Chapter 3088 Illusionary Wall (Part 2)
"Thanks. I'll add it to my to-do list." Lith groaned. "What do we do now? It's late and we have no idea what awaits inside."
"At least we know it's not a Garden." Ryka couldn't see any mana flow around. "Nor a geyser."
"There's a lot of enchanted protections starting from there, though." Lith pointed at an illusionary wall that an array-detecting spell lit up like a Christmas tree.
"Dammit, whoever this guy is, they are thorough." Strider and the others spent what was left of daylight to study the magical formations. "There's no way to turn them off without revealing our presence.
"I say we come back tomorrow with fresh eyes after giving the arrays some study."
The group agreed and after a few Steps, Lith and Solus were back home. They spent the evening with Kamila, the children, and the rest of their family. Thanks to the geyser under the Mansion, the tower worked at full power, and with it the Grimoire.
Lith had set the floor to decipher the magical formations so that he suffered no mental burden while the Grimoire worked its magic. The Eyes were linked to the Library from which the artifact had access to everything Lith and Solus knew about arrays.
The arrays surrounding the illusionary wall of the cave were broken down and analyzed one by one and the information acquired was neatly organized in a folder. Only one automated floor of the tower could work at a time for now, but the rest could wait.
Normally, Lith and Solus kept the Spark active, leaving their equipment to be further refined. Half of the Adamant of Solus' Voidwalker armor had turned into Davross, forming an alloy superior to purified Adamant but without the special properties of pure Davross.
The same had happened to Lith's armor and Double Edge, but they were only coated with the mystical metal. Their backbone was comprised of the skeleton, scales, and skin of Syrook, the late Darkness Dragon.
The Spark had refined the remains of his corpse, feeding it with nutrients from the storage and allowing it to grow and be refined as if the Wyrm was still alive. Lith's Voidwalker armor and Double Edge were now made of materials with the same properties as the body of a 30 meter (100') tall bright violet-cored Darkness Dragon.
The same had happened to the Sage Staff whose Yggdrasill Wood had gained the equivalent of ten more years of body refinement, close to the maximum age that any World Tree had ever reached.
The process had increased their size, durability, and mana conductivity. The armor and weapon now fit Lith's Tiamat body perfectly without being stretched, increasing both their offensive and defensive capabilities.
The same had happened to the Sage Staff whose Yggdrasill Wood had gained the equivalent of ten more years of body refinement, close to the maximum age that any World Tree had ever reached.
What lay beyond was a mystery that Solus couldn't wait to unravel.
"Did you really scout restaurants for a romantic date while on the mission?" Kamila was elated by Lith's description of the Crystal Cauldron. "Then I have to prepare something of my own to return you the favor." She giggled.
Valtak, instead, was annoyed hearing that they had to postpone his lesson.
"You better make up for this by freeing two days in a row for me, hatchling." The Father of Fire said. "Otherwise I might decide that moving on to a new and more respectful student is a better use of my time."
"I'm sorry, Valtak, but this is important." Lith replied.
"It better be. Valtak out."
Useless to say, Tista and Morok weren't happy either. The Hekate now had to get beaten up two days in a row by Salaark's Phoenixes while the Tyrant knew that the make up lesson meant missing one day of experimenting on human evolution.
"Don't worry about me. I don't care." Ryla was the only one taking the news with grace. "Everything I have I owe it to you, Lith. One day is nothing compared to the happiness you blessed me and my child with."
Her words made Tista and Morok feel like ungrateful jerks while the kids joined in her praise.
"Uncle Lith is the best, right big brother?" Garrik still considered every day he didn't spend alone and locked in his room as a blessing.
Even having a meal with those he considered his family gave Garrick so much joy that it made the older Tyrant's heart tighten.
"He sure is." Morok said while ruffling Garrik's hair.
***
The next day, Lith and Solus woke up at dawn and reached Strider and Ryka outside the cave. There was no point in meeting at the Mansion again since they knew their destination and it saved the members of the Hands of Fate a few stops.
"I've worked on the arrays a bit, but they are too complex and there are too many of them." The Zouwu sighed. "I even called several colleagues but on such short notice we lacked the necessary personnel to finish the job.
"I got only half of them done."
"Same here." Ryka shrugged. "I deciphered a few, but that's it."
"Me too." Lith lied through his teeth.
"Don't worry, you lazy asses, I had better luck." Solus played her part and took three folders out of her pocket dimension. "I've deciphered everything."
"What about your folder?" Ryka asked.
"It's all in here." Solus tapped her forehead.
She was being honest since the fourth folder was stored in Soluspedia and thanks to the knowledge storage, she knew every page like the back of her hand.
"By the gods, so much work in so little time. You really are a genius." Strider flipped through the pages, reading findings similar to his own, just better and more comprehensive.
"I won't lie. I am." Solus puffed her chest out with pride. "But I also have to admit that without a solid Library and an all-nighter, I wouldn't have discovered more than you guys did."
Again, it was the truth. The Eyes of Menadion was a miracle of magic, not a supernatural miracle. Without time, world energy, and the Library, Solus' head would have been in massive pain just by looking at the illusionary wall and Lith with her.
Thanks to the information acquired from the tower's Grimoire floor, it was possible for the group to alter the magical formations while keeping them active. This way, no alarm would be triggered and their caster wouldn't notice anything.
Yet possible didn't mean easy. They had to work on a single array at a time and use surgical precision while altering each rune. It took them a couple of hours but it was worth it.
There were no safety measures past the illusionary wall and the road was clear.
"Probably they don't want to draw attention," Lith said. "The hidden entrance and its arrays were cloaked. We would have never found this place if we weren't following Adria's trail inside the cave.
"On top of that, too many arrays too close can't be cloaked. They would form a corridor of energy that anyone with Life Vision would notice."
Past the illusionary wall, there was an underground tunnel that bore no lights. Its surface was too smooth and regular to be natural.
"Judging by the lack of magical residue, this place was erected with earth magic a long time ago and maintained regularly." Strider said.