The honesty in Lith’s voice was the only reason Vladion answered with words instead of curses.

‘Until the plague, I was born and lived in Jiera whereas the Tree was here on Garlen. I was too busy and had too many limitations during daylight to cross the ocean just in the hope to find their Fringe, get inside, and somehow obtain a branch.

,m ‘Very few people get their hands on Yggdrasil wood every century and when they do, they enchant it their own way. Not only getting one would require me to find and kill them, but I’d also end up with something that doesn’t fit me.’

‘Doesn’t Baba Yaga reset your stuff with Creation Magic if you ask her?’ Lith was flabbergasted.

‘Of course not. Just like Salaark, right?’

‘Yep.’ Lith replied a bit too fast and due to the mind link, Vladion could almost feel the blatant lie.

‘I hate your guts, kid. Now shut up before I change my mind and break a sacred oath.’ Scanning the Golden Griffon’s power core was a task as boring as it was vexing.

They had to stare at it while also withstanding the mental pressure that the use of the tower’s Eyes exerted. Thanks to the Monocle form and the tower’s power core acting as an auxiliary brain, the strain was split in four but it was still a heavy burden.

Vladion took a few vials of blood out of his pocket dimension and drank them. He wanted to recover the strength he had lost by using Blindside for so long and from moving during daylight in case something happened before their escape.

Resisting the slumber caused by the abundant light element from the sun required a constant expenditure of the energy stored inside his blood core.

As for Lith, he shapeshifted into his human form to eat and use a tier one healing spell to speed up his metabolism. This way the food was digested and assimilated before the Unwavering Loyalty array could even detect him.

It quelled the hunger of his Abomination form and restored his stamina.

Thanks to the resonance between the artifacts and the Sage Staff, scanning the power core would require much less than Lith had initially feared. In a little more than an hour, they had reached over 80% of completion.

‘Gods, it feels like a year.’ If Lith had glands he would have been covered in a cold sweat. ‘How long do we have to wait? Thrud or her Generals might return at any moment.’

‘Relax, Scourge.’ Kalla said. ‘You’ve been on the frontlines. You know that battles take the whole day and the sun has yet even to start setting. Until that moment, we are relatively safe.’

Alas, they had all forgotten that just like its name implied, the Golden Griffon was an academy. The daily routine was dictated solely by the class schedule and was unaffected by the war.

Being left with a skeleton crew meant the need for all hands on deck, but both students and professors would take a break for lunch. Thrud had been adamant about giving the students humane hours and regular rest.

Even the criminals were allowed all the food they needed to endure the training and eight hours of sleep a day to reset Invigoration.

Headmaster Sevenus Hystar considered her policy an insult to his work during the past 700 years, but the slave spell that Arthan had inflicted upon him didn’t brook any form of complaint.

Whatever the Queen or even her consort ordered, the Headmaster was programmed to smile and obey.

‘I hate teaching these morons!’ Hystar left the advanced Forgemastery class right after dismissing the students. ‘All this coddling and spoon-feeding them is ridiculous. Back in my day, they had to fight even for the right to eat and the losers would be eaten.

‘I gave birth to the strongest fighters that the Kingdom has ever seen yet instead of being grateful to me, the Queen beats the crap out of me for it. Sure, I robbed my students of their free will and over time they went completely insane, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

‘The only silver lining is that Her Majesty is winning the war and that due to her enlightened rule her people love her. Too bad that I’m a complete moron unworthy of licking the ground she steps on-‘ The slave spell forbid Hystar even to think badly of Thrud, turning any grievance he had into self-loathe.

Yet the reason his train of thought derailed was the presence of intruders in his office. The Headmaster had no need to eat or sleep so he would spend his free time in isolation to calm his nerves.

‘Danger at your six!’ Solus warned the rest of the group who was still staring dumbly at the power core.

They all turned around in unison, weaving their best spells to face the incoming threat.

‘Avoid area of effect spells and bloodline abilities.’ Lith said. ‘The Headmaster has limited powers over the academy unless we break its rules or damage it.’

“Who the heck are you, how did you get in here, and why even though I can see you with my own eyes I can’t still feel your presence?” Hystar was more curious than angry about the break in.

The Mad Queen had forbidden him to play with the students anymore but she had left him free rein with intruders. The Headmaster had a lot of pent up rage to vent so his greatest worry was to kill them too quickly.

Vladion took his Primordial Thirst sword out of his pocket dimension, making his first mistake. Hystar had never met Kalla, knew nothing of the Eyes, and very few people had witnessed Lith’s Abomination form.

Thrud had met and fought Vladion, though. She had shared the encounter with the Headmaster via a mind link so that he could help her to replicate the tactics and enchantments that she had witnessed.

Hystar had failed to recognize the Firstborn Vampire but he recognized Primordial Thirst at a glance.

“By Arthan, if you are undead then this will be even easier than I thought.” A snap of his fingers turned the ceiling into glass, letting sunlight fill every corner of the room and setting Vladion ablaze.

‘Fuck me sideways, we need to stop him from sounding the alarm.’ Lith was an Abomination and sunlight quelled his hunger, making him stronger. ‘Kalla, keep scanning. We don’t have a moment to spare.’

‘On it!’ Solus and Kalla replied in unison.

The Headmaster and the academy were one so even by staring at him the Eyes could keep studying the power core. On top of that, every ability of the academy was coded in the enchantments and they had scanned most of them.

Between the mana perception of the Eyes of Menadion, the data collected, and the Sage Staff, Lith had the equivalent of Dragon Eyes. He could see the single runes of the spells that Hystar was casting and what enchantments he was about to activate.

On the other hand, Lith hadn’t missed how the Headmaster had turned younger from their last meeting and was also much stronger.

😉

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