For once, Lia and I weren't trying to accomplish anything of our own. Instead, the two of us were out and about, keeping an eye on our respective students as they were trying to raid one of the higher-levelled areas we had previously explored but decided to ignore. In a way, it was supposed to be an exam, allowing Lia and myself to judge their progress and possibly add something to the lessons we were planning on teaching them this next few weeks, as we were waiting for the rest of the snow to thaw, plus maybe a week or two extra, so we wouldn't have to travel through the muck and mud left after the thawing. The details would have to be worked out once we had some more information and a slightly better prediction regarding the weather.

"They are doing quite well," I admitted, watching as Daniel rapidly prepared sturdy cover for his companions, forcing the enemies attacking them into a narrow space where they could be dealt with easily. Instead of having to fear being overrun, the fivesome only had to face a few enemies at a time, enemies who, more often than not, were pushing into that narrow gap and hindering one another instead of fighting to the best of their ability.

Sure, the enemies they were currently facing were only simple undead but their numbers were large enough to threaten unprepared foes, simply because few people could destroy them fast enough to stop them from swarming their group. In fact, if Daniel had only conjured a simple wall, the Undead might have been capable of bypassing that wall and swarming them regardless of it but Daniel had added a few spikes and overhangs to the wall while actively controlling his construct to keep the Unead from climbing it, either by manifesting additional spikes and pushing the climbing Unead off or by removing their handholds, so they would fall that way.

"That they are," Lia nodded, a grin splitting her face while Samantha was lobbing something into the teeming mass of Undead. When the grinning Lia hid her face while the object was still in flight, I copied her, fairly confident that I wouldn't want to get caught by whatever the object might be. I knew enough about the shenanigans perpetrated by Lia, Alex and Sam to know they just loved their explosions, though when I felt the warmth wash over me despite our distance from the fighting, I felt a little surprised regardless of my prior knowledge. For a grenade to make us feel warm over two-hundred metres away, without being fatal to the people fighting right next to it was fairly impressive, especially given that there had been no explosion involved.

Instead, as I could now see, the object had been some sort of incendiary device, spreading some burning goop similar to a few things I had seen Lia use in the past all across the Undead, causing more than a few of them to writhe in apparent agony. Quite impressive given that, to the best of my knowledge, these Undead couldn't feel pain and yet, Sam's grenade managed to do exactly that. Or it worked on some other principle beyond mere combustion, and that other principle was utterly devastating to these Undead. A combination of factors was also possible, or something I hadn't even heard of, quite likely given my lack of education in Alchemy.

"Their three meat shields will feel just a tad useless, I guess," I shook my head, wondering just how dangerous Lia actually was once she was prepared. Sure, when it came to stealth, I still had the edge, but thanks to the lessons I had given Maggy and Lia, the advantage was fairly slim. And once stealth was combined with stupidly dangerous bombs like the one Samantha had just used, the danger went up dramatically, especially as I wasn't certain how easy it would be to detect the devices used by the three Alchemists. The magic within them was fairly well concealed, with little betraying their devastating nature.

"They'll have to deal with it," Lia shrugged before continuing, "And honestly, we might want to offer them a bit of extra oomph, if you know what I mean."

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"What do you have in mind?" I asked after thinking about it for a bit while watching as the three fighters in their group made short work of the remaining Undead, with very limited support from our students who were preparing something else.

"Well, your Blood Magic can change somebody's physical characteristics fairly easily, while Samantha and I have stumbled across a few alchemical substances to boost a person's body beyond their current limits. If we combine the two methods, we should be able to create some lasting effects, something along the lines of a full-body boosting enchantment, at least if I understand what you have told me about Blood Magic and enchanting correctly," Lia explained, stunning me for a moment. The idea was something similar to experiments I had done on Mundus, most of which had been met with some failure. Trying to recreate those experiments here, especially if they were made even more complicated by the addition of alchemical ingredients, was a fascinating idea, though one I could see go wrong fairly quickly.

After a few minutes, I explained to Lia what had happened on Mundus and what failure I had encountered. Meanwhile, the group of five was fighting one of the curious roaming bosses in this area. This one was a strange amalgamation of bodies shaped into a massive, vaguely humanoid creature of flesh, bone and decay.

The thing was too massive for any of the fighters to block it directly; they'd be simply overrun, but it turned out, Daniel had paid close attention to a few of my lessons regarding redirecting force and made good use of that. Instead of trying to block the thing head-on, he used cleverly placed obstacles, most of which were fairly small, to trip and hinder the thing, keeping it from applying the insane amounts of strength it had. Once the thing was off-balance, the three fighters could chop into it, or Sam could launch one of her grenades, though I soon realised that the grenades weren't just things she could prepare back home and take as many into battle as she could carry, there was some sort of priming process going on, requiring her to spend some personal power when readying them.

"We'd have to do a few tests, right?" Lia reasoned and I glanced over to her, realising just how important that seemed to be to her. She wanted these five to have the best chances they could have, not just to live but to thrive in this new world. Most likely, that desire stemmed from Lia's burgeoning romance and relationship with Samantha, which was something I wasn't quite sure how to feel about.

On the one hand, I knew just how important Sigmir was to me, so I was happy that my daughter had found someone she cared for, on the other hand, I knew how important Sigmir was to me, so I couldn't help but realise that my daughter would go to similar lengths to stay with Samantha. By now, I was fairly certain Lia wouldn't continue onwards when Luna and I left, not unless something happened between Samantha and her in the meantime. And even if something happened, Lia was my daughter, and a lot of her core values were directly imparted by the magic I had used to make her from the flesh of her Shattered soul. Thus, her reactions would likely be somewhat similar to those I would have if put into her situation.

"You know that we can't test that on normal animals, right?" I asked, already knowing that Lia would know but wanting her to admit it.

"We'd need some humans, yes. But why don't we visit the idiots' lair, offer a few of them power and watch how many take the offer?" she asked, using the name I had given one of the local communities, mostly because the organisation there was incredibly haphazard, to the point that I was honestly surprised they hadn't starved yet. Unless I missed my guess, that was down to dumb luck and multiple large warehouses filled with non-perishable food they had found early on but I wasn't all that certain. Still, their luck would soon run out, just as the few supplies they had left would.

"You know, that has some potential," I admitted, already considering how to word such an offer and where to perform the experiments. As I did that, we were treated to a quite impressive show, as Jack and Daniel performed a slightly insane combination attack, where Daniel used his Earth Magic to catapult Jack upwards, allowing him to take an incredible leap and deliver a crushing strike to their massive foe, managing to sever the spine and, somehow, disrupt the necrotic energy animating the amalgamation of flesh and bone, ending its existence.

"Truly, they have some potential," I muttered, now mostly speaking to myself and wondering just how far we could push that potential. It might just be utterly glorious.

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