"Thanks to the Eyes, I'm certain that Lith and I have performed more discoveries than the Master and his Organization would in the same amount of time. And they are a bunch of old-ass monsters without a life."
The more Phloria learned about the capabilities of Menadion's tower, the more she understood why Lith had kept Solus a secret from her for that long.
'An artifact of this power would trigger wars between countries, humans, and even continents that might last forever. A mage tower is truly a mage's greatest dream. At first, I got really angry with Lith, but now I'm certain that he did the right thing.
'Sure, their relationship is creepy as heck, but he can't reveal Solus's existence to anyone without also revealing the tower. My only question is, how could he realize all of this by himself while he was still a kid?' Phloria thought.
"Just one question." She actually said. "Does the tower have a mind or sentience of sorts? Because I don't understand how a thing like my glass or this tea table can help you think, Solus."
"No, the tower has no sentience. It's just a bunch of magic and stones. You must think of it as of a-" Solus was about to say supercomputer, but then she realized that on Mogar no one knew what even a microchip was.
Explaining Phloria about computer programs that ran up simulations to predict phenomenons and sped up the resolution of the algorithms she came with would have just been a massive waste of time.
"Of an extra brain that I can metaphorically attach to mine to become temporarily smarter."
"That's just great. Solus is right, you got plenty of spoils from your little trip to Lightkeep. Stop being a sourpuss, Lith." Phloria whistled in approval.
"What Happy here fails to mention here is how little we actually learned and how boring the process is. We had to stare for days at both the crystal and the gloves, then read lots of stuff to make sense of them, and then trying to put what we learned into practice.
"The Eyes can tell us what something can do, but not how they do it or how can we make them do it. Not to mention that due to Solus's weak power core, we both get a massive headache every time we use the Eyes for too long!" Lith felt a phantom pain just talking about it.
"What did you learn about the orc crystal?" Elina asked.
She wasn't a mage, but learning about magic was the only way to have a meaningful conversation with her children so she had sucked her boredom up and understood at least the basics of it.
On top of that, theoretical magic worked wonders for the kids, making them fall asleep faster than any fairy tale could. Aran and Leria had dozed off before they even started to talk about the Eyes.
They were hugged to their respective magical beast, using their soft fur as mattress, pillow, and blankets.
"Disturbing things." Lith's words made even Elina curious and scared.
Her son would rarely be upset by anything but the death of someone close to him, let alone some brainless piece of crystal.
"During our fight with the orc shaman, she used spells that no member of their race is supposed to know. Orcs can't use magic above tier three unless they are some kind of Manohar and that shaman definitely wasn't so smart.
"Yet she managed to cast a tier four spell because it's memorized in the crystal. Once we made this discovery, we checked the Eye of Kolga and the other mana crystals in our possession. What we found is that all of them have some kind of memory function." Lith said.
"How is that possible?" Elina asked, wondering if crystals could learn from their user to the point of achieving sentience.
"Beats me. I can't see a practical use for this nor can I devote so much time to this theory. Orc's spells may be powerful for orcs, but they are crap for humans. I'm much more interested in using crystals to control world energy." Lith said.
He had no idea of the hidden potential that memory crystals had.
They allowed a mage's thralls to act as one, to learn from each other's experiences, and to pass that knowledge onto others. By linking their lesser undead or golems with a memory crystal, a mage became capable of keeping themselves away from the fight while collecting and sharing the data.
Memory crystals allowed to give a brain and learning abilities even to inanimated creatures, turning them from mindless monsters into a well-trained army simply by accumulating enough experience.
Very few people on Mogar knew about this and most of them were Guardians. The only human who had successfully employed them in recent years was Balkor.
Without the memory crystals, he would have never managed to give his undead thralls and Valors a hive mind, nor be so successful in his endeavor and bring the Griffon Kingdom to its knees.
Also, the secret of powerful artifacts like the Spell Hoarding Cube lay in memory crystals. It was thanks to them that not only the mana, but also the will of the mage could be stored inside of it along with their spells and kept them indefinitely.
The rumor about the Cube memorizing the spells was actually true, only the part about it being able to cast them at will was made up. The Royals and countless people before them had failed to learn Valeron's True Griffon or Tessa the Titania's When All Are One.
Alas, knowing and doing are always two entirely different things.
Lith knew nothing about those things and saw in the small seed of knowledge in front of him just a waste of time instead of a mighty tree that might one day bear even mightier fruits.
"What did you learn about the Davross?" Phloria asked.
"Do you want me to die?" Just the thought of the massive workload that waited for Lith on his desk every single day gave him a massive headache. "Just talking about this stuff made me so tired that I'm not going to pull another all-nighter.
"Today I'll sleep in my f-" Lith remembered about the kids. "Farming bed!"
***
The city of Valeron, Royal Castle, two months later.
During that time, Vladion had kept Lith regularly posted about his investigation. The Eclipsed Lands owed the Firstborn Vampire a huge debt of gratitude and having their relationship with the Undead Courts turned sour, they had no qualms dealing with the Courts members with a heavy hand.
Vladion was slowly but steadily moving to bigger and bigger fish. The Firstborn had assured Lith that soon he would keep his part of their bargain. Lith, however, wasn't very pleased by the news.
He had never considered that for an undead and a Firstborn at that, the word "soon" had an entirely different meaning. While Lith meant hours or days with it, when coming out of Vladion's mouth "soon" might mean months, if not years.
"Turn that frown upside down, darling, or you'll ruin the Gala for everyone." Faluel said while holding Lith's arm as if she was deeply in love while they walked the red-carpet side to side.
