Supreme Magus novel Chapter 155

Aside from muffled, disgusted moans and the soldiers’ chuckling, the room had finally become silent enough to allow Lith regaining his focus. Garith was one of the first infected, and that made him a perfect specimen, at least on paper.

From studying his condition, Lith discovered a few things.

The slow reproduction cycle of the mana blocking parasite had allowed Garith to live that long without side effects aside from the lack of magic. It also gave the parasites enough time to fill him with toxins to the brim.

To add insult to injury, each parasite was enveloped by some kind of cocoon, formed over time by the constant excretion of toxins, that made almost impossible to pinpoint them even with Invigoration.

To get past the cocoons and make sure of the worms’ position, Lith had to spend almost all his mana reserves.

"Your treatment was pretty harsh, sir." Kilian couldn’t stop laughing at Garith’s desperate attempts to remove the gag.

"The young master here is really as powerful and influent as he says." And that was the reason why Kilian avoided referring to Lith with his name, but only using the rank that his plague doctor army uniform granted him.

By the King’s decree, Lith’s involvement had to be kept secret. He had to report all of his discoveries to Varegrave first, whom would decide if letting him take credit for them or making them pass for information obtained through the use of an artifact.

Hence, Lith always wore the uniform when he wasn’t working with Marth.

"Really? Then as soon as I finish examining this idiot, take him away and bring me another patient. I’ll make sure mister Senti gets cured last. Arrogant brats need to be disciplined."

The whole tent chuckled, except for Garith that turned pale as a ghost. Because of the masks, the only way he had to recognize someone was through the voice, and even that was distorted, coming out of the nostrils-like holes in the plague mask’s beak.

The soldiers weren’t afraid of him too. Being forced to babysit a bunch of powerful and arrogant mages, their uniforms had the name tags removed.

Sighing out of exhaustion, Lith prepared for the last test. He wanted to extract a sample of the toxins, hoping that the alchemists could concoct something to neutralize their effects.

Lith placed his hands above Garith’s arm, using Invigoration like usual, to use his mana to take control of the flow in the patient’s body and force the toxins out of the pores.

Yet this time he failed. He was too tired, and in front of so many witnesses he couldn’t access to the world energy to replenish his mana. Otherwise, when others would perform the same experiments and reported how difficult everything was, he would stand out too much.

The problem with working for the army was that Lith was supposed to report everything in his lab notebook. Thanks to his nightmarish penmanship, until that point he had been exonerated from it, doing an oral report at the end of the day instead.

Now, though, Kilian had nothing to do while watching Lith performing his experiments, so Varegrave had asked him to fill the paperwork in Lith’s stead, with the result of creating an actual record of his exploits and sealing another chunk of his abilities.

"The sample collection attempt failed, I presume." Kilian noted down, listening to Lith wheezing like a bellows.

"Indeed. Take him back to the tent." Lith ordered the soldiers.

"I need time to recover my strength. I’ll extract the sample after lunch from another patient, this one is not needed anymore."

"Yes, sir!" Both soldiers replied while standing on attention.

"What about the handkerchief, sir?"

"Earlier I stepped on horse manure, so he can keep it as a present."

At those words, Garith stopped his attempts to push away the improvised gag with his tongue. His face turned green realizing what was that horrible taste he had been experiencing.

Lith dined in Varegrave’s tent, reporting to him most of his findings and his doubts about finding a cure. The Colonel wasn’t new to Lith’s pessimism, but it was also the first time seeing him so tired.

Lith was a little pale, panting between words, his hair sticky from all the sweating under the mask.

"Don’t worry, as soon as you manage to extract a toxins’ sample, I’ll give it top priority." Varegrave reassured him.

"Thanks." Lith replied. "If we manage to find a way to dissolve or disable the anti mana toxins, it may be even possible to use the same cure for all the parasites. As it is, even locating the parasites is excruciating."

Silence befell in the tent. No one actually believed such a thing would happen, at least in the short term. The gap in talent and expertise between Hatorne and the Alchemists at their disposal had become each day more apparent.

The only answer they would come out with was: "We are still working on it."

Lith knew that without his true magic, there wasn’t much magicians would be able to do either. Realizing once more his limits, Lith gritted his teeth and promised himself to work even harder, exploiting every advantage that Solus and true magic granted him to get free from all the shackles others tried to force on him.

"By the way, what about my family?" He asked.