Supreme Magus

Lith could distinguish the passage of several different people in the room, each one with their own smell and fear. Lith illuminated the area, revealing several different shreds of clothing near the table's edges, where the people strapped to it had struggled to escape.

Brown stains of dried blood were visible on both the stone table and floor, making it resemble more a sacrificial altar rather than a science lab. The raw amount of mana still lingering in the air made Lith's skin crawl.

'By my maker. Whatever that is, it needs so much mana to work that I wouldn't be surprised if we found a second Mana Reactor.' Solus thought while Lith took scans of the device with his army amulet.

"This is no mana crystal." Lith pointed at the white prism that was supposed to fuel the artifact.

Instead of being cut like a precious gem, it resembled a huge salt crystal, formed by several rectangular blocks fused together. By looking at it with Life Vision, Lith noticed that it bore the same signature of the white energy surrounding the weird undead he had fought.

The prism, however, was powerless. It had no mana flow nor life force, making Lith wonder what its origin could be.

'This is interesting. The design of the machine is similar to ancient Odi technology, but the techniques used to build it are all modern.' Lith thought. 'If I manage to copy its schematics, it might be useful in reproducing the body-swapping device I'm working on.'

"What do you mean, this is no mana crystal?" Acala examined the prism, cursing his bad luck. Not only were the enemies missing, but the device's value amounted to its own weight in scrap metal.

Without a power source, it was just an ugly oversized paperweight.

"What now?" Lith asked.

"Beats me. This is as far as I was able to mark my passage. There's some kind of Warp Gate past one of those corridors, but I saw it only once while trying to avoid a patrol so I have no idea where to look.

"I doubt I could interest you in the side caves and empty tunnels where I hid for the past few days." Acala could feel his dreams of glory and riches shattering.

He sat against the wall, incapable of raising his eyes from the ground without crying.

Lith cast his best Life Detecting array and when it came back negative, he lighted the whole cave, revealing several passageways leading further below.

"Let's be honest. We don't like each other and so far hunger is our greatest enemy." Lith said. "We need to understand if the vampires are still here or did they move out after discovering about your presence, and we need to do it fast.

"After reading your report, the army will send a research team here as soon as they are done with the most urgent business. If by the time they are here we don't have a clear picture of the situation, human lives will be at risk."

"Do you really believe me?" Acala almost couldn't believe his own ears. He had been expecting nothing but mockery and disdain from his more successful junior.

'Heck, in his shoes I would have called myself a liar. Maybe this Verhen is not as bad as the rumors depict him.' He thought.

"Of course I believe you. You put your life on the line to get us here." Lith replied.

"It's better if we split up, to cover more ground. Let's meet back here in a couple of hours. If one of us encounters an enemy, he should return here early and wait for the other. Okay?"

"Okay."

Lith and Acala were all smiles, making Solus want to puke.

'Let me guess. "Cover more ground" means that you'll be free to take whatever you want without witnesses while the other clause is to make sure he doesn't find anything relevant by himself.'

'Correct.' Lith inwardly wore a wolfish smile. 'Acala doesn't know that even the thralls leave no corpse behind, so even if I meet someone, I just have to kill them and then move the loot to a secure place.

'I doubt that an important area would be left unguarded, so by sending him away I get free reins for myself and a free scout that will check the road, saving me a lot of time. Two birds with one stone.'

Both Lith and Acala used earth magic to open a little hole in the cave's walls and hid their food bags there before exploring a random corridor. Or better, Acala took a random corridor while Lith followed the still lingering energy signature belonging to the white aura.

Only when his fellow Ranger was far away enough, did Lith return to the device room and sent Solus to closely inspect the machinery.

The army amulet couldn't transmit any data as long as it was within the array and Lith couldn't just wish the army would trust him enough to share the schematics of an Odi sourced unknown device.

Solus used her semi-liquid form to take a mold of every nook and cranny of the machine, while Lith used the information she passed him to create a scale replica with earth magic.

Once they were done, he hid the stone statue in his food bag. Then, he started exploring. Lith could move much faster by himself since Life Vision and mana sense allowed him to pick up non-cloaked arrays and to spot people from a distance.

He used his Array Detecting spell every time he noticed a good place for an ambush, yet he found nothing. Part of the stone corridors was natural while the rest was man-made via the use of earth magic.

Both were really old, with small stalactites and stalagmites growing as well as vast patches of mold that had lived long enough to cover huge sections of the walls.

'There's something really wrong here.' Solus pondered as they kept going further below the bowels of Mogar.

'With the dimensional blocking array still in place, the vampires can't have stored their things and fled. Even if they could, why leave behind their precious machine? Also, I can't explain why they used such a small part of the upper caves.'

'Agreed.' Lith nodded. 'The materials for the device have to come from somewhere and none of the robbed caravans transported the necessary to build one. Just like the array, that machine looked like a mix of modern and old, hence the old parts must have been taken from here.

'This place reeks of Odi, yet we can't find any trace of their presence. As if…'

'As if someone already cleared everything.' Solus completed the thought for him.

Lith stopped walking ad started to use Fire Vision and Invigoration on the walls, looking for clues. It took him a while to reach the next intersection and find the remnants of an ancient Odi writing carved in the stone, just like those he had spotted on the way to Kulah.

Part of it had been eroded by time and the rest was covered by moss, making it easy to miss and almost unreadable.

Almost.

'It says "Storage".' Solus thought while Lith was already cursing the array stopping him from moving the Odi dictionaries inside Soluspedia.

'Wait. Do you speak Odi now?'

'A bit. By dint of translating the books about body-swapping, I've picked up a few words. Didn't you?'

'Absolutely not.' Lith replied.