Chapter 803: 803
As Kalla talked, her body constantly shifted from a normal appearance to a skeletal figure enveloped in living shadows, very similar to what happened in her Wraith form .
"I didn't choose this form to be pleasant to the eye, nor to make friends . " She explained once she noticed Lith's surprise . "It's just that being a giant bear makes it really hard to work with little things and I can't use spirit magic in front of humans . "
"Have you discovered anything with Invigoration that we can use to develop a cure?" Lith asked .
"Yes and no . You'll understand once you see one of the infected . Is Solus with you?"
Lith showed her his right hand, where a stone ring was wrapped around the cloaking device Solus had forgemastered to hide her existence .
"Excellent move . I couldn't even perceive her even from this close . Nice to meet you Solus . I hope one day you'll show our human form to me as well . " Kalla said .
"Just come visit me once . " Solus used air magic to speak to her friend . "I've invited you to the tower more than once . "
"I know . " She sighed . "My children always rebuke me for my long absences, but my research is too important . If not for the crisis at hand, I would have not left my lab . "
"I would have never thought that you cared so much for the human world . " Lith was surprised by Kalla's words .
"I don't . You are misunderstanding my words . Undead plants are much more dangerous than normal undead . No matter if they feed on regular humans or beasts, their victims always have the opportunity to call for help or to band together to better defend themselves .
"In the case of undead feeding on plants, their victims are sitting ducks . Entire regions might be infested with undead and no one would notice until it is too late . Without the green, herbivores would starve and once they fall, everyone else will follow . "
The tree hosting the labs was bigger than the White Griffon hospital, forcing the two Awakened to take a walk to reach the stairs for the lower floors . Lith noticed immediately that the underground facility was made entirely of rock and enchanted with an earth blocking array .
"Here we keep the patients that are willing to be cured, no matter the cost . " Kalla explained . "Rock to prevent them to feed on the nutrients of the soil and the array to stop them from escape with earth magic once starvation kicks in . "
Everything from the bare stone corridors to the thick metal doors made the place look more like a prison rather than a hospital ward . Kalla led Lith to one of the cells, showing him the enchanted padlock and the sequence of runes necessary to open it .
Inside, there was a Treantling, a tree who had gained sentience . Lith had no idea if plant folks had a gender or if it was just a matter of how they choose to appear, but it looked like a male to him .
Even though the Treantling was curled up in a corner of his cell, hugging his knees close to his chest, he was still over 1 . 5 meters (5') tall . His wooden limbs were as thin as a walking cane and the pile of leaves that covered the cell's floor once belonged to his now bald head .
The bark of the Treantling was nothing like the sample Lith had seen upstairs . It was of a dull black, creaking every time the plant folk moved . The creature's eyes were two black holes lit by a fierce red light that proved how the hunger of the symbiote was consuming its host .
The creature snarled at their entrance, yet he didn't move . Their stench was so disgusting that the Treantling was able to suppress his violent instincts .
'This is interesting . ' Solus thought . Metal doors and walls didn't impede her mystical senses, so she had taken a good look at all the inmates before sharing with Lith her findings .
'Just as I expected, this Treantling has a blood core along with his mana core . Marth's therapy works because a weakened blood core can be easily destroyed by darkness magic but the resulting pain is inhumane .
'Also, for such a method to work, the body must be so weakened that it can't supply the blood core with energy any more . I'm afraid that not even all plant folks can survive this method, let alone humans . '
'You said this was interesting . So far the situation is just desperate . ' Lith replied .
'Let me finish . Their situation is completely different from the undead thrall we met in Othre . Count Xolver had a blood core that was near his mana core and they were both made out of his own energy .
'The patients here, instead, have a blood core as well, but it doesn't show any sign of attempting to merge with the mana core . What's even more unsettling, is that the energy signature of the two cores doesn't match .
'Quite the contrary . Each infected has their own energy signature, whereas the blood cores bear the same energy signature, as if they all belong to the same person . '
Lith used both Invigoration and the tier five spell Scanner on the Treantling to double-check Solus's findings .
'What the heck?' Lith's exams proved that she was right, except for one thing . According to Scanner, there was no such thing as two Life Forces, only one .
After closing the cell door and Hushing the zone, Lith shared with Kalla everything he and Solus had found .
"Interesting . " Kalla said . "My readings match yours, yet Solus's makes much more sense . During my time here, I used Invigoration to check both our patients and those who refuse to be cured .
"No matter how much they feed, they never turned into proper undead but remained hybrids . The only ones who actually became undead are those who willingly joined Erlik's ranks . "
"I'm sorry, but you've lost me after 'more sense' . " Lith admitted .
"What I'm trying to say, is that the plague is actually undead tissues that bond to their victims like a parasite and then spread to the rest of their bodies . The infected are not really undead .
"They are simply invigorated by the parasite who shares with them both its strength and hunger . Hence no matter if they choose to feed like undead or not, the parasite can only grow up to a certain extent without killing their hosts .
"They are not really hybrids so much as two different living beings almost fused together . We failed to realize it because whoever created this parasite engineered it so that the second life force would always be eclipsed by that of its host . "
"Does this knowledge help you in finding a cure?" Lith asked .
"No, but it's a start . At least now I know why all of my experiments so far failed . It's because they were based on the wrong assumption that the undead matter was part of the patient, while it's actually a foreign organism . "
Kalla sighed deeply and her whole figure turned to a shadowed skeleton for a split-second .
"Poor Nyka . She really hoped to become able to remain awake during the day . Yet if my hypothesis is right, whoever created the plague didn't make it to create hybrids, but only to use it as a ruse to push the inhabitants of Laruel on Erlik's side . "
"And no hybrids mean that you can't apply it to your daughter . " Lith completed the phrase for her .
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