“It’s amazing how even inside a Sealed Space the darkness element keeps seeping inside the prison. I think…” The man’s voice faded in the distance and the group resumed their advance.

Lith regretted not having heard anything relevant about the room’s defense system. Yet hearing Orpal’s voice and learning how he was being tortured both physically and psychologically every day almost made Lith change his mind about killing his brother.

Almost.

He took a mental note of the room with his own Eyes and asked Solus to memorize its dimensional coordinates.

‘We have no chance of breaking in without being surrounded.’ She thought. ‘There are too many people here and even with the Eyes, it would take a while to crack the door. I’ll humor Lith just to keep him calm.’

In a regular academy, the seventh floor was dedicated to the living quarters of the staff and the Golden Griffon was no different. There lived Thrud’s Generals, Linnea, Jormun, and the Mad Queen herself.

None of the doors was closed since most of the occupants of the floor were gone and there was absolute trust between them. No one was supposed to be capable of entering there uninvited.

Each room was as big as a penthouse and as luxuriously furnished. There were soft carpets covering the floor of every room, and the lobby of every apartment was bigger than Kamila’s house in Belius.

Lith could see that Thrud’s Generals had their own personal labs and research materials right inside their homes. They had all been neglected apprentices and now they had arranged their living quarters better than those of their old masters.

The Divine Beasts kept their doors open also to keep an ear on the little Valeron, especially while his parents were away. It was the reason Kalla and the others heard the cooing and giggling typical of a small child.

Lith pointed at the source of the noise before passing his thumb over his throat, gaining the reproachful glares of Vladion, Kalla, and Solus.

‘Hey, if we can defeat Thrud and end this war just by taking a child hostage, I have no problem being the bad guy.’ He said via the mind link.

‘What if it was your child?’ Vladion asked, filled with outrage.

‘I would never leave her unguarded like- Oh, shit!’ Lith had peeked around the corner, discovering that Jormun was on his same page.

He was there, playing with Valeron while several Forgotten guarded all corners of the room and its entrances. To make matter worse, Valeron the Second had two violet-cored Awakened for nannies.

They were the handmaidens of the late Syrook. Thrud had taken them with her so that Valeron would grow up with someone who could teach him to embrace his human side and understand the struggle of regular people.

In exchange, the Mad Queen was teaching the handmaidens everything they needed to survive in the outside world.

‘It’s like he expects someone to Spirit Warp in. The guy is beyond paranoid, he’s mental.’ Lith’s words earned him a second volley of glares. ‘Let’s move. Plan A it is.’

‘It takes one to know one.’ Solus scoffed at him taking mental notes of Jormun’s protection just to enhance them with some of Lith’s own for the baby girl’s future room. ‘Valeron is just a little boy. How can you even think of dragging him into the war?’

‘Because this way my daughter wouldn’t.’ Lith replied. ‘Only one of them is going to live happily with their parents and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make sure that my baby girl doesn’t end up an orphan.’

They quickly reached the next flight of stairs and arrived on the eighth floor.

The Headmaster’s office was located atop the castle keep so it took them a while to reach their destination.

Back when Lith had reached the office for the first time, it was located on the ground floor and the lost academy was still under the effect of the sealing arrays.

Now, however, being so close to the academy’s power core with the full power of the geyser at its disposal, made climbing the final steps hard for his group. The world energy was collected, accumulated, and amplified in the keep before being evenly spread to the rest of the academy.

To make matters worse, the power core was a sentient being. Once the world energy took its energy signature it would also gain the core’s hostility toward anyone but Arthan’s blood.

Hystar couldn’t perceive the presence of the intruders due to the cloaking rings they wore, but that didn’t relieve the pressure of the malevolent mana that filled the air around them.

The Headmaster’s office looked nothing like Marth’s at the White Griffon. The whole floor had been turned into a detailed map of the Griffon Kingdom with miniatures representing the fortresses and the position where the troops of both sides were currently deployed.

A golden throne whose wood had been carved to resemble a prancing Griffon was at the head of the map while several smaller chairs were placed on either side. The walls were filled with reports from the most successful and disastrous battles.

Thrud always kept them at hand to learn from them both.

Hystar’s and Linnea’s desks were lined one against the other and they were both filled with paperwork. Lith browsed the piles of documents, discovering they were updates about the status of every line of research conducted in the academy and the progress of their “recruits”.

Sadly, all the documents were written for someone who already knew the details of each experiment and contained little information about them.

‘The miniatures by themselves tell us nothing of Thrud’s future plans.’ Kalla said after taking a good look at the room with the Eyes of Menadion. ‘I can see several inactive arrays filled with notes and strategies, but to read them I would need to activate them.’

‘Ignore the arrays.’ Vladion replied. ‘If we activate them, Hystar would notice and Thrud would just change her plans after chasing us out. Let’s just focus on the reason we are here.’

Unluckily, the map didn’t show them the position of the power core nor how to reach it. On the other hand, despite all the changes the office had undergone, the Headmaster’s desk was still there and so was the wall to its east.

The magic insulation was so good that even the Eyes couldn’t perceive the presence of the power core behind the solid stone.

‘Thank the gods we had a lot of practice finding hidden switches while climbing our way here.’ Kalla said. ‘Just like the stairs, there should be a mechanism to access the power core in case there is a blackout or it needs maintenance.’

Thanks to the information gained from the prisoner Vampire, it took them just a while to release the locks and make the wall slide up, revealing the power core.

‘By the Great/Red Mother.’ The group thought in unison at the sight of their prize.

The Golden Griffon’s power core was comprised of a white mana crystal the size of a gym ball encased in a cube of black Davross. Seven concentric rings of white Davross spun around it, each one moving in a different direction.

😉

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