week. Psychoprotective instead.

--------------------------

David's wife was apparently named Pyra, a beauty with bright red hair and control of over a thousand head of cattle. It was the largest operation in the area, with over one hundred hired hands, and if one wanted to be political about things, it was exactly the kind of family that would be extra-keen to marry powerful adventurers to help maintain their position.

"David's never brought any other adventurers home before, it's nice to meet you, Mr. Toomes." Pyra said after introductions were made. The baby didn't have a name, traditionally in this region names were a first birthday kind of thing. Casimir thought it was kind of a weird tradition, but he's been to far too many places to bother commenting on odd customs.

"It's nice to meet you too." Casimir replied. "I admit I didn't expect David to be the settling down type, " Well, the responsible type in general really. "-but after seeing you I can see why."

Pyra giggled at the compliment. "David, you didn't mention your friend was such a flirt!" The servants started to place down the dinner, which was quickly prepared because of another local tradition of always being ready for guests. Anima had that same tradition, which was a nice taste of home. Pun intended. Turning back to Casimir, she gestured to the food. "Eat as much as you want. No one leaves this house with an empty belly."

In most places, a thick slice of beef steak was a luxury item beyond the ability for all but the wealthy to acquire. Monsters seemed to be able to tell the difference between domesticated animals and wild ones, and usually left the latter alone while the former were hunted and killed with just as much ferocity as they did people. As a result, most meat was hunted, and the flavor of wild game was far inferior to a good, fatty chunk of beef.

Around here? Casimir bet that he could buy a whole cow's worth with just a gold coin or two. Still expensive, but in Anima that kind of money could buy maybe one fifth of that. If he caught someone who sucked at haggling. He still has that book of enchantments that had the meat storage design in it, right? He really needed to get around to making a personal spellbook one of these days, he used to use mind magic to memorize utility spells like that. Can't do that anymore.

Come to think of it, he should probably lay off of those mind potions for a few days. He can still sense some of the remnants in his system… But they were so useful…

As he ate the delicious steak, Casimir kept an eye on David and Pyra, both whispering to each other at the other end of the table. Cute couple. It did leave him feeling like a bit of a third wheel, but a little awkwardness was fine in return for such fine food. The baby wasn't at the table, Pyra passed the little one off to a nanny shortly after David got the chance to coo over them for a bit.

Towards the end of the meal, the silence was broken. "So how long have you two known each other?" Pyra asks, as an icebreaker.

Casimir gave a long exhale to think about the question. "Must be like, what, twelve years?" He said, looking to David to confirm.

"Around there." David said.

"Yeah, Hana had formed that team seven months before," Casimir said, going into the story as he was remembering it. "-and one day there was this punk kid, fourteen but looked twelve, demanding that his sister come back home and stop risking her life all the time."

Pyra seemed very interested in the story. "His sister?"

Casimir nodded sadly. "Yeah, Luci died a few years ago. Probably before you met." Given the timeline involved, probably shortly before they met. "Anyway, we were three standards and a veteran at the time, Hana was the vet, so while I don't remember exactly how things went down that day, I do remember that after we got another job and moved out, we woke up the next morning with that same punk kid swearing that he'll keep the ranked adventurer safe." Casimir grinned at the memory. "It was hilarious! Still, we weren't doing anything too difficult, so after a huddle, Luci convinced us to let him tag along. Magnus whipped up a sturdy stone staff for him to hit things with and I whipped out the books and scratched some enchantments on the thing to make it lighter for the boy on top of some useful curses." Really, with some solid cursework you could get a dozen cats to finish most standard hunting missions. Hana refused to take veteran-ranked quests until at least one of the group had joined her at the rank.

"Why would you curse him!?" Pyra said, horrified.

Casimir stared at David, unimpressed. David just laughed. "Right. Any non-instant spell that you cast on a person is a curse. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to make you feel better." He summarized. Laymen… "I meant that I gave him a little extra strength, speed, and weight to allow him to better wield the stone staff and hit monsters with it."

"Okay…" Pyra said, a little confused but accepting it to let the story continue.

Casimir will just have to take what he can get. "Okay, so the mission was…" Casimir paused. "David, do you remember what we were hunting? It was some shitty tribal monster, I remember that much."

"Goblins." David said. "It was goblins."

"Right." Casimir said. Now it was coming back to him. "So these goblins had taken control of a small river, and were being their usual disgusting selves. It made things unpleasant and difficult for the village downstream, so they hired adventurers." Casimir noted that he was beginning to lose Pyra's interest in the tale, so he skipped to the good part. "So there we were, strategizing our approach to the goblin camp. The only issue was, no one kept an eye on the kid."

Pyra's interest was seized once more. "What happened to David?"

"The crazy brat took his brand new asskicking stick and decided to shove it up a goblin's arse, is what happened to him!" Casimir nearly shouted, laughing at the image. "We all scrambled to make sure he didn't die, all the goblins got killed, including their war chief, an ogre." Casimir got that particular kill, if he recalled correctly. He didn't have his axe back then, but he did have this one mace that Master Southwind provided that accomplished a similar role of a big hit that he used to finish off his incapacitated enemies. "So it worked out." He added to finish the story.

"So then he joined your group?" Pyra asked.

"No, it took another two times of him tracking us down on our way to a job before we accepted that he wasn't going to just go away." Casimir explained. "Luci wouldn't let us attempt more forceful persuasion. But she also didn't want to go back home, so the only solution to the problem was to let David get his sister complex out of his system by tagging along."

David actually got offended by that jab. "S-sister complex!?" He exclaimed. "I did not have a sister complex!" he insisted, a luminescent blush on his face.

Pyra giggled at her husband's indignation. "So what was your team name?"

Casimir frowned. "We could never decide on one, honestly." He said. "We had all kinds of official ones, and we changed it every few months. The Scholarium, The Bookwyrms, Four Nerds and a Brat…" Casimir chuckled at David's groan at that one. "Eventually the joke of us constantly changing our name became a greater trademark than any one of them. The last official name we had was The Indecisives." It had lasted a little longer than most of the other names. Casimir wasn't superstitious enough to think that kind of settling on a name doomed the team, though. "So how did you two meet?" He said, changing the subject.

Pyra flushed. "Well, my family decided to hire out some adventurers to increase security after some rustlers stole a few dozen cattle…" She said, twiddling her thumbs. "One thing led to another…"

So nothing terribly interesting, then. Conversation continued, idly passing the time discussing topics without real substance. Eventually, Casimir was directed to the guest room where he used magic to ensure that he quickly went to sleep and became unable to detect whatever David was doing that night.

----------------

"What in the world are you going to use that much beef for?" David asked as Casimir referenced his book and carefully inlaid the copper wire that created the preservation enchantment on the metal travel chest full of meat wrapped in wax-treated paper.

"I'm going to eat it, mostly." Casimir said flippantly. "But you know how useful meat can be when it comes to baiting monsters." Use just the right flavor of life mana, and you can fool the stupider monsters with mana senses that the steak you threw is alive and distract them, a list that included most undead. You need to use domesticated meat for it to work, though. "If I'm lucky, it'll last long enough to serve Master Southwind a nice celebratory dinner."

David scoffed. "Teacher's pet." He said accusingly. "Well, I've sold the arms and armor of the undead army to my buddy, he's in the military. He wants me to deliver it to a contact at the capital, but that can wait."

"How much is the return?" Casimir asked, idly. Military hardware was worth a fair bit, and while the material was cheap, if high quality, there was an awful lot of it.

"Four hundred gold for the lot." He bragged. Casimir whistled at the price. Yeah, that's definitely worth lugging that crap this far. David tossed a bag of coins to him. "That's your half." Casimir caught the bag, hefted it to check the weight, and tossed it into one of his spatial bags. Yeah, that felt like twelve and a half pounds of gold. Wait.

"Hey, what's the purity of the local coins?" Casimir asked. If this really was two hundred ounces, it better be pure…

"It's pure gold." David confirmed. "So how much longer are you going to take there?"

Casimir looked at the progress of his inlaid enchantment and compared it to the design in the book. "...Give me ten more minutes, preservation enchantments are very delicate." The margin of error is much smaller than most of the other enchantment crap he uses. There's a reason he's using inlaid metal rather than etching or ink, after all. It's more durable this way.

After finishing his work, Casimir tossed the chest into his high capacity spatial bag, the one that sacrificed a lot of the convenience of his other ones in return for the most space. "You say goodbye?" He asked.

"Yep. Let's go." David replied.

----------------

Petranis' phylactery couldn't be precisely tracked for several reasons. For one, he only got one data point on the rough distance and direction. He could narrow it down to a few dozen square miles, but that's it. Second, she's had nearly a whole day to move it. No one really knows exactly how long it takes for a lich to reform a new body, but Casimir's heard of them springing up after just one day before. Finally, they rated the odds of Petranis' Master not being the one holding the phylactery to be extremely low.

The terrain was a particularly hostile set of hills known as the Flowstone mountains. There was some kind of underground mana convergence within it; each hill outpoured black flammable mud on a continuous basis; the build up created frequent mudslides that can and often do turn into deadly firestorms. It reminded Casimir of coal, actually. It had a similar mana scent to it, if you ignored the fact that it was mostly liquid and mixed with a bunch of clay and dirt. The locals (Aviost mostly) harvested the stuff and did all kinds of alchemical nonsense with it. Most of it seemed to be scams, in Casimir's professional opinion. The lubricants were pretty good though.

"So… How are we supposed to find her base?" David asked as they overlooked the hills from the air. There were several kinds of monster that only seemed to exist to stop people from flying too high in the sky, Cloud Slicers being merely one of them, but they weren't worried about any such attacks. They were two elite-ranked adventurers, after all. Even if 'The Titan' was a stupid epithet.

Casimir hummed as he contemplated his options. "The geography's so unstable that you'd have a beast of a time finding records of underground areas. Any place that exists would need to be shaped and maintained magically." He reasoned. "I'm not sure if I could detect it if we did a search, but I'm also not sure that I couldn't." It would really depend on the competence of whoever was doing the hiding. It's not that hard to blend things in with the local mana profile if that profile is reasonably thick with it like this place was. Detecting hollow sections wouldn't work without the rigidity of solid stone that he has to work with in cave systems…Yeah, densely packed dirt was okay if it had enough clay, but mud? Fuck mud.

"You know what I do when I need to find hidden shit?" David asked.

"...Okay, I'll bite." Casimir said. "How did you find shit without me to do it for you?"

"I ask locals." He said simply. "Let's get some drinks at the adventurer's guild."

On one hand, Casimir's pride really didn't want to just roll the dice by asking locals and possibly tipping off their quarry. On the other hand, Petranis likely already suspects that they are soon to be in the area, and more importantly, fuck mud. "Alright, maybe they'll know of some stable cave systems we could check." Casimir admitted. "Let's go."

The closest guild hall was not in the small village that Casimir ended up buying a little grease from, but instead a medium-sized town on the far side of the hills called Ettlu'at. As expected for the area, about two-thirds of the people were aviost, each one distinct in feather pattern and beak shape.

Casimir mostly held back and watched David do his thing, buying the whole guild a round of drinks and chatting up everyone from the serving girl to the grey-feathered old birds in the back. Casimir considered himself reasonably good at getting intel from the local adventurers, but it was a little humbling to see how he flawlessly pivoted whatever the person he was talking to wanted to talk about to topics that were important to the investigation.

Looks like the brat's grown up in more than one way.

 

[Spectrum]

The baby didn't have a name, traditionally in this region names were a first birthday kind of thing. Casimir thought it was kind of a weird tradition, but he's been to far too many places to bother commenting on odd customs.

Click to shrink...

That is unfortunately a sensible tradition in older cultures where you still have to deal with high infant mortality rates.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

That is unfortunately a sensible tradition in older cultures where you still have to deal with high infant mortality rates.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, Casimir's really well-traveled, but more importantly infant mortality in Anima is very low. They're a rich country with lots of trained doctors who are all capable of very precise healing magic. So while Anima doesn't have a tradition like that, and thus he sees it as weird, he's been to many places with all kinds of traditions on baby naming. From 'milk names' which are meant to ward away evil spirits who are renamed later, to not naming until some birthday (latest he's seen is 5th), he's seen the gamut.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Eventually, David managed to navigate the social scene of the adventurer's guild well enough to get a hold of someone who could be of assistance: An elite-ranked shaman by the name of Polium Cloudskimmer, epithet 'The Swamp King'.

The Aviost was visibly aged, his left eye clouded over and his movements slow and deliberate. His black feathers were streaked with gray, and his beak, a long and thin kind, had a discolored patch that was clearly a transplant to repair serious damage.

He had his spirit companions, the polite adventurer term for a long-term contract that included the spirit's physical presence, with him. There was a powerful toad-like mud spirit that he sat upon, with overgrown and muscular arms and warts so large and bulbous you couldn't cover them with a hand. Coiled around him was a vine spirit of some kind, its serpentine body covered in tiny leaves like fur. Finally, hanging off of his shoulder was a smaller, less powerful pond spirit that wore a lilypad as a hat, looking mostly humanoid but vaguely frog-like in the face.

"So…" Polium said after he had a chance to assess the two adventurers who arrived at his shack. "I've heard you two are looking for a diviner that can plumb the depths of the Flowstone Mountains."

"That's right." Casimir said. "This is what we're hunting for." He presented the Aviost with the updated quest form they picked up in town. "We can do this two ways: We could contract you for the search only, and pay you appropriately, or we could cut you in and you help us to the best of your ability. We're all elite-ranked here, no need to quibble on ratios." Also, the unexpected windfall from the trip to the Wounded Wastes meant that he didn't care as much about his share diminishing.

Polium seemed to consider the upfront offer. "It seems like dangerous work… but adventuring is a dangerous career. I accept."

"Fantastic." Casimir said with a smile. "Now, can you find what we need right now, or do we need to track down another spirit?" Shamans were widely considered to be the best diviners, because unlike literally any other kind of spirit mage, they could productively exploit the fact that many spirits had very good mental maps of their home terrains. Contract a local one for navigational work, and you could find places that even seasoned rangers have no idea exist.

"It is as you suspect. We must commune with local spirits." Polium replied. "Let us go." He trilled a hidden whistle to his spirit companions. "Try to keep up."

The mud spirit croaked, tensing its entire body before launching itself towards the Flowstone Mountains. With a single glance between them, David and Casimir leapt after him, following their exact arc before moving closer to the ground once the first leap was complete.

"So do you think this guy can handle Luci and Magnus?" Casimir asked David. He wasn't entirely sure, but the power of his mud spirit did seem promising.

"It's fine." David said dismissively. "Even if he can't, all he needs to do is point the way. He's strong enough to be a distraction, at least."

"Good point." Casimir conceded. "That mud spirit could make Magnus' unlife really difficult."

They probably should have mentioned the possibility of fighting a dragon, though…

----------------

They found Polium in the middle of a spirit beckoning ceremony. One of the big things that separated weak spirit mages and proper shamans was the ability to beckon spirits to them. Shamanic cabals were generally very secretive about their beckoning ceremonies, but enough academics have written books on the subject that the rough process is pretty well understood.

First, you identified what kind of spirit you wished to beckon. The more specific, the better.

Second, you provided an offering of power to the spirit. The size of your offering determines how powerful a spirit will show up, and as the offering itself was payment, most spirits would be willing to do a small favor or two without any further compensation.

Third, you actually called out to the spirit. This was the longest part of any spirit beckoning, and you could be at it for hours before any deign to show up, or there could be no spirits that fit your description and you waste however much time and effort you put into it.

Polium was speaking in a shrill, screechy language that Casimir didn't know, although given how it sounded, it was some kind of aviost tongue. Then… he set the muddy hill on fire.

"What is wrong with you?" Casimir exclaimed as he leapt up to a force barrier that David erected after leaping up himself.

The shaman ignored both of them as they gestured, stoking the flames by throwing what appeared to be potions into the conflagration. The fire grew larger and larger as Polium screeched. If there was any hope that they could beckon a spirit without getting noticed by Petranis and whatever else she had waiting here, it was gone now.

Once the flame encompassed three of the muddy hills, it suddenly started gathering in the sky. The flames completely separated from the ground, leaving ordinary flammable mud in its wake. After about a minute, the fire had condensed into a single point, which exploded into the form of a spirit. It was large and made of fire, of course, but its shape conformed to that of a boar with massive tusks, so large that you could stick a barrel on its nose and the tusks would hold it in place.

"I welcome you, Karn of the wildfires!" Polium shouted in a language Casimir did understand. It was a spirit tongue that was understood by the spirits in the Depths, although he wasn't entirely clear why some spirits spoke that language and other spirits spoke one of four other options. Geography was clearly not the only criteria. "We seek your wisdom, learned from countless cycles of destruction and renewal!"

The spirit responded, a voice that was backed by the roar of burning hot winds, the stench of ash accompanying the words. "You have properly invoked the ancient compacts, and you have been properly respectful." It replied, acknowledging that the experienced shaman knew how to suck up to the spirits. "Speak your questions, petitioner!" It demanded.

The tension in Polium's entreaty was gone, as the shaman relaxed into the muddy throne his mud spirit was carrying on its back. "Within the last week, a Lich's spirit had retreated to somewhere within your domain." Polium gestured to David and Casimir. "My allies here are hunting this wretched existence, and we seek aid in locating the undead's core."

Karn smoldered at the request. "...You act in opposition to forces that are the enemy of all who draw breath in this world." It acknowledged. "We will contract with you, shaman, in the name of destroying this blight to existence." One thing that any adventurer knows is that spirits hate monsters. As such, shamans who were adventurers generally had a relatively easy time getting at least temporary contracts from spirits if the local area had a monster problem. Things as powerful as liches constituted a problem all its own. Getting permanent contracts, on the other hand… much more difficult.

Casimir turned to David as Polium started haggling in earnest with the wildfire spirit. "You sure this guy's just elite?" He asked. "That's a pretty powerful spirit he just summoned."

David hummed. "You know as well as I do that rank isn't everything." He said, waiting for a beat before continuing. "...He seemed too prepared. I think that spirit was the main reason he was in the area in the first place."

"Yeah, that fits." Casimir said. "If he could get a good spirit like that to bolster his strength, he might be able to break into heroic rank." Wait. "...He seems kind of old to be worrying about that, though." Casimir added.

David snorted. "You remember that powerful spirits can extend your lifespan, right?"

Eh… "I've never seen anyone who could substantiate those legends." Casimir said dismissively. "You know how crazy stories about powerful mages can get. Shamans just get more of it than most." Advanced mana cultivation did make one age more slowly, but you needed to have developed it at a young age to get the really impressive lifespan numbers.

"It looks like they're done." David observed, hopping off of the force platform. Seeing as how the wildfire spirit was nowhere to be found, that checked out.

Casimir just dropped as David dismissed his spell, using a quick burst of flight to land right next to their new teammate. "We're done here?" Casimir asked.

The aged Aviost leapt off of the mud spirit's back, landing on his talons without a care as he flexed his arms. His black feathers were shiny and lustrous, both eyes burned with energy, and his movements had the vigor of youth. "Yes, Karn of the wildfires has joined his strength to our own. Follow me!" He gestured to his spirit companions, and they each compacted themselves into something Polium could carry: The mud spirit became a belt with an elaborate bow-thing in the back, which the pond spirit clung onto without changing shape. The vine spirit became a scarf that was much smaller than their actual body.

With a burst of flame ejecting from his feet, Polium started to leap from hill to hill, somehow not setting everything ablaze as he went. "Spirit magic…" Casimir muttered ruefully to himself as he followed the rejuvenated Aviost.

Things are starting to look up.

----------------

After about twenty minutes of jumping among the muddy hills, Polium stopped on some large stone pillar that had absolutely no business being in the middle of this terrain. "This is one of the few stable landmarks in this land." The shaman explained. "Long ago, a castle was in the skies above this place, and a great battle occurred between the forces of that castle and the Wind-Commanding Dragon. The ruins of the fallen castle have long sunk into the muck, but this single support column, around which the entire castle was built, landed point first and embedded itself within the bedrock, remaining standing tall to this day."

Casimir nodded, intrigued at the story. David, on the other hand… "Yeah that's nice. What does this have to do with Petranis?"

"Patience, chickling." The bird-man said scoldingly. "This part of the Flowstone Mountains contains many underground chambers, as the legendary enchantments were so grand, the castle has been slowly re-assembling itself within the mud over the centuries. Karn says that he sensed a disturbance in this area around the time you claimed your lich died." He turned towards a nondescript patch of black mud. "This would be the first place to look."

Well, that sounded grand. "Let's go, then." Flying castles used to be popular grand projects about two thousand years ago, but then they all ended up getting destroyed for one reason or another. It was far from the first time he's heard a similar story… although the re-assembling part was new. It did explain why some of those other ruins were in such good condition...

"Siza, descend!" He commanded, and his mana surged into the aspect mix of his mud spirit, which seized control over the black mud and created a pit of nothingness in the middle of the muddy ground. "The entrance is here. Come with me."

"Now we're talking!" Casimir said with a savage grin as he jumped down into the pit. The bottom of it was a stone door, and a pulse of mana revealed the mechanism. Casimir gripped the handle, twisted the section, then pulled it open. David and Polium entered the door, and Casimir closed it behind them.

"Let's move!" Casimir said with conviction as he started to attune his senses. The castle's hallways were thick with mana, appropriate for the enchantments this place supposedly had. But if he tuned out the enchantments, the mud, and his teammates… All that's left is the shit he needs to know about.

Nothing, nothing… there! "I got something." He said as he turned a corner; his teammates silently followed his lead now that they were back in his comfort zone. "...a lot of somethings." He added as he kicked open another, less locked door.

"Monsters!" David announced as his mana surged in readiness.

"Of course there are monsters!" Casimir shouted as he started channeling mana into his curses. "It's a Dungeon!"

"Pirie! Loam!" Polium announced, the vine and pond spirits readying themselves as well. "Protect us!" He added.

The room appeared to be some kind of ballroom: large, mostly empty, and somehow intact despite the mud visible through the many windows. Within was a motley collection of monsters: dozens of gargoyles, the stone birds already preparing to take off into the sky to start dive bombing the adventurers, somewhat over a dozen Armaxes, chitinous monsters that resembled armored knights with mantis claws, on top of what was frankly the largest minotaur that Casimir had ever seen.

Unlike most humanoid monsters, minotaurs were solitary beasts that did not speak, merely hunting down adventurers with their fantastic senses and cruel cunning. They were normally only a veteran-ranked threat, but between this one's size and what was no doubt an artifact spear in its hands… It was probably a much more even fight than Casimir would like to admit.

"Stand back!" Polium said as his hands burst into flame. Intuiting his intentions, David and Casimir remained at the shaman's side as he summoned a fraction of the massive presence of that wildfire spirit. "Cataclysm!" He announced as he released a huge tornado of flame at the gathered monsters. Loam the pond spirit created a thin barrier of water, which boiled but did successfully shield the group from the oppressive heat of the spell.

"Thank you, Loam." Casimir said, just to be polite. Casimir could handle even this level of collateral heat without trouble, but it was quite considerate of Polium to think about his teammates before unleashing that level of magic. "We got it from here, Polium. Save your mana."

Indeed, Polium's fire magic had halved the number of armaxes, and killed two-thirds of the gargoyles. David leapt into the sky, engaging the gargoyles without a shred of concern for their diminished numbers.

"Yes…" Whispered Polium. "This is the power of Karn… It's exquisite." Yeah… that's not concerning at all… nope.

The minotaur had escaped the flames without too much trouble. Casimir suspected that the artifact he was wielding was responsible for that. Hopefully, it only could protect it from physical dangers, but that's something Casimir's going to have to find out.

Casimir ran towards the Minotaur's group, slipping through the wild swings of the armaxes as he drew his stiletto. "Come on ugly! Let me show you why they call me…" Casimir leapt to avoid the spear thrust of the massive minotaur. "THE LAST GASP!" He shouted as he drove his stiletto straight into the throat of the massive beast.

For the first time in too long, Casimir started his signature sequence of curses. He managed to lay three choking curses on the beast before the minotaur grabbed him by the leg and threw Casimir off.

The minotaur hacked and coughed, removing Casimir's stiletto before negligently tossing it aside. After a beat, Casimir managed to heal the minor fracture in his leg and shoulders and the minotaur, breathing heavily and laboriously, started to approach Casimir once more to attack.

The Armaxes had decided to go after Polium, so…"It's just you and me, ugly." Casimir taunted. "Come and get me."

He missed this.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Artifacts were somewhat… deceptive as a category of magic item. What made it an artifact? In the past, when the term was coined, it was basically a category that meant 'it's old and we have no fucking clue how this works'.

They don't use conventional enchantment methodology, but they are still clearly objects of incredible magical power. Back then, a complete mystery. Now? Not so much. The vast majority of artifacts, the type of item one typically thinks of when you say artifact, were made by forcibly calcifying a spirit into becoming an object, destroying their identities and fusing them with magical materials to create an object that surpasses all other armaments, with the potency of a shaped object, the exotic properties of an enchanted object, and the inviolable durability of starmetal.

Well, the artifacts that were still around were made of that, anyway. Spirit courts didn't like people using artifacts and preferred that they get destroyed, although it varied widely how militant they were on the subject. The more fragile ones have long been broken; It was why you usually saw them collecting dust in the most secure vaults a country has, only to be brought out in times of dire need. Knowledge on how to create them has been lost, presumably known to certain ancient spirits but they certainly aren't going to tell anyone.

This minotaur's artifact… it was a complex spirit, definitely. At least two mana aspects working in harmony. Or maybe it was multiple spirits? That was rare, but not unheard of. He could pick out fire magic easily enough, but the others… stone?

The monster finally managed to adapt to the choking curses Casimir had inflicted upon him, moving sluggishly but steadily as it thrust the spear repeatedly in an attack sequence that was beyond the skill level of your average minotaur.

That didn't mean the attack sequence had a chance to actually land a strike, but it meant that Casimir needed to expend mana to keep up. Casimir experimentally let some mind mana loose to distract the minotaur as he slipped underneath the legs of the beast, preventing it from noticing the movement. As far as it could tell, he just vanished.

Immediately, the minotaur sank his spear into the ground the instant it realized that its foe was not in front of it, which caused spikes of stone to erupt all around the beast, nearly running Casimir through six times over. Fortunately, his armor was up to the task of making the blow merely shove him around and score a few cuts in unarmored parts of his body.

"Okay, this minotaur is stronger than me, faster than he looks, smarter than he has any right to be, and is wielding an artifact that can let him cast a few spells as fast as I can." Casimir observed as he got back to his feet. He grinned. "It's been a while since I've had an actual challenge." Noticing that he was now near his stiletto, Casimir pulled it into his hand magically.

The minotaur charged forward with its spear. Its stance though… Ah. It intended to use the stone spike wave again when it's close. Easy enough. Casimir stood ready, and when the minotaur shifted its spear to strike down instead of stabbing him directly, Casimir climbed up the minotaur's arm to avoid the wave of spikes and slammed his stiletto into the minotaur's neck again, layering two more choking curses on the beast as he checked on the status of the first three.

After leaping away and standing on a barrier in mid-air, Casimir gave a frustrated sigh. "Okay, that artifact's definitely helping him breathe." Casimir concluded for David's benefit. "The air curse is being counteracted directly and the fire curse isn't burning his lungs at all."

"If you need some help, just holler!!" David shouted from his position next to Polium. He had already defeated the weaker monsters.

"Screw off!" Casimir shouted back. The minotaur charged once more, its roar interrupted by the hiccups Casimir cursed it with. "You? DIE!" Casimir shouted as he dodged the spear thrust and channeled mana into his stiletto.

The minotaur shed black blood as Casimir cut and stabbed the thing's hide, staying far too close for the spear to be useful. In tandem with the physical attacks, Casimir shot a jolt of mind mana into it so as to convince it to do what Casimir wanted it to do rather than what the smart thing was.

As compelled, the minotaur threw its spear away so it could better attempt to grapple Casimir. Effective use of mind mana was all about the little nudges. Casimir jumped towards the spear, his mana senses clearly pointing out the tether of mana that attuned the monster to the weapon. Casimir swiped at and broke that tether with some well-placed cursebreaking techniques and picked the artifact up himself.

Going from three effective choking curses to five seemed to be the last straw for the minotaur. It was wheezing and hiccuping as it kneeled on the ground, and if Casimir allowed it the seconds more necessary to suffocate, the curses would break and the fight would begin again.

But that's what his greataxe was for. Chop chop!

"I knew you were rusty from that spar, but that really showed it." David snarked as he picked up the severed head of the minotaur. "You could have finished that in half the time."

"Well excuse me for being cautious around an unknown artifact." Casimir groused back. With it in his hand and able to focus solely on examining it, Casimir could more clearly make out the mana composition. It was definitely made of two two-aspect spirits, one with a familiar fire/stone mix denoting a volcano spirit and the other being an air/water mist spirit. "Polium, have you ever heard of this thing?"

Polium shook his head… then started nodding instead. "Karn knew of this weapon. The name translates into 'Spear of Four Deaths'. You should consider yourself fortunate that you avoided any injury from the blade."

"Oh? What would have happened?" David asked, intrigued.

"He would have exploded." Polium replied.

"Looks right." Casimir said. "The blade is made of a volcano spirit, and the shaft from a mist spirit. Here, watch this." Casimir moved the butt of the spear around, generating some mist and then, with a wave, obscured the far half of the room in a fog. "I didn't see it actually use any fire aspect, so an eruption spell or something on the blade would make sense, he only ever struck the rock surrounding us."

"You know anyone who could use a good spear?" David asked. "Not my style."

Casimir hummed. "Illivere uses a spear… but giving her an artifact is probably a bad idea." The political implications alone…

Polium grunted. "I am bound by my pacts against making use of such weapons. I must insist on its destruction, if possible."

Casimir tapped the weapon on the ground. "Starmetal, sorry. This thing is pretty much indestructible." After a moment of thought, he added: "My Master has a pretty good vault, I could stash it there." While Casimir wouldn't go so far as to say Master Southwind's personal stash of valuables was as well defended as the vaults of the Academy, much less the vaults controlled by Anima's government, he'd be willing to bet it would stack up well against the average artifact storage vault.

"It can't be helped." Polium said, evidently not very enthusiastic about that portion of his pacts. "Let's explore the rest of the dungeon."

"Right. Let's go." Casimir put the spear in one of his loot bags and went off to scout some more.

After four more rooms filled with powerful monsters, Casimir huffed as they took a break for lunch. "This seems like an ordinary dungeon." Casimir complained as he cooked some root vegetables.

"It's not even suspiciously ordinary." David added. "You don't usually see distributions like this, there's hardly any weak monsters at all. Even the lowest rank monster could stomp your average standard." Unsaid was the fact that it also wasn't unheard of.

"We have yet to see any hint of undead, this is true." Observed Polium as he snacked on his bag of trail mix.

"At least we're getting rich off of this loot." David said, looking for the positives of the situation. There were quite a few ancient enchanted weapons in the hands of monsters, even if there was only one artifact. Much like starmetal artifacts, the only enchanted weapons that last this long are durable metals inlaid with mithril to hold the enchantments. So in other words, they were expensive.

"Loot is useless." Polium groused. After a glance of David's mischievous smile, he added: "I'm still demanding my share. But the point of this endeavor is the destruction of those revenants."

Taking out his new steak box, Casimir withdrew two of the wrapped bundles and started seasoning. "How do you like it?"

"Still bleeding." Polium said. Way to play into the shaman stereotype, man.

"Medium." David added superfluously.

As Casimir plated and served the food, he decided to address the monster in the room. "So I don't know about you two, but this is getting exhausting. How many more fights are you two good for?"

"Karn's wisdom is that we have cleared two-thirds of the complex." Polium announced. "This is the largest section of the sunken castle, but it is far from the only one. Finishing the search of this area should involve no more than three more battles, and I am confident that we are capable of such a feat." 'We' in this sense meant him and his spirit companions.

David hummed. "I might need to eat one of those bombs." He admitted. "That fight with the Yurgeim really took it out of me." That's what you get when you try and out-muscle something that can swallow you whole, David.

"Give me twenty minutes to bind mana and I should be able to manage." Casimir said after taking a bite of his steak. Delicious. "David, you bind too."

David groaned at the order. "Ugh, it's so little mana, though." He complained. "It just makes me tired in return for mere trickles of mana."

Casimir snorted. "Then drink your vigor potion afterwards. Replacing that is easy. And it's only a small amount compared to your full power, it's plenty to get through another fight if you're not stupid about it." That 'if' is carrying a pretty big load, though. After another swallow of food, Casimir added. "Besides, a little time to digest will give you a good chunk of mana, exercise helps that." Magnus always encouraged everyone to join him in his post-meal exercises for that exact reason. Damn sorcerers.

"That sounds agreeable." Polium said, interrupting the brewing argument. "Loam, wash the dishes when they finish, please." He moved a few feet away and started kneeling. "I have some rituals to attend to, anyway. The food was delicious, thank you."

Something about this trip is rubbing Casimir the wrong way. Was Polium lying to them? He has no reason to. Even heavily destructive spirits like Karn hated undead, so there likely weren't any issues in that direction… He didn't seem like he was going to go murderous over the artifact… What was he missing?

----------------

Whatever he was missing, it didn't stop them from clearing the small but dangerous dungeon. Each fight proceeded more or less the same way: Polium opened with some grand magic that did half of the work for them, then David and Casimir cleaned up. Casimir took on the strongest monsters first, David took the weakest, and they met in the middle. It was like the good ol' days, although the lack of numbers was made up by the fact that Polium was significantly stronger than Hana was. That probably had something to do with all of the alchemized mana they were blowing through to keep going.

Another one of the many advantages of spirit magic is that you could burn potions directly into magic without needing to ingest it or anything like that. Polium probably thought they were being slick about it, but Casimir noticed him pulling out reagents.

"So what's the haul?" David asked Casimir after a thorough looting. They weren't up for any more combat for hours, anyway.

Casimir referenced the list he had made. "In ancient top-quality enchanted items, we have fifteen weapons, one full suit of armor, ten random pieces of armor, the artifact, and this mysterious butter knife." Casimir waved the knife around. The enchantment matrix wasn't really familiar, and empty of power, so he'd need to figure out what kind of mana to feed into it before he could explore it.

"...Dibs." Polium declared. Shrugging, Casimir tossed him the butter knife. Hopefully that wasn't going to bite him in the ass.

"In monster parts, between the harvestable parts like minotaur horns and the condensed cores from the weaker monsters, I'd say they're collectively worth about two more weapons." Assuming you had the connections and wherewithal to actually sell the bloody things. There's one of those cultivator sects in the borderlands of this country, right? They're always able to use more monster parts. They could at least sell the cores to them.

"Selling this stuff is going to be a pain in the ass." Observed David.

"We don't need to sell all of it." Casimir pointed out. "Especially not immediately." He had already swapped out that sword he picked up from the kobolds for one of the three ancient swords. The guard wasn't as fancy, but it was of a similar length, balance, and it had the same boring enchantments he had on his old one, with a bonus enchantment that made it move smoothly underwater. Made by the hand of a master, it was. There was also a short blade that could theoretically replace his stiletto, but the whole point of using unenchanted verenium was to use it to channel magic, so it wasn't so much a replacement as a backup weapon.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up." David groused as he looked at his staff. While there was a staff among the weapons, it was a fire-aspected casting focus rather than something you'd hit people with, so he couldn't get an upgrade. Polium grabbed the staff, naturally. It could concentrate and store fire mana and unleash a narrow stream of flames, which was super-handy for a spirit mage whose fire magic came in 'parlor tricks' and 'cataclysmic', without much in between.

"Well, I'm beat." Casimir announced. He could definitely keep going if he absolutely had to, but he really shouldn't be abusing mind mana like that again. "Let's stash this shit at the guildhouse and come back tomorrow. Hopefully we'll be able to find traces of Petranis."

There was no way they could have missed the fights, so she was definitely long gone. Hopefully they'll find some clues.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

"Okay, I'm pretty sure she was in this one before she rabbited." Casimir said confidently as he examined the magical remnants of the desk. "Liches leave a pretty distinctive imprint on the local mana when they reform." Distinctive… but when they deliberately wiped their trail, it was still difficult to make out. Not impossible, however.

"Any clues as to her whereabouts?" David asked. Casimir shook his head. "Curse it all!" Yeah, tracking anything through the churning mass that was this landscape was basically impossible. Even with the divination skills of a shaman, it was just a matter of checking individual underground chambers for signs of habitation by undead.

"With the scene before him," Polium began, "Karn has revealed to me what they have burned away." He gestured to the exit, where his mud spirit sat ready to open it back up. "We should take our leave."

Casimir wasn't entirely sure whether it was possible for a spirit to do that, but honestly, powerful spirits sometimes felt like they could do whatever the crap they wanted, so he just went through the mud tunnel once it opened up.

Once outside of the underground chamber, they started to move away from the massive piles of flammable mud, following Polium's vague direction. "So, where are we headed now?" Casimir asked. "Because this seems like a dead end."

"The lich's master and confederates had many piles of documents which they burned in that chamber." Polium explained. "From Karn's insight into those documents, their next move is obvious: They seek a specific artifact, although they were circumspect on revealing exactly which one they seek." The aviost trilled in triumph. "Where they were not circumspect was their plans for securing this artifact. We make for Anima!"

Wait… "Hold it." Casimir said. "What was their plan?"

"They seek to plunder the personal vault of the Archmagus." Polium explained. "By kidnapping his daughter, they will utilize a doppelganger to impersonate her and secure access." So that's why they wanted Illivere… "As the girl is kin to a memory spirit, the doppleganger will be able to adequately impersonate her mana profile if given time to study it." Yeah, that made sense. Dopplegangers had enough mind mana tied up in their disguises that they were frequently mistaken for being mind controlled when impersonating people. It was the main method of detecting them.

"Do they know where she is?" Casimir asked. How fresh was his information?

"She attends the Academy of HIgh Magic. Once we-" Not very fresh at all, then.

Casimir cut the shaman off. "Yeah, I already foiled that plot. That's how I discovered the revenants."

"...I also have a map to some of their major bases." Polium said.

"We already took out the one in the Wounded Wastes." Casimir said. "It's where we dusted Petranis."

"In that case…" Polium tilted his talons to his right, allowing the jets of flame to curve his trajectory to the left. "This way, then!"

Casimir chuckled as he mentally finished the phrase. 'To Adventure!'

----------------

Polium's information was, unfortunately, mostly out of date. Each base was cleared out long before they got there, most of them being previously undiscovered or even freshly excavated dungeons filled with monsters. Profitable, but not what they were looking for.

"We've been running around the continent for a month now." David complained. "Yeah, I appreciate y'all letting me sidetrack us long enough for me to do that errand, but this is not getting us anywhere!" The errand he was referring to was dropping the equipment from the Wounded Wastes off at his friend's contact, who turned out to be a quartermaster for the local military. They took the opportunity to sell off some of the superfluous enchanted weapons while they were there, splitting the money evenly.

"At least any and all rust we could possibly have has been thoroughly scrubbed clean." Casimir snarked as he cooked lunch for the group. He's probably stronger than he's ever been, at this point.

"We've also used up most of Hana's potions." David retorted. "The only ones left are those water ones you still haven't touched."

"I have a plan for those." Casimir assured him. "Also, there's still a few more life ones left." Three, specifically. Mind mana was his second most proficient mana type, behind force, so he always had a good idea on how to make use of those mind potions. Even if he tried to hold back on using them. So, he was out. The remaining life potions were reserved for emergency healing.

"Once we face our enemies, they will be quite useful." Polium agreed. "Even if I am uncertain as to how effectively you can wield it."

"I've been practicing." Casimir said, smiling in anticipation. "I'm ready for them."

David punched his palm. "So, what's our next move?"

"I don't know." Casimir admitted. "We haven't checked an Adventurer's guild in six days, perhaps they have more news from the other teams, or fresh leads about undead?"

"I don't have any better ideas." David replied, agreeing with the rough idea. "What's the closest big one?"

Polium checked the map, marked . "The one in the Jurta Federation's capital, I believe."

Casimir perked up. "Actually, let's not go to Jurta. They're invading their neighbors right now. Let's go to Krallent instead."

"Want to check on your students?" David asked.

"More like I need to make sure they get back to the Academy." Casimir said. "The communication crystal I left them has finally expired even after my efforts to maintain the connection, and if they want to get back in time for classes they're going to have to leave soon." Should he pay for a portal? He can afford it now… Maybe if there's a promising lead at the guild, he'll take the extra days to hunt it down, and then pay for a portal.

Polium hummed in thought. "Yes, it may be time to gather information once more. I must continue on this course until the revenant threat is dispatched, but if obligations take you from this journey…"

Casimir winced. "Yeah… they kind of do." He could just not show up for his upcoming classes… but that would leave his students out in the cold. Was it really worth abandoning them when he didn't even have a lead?

"I will send a messenger in the event I learn of their plans." Polium assured him.

David chipped in: "Unless we get a chance to take them out first."

----------------

"I'm sorry sir, but the Cursed Study Group haven't yet returned from their latest mission." The polite old man said sympathetically. Their name was kind of stupid, but Casimir really couldn't talk. They can change it later, anyway. "We did expect them back this morning, but they must have been delayed."

"Ah, where would they have been sent, then?" Casimir asked. "Also… did you expect them back based on their demonstrated travel times, or the standard?" He added.

"Oh, they were specifically requested for a small clearing mission." The bureaucrat replied. "A farmer that moved in recently found an underground cavern on his new property, and heard from his neighbor how proficient your students were." After a moment, he added: "The property is about two days away, and it's been six days since they've left." Shit. "Now that you mention it, they have made something of a habit of coming back early for all of their quests."

"Where's the farm?" Casimir asked insistently.

The bureaucrat considered the request, as it was, strictly speaking, not something he was supposed to do. The Adventurer's guild doesn't recognize Casimir's status as a teacher to hold any special privileges related to his students, and as he's not related to them either… Policy-wise, it's no different than if he was some random thug demanding to know where some rookie adventurers were busy getting tired out by fighting monsters.

Needless to say, policy wasn't always followed to the letter. "Now I don't know what kind of things you get up to in your local guild, Mr. Toomes, but here, we take the privacy of our adventurer's seriously. I couldn't possibly give you directions to Mr. Mason's farm." the old man shooed Casimir away.

Casimir snapped his fingers. "Well, I'll just have to wait, then. On an unrelated note, where is the courthouse? I've been thinking about purchasing some land."

After the detailed directions as to who to talk to regarding land ownership, and an uneventful trip following them, Casimir ran off to possibly save his unlucky students.

----------------

Finding the farm was the easy part. More difficult was finding the cave system that was nominally the reason his students were called. Now that he wasn't in a terrain that was best described as 'churning pudding' in consistency, it was only somewhat annoying to locate rather than nigh impossible.

The cave was cleared, but there was clear evidence of battle. A wide scorch pattern on two parts of the cave, presumably from fireballs, a few cracked bits of floor from exuberant use of force mana to maneuver… they were here. So, time to check on the owner of the land. He did see a shack on the way…

The shack was deserted. After a quick look around, he saw the trail of a wagon. "Back to tracking." Casimir mused, focusing his senses on the smells and faint traces of his student's presence. "They were on the wagon." He concluded after following the trail. "...and Hanna was bleeding." It was quite unusual, actually. She could easily use magic to seal any wound or clean up any blood, but he could pick up a drop of her blood, the mana within distinctly pungent to his enhanced senses, every hundred feet or so.

Ah, she was leaving behind a trail on purpose. Of course. That said quite a few things about their situation. Casimir's guess was slavers. If they were working directly for Luci, they probably would have taken Illivere alone. That wasn't to say that the slavers weren't going to sell Illivere to whatever doppleganger Luci has ready, but the trail meant that they believed that he would come looking for them, and they'd live long enough for him to find them.

Now, he had students to track down.

----------------

If you had asked Casimir to guess where a wagon full of slavers with product would go to in this part of the mainland, he wouldn't have been able to answer that question. Slavery was not particularly endorsed by any nation… officially. There were plenty of 'not quite slavery' kinds of agreements out there, and of course criminals could threaten whatever kind of force necessary to make things work for them. Even bandits had to be able to deal with local monsters, after all.

What he did not expect was a prison complex/quarry that, to all appearances, was associated with the same nation that Krallent is a part of, although he couldn't quite remember the name right now. He was pretty sure the ruler was a King… It had the same flag with the hammer and spear design on it.

His students were definitely inside, though. The question was, was this a legitimate prison that dabbled in slaving on the side, or a slaver camp merely disguised as a prison? As Casimir tweaked and amplified his senses to examine the area from a distance, he started to build a picture of how his students were being kept. They were in the basement, chained up and with their equipment kept in a crate, not yet distributed to the slavers as loot. Well, some of it probably was, but for the most part it was all in one spot. Which if they were a real prison, would be what one would expect them to do.

Still…he needed more information. He leapt to the front gate of the prison, allowing the excess force mana to violently discharge on the ground, which was absorbed by the dirt with a brief tremor. The guards on the towers adjacent to the gate all became alert and started readying their bows.

One of them shouted, using an enchanted stone to amplify their voice. "Who goes there!"

"I am Elite Adventurer Toomes!" Casimir boomed back louder, using a few motes of mana to emulate the enchantment. "This is your only chance to release the unlawfully imprisoned adventurers held here!"

As the guards processed his statement, Casimir assessed the gate. The wall was made of quality steel-plated stone, which was another point in favor of this being a legitimate prison. There were some enchantments improving both the durability of the metal and also providing other security features, but this country did not have enchanters that were up to the task, in Casimir's opinion. But he was a bit of a magic snob, so it was probably passable.

…Yeah, it would take way too much mana to kick it open. Drat.

Surprising him, the guard actually sent someone to 'get the Warden', which put the final nail in the 'real prison' coffin. "You stay there, and the Warden will speak with you."

"Alright. Won't move from this spot." Casimir assured them. He focused on the depleted, but still present mana profiles of his students, which still shined to him from his usage of Attune Senses.

As the minutes dragged on, he noticed his students being moved, sedated with a sleep spell, and he tracked them in his mind's eye as they moved down what was probably an underground tunnel that led… right beneath his current position. He confirmed the terrain with a pulse of stone mana, feeling out the dirt beneath his feet. Conveniently, they thought to bring the evidence with them, carrying the crate with their equipment on the same cart or wagon they were being moved with.

The Warden was a fat man who squinted past his spectacles as he stood on the walkway above the gate. "What's all this then?" He shouted, offended. "We have no prisoners that are here unlawfully, adventuring or otherwise."

"Does your prison have a basement?" Casimir asked. "Any underground tunnels, perhaps?"

Stunned by the non sequitur, the Warden said "No." with confidence.

"Well then, clearly those adventurers aren't in your prison then." Casimir said, kicking the ground in faux frustration. "Ah well. I'll just… go away." Sighing dramatically, he walked off dejectedly, following the path the tunnel took as it transported his students.

The Warden didn't seem to know how to respond to this outcome, but eventually decided that it wasn't his problem. "Good! You are not welcome here!"

Now, where in the world are they taking them?

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Something that Casimir's gone through a lot of effort to learn was how to use the tremorsense divination without also giving away his exact position, on top of giving all of that valuable topographical information to whoever was paying attention with mana sense. This was primarily accomplished by getting better at sensing mana, and then just using less of it to divine the underground terrain. Anyone worse at sensing stone mana than you will get less information from your weaker spell.

Whatever mage they have attempting to detect hazards or pursuers did not learn how to do this. Like clockwork, a pulse was sent out every five hundred feet, and walking on tiny force barriers a few inches above the ground pretty much made it impossible for them to detect him following them. Unless they were exceptionally sensitive to force mana, of course, but that's not a large concern.

These kinds of tunnels… there's usually a substantial monster risk. He didn't sense any enchantments that warded away monster formation… which didn't mean they weren't there, but that just meant that whatever enchanter laid them was a master at subtlety. No wonder the Warden didn't know about the operation under his nose. Or he's just good at playing dumb, but as long as Casimir retrieves his students with no major injuries, he's willing to let bygones be bygones. Well, he'll still dismantle as much of their operation as he can find and loot them into poverty, but he won't go on a long crusade hunting down every scrap. He's got places to be.

As he walked, he realized that he had stopped paying attention to the weather. It started to rain, washing the environment with water mana and making it more difficult for him to sense his students. Of course, that cut both ways. He increased his sensitivity by putting his feet back on the steadily soaking ground, and that same rain created enough metaphorical noise that the mage they had scouting couldn't tell any but the heaviest impacts on the ground.

After about an hour of the kids getting moved slowly through the tunnel, presumably on a wagon, they made it to the trade road. There was an inn that was presumably connected to the tunnel network, so he just entered the place and slumped dramatically at the bar.

The inn was called 'The Trader's Rest', and the bartender was a young and pretty elf. "Rough week?" She asked.

"My students vanished on me, and now it's raining so I can't go look for them." He grumbled. "What do you have that's strong? Today's a day to make mistakes."

The girl smiled widely. "Well, we do have some select stock in the basement that'll knock out just about anyone." She said slyly. She was good, she was cool as a cucumber despite the payday he was dangling in front of her. Whether she suspected a trap, on the other hand…

The mysterious enchanter's work was better here, the presence of Casimir's students was muffled to his senses. If not for him artificially increasing his sensitivity to their distinct mana profiles, he probably wouldn't be able to sense them at all. "Give me the whole bottle." Casimir demanded, pulling out a gold coin and slamming it on the bar. The sound was loud, demonstrating his strength without making it obvious that he was doing so.

Greed sparkled in her eyes at last. Smoothly, she added. "The whole bottle will cost you…" She picked up the coin and assessed it. Or rather, assessing him. "Five of these." She finished. "It's a very exclusive vintage."

Casimir counted out four more, deliberately pulling out twenty of the quarter-ounce pure gold coins the locals used to do so, replacing the coins into a bulging money pouch. Grinning, the elf slipped the coins into her cleavage and rang a little bell at the back of the bar. After a moment, a panel in the wall opened up, and she whispered into it: "Umbra vintage for the customer."

Casimir focused his senses on the ground beneath him as he pretended to be depressed. As expected, the good/drugged wine was kept in the secretive areas that his students were kept in, and he was able to get a flash of clarity on where the entrance was when the cellar door opened up, weakening the privacy enchantments for a few seconds. Similarly, his sense of his students increased at the same time, confirming that they were inside that door.

Noting his exact path, a scruffy man that looked like an experienced warrior entered the bar area, holding a wine that was black as pnuma flower, but without the points of light. "Here you are, sir." He said, unable to sound dignified and instead managing the epitome of sleazy. "A few glasses of this and you'll be lucky to know where you are in the morning."

"All right!" Casimir said, faking enthusiasm. He easily opened it with his bare hands and gave the substance a good whiff. Immediately, his head swam with the gaseous narcotic within the bottle. What the hell did they just give him? "This is powerful stuff!" Casimir complimented shakily. He used a flash of life mana to purge the noxious substance from his body.

"Only the best for our customers." The man said, not bothering to hide his evil grin.

Casimir was going to fake drinking this, using magic to purge the poison as he drank it, but with something this potent… Change of plans. Casimir put the cap back on the bottle. "Where's your toilet?" He asked instead. "I should piss before I stop being able to walk places."

"Chickening out, eh?" The slaver taunted. "A real man's drink too much for you?"

Casimir was pretty sure you could knock out a dragon with a barrel of this, and they were usually pretty resistant to poisons. "Fuck off." Casimir said, faking irritation. "I'll find it then." He walked towards the place the slaver popped out of, trying the doorknob. Hrm, auto-locking, huh? Fancy.

"Hey, that's employees only." Called out the elf.

Casimir spent a chunk of mana to rip the locked door off its hinges. "That sounds like a 'you' problem." He shot back as he opened the bottle again, drawing out and aerating the drug within. The slaver took out a knife and charged, but when the cloud of drugs was shoved into his face by Casimir's spell, he dropped to the ground, out like a light.

The elf rang the bell frantically, sounding the alarm to her confederates. Casimir put the bottle away after drawing out enough drugged air to deal with a few more of them, drawing his sword as he did so.

A few slavers attempted to ambush him as he repeated the steps the first one used to deliver the drug, but he directed his improvised knockout magic into their hiding spots, appearing unopposed as he walked through the hallways.

Even with the rain being blocked by the roof, the water mana that inundated the environment during such a storm tended to creep into structures anyway. Casimir added that mana to the cloud of drugs he was directing, increasing the size and speed at the cost of making it a vaguely visible mist.

"This is good practice." Casimir murmured to himself as he manipulated the water mana into the nostrils and lungs of a few more slavers that were lying in wait. "Ambushes only work if you can actually hide, dumbasses." He muttered as he made it to the hidden trap door. He considered the quantity of drugs left in his mist, then dispersed it. He could save the rest of those drugs for later. Instead, he drew in more water mana from outside and converted his internal mana and released it, building up a proper domain that he could carry into the underground. It would slow him down, but it was important to manage the slaver's fear.

Currently, he hadn't killed anyone yet, and was fighting them with domain magic in the rain. Scary, but not 'panic and do something stupid' scary. It allowed them to think they had a chance to win.

When he felt he had a decent amount of mana at his fingertips, he stomped on the trap door, injecting a spike of metal mana to tear the locking mechanism apart before lifting it. Taking cues from the book he had been studying during the break, he condensed the domain further, sending a thick cloud of mist into the trap door. Dropping in after it, Casimir deadened the sound of his landing, which did not appear to impede the volley of arrows that launched immediately on landing.

With the instant feedback provided by the mist that was linked so strongly to his mana sense, Casimir was able to avoid all but two arrows, to which he angled his body to make them deflect off his armor instead of scoring deep cuts. From the sound of the impacts, they were enchanted with additional impact force, but his armor's enchantments held up.

A few motes of cold mana were fed by the domain, causing ice to grow over the bow-wielding slaver's bodies in a second. Four more of them charged with swords, against which Casimir focused the domain's mana at the ground they walked, creating a slick patch of wetness that was not quite ice, but their boots could find no purchase on the surface of it anyway.

Casimir leapt away, allowing the melee slavers to crash into each other before churning the mist in exactly the right way. Just a tiny seed of lightning mana was placed near their pile, and a large chunk of the domain, more than he wanted to, instantly flash-converted into more lightning mana, cooking the four men in their skins with the sound of a thunderclap. They… probably could survive it. If they get potions within the next hour.

"Need to work on control." Casimir muttered to himself as he finished knocking out the archers that didn't decide to quit the fight after getting flash-frozen. "One underpowered spell, and one overpowered. Are we going to go zero for three?" There was enough mana left in the domain that he could probably pull off one more big spell; it was a pretty small one. Really, it wasn't even more mana than he could personally throw around if he was so inclined. This way just let him get in more practice with domain magic.

Of course, you didn't get to be a successful criminal enterprise in this world without having a few ways to deal with random veteran ranks showing up to dismantle your operation. Which is what he was pretending to be.

What did these guys have? It seemed to mostly be trap enchantments. Which he literally washed away by flowing a cloud of mist to erode away the mana in the enchantments. It was a little tricky to pull off properly, as while you could twist water mana into a corrosive force, it was more in line with his skills to just use it as a medium to cast negative magic through and disarm them normally.

Eventually, he found his way into the cell block. Twenty discrete cells were there, about half of them filled. His students were in one, still unconscious from the sleep magic they used to incapacitate them. Well, it was possible that Illivere was just pretending to be asleep, but he wasn't sure. She was really good at that.

Still, a disadvantage of using domain magic was that his mana senses were muffled, so when combined with the suppressive enchantments in places that he hasn't worn away yet, it left him feeling a little twitchy. The wagon that his students were transported in was in the room, the crate filled with their equipment inside.

Carefully, he directed the remainder of the domain he dragged in here to strip the enchantments on the occupied cells, the smothering water mana absorbing the violent discharge of lightning mana that they were armed with, converting it all into a massive blast of thunder that Casimir directed deeper into the complex, collapsing the tunnel towards the prison. The tiny amount of noise that escaped his control (relatively) also coincidentally shattered the sleep spells on all of the prisoners, causing them to all awaken screaming.

"Get up!" Casimir shouted over the ringing that was no doubt in their ears. He used a few motes of mind mana to make them understand him anyway. "We're going to get out of here before their real enforcers show up." He assumed they'd be showing up, anyway. Despite the enchantments, he thought the defenses he's been barreling through were kind of light. It seemed to just be whatever thugs were on hand at the time.

"Teach, they were going to sell Illivere to a dragon!" Peter exclaimed. Oh?

"We'll go over that after we're out of here." Casimir promised.

Over the next few minutes, Casimir busied himself disarming the enchanted collars that kept the prisoners from doing anything to affect their escape. Like all of the enchantment work here, it was very well done. "...wait." Casimir said after he disarmed the last one. "I recognize this style." The suicide enchantments… "These guys are connected to Luci and Magnus." He whispered to himself.

Casimir's eyes hardened. "Start binding mana." He instructed his students. "I expect trouble." Each one said an affirmation and started doing the Evoker's dance.

Casimir examined the other slaves, but they seemed to be captured mostly for domestic or labor purposes; not particularly dangerous when armed. "You all… just stay out of the way."

Faron shouted an affirmation: "We'll keep you safe!" He vowed.

Casimir started sorting his student's equipment, which was surprisingly the only thing in the wagon. He knew they rushed them out of the prison in a hurry, but seriously? Did they expect the Warden to tie him up for long enough for them to escape?

After his students were properly equipped and in possession of some small amount of mana, Casimir figured it was a good time to get out. "The slavers have been evacuating the bodies of their fellows for a while." Casimir warns. "Follow me."

Walking back up to the Inn was unopposed, but when he was about to leave, a set of five men landed, as if they leapt a great distance to get there.

"Who are these guys?" Peter asked.

Illivere answered first: "The slaver's enforcers."

"Powerful warriors." Hanna added.

"Mages?" Asked Faron.

"No." Casimir said. Despite the rain, the men were stripped to the waist, their muscles on full display as they held their weapons like dedicated warriors. But the power emanating from their stances… It was significant. "Cultivators."

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Mana cultivation was usually used as a measure of monster strength. Materials that were infused with mana were stronger, more durable. Living beings were not an exception to this. Monsters had significant amounts of impure mana at their disposal, and some could be composed of truly massive quantities of it.

But this was not something exclusive to monsters, just innate to them. Anyone who used mana over time, who recover from mana burn without succumbing to mana addiction, developed mana cultivation, gaining strength, speed, and most importantly, durability beyond that of non-mages.

Cultivators were warriors who have all sorts of secret arts specifically designed to maximize their mana cultivation as fast as possible, only learning spellcasting at the higher echelons. That's after you strip away all of their cultural baggage, mind you. It was the reverse of the normal way to learn magic, where you learn how to cast magic and develop mana cultivation as you advanced. It made them superlative warriors, but they also languished when it came to utility magic. Given their roles as mostly-independent monster hunters/border patrols, it worked out well for them.

"You dare attack a place protected by the Soaring Heavens sect?" The lead cultivator announced his presence; fortunately Casimir learned how to speak their language so he could sell monster cores to them. Couldn't read it, though. They were also a bunch of overdramatic whackadoos.

Cultivators didn't, as a rule, believe in hiding their strength. Well, they do, but only in the sense of making themselves seem stronger than they were. So Casimir would peg them as wind-aspected sorcerers, if he didn't know they were cultivators instead. There were significant tactical differences between one and the other. More critically, he knew that the one who spoke was as powerful as all five of his buddies combined.

Still, they weren't entirely unreasonable whackadoos. "I dare to attack slavers." Casimir shouted in reply. "I'm going to give you one chance to forswear these scum before I send you packing back to your monasteries." Talking also gave him time to gather mana from the rainstorm and establish a domain. It wouldn't impede the cultivators at all, unless they try to use offensive magic, but only the stronger ones are generally capable of it. "Kids, get some distance. The rest of you, go with them."

"Slander!" Refuted the lead cultivator. "This is an Inn of good repute, and you will not stain the name of the Soaring Heavens sect with such vile accusations!" He pointed to the crowd of freed slaves. "Go retrieve the employees and guests of our establishment, while I deal with this interloper." He shaped a sword out of wind mana, dense enough to take on the appearance of shining crystal, utterly flawless. Casimir was positive he could gift such a blade to another and it would retain its shape for weeks of heavy use.

Another little quirk about cultivators is that they didn't really believe in improvising their magic, either. Every single spell was a distinct technique that they practiced until they have achieved utter perfection, and given how advanced their ability to shape their mana is by the time they start learning… that meant the few spells they did know were used to their utmost. That? Was a Hero-grade spell.

He needs a little more time to gather the rainstorm's mana… "Impressive." Casimir complimented him in his language. "May I know the name of one who wields such a great blade?"

Exactly as intended, the head cultivator puffed up and swung his wind sword a few times, each swing projecting the cut a few feet outside of the blade, angled to slice several dozen raindrops at once. "You face the Young Master of the Soaring Heavens sect, Zhu Tou!" He shouted, mana giving his voice a booming quality. "You speak well, for a mortal. You no doubt have some meager strength, or else I would not have been called to suppress you. Who is before Zhu Tou? I will remember it, if you survive for longer than one second against me."

Yeah, the rainstorm was beginning to fade. There wasn't much mana left to siphon. It'll do. "My name is Toomes, " Their language was such a clunky mess when you needed to talk about magic… should he translate? Eh… he'll make something up. "-and I wield the power of the Storm-Gathering Scripture. You are a fool to face me here, at the apex of my strength!"

Zhu Tou laughed. "If this is your pinnacle, " not even close. "-then I see that I have wasted my time! If you bow before me one hundred times, I may let you live as my servant!" Not even going to pretend anymore that you're not slaving scum, huh?

Casimir decided to take advantage of the initiative that was ceded to him, drawing his verenium knife and another supplemental item: a sheath that was plugged up with wax. Stabbing the wax through, he let the metal soak in the alchemical poison as he directed the massive quantities of mana he gathered from the storm. With his now free hand, he drew the sword he had looted from that sunken castle: It was probably durable enough to compete with that shaped blade.

To the cultivator's credit, he seemed to recognize the quality of the blade. His arrogant mein calmed a bit, and he took a fighting stance. It seemed more defensive than offensive, which seemed a little strange. Was he waiting for Casimir to attack first? Was he wary of the water domain? Did he suspect the trick Casimir was setting up?

Well, if he was going to wait, Casimir was going to set up another layer of trap. Bringing his network of curses to the fore of his mind, Casimir started making some edits. Reinforce this, increase the capacity of that, add this little bit to make it all work… There.

He's not going to have enough resources to use all of these other plans, and he's out of ideas for other options… time to goad. Attacking things that can see him is not his style. He's more of a counter attacker. Also, his students are winning against his flunkies. "Every moment you wait…" Wait, how do you say… changing idioms. "-matures my victory like fine wine." Casimir taunted. "The Storm-Gathering Scripture will gather the…" He should have known better than to try and taunt someone with a language he was not fully fluent in. "...water around this place and crush you." How to wrap it up? Ah. "This is the warning I, your grandfather, will graciously provide."

Zhu Tou smirked. Yeah, he fumbled his pronunciation somewhere in there, definitely. Maybe it was a grammar mistake instead. "Do you think to warn me, the Young Master of the Soaring Heavens sect? Well, then I should issue a warning of my own: The Heavens-splitting Blade is the epitome of a warrior's might, a blade shaped out of the very soul of the wielder. Against its sharpness, nothing can even slow my sword arts! Observe, and you may learn something!"

Finally, the cultivator attacked. They were separated by about a hundred feet, their ability with mana allowing them to easily project their voices at that distance without really thinking about it. He crossed it in less than a second.

But it wasn't too fast for Casimir. He took a solid stance and parried the incoming swing, the heavily reinforced metal held under the sharpness of the blade, deflecting it past Casimir's body and allowing him to score a small cut with his poisoned stiletto.

After a few more exchanges, the cultivator using his superior speed to dash in and out of reach and slicing out with his blade with skill as keen as the greatest of mage knights, he stopped, shuddering. "Poison?" He asked, observing the tiny cuts that were the result of Casimir trying to stab him after each parry. They were still bleeding, and the blood was… fizzing. It was a useful hemotoxin. "You think to poison me, who will one day be Immortal?" Cultivators focus on mana cultivation massively extended their lifespan, and supposedly, this extended to a state of 'Body reformation' which created an immortal body from their soul. Essentially, they turn into spirits. He's never heard of any that actually did this, but it was a big goal of most cultivators.

As a side-effect of this, they were complete bastards to curse, as their focus on 'refining' their souls heavily resembled the souls of advanced curse wizards, with their networks of curses that tended to block other curses from properly affixing.

This is, naturally, one of the reasons why most curse wizards need to learn how to fight physically with the augmenting side of the discipline: too many things were annoyingly difficult to curse. "Yeah, I made the whole Storm-Gathering Scripture thing up." Casimir admitted. "Worked though, didn't it?"

He was probably experiencing dizziness, a burning sensation, pressure in his chest… Not at all conducive to proper strategy. "YOU DARE!?" He shouted, the tightly controlled wind mana surging with his emotional outburst. He charged forward even faster than before, burning through his mana supply to increase his performance beyond the weakness the poison would have inflicted.

Casimir, in return, increased mana flow to his own curses, matching his increased performance. The first exchange put him on the back foot, his stiletto getting knocked away by the cultivator's flare of cutting winds the instant he tried to stab the more offensively-focused man.

His armor and curses held up, however, making that the only accomplishment of the explosion of wind that the man used to disarm him beyond a few flesh wounds. His sword, as both further away from the epicenter and held more securely, was still in his hand.

Okay, plan check. He's too strong to overpower with his awesome weapon skills. Poison was a bust, he's too fast to use Convergence, Thunderclap, or Flash Freeze. His aura of wind mana is fighting the domain, making anything more guided pointless.

Already down to that plan? Alright, start molding the domain. While Casimir set up his final gambit, the enraged Cultivator gathered his strength once more, and moved at speeds faster than David's best. After a powerful parry fueled by his armor's stored mana, the cultivator decided he was done with petty matters like keeping enough mana to still fly home afterwards. His sword, shaped with mana, multiplied, spinning around him in a tornado of death. In response, Casimir used a flash of mind mana to fool his opponent's senses, just for two seconds. To his eyes, Casimir fled his might.

Instead, he went towards it. The swords calmed their rotation at the sight of Casimir's retreat, repositioning in a defensive formation to allow him to pursue at full speed.

Casimir, in the second of time he had, slipped underneath the defenses and struck the man's stomach with a verenium acupuncture needle, normally used for complex healing or permanent curses, right in the the center of his crazy pseudo-curse network, and cast a curse. He couldn't do anything fancy, but he put in as much mana as he could manage into a spike of magic. Specifically, a lightning attraction curse. Then, he fed the domain a tiny scrap of lightning mana, and let the domain loose to do what it does best.

The effects were immediate. The massive quantities of water mana that Casimir had collected from the rainstorm converted into lightning, which all poured into electrocuting both of them. But unlike Zhu Tou, Casimir was prepared. Every scrap of lightning mana channeled itself over his skin, and was directed straight through the needle into the lightning attraction curse, bloating the spell matrix beyond all containment and immediately causing it to have a resistance reaction.

In other words: He got shocked, his organs got shocked, his soul got shocked. Whatever network of pseudo-curses he had before the electric strike was shattered, although Casimir was pretty sure it was fixable. Also, while he'd be weakened by the network being damaged… he thinks the word they use is 'meridians'? He'd still have the mana cultivation that he developed from those meridians. It really depended on how much of his magic used them as a jumping off point. It was entirely possible he couldn't cast any spells like this, only swing a sword really well.

The man slumped down, unconscious and possibly dying. The swords of wind shattered at the outpouring of lightning mana, the duplicates apparently being active magic. The first one was still laying there, and now that it was still Casimir used negative magic to disrupt it, letting it dissipate.

He examined the man's largest wound. "Eh… that needle is ruined." Casimir said, before he realized he couldn't hear himself. He has more, anyway. He quickly healed his damaged inner ear, and whistled a brief tune to check his hearing. Satisfied, Casimir continued to assess his enemy's health.

"...He'll live." Casimir pronounced. At least, he's not in any more danger of dying than most of his fellow slavers. Cultivators were crazy tough.

Dashing over to the other battlefield, he noticed Hanna tending to the subdued cultivators. "Any problems?" He asked his students.

"They were really strong!" Peter exclaimed. "It was like fighting you during that first challenge you gave us, but there were five of them."

Casimir grinned at the reply. They've really grown, huh? "Well, you did well. Cultivators are extremely difficult opponents. Their secret training techniques give them strength that normally requires decades of effort in just a few years." He was wondering how his new training curses stacked up, actually. Apparently it was more favorable than he expected.

"Thank you for saving us, Mr. Toomes." Illivere said earnestly. It was more emotion than she usually spoke with, so she must be pretty frazzled by the whole event.

"Hey, these guys were beyond what you should have faced. I should have come back sooner." Casimir said, apologizing without saying it directly. "Now… What's this about a dragon?"

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Oh shit. I completely forgot to post the latest chapter of this when I was supposed to. My bad.

-----------------------------
The explanation from his students was pretty basic: They overheard the slavers referring to whoever they were going to sell Illivere to as 'the dragon', and that a representative of the dragon had examined her during their captivity to confirm that she was who the slavers said she was. Illivere wasn't conscious during that, but Faron was.

The representative was… well, no one they knew. Some human who didn't introduce themselves within Faron's acute elven hearing. It did, however, explain why their stuff was kept in their vicinity, though. Illivere had something the dragon wanted in her possession, but wouldn't elaborate as to what it was in advance.

"Given the various possibilities, particularly their recalcitrance on exactly what they wanted, it was likely this." Illivere explained, taking out a rather large amethyst ring she kept on a chain around her neck. "It would serve as proof of my identity, and acts as a key to certain locks. With it, they could more easily penetrate some high security areas."

"That makes sense." Casimir agreed. "They couldn't know if the item in question was in your possession, or if you had passed it to another before capture. So they had to not steal your stuff until the dragon paid up and took what he wanted." This fit neatly into the doppleganger plan that Polium had discovered. They hadn't fully given up on it, apparently.

As Hanna stabilized the slavers that were dying, Casimir went through their documents. Most of it was coded, of course, but there were also some decrypted or yet to be encrypted documents that gave him enough of an idea of what was going on. Also, they used the same methodology to encrypt their documents as the ones on Anima, even if it required a different code wheel. Code wheels that the slavers had several of, hidden away. Between him and Illivere, they quickly managed to get a fairly complete picture of the slaver's operations, and more importantly, when and where the dragon's representatives will meet for the handoff.

…Well, he'll need to hire a portal to get back in time. Worth it.

----------------

After they had gotten the slaves into the custody of the Adventurer's guild, first double-checking that they didn't stumble across a country where slavery was legal, they got to work.

The slaver's messages and notes left an incomplete picture as to the details of the deal, with frequent dodges like 'the usual precautions' and 'code phrase 5' instead of anything actionable. Therefore, depending on the nature of these protections… the dragon's representatives might not even show up. It was still worth pursuing.

The meeting place was the middle of a featureless desert, where you could see for miles if anyone who you didn't like was approaching. A reasonable precaution for trickery.

"Remember kids, if they're prepared for directness, use trickery. If they're prepared for trickery…" Casimir said as he caught sight of a very familiar stone construct, cleverly blended into the terrain as a random landmark. If Magnus ever needed to go quickly, he always used that construct to move quickly. He could easily go hundreds of miles away in mere hours if he caught on to their approach.

"Be direct." Finished Faron. Casimir had passed out the pieces from the dungeons that he thought they could use, so his new enchanted breastplate, big enough for the boy's broad chest, would likely see some excellent use today.

Casimir wrapped light mana around himself, concealing his presence with a lazy invisibility spell. It was nearly noon, and in terrain like this? A heat shimmer was the perfect disguise. He ran along force discs that he created for the briefest instant of contact, to prevent Magnus from detecting him via sensing tremors. One of the biggest drawbacks, in Casimir's opinion, of becoming a sorcerer is that it cripples your ability to sense mana without relating it to your specialty.

Magnus will be ready for them, of course. While Casimir was confident in his ability to elude his former friend's senses, his students cannot claim the same, and they're right behind him, trailing by about two miles as he ran at twice their speed.

But he was counting on that. Magnus's construct shook off the dust he used to allow it to blend in with the rest of the desert, and charged… straight at Illivere. Just as planned. Casimir spent several seconds dumping a large chunk of his mana heart into his fancy new… well, it was really old… whatever. He put a bunch of mana into swinging the greataxe he picked up in that dungeon, which was made with a similar philosophy of the one he had before: maximum damage in a single swing. It was a little bigger than his last one, true, but it was made of sturdier materials and enchanted with mithril inlays that let it last over a thousand years without tarnish.

Put simply, it was better. If he tried using this much mana on his last ax, it would break. Which was good, because if he tried this with any less mana, he'd break more than just his weapon.

Timing his swing just right, his weapon impacted the front of Magnus's stone construct as it rapidly rotated the exterior of the sides, moving faster than any mundane vehicle. It exploded into tiny stones, and Casimir grinned as he felt the mana signatures of Petranis, Magnus, and at least four other unidentified undead of similar strength each spasm as his attack cut all of them in half.

That didn't, of course, mean that the fight was over. Magnus was still a wraith, and he recovered himself after just one bounce, turning to face Casimir now that the illusion was missing. Another one of the undead in his group was also a wraith, its fiery form continuing to go at the same speed as it went to engage Casimir's students. Petranis was just going to reform, and if one of the other three were liches, so would they.

…Ah, another one of them just managed to survive. Another dwarf, pale and wispy, struggled to repair the damage that Casimir's cut had inflicted, but wasn't destroyed just yet. It was a specter, a revenant spawned from a warlock. Hopefully Petranis was the only lich, or else that would be embarrassing, using that much mana to kill so few.

Well, the fire wraith was definitely going to fight his students, so all Casimir can do is keep the other two combatants busy. "We have to stop meeting like this, Magnus." He shouted. "Don't worry, though. This'll be the last time." Casimir stowed his axe, bringing out his casting stiletto for the fight.

Magnus let out a grinding laugh. "So you did have a tracker on the princess." He said, presumably referring to Illivere. "Those sand-headed slavers are useless, missing that." The wraith stomped the ground, mana pouring out of him as he shaped his usual battle armor.

While Magnus was busy with that, Casimir decided to finish off the specter. Warlocks weren't quite sorcerers, but they had a lot in common with one, magically. It was why wraiths and specters were so similar to each other. This one felt like it used wind and water aspected mana, mostly, so Casimir cast his newest original curse, inspired by his studies of domain magic. As it was a curse that relied on the target using mana, it worked on the only halfway material monster without issue. "What's your name, by the way?" Casimir asked the specter, to be polite.

"I am Hilvas." The specter said, gasping. Ah, he was a known Revenant from the list he perused in preparation. Veteran-ranked adventurer, and was listed as a wind wraith. It was an easy mistake to make. "And you're dead." It reached out, its arm thickening into a drill of water.

"Nah." Casimir said, flicking the drill with a tiny mote of of lightning mana before jumping clear of the explosion.

His curse worked exactly as designed. It twisted the water mana in the monster's system, churning it in the way that was done in the water domain to prime it to convert into lightning. So his water magic all flash-converted into lightning, which was not something survivable for something as weakened as Hilvas was. If he was less injured, and knew anything at all about utilizing lightning mana… he may have been able to do something. But he was not.

"That's a new one." Magnus commented, his voice just as grinding but much deeper than before. His stone armor was much more closely connected to himself after his reanimation.

"Wizard." Casimir replied. That said it all, really. He learned more tricks over time. With a glance, he could tell that the fire wraith had not immediately incinerated Casimir's students, so that was a good sign.

Still, Magnus knew, roughly, what was effective against him. Further, Casimir's mana heart was depleted from dealing with his backup. This would be tricky to do without taking an insane risk.

Magnus, finally deciding that the waiting game didn't favor him, started to lumber forward, simultaneously launching chunks of stone at high speeds, the Shrapnel Burst spell being aimed more to limit Casimir's mobility rather than seriously attack him.

Casimir remained stationary, twitching his limbs to block or avoid the shrapnel that actually got near him as Magnus shaped his limbs into a set of axeheads. Casimir frowned at the decision. His usual hammer would be much easier to avoid… which was the point.

When Magnus finally reached melee range, still blasting out random shrapnel bursts in an attempt to catch Casimir off guard, Casimir tested his preparedness. He coated the sole of his foot in stone, tapping the stone behemoth's leg with it as a feint. The section immediately attempted to seize the limb, stone softening into mud before re-hardening. Casimir just slipped out of the stone covering his foot, allowing Magnus to subsume the decoy. He ducked, weaved, and allowed the minor blows to score hits on his armor as Magnus did his best to try to kill him. Fortunately, the man never really figured out how to apply his mana into making himself faster. His mana cultivation did increase that over time, but compared to David, the dwarf might as well have been standing still.

But stone magic allowed him to increase his weight directly without making him any slower, so if he scored a proper hit… Casimir might survive. Maybe. The man was leaving tons of openings, but they were traps. He expected Casimir to back off, to make some distance, and he was dedicating a lot of his magical efforts to make Casimir regret that.

In a way, he was trapped in Magnus' preferred combat range. But from another point of view… Magnus was trapped in Casimir's preferred combat range. If Magnus knew Casimir as well as Casimir thought he did, he was probably thinking something along the lines of 'okay, Casimir's going to try and baffle me with an illusion about… now.' Not one to disappoint, Casimir tossed out some mind mana, reinforcing the idea that Casimir was not where Magus thought he was and that he should do something wide area when Casimir least expected it.

Instead, Casimir crouched down and put all of his armor's stored force mana into reinforcing a shield he put all of his effort into erecting. Magnus' armor exploded off of him, the massive chunks of stone going even faster than the herding shrapnel bursts. Casimir was a little concerned that his students might get hit by that, actually. Well, hopefully they'll be in a state where Casimir could heal them up…

The force shield held, two of those large chunks deflecting off with hits that were not at good angles. Dropping it, Casimir focused his senses on the one weak point of the now-vulnerable wraith: its monster core, right behind the nose of the stone mask that pretended to be the wraith's face. He stabbed his stiletto right at it, channeling metal mana through the blade so that its durability and sharpness, for just a moment, exceeded anything that Magnus could bring to defend himself. His arm was strong enough to drive it through.

Magnus's body crumbled apart, his voice silent. "Rest easy, buddy." Casimir said. "I'll take care of things from here." Now, are his students still alive?

…Yes. Fantastic.

----------------

"Tell us where your master is!" Peter shouted at the imprisoned wraith.

"Fuck off!" The flaming prick shouted back. "The Master will reclaim me soon!" Despite the appearance of intangibility, even fire wraiths had some solid parts. Faron had a long set of tongs that were fiercely gripping his, and there was a barrier that absorbed fire magic cut into the ground, presumably by Illivere. The wraith must be pretty spent if he didn't think he could overpower that barrier… then again, Faron only needs half a second to crush him, and the barrier can certainly buy him that.

"Y'all get anything?" Casimir asked. Turning to the wraith, he started with one that Revenants were usually willing to answer: "What's your name?"

"I am the great Giles!" The wraith insisted. Ah, that one. Veteran-ranked as well. Good job, kids.

"And your friends? I knew Magnus, Petranis, and Hilvas…" He said, trailing off. Revenants hated the idea that they were forgotten, and if he knew those other Revenants in life…

"They are of no consequence!" Giles retorted. Guess he didn't know them before he died. "You will soon join us, for the Master will not tolerate this insult!"

Hm, so the Master was creating them? No one that Casimir had ever heard of had ever admitted to studying negative magic deeply enough to be able to animate a revenant… Time to guess. "So the Soul-Devouring Dragon lives…" Casimir said, faking conviction.

Giles laughed. "You can't trick me, Last Breath!" Drat. "You know nothing!"

Illivere spoke up: "I know everything. Kill him." Faron immediately crushed the core of the wraith with his tongs before dismantling them to reclaim a portion of the mana he formed them with.

Casimir grinned. Sometimes it pays to bring a literal mind reader to interrogations. She's gotten a lot better at it since he last saw her, if she was able to get actionable information that quickly.

Hanna finished doing whatever she was doing and approached the group. "We did it, Professor!" She said, moving her left arm to test the range of motion. It must have gotten hurt.

Casimir smiled. "You did." He agreed. "You made me proud, handling such a high class monster all by yourselves." Each of them perked up, puffing up their chests at the praise. "Now, I need to see if I can pick up clues in that wreckage, but afterwards…"

Illivere immediately understood his instruction. "I'll tell you everything."

After checking the corpses of the two mysterious revenants (one was definitely a mummy, but it wasn't Luci. The other… probably another Lich), Casimir joined his students around the fire they started to cook lunch, Casimir breaking out Magnus' old cookware and the box of steaks. "So, what's this Master? Archmage? Dragon? Undead Archmage? Spirit?"

Illivere's expression was stony. She hated what she was about to say way too much for it to be anything but the truth. "Yes." She said. "The Soul-Devouring Dragon… has become a lich."

…a dragon lich? But… that's impossible. Monsters can't become undead… right?

"It gets worse." Illivere continued. "The Dracolich is under the direct control of…" She swallowed her words, fear overpowering whatever part of her bloodline normally cooled her emotions. "Malice, the God of Monsters."

…Shit.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Update: I'm an idiot. this was what was supposed to be posted in two days, on Monday. Enjoy the early release.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

I'm not completely happy with this climax, but I have a problem writing satisfyingly long fight scenes. it's an extra-long chapter though.

-----------------------

"This is heavy shit." Peter said after Illivere's full explanation.

"A God of monsters…" Faron muttered. "Terrifying."

Casimir sighed deeply. "Okay, so let me see if I've got this straight: Your dad has something that Malice wants. To that end, he created a dragon-lich, which he can directly control, unlike most monsters, to lead an organization that can retrieve this, a risk that has led to his exposure to us."

"That's right, although he has other objectives as well." Illivere confirmed. "Giles didn't know of any other time Malice has acted directly, but he's a factor that could explain some of the more unusual monster activity throughout history."

Hanna remained quiet, lost in thought.

"Well, was there anything actionable there?" Casimir asked. "Give me an hour and I'll be in top shape.

"I wasn't able to get directions to their base that I understand." Illivere replied. "Giles doesn't have a very good sense of direction." There really wasn't any way around the 'target doesn't know anything' defense. Compartmentalized information was a pain. "He did know that it would have taken them approximately four hours to get back to their base, and that it was roughly… that way." She said, pointing. "But I didn't catch how quickly they were going, and they were still accelerating when you intercepted them anyway."

That was an easy thing to fix. "Well, I know how fast Magnus goes on that thing." Casimir pointed out. "Also I think I can pick out his trail, even if he tried to hide it." He clapped his hands. "Start binding, and then drink your invigoration potions. I have a very important task for you, if we find something."

They're ready to at least provide support. Also, he wants them where he can sense them until he gets a better idea of what in the world is going on.

----------------

Tracking Magnus's earthmover spell was actually relatively easy. He did put a small effort into concealing it, but clearly didn't put discretion as a priority. There were plenty of destroyed shrubs to find, and he flattened parts of the terrain ahead of him as he went, and didn't do a great job putting it back afterwards. Four hours at his usual 'don't plan on fighting' speed put it two hundred and fifty-ish miles from the dropoff point, and given how unprepared he seemed for battle… probably relying on those other revenants to do any fighting… yeah, he was probably going that fast.

This time, the hiding place of the Malice conspiracy was in a lush and fertile valley, a river cutting through, an idyllic place for anyone to inhabit. Too bad that Casimir recognized this hellhole. The Venom-Drowned Valley. Something about the area created encouraged life mana to develop into the most hostile, poisonous varieties possible. Living there was impossible, but it was a relatively famous location in the sense that it was dangerous enough for Elites to be sent there on gathering/monster clearing missions.

Casimir pulsed a sensory spell through the ground, imitating Magnus in the amount of power used. If they had some kind of code for this, they'd know, but the issue with unprompted coded signals is that it took people a few seconds to recognize that something was wrong.

They were in an underground complex in the mountains on the eastern side of the valley.

"Uh, Teach? I felt that." Peter observed. He better have, even with his iffy mana senses. "Won't they?"

"If you're hiding in the middle of the wilderness, you can't go panicking at every stray divination." Casimir lectured. "Further, they're expecting a Stone Wraith to come back, so they'll just think it's him if they don't have a coded signal or something."

"They do." Illivere declared. "Suspicion and alertness has bloomed in an underground area, right there." She said, pointing straight at the complex. This is why Casimir ended up overusing mind mana. It's just so useful…

Hm, element of surprise lost, okay but less than ideal backup, an undead dragon, and on top of that, bare minimum, Luci, with whatever spirit magic backup Malice can provide his Lich-warlock-priest-whatever…

"Time to run." Casimir decided. That response time was way too fast. "This way, towards that stormcloud we saw on the way here." If they do pursue, some environmental advantages would not go amiss.

Immediately, they fled towards the source of accessible mana. The thing was, mana that was purer was also less stable. Mana had a general tendency to mix and corrupt itself, becoming harder and harder to manipulate. There were forces in the world that purified mana naturally, although no theory fully accounted for the discrepancies. You needed to isolate and control purified mana if you wanted to stay that way, but if that was how it worked, why didn't all of the mana just… stay corrupted?

The generally accepted theory, at least for water mana, was that natural interactions between light and water mana allowed scraps of pure water mana to rise into the air, which accumulate into clouds that, once they became dense enough, unloaded its rich mana supply on whatever happened to be under it at the time.

One of the things that led to the creation of domain magic was studying the effects of rain, so naturally, it was an excellent place for someone trained in weather domain magic (which he qualifies as now) to stand and fight. The only issue was… it wasn't raining. So he's going to need to do something about that if he wants to tap into that extra power.

But were they pursuing? It didn't seem like it…

"I think we escaped." Faron declared. Hanna sighed deeply in relief.

Illievere didn't seem so sure. "At this distance it's hard to tell… but I think I can still make out the ripples of them searching for us."

Peter hummed, implicitly trusting Illivere's assessment. "You have anything else in that bag that can help us, Teach?"

He already gave them the… oh. Yeah this would be a pretty good time to break it out. "Just this." He pulled out the Spear of Four Deaths, passing it to Illivere. "Have you ever used an artifact before?" He asked.

"Yes." She confirmed. She did a mind magic spell that Casimir didn't recognize, on the spear. "...I have explained the situation, and the fragments of the spirits within have agreed to help us." What. She started waving the spear in the air, pointing it upwards. "I should be able to handle the connective part of our battle plan, Mr. Toomes." She said, a small smile on her face. What the hell is this? Is this some kind of secret magic the Archmagus had up his sleeve?

Hanna took a deep breath. "If you have a good life potion, I have an idea that could help." She said softly. Without hesitating, he tossed one of his emergency healing potions at her. After a moment of gathering her courage, she gripped her own arm, and after a moment of dawning horror, ripped it off entirely before drinking the potion. A sliver of green crystal, heavily resembling a starmetal artifact, steadily grew out of her shoulder into the shape of a skeletal arm. Then, she repeated the feat for her other arm.

The arms she ripped off, on the other hand, melted into a mana-rich goo that immediately sprouted and took form into… a spirit? What. Measuring the power of spirits accurately was always kind of a chancy proposition, but this one that formed… was substantially stronger than Hanna was. How the heck does that work? His best guess… a spirit pact, druidic or clerical in nature, triggered by her sacrifice. It didn't explain… literally anything else about that, but Casimir could at least understand how she managed to get them more mana on their side than they started with.

The spirit looked like some kind of armored animal person, with thick wooden plates, a bipedal build, and a shape that suggested that it could effectively curl into a ball to protect itself. Its arms were long and thick, and ended with dangerous-looking claws that were dense in concentrated mana.

"That seems like an exceptionally extreme measure, Hanna." Faron said, uncomfortable with her strange arms.

"Don't worry, my arms will be fine." Hanna assured them. "They'll go back to normal after a few days."

"Is that spirit summoning?" Casimir asked. "I didn't know you were a spirit mage."

Hanna's expression was not comforting at all. "Well, I am. Surprise!" She said, lying blatantly. What. "Chestnut here will be able to fight better than I can. I'll use my remaining mana to heal any injuries." She then proceeded to run away, ducking into a medium sized copse of trees that was about a mile distant.

Casimir turned to his male students. "Do either of you two have something that's going to damage my apparently fragile worldview?"

"No." Faron responded.

"Nope." Peter said, before wincing. "Well, there is… one thing." He amended. Casimir scowled. "But it can wait. Won't help us now." He hastily added.

Casimir turned to Faron again, squinting as he examined him. "Well, if that's everything…"

Faron coughed. "Well, now that I think about it…" He formed a sword in his hand out of… space mana!? "I have been practicing this. It seemed prudent, after seeing that mummy make use of it."

That's it, Casimir is a terrible teacher. "Well, clearly y'all have grown by leaps and bounds without me holding your hand." He admitted. "But don't think that I don't have more up my sleeves!" His students started to glance at each other nervously. "After we get back home, I'm going to make last semester's lessons look like drinks at the guild!"

With that confident assertion, all three of the remaining young wizards firm up their stances and prepare for battle with fire in their eyes.

Just in time, too, as Casimir heard, smelled, and tasted the noxious, moaning space magic that he last sensed in use by Luci tear open a rift in front of them, with the first being out being, as expected, the Soul Devouring Dracolich.

"Now!" Casimir shouted, quickly drawing six of the top-quality water potions on the ground. From the copse of trees that Hanna was hiding in, the other twenty-four of them came flying out, detonating when they came into contact with the water domain he quickly asserted control over, causing the area of magical dominance he controlled to swell in strength.

"What in the crushing depths is that?" Luci questioned, reflexively jumping away from his swelling domain after leaving the portal. "Is Hana here?"

The Soul Devouring Dracolich had no such compunctions; but it seemed sluggish, as its scales were half-gone, rotted away along with large swathes of its musculature. He supposes that while most revenants had more magically potent bodies than when they were mortal, a dragon would see it as a step down… Musings aside, the dragon used its primary method of attacking: it started to inhale, sucking up the mana they had left helpfully accessible to it.

Sensing the rate of depletion… This is working even better than Casimir thought it would. "He's weaker!" Casimir declared. His plan was for the full strength dragon, too. It was chancy, mind you, but it was his best shot that didn't require him to spoil the chance he had to catch the bastard. Even if they almost did anyway. "Next part of the plan!"

"Oh no you don't!" Luci shouted as she charged, space-aspected "Holy" sword in hand. Apparently they were short on competent backup, because there were only two other Revenants present: a second mummy and a vampire, which is a cultivator revenant. He couldn't discern a mana flavor through his domain's overpowering aroma for the mummy, but the vampire appeared to be metal-based, given the superlative blade he was wielding, practically singing the tones of metal mana.

Faron jumped forward with his own weapon shaped from space mana, engaging the mummy in melee combat. Luci wasn't a slouch when she was alive, but neither was she usually the type to jump into melee combat when she had other options. She just probably assumed that Casimir would be well-prepared for all of her usual tricks, and knew that Casimir would be distracted by the dragon draining his domain. So, despite the difference in experience, Faron's dedicated and enthusiastic training matched and even exceeded Luci's swordsmanship.

The vampire was engaged by Chestnut the spirit, the wood-seeming body surprisingly fast and predictably durable. The second mummy was engaged by Peter and Illivere working together, in the sense that Peter distracted it while Illivere showed off her new artifact's offensive capabilities, a simple stab turning into an eruption of fire, utterly destroying it before it managed to do anything beyond an attempt to call on binding manacles from the ground, a typical miracle of Redoubt. Hrm, you don't see many non-dwarf priests of that particular spirit.

As for the dragon… he was still sucking up mana. "You know, I've always wondered." Casimir shouted as he molded the domain as the dragon consumed it. Illivere jumped back to a defensive position to his right while Peter went to join the fight against the vampire. "How much do dragons understand about the underpinnings of their magic?"

The dragon chuckled, its voice much raspier than it was when it was alive. The Soul Devouring Dragon wasn't very chatty, but perhaps Malice is different. "I know enough." It said. "Negative magic's inherent limit is that of scale. You desire to use this outpouring of alchemical mana to counteract this strength. But it is not enough. I will devour this mana, and then yourself, consigning it to the void."

"Really? Darn." Casimir said sarcastically. "Looks like you got my plan all figured out. I'm kind of new with domain magic, you know? I'm really more of a curse guy. But I'm sure Luci told you all about me." Discreetly, he signaled Illivere. He's spread out the domain enough that it might not notice this next bit.

Luci sent off a massive flash of light, which was completely ignored by everyone present. Chestnut had managed to secure the vampire in a grapple, and Peter was focusing on trying to get through the revenant's impenetrably tough metal skin.

"She was quite reluctant to speak of you." The dragon replied. "But they always do, eventually. You lost to this body in much better circumstances than the last time, and there are no heroes to assist you this time. Merely children."

Illivere unleashed a mist with a wave of the haft of her spear, allowing it to fill the domain with additional mana from her own stores as well as the inherent mana within the artifact. It also spread itself upward, linking the domain to the cloud above while concealing that connection with the mist.

"Maybe so." Casimir acknowledged. The dragon's undead body was… difficult to get a clear read on, and the domain's polluting his senses with noise was not helping… but the domain was also being drawn into the monster, so if he focused on that… "But you forget the other weakness of negative magic."

"What is this, a lecture?" The dragon growled, ready to unleash the mana he was draining the instant Casimir made an offensive move.

"Perhaps." Casimir said, drawing in the cloud's mana and organizing it into the right configuration for his plan. "I am a teacher now, after all. You've met my students, of course." He said. Almost…

"You're an up-jumped grave jockey that found out that making corpses is more lucrative than storing them." The dragon retorted. Ouch. "You disrespect the noble art of magic with your craven obsession with knifing people in the throat, both metaphorically and literally."

Casimir raised an eyebrow. "Kind of an odd sentiment from a God of Monsters." He said idly, which earned him a glare filled with more hate than the dragon could ever manage in life. "Am I supposed to lie down and die, then? Or do you just object to me sticking pointy bits of metal into the monsters before I kill them?"

"Something like that." The dragon whispered. "Now, I've absorbed half of your domain already, so if you're going to do something, it's too late. Not that it would have helped."

"I'm sorry if you're feeling impatient." Casimir said. "But this is my masterpiece of magic, so I'll thank you not to ruin it."

"You're not even using your specialty." The dragon observed. "Even if you were, cursing me would be a futile effort. You're not cursing yourself…" The dragon seemed a little nervous from Casimir's boast, scanning the area for anything he could be doing that wasn't already apparent.

"I am a curse mage, correct." Casimir agreed. "Specifically, I'm a Master of Curses. That means I've invented my own spells. It's not that difficult, really. I've always had a knack for improvisation. You just need to write it down afterwards and you have an academic paper."

Almost… He's getting distracted. "One of the most aggravating things about dealing with curses is that a curse doesn't need to be cast through anything in particular. The less direct and energetic the interaction, the weaker the curse is, and the easier it is to shrug it off." He tapped his head at eye-level. "Curses can theoretically be cast just by looking at someone and focusing on them. Eye contact increases the power of this. Some kind of ranged interaction, like conversation, increases it more."

The dragon's nervousness increased, as it continued to absorb the domain while feeling out what Casimir was doing. It could probably tell that Casimir was molding the domain into a domain spell of some kind, and it may have noticed the extra mana coming into it, but it didn't look up, so it probably didn't notice why the domain was growing faster than he could drain it.

Excellent. Continue to be concerned over the things he was talking about… "Distance matters, of course. The closer you are, the less your spell is weakened. Touch strengthens it more. Forceful contact, like a punch or slap, makes the curse even stronger, by a little bit. Getting through the skin, like shoving one's hand down the throat of your target? Even better." Casimir laughed. "With the right equipment, you can even curse someone by stabbing them! But you knew that."

The Vampire was destroyed by Illivere intervening, using the artifact spear to penetrate the vampire's metal-based defenses, and Luci appeared to be on the back foot now that all of his students were attacking her. She did, however, separate Chestnut into six pieces… which are still alive. Space mana was weird.

Was he ready? He thinks so. He just needs to distract Malice again. "You know that the instant you stop absorbing the domain, I can hit you with the full force of it. So sit tight." Casimir said. "To create the best curse, you tailor things towards your target. Without a thorough examination, this is generally impossible for most beings. You can get maybe two thirds of the way there by studying others of their kind, of course. Something like you?" Casimir laughed as he waited for the slightest ebb in the dragon's concentration. "You could study on how to curse dragons, revenants, negative mages, spirits, and possessed beings…" Casimir grinned savagely "Or you could be someone who cursed that body in life, know how to effectively curse liches, and have spent the last two minutes studying it."

The dragon snarled, backing off from his protective void to gain additional distance. "You arrogant fool! I will destroy you with what you've given me." He brought the water mana he had been siphoning back out, prepared to deal with whatever Casimir was going to do and building an offensive spell to kill him if he dithered.

"Perfect." Casimir said, right when Peter decapitated Luci's mummy. Casimir directed a lightning bolt at the dragon, not by creating it, but instead by making everywhere else a place where lightning did not want to be. The storm cloud he had been brewing above them unleashed its fury, the bolt from the sky impacting the overgrown lizard zombie.

The dragon was prepared, of course. He used the stolen water mana to block it, which was overpowered by the sheer power of a "natural" lightning bolt. He also used his own negative magic techniques to draw in some of the mana, which he might have used to deflect even more of the bolt. It's what Casimir would do if he was in that dragon's rotten britches.

Now, as a lich, getting struck by lightning wasn't necessarily a lethal blow, and that went double for a dracolich. But the lightning bolt wasn't the attack. The curse he had painstakingly created within the bolt of lightning was, which went through the connection to the lich's soul through his absorption of mana.

It was the culmination of his entire life and education. From his family, he learned how to seed curses into other spells. From his Master, he learned how to construct a spell from disparate pieces of lore. From his party, he learned how someone's soul changes from being turned into a revenant. From his students, he learned that he had been neglecting his education, and sought to learn more magic. During his quest to set his friends to rest, he learned how to use weather magic, and invented a curse to set off a foreign mana conversion cascade into someone's body and soul. Most importantly… he knew that negative mages tended to struggle with ice mana.

The curse set off every scrap of mana the dragon had collected from the water domain and hadn't finished using. The dracolich was encased in a massive glacier, which then immediately shattered into billions of tiny pieces as the dragon flexed its undead muscles. Those muscles immediately froze over again, as the curse hadn't finished with the conversion yet.

Casimir smirked. "Lightning bolt." He intoned, and he put the rest of the domain into some good, old fashioned, blowing stuff up.

He loved the sound of thunder in the evening.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

The corpse of the Soul-Devouring Dragon burned. The amount of mana in a naturally formed stormcloud was immense, even if the amount of mana in that particular one was on the small side, as it wasn't fully formed. If Casimr didn't already ensure that all of his students were protected against such hazards, they would all be blind and deaf from the flash and boom of that spell. "And that!" He announced. "Is why any military that can afford it buys literal barrels of alchemized mana and brings mages that can use the stuff." He kicked Luci's head up, catching it by the blasphemous litanies that wrapped around it. "Nothing else can outmuscle that kind of magic." Even the strongest of divine miracles could only match them, and priests paid steep, personal prices to invoke such power.

He examined the face, spending a moment to remember her, as she was in life. He wasn't sure how long he did so, but Hanna poked him, seizing his attention. "Right, we need to follow through." He said, tossing the head into his bag. "Looting, then we go back to the dragon's lair. Chop chop!" He added, clapping his hands for emphasis.

His students leapt into action as Casimir instructed them how to properly harvest useful materials off of powerful undead, although there was a significant amount of guesswork on the undead dragon. Afterwards, Illivere twirled her new artifact spear and leapt towards the revenant's base, leading them all to the entrance. Casimir was pretty sure he knew where it was, but Illivere definitely did, so he just followed her.

The Soul-Devouring Dragon and his cronies were holed up in a massive cavern, clearly purpose-built as a dragon-sized lair with supplemental facilities scattered around like model sets, just on the floor waiting to be crushed by the inhabitant who was properly sized for the room.

The phylacteries of liches were not difficult to find, once you locate their general position. Monster cores were high-density impure mana, mixed with precise ratios that all monsters of that kind shared, with revenants being one of the big exceptions to that rule. In particular, they had an exotic mana aspect within it, noted in scholarly writings as 'death-aspected' mana. It was only present when the undead were animate, so it was difficult to study. Tomes of necromantic lore, which study the undead extensively, were very difficult to come by, so Casimir knew basically nothing about it. Well, except that it stank. It made it impossible for them to hide their natures.

"Petranis, the Dragon, and one more." Casimir said, nodding to himself. One of them must be one of the passengers he destroyed when dusting Magnus. Still… "Okay, pay close attention to what I'm doing." Casimir instructed his students as he carefully dismantled the pseudo-curse that was responsible for reconstituting the Lich's body after destruction. Sure, he could just smash the things, but phylacteries were valuable. After about a minute of careful work, the death-aspected mana vanished from his senses, proving that he had successfully destroyed it. "Hmmm…" He wonders… "Next."

Petranis' phylactery wasn't any harder to disable than the other Lich's. It was a little easier, in fact, due to the fact that he had contaminated it a little bit when casting that tracking spell. It was like a tiny light helping him see what he was doing. Carefully, he focused his mana senses towards the death-aspected mana, as revolting as it was. When he spiked the last little bit of the reformation spell, dismantling it, the death magic… fled. It didn't vanish, it went somewhere. "Hello…" This has potential. "Is that you, Malice?" He asked rhetorically.

"Teach, what are you doing?" Peter asked.

"Ah, don't mind me. Hopefully you're learning something from watching me disable these phylacteries. I know I am." Casimir said, before moving on to the big one: the Soul-Devouring Dragon's phylactery.

A regular lich's phylactery was fairly ordinary, in the sense that they usually all looked the same: a sealed urn made from ivory while decorated with black diamonds, too small for proper cremation, with a glowing monster core inside. Prying or smashing the thing open was enough to kill it, but you could get more money for it if it was still sealed, as long as it wasn't going to reform a very angry undead wizard.

A dracolich's phylactery was different, apparently. It appeared to be… some kind of drum? It was still made of ivory, stained black and with wickedly sharp flourishes like a barbed skeleton, and it used flawless diamonds as decoration. An inverted color scheme… One end was wide, but covered in a dragonscale tarp that Casimir hesitated to touch.

Still, his mana senses could clearly smell the vile concentrations of death-aspected mana, thicker and more potent than any other example. How to… He started to carefully probe the phylactery's matrix with his tools, testing its structure. It was always something of a combination of a curse and an enchantment, but it was closer to a curse, so he referred to it as such. This one… had some differences.

"I found some papers." Faron announced. "They are unencrypted and detail the resources of the rest of the organization."

"That's great." Casimir said absently. "Little busy." Okay, so that bit is the same as the regular phylactery, and that bit is different. The dragonskin has part of it etched on the back, but oddly it was one of the similar parts, not the different one. It did remind him of an auto-function…

Hanna came back into the room from where she vanished with Chestnut, the spirit that she hopefully just summoned. Her arms were once again flesh and blood, and not skeletal with an appearance that was suspiciously close to the starmetal spear that Illivere had started communing with when Casimir started on the dracolich's core.

He was really wishing that he did more research on exotic objects. He'd have some kind of containment circle design on hand if he did. But… he did have some extra trap disarming gear that might be helpful… there's stuff in common between disarming traps and dealing with dangerous materials…

After some frantic digging through his various magical storage spaces, Casimir had the phylactery suspended in the air, his most protective gloves on, and with his most expensive set of magic channeling tools. "This should help." With this new setup, he tested the phylactery by tapping the dragonskin, producing a thumping note that confirmed that it was, in fact, a drum. Magically, on the other hand… it responded. It didn't do anything, per say, but the force of the drumbeat traveled down the complex magic, which was promptly rejected. It reminded him of an encryption enchantment, where it did something in return for a stimulus of a particular pattern, like a specific musical piece. Was there any part of this that… there. That's the metaphorical tumbler for this lock.

After a few more test taps of the drum, Casimir determined… that he could not just pick this lock. These kinds of musical passwords… they weren't that hard to just destroy and bypass that way. He didn't usually work with things that he couldn't just break if he needed to.

"Hey Faron." He said. "Any music in those papers?" This was probably something that Malice needed someone he didn't directly control to do. "For a drum, if it specifies."

Given that Casimir spent the last few minutes tapping on a drum, it was no surprise that Faron immediately understood the purpose of the request. "Ah, I'll look, sir." he said.

"Me too." Peter said, with Hanna humming in agreement as they split the pile of papers.

While they approached that problem, Casimir continued to examine the mysterious mana aspect. While he's sure that he's far from the first person to study the special mana type crucial for the functioning of undead, with the context of Malice as the God of Monsters… it's clearly one of that spirit's mana types. One of these parts of the spell matrix that he doesn't understand, which is about half of it, for a generous definition of understanding, has to relate to this mysterious mana aspect.

He suspects that it's a mirrored aspect, like ice is to fire. But it's definitely not mirrored to life, because that was his first guess and he'd be able to pick it out if all he needed to do was find a flipped life aspect utilization segment.

"Found it!" Peter declared, holding up a page. "It goes dun, dundun, dun-DUN, du-" Faron whapped Peter upside the head. "Uh… here you go, Teach."

Casimir stared at Peter. "Do you know how to read sheet music?" Casimir asked, because he was planning on using it as a guide to his tests. Peter nodded. "Then put on my gloves and play it."

After a moment of everyone getting ready for something crazy to happen, Peter tapped out a small ditty on the drum. Casimir paid very close attention to the spell matrix, seeing the tiny pulses of force mana tapping the drum initiated travel down to the proper spot to be read by the enchantment.

At the conclusion of the music, the drum erupted in mana, and immediately started to reform the Soul-devouring Dragon's undead body. Illivere's artifact spear quickly ended that threat before it could become a problem, but Casimir was already disabling the matrix as quickly as possible, having already determined the most efficient way to do so.

Just as before, the death-aspected mana bled away the instant Casimir compromised the matrix. However, after the surge of death-aspected mana from the invocation of the reformation of the dracolich, it bled away over two seconds instead of an eyeblink, an eternity's difference. It was bleeding… down?

Casimir reviewed the information his mana senses were giving him. Yes, definitely down. Did it arrive in an upward direction? He used a little burst of mind mana to sharpen his memory even further than he already was. …it did. He had a little bit of trouble comprehending the distance, though. It was further than any other distance he's traced a connection through before. Which meant it was more than one thousand miles. Has anything ever gone that deep? Gravity cultists, if anything…

Still, he's hit the dead end. He's magically memorized the structure of the matrix, even if he doesn't understand it, so he can study it later. It's not like he won't have time over the next semester. "Well, that was the last thing we needed to do, I think." Casimir said. "Y'all go over everywhere?"

"Yes sir!" Faron declared. Casimir used a much louder stone magic pulse than usual to see if there were any still-hidden areas.

Sensing none, he went down the other list. "Checked every room?"

"Yes sir."

"Checked the furniture for hidden compartments?" Casimir asked.

"Yes sir."

"Checked underneath everything?"

"Yes sir."

"Took everything of value?"

"Yes sir."

Casimir clapped his hands. "We're done here!" His student's expressions melted into relief. Casimir gave them a wide grin. "Let's go home."

----------------

If they really booked it, and hired a ship to go to Anima at full speed, augmented by their own magic… they'd still get there late. Thus, Casimir needed to hire a long distance portal. It was a service that didn't have any real consistent provider, but there was an informal network among wizards capable of the feat that allowed them to open long distance portals by collaboratively casting at both ends. The tricky part was, of course, getting a hold of two. Fortunately, the Adventurer's guild kept records of where any such wizards have set up shop, so he could accomplish multiple tasks in one go. Also fortunately, the Academy had such a wizard, so Casimir just needed to get hold of just the one.

"That sure looks like an undead dragon head." Stated Guildmaster Limeshaper as he stroked his beard. "Never thought I'd see something like this."

"I was surprised too." Casimir said as he placed on the table the last proof of death of the Revenants, Luci's head. "I'll deliver this one to the Helelites personally."

"So this was just you and the Cursed Study Group doing this?" The dwarf asked incredulously.

"I did the hard parts." Casimir assured him. "It's a lot easier when you know all of their tricks." Like how comparatively vulnerable Magnus was when he was using his stone transport, or that Luci's best spells can be relatively easily defended against via curses. Or that the Soul-Devouring Dragon prefers to use the swallow and digest method of magic absorption, which opens the door for the trick he pulled to keep him still and magically occupied. He had been planning that move for weeks. Admittedly, he was unsure if it would work after the Malice revelation, but the storm cloud allowed any extra power to be rendered moot.

"...Huh." He said, thinking hard. "...You're all promoted." Casimir's students whooped and started celebrating at the news.

What? "Really?" Casimir said, surprised. "I guess it might be warranted for me after that quest," He'd argue against it, but he did just complete two technically heroic-ranked quests practically back to back, so he could understand why someone else would think him worthy of the rank, if they didn't know how much of an information advantage he had for both. "...but my students haven't been adventurers for even a year. Is promoting them to veteran really a good idea?" He asked.

The dwarf snorted. "They've earned it. They weren't just incidental in your completion of this quest, but instrumental. Is that right?" He didn't share the sensitive bits, like that baffling trick Hanna pulled, but he didn't take all the credit. It wouldn't be right.

Casimir pursed his lips as he resisted his first impulse. "..I suppose." He eventually conceded. "I couldn't have done what I did if I had to fight the dragon's backup." It was surprising how willing enemies were to let Casimir stall and set up complex magic if it meant that they could gamble on their backup killing his students before the reverse happened.

"Without an exam, their promotion would be considered probationary anyway." Guildmaster Limeshaper added. "They won't be pushed too hard. Besides, isn't school going to start back up again soon?"

"Yeah, I'm going to need to get a portal opened up back to the Academy if we're going to make it back on time." Casimir said. "Do you know anyone who can open it from this side?"

"Aye." The old dwarf replied. "The guildmaster at Rorik's Outlook is capable of it. That's a dungeon town about two hundred miles to the southeast from here, on a mountain." He shrugged. "He may ask you to help clear a tricky monster or two, though." Dungeon towns were only founded for particularly large and complex underground areas that accumulate monsters, ones that could spawn monsters faster than an adventuring team could clear it.

Come to think of it… "I've delved there before, actually." Casimir said. "Like… nine years ago? Somewhere around then."

"You'll not have met Seasplitter then." Guildmaster Limeshaper said. "He retired from adventuring about five years ago. Unless you met him as an adventurer, he was 'The Sky Splitter' before deciding to settle down for a while." Really? Family name of 'Seasplitter' with the epithet 'Sky Splitter'? He shouldn't talk, but still…

Nevertheless, Casimir nodded along. "Don't think I have." It's a big world out there, he's met maybe one in twenty elites and heroics in his career, and that's a generous estimate.

"Well, it's going to take weeks to process all of this. You better get going." The guildmaster said, tapping the head.

"You already know where I'll be in the next several months." Casimir replied. "Just get everything sent to Anima and I'll make a trip to the capital once it's there."

"Will do. Safe travels, Hero Toomes." The guildmaster said, grinning at Casimir's new title.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Next chapter's the last one for Book 1. I won't be starting on book 2 any time soon, if at all.

-----------------------

Rorik's outlook was a pretty typical dungeon city: a fortified keep in the back end of nowhere. This one in particular was on the top of a reasonably-sized mountain among other mountains, maybe two and a half miles tall. Several ropeways connected the place with the bottom of the mountain on various sides as well as the adjacent mountains, each endpoint a miniature town in its own right.

"Wow…" Peter said as he saw the massive cargo lift. Thick steel ropes, enchanted for further strength and durability, trailed up the slope about twenty feet apart, wooden columns with even greater enchantments keeping them suspended over the rocks and shrubs.

"It's impressive engineering." Illivere said in agreement. "But wouldn't this be expensive to replace in the event of an attack?"

Casimir had seen it before, so he just kept walking. "This is a dungeon city. They're fiercely independent, even the ones that are nominally taxpayers to the nation they're in or near. No one attacks them with armies, because that's just a quick way to get a massive monster outbreak. These are the kinds of cities that get passed back and forth between nations in peace treaties, all the while just continuing their business suppressing the dungeon and selling the monster parts." Well, dungeons spawned more than monsters, certain magical ores and other materials spontaneously form from mana flows in dungeons, but you could also use geomantic manipulation, so it wasn't an exclusive source. "They're good places to live, if you don't mind the risk of a monster outbreak."

The group approached the ticket office, where a young elven girl sat bored. She had clearly been working at this place for a while, as she was no less bored when five adventurers came to her workstation. "When's the next lift?" Casimir asked.

"Six hours." The girl said. "Tickets are two each." She looked him up and down. "You have any local coin?" She asked.

"Nope." Casimir replied.

"Half silver, then." She said, switching to adventurer guild shorthand.

Casimir started digging through his coin pouch. No, this one only had gold… where was his silver? Ah. "Same cost for a Runner's ticket?" He asked.

"...a what?" The elf asked, confused.

"Oh, you don't do that anymore?" Casimir asked. "It's where you let us just run up the rope." They did it back when he spent that one year based here…

"...No, we don't." The elf replied. "I've never even heard of that."

Casimir scratched his chin as he contemplated that. "Come to think of it, I usually went up and down from the other side…"

"You're not allowed on the ropes." The now much more alert girl insisted. "Only the enchanters are allowed up there." Well, he assumed that emergencies wouldn't count, but it was possible that Zeke was acting outside his official remit when he offered that alternative route.

"Fine, fine." Casimir said, sighing. "Five for the regular tickets then." He counted out some coins from some backwater that they passed through while hunting for liches. "These should be fifty-fifty silver and tin." Quarter-ounce per coin, so… twenty coins. He placed them on her scale.

She weighed them, then examined a random coin. Her eyes glowed with magic as she inspected the mana composition of the metal. "It checks out." She brought out their tickets, the same familiar numbered leather-wrapped wooden tokens with faint enchantments to identify themselves.

"Well, what do you want to do?" Casimir asked his students.

They immediately started talking over each other, excited to have some time to burn in a town. Casimir chuckled. Makes him feel a little old, really.

----------------

After some shopping and way too many impulse purchases from the slick merchants who specialize in separating young adventurers from their dungeon money, they were able to go up the lift into the city proper.

Guildmaster Seasplitter was a middle-aged elf, probably about one hundred and fifty years old, and he welcomed Casimir warmly into his office. "Sit, sit. Now, I understand that you need a portal back to Anima?"

"That's right, Guildmaster." Casimir said respectfully. "Within the next four days, preferably." That would leave them with one full day to get resettled before classes start up again.

"I've already spoken with Headmaster Gardender. He's quite relieved to have heard news of you, he was expecting you back already." Guildmaster Seasplitter said, somewhat chidingly.

"Stuff happened." Casimir said, shrugging.

The elf snorted at the understatement. "Yes, 'Stuff happened'. Anyway, he's arranged for their end of the portal at noon in three days." Fantastic. "Until that time…" He said, trailing off.

"Yeah, I'll cull the dungeon a bit, no problem. My students could use the experience in underground fighting." Casimir said immediately.

"Not quite what I was going to ask." The guildmaster said. "It would be appreciated nonetheless, but what I actually need is more… precautionary. There are strange reports from the deepest recesses of the dungeon, unusual magical effects with no discernable origin, oddly intelligent monsters, and even the terrain appears to shift between reports."

Casimir would like to think that such things happening so close to Malice's movements was a coincidence. He knows better. "Have any other dungeons reported similar issues?" He asked. Maybe he was just being paranoid…

The Guildmaster waved his hand vaguely. "The Umbral Loch may have mentioned something along similar lines." Crap.

Casimir sighed. "I'll check it out, but any significant action on my part is going to need to wait until after the next semester."

"Just get me something to go off of and I'll make the portal." Guildmaster Seasplitter said, an edge of desperation to his voice. "You may be a fresh Heroic, but this town hasn't even seen an elite in months, ever since that dungeon rush started in the Bladespire mountains." He winced. "I was about to recruit my best veterans and lead them down there myself."

"Yeah, that's probably not a good idea." Casimir said, eyeing the elf's notable paunch. "Any other oddities you haven't mentioned?" He asked.

"Just one." The guildmaster said. "There's also been an uptick of treasure located. Hopefully it's just a new cavern that opened up, something made by some wildcat dungeoneering expedition twenty or thirty years ago. It would fit the quality of the treasure." He looked to the wall of his office, where a massive map of the tunnel system took up the entire area. "I have a bad feeling, though. Minor hitches in the fabric of space, like someone's been using space magic recklessly. I haven't sensed any proper magic, though, so I shouldn't be seeing those aftershocks. But I am. It's a mystery."

Casimir was beginning to understand what was disturbing the old elf about these reports. "Hopefully it's just that." He agreed.

----------------

Even with all of the fancy titles and recent promotion, Casimir never really saw himself as a hero, some larger than life figure that could have epics written about them. He killed monsters, with cruel efficiency more often than not. Striking from stealth, counteracting whatever impressive tricks his targets had, and letting them suffer and weaken before putting them out of their misery rather than any kind of dramatic clash of blades.

By the same token, most of his jobs get done without much in the way of… dramatic twists. When something goes wrong, it's usually because he took a calculated gamble that didn't pay off, or some known unknown was revealed to be more than they were prepared to handle.

But lately… that was changing. After not one but three separate coincidences pulling Casimir into the same plot of the God of Monsters… even if it was because he was teaching Illivere, there was enough luck involved to make a guy… suspicious.

Or just paranoid. Once you know Malice existed and acted through monsters, you start seeing his hand whenever anything remotely odd starts happening. Was he involved in this? Perhaps. It almost made him look forward to teaching classes again. Almost.

The dungeon was large, miles of tunnels crisscrossing the mountain's interior. The adventurer's guild took steps to keep things contained, sealing any entrance beyond the one they control and sending patrols to keep watch for any new ones forming. He had sent his students to just do some regular dungeon quests to keep them busy until the portal, but Casimir's quest had him venturing deeper.

The thing about dungeons is that mana flowed a lot more freely through air than solid stone. Thus, underground tunnels like those found in dungeons tended to form currents, with the thickest and strongest monster populations being where those currents intersected each other. These 'monster nests' were clearly marked on the extensive maps that Casimir was provided. Such as the one he was standing in right this second.

"...This is not nearly enough monsters for a nest." Casimir decided after placing the last of the monster cores in his bag. The impurity of those mana flows made them a lot more difficult to sense, unless there was something in the area purifying or filtering the mana; like those cactus mushroom things he harvested a few of that were drinking up and concentrating the water mana, keeping the tunnels dry and providing a source of clean water that adventurers could use if they were too desperate to save it as an alchemical ingredient. They practically glowed to Casimir's mana sense in comparison to the objectively much stronger mana convergence he should have been standing in.

But more difficult to sense did not mean impossible. "It's shifted…" Casimir said, feeling out the subtle flows. "It's all going one direction now." He marked his map, noting that the monster nest was now defunct. "Now, where are you all going?"

He drew his sword, slicing the monster that tried to ambush him in half. Nothing unusual there. He siphoned the core to clean up the corpse anyway, and placed the resulting stone in the bag with the rest.

Eventually, he paused in his journey. "What… is that?" He took a few steps back. Nothing. He walked back over that invisible line. He really wished he was better at interpreting space mana because that's… certainly something.

"I found your anomaly, Guildmaster." Casimir muttered to himself. It was subtle… if he wasn't actively looking for weird mana interactions, if there were more monsters around… he might have missed it.

He let out a pulse of stone mana, ready to flee if he detected something dangerous. Creating a mental map of the terrain, he compared it to the area he should be on the map. It… didn't match at all. It looked… carved. Like man-made tunnels rather than the naturally formed ones, even if he really didn't know enough about geology to guess how.

It was only a dozen feet or two before he found the tunnel. Smooth floor, unnaturally flat, paved the way deeper into the dungeon, even though this segment of the dungeon was supposed to be a twelve degree ramp. It wasn't tiled, and it was clearly meant to look like it was naturally formed, but no natural surface was this… flat.

This whole area followed that theme, of "natural" walls that were far too regular and shaped to be anything of the sort. There was still some kind of subtle aura suffusing the area, somewhat reminding Casimir of domain magic, a sense of presence, the mana held in place in readiness rather than the natural state of flow.

Any further musings were interrupted as the local monster population rushed his position all at once, a few even going around behind him in an attempt to cut off his retreat. There's the 'oddly intelligent' monsters that were reported. This would be dangerous… if the monsters involved were actually dangerous. He just flooded his network of augmenting curses with mana and carved a bloody swathe through the monsters.

It was strange, these monsters were weaker than the ones higher up in the mountain… After the last of the monsters were slain, there was an odd fluctuation in the stillness of the psudeo-domain, and the monster corpses all simultaneously dissolved into nothingness. Now that felt like active magic use… but if you could do that, why not attempt to interfere with his curses as he fought?

What in the world is going on?

----------------

Whatever force directed those monsters to fight in a coordinated matter, it gathered all of the monsters in the area to do so, as Casimir found the rest of the curious dungeon segment utterly bare of them.

That isn't to say that there wasn't anything to find. "...Why is there a treasure chest?" Casimir asked out loud. It was just… strange. It was even trapped… with an outright amateur wire that he could have clamped and cut when he was six years old. Inside was a basket hilt sword of reasonable quality that more or less matched the style of the one he was using… but it much more closely matched the one that kobold was using, back when he was still hurting for a weapon usable against massed enemies.

Does he still have that sword? Or did he sell it to that army where David lives? If he did still have it, he likely stashed it… in here? No, in here. He drew the sword from his bag of backup weapons, unsheathed it, and compared the two. If you ignored the enchantment he had put on the original sword… It was a perfect copy.

It was also the only thing in the treasure chest. No one would put just one sword in a chest! He put the swords away. Something seriously strange was going on.

After another few minutes of attempting to discern the direction of the mana flows past whatever was stifling them, Casimir eventually found an odd pedestal, a gigantic gemstone inlaid on the top of the elaborate structure. It felt… like a monster core. Not an undead one, but a more ordinary, if potent, monster core, the stink of overlapping mana scents thick in his senses.

The mana of this particular room was much thicker than anywhere else, swelling and trembling at his presence. Casimir touched the core, in an attempt to more precisely examine it, but it suddenly started flooding his system with mind mana, nauseatingly impure mind mina, and it cut through his compromised defenses as it attempted to shout, telepathic noise so discordant that Casimir reflexively lashed out, kicking the pedestal and breaking it in half. The noise intensified for an instant, causing him to collapse in pain, before fading away.

After recovering from the mental attack, Casimir picked the biggest piece of the broken pedestal, separating the giant monster core from its mooring and pocketing it now that it was inactive. "Whatever this is, it was the source of everything." Casimir said to himself, noticing that the mana in the air was no longer being strangled and was now beginning to flow more freely.

He kneeled down, examining the shattered pedestal. "Ah, there's some kind of enchantment array here." Casimir said to himself, noting the distinct wires of an unknown metal within the pedestal. "That I've ruined." If he had known… Bah. The metal's still kind of strange, so he spent some time looting it before turning back and making his way back up to the surface.

There was no way something like this was just a one-off… He'll have to leave it in the Guildmaster's hands. He'll be too busy to do much about this in the near future.

Maybe next year, if it's still a problem.

 

[Khettien]

Thank you for sharing this story, it's been a fun read.

 

[InquisitiveSquid]

Thanks for the great story. Now I'm wondering if Hanna has an artifact skeleton or if she's a spirit reborn as a mortal.
Also, Malice just created Dungeon cores?

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Well, it's done. I'm not proud of the quality of this book, but I am proud of myself for managing to finish it.

I do apologize for forgetting to post this in the morning.

--------------------------

Their arrival back to Anima was not heralded with any particular fanfare. Just work…

"Here's the paperwork for your classes. Staff meeting in tomorrow at noon. Be there." Were the first words out of the Headmaster's mouth after the group went through the portal.

And family…

"Casimir! It's so wonderful to see you again! I was so worried!" Were Master Southwind's first words after they left the portal room into the adjacent waiting room, the incredibly tall elf picked him off the floor to maximize the affection of her hug.

"You sure cut it close, didn't you son?" Asked another obsidian-skinned elf with thick muscles and a bandana covering their bald head.

"Father!" Exclaimed Faron, surprised to see the sailor.

"What, you think an old salt like me wasn't going to visit?" The unwrinkled man asked as he gripped his son's hand in a handshake that he pulled into an embrace.

Peter's mother, a rather short woman who was older than Casimir expected, was also waiting, as was Professor Giltblade, Hanna's guardian. Casimir glanced at Illivere, who had no one waiting for her, but that just put the girl in Master Southwind's sights, so in a matter of seconds her crushing, if heavily cushioned, grip was shared by the both of them.

"It's nice to be home, Master." Casimir said with a grin.

Master Southwind set them both down, grabbing Casimir's hand and starting to walk away. "There's so much to do, Casimir. I handled all of your marking appeals, but we need to go over the results of those, and make sure you have all of your material requirements updated for your courses. Obidaiah finally got fired so you're teaching that whole course this semester, " What? He has to teach the sorcerers even more? "-and there's a few student complaints that I need to go over with you, did you really tell your students you wouldn't take on personal students until after the semester?" Did he? "Also, Professor Harper wants to get you to agree to help with the dueling club, on top of that-" Master Southwind kept talking, piling on more bureaucratic necessities with things she had agreed to on his behalf while he was gone and was thus now stuck with.

Ah, academia. It hasn't changed a bit.

----------------

Hanna shuddered as Casimir placed the acupuncture needle into a specific spot on her back. "Why needles?" She asked.

"If you want me to get as precise a picture as possible on what's going on with your soul, I need the full picture. This will ensure the clearest view." Casimir responded clinically. "I don't do this kind of work much, so I need to work a little slow." Her soul/body connections were really, really strange. After another few minutes analyzing what his magic senses were telling him, he inserted another needle. "I'll spend a few more minutes to see if that's all of them, but while you have twice as many body/soul connections as most people, they're still mostly clustered in similar spots." He would have had to feel things out to find them all anyway, so it wasn't as much of an imposition for him to do it in comparison to someone who would do half of them by memory, who would have gotten most of them way off as a result. "I still think I should have brought Master Southwind here for this."

"No." Hanna said immediately. "You won't do anything bad, but… She's too…"

Casimir grunted in understanding. "She's pretty bad with keeping secrets, yeah." He agreed. "Hang on…" He brought out yet another needle and jabbed it into Hanna's left foot.

The teenage girl yelped. Ah, he must have screwed it up. He removed the needle, looked at the extra connection point more closely, and stuck Hanna's foot again. She only winced that time. Good.

"Was that the last one?" She asked pitifully.

"Maybe…" Casimir said as he strained his mana sense to see if he had missed anything. Two hundred nineteen needles were sticking out of her as she floated in mid-air. "...Yeah, that was it. Now, for the next step." Gently, he started channeling the low intensity life mana slowly through the needles, filling in every nook and cranny of both her physical and spiritual anatomy. When dealing with exceptionally complex curses, the kind that are usually reserved for body modification or mana attunement, this kind of preparation was the best way to pre-empt any flaws in your matrixes, the equivalent of ensuring you have a nice and flat floor that was level before building something. It just so happened that it was also the first step for, say, creating a full soul map of someone.

As it turned out, Hanna was some kind of artificial human created by spirits, with no biological parents. The issue was, Hanna didn't actually know much about what that meant, beyond her ability to create spirits of life by ripping off parts of herself, also to re-absorb them later.

Thus, the full analysis of her soul anatomy. "And… I'm ready." Casimir said. His eyes were glowing intensely, he knew. Casimir tapped the needles one by one, each tap creating a tiny pulse of mana that traveled along Hanna's soul structure. Hanna was stoic externally, but each tiny flash of pain lit up her soul as she endured the minor but annoying pain.

"Okay, I think I'm almost done. Just need to…" Casimir trailed off, channeling mind mana into the pre-prepared crystal. After finishing that process, he projected the soul map inside the crystal, creating an image that he compared to Hanna's soul. "Perfect." Casimir started removing needles from his student, lightly turning her as he went before finally turning off the enchantment that kept her suspended in the air after the last needle was on the tray. "You can put your clothes on now, by the way." He said idly. She hurried to the chest in the corner of the room to do so.

"So… now what?" Hanna asked, dressed in a light dress rather than putting on her full kit.

Casimir hummed, projecting the soul map. "Well, I can start with telling you what you feared? Not the case." He pointed to a few of the stranger bits. "If Chestnut was merely trapped within you, and then recaptured after you freed him, these… callouses? Scars? Whatever these are, you'd expect to see them here" He pointed to a distinctly non-calloused bit. "-and here, and for the soul's composition to be distinctly different as it re-integrated, but there's nothing." Admittedly, it wasn't completely definitive, but once he understands this exotic piece of soul anatomy, he'll know more definitively.

"What is happening, then?" Hanna asked, carefully examining the soul map without any real comprehension.

"I don't know." Casimir said honestly. "They don't match up to the tears you outlined before we started, so they're clearly not that. I'll need to do some research." He shut down the soul map display, taking out a wooden egg-shaped container and deposited the crystal into it, snapping it closed. "This will keep it safe from detection."

"Um… about the… other thing…" Hanna said softly, uncomfortable.

Casimir smiled. "Don't worry Hanna, first thing we'll do in the next break is visit your home, okay? We'll get that prophecy thing knocked out, no problem." Apparently, 'The Forest Father' had sent her here to gain strength to face 'the threat below' which was prophesied to arrive soon. Hm… could it be? Well, they'll find out.

"Right." She said, brightening at Casimir's confidence. "So…?" She trailed off, glancing to the exit and fidgeting.

"You can go home, yes. I'll see what I can wrangle from the Academy's library to see if I can make sense of this." Really, the weird thing was how… normal it acted. It responded to curses more or less the same as any spirit-blooded person. Oh, there's an idea. He could track down the soul map of someone with a similar bloodline and compare them. Maybe there's some insight there.

As Hanna left, Casimir put the wooden egg into his most secure pouch. His fingers brushed the other major item in there as he did so. "Oh, right. That thing I've been putting off."
Well, no time like the present.

----------------

"I don't know how to thank you for this." Abbess Redpoint said as she led him to the empty tomb.

Casimir sighed. "The bounty was plenty, thank you. I went on that quest for personal reasons." Ah, they were here. He passed the Abbess, the woman chirping in surprise as he channeled mana into the shrine.

The light shined like high noon, just like before. Not a single shadow was allowed within the area, each flourish of color in the murals as rich as when they were first painted, over a year ago.

"Now, if you could…" The Abbess said, holding her hand out for the purpose of his visit. "There are spell defenses I need to circumvent."

Casimir snorted. "I got it." With all the time he spent here, the idea that he couldn't open this is laughable. He tapped out a sequence of mana pules on various spots on the shrine, alternating between light, space, and life mana to emulate whatever authorization signature Helel used for the tomb. The ornate box that held pride of place on the shrine opened up, causing the priestess to gasp in shock. "Here we are." He said with a small smile. Still got it.

Reverently, he took Luci's skull out of the pouch, pulling it from underneath his city gear armor. Revenant bones didn't have anything about them that was particularly concerning in comparison to their formerly living counterparts, so this wasn't that unusual, for an adventurer. He gently placed the skull in its proper place. "Luci…" He whispered, trying to find the perfect words.

"...Welcome home."

----------------

"Here he is." Peter said, uncharacteristically somber as Casimir walked into the room. An elderly man laid in the bed, wasted away, practically gasping for air. "My grandfather's… can you help him?"

Casimir hummed. "Well, if the Helelites couldn't fix it… maybe, maybe not." He took the blankets back to inspect the man.

The old man's eyes sharpened. "Who're you?" He said with surprising strength. Casimir could sense the man readying his withered mana heart, but Casimir was not concerned.

"I'm a doctor." He lied. It was close enough to the truth.

"Boy, I told you not to spend money on me!" He said, frustrated. "Go to school!"

As Peter argued with his grandfather, Casimir analyzed the man's soul. It was definitely some kind of curse, that was for sure. It was exceedingly complex, though… clearly it was a spirit curse. "Swamp spirit, right?" Casimir asked. "It's important that I know the source of the curse."

Peter grinned at Casimir's deduction, while his grandfather looked stupefied. "...I didn't tell the boy that." He said.

"Do you have more detailed information?" Casimir asked. "Mud spirit, rot spirit, fetid spirit, toxin spirit?"

"...It was a rot spirit." the man said. "Cursed me for killing its favorite toad."

Casimir snorted. "Yeah, they'll do that." Ironically, professional cursebreakers are rarely called for curses imposed by a curse wizard. Much more common were spirit curses, which were much harder to remove. Thus, the profession's demand. "You know, you'd have been suffering for another four years before Peter'd be qualified to cure something like this, right?" Only a bit of an exaggeration. With motivation and a hyperfocus on the task, ignoring all of the other stuff he should be learning, getting under the two year mark would be quite possible. But it's much easier to just cure it himself.

"But then he'd be set for life." The grandfather said with conviction. "There's good money in cursebreaking."

"In other countries, maybe." Casimir mumbled. "Well, he can easily afford it now, but I'm doing this for free. I have more money than I know what to do with." That wasn't strictly true. He could always try for even better armor and weapons, but taking a fair price out of Peter's share wouldn't really impact his ability.

The old man coughed wetly, the curse in his system flexing as the man's phlegm thickened and spoiled in his throat. Peter's grandfather went into a full coughing fit from the curse's effect, but some quick water magic extracted the wad of rotten phlegm and soothed his throat. "Ah, thank you." He said.

Casimir huffed. "Right, I could move this to a ritual room, get some potions and medicine, and do this the slow way…" He gave the old man a meaningful look.

The man's smile had very few teeth, but resolve aplenty. "Do it fast. I can take it."

"This is going to hurt then." Casimir said, yanking off the covers of the old man. Peter recoiled at the sight of his grandfather's nudity, but it didn't bother Casimir at all. He draw out his cursebreaking needles, thick verenium ones coated with a less conductive metal in the center for safer handling. Casimir's hands blurred as he stabbed the old man with eighteen needles, and as one he sent enough mana down each one to penetrate them straight through his body, if he were so inclined.

Peter's grandfather's scream ripped out of his throat, louder and clearer than ever after Casimir's minor treatment of it. But within Casimir's mana senses, he could see the rot curse shatter and break apart, which was promptly siphoned back out through a set of four needles that Casimir inserted as the man was writhing. "That'll do it." Casimir said, reclaiming all the needles with a gesture and flex of mana.

The old man breathed deeply as he calmed down from the ordeal. Peter scrambled to help him up. "Grandpa!" He said worriedly. "Are you okay?"

Exhaling with strength, the old man gave a wide grin showing all nine of his teeth: "Never better, boy!" Peter smiled right back.

Casimir coughed. "You can handle the aftercare, Peter. Vigor/Recovery curse variant, I brought a copy with me." He fished out the scroll from one of his many bags and passed it over.

Peter's eyes were full of happy tears as he accepted the scroll. "Thanks, Teach! I'll learn this in a snap."

Casimir grinned as he left the Woods' apartment. "I know you will." He said before adding: "Just remember to show up for class."

"He will if I have to drag him there!" Shouted Peter's grandfather.

What a lovely family that Peter has there.

----------------

Casimir strode into the room confidently, the riotous noise silencing as he went to the center of the cleared space. "Welcome, class!" He shouted, energy which his students returned with cheers. "Welcome to Advanced Combat Magic! My name is Casimir Toomes, heroic-ranked adventurer." He was in full kit, and drew his ancient sword, the weapon alone worth more than most of his student's families make in a year.

He started to swing the sword around, launching flourishes of magic from it as he did so. "The sad truth is that while you can fight battles quite effectively with naught but clever spellcasting…" On cue, his assistant launched a fireball. Casimir drew his verenium stiletto and cut it in two, using negative magic to ruin the flame and just ignoring the rush of hot air. He finished by throwing that knife into the dummy the assistant was carrying in front of him, right on the target circle that represented the heart. "There's no one strategy that will win you all battles. Consistent victories in combat require a combination of a solid plan one, the ability to recognize when you need your plan two, three, or four, and enough friends that they can handle plans five on."

Casimir pointed his blade at his students to emphasize his point. "If you plan to become a mage knight, this is not the class for you. The mage knights already have a program you should already be attending, and everything you need from here will also be covered there. This is a class for those who wish to explore the dangerous world we live in, filled with monsters and worse." Like slavers. "Adventurers! Even if you decline to join the guild and get in on the grind, you should be able to take away enough from this class to not end up crapping yourself when you're face to face with battle."

He looked each and every one of his thirty-six students in the eyes, already assessing their mettle. Maybe a third seemed to have actual fighting experience? All of them had passed basic combat magic with a good rating to qualify, but it was a compulsory course, so standards were not high.

Still, his personal students were among their number, so between Peter, Illivere, Faron, and Hanna, they should be able to help him whip these kids into shape.

"Any questions?"

 

[Spectrum]

Well, it's done. I'm not proud of the quality of this book, but I am proud of myself for managing to finish it.

Click to shrink...

Congrats on finishing!

(His needles sure are getting extra duty.)

 

[Ferguse]

Fantastic story! I'm happy I came across it.
I really liked the outsider's view of the team of "protagonists", while also showing that Casimir had his own shit going on.