"If you want, I can propose a motion to help Laruel to the Council…"
"No, thanks anyway." Lith recognized a failure when he saw one. The motion was bound to be a dud and he would be indebted to Athung for trying. Moreover, the idea of a country where he would have no secrets to hide was beyond alluring.
Lith then contacted Faluel as well, but her reply was equally lukewarm. The downfall of humanity in Jiera had benefitted the beasts even more than it did the Awakened. The plague only affected humans, so now Jiera belonged to plant folk and magical beasts.
"We don't fear the undead, no matter their numbers." Her interest in the matter was so little that only one of her heads was looking at Lith. Half of the remaining heads were asleep while the other half was working on three different projects.
'Fuck me sideways!' Lith thought. 'Lesser dragons my pale ass if she can work on seven different subjects at the same time. Why my beast part is not a Hydra?'
"That's because unlike humans, beasts know about Awakening and Emperor Beasts take good care of their turf. I can slaughter an entire branch of any Court on my own in a matter of minutes and so can my peers.
"Humans are scared of undead for two reasons only. First, due to their dull senses, humans can't feel undead approaching, nor recognize them when they disguise among the living. Second, they are too used to have an overwhelming advantage in numbers.
"Despite the fact that they can live forever, undead are actually the race with the smaller population, because most of the other races kill them on sight. The idea of having their numbers doubled is terrifying only for those who can't rely on their Awakened."
"Why the Council of plants or of the undead don't do anything, then?" Lith asked.
"Awakened undead have no place in the Courts and despise them. There's also very few of them because Awakening an undead is much harder than a living being due to their blood core, so most of them are Liches or Awakened that turned to avoid death.
"Both kinds are very focused on their research and have very little interest in such trivial matters. As for the plants, Awakening doesn't change someone's nature, so they are still a bunch of psychos. I trust them even less than humans."
After talking with both his contacts in the Council, Lith realized how small of an issue Laruel was in the eyes of such ancient and powerful beings. They were probably capable of slaughtering Erlik and his army with a sneeze, it was just that they didn't care.
The following day, after escorting Kamila to Javvok's Gate, Lith and the others returned to Laruel. Professor Marth was waiting for them inside another treehouse, this one big enough to accommodate all of them.
"First of all, thanks for your help. Second, if you need to take anything out of your dimensional amulets, do it now. Laruel blocks all kinds of dimensional magic, amulets included."
Lyta approached each one of them in turn, placing her hands above their storage items to allow them to retrieve their weapons and some potions. Solus used her mana sense to notice that just like what happened for the house, the Dryad wasn't employing her own powers.
She was actually borrowing the same energy that was flowing through the tree, manipulating it to temporarily bend the arrays surrounding them.
Then, Lyta opened a Gate that led them directly to their lab. There were several tables made of solid stone, arranged at a safe distance from one another. Some were occupied by complex machinery magical in nature, while others had tissue samples stored inside crystal cases and several magical items to study them.
Even though it was barely past dawn, there were a lot of people at work, most of which were clearly foreigners. The people from the Blood Desert had brown skin and wore colorful clothes.
Mages from the Empire were so pale that Lith wondered if they lived underground and wore clothes that even though resembled those from the Kingdom, they were made of a thicker fabric.
Lith had never seen so many people with blonde and red hair in a single room before. Luckily, all the people in the Garlen continent, despite their many differences, spoke the same language, so communicating with each other was easy.
Marth quickly greeted his colleagues before bringing his ex-students plus Phloria to the closest table above which the crystal cases were orderly arranged.
After the events in Kulah, just like Quylla had decided to learn battle magic, Phloria had decided to follow Ranger Eari's example and learn at least tier four healing magic. Her problem was that she was just a beginner, still struggling even with sharing her stamina.
Phloria looked at the tissue samples hoping that Marth would dumb it down enough for her to understand. So far, the problem didn't seem something that could be beaten with a sword, making her second-guessing her choice to be there.
'Gods, I feel so useless. My career is slipping through my hands, I got attacked every time I left my home, and now I even have to pretend that I understand this stuff. I wonder if this week can get any worse.' She thought.
"We're working on this for almost a month, so we've already understood how the plague works. The only thing left to do is to formulate a cure and then put it into practice." Marth took a crystal case containing what looked like a piece of bark the size of a napkin.
The crystals were the only way to preserve the tissue samples without them disappearing like what normally happened to a piece of a plant folk once it was separated from its main body.
"This is a fragment of the skin of a healthy Treantling." He gave it to Quylla for examining it while teaching the others a tier one diagnostic spell that worked on plant folks since normal spells would have been of no use.
"What the heck!" Phloria blurted out after examining the crystal, almost dropping it in surprise.
A common diagnostic spell would simply allow the Healer to identify what was wrong in the patient's body, but would provide no information about their anatomy. The spell that Marth had taught her, instead, had allowed Phloria to see even the single cells inside the bark as if she had used a powerful microscope.
She had felt the life and the will inhabiting every single cell that composed the bark. Unlike humans or beasts, every single part of a plant folk shared a fragment of their sentience. If detached, they would attempt to reunite with the main body or to rebuild it from scratch.
Lith had no idea as well of how a Treantling body worked. Based on his previous experience with Lyta, he knew that a Dryad's only vital organ was the flower they had instead of a heart.
As long as it was intact, their bodies could endlessly regenerate just by absorbing nutrients from the soil. The flower could also be willingly removed as an act of submission.
The Dryad would have their power halved and their life would be in the hands of whoever held the flower.
