2521 Ubiquity (Part 1)



'Lith's mana, stamina, and life force are at their peak condition. The exertion is only on his mind. Unless he asks me for it, I'm going to respect his wishes.' Faluel said.

Nalrond was the first to recover. He used fusion magic to get rid of the mana poisoning due to the prolonged mind link with Lith and his meditation technique to mitigate the aftereffects of the Eyes of Menadion.

As for Lith, he had a harder time due to suffering from the same issues and the strain from organizing the massive load of information they had collected. Thanks to his bond with the tower, Lith could access all of its functions.

Yet due to Solus being away with the stone ring, every interaction required an effort to overcome the distance and the magical protections separating them. A single action like accessing Soluspedia or the dimensional pocket had a negligible cost.

On the other hand, conjuring the Eyes and then using the tower core to filter so much data further burdened his already strained mind. Even with the tonics and the rest, by the time Lith stood up his face was still pale and had dark eye bags.

"Are you sure you don't need a nap?" Faluel's silvery voice sounded like nails on the board to him.

"I- We don't have time for that." Organizing his messy thoughts into intelligible words was so tiresome that he half spoke and half panted. "There's no telling when my tracker will be discovered.

"Once it runs out of energy, it will lose its cloaking abilities and at that point, the monsters will know that their position has been compromised. If they move to another location or if their scouts notice our presence, everything will be for naught."

Faluel nodded, understanding that his real worry was Solus' safety and what might happen to her were she to be caught.

'That poor girl is alone against thousands if not dozens of thousands of monsters with unknown abilities and with no way out. Stealth is her only protection and one single moment of distraction would spell her doom.' The Hydra thought.

'Between her weakening core and the mental pressure from the nightmare scenarios that must be playing in Solus' head, she must be terrified.'

"So, I'm going to show you what I discovered and I'll leave it to you to find a solution while I focus on my recovery." Lith used a tendril of Spirit Magic to form a mind link with everyone. "Clench your teeth because this is going to hurt."

He had no eidetic memory so he had to conjure the Eyes and read the information from there. The flow of images started slow but quickly grew in volume and speed, turning into a raging river that flooded the minds of his companions.

"Slow down, dammit!" Ajatar clapped his temples, trying to contain his head that seemed to be about to burst open.

"Any slower and this will take us all day." Lith replied.

"Ajatar is right." Faluel reverted to her Hydra form to exploit her seven heads to ease the pain from the mind link. "If we end up like you, we'd be useless as well."

Lith snorted but complied, thinning the stream of information until the Drake found it manageable.

"Can't you just project a hologram for us to study?" Quylla asked, her head throbbing even after the flow of the mind link had been significantly reduced.

"Sure. How long do you need to read and understand this?" The schematics of the basic hexagonal cell structure of the arrays appeared in the middle of the group.

Each array was complex and comprised of hundreds of runes. Quylla needed one glance to understand that she would need hours to study one of them with conventional means and there were seven of them.

Once she noticed how they interacted with each other, adding a new layer of complexity for every shared string of runes, she gave up on the idea.

"Never mind. Please, continue."

'Calm down, you idiot.' Lith slowed the process down further. 'Mind links are very quick. It's just your paranoia that makes it feel slow. As Faluel said, there's no point in sharing my burden if I let it crush the others as well. Solus needs their help.'

After what seemed to be hours but was actually less than five minutes, Lith could lie down with his closed eyes and rest again. Faluel's seven heads were now in charge of keeping the mind link with the group.

She remembered most of the schematics and the few blanks left were filled by Ajatar and the others.

"This is amazing!" The Drake said while staring in awe at the complexity of the magical formations. "And I'm not just talking about Glemos' genius but also about you son. Did you really develop Dragon Eyes?"

It was the only plausible explanation for someone so young and inexperienced to have gathered such a level of detailed information. Not one rune was missing from the picture in front of Ajatar's eyes and even the mana flow between the seven arrays was recorded with perfect precision.

"Do I look like someone with Dragon Eyes?" Lith pointed at his weathered face.

"Definitely not." The Drake shrugged, focusing on the arrays again.

'Now that I think about it, if Lith had Dragon Eyes he wouldn't need our help but he wouldn't have learned so much either. Dragon Eyes are the perfect learning aid but only as long as the user has at least a basic understanding of the magical phenomenon he's observing.

'Not only is Lith unfamiliar with half of these arrays, but by his own admission, he has no clue about how they interact as well. If this was the result of Dragon Eyes, all the parts he's unable to understand would be missing and we wouldn't be able to help.

'However his bloodline ability works, it provides him full data yet without the means to understand it. During battle, it's worse than Dragon Eyes but it's superior otherwise. It allows its user to ask for help and take all the time they need to study.

'The perfect learning tool for- Wait, why does this sound familiar?' Ajatar could swear to have read something about a legendary creature or device that did the exact same thing.

'Focus, master Ajatar.' Morok's voice snapped the Drake out of it. 'The fate of my legacy depends on it. So far Lith pulled most of the weight. If you don't do something useful, he'll demand a huge cut and I won't be able to say no.'

'And why is that my problem?' The Drake inwardly snorted.

'I was planning to share it with you as a thank you for everything you did for me, but if you are fine splitting it three ways…' At those words, greed focused the Lesser Dragon's mind like a laser, casting aside all useless thoughts.

His eyes ran across the strings of runes like they were but a grocery list while his brain recalled every bit of useful information that he had learned from the countless Warden books he had studied during his centuries-long life.

"I got it." Ajatar said while the younglings were still focusing on their respective first array and Faluel was pondering the synergies arising from their honeycomb structure.