You walk forward and push open the doors, entering Elizabeth's office.

She's waiting for you behind her desk, hands ready to scribble notes down with an ink pen and some paper, while the familiar armored lupus stands beside her desk and Torrent stands in his usual corner.

Elizabeth: "So, what has happened since you've left?"

____________________


Magicist: "Kaniiria Juuken."

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There doesn't seem to be a check-in tent, not one that you can see, anyways, so you just go for the nearest robed person.

Each of them have the same emblem on the back - an abstract rose with a bird in the negative space.



Miimas approaches one of the robed people.

Miimas: "Excuse me, can you help us out?"

Healer: "Yes? What's the-oh dear. Here, bring her into this tent."

The healer walks to a nearby tent, holding the flap open for Miimas to carry Horoma in before the healer heads in himself.

A minute or so passes before the healer exits the tent, calling another healer over, some blonde woman.

Both healers, along with an additional three, enter Horoma's tent.

Tuhota: "Should we see what's happening?"

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Tabi: "It's been that way for a while, ever since I joined the Spiral. Always on the move."

The two of you cross the farms and fields towards Nullam.

Tabi: "Kleigg.

You've... Done a lot, for my family. And for me. I just want to tell you, that... I... I'm grateful, and... I..."

She starts to go blush here, looking down while balling her fists.

Tabi: "Think highly of you!



Um.

Thank you."

The two of you soon reach Nullam, the city alive with activity as people continue to scramble for supplies or run about the streets looking for friends and family.

Tabi has joined the party

You leave the cloning building and walk into the one just south of it.

The building doesn't look very large on the outside. Entering through the main doorway, you see a desk, several chairs, a coffee table, a restroom, and some stairs leading down. Talking is coming from below, along with a sharp striking sound.

Heading down, you find yourself standing in a much larger room. Offices are to the sides, and ahead is a beefy metal door that looks like it's supposed to open by rising up. The surface is smooth, along with the metal wall it sits in save for a small panel on the wall nearby. Several Caelum mages are trying to chip away at the door's edges with pickaxes and swords, without much success.

Turning your attention back to the offices, it looks like there are eight rooms total. All of them are a bit hazy inside, smoke, with piles of ash on their floors. One of them has various newspapers pinned on the wall, still intact.

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You and Tuhota enter the tent.

Miimas is standing near the tent's wall, looking away while the healers surround the blood-soaked bed in the middle of the space, where Horoma is lying.

The healers seem to be cutting out wires and chunks of something out of Horoma, things you believe were the internal parts of her doll body, dropping the bloody twisted bits into a bucket.


Miimas: "Hey."

The Westerner is facing you now, face blank of expression.
____________________


Elizabeth: "I see. Care to give more details?"

She takes a moment to write down your report before replying.

Elizabeth: "What makes your plan require so much secrecy that it cannot be discussed in front of my most loyal accomplices?"

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Caelum Red Mage: "They burned files, paperwork. All that's left are those newspaper clippings and a few personal notes. Door here is made of some tough AM, and an antimagic field extends a few feet out in front of it."

The mages continue chipping away at the door, slowly scratching the seam between the door and the wall.

____________________


She hesitates for a moment, hand slightly raised, before slowly reaching out to take yours.

A twitch in her lip forms, quickly spreading into an uncontrollable shy smile.

The two of you walk north east towards Luttiim, the forest path bright with the afternoon light.

Tabi: "I want to do more than travel. I want to spread technology and magic to places that lack them.

Do you know why the Spiral, originally intended to take down the Ruhe, is so heavily invested in capturing Magusalto?"

Elizabeth takes a long sip from one of the many mugs on her desk.

Elizabeth: "We've already experimented with rune magic. It won't work.

Leviathan skin is, first off, extremely durable. They're able to strike fast enough to liquefy rock and metal on contact without any damage to themselves. A direct hit would be required to have any effect.

On top of that, once a leviathan is active, it continuously releases an extremely large amount of heat, which by itself will cause anything within about a hundred meters to incinerate. We used the most temperature-resistant AM we had to test how well runes hold up. They don't make it to the surface of the leviathan's skin.

Attempts to use magic to keep the projectile cool were ineffective - too much mana is required to keep the projectile intact for even a split second once it approached the leviathan's thermal range, and it even seemed to decelerate quickly before vaporizing, and we had one of our best snipers fire it as fast as he could.

Whatever barrier the leviathan has around it, it prevents any projectile we can create from even getting close."

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Tabi: "It wasn't for resources.

You know about gunpowder, right? Explosive. Necessary for guns. People have known about it since the cataclysm, but it's only been recently produced on a large scale.

The manufacturing of gunpowder has been outlawed for thousands of years, because it somewhat levels the playing field between mages and non-mages. Magic users can be screened at a young age and then indoctrinated into whatever religion or government that wants to stockpile them. Knowledge and production of gunpowder is suppressed as much as possible. The strong stay strong, the weak stay weak.

It's no different with rune magic. Even constructs, only a few skilled individuals are capable of producing anything noteworthy, and they're quickly taken in by those who want to stay on top. Magusalto, any construct that is to be sold has to be approved. It can't be strong enough that it would allow someone to resist the government."

She's holding one of her interface bricks in hand, staring at the blocky device with a half smile.

Tabi: "That's why the admins took interest in me. My dream of giving the power of magic to everyone, through these telepathy bricks, it was dangerous to them.
That's why the Spiral was there. Magusalto is no different than the Ruhe."

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Caelum Red Mage: "Yeah. Ricochet hazard, almost took someone's leg off."

You head over to the office with the newspaper clippings and take a look.

Teleiat ITF Uncovers Another Breeder Hideout
The Investigative Task Force uncovered another breeder hideout yesterday, hidden in the forests to the south-west. "There were 54 of them, human girls kidnapped or bought off the blackmarket," said Iikua Konai, ITF Rank Leader. "It's saddening that there are still organizations that treat anyone not of their species as livestock. The Lupus trade still exists, human and chirop trafficking are well-established and have for centuries resisted efforts to shut them down, but that doesn't mean we're giving up." The children are being cared for in a government-run orphanage until a proper home can be found. In the mean time

That's all on this clipping. There are others that are the same - reports of breeding hideouts or organizations being busted, the girls being taken in by the Teleiat government.

One clipping, however, stands out from the others.

Teleportation Experiment Ends in Disaster
Earlier this morning, the entire block of Quillion Street was devastated by a failed teleportation experiment, officials reported. The area has been known for a while for its plunges into advanced magic experimentation, but the public was not aware until the accident that teleportation was an active project. Everything within a fifty meter radius was obliterated, and the shockwave of the "teleportation ripple" heavily damaged the surrounding area. There were no survivors in the fifty meter zone, and up to 20 casualties and 140 injuries further out. The man taking the blame is Matis Emiel, a well-known constructor among magic researchers. Playing a large role in the

The clipping ends there.

Lucida: Why is this article here?