Supreme Magus novel Chapter 2404

With her body now full of energy and her mind more messed up than ever, she knew she had to put some distance between them.

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"Where's next?" Tista had noticed that both Solus and Tista were distraught but she preferred to wait until they decided to open up.

"I would like to go to Phogia and Bima. The problem is that Phogia has no mana geyser and Bima doesn't even have a Warp Gate." Solus replied. "I won't last long in either of them and reaching Bima will not be easy."

"I don't understand." Dawn spoke from Nyka's mouth, making Elina's words echo in the Vampire's mind. "What need do you have for geysers? As long as you carry your true body, you should have all the energy you need."

"It's a side effect of the long distance from Lith." Solus was a good liar but not that good. "Keeping my own body away from his demands a lot of energy and mana geysers make up for it."

"I see." Dawn replied, but Nyka had spotted the lie and she doubted that the Horseman had been fooled.

Phogia turned out to be better and worse than Solus had expected. The people burned by the Thousand Flames had already been healed or had died in the days following the attack.

Simple earth magic spells had removed the black from the flames while light magic made the grass regrow. Yet judging from the few people they met on the streets and the lack of a field hospital, it was clear that either thousands had died during the attack or had moved out after.

"Actually, it's both." A guard replied when Solus found the courage to ask for an explanation. "Ever since the day Supreme Magus Verhen stormed Phogia, the smell of burned meat has become an integral part of the city.

"It makes foreigners hungry because it reminds them of barbecue. Yet to those who live here, it's a constant reminder of the friends they have lost and of their own flesh burning from the heat of the Thousand Flames."

"What about using darkness magic to cleanse the air?" Tista asked.

"It worked for some, but not for all." The man inhaled deeply. "There are people who even with their nose plugged keep smelling it. It's gone to their head and there's no way to take it out.

"Don't get me started on how many of them react when they hear the sizzling of meat on a pan. We had many riots near the restaurants and not because the people were hungry."

After Phogia, they moved to Bima, discovering that it was scarred in a different way.

The crater that Lith had opened while bursting through the city gates had been fixed, but the outer rim of the city was still a wreck. Some houses had to be rebuilt from the foundations, others were missing an entire floor, and many had huge cracks in their walls.

The city needed builders more than Healers but Solus found a way to help.

She would cut stones with earth magic in shapes that fitted the cracks. Then, she altered the density of both the walls and the patch so that they would mix into a homogeneous substance before hardening them again.

The people of the outer rim couldn't believe their own eyes and seeing their homes repaired so quickly filled them with joy. The damage was akin to a scar that constantly reminded them of what they had lost and of the harsh future waiting for them.