Britta's joy at soaring through the skies ended far sooner than she wanted it to as Kayn started descending toward the face of a cliff. After arriving back on the ground, Britta removed herself from Kayn's back with a slight stumble as she hadn't used her legs for the last few hours, plus she still felt a bit weak due to malnourishment.
Following Kayn as he walked forward, she was astonished when his strides led him right into the rocks, but rather than running into them, he went through them. Fearing she would be left behind as she couldn't see him anymore, she rushed through the rocks after him.
Before her eyes, a large underground town expanded far into the mountain. A couple of men wielding weapons approached the two of them. They were 5th stage magic warriors who were part of the group Kayn brought here, so they recognized him right away.
"Sir, welcome back!" One of them spoke as he approached. Even though Kayn was technically at a lower stage than him, he still treated him with reverence and respect as he knew Kayn was far stronger than he was.
"Thank you. Is the camp leader here?" Kayn inquired as to Yelena's location.
"Unfortunately, she left yesterday on a supply run. Lady Whiteclaw is the acting leader during her absence. Would you like me to take you to her?" The guard asked.
"That's not necessary." Kayn said as he placed his hand on Britta's back and moved her in front of him, placing her before the guard.
"I found a survivor and just needed to drop her off. Please take her to intake so she can be assigned a living quarter."
"Of course Sir! You can follow me young lady."
Britta was nervous, but if Kayn said that this would be a safe space, she believed him. Before following the guard into the underground city, she looked at Kayn.
"Will I ever see you again?" she dishearteningly asked as if she already knew the answer.
"I don't know. If it wasn't for finding you, I wouldn't have comeback to this place. This is probably the last thing I'll do for you, but you never know, fate could cause our paths to cross again. I just hope that if they do, it's during more pleasant times. Live well Britta." Kayn spoke as he turned back and left the cavern through the illusion once more.
It was yet another unexpected reunion for Kayn, but he was glad that at least some of the people he interacted with before everything went to shit were still alive and he could help them have hope for a future.
…
The surprise of finding people he thought dead brought a false sense of hope to Kayn. Hope that maybe others who were declared deceased may still be alive out there somewhere, but Kayn knew that hope was futile. The few other people he wanted to see alive like Director Vix, he knew were long gone. As for people like Tina the bowyer, or the music professor, he doubted they would have made it either.
However, the meetings did spur on his desire to move quicker. If, but a big if, but if by chance some of his acquaintances were still alive, but were captured or desperately trying to escape, the quicker he dealt with things, the sooner he could save them.
He recognized it was most likely a false hope, but it was an inspiration he needed and a firm reminder that his determination to stay here rather than leaving right away was the correct one.
This all brought Kayn back to his original issue, dealing with the lich he saved Britta from. He had taken a good look at the lich's mana signature and aura before he started his rescue operation, so maybe, just maybe he would be able to track down the phylactery a little easier now.
Kayn flew as close to the lich's region as he felt was safe, then landed on the ground and entered the realm of shadows. For the next 14 hours, Kayn traveled all around the undead ridden lands with his Mana Sense extended as far as it could reach.
He was about to give up on this particular lich for now as he didn't want to risk invading the monolith again, but as he stopped to sit on a rock to contemplate his options, something near him seemed off to his Mana Sense. It was a weird feeling, like seeing something within his senses that his normal Mana Sense shouldn't be able to pick up.
Following the direction he felt the abnormal sensation from, it started to become clearer as he got closer and his eyesight gradually registered something with a slight glow to it that he knew was not standing out like that before.
He bent down to pick up a strangely smooth stone, and once it was in his grasp, he knew that he had found what he was looking for all this time. His theory about using the All-Seeing Eyes within his Mana Sense was correct, he was just extremely poor at executing the fusion it would seem.
Kayn had only felt the sensation once he was within 10 to 15 meters of the phylactery, rather than the range of his Mana Sense, and even then, it wasn't clear what the abnormal feedback was before it was in his hand. Kayn chastised himself for thinking that gaining mastery and understanding of something as profound as the essence of the All-Seeing Eyes would be so simple.
Regardless, he was successful in finding the phylactery of his target. Now he just needed to figure out how to destroy the soul within without destroying the phylactery itself. Much like the previous two, this rock was actually the disguised mana core of the lich. The more Kayn hunted the liches, the more he was learning about them.
"For such a turtle, hiding away in his castle built of the dead, he didn't hide his phylactery very well." Kayn muttered to himself as he tossed it up and down in his hands while considering how to kill the lich. He also wasn't sure if destroying the portion of the lich within the phylactery would kill the form residing within the physical body as well, but he would be able to learn it from this one hopefully.
Unlike the previous two phylacteries he interacted with, this one wasn't in the process of trying to reform a body, so there were no indications of how it worked. He couldn't find any vulnerabilities during his initial examinations either. But now that the phylactery was in his hands, he had options.
If he couldn't figure out how to destroy the portion of the lich residing within, he could just go kill the actual lich in the monolith. With the phylactery in hand, after killing him he could just use the reformation process to determine the vulnerability to kill the lich without destroying the precious mana core. Once the soul of the lich was gone for good, his undead army would collapse as well, so invading wasn't as much of a risk anymore.
The major issue would be the question of how much the lich increased his security. If he called back his strongest undead and they could work together as well as Sevrin's commanders, it would become the worst-case scenario where invading the monolith again would have more risk than reward.
If that was the case, it would be better to just destroy the core in his hand and be done with it. However, that was easier said than done as each 6th stage core was precious to his growth. Even a single core might make the difference when the time came.
Kayn considered seeing what the effects of separating the core from reality would be, but he quickly discarded that thought. It wouldn't be able to go into his Void Loop, so the only option would be to take it with him inside of the Wanderer's Villa.
However, the Wanderer's Villa was intertwined with his soul. Intentionally taking a foreign and hostile soul into his own seemed like a bad idea. He was confident in the strength of his soul, but he didn't know how the phylactery would react and he wasn't going to risk something like that unless he was truly desperate, which he was not.
Kayn really didn't want to risk invading the monolith again though, so if he couldn't figure out how to deal with the lich through the phylactery, he might have to change targets for the moment.
'Wait…what if I can make him come to me?' Kayn thought, suddenly remembering why liches always kept their phylacteries within a certain distance of their physical body. It was because they couldn't go further than a certain distance!
He didn't know if it was because there was an invisible force not letting them go further than a set point, or if their immortality would fade if they were too far away, but it was worth a try.
If he couldn't go to the lich, he would force the lich to come to him!