During the last few days, Lith had attempted to call Xenagrosh multiple times to thank her for helping him to save his family, yet she had never answered. Xenagrosh devoted her full focus on the gene tank and on making sure that Nandi kept his sanity until the Master came out.
She had learned from Bytra that talking helped. The deeper the connection a Returner Abomination had with their allies, the easier it became to suppress their violent urges. Every time Lith called, she would just press Tezka's rune for a status report.
"Everything is fine." The dimensional mage Abomination had stayed in Lutia, to keep an eye on Zinya in the case Night found a loophole in Baba Yaga's slave contract.
"Then keep things that way. I don't know if the Master loves that woman or if he just cares for her. Zinya Yehval makes him happy and those feelings will help the Master to adapt to his new condition or will help us to control his clone in the case he fails."
Meanwhile, inside the tank, Zogar Vastor was fighting for his life against the Abomination who carried his genes but none of his burden. He was old and tired whereas his opponent was young and single-minded, caring only about survival.
Their life essences engaged a constant tug of war, one mind attempting to erase the other from the moment they had merged.
'I'll give you that you're relentless, kid, but if you knew what's waiting for you in the outside world, would you still be so eager to fight me?' Vastor said to his Abomination double inside the space they shared in their mind.
The creature's appearance was akin to the human form of an Emperor Beast, a projection of how Vastor perceived himself rather than how he actually looked like. The Abomination double was tall, young, handsome, and with thick hair like Vastor didn't have even at his prime.
The creature had come to life just a few days ago so he had no idea how to answer. His reply came in the form of draining a bit more of the Master's essence, tipping the scale even more in his favor.
Vastor had studied the merging process of a clone with his original, determining that the longer a double lived, the closer their prowess would get to that of their source material.
Yet despite all of his studies and preparations, the Master was the one on his back foot.
'Fine. Do you want to be Zogar Vastor, kid? Be my guest and take it. Take all that makes me who I am!' Instead of resisting the pull, the Master let his life force go.
The move took the Abomination clone by surprise, especially because Vastor made sure to add a big chunk of his mind to it. Being so young made the creature focused and unwavering, but it also made it susceptible to intense emotions.
He had never experienced pain or hardships. The clone's mind was a blank slate that could only mirror Vastor's feelings.
The creature saw the memories about Vastor being a short but promising youth as a student of the White Griffon academy. Regular mages took classes about one specialization, good mages like Lith took two, while three specializations were universally considered the mark of the true genius.
The young Zogar Vastor attended four specializations at the same time and graduated as the first of his year in each one of them. He became a Healer, a Warden, a Forgemaster, and even a Battle Mage.
His rise had sent all academies into an uproar. After graduating, he had become a member of the Mage Association, then a Royal Forgemaster, and even a Spellbreaker.
To learn any spell, he only needed to practice it twice and then he would create an improved version of the same spell that went beyond the expectations of its own maker.
He had never been good-looking, but after he managed to slay an Emperor Beast at the age of eighteen, all the noble families of the Kingdom threw their daughters at his feet.
Vastor dated for a while Keal Griffon, one of the Royal Princesses and Meron's older sister, and Tryssa Ernas, Jirni's aunt, but dismissed both of them thinking that such an early marriage would only hinder his magical research.
His talents made him an excellent candidate to become the god of healing and everyone expected him to become a Magus, but alas, Vastor hit a wall that he was unable to overcome.
His bright blue core made him a versatile mage, but without a violet core, he was incapable of crafting the most powerful pieces of equipment or of casting the strongest arrays recorded in the Kingdom's archives.
To make matters worse, even though Vastor had unparalleled learning abilities, he lacked creativity. His genius allowed him to improve the spells of others, but all his original creations turned out mediocre at best.
The passing of time only made his limits more evident and lowered the expectations that the Kingdom had for him. Soon the Royals considered him a potential god of healing only for the lack of better candidates and discarded him as a potential Magus.
Vastor's family forced him into marriage before his value in the eyes of the magical community decreased even further and when he achieved the title of Archmage at twenty-five, it garnered him more pity than admiration.
Everyone considered Vastor as a mage who had already peaked, as a magical wonderland that once explored, had no new marvels to offer and that had become no more interesting than your average botanical garden.
Marriage didn't make him better, only more bitter. His wife didn't love him and the feeling was mutual. To Vastor, she was the embodiment of all the filthy social climbers with no magical talent nor use who clung to him out of need, not out of respect.
When his children were born, he ignored them, considering them to be just more shackles that the ungrateful society of the Kingdom had bound him with.
The Abomination inside Vastor's mind experienced the emotional rollercoaster of his early life. First the undying determination as a student, then the boundless enthusiasm of the youth, and lastly the crippling desperation of the discovery that his magical career was already over before he turned twenty.
Vastor could feel the creature getting weaker, its grip loosening with the memory of each failure flashing in front of their shared consciousness. Yet it only lasted a second.
The creature's naivety also made its outrage genuine and gave it the strength to overcome the shock, eager to prove to the entirety of Mogar that Zogar Vastor was far from over.
'Not bad. I reacted the same way, but do you really think that rage is enough, kid? Maybe on the battlefield, but in a lab, it only makes you sloppy.' Vastor said while giving more of his essence and memories to the Abomination.
In the new visions, a now chubby Vastor had started to study Arthan's Madness. After drowning himself in comfort food and self-pity, a now thirty years old Vastor had accepted his limits.
It had led him to the realization that with his ability to learn and improve other's creations he might be able the crack the lost legacy of the Mad King.
