Chương 83: Chapter 159 - Refining the Route

That night, Mirian had them chain the oxen to the clearing right next to where Apophagorga would emerge. If she was right, she hoped the beast would grow comfortable finding the occasional snack. She ordered the expedition back. Some decided to stay to witness the titan emerging, even though she warned them they might not survive. Most left, disappointed, but still hopeful. The last days were the kind that felt surreal. Strangers would come up to her and talk.

Sometimes they asked her questions, sometimes they wanted to tell their own story. They would praise her, or thank her, and she couldn't help but feel like she was above them in some way—or less than human. Other soldiers left or scattered, off to spend their last moments with a loved one, embroiled in hedonism, or often, in thoughtful prayer. As the final hours approached and the remaining soldiers watched the world end, she continued probing her soul with her new tri-bonded spells.

The hole, it seemed, was deeper than her soul was thick. And it seemed there was something in there.

For the next two cycles, Mirian worked primarily on coordinating both the hiring of the myrvite hunters and getting the Praetorians and soldiers to move into position with them. The first time she tried organizing both, she arrived later in Alkazaria, and was only just in time to stop the destruction of the fossilized myrvite stores. The next time, she worked on refining the first days of the cycle, and got Nicolus to do more of the paperwork and help recruit Calisto.

It didn't need to be her going down to negotiate trade contracts or open bank accounts. She had to focus on the parts that only she could do. That got her to Alkazaria early. Then, she could really disrupt the attack. She broke apart the southern railroad tracks and made sure the western gate was closed. The resulting train derailment killed plenty of the Persaman soldiers outright. The initial surprise attack failed utterly. Stopping the siege after that was trivial.

For a third attempt, she got Torres and Jei to leave Torrviol and join her. Jei was easy to convince. Torres, it took some doing, but she eventually yielded. She rushed down to Alkazaria again and started making preparations for the attack on the city. Only—there was no attack. That concerned Mirian. On one hand, it was a blessing; dealing with the siege took a great deal of time. On the other hand, it was worrying.

Unlike Troytin, it seemed Ibrahim was much quicker to make drastic changes if something wasn't working. Does he know it's me? Does he know about Troytin? Or was he so focused he didn't even realize there were any other Prophets until now? And what is he doing? She had no answers, and she had no intention of moving into Persama. If that's where Atroxcidi was, he could stay there. The change made convincing the Praetorians to join her significantly harder.

Without Jei and Torres, she probably would have failed entirely. Once again, she left a tasty snack for Apophagorga, and shouted a message of hope to her assembled fighters. Soon, she promised. Everything was falling into place. The problem now was the Frostland's Gate Vault.

The next cycle, she left Troytin plenty of surprises, then started hiking back to the small northern town. Even if she barely spent any time sabotaging Troytin's efforts in Torrviol, she just wasn't moving fast enough to fit everything in. Ibrahim was missing, but she was still on a deadline; if the Praetorians didn't encounter his army, they were still bound to leave Alkazaria to hunt the arch-necromancer. She had to be in the second capital before they left.

Organizing the hunters, recruiting the soldiers, and then going through all the puzzles—it would take several days. The route is just too long. Then she thought, the route through the greater horrors is too long. There's too many puzzles, and I can't fight the beasts. But what about the other route? They had all guessed there was a second way to the Vault. It probably meant going through the death-trap obstacle course, the one that had seemed like a way to waste too many cycles. Worth looking into, she thought.

The first route had emphasized strength and intellect, requiring both combat and puzzle solving. There's no way I could get anyone else to join me on that route. But maybe… is it possible to do alone? If that was the case, mana management would be her next problem. I can levitate to speed up the journey, but then I'd arrive with almost no mana. Even using three mana elixirs, which is as many as I'm willing to risk, I'd either be short on mana for the trials, or I'd have to waste time resting.

As she walked, she tried to think of all the spells she would need. Is there a way to combine them? Minimize them? Damn, but there's so many, and they take so long to scribe! But in order to get a proper spellbook… Then she stopped walking. She already had the solution. There was a perfectly good spellbook, full of hundreds of spells, right in Torrviol. Better yet, using that spellbook would make Troytin's life hellish. Mirian, you're so brilliant.

That would save her hours and hours of time, spread out through the cycle. Critically, it would save her hours of time at the beginning of the cycle. And if I can't levitate the whole time, why not do what I did when I first visited Arriroba? I'll ride an eximontar. There were plenty of eximontar in Torrviol. The fastest one was Cassius's. Might as well steal that too.

Then I'll be off to steal gold and treasures from the Corrmiers, then steal the Holy Pages from the Sanctum, then it'll be time to steal all the myrvite hunters and Praetorians. My father would be so disappointed in me. Bitterly, she thought, well, who knows about my real father. Maybe he's a hardened criminal and would be fine with it. There was still that memory curse to deal with, but it seemed the best way to deal with that would be to get rid of Troytin first so she could freely investigate the Deeps.

Arenthia had said they were the ones who had likely done it. One step at a time. As Mirian camped out on the Littenord Pass, she watched the wyverns swoop across the sky. Why is flying so easy for them? Wyverns and birds don't need mana. Then her brow furrowed. Huh. Designs started to churn through her head.

After a few days in the village, Mirian met Beatrice and her team outside one of the craft shops. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"What were you doing in there?" Beatrice asked.

"I hired his team and the artificer to see if they can make a design in a day."

"Is that what the wyverns you brought into town are for?"

"Yup," she said.

"Why not make it yourself?"

"Because I'm going to be busy. Let's head down." They took the elevator platform down the stone shaft, then headed through the Labyrinth. Mirian didn't bother checking the maps, which annoyed Cediri to no end.

"That bundle of supplies for opening up the early puzzles of the Labyrinth—where do you keep it?" Mirian asked Beatrice.

"In my room." She cocked her head.

"Why?"

"I'm probably going to steal it at some point," she replied casually.

"That'll speed things up when it matters." Beatrice gawked at her.

"You can't just do that."

"Why not? Tell you what, I can leave an apology note. But you're absolutely not going to be able to come with me through the Labyrinth. Ah, Vault's just up ahead." Cediri sneered at her.

"She's right," he said reluctantly. While the others secured the ropes, Mirian levitated down and approached the door. First ring, counter-clockwise, ends on this glyph. Spin clockwise to here. Third ring, counter-clockwise. The door silently split open. Then she turned and used lift person to help Grimald down.

"So there's an actual Elder titan just… sleeping underground?" Cediri asked.

"Yup," she said.

"And you know which part the catalyst is?" That gave Mirian pause.

"I looked into it. The Ennecus family had notes on the arcane catalyst of the First Prophet's titan. It was a bone-like, nacreous-looking thing near the base of the skull. Described something like 'obsidian, spun like silk, with frozen oil that glistens as if lit by moonlight.' So I'll be looking for something like that."

"It's a big corpse to dissect. There's some devices we use to check the purity of catalysts when we sell parts so we know we're not getting something diluted. That could help you locate it." He sighed.

"I can't believe you told them all I'm a smuggler."

"I can't believe you've been a criminal this whole time," Beatrice said. Cediri rolled his eyes. Grimald shrugged his heavy shoulders.

"Seems like there's more important things," he said gruffly. Mirian requested that she be allowed to solve each room as they moved forward, while Cediri kept track of how long it took using sand timers.

"One and one quarter minute," he reported on the third room.

"Two minutes," he said on the fourth. Finally, they got to the challenge corridor, the one with the anti-magic suppression field. Beatrice raised an eyebrow.

"The Ennecus group told us about this room. A jump that's damn near impossible. A crushing-wall just after that. Then there's the tiles that incinerate you if you touch the wrong one, and finally, some gravity spell flings you into the ceiling towards all those spikes and you have to jump from platform to platform. You're absolutely going to die if you try that. I don't even think it's physically possible." Mirian smiled.

"Well, you know what they say about the best way to learn."

"Repetition? Mirian, that just means its going to kill you like a hundred times."

"Yeah, which is why I'm not going to practice down here." Mirian pulled a measuring stick out of her pack, two bundles of marked ropes, a pile of rocks, a dye pack, then a cylinder.

"Cediri, write down the measurements as I call them out." She started by measuring the distance from the door to the ledge, which Cediri dutifully recorded, then threw the rope across the first pit. The wall came out and crushed the rope. As it did, she pulled it taut, marked the edge, then as the smashing-wall retracted, pulled the rope back. She measured the rope from where it had been smushed to the place where she'd marked it.

"Four meters, six centimeters." The Ennecus group's initial estimates had proved to be pretty good, but Mirian wanted precision. If she was going to practice, she needed to practice on an exact copy, or muscle memory would make the trial harder, not easier. Next, Mirian used a weighted rock at the end of the rope and carefully timed throws to measure out the farther distances.

Once she'd measured the exact length of one of the trapped tiles (which burned the ends off her first rope), she could extrapolate quite a bit. After that, they all took turns chucking rocks dipped in dye onto the tiles. Hitting the exact tile they wanted was the hardest part, but the dye clearly marked the ones that didn't burn. Cediri dutifully noted it all down. The last part was far too distant for her rope.

Even if she could throw the coil just right, the crushing wall would stop the rope's movement before it got too far. Instead, from just outside the antimagic field, she cast a light spell inside the cylinder, then began moving it at angles to the measuring stick. With a bit of trigonometry and the distances she did know, she could assemble the rest of the distant measurements. It took a few hours. Then, they headed back up.

"Now," Mirian said, rubbing her hands together, "We're going to build it."

"Minus the death-trap parts?"

"Minus the death-trap parts," she agreed. They headed over to one of the cliff formations. There, Mirian began to use shape stone more than she had in any previous cycle, carving out and smoothing granite chunks so that she had platforms, tiles, and gaps to leap over. The last part of the structure was the trickiest part. Mirian had them cut down several pine trees, then made a structure with the same inverted platforms.

The only difference was she had to use wood instead of stone for the platforms for simple engineering considerations. Over the course of three days, they worked, until at last, Mirian had an obstacle course that fit the dimensions.

"Great. Alright, Beatrice, you're in charge of doing the illusion of the crushing wall. Ready?" Beatrice, who was sick to death of the tedium of measuring things and shaping stone, said, "Yeah. Got it." Mirian embraced The Spear That Cuts Water for extra agility, then took a running start. She took a flying leap— —and hit the ground just before the first stone platform, tripped on the narrow curb of it, then sprawled out, scraping her hands. Beatrice dutifully summoned an illusionary rock to crush her.

"Dead," she said in a monotone. Damn, this is going to take some time, Mirian thought.

In between trial runs on the obstacle course, Mirian checked on the craft shop. The results were, to say the least, not good. She took a break from training to make her myrvite detector. Since it was a critical part of her plan, she redesigned the parts to streamline production. Once she made it, it was trivial to locate more wyverns. Elsadorra helped clean them, then she brought the bones and wings to the artisans at the shop, discussing how to best refine the design. Then, it was back to the obstacle course.

It became clear to her that she would need to improve her physical ability, so she went back to using the Blooming Iron stance as she did agility exercises, went on runs, and practiced her horizontal leap.

When it was near the end of the cycle, Mirian sat down with Beatrice and they ate reindeer stew on the hillside. When it got too cold, Mirian infused the bowl with a little heat energy.

"So… what are you going to do when this is all over?" Beatrice asked her. Mirian chewed on a hunk of reindeer meat, swallowed, and looked out at the horizon. The snow was lit by the dancing auroras above.

"For the longest time, I thought I'd just go back to school, and Zayd and my parents would watch me graduate. They'd cheer me on as I walked across the stage of the Kiroscent Dome. I'd be at the top of my class, and then I'd get an apprenticeship with Professor Torres." She shook her head.

"That was my dream for years."

"That'd be stupid," Beatrice said. She laughed.

"Yeah. It wouldn't make any sense, anymore. I… I don't know." She thought about it some more, then said, "I would find the most beautiful garden in Baracuel and watch it as it turned to spring," she said.

"Balls," Beatrice said.

"I didn't even think of that. You haven't seen spring or summer in… how long?"

"A decade. A bit more, now. It used to be my favorite season, even when I lived in Madinahr. There's these beautiful flowers in the desert, and the cacti in bloom are really pretty." She closed her eyes wistfully, then opened them after a time.

"I have this, I suppose. It is beautiful, the dancing auroras reflected on the snow. The distant eruptions, like geysers of light."

"I suppose the hundredth time, they're not as terrifying," Beatrice said.

"Hundred and fiftieth," she said, chewing again.

"Gods," Beatrice whispered.

"I need to go down to Rostal and train with him a bit. Then I'll be back up to see you, and train on the death-passage again." Beatrice leaned over and gave her a hug.

"Alright." Mirian resolved to work on studying the soul-hole in another cycle. Moments like these, she had to appreciate. Keep the fires of hope alive, she thought. My followers will need it. And I will need it. Hope will sustain me far longer than vengeance. There was the flash, the end, and then the dreams of the Ominian again.