It had been days since I sent the black pearl to Reinar and lina for research, and we had managed to capture two more enemy camps in the desert, along with more beastkins that Vespera and I healed at night.
During that ti, the prince of the Droman Empire solved the mystery of the missing letters at the sa ti that the prince of Aridonia found the problem himself.
It turned out that the secretaries tasked with sending and receiving the letters were cursed, and if they didn’t intercept or change the ssages that the rulers were trying to send each other, they would die along with their families.
We sent them both so holy panaceas to heal them and let their nations deal with the punishnt.
One day, we had captured one of the enemy camps, and I received a ssage from lina, who had been researching the black pearl with Reinar and told that it was made with a material called starstone that could only be found in Kalusia.
When she told the details, I realized what Zagor’s plan was all along.
The devil had conquered the nation of Kalusia to exploit the starstone supply and create hundreds of thousands of black pearls to turn as many people into lesser demons as possible.
lina said in her voice ssage that the beastkins used that stone in their daily life activities and to empower the military. Still, we hadn’t co across any beastkin using any magical artifacts or weapons.
So of them could cast magic, but they did the whole "chanting" thing, which turned them into easy targets to knock out.
Another couple of days later, they sent the results of their research, and I received a golden pearl.
When I inspected it closer, I noticed that the demonic energy inside had been thoroughly cleansed by light magic, but it was more complicated than that.
It was an enchantnt with rules that allowed the spell to keep producing light whenever a small trail of shadows got within its reach.
lina and Reinar sent a ssage along with it, saying they didn’t know if it would heal a lesser demon’s curse, but it was the first ti they were able to revert the cursed magic, so we had to try.
While they were working on this one black pearl, we had gathered three more that we found on enemy camps, which wasn’t much, but at least it was more than one.
The following day, we were flanking another enemy camp not too far from us, and I decided to test the golden pearl.
The problem was that lesser demons were mindless beasts that attacked anything that moved, so it wouldn’t be easy to feed them a small pearl.
When the battle comnced, I tried to seize one of the lesser demons to see if it was even possible to capture them, but it wasn’t that simple.
At first, I used iron cuffs to hold one of the demons, but they easily broke free and kept attacking, so I asked Vespera if her spiderwebs would work.
Since the demons’ bodies were rged with shadow magic, we needed to use sothing that could hold them that was also laced with magic strong enough to combat the demonic energy.
To counter their magic, Vespera fused her spiderwebs with light magic, and it was able to seize a lesser demon for a few minutes. They would break from the bind eventually, but it gave enough ti to approach them and feed them the golden pearl.
We only had one pearl, so we took it as a test. If it didn’t work, then we would have to find another way to cure them.
After Vespera captured a lesser demon that had separated from the group, I quickly ran up to it and dropped the golden pearl inside its wide mouth, hearing the crunching of its sharp teeth chewing on it.
A few seconds passed, and the demon opened its mouth widely in a very unsettling manner, making take a few steps back with caution.
Its mouth kept opening as if it was forced by sothing until a ray of light shot out of its throat, and its body began burning white.
’I guess it didn’t work...’ I thought, but then I noticed the smoke and white fire dissipating, leaving a naked male beastkin on the ground unconscious.
"It worked!" I exclaid, quickly ordering Vespera to take the survivor back to the camp to check his vitals while we wrapped up the rest of the battle.
After we had taken control of the enemy camp, I returned to the one where we had taken the forr lesser demon, and he was awake, eating a bowl of food as he answered questions to the empress.
The man told us the reality of Kalusia and how all of their starstone supply was being used to create the black pearls, saying that Zagor wanted to turn the entire continent into lesser demons working for him.
’Well, I already suspected sothing like that...’ I thought.
He told us that there were warehouses filled with black pearls in the capital, but there were other stocks in smaller towns that they kept close to the border to send to the desert.
As the beastkin told us about their secret warehouses full of black pearls, I started coming up with a plan to steal them.
I an, there were thousands of people turned into lesser demons, so we would need thousands of golden pearls to heal them. At the very least, heal as many as we could.
I had already accepted the fact that I couldn’t save everyone, no matter how powerful I thought I was. However, I could still try to save as many as possible.
Still, we were in the middle of the desert and had a long way to go before reaching the borders of Kalusia, which ant that it would be a little more ti before we could get our hands on a large number of black pearls.
That night, I sent Reinar and lina a voice ssage telling them the results and how their golden pearl had healed the first lesser demon.
Reviews
All reviews (0)