For a moment, I wanted to cry. The desperation was great. Time advanced, and I had to return to my beloved. The protections I had placed would not last long. I had traveled kilometer after kilometer, searching for each of the wonders the Blood Elves had left behind. So far, where they had led me had been disappointments.
First, the coast. There, the famous inventions were merely trinkets with no military purpose. Stormhammer was strong only because of the people who had succeeded where the elves had dumped their rage. Then the famous Dark Forests, described with poetic beauty, only to find they had that beauty exclusively in poetry. There were no willing magical inhabitants—they were filled with all the mutated filth the elves had manufactured. There were probably more beings, but the poor bastards were not so stable and simply could not regenerate, or in the worst cases, were not genetically compatible with any other species and died alone. Then the keep, which was beautiful in elven knowledge... if only they were less useless. It contained etiquette manuals, gossip among themselves, procedures for cultural conquest. Only the construction of my wrath was saved by its magical barriers. There I could leave my beloved for a moment. The structure recognized her and would protect her along with the prison I had built for her.
Saving that poor civilization of beings oppressed by their masters—like everything I did afterward—was not for luxury, nor for vanity. I could not bear to see them suffer... no one should be forced to serve anyone. Moreover, in seeking to restore the forest they had lost, I found new clues about sites where masterpieces of the dominant culture were indicated. The mana collector was a very good idea—perhaps it would be the salvation of many towns if only they knew of its existence. But no one knew, for the simple reason that it had been used to harm others. Humans had been victims of an infernal apparatus—a piece of filth designed only to generate suffering. Were they so bored they needed such entertainment? The rescued people required treatment that only the mushroom forest could provide. It was either that or let them kill people in processes of sinking further into their filth. Despite being a very good invention, it was not the best discovery. A woman with so much power was impressive. I was sure that several secret books in the keep would only open to someone female with magic in her veins. Hopefully among these was the cure for her and her kind.
The lazy imbeciles inhabiting the forests near the town might be powerful against small groups of attackers, but they were useless against true dangers. Yet they believed in protecting their town, and against that desire, I could do nothing. I was sure that not all those so-called druids would follow their leader upon seeing the power the Dark Forest possessed. So some would travel to see it, if only to check if there was any interesting product that helped their concentration. Even though their logic annoyed me, they would need them there. Among the beasts that had found refuge there, some were magical, highly intelligent—so I suspected they were products of minor mutations. These came and went, delivering interesting messages to me. The mercenary troops were large—more than three hundred, not counting the elves and the alchemists surely lurking about. But the greater danger came from the towns I had just visited.
A contingent of paladins and healers had left before I arrived with the antidote to the madness of the succubi and incubi transformed by the elven "sin detector" machine. The only useful thing from that abomination were the collectors; beyond that, it was merely an apparatus that sought criminals who were rarely responsible for their actions. We lost a couple of days, so we would not catch up to them. But Lilith—the most powerful mage I had ever known, even more than my beloved—said she felt a magical entity dying. So I asked one of the wolf lords to take her there, while I went after one of the last constructions where they had set up entertainment, to prevent them from destroying a civilization so ancient that it was only now emerging into the open air.
From the last things I managed to translate in the keep, there was a dwarven refuge that had been vacated when the elves attacked and annihilated all its inhabitants. As I marched, I could not stop thinking about how many massacres that formerly dominant race had committed. Thousands of species went extinct. Races were decimated. New subspecies emerged from mutations. Habitat was destroyed wherever they went. But a twist of fate put them in a precarious situation, and now, through my beloved, they sought to return to their former power... It was no longer their time or moment! They did not take care of what was theirs. When I managed to kill her, they would all be relegated to eternal old men obsessed with the glories of the past.
The cavern where the last book was located—named in their texts as valuable (the others included authors and how valuable they were to the community; this one simply came as "Battle Tactics: Eliminating Risks at Birth")—was of a recent date and unsigned. It might be useful. My steps took me behind the forest, about four or five kilometers away, at the beginning of the mountain ranges that had once belonged to the dwarves. I did not know what inhabited them now, but they must be quite tough, as no expeditions attempted to delve into their secrets. As I approached, I saw many serpentine mutations. Folklore called them nagas. They did not seem to fear me or attack me. One of them—the strongest, judging by her size, with a tail nearly three meters long—stopped before me and bowed. Then she showed me two eggs and handed them to me. All watched. There were about thirty nagas, but there could easily be a hundred or more hidden in the caverns. I made an effort to remember how their reproduction system worked. It seemed they used caves to have clutches of their young until they were strong enough to survive. I suspected this refuge was important to them to the point of offering their children in exchange for me not entering the dwarven refuge. The problem was I had no more time. The enemies were coming, and I had to help them survive. It was not in my plans, but I would not make them suffer. What to do?