Blood in the Deser

by Sophia Schmidt

  Whenever Solus felt she was about to lose herself in the madness surrounding them, she would find a safe harbour in his heart, uncaring for the ever growing body count or their failure, the only thing he worried about was her.

  As often happens in the history of science, a crucial element for their survival was discovered almost by accident.

  Lith's research team had confirmed that the worms couldn't be killed or removed, either by magic and surgery, without causing them to release the necrosis inducing toxin that lead to the patient's death.

  To make things worse, Lith had discovered that even if the parasites' effects weren't triggered by the active use of mana, once their number grew above what the mana capacity of the host could sustain, they would start to feed on his flesh and blood causing his demise.

  It was after one of such cases occurred that Lith noticed something he had missed until that point. The corpse, like all the others caused by the worms' reproductive cycle, was perfectly normal.

  Temperature, rigidity, everything was as it was supposed to be, with no sign of premature decay.

  After consulting with Marth, they devised together a spell that would allow them to confirm his new theory. Being comprised only by experts, it took Marth's team only a few hours to create a trial spell, instead of the weeks that Lith would need if he had worked alone.

  Lith had already helped creating a diagnostic spell that would allow even to fake mages to detect the parasites, so he decided to let Marth conduct the experiment. He needed a cure that anyone could use, or everything would be for naught.

  First, Marth located the parasites in a patient's limb, then he applied the trial spell. Once again, Lith's core idea was simple. He had observed that the natural death of the parasites would deal no harm to the host, so all they had to do was not to kill them but to let them die.

  The trial spell flooded the patient's body with darkness magic, without directly attacking the parasites. The limb progressively lost its mana and vitality, until the point the worms were incapable to draw sustenance from it, starving immediately.

  Lith was able to follow the whole procedure via Invigoration, ready to step in if something went wrong. The first to collapse were the eggs, withering as soon the slightest trace of darkness touched them.

  Unlike the adult form, they had no protection against it. The keystone in Lith's new spell was that they weren't attacking the whole limb, but only the locations were the parasites resided.

  So, once their life force was extinguished, having being tricked in perceiving their host as dead, the healers were free to regenerate the damaged tissues and inject energy in the patient.

  The procedure lasted more than an hour, Lith and the other healers had to intervene more than once to prevent the spell from attacking safe tissues. Being only a trial version, it emphasized strength rather than finesse.

  When it was over, Marth was drenched in sweat, his mask's eye crystals were fogged by the body heat.

  "My dear colleagues, this leg needs to be regenerated a bit, but I'd say this was a success!"

  Chapter 153 True Genius

  After the success of the trial spell, Professor Marth's team shared with the other healers the details of their discovery. Finding the cure wasn't a contest, but a priority for the whole Kingdom.

  Thanks to the new and vital piece of information, the research began anew with the different teams sharing their success as well as the numerous failures. Those who tried to get rid of all the parasites in one go, had a high mortality rate compared to the healers cleansing one limb at a time.

  The great numbers of worms, coupled with the high finesse required to control the dark energies without inflicting collateral damages, forced the researches to abandon projects that aimed for a single session treatment.

  After a trial and error experimentation, it became apparent that the best approach was a different spell for each limb, arms, legs, chest and head. When Marth told him that their team was going to develop a tier five spells, Lith went back studying the other kinds of parasites, letting them do their job.

  He had still a limited knowledge of tier four, whenever the discussion moved to tier five, Lith was able to understand only the general terms, there was nothing he had to offer anymore.

  After eleven days, Marth's team had successfully converted the trial spell in four new spells. After testing their efficiency, curing several patients with a very low mortality rate, he went to inform Varegrave of their success.

  Those days, the Colonel was often gloomy, no matter how many progresses the researchers did, he had never forgot his foolish bet with the King. The moment the cure was found, it would also be his last day.

  When Marth finished his report, Varegrave went pale, his lunch made several attempts to escape the stomach and get back to the plate, but a few glasses of Dragon Water to celebrate the good news managed to calm his nerves.

  "I'm impressed by your amazing results, Professor. The White Griffon truly deserves the title of 'cradle of the healing arts'. To think that less than two weeks ago we were considering the idea of incinerating the whole region." Varegrave shuddered.

  The thought of so many innocent lives lost only because of his incompetence, hadn't allowed him to have a single good night of sleep since Lith's arrival.

  "Just out of curiosity, did Lith help you develop the cure as well?"

  "Oh, no. By the gods, if he managed to do such a thing, we would have a second Manohar at hand. Heavens know if one isn't already too much."

  Varegrave nodded. His fate was sealed anyway, he decided it was best to understand the scope of his mistake, rather than live his last days in fear.

  "It is odd, though. From your previous report, I understood that it was him discovering the key element for the cure and proposing the method."

  Marth pondered for a while, searching for the right words to not appear arrogant or ungrateful towards his own student.

  "Indeed he did. But saying 'there is a flood, we need a dam', is different from actually knowing how to alter the terrain and engineer a facility capable of getting the job done."

  "I'm sorry, Professor, but you lost me at 'he did'. Do you mind to dumb it down for me?"

  "Well, it's actually simple. Lith's diagnostic skill is the only thing he has on Manohar's level. He identified the plague's source and then understood how, at least in theory, it was possible to cure it. Yet he had no idea how to do it.

  If he was a true genius, he would have assembled four or five tier four spells he already knew and attempted a makeshift cure. Luckily, he knows his limits and the importance of teamwork, so he came to me for help.

  Long story short, his core idea was correct, but it was just a vague idea. Turning it into reality was beyond his capabilities. Not to mention how difficult has it been to make it actually work."

  As most warriors, Varegrave had always had limited interest in healing magic, but since in the last month it had become his bread and butter. It was now a topic that piqued his curiosity.

  "Not to be rude, but what are you saying doesn't make much sense. I read his file. I know he is the only S rank healer that appeared in the last five years. Otherwise, how do you explain that all the great magicians assembled here, you included, didn't manage to do the same, despite the gap in age and experience?"

  Marth sighed deeply. He wasn't a prideful man, yet admitting to be inferior to a child always proved to be vexing for his ego.

  "It's a matter of vision. All us old coots have taken bad habits during the years, and Lith is our wake up call. Since light magic has replaced medicine, we stopped asking ourselves questions that in this case proved to be vital.

  We do not care anymore why a liver doesn't function properly, we just identify what's making the patient ill and fix it. We got so used to light magic's simplicity to became uncapable of thinking outside its boundaries.

  Since Lith's arrival, he showed us how important was the knowledge of anatomy for regenerative magic, and now, being the on
ly one that spectated to autopsies, managed to caught what we all stupidly overlooked.

  He is considered a S rank talent, because while being taught to, we also learn from him. The lesson Lith has been imparting to us old fools is that science and magic are two aspects of the same thing, and that by relinquishing one we can't develop the full potential of the other."

  ***

  Meanwhile, now that the light magic parasite was off the list, Lith was experimenting the cure he had suggested Marth on the victims of the fire and water parasites too. (AN: the parasites that cause spontaneous combustion/freezing when using the respective elemental magic.)

  Thanks to Invigoration, he was capable of cleansing an infected in a matter of minutes.

  Before asking Marth's advice, Lith had already verified on his own that the method was feasible, leaving most of the glory to the rest of the team. True magic allowed him a surgical precision in handling darkness magic, even inside the body of another human.

  Killing a single worm or hundreds at a time was only a matter of focus for him. Whenever Solus would grow fond of one of their experimental subjects, he would cull the parasites in his body to prolong his life and prevent her to further delve into depression.

  While Marth and the others were still busy creating a spell anyone could use, Lith had already discovered two important things. The first was that fire and water parasites could be treated the same way as the light magic ones.

  The second, was that water parasites had a much longer reproductive cycle compared to their fire cousins. By checking the mortality data of the four different kinds of parasites, he noticed that water and magic blocking parasites were the ones causing the least amount of deaths.

  Unbeknownst to him, only two had been created to infect the soldiers, while the others were intended to be used on the population of the Blood Desert tribes and Gorgon Empire respectively until they had completely submitted.

  "If the cure I have devised works for three parasites, I can hope it will work also for the fourth type. Based on what Varegrave said on my arrival, until a way to eradicate the magic blocking parasite isn't found, they will not let me go.

  In a world like this, where quick transportation and communications are entirely magic dependant, the little critters can cause the fall of whole nations, bringing them back to the stone age.

  It would be like if on Earth someone controlled a bacterium capable of sapping electrical current. Let's hope I am right. I can't wait to get out of here." ¨C

  The magic blocking parasite was the one Lith knew the least about. Since its victims were kept in a separate space created with dimensional magic, he had no way to interact with the infected without the supervision of Colonel Varegrave.

  Most of them were powerful mages, that following the loss of their powers had been brought to the verge of insanity. The most common cause of death among the fourth group of infected wasn't the parasite, but suicide.

  The second one was the constant rioting, which frequency was only getting worse with the passing of time. The medical ward was isolated from the external world, aggravating the feelings of helplessness and despair that had taken a deep root in the heart of the patients.

  The few times that Lith managed to have access to the secret ward, the guards needed to be forewarned to have the time to restrain the residents before his arrival. Once he arrived, he had little time at hand and no privacy, so he could not conduct any experiment.

  Now that the other threats were under control, Lith decided it was the right time to convince Varegrave to take out at least an infected from the secret ward and set up a separate tent for his studies.

  Chapter 154 The Last Hurdle

  Contrary to Lith's expectations, Colonel Varegrave didn't raise objections to his proposal, allowing him to start studying the mana blocking parasites. The only issue was that many preparations were required, and the safety measures were much stricter than before.

  Most of the victims had turned extremely violent, so they needed to be hands and feet strapped to the stretchers to avoid escape attempts.

  Everything that regarded the magical community needed the Mage Association permission, so Captain Kilian was assigned to him as escort and assistant whenever he came in contact with one of the patients.

  There were a couple of reasons behind Varegrave's meek attitude. After speaking with Professor Marth, he had been able to put his wounded pride aside and admit to himself how wrong he had been doubting Lith's loyalty to the Kingdom.

  Second, and most important, he was dealing with an internal investigation that had exploded between his hands out of the blue. After Lith had killed the traitorous lieutenant Vickas and his two accomplishes, the cogs of fate had started to move.

  With the tight discipline the encampment was operated with, the sudden disappearance of middle level officers couldn't go unnoticed for long. By the end of the first day, the military personnel were on alert, looking for three possible deserters.

  The worst case scenario was that one of them, if not all, had been infected, and had decided to attempt escaping from the quarantine zone to see their families one last time before their demise.

  Varegrave couldn't take any risk, if the plague spreaded in the rest of the Kingdom, the whole world would have been in danger. Their living quarters were tooth comb searched looking for any clue about their intentions or destination.

  By the following day, the situation turned even worse. By checking their military records and work schedules, Varegrave discovered that all three of them, at the moment of their disappearance, were on patrol duty in the sector where Lith's tent was located.

  Normally he would have considered it to be a coincidence, but after what happened to his sworn brother Velagros, he couldn't dismiss the idea they were traitors sent to finish the job.

  Varegrave asked for Kilian's help, and both had their most loyal men search every place the three missing officers had been seen at, looking for clues.

  The good news was that thanks to Small World, escaping was far from easy, and all the guards at the checkpoints, the only ways out the quarantine zone, were all elite veterans of proven loyalty.

  Even if one of them was a traitor too, in an eight men team it would be impossible for him to help his accomplices without the others noticing. Also, according to the Ward block security, they had been seen going in, but never got out.

  Being Lith safe and sound, he couldn't be their target. The thorough search of the encampment lead to the finding of a hidden stash and most of the magical items that once belonged to the three lieutenants.

  The stash contained incriminating evidence against three powerful noble families and two of the missing soldiers, marking them as potential traitors against the Crown.

  According to a letter found inside the stash, lieutenant Vickas had been approached by his foster father, Duke Selimar, who had asked him to betray the Kingdom in exchange of the promise of becoming his heir.

  Vickas explained how he had pretended to accept, while gathering evidence to bring down the noble faction. According to the letter, he had only managed to identify two more, and concluded saying that if anything happened to him, it was likely he had been discovered and killed.

  Varegrave was moved by Vickas' brave selflessness, cursing himself for not being a leader capable to inspire trust. If Vickas had come asking for his help, maybe things would have ended differently.

  The final nail in the coffin of Varegrave's hopes for a happy ending, was that all the magical items retrieved now lacked any imprinting.

  That could mean that their owners were dead.

  Discovering how deeply rooted was the noble's faction grasp inside the military ranks, Varegrave entrusted all the gathered evidence to Kilian, letting the Queen's corps do the rest.

  Unbeknownst to Lith, his plan had worked almost flawlessly. It had been him forcing Vickas to write the letter on his notebook, to collect all the magical items and putting them were they could be found.

  L
ast but not least, he had found the hidden stash each lieutenant had and put everything together in a single one to make the cover story he had devised work. The only flaw was that he had no idea how to explain the disappearance of the three dead bodies.

  If the traitors had overpowered and killed the "heroic" Vickas, getting rid of the corpse was natural, but if even them had died, who could have cleaned the scene?

  The evidence contained into the secret stash wasn't enough to accuse one of the great noble families of treason, but it undermined their credibility, linking them to several unsolved crimes.

  It would allow the Crown to suppress all their activities and cripple their influence until the investigation was over. Preventing the civil war from occurring was a top priority, so Varegrave could only ignore that mystery for the time being.

  "Dammit, in the King's shoes, I'd kill an incompetent fool as myself without a second thought." He thought. "I was so busy doubting Lith's loyalty that I missed the real traitors right under my nose I can already hear the King and Queen quarrel about how corrupted the army his.

  She will never let His Majesty hear the end of it." ¨C

  ***

  Considering the matter of the other three parasites resolved, Lith started to examine several infected from the mana blocking parasite looking for the perfect specimen. He was determined to find the worst case of infection possible and use it for his work.

  Unlike him, fake magicians weren't able to alter the magical flow of their spells unless they had been expressively devised to allow it. To make things worse, Lith had no idea how a tier five spell worked, so he had to make sure to provide them a foolproof cure.

  Lith's plan was to study an advanced case, gathering all the necessary data he needed to create a trail of breadcrumbs that Marth's team could follow. Otherwise they would need to make adjustments every time they encountered a circumstance unknown at the time the spell had been created.