The image on the wall revealed Drake’s depressed expression which gave a small amount of joy to Lucifer, while he was enjoying the show the other three were discussing how to deal with the rest of the army.

Lucifer suddenly asked Rick “how is the farm going”

Rick paused for a moment then replied “good I suppose, the mana well is providing enough energy to rapidly develop the ingredients to full maturity, although the speed is too difficult to manage myself, that is something an alchemist would never complain about, it's our dream to have a cultivation patch that grows ingredients faster than we can deal with i--

Lucifer interrupted “what did you do with the mana crystals that have been growing in your field”

Rick replied “I have been placing them in a “trash storage ring” why”

Ahri and Selenia looked at Rick as if he was some sort of weirdo and said simultaneously “you use a storage ring for trash, just how wasteful can you be”

Rick laughed and replied, “did you forget my occupation, I’m a master alchemist, creating storage rings is as easy for me, unlike an enchanter I don’t have to sit there for months inscribing runes on a tiny ring, I can simply combine a few plants together into a dimensional ring.”

Ahri rebuked “but to treat mana crystals as “trash” is a little excessive, even the arcane university can’t use them as they please, each one is valuable and requires careful thought on what to use it for”

Rick chuckled “normally I would scatter them around one of the many cultivation patches I have hidden around the continent, however, going to those places would be less efficient that stealing-- cough collecting the plants in the dungeon, and there is enough mana from the mana well for nourishing the plants so mana crystals aren't needed, in fact the mana is so dense that some of the plants I don’t get to in time crystallize into mana crystals themselves thus exacerbating the problem, the crystals are like weeds at this point and if I don’t remove them regularly they take up all the plants room to grow”

Ahri sighed “what a luxurious problem”

Meanwhile, on the first floor Drake was marching the army towards the second floor, he occasionally infused mana into his legs and jumped onto a high tree branch to get a better view of the situation, he clicked his tongue in irritation when he saw another group of soldiers secretly slipping out of sight.

Drake knew that people would defect once they were given the chance considering what they had gone through and could do nothing to stop it, if he stopped the army to go catch the people retreating it would probably just lead to more people getting the same idea, he couldn’t even have the group leaders do a headcount to see who was missing, it would be impossible to tell who had been killed by the random attacks from the ants and those who had fled, more importantly, he wasn’t even sure the group leaders would tell him the truth if he ordered them to rat out their comrades, especially with how many of their friends died for no reason.

Lucifer noticed the group of people sneaking away towards the entrance and said: “I don’t want anyone who has attacked me to leave the dungeon alive, let's go we have a job to do”.

He stood up and prepared to grab his weapon then Rick interrupted “there is no need to bother with those people”

Lucifer asked “and why would I do that”

“because they are already dead, just watch the entrance and you will understand” replied Rick

Light shone at the end of the hallway blinding a group of soldiers that had secretly left the main army. One man said “there is the exit we are almost out of this nightmare”

“what are we going to say to those guarding outside”

“just shut up and let me do the talking-- cough – cough”

“are you alright Glen”

“yea I should be fine after I get out of this blood fog”

“I was starting to get used to the blood fog, its colour matches our shirts”

Lucifer’s group observed the retreating group of soldiers as they were exiting the dungeon, one they walked out he glared at Rick who just shrugged his shoulders and said: “keep watching”. Moments after they left the dungeon and were trying to explain the situation to the soldiers guarding the entrance several soldiers started coughing, a moment after the rest of the soldiers who had exited the dungeon started coughing and soon they were on the floor.

The soldiers who were guarding the entrance watched this “messenger group” start coughing and then they started to bleeding from every orifice, they stepped back because they didn’t want anything to do with whatever was killing them.

One of the dying soldiers reached for an antidote and downed it in a single gulp, however, it had no effect, his lungs filled with blood and the last thing he saw was his blood slowly creeping back into the dungeon.

Lucifer looked towards Rick for an explanation even though he had the feeling it had something to do with the blood fog Rick had created. Rick took several moments to scrutinize the results until he was satisfied with the effect caused by the blood fog and started to explain, “you never asked what the blood fog did when I created it so I never told you.

Firstly It’s not poisonous so priests won’t detect anything wrong with it and thus not create any measures to defend against it, although I cannot say the same about skilled mages but I digress, Second while you are in the fog it has no effect at all so priests can’t test the fog by its effects on a living being like they secretly like to do--

“priests don’t experiment on people” interrupted Ahri causing both Selenia and Rick to shake their heads, he replied “the easiest way to find out if something is dangerous to a human is to give it to a human and inject mana into it--

“even an idiot would know that injecting mana into something potentially dangerous would only make it more dangerous” she interrupted again.

Lucifer told her to “shut up” and let Rick finish and hoped that he wouldn’t feel in an educational mood.

Rick took a breath and waited for silence before continuing, “since I was interrupted I will start from the beginning”, Lucifer slapped his forehead in exasperation, “So if a priest, or any knowledgeable person with decent mana control wanted to test weather something was dangerous to them, first they would expose someone or some creature to the thing you wanted to test, then after you inject mana into a small portion of the substance you use your mana sense to feel the effects on the body, for example, if I injected a prisoner with Salenumit and after injecting a small amount of mana into the body it reacted negatively, like perhaps the skin melts off his face in large swaths, then you would know that its dangerous to inject Salenumit into someone--

Selenia was looking at Rick as if he was some sort of monster and cautiously said “this is just an example right, why does it sound so specific”

Cough cough “well sort o-- no I haven’t experimented on people before...” seeing that no-one believed him Rick awkwardly continued “anyway the method priests use is similar but on a much smaller scale, using mana sense they can look directly into your body while they are “healing” you and observe the small changes any substance has on the body. This allo--

This time Lucifer interrupted him “WHAT does the BLOOD FOG do, you senile old man”

“Oh, it gets into the body through the lungs and it always wants to stay near itself, so when you leave the blood fog the fog in your blood rips its way outside the body to get back to the main fog” casually replied Rick.

“FUCKING FUCKITY FUCK FUCK” exclaimed Lucifer before continuing in a calmer tone “you should have started with that, your character is making my bloody fingers hurt. So just give me your trash ring so we can move on to the next step already”