Mage And Wolf
Chapter 135

Chapter 135: Chapter 135

After breaking through chest to chest, any other form of meditation just seems inefficient. But I’m not entirely sure how to say that without it sounding like a pickup line.

The cooking utensils are cleaned and packed away, and we’ve both changed into our pajamas. There’s multiple couches in the entry room that have self repaired, so we’re not short on places to sleep, but there’s one big velour beanbag chair that looks just right.

We’re both staring at it too, waiting for the other to make a move, so it doesn’t get taken before we get there.

Suddenly Karl breaks the tension "How about we share?"

Side by side wouldn’t work, but on the other hand.

"Deal" I say, walking over beside him and curling up in his lap with my back against him and my head rested on the side of the chair. Oh, this is even softer than it looks.

He brings out the brush and starts smoothing my tail as I begin to meditate. I’ll give him this much, he knows how to treat a tail right.

Meditating with the urn out and Karl resonating energy behind me is outstandingly efficient. It won’t be long and I’ll be ready to break through again.

Today, we’re going to investigate the outside of the ruins for the morning, then come back in and see what we can find in the offices. It looked like most were just ransacked for the sake of destruction, so I’m not sure anyone actually took important documents or potentially valuable items.

I find a truly interesting item today exploring buried first floor area of the old temple. A 5 meter tall Jade statue of Black and White Dragons intertwined and either merging together or separating from one another. Best show this to Karl, it might be the totem he mentioned.

"That is amazing. You’re right, it is a totem, but I’ve never seen a Dragon Statue like that. Were these clerics possibly Taoist going for a Yin Yang sentiment? Or did they believe in blending dragon bloodlines for a beneficial outcome?"

That would definitely be new. Full blooded Dragons are very particular about their bloodlines, only the Dragonkin mingle freely. It might explain the horde of eggs so meticulously preserved though.

"It might have to do with breeding Dragons. Remember the book about purifying the bloodlines? Maybe they were already mixed and the church wanted to separate them? Like how they are in Dragonkin, but they wanted full blooded Dragons?"

"Not enough evidence to tell. I’ll have to read all through that book and any others we find. But this is a protective Totem. I can’t tell all that it used to do, but the effect still keeps monsters away."

We search the area for a while, looking for other curiosities, and find all 4 wings that were broken off the statue, as well as a few more broken pieces of Jade from something else. Finding more will take time, but there’s enough room to reattach the wings, showing they were broken before the temple collapsed and not crushed by the collapsing roof.

"Are you thinking what I’m thinking?" Karl asks.

"Giant winged dragon totem?"

"Yep. Hold up a wing to where it should attach, I’ll try to mend it without damaging the spells. Having the totem keep monsters away is a very useful thing."

The first one is easy, the left wing of the white dragon is a clean break. Just hold in place while Karl works his magic for a few minutes. The next is a bit of a pain, there’s pieces missing from the joint, so we have to search our collection of broken bits for the black fragments that fit. I tie everything in place with a scrap of cloth and Karl gets to work.

"Alright, that’s half done. There’s still minor spells active on the wings, and I’m hoping once the statue is complete I can integrate everything back together and see what it was supposed to do." He mumbles, thinking of the next steps.

Life before death, I think, raising the second wing of the white dragon. Again, I need to sort a bunch of broken bits into place, using chewing gum on the outside to hold the tiny fragments until everything is placed.

This wing takes a long time of me holding everything just right, with a few adjustments. But a sweat drenched Karl eventually declared it repaired and we move to the last wing.

Small mercies, this is almost a clean break, only one chunk from the base needs to be placed before the wing is attached. As Karl finishes the attachment, the whole statue starts to glow in an eerie light.

The remaining chips and cracks mend themselves and the eyes begin to glow silver.

"Do you feel that?" Karl whispers. It’s the central barrier and protective spell for the entire church."

"Do you mean the cathedral is going to rebuild itself?" I gasp. Way to be subtle, rebuilding a giant cathedral in the middle of the mountains.

"I’m not sure, but the barrier is back up. Uninvited guests won’t have an easy time getting in. The spell keeping the monsters away seems to be a misdirection spell. If you don’t already know where it is, it’s very hard to find. Pretty standard sort of defense, and maybe more effective now that its very existence is a myth."

Good point. Nobody seems to know exactly where this cathedral is, only that there’s a rumor of ruins in the mountains.

My fears were well founded it seems. Blocks are moving above us, so we scramble out after Karl casts the strongest protective shield he can over the Totem.

"I didn’t get to integrate the spells in the totem, but I think the self repair function is doing it on its own" He says to nobody in particular, looking around at the slowly forming walls.

The closest free blocks are moving to build the walls, clearly not their original spots, but somehow they all fit perfectly.

"I hope it can fix the floor joists and roof trusses or it is all coming back down again" I say, marveling at the millenia old feat of magical engineering.

"Let’s go explore the offices and let the cathedral do its thing" Karl suggests.

"Yeah, best not to be standing on a piece it might need." I mutter, heading for the relative safety of the underground.

Underground the noise is deafening, Karl ends up using a sound proofing spell to make the office area tolerable, but I can still feel the floor shaking as the cathedral rebuilds itself nearby.

"We won’t be under that cathedral, right?" I ask him, trying to work out the map in my head.

"The collapsed section by the dormitory wing should roughly mark the edge of the actual cathedral. I’m not sure if that will repair itself too, or if we will still be separated by a wall of rock from the cathedral basement."

There’s too much paper, my head hurts. Every document I’ve seen so far is about mundane cathedral management. Energy usage, staffing, supply consumption. Boring.

"Karl, tell me, how did you survive months in a hell of paperwork and office meetings?" I ask him disgruntled.

"I remembered the good times, found distractions and fluffed tails." He laughs. That sounds like a better option, I would rather be having my tail fluffed than being stuck in here any day.

"Did you find anything good, these offices are all cathedral logistics" I whine.

"Nope, nothing interesting here either. How about we go up and check the progress before dinner? You’re cooking again, right?"

"Deal. Anything is better than this. I’m starting to understand why the locals decided to never read again." Karl laughs at my enthusiasm to get away from searching the ransacked offices.

The outbuildings are still in shambles, the makeshift shelter over the entrance to our shelter still in the same condition we left it. But the outer shell of the cathedral is back up and the building has a roof. The inside are mostly still rubble, and There is no upper floor yet, you can see clear to the rafters, but the rumbling continues below us.

"Sounds like priority was the building walls and now it’s rebuilding from the bottom up" Karl says, listening closely to the cacophony of noise.

"Will it need more energy? How much can that totem even draw?" I wonder out loud. It’s visible from here now, enough rubble cleared that it’s mostly exposed.

"Shall we go feed it some stones, get it ready for the evening?" Karl extends his arm for me to take, like a gentleman escorting his date.

"It would be my pleasure" I laugh, resting my hand on his arm and delicately skipping off towards the statue.

"Is it just me, or is it looking at us?" I ask Karl, the eyes of the statue pointed unnervingly in my direction.

"No, see the photo on my phone? They were definitely looking at each other earlier" Karl responds.

"If you awakened a millenia old fertility shrine I’m so going to beat you" I inform him in a dry tone.

"Never fear, I’m like seventy five, maybe eighty percent sure it’s not a fertility totem"

We move around opposite sides to inspect the totem and they’re definitely looking at me. It’s unnerving, but between the feet I see round indentations sized for category 2 and 3 monster cores.

I fill under the white, while Karl fills under the black. Once the indentations are full, a gentle energy forms around the statue and the heads go back to looking at each other.

"Looks like that is solved" I sigh and we head back out.

Feeding into Karl’s preferences, tonight we shall have breakfast. Bacon, egg and potato breakfast burritos, with a side of bacon and green onion hashbrowns.