"I need a ride back home. Xedros, the Lord of the Kellar region, must have gone away for some important reason. He isn"t home and he doesn"t reply to his amulet. Can you help me, Scourge?" Ryman asked.
Xedros the Wyvern was actually laying on the side of a mountain with most of his bones broken. Tyris had decided to spare his life, but that didn"t mean she was willing to let his act of defiance go unpunished.
Not only did her fist crush Xedros"s body, but it also had tampered with his life force, making it impossible for him to heal with Invigoration. It would take him days to fix the damage his life force had suffered and months to get back to his peak condition.
"Yes, don"t worry. I was going to visit you and Selia anyway." Lith said.
The army didn"t need their help often, so the three of them spent most of their time relaxing and sharing pointers about magic. Friya had many things to teach them about dimensional magic, whereas Lith had a lot to teach them about everything.
"How the heck did you learn the basics of all the specializations?" Friya had shed blood and sweat to train her three specializations.
"You have your guild, whereas I have no life." Lith shrugged.
Three days later, Lith and Protector left Zantia. Friya was sad to see them go. Protector"s kindness reminded her of her father, Orion. It didn"t take her long to grow fond of the wise yet socially awkward Emperor Beast.
The two of them Warped until they reached the nearest mana geyser.
"Why are we here? I thought we would take a Warp Gate." Protector asked.
Lith didn"t reply as Solus changed to her tower form, allowing them to get inside.
"It"s bigger than I remembered it." Protector looked around the familiar yet unknown place.
"What do you mean? It"s your first time in here. I expected you to at least be surprised." Lith asked.
"Your memories, remember?" Protector tapped the side of his head with a forefinger.
"Well, I bet you don"t know this." Lith snapped his fingers and a slight tremor spread throughout the tower. The s.p.a.ce around them stretched and deformed as they crossed thousands of kilometers in a heartbeat.
"By the Great Mother." Protector recognized the all too familiar Trawn woods.
"I can"t let the army clerks register all of my movements. If I had to vouch for you to let you use a Warp Gate, the Griffon Kingdom would easily guess your true ident.i.ty. I don"t have many friends and most of them have free access to Gates." Lith said.
"Thank you, Solus." Protector gave her a deep bow, making her blush.
"I hope you get a body soon. Fire and stone are not enough to express who you truly are. Whoever did this to you either loved you so deeply that they couldn"t stand the idea of losing you or was a heartless monster."
"You"re welcome, Protector." Solus regretted not being able to show him her physical appearance. She considered Ryman as one of her oldest friends, just like Lith did.
"I only have one secret and I"m already sick of it. I don"t know how Lith manages to keep so many of them and honestly, I don"t care. I want to come clean with him" She thought.
Ryman"s home was just a few hundred kilometers from Lutia. It took them just a few minutes to Warp to destination. When Lith saw Selia, her physical appearance shocked him.
She was supposed to be in her late-thirties, yet she looked even younger than the last time he had seen her. She seemed to be barely past her twenties. She was still 1.7 (5"7") meters tall and her skin was tanned from the years-long exposure to the sun.
Her black hair was now longer, reaching her shoulders and giving her more gentle looks. She wore a leather hunting jacket over a green s.h.i.+rt, green cargo pants, and brown hunting shoes with a soft outer sole, to limit the noise made while she moved.
Lith could tell by her round belly that she was past the six months of pregnancy. Her sharp eyes and rough att.i.tude hadn"t changed though.
"It"s about time!" She snarled while giving the children in her arms to Protector.
"Do you have any idea how hard is it to chase around those two pests while I"m bloated like this? Make yourself useful and fix us something to eat while we entertain our guest."
Her eyes became much kinder when she looked at Lith.
"Oh, G.o.ds! I would have never expected that the famished runt that once came begging at my door for help would get so tall. Give aunt Selia a hug, Scourge!" She extended her arms and embraced him before he could even answer.
"Scourge?" Lith asked.
"Ryman never calls you Lith and I think that Scourge is a fitting name for a great hunter." She replied while not letting him go.
The house was a mess. Toys were left around on the carpets and furniture. Most of the walls had been scribbled on, and Lith could see the traces of Selia"s efforts to scrub them off.
Yet it wasn"t the chaos reigning in the hallway which gave him the second shock in less than ten seconds from his arrival. Their home was almost identical to his own. It even possessed most of the enchanted home appliances he had made over the years.
"Selia, I missed you so much. Especially at Nana"s funeral." He returned the embrace the moment he snapped out of his reverie.
"I missed you too." She sobbed due to the joy of their reunion and the hormonal roller coaster she was experiencing.
"It"s all that wolf"s fault! I wanted to come at your graduation, but he said no. That the time wasn"t right and all that cheese." Selia wanted to swear, but she had learned the hard way how fast children were at copying their parents" bad habits.
"I don"t want to sound rude, but how can you look like this? Why does the house look like this?" He asked when she released him from her embrace.
"It"s all thanks to your memories." She gave him a big kiss on the cheek.
"Not only did you save that wolfhead"s life, but you also taught him more about the world and magic than he could ever achieve on his own. I asked him to do for me what you did for Elina and to make all the cool stuff you do."
Balkor"s attack had happened during the third trimester of his fourth year at the White Griffon, giving Protector most of his knowledge about regrowing limbs, Forgemastering, dimensional magic, and even magic crystals.
"I can"t do all the things you can, but at least I know the basics." Protector squinted his eyes and used a small blast of darkness magic to clean the walls.
The moment Ryman let them down, Lilia and Leran ran towards Lith. They were respectively 4 and 2 years old. With Ryman"s red hair and Selia"s sharp eyes, they were the spitting image of their parents.
They seemed to be curious about him, but instead of asking questions, they sniffed him for a while before shapes.h.i.+fting their hands and bare feet into claws to better climb his legs.
"No claws with the guests! Get down immediately!" Selia"s pants were riddled with holes. Now Lith could understand why she was so edgy. If Aran had magical powers, Elina would have gone insane without his help.