After entering inside the house, away from prying eyes, Lith made use of his newfound knowledge as a healer.
He used Invigoration to spot and fix all bone, muscular and even intervertebral disc damages accumulated in his parents' bodies over time, due to the hard work in the fields and the aging.
He also used tier four magic to not make them feel tired because of the treatment, borrowing them his energy.
"What the?" Raaz moved around, feeling the subtle changes.
"I feel full of energy and my knots have disappeared. It feels like I am twenty again!"
"Glad to hear it." Lith replied hugging his father. "I have learned so much in just a month. The academy has showed how limited my horizons were. There are many things I can still improve."
He also performed a full check up on Tista too. She was always fit as a fiddle, but Lith never stopped worrying about her.
They talked about his mock exam, of which Lith gave an accurate description, although removing the encounter with the Scorpicore from the picture.
Instead he put particular emphasis on how he developed a good relationship with his teammates and Phloria in particular.
The doctored version of the story was aimed to avoid them worrying about him being alone in the academy, hoping to help overcome their long-term sense of guilt for him never having any friend in the past.
His parents kept believing that Lith had spent his childhood alone, because the family needed money and food, forcing him to become a hunter first and a healer later. But that was only half the truth.
He had almost nothing in common with teenage magicians, let alone with young children. Work had always been an excuse, to avoid taking any unnecessary risk of blowing his cover.
After settling the matters with his family, Lith decided to take a walk in the woods. He needed some time alone, not only to sort out his chaotic feelings, but also to try to convert everything he had learned from the academy and its books in true magic.
Knowing that he could be under surveillance too, he walked toward his private clearing in the Trawn woods using Life Vision, while Solus scanned their surroundings with all the senses at her disposal.
- "Aside from us and the animals I can't find anything else." She reported.
"Same. I believe that it's possible for the Queen's men to have magical items that conceal their presence, but I doubt they can avoid all our combined resources. I use true magic, while you, well, beats me what you use.
Bottom line, I think we are safe. Probably they have been sent to keep an eye on external threats, not on me."
"Yeah, but it's better be safe than sorry." Solus gave her firs paranoid remark ever.
"By the way, do you remember that before the mock exam I talked about a surprise?"
"Of course."
"Well, time to reveal my new gift. We need a special place, so I need you to follow my instructions." –
Lith casted his slipstream flight spell, moving in an irregular pattern toward the destination Solus had pointed him to. At the same time, both of them were scanning their surroundings.
Following them at such high speed while remaining covert should have been impossible. They soon reached the inner part of the woods, where months before they had assisted the three kings against the Wither.
It was still a wasteland, only grass and weeds had started growing anew.
- "We are in the clear. I didn't notice anyone following us. Did you choose this zone because it provides no cover to our pursuers?"
"No, because it's one of the few spots that can serve our purpose. Thanks to my sense of self, every time I regain a new function, I always know how to make it work. This one is special, and needs a special spot."
"What's so great about this place? It's depressing and more dead than Julius Caesar."
Solus chuckled.
"Did you ever wonder why the Wither moved in this direction every time it managed to escape?"
"Normally I'd say it was just desperate, but I bet you have a better explanation."
"Bingo! I noticed it the first time we came here, but back then I couldn't make head or tails about it. You see, with my mana sense I'm not only able to differentiate people, but also landscapes.
That's because the world is literally full of mana, and some places more than others. During our travels, I noticed several spots were the world energy was much more abundant than usual, and this is one of them.
I believe that the Wither was looking for this place to leech the massive amount of world energy to survive the fight." –
Solus detached from Lith's finger in her usual spider form, reaching a clearing a few meters away, before starting to burrow into the ground.
In front of his astonished eyes, a blue pulse lit the clearing. At every beat, something came out of the ground. It was like looking at a fast-forwarded video, were one could see a seed become a flower in less than ten seconds.
But in Solus' case, the small pebble grew into a tower.
A puny, demolished tower, to be precise.
It barely reached 10 meters (33 feet) of diameter, with a single door flimsy enough to get carried away by a strong gust of wind. The tower only had the ground floor and no roof, debris covered it's top, like it had collapsed on itself.
- "This is indeed a surprise." Lith was impressed nonetheless. "Does this thing come with any defence mechanisms? If so, wherever we go, we will always have a place to stay, avoiding humans and beasts alike."
"First of all, this is not a thing, that's me!" Solus was quite pissed off being treated as an object. "And yes, I do have defence mechanisms. So, get your rude a*s inside, so I can activate them." –
Lith did as instructed, discovering that the structure inside was bigger than it looked on the outside. On his right there was a set of crumbled stairs going up, and another that seemed to go down unimpeded.
In front of him there was a single door, leading to a bedroom almost identical to the one Lith had made build in his house. Yet the bed was a king size canopy one, and the room had a private bathroom, just like his room at the academy.
"Mass displacement?" Lith asked in amazement.
"Yes." For the first time, he could hear Solus's voice with his ears. "Only part of this form exists in our plane, the rest is actually in the pocket dimension. Do you like this piece of home away from home?" She was clearly eager for a praise.
"Very, it's an amazing replica. I can't thank you enough for giving me a real toilet, it means the world to me."
Solus giggled.
"You are welcome. But this is not the surprise, just part of it. Go downstairs, please."
In the basement there were two more rooms, the first one was a perfect copy of the forgemastering training hall, down to the last small detail.
"I was able to reproduce both the potion and the forgemastering labs, even the equipment." She explained. "But I cannot create from nothing ingredients or consumables. Some things we can only buy them."
Lith opened the drawer supposed to contain rings and amulets to enchant, but just as Solus had announced, it was empty.
"Not a problem." He replied. "There is not much that I can do with my limited knowledge.
Luckily, when I told Professor Wanemyre that I wanted to do some practice on my own, she gave me a few rings and a bottle of the liquid for drawing magic circles. We have enough for a few attempts at applying true magic to forgemastering."
The only Forgemaster's spell Lith had seen, was the one for realizing dimensional items. He drew the circles and the runes with the utmost care, there was no one to help him in case something went wrong.
When he finished, he placed a pebble in its center. He wasn't expecting to succeed, only to study to mana flow to reproduce it with true magic.
So, instead of chanting, he used Invigoration to call upon the world energy and sent it to fill the magic circle. It was easy, and it didn't affect his mana reserves, since he was employing external energies.
Unlike Professor Wanemyre, he didn't fill the circles to the brim. Being an experiment, the less energy the better, not to mention he wanted to avoid creating top tier rings after just a month.
According to the books, it was sufficient to give the circles mana until the air started to crackle to obtain the lowest class dimensional objects.
Lith knew the thirteen runes and their spells like the back of his hand, he had performed them countless times during the lessons and on his own.
Remembering the characteristic feeling of each one, he weaved the runes' incantations in rapid succession. In Lith's mind, Wanemyre's performance, albeit exceptional, was like a kid playing a piano one key at a time.
He was convinced that to maximize the effects, the different spells had to complement and integrate each other, like in a magical symphony.
The runes rose in the air one after the other, forming a perfect ring around the pebble in the blink of an eye. Lith then started compressing the mana inside the runes. Soon all the energy was encompassing the little stone, trying to seep inside.
Now it was the most critical moment, Lith had to force energy and matter to fuse together. Things were going smoothly, but in the back of his head there was a constant alarm that something was wrong.
Suddenly, the energy mass imploded, pulverizing the pebble. Despite being unable to escape, the mana gone wild still managed to burn the circle, leaving a crack on the floor.
"Ouch! That hurt!" Solus said.
"Sorry, my bad." Lith said embarrassed by his failure. "Any idea what has gone wrong?"
"Right off the bat, I can come up with at least eight errors you did." She actually replied at his rhetorical question, leaving Lith in awe once again.