72 Chapter 69: The Unseen Enemy

Eli POV

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I was currently in the southern area of Palantia putting the finishing touches on the back end of the quick cave I had made into the artificial mountains crafted by the dwarves. Finally, I finished my task and went out of the hole that was going to be my home for a while. Salamede, who was also wearing her vine suit, was walking past me to go over the cave as I kept watch over the dark forestry facing away from this southern section of the pass's mountains. Further past the woods I was admiring and out of sight, lay the swamps.

"Do your legs move well enough, Cell?" I asked to my left as the project I had been working on moved with almost doll like jerks and twists. The legs were wood and done in a human shape, but the main body was a thicket of vines that had two pairs of arms jutting out the sides. Where the neck should be was a small wooden pole with a blank wooden mask stuck on the end of it. When I had first started making it the thing resembled a tangled mess of weeds but with work and patience, I managed to ger it to look like something more similar to the musculature of actual flesh.

Inside the weaves of vines were several bone-like wooden pieces that provided raw strength and helped make the central structure where the lungs should be more durable. Having Cell spread out over the whole body would defeat the safety purposes of the construct so the core was a sphere of solid steel layered in several sheets around the special wooden pieces that held the enchantments which grew and moved the vine limbs through small holes. That part alone took nearly as much time to make as the rest of the body.

Cell looked at me from the head of the vine doll where his sphere presented a single eye staring out from the featureless mask. I had used a solid round piece of mana crystal as a substitute for a protective sphere of glass around his actual head. It was tougher than stone and a lot clearer than any nominally strong glass I could have made. In his dolls hands he held two large leather bags, in the left one was the general goods floating around in the expanded space of the bag of holding while the other was a plain bag with the copper sphere that fueled those machines still turning inside as it laid in the regular leather sack as the bits of dirt I put around it acted as grounders for the electricity.

He brought the item inside while I worked on finishing out our new home. I was using earth spells to mold the earth back into its natural shape to provide camouflage for my new home, only this came with hole that zagged through the rock with an upward L shape to provide air and block any of the light that might slip through. As I started closing the outside world off completely, the only light was that from the mana lamp I had taken with me, which now illuminated the whole room high above on the rough ceiling.

"All right just set up the cooking area and I'll get dinner ready," Salamede said behind me as I was putting the finishing touches on the rock cover.

Using some bark pieces, I crafted a sort of campfire that ran on mana. Salamede took a pot out of the bag of holding that stored a variety of household good and started a crude stew made up of vegetables, a rabbit we caught, and some herbs from her own store of foodstuffs. I started working some enchantments into two, thick wooden walking sticks as I went over the last few hours as Cell did some odd movements with his doll body as he tried to master this new toy off to the left.

I had been in the basement working on finishing out the head of the vine suit when I heard Salamede calling from the door as her voice carried through the open hatch. Coming up and closing the floor panel to allow Cell to continue work on mastering the movement of his new tool, I went to greet Salamede when she burst through the front door.

"Eli, what did you do?" She asked, seemingly hurt and scandalized.

"What?" I asked calmly, clearing my mind of all the small talk I had prepared.

"They just put up the notices around town. Do… do you not know why?" She asked with a confused tone.

"No. Notices for what?" I asked keeping my voice level.

"Notices for a censure." She said.

"Which is?" I prodded.

"It means people in the central government have deigned you a threat to society. Businesses are not allowed to sell you goods nor buy from you. No one is allowed to associate with you or they will fall under that same censure." She explained.

My face contorted in anger as I reached for the questions that needed asking.

"How would the nobles have gotten that?" I asked as I walked up and brought her over to the hammock to sit down.

"They couldn't have. Nobles interfering in the central government, outside of petitions to Congress, was something that was cracked down on a long time ago. Eli, you didn't do anything to deserve this, right?" She asked with a desperation in her voice that carried clear through the spirit connection.

"No. This is… they….they." I said as the connection hit me.

"The necromancers," I said out loud with barely any air in my lungs. I took a deep breath and worked the thread my mind was weaving.

The nobles didn't rig the legal system against me. The nobles weren't the ones putting up the huge amounts of money to get the gangs together. It was the necromancers. This previously discarded possibility sent a chill down my spine.

But how did they find me? Why did they not just ambush… all right just get the questions in order. What is the central question that I need to ask right now?

Is this the Necromancers doing?

If someone in the government knew what I was considering with the orcs they would have sent an execution squad after me and that was the only issue this could possibly be about from their perspective. The nobles didn't have the connections to rig the central government against me like they could have bent the local law. But if the leftovers of the necromancers knew where and what I was, then they would be the only group with the motive and the means to bend such a wide array of organizations to their will.

There were a thousand possible mixings of necromancer and noble actions, but any amount of necromancer involvement was catastrophic. I thought about what could have motivated such a blunt action if it was the necromancers, but my only guess was to force me into the woods to scavenge for food alone. Then I remembered something.

A passage from the journal I read when I first came to this world. Something about having my powers lessened when they pulled me here. Unless they had someone to tell them what actually happened, which they didn't, or if the circumstances of my arrival was a foreseeable event, which was doubtful considering how close the rest of their base was to the summoning chamber, it's a pretty good bet to say they don't know I'm a quad element scion. From that perspective getting me alone in the woods and kidnapping me would a simple task.

But how do they know it was me?

Looking at it from their perspective, the pieces were there if you were in a position to see the whole picture. The crafter surviving a few too many encounters. The crafter who just so happened to go hiding in his tower from the bullies at school around the time a mysterious new force started wrecking the bandits.

However, my deception had the fatal but unavoidable dependency on people not knowing there was anything about me beyond being a great crafter and polar opposite organizations not talking to each other, which didn't work if they had members who secretly cross checked each other's reports and knew there had to be someone new around who was hiding something.

And of course, the crafter that showed up around the same time as the disastrous summoning ceremony with no backstory that could be verified and had odd features. That last reason had been there since the beginning, but more than a whole week had passed since I had come to the town by the time of the tournament where I first saw their connection to the elves in the form of that elves crown. Since I had not been kidnapped in the night, I assumed that meant they were currently unaware of my presence and the local guards starting a man hunt to look for me would only draw their attention, an assumption that was no longer a sure thing.

That was discounting the possibility that it was some type of magical tracking system. Granted, none of the current magical systems I had been introduced to would have been beyond my mana sight. But none of the books I read in the classrooms had covered stealing souls from cosmic horrors beyond the veil of space and time, so it was safe to assume I wasn't working with all of the magical information known in this world.

Then why wait so long to move, or even bother moving in the open at all?

So, if I'm a member of a secret necromancer cult and I know a source of near infinite wealth is walking about undetected but everyone I had to the dirty work for me died in a mysterious accident getting it here. What is the solution?

Use… some criminal connections to kidnap him. But if that fails then use the powers of my legitimate position to twist my underlings into doing the job for me while leading them astray as to why they're doing it. Which would take time and a 'real' reason for going after him, things they certainly had now.

What this all suggested was that the necromancers knew about my presence in the academy from the first day. But lacking manpower and any local support, they've been working in the shadows to get criminals to do their job and when that failed, they began to twist and pull the legal system to do their dirty work to get me to a place where they could get their last few minions to ambush me when I have no support from the guards or resources to properly guard myself.

That was all assuming it was the necromancers.

As opposed to…? Who, exactly?

No. My mind was made up.

I'm getting the hell out of here.

"Salamede, the Necromancers were the only ones with the means and motivation to do this. I have to leave" I said in a calm voice as my purpose was made clear.

"So where are we going?" She asked as she got up.

"Where we-" I started, but then I considered we were the town's most known 'couple'. The odds the necromancers didn't know about her were non-existent and not taking her with me would just be more dangerous. Then again, she wasn't the only person to worry about.

"What about your mother?" I asked her.

Salamede took a gulp but she responded after a second of consideration and moved to leave.

"I'll leave her with the weapons you gave me. She's too old to travel and I think she'll understand." She said as she went out the door.

I spent the next few minutes quickly getting everything wasn't hooked up to a generator I could into the one extra bag of holding I made. Since bags of holding won't go inside other bags of holding, I had to use a regular leather bag, with a loose collection of dirt to keep bag from getting fried, to hold the ever humming copper sphere I had replaced the water wheel with a few days ago when Cell had shown some trouble using the air gun I made for him.

Right now, Cell was trying to move around with his new body but getting him to do the elongated jumps wasn't going to happen without days of practice. I sent impressions of him using the vines to hold on around my waist as we traveled. As I was packing, Salamede came back carrying an assortment of clothes and food.

"Salamede! They could be watching right now. You basically broadcasted 'we're leaving' to anyone looking." I said in an even tone as she laid the goods down.

She gulped as she slapped her head.

"I'm sorry, Eli. spirits I'm so stupid." She said in a strained voice. It was frustrating but berating her would do no good now.

"It's all right." I said in a re-assuring tone as I patted her shoulder "They probably don't know I'm a scion, so I think we still have the advantage. But we need to leave. Right. Now." I finished as I threw on my vine suit and tossed her leather armor and metal shoulder guard into a chest and put that in the bag of holding. Not even getting out of her dress, she threw on her own vine suit and took the bag while I explained the plan to Cell and took the other regular bag.

Besides some needed household items and the generator, all the construction equipment, the hammock, cross bow, and a few other non-essentials were going to be left in the cave. I didn't mind leaving the construction equipment behind because it would be too difficult to fit them inside a bag of holding and they were useless without electricity, but the generator itself was too valuable a piece of technology to leave behind and I didn't know how long I would be out in the wilds where replacing it would be almost impossible. Taking the mana lamp from the middle of the main floor, I stored it away in the bag of holding and we made our way to the basement.

While they stood around the mana lamp I had installed on the central pillar of my workshop, I used earth magic to fuse the hatch into the surrounding floor, making it just another solid part of the floor. Taking the second mana lamp off the pillar, accompanied with a sad look at the surrounding shop and at the small grotto off to the left that lead into the river, I motioned for us to go down the long tunnel to the right.

We had already gone over this, so Cell handed over his bag to me and wrapped a long sheet around his head to hide everything but his central eye and moved the boulder out of the way as he clumsily went outdoors. After a few seconds, I followed him out. Seeing the jutting boulders of the abandoned troll nest and surrounding trees as calm and peaceful as they had ever been, I sent out a spirit connection to tell Salamede that it was safe.

Pushing the boulder back in place, Cell quickly grabbed ahold of my back and all three of us took off into the trees. After a while, it was obvious that no one was currently chasing us as we did the massive jumps that sent us almost flying through the air. Even so, I kept up a brutal pace, stopping only when Salamede needed a breather. It was the late afternoon when we got in the general area of where I wanted to be.

This was a section of mountain on the southern part of the corridor where the Coalition and the Phoenix empire fought. It was a good bit away from the swamp but still out of the human's territory. It was here that I would set up a pseudo base of operations until I got a few magical items up and running that would let me set up other such bases with ease as I only felt comfortable camping in the same spot for at most two days, which was what I was working on right now.

"So, what now?�� Salamede asked as she stared into the pot.

"I've thought about simply making for the central continent, but that's no guarantee of safety even if we had a clear path. So, we get situated, then we find that one orc we helped at the Crypt and work out how to get at the Viper Base commander. I don't dare go back to that necromancer base and attacking the central government official who censored me seems like an even worse idea. Since getting all of the gangs to go after me and getting me censored would take an enormous amount of power and influence that wouldn't make any sense to expend if you weren't aware of what I truly am, my best bet is to get ahold of the people who made that happen. That means pulling on the last thread in this weave remaining to us: The Viper base commander.

Whatever their purpose, I didn't see anything in the summoning chamber that looked like orc clothes, and setting up the contacts to get them involved in the scheme would probably take more effort than any other human, not to mention the friction it could cause amongst their members. Given all that, working with the orcs is our safest option. Not safe, mind you, just the safest of the dangerous options."

She was silent for a moment with the only sound being the bubbling of the pot and the smacks of Cells doll feet hitting the floor.

"And you're sure about this?" She finally asked after a minute of silence.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I turned my head to the ceiling.

"Yes. This isn't about my reputation anymore. This is about my neck. I'll try to keep any non-bandits out of the blast zone, but I can't make any promises" I said, simply laying the truth out there as I took in the scent of the freshly carved earth.

She sat there thinking it over some more before giving her verdict.

"All right. But promise me, Eli, promise me that we will do enough good after this to make up for it." She said in firm tone.

"We'll do enough good to make up for this tenfold. That I solemnly swear. Besides, whatever happens with the orcs after taking the Viper base may not be too hard to undo" I said as I turned my head back to look her in the eye's. She nodded, seemingly satisfied as she reached into the bag of holding and rummaged around.

"Dinner will be ready in about half an hour, better get some rest," She said as she stirred the pot with a long spoon she pulled from the sack.

I obliged her as I leaned against the rough wall. After dinner, I used magic to carve some hooks of earth out of the walls so we could set up our vine suit hammocks. After a long night's sleep, we spent the rest of the day stealthily looking around the northern section of the woods between the Bulwark and Maws gang. Having Cell hang on me for this mission wouldn't be a good use of our time, so I had him stay in the cave and continue to try and master the special vine suit I had made for him.

The trip proved to be mostly a waste as we spent a lot of time maneuvering around the caravans and now much larger patrols. While the increased security was a hassle, the large trees and paths around smaller, less watched roads still allowed us access to the northern region. The fact that Salamede was able to use her vine suits full functions significantly cut down on our travel time compared to the last time we visited the orcs territory.

We followed this pattern for two more days, looking out in the local orc bands and not finding the one we needed. Coming back home, I either spent the rest of the time adding more features onto the doll body for Cell or moving our hideout. On the third day, we finally found our estranged comrade.

Around late morning, she was heading back towards a river in the section of the woods just south of the Bandits Grove, the northern most tip of humanity's presence before meeting dwarves and elves. She was stalking through the woods along a bare dirt path that took them through a long hill the sloped on for what seemed like a good mile. But she was being followed by two of those grey cloaked mages, who were both moving through the section of the huge trees below our typical playground where the ancient forestry touched the sky. I considered my options for a moment before deciding that since I was wearing my deer skull helmet, with wood flowing along the jaw to fill the hole and crack, I might as well make an entrance. I relayed my plan to Salamede who nodded.

As the two mages were a few dozen feet from each other staring at the orc and her band of Frojan a good distance below them, Salamede and I shot them both in the head. The one closer to their prey just limply fell to the ground while the other one farther away didn't immediately follow.

As I was already flying towards her when I took my shot, I immediately put my vine encased foot around her head to keep it in place as I put my other foot in her back and rode the body down to the forest floor below. While I fell to the ground, I briefly looked to see Gula pull out her sword and put her back up against her comrades as the group of at least a dozen Frojan expertly pulled back into a formation of three different smaller groups all with their backs to each other as they brandished staffs, blow dart guns, and wooden cudgels. All magically enchanted if memory serves me well.

I landed with a solid thud and crunch a few yards away from them, even going so far as to use an earth spell to pull up the surrounding dirt to exaggerate the impact of my arrival. They all jerked their heads towards me and while they all seemed defensive, there wasn't fear in their eyes. Good, good. People act stupid when they're afraid but merely worried people are a lot more reliable. And I was content to continue that line of reasoning with these future co-workers as well

"You should be more careful, Gula. The woods have many dangers, seen and unseen, and you won't always have a protector like me around to safeguard you." I said casually while the dirt continued to fall around me as I used my leg around the crushed head to throw the body further down the hill before turning back towards them.

She wore her typical black leather armor and had a bit of long, black hair growing over her the side of her right eye, though not enough to obscure her vision in any way. The vertical cut across her left eye, one of the two black spheres with a golden iris matching her right eye, remained unmoved even as the horizontal cut along her nose scrunched up. Her pouty expression, along with her sharp chin, was quite an…. amusing sight to me.

The ballerina figure of the orc showed a certain grace as she put her sword back in holster and walked forward until she was a few feet from me. I had to admit that took a lot of courage even if she had a lot of reasons to not even bother trying to out match me.

"I've lived and tracked through woods, including ones more dangerous than these pretty gardens you humans laughably call the wilds, almost my whole life. So, I suppose I could find a way to go on without your protection." She said in a strict tone before she relaxed her shoulders and continued.

"But part of survival is accepting help wherever you can reliably get it. Thank you." She said with a light bow. I nodded in approval as I encased the other body in dirt and sunk it three feet below the surface.

Odd, last time she seemed almost servile. But looking at her sweaty palms and nervous sway it was clear she was now more wary of me. Perhaps this was just her way of coping. Given that, I decided to keep a slight distance and not make any sudden movements.

"What do you know about the commander at the Viper base?" I asked.

She drew back a bit before raising an eyebrow.

"Why do you need to know about him?" she asked suspiciously.

"We have a long-overdue discussion," I said in a neutral tone.

"All the reports I have on him say he never leaves the fort or sends out any important documents except through the groups with a lot of mages who occasionally come through, but when we've tried to attack them in the past their scouts in the trees get us first. Last we heard he was still in the fort but that was a while ago" She said plainly as the other Frojan established a wide line looking in every direction to make sure we didn't get snuck up on. If we were going to work together effectively, I would need to reveal Salamede and Cell eventually but now wasn't the right time.

"Then we'll just have to take the base from the bandits." I said casually as I took in the cawing of a bird in the distance.

"PFF." Gula scoffed in clear disbelief. "Why didn't we think of that? It's not just the bandits that are the problem" She said in a serious tone.

I figured as much.

"So how much support is the Coalition giving the bandits?" I asked her as I looked around the forest in an idle manner. Such a tactic was as old as time, which often ended in much the same way every time.

"Not so much supporting them as almost making them a part of the army" Gula said as she.

Great… so does that mean…

"These grey cloaked mages, they aren't some rogue magical organization. They're the actual military, aren't they?" I half stated and half asked.

She raised a black eyebrow at that as she stood there, seeming a bit more relaxed.

"You really are new to this neck of the woods. Yeah, they're the military and the bandits become more mixed with official soldiers the farther north you get." She said.

Using a bad tactic was one thing but using it to that degree was like distilling the bad tactic down to its purest essence.

"Okay then, how many soldiers are there?" I asked, hoping this hole I was digging into would have to hit bedrock at some point.

"The soldiers, or even to a certain extent the mages, aren't the problem. That base has a line of three smaller forts leading towards the main roads. Not to mention the two older bases, a converted mining site nearer to the mountains and a tunneled out mini fort underground, to send a hawk to for assistance. The weakest of those is the underground one and we've never even got past the first floor. Taking out the Crypt base was only so easy, at least compared to the others, because it was a newer fort that didn't have all of its defenses finished."

It had seemed odd how desperate the orcs were to take the fort, but this piece of information, combined with the explicit support of the Coalition, provided a new justification for their tactics.

"That's why you were so eager to take it. The Coalition is using the fact that you don't have earth magic to gradually move into your territory one fort at a time. And since you can't take them in a straight up fight, you can't create a large mining operation to start digging into or under them, they just need to keep building more and more forts until they kick you out of the mainland completely."

She got a grim face at that.

"Sounds like you know your stuff. Yeah, but the bigger question is how that'll work out in the swamps. Forts need a constant stream of supplies to keep the soldiers sitting around doing nothing well fed and we've been giving them a good bloody nose trying to keep the bread and mead flowing but that's nothing compared to how much we could do out in the swamps.

However, losing our current lands outside the swamps would still be a big blow and from there it's just a question of whether or not we can bleed the Coalition enough till they run out of bodies or money and give up building more of these forts." She responded in an almost bored manner, considering she's a soldier this is a conversation she has probably had hundreds of times already.

"First things first, what kind of help can we expect?" I asked her. It actually took her a moment to respond, but her face said the response was difficult to say, not to formulate.

"None, we're the disposable part of the military who mostly do bounties or get called to serve under one of the local commanders to do a job. Undesirables who've pissed the wrong people off. Unless we start doing something to get noticed, none of the local commanders will co-ordinate with us no matter what we write in a letter." She said in an emotionless voice.

"All right. Then let's prepare for that future filled with friendship. What do I need to do to work peacefully with the other orcs when they do notice us?" I asked calmly.

She huffed and just turned to look down the hill.

"That will probably be the easiest part. I don't know if you intentionally did it, but that get up actually resembles an old tale of a swamp demon hybrid. Add some new bits and I'd say you could pass yourself off quite easily. Just make sure no part of you gets exposed that reveals your true species again or they'll rip your pants off and rape you to death on the spot once they realize you're a quad element caster." She said with what I assumed was a serious tone at the end.

"And you won't?" I prodded.

She moved off a bit as she puckered her lips and scrunched her eyebrows. Gula then walked forward and looked out over the slope, like she was looking for her answer among the grass and trees that soaked up the rising sun.

"Me and the rest of my species aren't on speaking terms right now. If you can get us through this war for the Viper base, something that will probably get us enough honors to retire if I'm lucky, enough for a promotion if I'm not, then I will keep your secret. Hell, you're probably my best bet to getting to the ripe old age of 30 at this rate." She said with a slightly defeated tone.

I nodded, satisfied at the conditions. Not totally trusting them, but at least a framework for cooperation had been established.

"Could we go with the story that the swamp demons are pissed at the humans for violating nature or something?" I asked.

"They don't actually exist so I don't see how anyone could question you. Although you're probably going to have to change your voice just to be safe. Even with that mask on, you still sound a bit too human." She said as she continued to scan the woods.

"Aside from the meet up time, I have two other questions." I said with a mild tone. She turned with a raised eyebrow.

"What do the orcs have to bash down the gates to the main base?" I asked.

"We've tried damn near everything we can think of. Giant water rams, using the same destructive water magic we use to take down wall while the Frojan are guarded under shields, we even tried using alcohol and flames, but nothing seems quite as effective as running up to it with big axes." She said with a frustrated snort.

As in nothing that will take down the main Viper base

"Last, what do I need to look like to disguise myself as this swamp demon?" is what I said.

"That helmet needs to be a lot darker, bones among the vines, something covering your hands aside from leather and I'd say you fit what every mother has told their daughters at night when it comes to Pandegos and leaving the house without permission. The earliest we could do whatever base you want to hit is three days." Gula said.

"Make it five. When we hit that first base, I want to be ready to move on to the main base after you tell whatever higher up you need to of our success." I replied as I walked up beside her.

She turned her head away from her reverie to look askance at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Just taking down any one of those bases isn't going to be enough. We've been trying, and failing, to take those mini castles down for over twenty plus years. The underground one and the spruced-up mine provide a clear path for re-enforcements from the Plug while the other three leading up to the main road bring troops from the coast. Just taking down one of them isn't going to be enough" She said in an exasperated tone.

"The Plug?" I asked, confused at the odd phrase.

She got a light smile, in spite of her apparent efforts to retain stoic.

"They call it the Bulwark. We call it the Plug because it plugs up the shit coming out of the Phoenix empire and keeps it from getting out of the bowels of the mountains pass." She responded with a mirth ridden tone.

Dammit. It briefly occurred to me to try and get the commander on my own, but numbers count and I'm not risking my neck in some ill-advised nighttime operation inside a fort swarming with enemies.

"Lovely. What base should we hit first then?" I asked.

"There's less activity around the two leading from the Plug and starting there would be better if you intend to kill any of the humans who could give away your presence and want one of the commanders to notice us. The underground one is quite a few miles from the Vipers main fort, so we don't have to worry about horns giving us away. From the surface it looks like three small mini forts protecting hallways leading into a small hill with a tower between them" She finished. I had a vague recollection of where she was talking about from my last foray into these woods.

"All right, we start five days from now. We need to hit them again and again until your higher-ups will be willing to take on the Viper base. How many of these forts will we have to take down for them to consider that?" I asked.

She was silent as she went over a bunch of figures in her head, which finally resulted in an answer.

"We'd probably need to destroy all of them if we can't get a personal demonstration with any of the local big girls. There're too many problems with getting stabbed in the back as you're trying to siege a whole castle, a lesson hard-learned from far too many attempts to get at the forts behind the Vipers base. You'd probably get us in in five minutes, but I can't see any officer putting their entire command in danger based on a largely unknown ally whose performance they know nothing about" She finally said.

Fuck me, all this for one person and a few pieces of paper if I'm lucky.

"Fine, five days from now we hit the underground fort in the early morning." I said with a hint of tiredness in my voice. The orc nodded and walked off to the left as she whistled and got the Frojan moving again.

My main point for this trip finished, I headed back towards our base with Salamede. After explaining the plan and my next project, she merely nodded and went about preparing lunch when we got back. I immediately went about collecting large logs and making more bags of holding to store the large slabs of wood as I worked on them. The rest of the day passed with no other incidents aside from me spending my time tinkering on the new project and working with Cell for his tool's new features.

But as I went to tuck into bed, it occurred to me that an explosive powder would probably be a good backup in case magic was un-available due to mana issues or Salamede ended up needing to do the demolition. Going over all of the chemical combinations I knew of, I struck upon the right combination. It was old as dirt itself and would require me going through some dung piles, but it would do the job, despite its odd ingredients. That was my last though as I drifted off into sleep.