"How long was I out cold?" He asked while clenching and releasing his fists several times. There was something off with his body.
"Almost three hours." Solus replied. "Which is odd, I expected you to need at least eight hours to recuperate. How do you feel?"
"Like there's an itch I cannot scratch. A needle in the back of my skull." Lith noticed Nok lying on the floor, still unconscious. He had so many things to ask but so little time.
First, he healed the young Byk, then proceeded to fix the mess Kalla's body was.
'Wish I could speak and treat her at the same time. My day leave is almost over, I must make use of every single second I… What the f*ck?'
To Lith's surprise, he could not only perceive Kalla's life force with much more clarity than before, but also understand where he or she had messed up. It was more about listening rather than seeing.
Life force was like a song performed by a living being and every defect was a sour note. Lith listened to the melody played by the Wight's body, guiding its flow along its intended path instead of trying to force it.
The patchwork covering Kalla's mana core soon became a smooth surface, even leaving a few energies to spare that Lith redirected to the butchered left paw to hasten its recovery. The procedure required over an hour but neither Lith nor Kalla noticed the passing of time.
Lith was engrossed by his new ability and used it to heal his friend while deepening his understanding of Body Sculpting at the same time. Tier five Healing magic hadn't become easier all of a sudden. Scanner was the same spell as before.
Yet the blue core allowed him to obtain a whole new set of information that made it possible for him to understand the breath of life rather than discovering it with a trial and error process.
Kalla instead focused on herself, trying to put into practice what Solus had explained to her. Lith's touch made it easier for her to sense her life force. It was like a gentle massage over her soul that was easing her pain.
When Lith was done, Kalla felt exhausted but relieved. Somehow, she knew her life wasn't in danger anymore and her paw, albeit was still limp, had stopped hurting.
"There." Lith said. "Everything should be all right. Take a few days to rest. No magic allowed. You core has yet to settle in the new life force. If I were you, I'd wait until your paw works again. A few weeks should suffice."
"A few weeks?" Kalla grumbled. She had never taken such a long break from her research. A few hours at most. She wanted to object and bargain her way out, but after looking at her children's condition she decided to comply.
"I understand you are in a rush. What do you need my help for?"
Lith sighed, hoping she would believe him, before explaining to her both his reincarnation problem and the need to get Solus a body. If Kalla was surprised, she didn't show it. Nok and Nyka were another story.
Their mouths almost fell onto the ground hearing Lith's words. To them, lizards becoming dragons was something plausible. They were used to Scarlett stories, where she slaughtered princesses and rescued kidnapped trolls.
Reincarnation and a girl in a stone were too far fetched to believe though.
"Coming to me was the right move." Kalla replied after pondering for a while. "I just don't get why you have submitted to the humans' army."
"I didn't submit." Lith scoffed. "My problem can't be solved with a single spell or a generic artifact. If I had to find a solution all by myself, not even the extended life of an Awakened one would be enough. I have only one attempt at achieving my goal.
I must make it count."
"True." Kalla admitted while tapping her chin with a single claw. "Scarlett has amassed centuries worth of knowledge, yet even something 'common' like Lichhood is a huge gamble. Without her books, I wouldn't even know where to start."
"That's my problem. I have no starting point. That's why I had to make the humans think they need me more than I need them. Between the Mage Association and the Army, I have now access to countless tomes but it's still not enough.
"They don't trust me enough to let me read the books I need. I need to play my cards right and use my status to access otherwise forbidden areas." There were countless ruins in the Griffon Kingdom.
Some were just piles of dust and debris, others were places of power. Such areas were still protected by powerful barriers and only the army mages knew how to disable them. Why waste years to open a door when you could just borrow a key?
Lith showed Kalla a map, pointing to her the regions he could choose for his assignment as a ranger.
"My plan is to pick one of the less populated areas with the greatest number of ruins. The others have already been thoroughly explored. Hoping to stumble into a secret relic that no one but me is able to find would be nothing but wishful thinking.
"Joining the army gives me access to the list of the ruins and to the methods to access them. The problem is that there are too many of them. Can you at least point me in the right direction?"
Kalla limped to one of the libraries, pointing to Lith a thick book with a deep green cover.
"I would pick it myself, but without spirit magic I have only claws. Doctor's orders." She smirked. Lith took the book and started to flip through it.
"Can you really understand this gibberish?" The tome was filled with odd runes he had never seen before.
"Of course not. Who has the time to learn a dead and buried language? Put some mana into it." Kalla replied.
Lith did as requested and observed the runes rearrange themselves in the common language the three Great Countries shared.
"This is amazing!" Lith blurted out in envy. "How did Scarlett managed to do this?"
"She didn't. She, uhm, liberated most of these books from a mad Lich, but this is a story for another time. Read from page 290."
The chapter told the story of a forgotten race, the Odi. Millenia ago, their magical and scientific knowledge had allowed them to defeat all illnesses. Their empire grew in wisdom and power, until time was the only enemy they had left.
The Odi became arrogant and attempted to find a way to achieve eternal life. According to the book, they started experimenting on the lesser races to develop a method to transplant the conscience from an old body to a young one.
Thousands of lives were lost during the experiments, but in the end they succeeded. It marked the beginning of their end. Until that moment, the Odi had believed that everyone would benefit from the research.
That they would use the lesser races as a source of spare bodies. Their upper echelons had different plans. They considered such an idea revolting and aimed to preserve the purity of their bloodline.
While commoners would receive a lesser body, the nobles started to buy children from the less fortunate among the Odi to use them as vessels. It didn't take long for a civil war to break out, nor for the so called lesser races to exploit it to exterminate the Odi for good.
"The Odi laid the foundations to Lichhood." Kalla explained. "Maybe in one of their ruins you can find some clues to follow in their footsteps. Even if it doesn't work for you, it could always prove useful to your ring fairy to escape from her cage."