Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Besides, Zach had far more free time to tinker with the orb than Zorian did. The restart was nearing its end and there were so many things that needed to be done…

The restart was almost over. Overall, Zorian would have described it as a highly productive one.

The study of the gate stabilization frame they had stolen from the Ibasan base yielded a lot more results than Zorian expected. He now knew that some very unconventional methods had been used while making the gate – instead of carving the spell formula necessary for the operation of the frame, the Ibasans had embedded them directly into the frame in the form of numerous magic threads. The frame literally had to be peeled away, layer by layer, in order for researchers to record the layout of the threads and attempt to decipher it. Sadly, though they had invited many capable researchers on the project, they had failed to make sense of how the frame worked. Perhaps if the gate frame was still actively maintaining a dimensional passage, but as it was? Not a chance…

Still, it was a start. A lot of important groundwork had been done, and future analysis of the gate should go much faster. It was probably good that they didn’t manage to take an active gate in this restart – if they did, they would no doubt shy away from simply taking it apart like they ended up doing here, and several crucial insights would never have been made.

The interrogation of Sudomir was also a success. Granted, the man knew so many important things that he and Alanic had already agreed to keep kidnapping him in future restarts as well, but even his current gains were considerable. For instance, Zorian had finally found out what the deal was behind his strange transformations.

While Sudomir was an extremely talented warder and soul mage, and dabbled in lots of other magics as well, he was not terribly impressive as a fighter. Sudomir was well aware of this, and thus decided to close that vulnerability by becoming a shifter.

But he was overconfident and reached far beyond his grasp. Rather than picking one specific magical creature to fuse his soul with, he decided to splice up several magical creatures into some kind of unholy abomination that theoretically combined the best features of all of them… and then fused with that.

According to Alanic, it was incredible that the ritual didn’t end up turning him utterly insane or a quivering mass of unstable flesh right from the get go. As it was, the shifter ritual he designed was only a partial failure – the transformation was almost uncontrollable, forcing him to keep it suppressed at all times. But whenever he was under a lot of stress or in emotionally charged situations, his control inevitably started to slip, warping his mind…

Still, while the shifter ritual was a failure in many ways, it did give him his signature resilience. One of the creatures he used in crafting his initial abomination was a troll, and the other a dragon. The other three were similarly hard to kill. Zorian shuddered to think what would happen if he were allowed to completely transform into his composite form.

Another thing they found out from Sudomir was that there were some people related to the Cult of the Dragon Below that they had missed thus far when investigating the invaders. This was because they technically weren’t cultists. In fact, they were purposely kept separated from known cultists as much as possible, so they would look as clean as possible in case somebody investigated them. This included a fair number of lawyers, low-level politicians and even a respected judge. There was no time left to really check these people out, and Zorian suspected they weren’t too important for understanding the invasion, but he made a mental note to investigate them anyway. Just for the sake of being thorough.

Eventually the day of the summer festival came… and no attack occurred. The Ibasans continued evacuating, the Cult of the Dragon Below never made a move, and the primordial trapped in the Hole was never released.

But the restart ended right on schedule anyway, and Zorian woke up in Cirin, with Kirielle wishing him a good morning…

Deep in the jungles of Koth, there was a large, circular hole in the ground that led to a narrow vertical shaft and a pool of greenish water at the bottom. Although the place was quite beautiful, very few people could come here to admire it. It was, after all, absolutely teeming with chameleon drakes.

Naturally, this was the cenote where they had recovered the orb of first emperors in the previous restart. Zach and Zorian stood on the edge of the cenote, observing the chameleon drakes milling around the place and discussing how to go about recovering the orb this time around. Occasionally a group of chameleon drakes wandered past them or scrutinized their location, but between their cloaking spells and Zorian’s ability to reach into their minds and edit their senses and memories, there was little chance of them being discovered.

"So how are we doing this?" Zach asked. "Do you think you can sneak us in?"

Zorian stared at the cenote for a second before shaking his head. The drakes inside the cenote tended to clump together in groups of five or more, and the orb cave seemed to be the place that held the largest group.

"It’s hard enough to keep the drakes from noticing us when it’s just one or two," Zorian said sadly. "Those four independently moving eyes make their senses quite unlike humans. Figuring out how to fool their senses from moment to moment is too tiresome for me to do it on large groups."

Zach didn’t seem surprised by this. He seemed to be getting more familiar with the limitations of Zorian’s mind magic. "Then we should just go in, spells blazing, then?" he offered. "I mean, why complicate things? We can take them, I’m sure of it."

"I’d rather not fight a swarm of chameleon drakes today," Zorian said. "How about this? You move back from the cenote a little and attack them. If their previous reaction is any indication, they should all swarm out to deal with you. When they do, I will teleport into the orb cave, claim it, then teleport out. Even if they leave behind a few guards, these will be no match for me."

"And what if your attempts to claim the orb cause the hydra to appear?" Zach said with a frown. "I don’t want to be mean, but your fighting skills…"

"I’m no match for that thing, I know," Zorian said, nodding. "I don’t have to actually fight it, though. I can always just flee if it appears. I’m good enough to survive its assault for the few seconds it takes to cast the teleport spell. Besides, I suspect the hydra can’t actually exit the pocket dimension inside the orb cave itself. It’s just too big. The last time it emerged from the lake at the bottom of the cenote, and I suspect this time it will be no different."

"But if you snatch the orb and leave the cave, won’t the hydra have plenty of space near you to teleport itself in?" Zach asked.

Uhh… damn. He hadn’t thought of that.

"And even if the hydra doesn’t react immediately, simply having it inside makes the orb into a massive time bomb. The monster can clearly exit the orb whenever it wishes. What if we bring the orb to Cyoria and the hydra decides to enter the city while we’re sleeping or otherwise distracted? Imagine the damage it could do. If it decides not to react when we claim the orb, it might be a good idea to deliberately lure it out before we bring the orb to a populated area."

They decided to try Zorian’s idea anyway. The execution turned out to be a little more complicated than Zorian had thought it would be. Apparently Zach alone was not threatening enough to whip the entire group of chameleon drakes into a frenzy and make them leave their lair. After all, he was just one man. He might have been ungodly powerful, but that wasn’t something that could be gleaned at first sight. Thus, the drakes initially simply sent a group of five young drakes at him to deal with him. Of course, when Zach effortlessly slaughtered those five, the entire cenote grew more agitated… but not agitated enough to rush out and swarm him. They felt pretty safe in their cenote base, so they just massed themselves together and decided to wait and see if Zach would actually dare attack them in their home. Inconveniently for Zorian, they picked the orb cave as their rallying point.