Magus Reborn

As it turned out, there really was no antidote.

Kai had already known finding one would be difficult. Spirit King Vaelthoros was a higher being, and one from another realm at that. Even Valkyrie might not have known enough information gathered about it, let alone about the specific poison it used. Still, he had held onto some hope because the library did contain Hendricks Klandel’s diary, and that man had looked deeply into other realms.

So Kai searched through the library anyway.

He found books on different realms, on their spirits and creatures, and on the strange plants that grew in them, but there was nothing on the poison itself.

That was the most frustrating part. The poison didn’t even look extraordinary. At least, not in effect.

Its work was simple enough.

It blocked the veins in his arm, stopping mana from moving through them, and if it was left there long enough, those veins would eventually jam for good. It was almost the same effect as the poison still lingering in the body when Kai had first taken over it. But this time, he couldn’t just force it out. If he tried, it would spread into the rest of his veins, and he doubted he would be able to clean all of that up afterward.

An antidote was the safest way.

But how was he supposed to find one when the books didn’t even mention Spirit King Vaelthoros by name?

If he had to guess, then the poison was something whose antidote could only be found back in the earth plane. Maybe that had been the spirit king’s intention from the start.

Even if he escaped, he would still be forced to return in the end, and once he did, he could be trapped there and killed.

Kai could easily see how the plan behind it worked.

For a mage, losing the proper use of an arm was one of the worst things that could happen. Even if they knew double-casting, their strength was still almost cut in half right away.

Kai was still better off than most because he knew far more than the average mage ever would, but that didn’t change the truth. In the battles ahead, he would need everything he had.

Which meant this problem had to be solved one way or another.

That only made him feel more certain that working on what he had started calling mage hands was the right decision. The problem was that even that would still take time before it reached the level he actually wanted. Maybe he could ask Orion to begin working on something as well.

If there was truly no antidote and no direct way to purge the poison from him, then the only other answer would be to throw men, money, and effort at the problem until something workable came out of it.

But that would also take time.

And time was exactly what he did not have.

With that thought still in his mind, Kai closed the book on the Earth Plane and frowned.

Across from him, Amyra looked up from the calculations he had been making her do for building her third circle. “Is everything okay, Lord Arzan?”

Is everything really okay? He was brought back to reality. “Not really. I’ve been trying to find an antidote but I don’t think I’ll be able to make one here. At least, not in this world.”

Amyra’s brows drew together at once, and some of the colour left her face. “An antidote?”

Just like that, Kai realised he had never actually told her what had happened. And to be honest, he had not told Amara either. Or Killian, or Francis.

But now that it had come up, he didn’t really see any point in hiding it anymore.

So, over the next few minutes, Kai briefly explained what had happened in the Earth Plane, how the poison had gotten into his veins, and why it was something he could not simply force out on his own.

He also told her that, from everything he had found so far, there did not seem to be any antidote available here.

By the time he was done, Amyra looked even more worried than before.

“What are you going to do then, Lord Arzan?”

Kai exhaled through his mouth. “Right now, not much. At the very least, the poison isn’t going to kill me.”

Amyra frowned at once. “That’s not reassuring.”

Kai gave a small, tired smile.

“It’s the only silver lining I have right now. I’ve already stopped it from spreading any farther, and since I can still cast through my legs, I’m not helpless yet.”

Amyra slowly nodded, though her expression did not ease much. “But you still have to find a solution, right?”

“Yes,” Kai said. “As fast as possible. Once I’m back in Veralt, I’ll see if Orion can do something about it.”

After saying that, he lowered his gaze back to the books in front of him, and after a moment, Amyra did the same.

What Kai didn’t tell her was that there was actually one other way he knew of that might work.

It would probably also be one of the most painful things imaginable.

If he truly ran out of options, he could rupture the veins the poison had spread through, then cut his hand open and force the corrupted parts out of his body manually. It would be bloody, ugly, and dangerous enough to kill even a Sixth-Circle Mage. The natural regeneration of his body was not strong enough yet to regrow proper mana veins, and damage like that was usually fatal.

Losing even one mana vein could create a gap in the way mana flowed through the body, enough to disrupt everything built on top of it. But there was still one way to regrow a mana vein, and it was not mana surgery.

Reaching the seventh circle.

At that stage, his body would gain the kind of natural regeneration that, with enough mana-heavy resources, could grow back a damaged vein in a short time. If he reached that point, then he could tear out the poisoned part and recover from it properly. But Kai knew that was an extreme answer, one that could cost him a great deal even if it worked.

More than that, he would first have to reach the seventh circle, and that was not something he could focus on before dealing with the corruption zones.

The moment that thought crossed his mind, he found himself thinking about Killian again—and the other Mages, and the Enforcers who were still fighting their way through the fiends and weavers there.

Francis hadn’t sent anything back yet, but Kai was sure the message had reached him by now, the one warning that all of it was a trap meant for him rather than a simple plague. Even so, he still had no idea how bad things truly were.

Soon, though, he would.

Part of him had wanted to leave for the corruption zones immediately, but his body, and especially his soul, had needed real rest after everything he had gone through against Dravros.

That was why he had chosen to stay a little longer, help Amyra, and search for anything that might give him an answer about the poison.

At least now he knew that search had led nowhere.

Still, his mana had nearly recovered, and even his soul mana, which returned much more slowly, had climbed back above eighty percent. At this point, all Kai could do was hope that Killian and the others were still alive by the time he reached them.

***

Killian didn’t know whether he was going to stay alive for much longer.

No matter how he looked at it, that was a pathetic thought to have, but he could not stop it when it was simply true. The corruption zone had looked small from outside, barely the size of a little town they only needed to clear and then hold until reinforcements arrived.

Instead, it had turned into a nightmare.

A quarter of his party was already dead.

That was not a small loss by any measure, and the ones still alive were hardly better off. Almost all of them were injured in one way or another, and there was a limit to what health draughts could do for them. They needed time to work properly, but time was the one thing they never got.

Before one wound could settle, they had to clash with more fiends and more weavers, and each battle only made things worse. The healing chemicals were running low too. They still had some draughts left, but at the level most of his party stood on, one could not just keep drinking them one after another without consequence.

Honestly, it might have been manageable if the enemies had only been ordinary fiends and weavers.

But they weren’t.

The worst one so far had been the fiend shaped like a giant elephant.

That thing was a monster.

A walking wall of flesh and corruption that took far too long to bring down. The only good thing about fighting it was that it could not move quickly, but even then it kept firing globs of dead mana at them, and one of those had struck a Mage named Teren full on.

By the time the battle finally ended, the dead mana inside him had already spread too far. It was corrupting him from the inside, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

In the end, they had only one choice.

They put him down before the suffering could get any worse. And that had only been the beginning.

After that first death, Killian had tried to give his party more time to rest between battles, but the enemies never allowed it. They came at them again and again without pause, and it was only later that one of the Enforcers spotted a drone moving across the sky.

When they finally brought it down and got the message from it, it turned out to be a warning from Francis.

The message said the corruption zone might’ve been a trap made specifically for Lord Arzan, and that Killian should be careful or even abandon the mission if he judged that necessary.

Honestly, Killian could believe it.

This place was far too different from Vanderfall.

Even so, the thought of abandoning the mission never truly settled in his mind. Still, he had asked the others. As the one leading them, he had felt he needed to. He asked whether they wanted to turn back, but none of them did.

Watching one of their own die had shaken them, yes, but it had also lit rage inside them. The deep need for revenge. The need to at least finish what their fallen comrade had died for.

So they kept moving.

And the next day, more of them died.

By then, they had come close to clearing out most of the fiends and weavers from the town, but there was still the inner district left, the stretch leading toward the center where the wealthiest mansions stood. If Killian had to guess, the worst of the enemies would be waiting there.

Just thinking about it made him let out a breath.

He turned and looked at the Enforcers and Mages standing behind him.

“You all understand the new strategy, right? I will personally punish anyone who breaks formation and tries to act like a hero.”

At that, an Enforcer named Kalen pursed his lips before saying, “But what if you are the one in danger, Knight Killian? We can’t just stay back and deal with the weavers while you fight the fiend.”

Killian looked at him at once. “If you try to take it on, you’ll die. I’ve told you that already, and you know it. You aren’t children, so stop being stubborn. Follow your orders and act like the soldiers we trained you to be.”

He knew every one of them still wanted to argue.

He could see it on their faces. They didn’t want to leave the larger fiends to him alone. But wanting something and surviving it were different matters. Killian could take a hit or two from those creatures.

They couldn’t.

At this point, they were far more useful as support than trying to prove anything with bravery. This campaign had already gone much worse than he had imagined. There was no training left in it now. Only survival.

So for the next ten minutes, they moved in silence.

They cut through narrow alleys, watching every corner and every shadow, while keeping their eyes on the rooftops in case a weaver was waiting above them. When they finally got close enough to the wealthier part of the town, they found a ladder leading up the side of a building and used it to climb to the rooftop for a better view ahead.

Killian reached the top first and stepped toward the edge.

His body froze on the spot.

What stood ahead of them was nothing short of horrifying.

He did not even remember seeing anything like that when they had first dropped in from the sky, but it was there now. Bigger than the elephant fiend they had fought before. Much bigger.

A giant golem sat crouched over one of the mansions like some massive corpse brought to life. Its body looked as if it had been built out of shattered stone, blackened metal, and dead flesh fused together in the wrong ways. Thick cracks of dark light ran through its frame like veins. One arm was larger than the other, ending in a warped hand that looked capable of crushing an entire house in one grip, while its back was lined with spines that rose and fell as if the thing were breathing.

Its head was the worst part.

Too small for its body, half buried into its shoulders, with no proper face other than a deep hollow where two dull lights burned like eyes.

Killian heard gasps behind him as the rest of his party climbed up and saw it too.

He kept staring at the creature for another second before turning toward them and muttering, “This might be the last battle we fight in this town.”

***

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