Supreme Magus novel Chapter 435

"The first is that they were victims of an Abomination. When those creatures feed, they leave behind a trail of corpses not different from the one I showed you.

"The second one is that we are facing a vampire. They can feed off people’s emotional energies, in which case they are better known as Incubus or Succubus, their blood, or their very life force.

"A victim of the third kind of vampire would resemble Lord Stern. I’m not really convinced by this hypothesis, though, since some of the deaths happened in broad daylight.

"The third and the worst one, is that we are against someone with the skills and the resources to employ Forbidden Magic right under our noses. It’s a branch of magic that is universally outlawed because it requires living sacrifices to work.

"It allows you to break the rules of magic. You can create life, prolong your existence, become stronger, even steal a part of someone’s soul. It’s very risky and almost always lethal, but there are very few things you can’t achieve with it.

With the proper preparations, killing from a distance is hardly a problem."

Dorian finished his explanation and hoped for the best.

"Maybe coming here wasn’t a complete waste of time. I don’t know who did this nor the why, but I think I know the how." Manohar said with a conceited smirk, like he was the only one with a brain in the room.

"Only a less competent mage than me could believe that nonsense."

"That’s impossible." Dorian blurted out. "We didn’t manage to find a clue in weeks and you’re saying that with a glance you have already understood everything?"

"Gods, you’re really stupid." Manohar slapped his own face in annoyance.

"Even Linjos, may the gods rest his soul, was brighter than this. No, I’m saying that I figured out what’s happening, but since you’ll have to explain it to that halfwit boss of yours, I’m dumbing it down for you.

"Ever since Balkor’s attack we have conducted thorough studies about the Abominations. Vastor and I are the leading experts in the field. Even without that egg man, I can tell you that no Abomination did this."

"Yeah." Lith agreed. "There’s too much waste here. When they feed, they only leave the bones intact."

"Exactly!" Manohar performed a few hops of joy. Lith’s explanation was dumb enough for everyone to understand it.

The rest of the team tried to avoid thinking about how the duo could have performed their studies on the feeding habits of such deadly creatures.

"As for the vampire, not only they hate daylight, but also the organs of the victims would have already started to rot. This leaves us with only one possible explanation: we are dealing with Forbidden Magic."

"That’s preposterous!" Dorian said in outrage.

"It’s not." Lith shook his head. "I’m no expert in Forbidden Magic, but this corpse is unnatural. Have you checked it with magic?"

"Of course not. Even the light element is useless on cadavers. It would have been a waste of time. We just performed a regular search of the body and took a few samples to have them analyzed by the Alchemists."

"You noticed!" Manohar said ignoring everything Dorian said. "Dear Lith, it’s a shame you left the White Griffon. We had so much fun together."

Lith had a hard time considering his role as Manohar’s assistant as fun. He had to substitute for the Professor’s lessons, fill his paperwork leaving to him only to sign the documents, clean his messes, and take the blame for his actions whenever he lost sight of the Professor.