The memory of Gadorf the Wyvern struck Lith, making him reconsider. Xedros sounded more troublesome by the second, but Lith didn't have much choice left. The Wyvern was an opponent he could face or who had least had to respect his new master.
A Dragon, instead, would likely treat the both of them like bugs.
A sudden childish noise awoke Lith from his brooding, raising even more questions about the Hydra being so chipper.
"What was that?"
"Sorry, the little one is a real rascal and managed to snatch my amulet." She showed him an infant that couldn't be more than a few months old.
"I helped Selia during her delivery and it made wonders to break the ice. Sometimes I babysit her children to allow her to catch some sleep or go on a date with Ryman. Gods, I had almost forgotten how wonderful hatchlings are. It makes me wish to have a few of my own again."
'Thank heavens, this explains everything. For a moment I was afraid that Faluel was flirting with me, but she's just swayed by her maternal instincts.' Lith inwardly sighed in relief.
"I heard you already have a companion. With your cracked lifeforce you've not long left to live. You should hurry, you know. You're not getting any younger." Faluel repeating Elina's mantra but with much less tact made him almost regret the decision of becoming her apprentice.
Almost.
Faluel then offered Lith to Warp him directly to his destination, but he preferred to study the surroundings instead.
'If this Xedros is even half as bad as she described him, then it's better to have an escape route and a few contingency plans ready.' Lith thought.
The First Wyvern lived on the top of the Golden Crown mountain, near the south border of the Kellar region. It was a peak so high that it would be always surrounded by clouds that, whenever there was a storm, thunders would paint its glaciers a golden color, giving the mountain its name.
Xedros's cave was hidden by such a thick cloud layer that Lith doubted it could be natural.
'Are you sure you don't want me to come?' Solus asked when Lith left her in the middle of the most powerful array at their disposal.
'Positive. I don't plan on letting Xedros use Invigoration on me, but he might still have means of detection able to spot you. Menadion's legacy would give anyone plenty of reason to defy Faluel and I don't want to take risks.'
Solus's mana sense had perceived a lot of arrays covering the mountain. Some of them were invisible even to their mystic senses and Lith found them only because his paranoia forced him to use Invigoration before landing.
Xedros seemed the kind of creature that would not leave anything to chance and Lith followed the Wyvern's lead, placing his own arrays in the blind spots of the enemy formation.
Before assuming his hybrid form, Lith stored most of his equipment inside his pocket dimension. He wasn't expecting a fight and his usual display of mystical artifacts might give Xedros ideas about what to ask in exchange for his help rather than command respect to Lith's scaly host.
Lith had no intention of providing a perfect Orichalcum Skinwalker armor, nor to give away Ruin until Orion was done with the real deal. The mess with Phloria had involved her father as well, making it difficult for Orion to receive the authorization to use advanced Forgemastering techniques for a grassroots magician like Lith.
'Judging by Xedros's mastery over Warden magic and Faluel's description, I can easily guess from where Gadorf got his shitty attitude. The Wyvern only knows that I'm a Wyrmling and that I'm Faluel's apprentice, so if I play the dirty poor card, I should be able to avoid unreasonable requests.' He thought.
Lith even switched Orion's cloaking ring with a medium tier dimensional ring. An Awakened Wyrmling with just a yellow mana core would have aroused Xedros's suspicions and Lith knew that hiding too much of his power might give a bad rather than good first impression.
'I want a business partner, not to look like a beggar.' Lith flew in front of the cave's entrance, discovering that the arrays covering it were so densely packed in energy to be visible to the naked eye.
The circular opening in the rock was big enough to accommodate a freight train, making him wonder if Gadorf was incredibly young, a dwarf Wyvern, or if his host had simply arranged the house to properly fit its owner's ego.
If Xedros's aim was to become a Dragon, then he was likely to have built his lair so that he would not be forced to move out after his evolution.
'I can count at least four different arrays, but they overlap so perfectly that they act as a single entity. I'd better take note of all the unknown runes, just to make sure that this trip doesn't result in a complete waste of time.'
Lith had just taken a piece of paper and an inkwell out of his pocket dimension when the magical protection covering the entrance split up into four different arrays that disappeared one by one, leaving the passage open.
It was only then that Lith did realize the ingenuity behind the Wyvern's course of action in protecting his home. Each one of the magical formations had its own purpose and was capable of working alone, but when combined, so did their effects.
Unlike the Odi's faulty overlapping arrays, the combined formations didn't obtain a new function, so much as their runic inscriptions were able to fit into each other's blank spaces.
It allowed them to combine their powers to increase their versatility by several folds. Until that moment, Lith had only witnessed manors where several different arrays were stacked together to offer protection from different possible sources of harm.
The Wyvern's lair, instead, had few arrays compared to those protecting the Ernas Household, but those formations were capable of blocking different kinds of magic according to how and where their runic inscription met.
Normal arrays were static in their position and could only be turned on or off, whereas Xedros's occupied all the same magic circle so that based on which of its sections were powered up and those that weren't, they could seal specific elements within their premises.
On one hand, that kind of arrays couldn't protect from all the possible threats at the same time like those of the academy, but on the other hand, they required much less maintenance and a far less powerful energy source to be fueled.
'If I'm right and Xedros controls his house's protections telepathically, this way he can seal off his enemies' best cards at the right time. On top of that, he's the only one who knows how the arrays' combination affects the elements at a given time.
'It gives him an edge that not even Life Vision's ability to see arrays can compensate and allows him to fuel all the formations I spotted on my way here. Otherwise not even a crystal mine could sustain that many arrays.' Lith thought.
"It's impolite for a guest to try and steal his host's artworks. It was already rude enough of you to arrive unannounced. Come in, and waste my time no more." A manly voice coming from Lith's back said.
Yet there was no one there, making him frown.
