Chapter 4411: Primordial Dread (Part 1)

"That’s a great idea!" Lith wanted to resume practicing immediately, but he could feel the mental and physical fatigue of the morning’s experiments catching up with him. "It doesn’t explain the deep blue energy and the role Spirit Magic plays, though."

"I was getting there." Baba Yaga said. "Consider that Mogar’s shadows are not meant to be taken literally. When she showed you Arthan, she didn’t mean for you to resurrect the Mad King, but that his opus, the Golden Griffon, held the key to mending the cracks in your life force.

"The same happened with the answer to your question about how to help Solus regain her body. Mogar showed you Ripha at the moment of her death, but our planet was just telling you that you had to trust Ripha’s genius.

"The tower restored Solus’ form on its own, long before Ripha returned as a Demon. By following this logic, we can assume that whatever process will allow you to use Void Magic on the Cursed Elements doesn’t require all elements.

"It just applies to all elements. Mogar showed them to you all at once to give you a clue without making the answer too obvious."

"It could be." Solus pondered. "What about Spirit Magic?"

"That’s an excellent question, but I’m too tired and hungry to think clearly." Baba Yaga raised her hands in surrender. "I need a good meal to regain my strength and a bit of time to organize my thoughts. Are you coming with me or are you staying here?"

Lith would have loved to have a light snack and get back to work, but experimenting on Void Magic had turned out to be much more complicated and energy-consuming than finding new Dread Runes.

’The Lodestar can’t suggest answers to me unless I ask Mogar the right questions. So far, I was completely off the mark.’ He thought.

"I can use a break. Solus?"

"I’m right behind you." Solus put the Lodestar in stasis and restored the flow of world energy to the other floors to reinforce the security of the Mansion. "I’m not letting the Lodestar recharge because the little energy it would gain isn’t worth being on edge the whole time. I want us to enjoy our meal."

The Mirror Warp brought them into an empty room adjacent to the dining room. After the kids’ bad experience in Lutia, Solus wanted to avoid scaring them.

"You’re back already? We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow." Their arrival pleasantly surprised Elina. "Luckily for you, I prepared your servings as well. I was going to put them aside for your return.

"I know how tired you guys are after spending so much time in your lab, and I wanted you to have a proper meal."

"Thank you, Mom." Lith used a chore darkness magic spell to cleanse himself of dust and sweat before hugging her.

"Don’t mention it, sweetie." Elina replied.

The meal passed uneventfully. Lith and Solus remained vague about their experiments and spent their time listening to how the others had spent their morning.

Baba Yaga had returned to her hut to eat with her adoptive hybrid children, saving Orion and Jirni from the stroke that meeting her would have given them.

"Before I forget, Gilly asked me to give you this." Kamila handed Lith a piece of paper.

"How many times do I have to tell her that I’m a married man?" He grumbled, pretending to be annoyed.

"Stop being silly!" Kamila chuckled. "The only reason that poor girl pesters you is that she can only see her father when you visit Lutia."

Gilly was Locrias’ daughter. All the family members of the Sigil Demons had their own living quarters at the Verhen Mansion, but they couldn’t help feeling out of place and preferred living in their homes in Lutia.

"Tell her that she can have her father-daughter date as soon as I’m done with my current business." As Kamila had predicted, the note was a simple request to let Locrias spend quality time with his family.

"Speaking of business, Master Ajatar will come to visit us soon." Morok said. "He says that he misses his godchildren too much, and doesn’t want them to forget his face."

’If only.’ Orion and Jirni inwardly grumbled.

Quylla had scolded her parents multiple times for their poor attitude towards her husband, yet they still resented being passed over for the role of godparents.

"He can stay here for as long as he wants." Solus said.

"Thanks, but I bet his scaly bottom that this is just an excuse to check on his lair." Morok replied. "You know how Dragons are. Master Ajatar must be worried sick that someone has broken past the defensive arrays and stolen his treasures."

After the meal ended, Lith and Solus returned to the Lodestar and found Baba Yaga waiting for them.

"I’ll use the time we have left to learn more Dread runes and get used to the pressure they exert on my psyche, or I’ll never be able to use tier four Dread Magic." She said. "What about you?"

"I already know the runes for the spells I want to create first." Lith replied. "I can do that anytime in the Firing Range. I want to keep working on Void Magic and follow your advice. If you are right, the Lodestar will let me know when I’m on the right path."

The Maiden sat cross-legged on the floor, away from Lith to avoid getting caught in the aftermath of a catastrophic failure. She had practiced Dread Magic long enough to grasp the necessary steps to create a tier four spell.

She had to visualize the effects she wanted to obtain with absolute clarity, or the Lodestar would suggest more runes than she could handle and give her a panic attack.

Baba Yaga started with the simplest incantation she could come up with. A blast of Zero surrounded by several air blades and bolts of thunder. Only the air element was quick enough to keep up with Dread Magic.

The others were too slow and would have needed to be carried by the Zero without being frozen, adding another layer of difficulty that the Maiden wanted to avoid. The more complex a spell was, the greater the number of runes it required.

Limiting the interaction between the two elements kept things simple and allowed Baba Yaga to near completion of the spell before the abject terror the Dread Magic runes instilled in her brought her research to a halt.

Zero forced her to relive the worst moments of her past, back when she was just a low-caste Odi who had fled her village to avoid becoming a test subject of the high-caste.

The tower disappeared, and Baba Yaga found herself in the open during a cold winter night, too afraid of being spotted to light a fire. She tasted the blood and raw meat of the red squirrel she had caught with her magic, but she couldn’t afford to cook.

She felt the cold numbing her limbs and making her drowsy as strength abandoned her. Baba Yaga also remembered the crippling fear that she might not wake up ever again if she fell asleep.

Zero Magic also forced her to relive the memories of Ahote, the Firstborn Wendigo, that Baba Yaga had inherited while exchanging her life force with her.

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