Supreme Magus novel Chapter 632

"I think he will be more pissed off by you almost dying due to your bravado. There’s no defense against those black rays, your shields are no safer than wet paper against them. What the heck were you thinking?" Seeing Phloria almost die had triggered his memories about Carl.

Both Quylla and Phloria were surprised by his aggressive remarks, but only because neither of them had ever faced a fully formed Abomination. Only after Lith explained to them what they were capable of, did the girls realize how big of a bullet they had just dodged.

"Even if I knew all this, I wouldn’t have acted any differently." Phloria said.

"My aim is to become a member of the Knight’s Guard, the elite of the elite for Mage Knights. If we don’t protect our assigned marks, we’re useless. What just happened is an occupational hazard."

Lith would have liked to scold Phloria for her nonsensical behavior, but in the end, he decided against it. He too had risked dying many times to follow his own agenda, criticizing her for doing the same would have been plain hypocritical.

Soon Morok started to open new tunnels with earth magic. Seeing how fast and confident he was while taking several apparently random turns, made Lith curious.

"How can you be so sure this is the right way? Do you have a map or something?" He asked via the army amulet.

"No, I just marked the walls on my passage to react to my mana, in case I got lost or I needed to backtrack. That’s why only I can lead the expedition. Don’t you do the same in dungeons or underground places when there is no time to draw a map?" Morok replied.

"No. I have a great memory." To be exact, Solus did.

In emergency situations, Lith would rely on her abilities to access to his memories and find the right path. Otherwise, he would always take his time to draw a map and store it inside Soluspedia to gain tactical awareness in the case an ambush occurred.

Like he was doing at that moment. Morok had tasked him to close the tunnels as soon as possible so that no one could follow them without being noticed. Earth magic produced a lot of noise and with the echo in the tunnels, its use could be heard from hundreds of meters of distance.

The expedition team managed to move forward for two more hours before even Morok was on the verge of collapsing due to exhaustion. Their advance had slowed down even further due to the lack of lighting since they had left the mines.

The natural tunnels were bumpy and uneven. Their footing was also very precarious because the humidity would condense on the ground, making it slippery. Luckily for them, during his first passage, Morok had marked safe rest spots.

"You take the first watch." Morok said while pointing at Lith.

"Then have someone relieve you after one hour, I don’t care who. I’ll take the last watch. We’re not moving from here before four hours minimum." _{frёeweɓηovel.coɱ}

Before any of the soldiers could complain that he wasn’t their commanding officer, Morok was already asleep. His behavior caused many grumbles, but they didn’t last long. Everyone was so tired that they fell asleep the moment they sat down.

Lith checked his surroundings with Life Vision. The light coming from the crystal mines was far enough to allow him to scout far and wide, making sure that there was no imminent threat.

He even performed a Life Detection array to cover more ground.

"Forgemaster, Healer, fighter, and even Warden?" A voice asked.

"Yondra Mefaal. Black Griffon’s Professor of history of magic and Forgemastering. You can use them to set a barrier. I’m too weak to cast a spell, but at least I can give you some help." She replied with a kind smile.

Seeing that Lith wasn’t moving, Yondra laughed and showed him how to perform the Silent Shroud array. When Lith was done, a black dome surrounded the camp, preventing both light and sound from spreading outside of its premises.

"Now no one can see or hear us. The barrier it produces is not very strong, but as you can see, it’s a very useful formation." Thanks to the array, Lith could see the area surrounding them as if he was wearing thermal goggles.

It was quite useless for someone capable of using Life and Fire Vision, but it would allow him to rest more easily when others would relieve him from guard duty.

"Thank you very much." Lith said while copying the spell in his grimoire along with his thoughts about how to turn it into true magic.

"Don’t mention it. By protecting you I’m protecting myself. I’d like to talk about many things with someone as peculiar as you are, but alas, I’m beat. See you later." Yondra checked on her assistant condition and after she made sure he was just fatigued as she was, she fell asleep.

Lith followed her example and went checking on his friends. Morok didn’t seem to need his help and judging by his snoring, he was having a good time. Quylla and Phloria were both sleeping.

Invigoration confirmed to him that there was nothing wrong with them. Since there was no point in waking them up, Lith started to circle around the edges of the formation while using Accumulation.

The tunnel was quiet. There was no noise nor energy signature coming towards them, yet the space around them was far from being empty.