"Frigging cold." She shivered when a cold draft from the cave entered the room.

"Fine, but the materials are on you." Lith said.

"Deal. Say goodbye to your family for me and call me only if either you really need my help or you can properly introduce me. I hate lying to be accepted. I don't need anything from them, it's them who need my help."

Lith gave her a deep bow and went to give the good news to his family.

"If you have any questions, ask Quylla. I'll be back in a jiffy with Kami and Zin. They must be worried sick." He said while Hushing the living room, to keep their cries of joy from waking Rena up.

"Wait, how the heck did Faluel control Rena's metabolism? There's no spell I know that can do that. Also, how is it possible that after hours of treatment you and I are exhausted while those two didn't even break a sweat?" Quylla asked Nalrond.

"It's amazing how I'm the one who lived in the middle of nowhere all of his life and yet it's you who is this painfully ignorant." Nalrond said before going back home as well.

Back at Zinya's house, the kids had gone to sleep for a while. The procedure had taken so long that the sun had already set. Yet the two women had been restless the whole time, pacing around the house or checking the windows at the faintest noise, hoping for some news.

When Lith knocked, the door opened instantly. He was surprised noticing that Kamila's eyes were red and she had consumed quite the number of handkerchiefs. Zinya was worried as well, but she had kept her cool for her sister's sake.

"Everything went fine. Mother and children are alright." Lith said, trying to understand the source of her stress.

Kamila was on great terms with his family and she had a good heart, but judging from the pile of crumpled cotton, she seemed to have cried as much as Elina.

"Thank the gods! I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life." Kamila sighed with so much relief that it confused Lith even more. "I have a question, though. Was she…"

"The same Faluel I talked to you about yesterday? Yes. Did she make a bad impression on you?" He tried to understand if Kamila was concerned only about the child or also about him spending a long time with the Hydra.

Her human appearance was quite attractive, after all, and being jealous would have been natural.

"What the heck are you saying? She's a saint. You're lucky to have met such a caring teacher who's willing to help complete strangers for free. I wish me and Zin had such luck when we were younger." Kamila said, making Zinya nod and Lith scratch his head.

"I just want to know how the Strangler works. Is it a family thing? Do you have it as well? I've read the papers but the medical jargon is beyond me." She asked.

"It's a family thing, passed from the mother's side. I don't suffer from the Strangler, otherwise I would be kind of dead at this point." Lith replied.

"Only from the mother? So a father can't pass it on his children?" All traces of worry disappeared from Kamila's face. She was brimming with joy as if she had won a million gold coins.

"Exactly. I can't…" Lith choked on his words the moment he understood the reason for Kamila's anguish and she hugged him so tight that she squeezed the air out of his lungs.

***

Once the problem with the baby was solved, Lith's first week's leave was peaceful. Faluel's sudden appearance and her odd methods had raised a lot of questions, but the members of Lith's family cared only about cherishing the happy moment.

He would rarely get out of the house, spending most of his time catching up with his parents and checking up on Rena every two hours. She was recovering well from the procedure, but she was anxious about her babies.

After a while, Rena calmed down and so did the rest of the family. Lith enjoyed taking a break from all his worries and projects. Solus and he spent that time appreciating what they had fought so hard to build and protect.

After a while, however, peace just became boring and everyone grew restless. Even during winter, there was still a lot to do at the farm and at the smithy. Elina and Raaz had to deal with the farm's backlog while Kamila decided to start her part-time.

With Zinya taking care of Rena and Lith of the house, she was starting to feel useless.

'I think I'll follow her lead and get some work done in the tower.' Lith thought while Warping to the mana geyser in the Trawn woods.

'I agree. I'm itching to put to the test some of the Runesmithing techniques I've researched.' Solus said.

'Not about the Odi machine? I mean, between all the books we have retrieved, the mold of Dawn's device, and the scans of the Odi's knowledge swapping machine, we have a lot of material.' Lith said.

'Too much material, to be precise. It will take me months just to translate the manuals, then we have to understand how the old and recent machines work and if we can use such knowledge to upgrade the body-swapping machine.' Solus said.

"Definitely too much. Why don't you ever get me good news?" He sighed.

"I just did, you ungrateful man! While you cuddled at night with your lovely girlfriend, I was working my ass translating the booklet from Huryole. I've found the blueprints for your goddamn ring! Happy now?"

A pouting Solus appeared in front of Lith the moment he stepped inside the tower. She was wielding her Forgemastering hammer in a threatening manner.

"Very. Now put the hammer away, please." Lith said.

Solus snorted in reply, making a table covered in paper scrolls appear in the middle of the ground floor.

"I've found a couple of interesting blueprints. The first is for a barrier ring. It works like spirit magic. You inject mana into the ring and it generates a spherical barrier around you.

"The pros are that it can help us to study spirit magic and it's quite versatile. The cons are that it's mana expensive and that it can't change shape, only its size. The mana crystals and the pseudo core create a scaffold, but you must do the rest." She said.

"The second is for a tier five magic holding ring. I don't recommend it. Mostly because you don't use tier five spells often and that kind of item can store a single charge, whereas the barrier can be used as long as you have mana or use Invigoration."

"I don't know. I could use a free Final Sunset, it's my bread and butter these days." Lith didn't like having copied one of Nalear's spells, but its power was undeniable. "How many sets of runes do they require?"

"Three sets of runes and three mana crystals each." Solus replied. "If you consider they are equally difficult to craft, I'd say their effects cannot be compared."

"Agreed." Lith said, making space inside Soluspedia for both blueprints in the case they had enough purified Orichalcum to craft more than one piece.