Mage And Wolf
Chapter 161

Chapter 161: Chapter 161

The Sect Elders are really quite polite to us, as they escort us in and to a mountain cave where the waiting disciple begins making tea.

"So might I ask, what brings you to such a remote location for your timely intervention?" The Elder asks carefully.

"We are actually looking for a Thunder type relic that was sensed after the earthquakes last year. The object doesn’t seem to have moved, but the sense is very faint, according to our Elders. We’re hoping to come close enough to pinpoint it, and that’s how we stumbled across the battle here on the mountain." I explain as the disciple hands me my tea.

[It’s poison. Nightshade based I think, my spell isn’t perfect] Karl sends me through the mind link.

I pick up a biscuit from the table, the Elder has been snacking from them so they are likely fine, and use it to cover calling an antidote pill from my storage rings. I eat the pill with the cookie in one bite and sip the tea to wet my throat.

"Oh, that is lovely. The bitterness of the Nightshade keeps the honey from being overpowering." I commend the disciple.

They all take on a bright red embarrassed shade, so I decide to bail them out, but Elder Song beats me to it.

"Might I know where your privy is? It’s been a long journey for an old man." he says.

The disciple goes with Elder Song and I’m left with Karl and two Elders in the high Core Formation Realm. They’ve certainly got immortals in the compound, but it seems we didn’t rate highly enough to be assassinated by one of them.

I sip more tea with a smile "It’s a beautiful compound here, carved directly into the mountain. An extinct volcano, right? That would explain the warmth of these caverns."

They both nod nervously, unsure how to respond, since I’m not dying. Total amateurs, the both of them.

"Oh relax, I’m a Priestess of the Death God, everyone knows we’re immune to poison. I’m not going to keel over from a bit of specialty tea. You should try some though, the disciple made it just right."

I can see Karl is discretely casting a sleeping spell, and neither of them had noticed yet, so I get up and pour another two cups of tea.

"With honey or without?" I ask, seeing the nightshade powder posing as sugar on the counter.

"Oh, yes, honey is good." One stutters, shifting in preparation for an attack.

They both turn to me as I approach with the tea, forgetting about Karl, who quickly finishes his sleeping spell, rendering both quietly unconscious.

"Grab their spare robes. Let’s go find that Fire Energy source." I whisper to Karl.

Now dressed in simple white cultivators robes with a heavy cloak, my chest bound tight and hood up to blend in, we had towards the dive of the energy, a cavern somewhere below us.

Karl indicates we should go left, and we enter an inconspicuous tunnel that winds deep down into the mountain. I close my eyes and sense for souls around us, finding nothing living, but a hundred or so dead further down the tunnel.

[Former zombies ahead, about a hundred. This should be the place] I send to Karl.

As I thought, nothing lives here. But the battle war intense, the Vault door has been blasted open and the last of the invading forces died a few steps inside.

We sneak through, not touching anything that would leave traces to follow, and enter the treasure room.

It’s, well, what’s a polite word for disappointing? There’s a few dozen mediocre weapons and a liter sized jar of Dragon blood that’s emitting an intense fire energy, as would be expected of Red Dragon blood well preserved.

"This had better not be it. I could get a better Treasure from Lelou just by asking." I complain and Karl laughs softly.

"Don’t be mad that they’re poor. Be happy they managed to keep what little they had." Karl whispers.

We search the room thoroughly, even tipping the jar from side to side, checking if something was hidden inside, but there’s nothing.

We decide to head back to the lounge and Karl uses a memory charm on the Elders. Song is already back, the disciple he left with is out cold. The memory altering spell is simple if you don’t get into details, so Karl made them forget trying to poison us and simply gave them a memory of the disciple sleeping on the job and me making tea while we chatted about life in the mountains.

The disciple will remember nothing when he wakes, as if he really were asleep.

They escort us back out of the Sect with polite smiles and we make our way through the battleground as if nothing happened.

"Elder Song, please tell me you found something. Anything at all. These bums were flat broke, I know, we checked their treasury." I ask once we’re well away from the sect.

"I found the Phoenix nest. They’ve even combed through the straw looking for the last remnants of a feather. The way their Sect looked as I explored, I wouldn’t be surprised if the guys we ran off were debt collectors here to clean the place out."

"Well, the Divine Fist was right. There was a Phoenix Nest here. Just the nest though." Karl laughs.

We make our way down the mountain, headed towards a city we can see on the horizon. Maybe they’ll have something fun to do, take our minds off angry virgins and penniless recluses.

Night falls long before we reach the distant city, so we set up camp. Elder Song is very impressed with my tent made of a giant’s storage bag. Even if it is inconvenient to have to carry a backpack. He knew of it, of course, but it’s his first time setting foot inside of it.

"Not bad, you’ve really decorated the place well." Elder Song laughs, looking at a pile of confiscated gear and trinkets piled in one corner.

"Ignore that, I haven’t gotten around to sorting those yet." I shrug. The rest of the tent is set up though, with carpets, beds, a kitchen, bath. You know, the essentials. We decide to keep guard, and start a fire so we blend in with the expectations for normal travelers. Relying on Divine Senses might be more effective, but it would really blow our cover if we did it openly.

Elder Song wants to test my cooking knowledge before giving me a new textbook, so he has me spend the entire night cooking various dishes. Him and Karl even take up my guard rotation so I can keep cooking. By morning I’ve got all 30 recipes that Elder Song assigned as my test prepared, and Karl is looking at the buffet table in awe.

"If we leave this here, it won’t go bad, right? It is a storage bag after all." Karl asks.

"It will be fine, but it will get cold if we let it. The bag doesn’t seem to think changing temperature hurts it any, but it keeps ice cream from melting and the food from spoiling."

Elder Song takes one bite from everything at first, making notes as he goes. Once he’s finished he comes back with the verdict.

"Passable, I made a list of mistakes for you to correct, but it’s all still in the edible range." Elder Song gives his seal of approval, handing me his grading notes and a fresh textbook with more advanced mystic cooking recipes.

After dinner Karl can’t put off his breakthrough any longer. Even I can feel the instability in his energy flow at this point.

We retire to a curtained off bedroom in the tent and Karl brings out the beanbag chair and the Death Energy totem together for the first time in what feels like forever. I prepare the Core Forming and Soul Forging Pills on the floor beside us and hold out my hands with a grin when Karl produces the mittens.

"I didn’t know I’d traumatized you so much." I giggle as he locks them in place. He looks like he’s about to answer, but a surge of energy from the breakthrough beginning cuts off anything he was about to say, so I snuggle closer to his chest, letting as much energy as possible resonate off me and back to him.

Half a second later this triggers my own breakthrough and Karl reaches for the pills, feeding them to me like grapes with a forced grin as he tries to control the energy reaching a second peak and bringing him into the Core Formation Realm.

The pills bring me smoothly through to the third rank of Core Formation as expected and I open my eyes to a fading gold shimmer In not used to, the reflection of a minute amount of Divine Light growing. Moving through Immortality and into divinity might not be as difficult as I’d feared if my body is that compatible with Divine Energy.

I wonder if it’s unique to me, or to all Lycans, because they’re descended from beings created by a Goddess?

Both of our cultivation bases have settled, Karl is firmly into Core Formation now, and his power has taken a massive leap. I can feel the faintest hint of the Mate Bond in his newly formed core, and with it, a few particles of divine energy.

"As I was going to say before, I’m not traumatized, I just like the look." Karl whispers in my ear, sending a shiver through my body.