I became a legion lich

215 Tracking spell

He was wearing a gray prisoner jumpsuit that looked brand new, contrasting with the former elder’s grimy appearance. His face was smeared with snot and tears and his prodigious beard smeared with dried blood and saliva.

Louis walked unsteadily and his hands shook uncontrollably, his unfocused eyes looking slowly around the room, but his mind was confused and didn’t register anything his eyes were seeing.

‘Is this really the dark elder?’ Canan thought in disbelief. The old man in front of them looked like a sick old who could die at any moment, rather than a ruthless necromancer and terrorist.

‘It must be the result of drugs and continued torture. Or perhaps because he is a necromancer who fights with the support of several undead, he is not used to pain and easily gave in to torture.’ Eirin considered the different possibilities and decided to investigate what was done with Louis.

Everything that happened inside the dungeon of the forgotten was recorded, so all the torture done to Louis would be in the records and Eirin could access it through the magic table, which was connected to the prison’s database.

The records of everything that happened inside the dungeons of the forgotten could be accessed through the magical wooden table in front of it and the office of the head jailer, as the information was stored magically and not physically.

Eirin accessed the information as the guards led Louis to the empty space in the middle of the table and forced him to his knees.

‘Wow, it looks like they took it hard on him. Check this out.’ Eirin thought as she read through the files, marveling at how creative jailers could be.

They burned it, froze it, drowned it, electrocuted it, buried it alive, just for warmth. The jailers skinned Louis as if he were an animal with a surgical precision that impressed even Canan.

.....

They managed to reach all the nerve endings while avoiding the veins and arteries, causing maximum pain with minimum risks. After ripping off all the skin and leaving his muscles exposed, the jailers poured boiling water over the elder’s body, causing him to scream like a wounded animal.

The jailers healed him, only to move on to the next torture. They made a point of always changing the pattern of torture so that Louis would never get used to the pain.

‘It looks like they also administered different drugs into his body and tortured him under the effects.’ Canan spoke in Eirin’s mind while ignoring the tortures, as he wasn’t much of a fan of torture, though he understood that it was necessary.

‘Let’s formally put the tracking spells to end it soon and we can go back home.’ Eirin thought and got to her feet, before walking over to Louis. As if recognizing her now that she approached, Louis’ eyes began to focus again.

He looked around the room until his eyes landed on Thersec and turned red with rage.

“Y-YOU!” louis screamed in rage as he recognized the man who captured him and the one responsible for all his pain, jumping on him. He tried to use magic or abilities, but without a staff and with the chains sealing his core, there wasn’t much he could do now.

The guards beside Louis grabbed his arms and knocked him to the ground, but he didn’t stop screaming.

“You! You are to blame for this!” His face turned red with anger as he raged, but Thersec just glared at him with cold eyes, irritating him even more.

“Enough of this yelling.” Eirin grabbed Louis by the neck and lifted him off the ground, before casting the tracking spell under him.

Louis tried to struggle to get rid of her, feeling EIrin’s mana creep under his body and the signature foreign mana burn his body, but the feeling quickly faded.

The tracking spell surrounded Louis’s core as if it were a new layer and Eirin forcibly removed the chains that sealed his core, causing the same to release mana to try to expel the invading mana.

Eirin took the moment to flow extra world energy into the spell, the different energy signatures blending together, much like a binding spell. The biggest difference was that there was no tug of war for control, as Louis couldn’t affect the spell.

The spell stopped accepting Louis’s mana as soon as it balanced with Eirin’s mana, which took almost all of his mana. Despite the small amount of mana Eirin used, her core was at the level of a demigod and Louis barely had enough mana to match the quality of a single Eirin spell.

As long as the spell not was undone, Eirin could detect him, even if he went to the other side of the planet. The spell’s effect would only cover a few dozen kilometers for an ordinary mage, but Eirin had no such limitations.

“What did you do to me??” Louis shouted as he recognized the tracking spell. He tried to scream, but Eirin was grabbing his neck, barely leaving him room to breathe.

“You’ve been judged by the elders as a terrorist and normally I’d leave you here to rot to death, but your usefulness outweighs my willingness to see you suffer, so feel lucky, you’ll live another day.” Eirin spoke in a cold tone, needing sheer willpower not to kill Louis then and there.

From so close and with him so weakened, a flick of the wrist would snap his neck.

“You can’t do this to me!! I’m an elder and I demand respect! You’ll pay for treating me like this!” Louis began to scream wildly, his face getting even redder from the strangulation.

Eirin was disgusted by the depressing sight and threw Louis against the wall so she wouldn’t have to touch him anymore.

She controlled her strength not to turn him into a pool of blood, but between the impact and his weakened state, the impact against the wall was still enough to knock him out, a pool of blood quickly forming around his head.

“Light Elder, heal him just enough to prevent him from dying and return him to the guards. He will spend his days in the Dungeon of the forgotten until the day before the invasion starts, so he has time to recover.” Eirin sneered at Louis’s despicable sight.

“I don’t want him to spend a second more at liberty than necessary.”

Yami ran to his side and did only first aid, feeling Eirin’s gaze on his back and a silent promise of pain if he healed him one centimeter more than was strictly necessary.

The jailers grabbed the dying body of Louis and carried him away, maniacal smiles on their faces under their visors. The overwhelming majority of the jailers in the dungeon of the forgotten were crazy about torture and considered Louis their new toy, so they were glad he wasn’t leaving yet.

“Well, we’re done with everything we had to do now, so let’s end the trial here. We all need a shower and decent meals.” Eirin clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention and left without even hearing a response.

Eirin was tired and hungry, so she teleported back to the empire as soon as she entered the VIP room.

**************

In the demi-human wasteland, a week later.

The army of Athos destroyed the hydra’s territory with an ease that surprised even the skeletons. Unlike orcs, who could increase their physical power beyond limits, kobolds, desert lizardmen and minotaurs were not powerful and took much longer to break through barriers.

His camp was on a plain, while the hydra’s nest was in a cave built by himself.

The army mages had a lot of time to release offensive spells and since there would be no aerial battle, all of their firepower was unleashed on the demihumans. When the shockwave was finally released, almost all of the demihumans were destroyed.

The hydra also tried to fight to defend its territory, but Simogo and Treevor faced it together, their combined skill was more than enough to defeat it with ease.

Hydras were capable of casting magic with all over heads and had dragon breath as well, but it was useless against Treevor and Simogo, who could unleash even more powerful attacks or easily dodge the hydra’s attacks.

The battle was over in less than half an hour and after just a day of quick weapon repairs, collecting the useful resources in the camp and turning the corpses into new undead, the army marched back towards the basilisk’s territory.

The hydra’s hoard was even smaller than the hyverns, as the hydra was a lazy creature that rarely left its territory, so its hoard was just magic herbs and a few pounds of mithril, which the skeletons already had in abundance.

Malic and Wylver joined them as they marched against the Basilisk and brought back whatever information they could gather from the sky without being discovered. According to them, the camp had changed since the last time the wylver attacked them and was now on the border between the desert and the savannah.