"Why do you assume I'm an expert about brothels?" Those words broke Lith's concentration, increasing Solus's burden.

"There's no need to be modest." The god of healing said. "We need strippers, dancers, and a lot of booze to throw a decent party. Or so I've heard, at least. You just point me in the right direction and I'll do the rest.

"I've already proven to you that I know how to keep a secret so your kinks are safe with me. I'm not one of those White Griffon gossipers who go around saying that you, Nalear, and Wanemyre had a thing that ended badly, leading to her rebellion."

Yet the long pause that followed as Manohar waited for some juicy details told Lith otherwise.

"This is going to be a damn long day." He sighed.

***

Lith almost called Tulion, Phloria's philandering brother, for advice but after calling Vastor to make sure that he agreed with Manohar's idea for his bachelor party, there was no need to.

After a heated argument and Vastor swearing upon his name that he would flay Manohar alive if Zinya ever heard of it, the two Professors agreed on something less spicy and more friendly.

"I just want to have fun with my friends, not set the grounds for divorce even before the marriage!" Vastor said. "Just bring me to a place with good food and drinks as old as I am. But not too much, I need to fit my dress."

After solving the issue with Manohar, Lith and Solus spent the rest of the day in the tower. They needed time to decipher what they had just learned about memory crystals and compare it with their previous knowledge.

"We have everything we need to work on the first prototypes, yet after Faluel's lesson about how to preserve a corpse's mana channels, I'm having second thoughts." Lith said.

"We are not creating an undead so Necromancy might lower the quality of the materials and cripple the performance of the golems for good."

"Agreed, but the Balor and the Vagrash didn't die of a stroke in their sleep." Solus said. "Their bodies are broken and battered. If not repaired, they might fall apart during the Forgemastering process. Both choices are equally bad."

"I guess that my best option is to ask the opinion of an expert." Lith sighed.

They finished working on everything they could on their own before going to Faluel's lair.

The Hydra was in an excellent mood, humming while the complex spells she weaved moved heavy pieces of metal along the lines of a Forgemastering circle that encompassed most of the cave.

Faluel wore the Hands of Menadion on her human form, using them to channel the world energy coming from both the arrays in her lair and a huge pile of white crystals that lay in the middle of the circle.

The single pieces came close to each other slowly, assembling together to form what looked like part of an armor. 

"What are you doing?" Solus asked.

"Crafting myself equipment. I'm testing the Hands' potential now that I've grasped how they work." Faluel replied.

"Without a mana geyser?" Lith was flabbergasted. "You are just wasting a lot of magical metal!"

"I'm not, silly." She tapped his nose with her gloved hand. "First, that's just Orichalcum. Not even the richest Dragon is mad enough to use Adamant for a prototype. Second, I Forgemastered every single piece while on top of a mana geyser.

"Why do you think I'm not using the Mana Well technique?" She pointed at the lack of a Forge and a Hammer. "Do you really think I'm that stupid?"

"Still, it's a lot of Orichalcum." Solus said. "Also, considering that your best mine has been recently pillaged, I think it's unwise to take out so many white crystals. They would have helped new gemstones to germinate more quickly and in the long term they would have made up for your losses."

"Oh, that's the best part. The materials don't come from my mines. Do you remember that I told you that Ajatar and I had to face the plant and undead Lord of the Distar region?"

"Yes." Lith nodded. "They pillaged your resources during your absence and you demanded compensation."

"That and that are part of said compensation." Faluel waved at both the floating metal and the pile of crystals.

"That's why I'm in such a good mood. The Council rewarded me for the information we brought them about Thrud by making those jackasses Jihan and Grenjork pay dearly for their trespassing."

"How does that Forgemastering circle work?" Lith asked.

"It's similar to the process the fake mages used to build your academies." Faluel replied. "I've enchanted every single piece with their own pseudo core and now I'm assembling them.

"This way I've reduced the difficulty of the task and I can focus on one pseudo core at a time. As the pieces combine so do the pseudo cores they contain, forming a power core of growing complexity."

Lith could see with Life Vision how the Forgemastering circle created pathways that connected the enchantments, merging and stabilizing their energy before adding a new piece.

Faluel's method limited the energy and focus that matching the pseudo cores required by splitting the task into small steps and giving the power core the time to stabilize before feeding it a new pseudo core.

"I thought that the trick to make a power core was creating incomplete pseudo cores and making them overlap like the pieces of a puzzle." Solus said.

"That's the perfect method for a beginner or when you have to create something of a relatively small size." Faluel replied. "When you craft something as big as an academy or the equipment for an Emperor Beast, however, it's not enough.

"The energy amplification effect of the magical metals coupled with the massive amount of mana necessary to enchant something that big would be too much even for an Awakened."

"Why didn't you teach me about it?" Lith asked.

"I did. It's just an enhanced version of what you used to craft the DoLorean, remember?" Faluel chuckled. "This is my personal spell and you have yet to work out how to craft a complex power core for standard equipment.

"As I said about Blade Tier spells, you already have too much on your plate. Focus on one thing at a time because if you spread your resources too much, you'll achieve nothing."

The Hydra snapped her fingers, sealing Lith and Solus in a space that kept them from using their mystical senses or the Eyes to peep at her workings.

"Tell me the reason you are here and don't worry about my work. I'm good at multi-tasking."

Lith explained to her his worries about how to restore the corpses without destroying their magical properties.

"Why would you do that? It makes no sense." Faluel asked.

An awkward silence ensued as Lith and Solus pondered how much of their research they should share.

"This is offensive! You want me to teach you everything you need, to help you devise solutions for your problems, and yet you refuse to share anything with me? If you don't trust me, stop wasting my time.." The hydra called out their double standards, and realizing she was right really hurt.

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