"I'll tell the boys to shave often, then." Salaark chuckled. "Now that you guys have an idea of how things work in my cities, all that remains to do is to show you your living quarters now and the market in the morning. Things get quite busy at sunrise."
"By the Great Mother!" The Verhens said after entering the Overlord's tent. "This place is like Solus."
"It's called dimensional displacement." Salaark said. "It's the only way to have all the space I need without making a tent so big that it would collapse under its own weight."
The inside of the palace extended as much as Valeron's Royal Castle, but everything was placed on the ground floor, requiring an internal network of Gates to not get lost and to quickly reach any destination.
The curtains that separated the rooms from the corridors were as thin as regular cloth yet also as hard as enchanted stone.
"You can set up your tower here, Lith." Salaark pointed at the biggest and most powerful mana geyser that he had ever seen. "I want Solus's stay to be pleasant as well so I chose a spot that will allow her to keep her humanoid form inside the entire camp."
"How could I not notice it earlier? Solus?"
"It escaped even my mana sense's detection." She sounded as surprised as he was.
"That's because under this place there's not only a water source, but also a crystal mine and rich Adamant veins. The three of them together absorb most of the world energy and keep it contained." Salaark said.
"Really?" Lith asked.
"Really. What my country lacks in food, the Desert abundantly makes up for it in natural resources. We keep what we need and sell the rest to purchase whatever we lack from the merchants."
Solus turned into a small stone spider that quickly dug through the sand, making the tower emerge from the ground. The tent's ceiling was so high that the third floor of the tower didn't even come close to it.
Then, Salaark showed them their rooms. Each one of them had a colorful gold-embroidered carpet covering the entire floor, a king-size bed, several closets, a bathroom, and a small thermal spring big enough to comfortably host three people.
"I thought that water was scarce and precious!" Lith blurted out in surprise.
"It is, but I'm a Guardian so both living beings and nature have to follow my rules." Salaark shrugged. "I want you to respect my people, but I also want you to enjoy your stay. I expect you to sweat a lot and hence to need a good bath more often than at home."
"Can Abominus use it too? I can't bring him to my bed if he smells or if his fur gets filled with sand." Leria asked.
"Of course. Your spring, your rules." Salaark ruffled her hair. "Now, do you want dinner, to try and sleep a bit, or would you like some magical lessons?"
"I'm not tired and I'm still full from breakfast. Can I explore your palace?" Aran asked.
"As long as you don't break anything, dear."
The kids jumped on their respective steeds and trotted away before their mothers could say anything.
"Before we start, do you mind giving me a tour of the tower? It has been centuries since the last time I saw Menadion's masterpiece and I'm eager to see how Ripha bonding the tower with Elphyn- I mean, Solus changed it."
"It's the least I can do, Grandma." Lith said while opening a Warp that led directly inside the tower's lobby.
Thanks to Salaark's dimensional magic, the influence of the mage tower extended to the entire camp, filling him with nigh-endless energy. The god of Forgemastery felt nostalgic seeing the familiar runes and curious about the new ones.
"You are still missing a lot, but the constant upgrades in the power core are as good as those that only Creation Magic can make." She nodded. "Now why don't you show me your labs?"
The face she made while stepping inside the Forgemastery workshop told Lith that Salaark was as disappointed as she had been enthusiastic of the crystal mines and of the Mirror Hall.
"That's it?" She asked while curling the upper lip in disgust.
"Grandma, I know that this isn't much, but I'm only 19 and Solus is still recovering." Lith replied with a sigh. "I didn't have the time to accumulate many materials nor to set up complex arrays.
"I came here exactly to rest because I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown from overwo-"
"The lab is good, silly child." Salaark ruffled his hair, cutting him short. "I was questioning this!"
She pointed at the big obsidian table that Lith used as a Forge during his experiments.
"It's a standard Forge, Grandma. I just use it to place the items that I craft before the flow of world energy makes them float in mid-air. Obsidian offers small resistance to the mana flow and it doesn't disrupt the enchanting process." He said.
"My point exactly. It's just a dignified table like there are hundreds of them. You are a Forgemaster, not a cook! Where is your Adamant Forge?" Salaark asked in surprise.
She used a Davross Forge for her creations, but she doubted that someone as young as Lith could have even enough of such a precious metal to make a sword for his human form, let alone several kilos of it.
"Why should I use Adamant as a Forge?" Lith said. "It's just a waste of good metal."
"Are you telling me that you have partnered up with Menadion's heir, worked all of your life inside Menadion's tower, and yet you have no clue about the basics of Menadion's Forgemastery techniques?" Salaark couldn't believe her own ears.
"I lost my memory along with my Mom's legacy, ma'am. We learned my real name only after meeting Silverwing in Jiera." Solus replied while blushing in embarrassment.
"Well, good thing that you've come here, then." The Guardian nodded. "I'm not going to teach you any of my techniques, unless you bend the knee and join my nest, of course.
"Yet I have no problem sharing with you the technique that Menadion imparted to all of her disciples, me included."
"You were one of Mom's apprentices?" Solus asked.
"Yes. There's nothing wrong with asking for help from your betters. Back then, Menadion had developed techniques that exceeded everything I had ever made and she was looking for a way to improve them. It was a win-win situation.
"On top of that, even though my stay was very brief, Menadion asked all of her apprentices to pass her teachings unto you in the case something happened to her." Salaark took a Davross Forge out of her pocket dimension and placed it in the middle of the lab.
It was a rectangular table of metal 1.5 (5') meters tall and wide and 2 meters (7') long that had to weigh a few dozen kilos at minimum.
"Watch and learn." She said as what looked like a one-handed battle hammer appeared in her hand.
It had one crystal the size of a nut etched on each side of its head and one more on its top.. Feathers from both a Phoenix and a Griffon were wrapped around the hilt of the hammer, enhancing Salaark's mana flow and giving her a better grip.
