“Master, where does this lead?” Amaya asked Cain as she found the door in the bushes.
“It can lead anywhere in the maze that I want, but there is a specific room that I want you to see.” Cain jumped from the water and walked toward her.
After waving his hand to the other girls, Cain and Amaya walked alone to the next room.
The next room was dark, faint growls could be heard from the depth of the unknown. “What are those?” Amaya cried as she turned around and vomited. The room was filled with walking corpses and mutilated bodies of bandits and the undead Cain killed before.
“Undead that I created, they are just like you but lack intelligence,” Cain said as he lit the room, both he and Amaya could see in the dark but the light was always better.
Amaya vomited again when she saw the undead with color this time (In the dark she only saw it in black and white). “What are…brreee!”
“Let me get straight to the end, you’re the same as them, a zombie. But, with the exception that you retained your intelligence and that I created with more care and love.” Cain said as he patted one of the undead.
“Then why…did you bring me here,” Amaya asked, fearing that he was going to lock her here with them.
“I’m going to give you full control over them…Well, I don’t seem to need to do that since they already see you as a superior undead.” Cain said as he released all the undead at her. They rushed and stopped just a few feet away from her.
“As you can see, they should follow your orders blindly.” Cain smiled at her. “Tell them to do something.”
After hesitating for a bit, Amaya mumbled, “Sit!” All the undead sat on the ground immediately.
“That seems to work nicely, now I need you to be able to summon them at will. Can you choose a simple word for the spell?” Cain asked as he created a small magic circle.
“What?”
“Just tell me a word or a short sentence that you can use to summon those undead zombies.”
After hesitating a bit, Amaya finally found a suitable sentence, “Come forth!”
“That nice and short, I will make it summon up to one hundred zombies from here. You can decide on any number from 1 to 100.” Cain said as he finished his magic.
“Isn’t that pretty strong?” Amaya asked, “Why would I need all of those?”
Cain thought about it for a moment, “It’s strong but…Who knows what we could face? Ok, here’s a second word, Marshal Undead. This will release all the undead stored in the maze in one go.” He quickly edited the magic. Of course for the summon to work Cain still needed to approve it so she couldn’t use the power without his consent.
“Wait! I don’t need all that power.” Amaya screamed.
“But you are my maid, I want my maids strong enough to trample a whole country!” Cain said with a proud smile.
“That isn’t what maids are supposed to be!” Amaya cried at him.
“Well, I did create a long stick to live inside just cause I can.” Cain quickly erected a Lisworth tower at the corner, “What’s the harm in a few battle maids?”
They took a while arguing about how a maid isn’t or is supposed to be strong enough to shake a whole country.
… After a while, they returned to the pond.
“Hey Sofia, won’t you swim with us?” Cain called her from the water.
“I will come right now, I was just thinking about something.” Sofia rushed toward them, the thoughts about cold magic still running in her head.
‘Absorb the heat…I need it to get colder and colder. Just like when I compressed the spear, absorb more and more heat until it starts freezing.’ Sofia thought as she stared at the water.
Sadly, her magic wasn’t reacting, thoughts alone aren’t enough to move the arcane magic. Sofia jumped into the water and tried to swim, she was only able to paddle slowly with her feet.
“Need me to teach you how to swim?” Cain asked, “I can do it alone, just give me a moment!” Sofia replied immediately.
Looking back at the pond, the water had a clear blue color from the blue ceiling. The pond was located in the middle of a thick jungle-like forest and protected by the Pixies. It was impressive how they created such a thing in half an hour.
“Alice!” Cain yelled as he saw Alice drowning. She was using her wings to swim. However, drowned as soon as she got exhausted.
Splash! Selena shifted into her jaguar form and dived after Alice, she was the fastest swimmer between them.
Alice was struggling to swim back, her wings weirdly got cold all of a sudden. ‘I’m getting numb, what is this?’ Alice tried to teleport to Cain but their link was being dampened by chilling cold magic.
When Alice took a last look toward the surface, she saw a black feline face with its fangs out, the feline’s ears were clamped shut and its eyes glow bright golden. She recognized it as Selena immediately and stopped flapping around.
Selena gently bit Alice’s neck and dragged her out of the water.
Alice immediately gasped for air, “Are you alright?” Cain rushed toward her and used [Lesser Healing] If she was finding it hard to breathe he could always use magic [Investiture of Wind] to force air into her lungs.
“I did…hold my breath. Remember that am a devil. I won’t drown as easily as humans.” Alice took several deep breaths. Her wings still felt horribly cold and numb.
“Sofia…can you heat my wings a bit?” Alice asked.
Sofia quickly extended her hands and started using a weak version of burning hands to heat her wings.
“This will take a lot of time, let me handle it.” Cain couldn’t wait, he immediately clamped his hands together and gathered enough magic to shake the whole maze. For a moment Sofia thought he was going to incinerate Alice.
[Investiture of Flames] Sofia recognized this spell well. Cain taught her how to use it before. What she didn’t recognize was the flame color, they had a faint blue glimmer to them.
“You’re going to burn the whole place!” Mei screamed.
“I’m not, this spell is just for ease of control!” Cain told them.
Being curious, Sofia attempted to touch the blue flames circling around Cain. They were colder than what flames should be, yet she could feel the immense heat power he was generating in them. His control of the heat was impressive; she could swear his flames are hotter than Zaleria’s if he was serious.
Cain waved his hands and the blue flames engulfed Alice’s wings, slowly heating them equally from all directions while keeping a track of her magic circulation.
“I generate a lot of heat then reduce the amount of heat transfer to all targets. The second phase is engulfing the targeted and slowly releasing the heat from all directions. The person who made the spell [Investiture of Flames] created this technique.” Cain said as his eyes glowed with arcane flames.
“Fire magic is all about creating heat and moving it around, this spell makes that process easier and more precise,” Cain said.
Sofia felt as if she heard something out of this world. ‘Fire magic is all about creating heat’, she knew that but this time it felt different.
Fire magic is the opposite of cold magic or what is called Ice magic. If fire magic is creating heat, then the opposite should be destroying heat and not absorbing it.
Sofia stopped her magic to let Cain work comfortably. What now got in her mind was why Alice felt numb in the first place, that was the same question going in Cain’s mind.
Cain who was inspecting Alice’s wings as he was heating them quickly realized. The magic keeping them warm got erased.
A devil’s wings were large and filled with blood vessels and small compacted muscles. So they won’t start cooling the devil’s body, they seem to have evolved a thin layer of magic that insulate them (Heat wise) from the outside world.
Was it just a random thing? Cain couldn’t believe that but humans have cramps, could this be a devil’s magic cramp? He never heard of such a thing.
“How are you feeling now?” Cain asked as he felt the insulation layer regenerate.
“Better, I can feel them now.” Alice quickly retracted her wings into her back and transformed into her human form.
“Couldn’t you just transform back?” Gracie asked, which seemed like a reasonable solution to her.
“I couldn’t transform when my wings were numb, it’s like asking a paralyzed person to stand up,” Alice replied with an exhausted face. This satiation has taken a toll on her body.
“Probably this enough swimming for today, let’s head back home and rest,” Cain suggested.
After making that, everything was alright Cain and the girls quickly returned home.