Kayn crashed through a cacophony of thick trees as he fell from the skies, completely drained of all mana. Once his body hit the ground, he pulled out the Wanderer's Villa and crawled into it. He estimated that he was somewhere along the border region of the Great Forest, but that wouldn't mean he was safe from his pursuers.
He hurriedly braced himself against the wall as he shuffled down the halls of the Villa towards the control room. Once he arrived in front of it, he took only a few seconds to enter in the correct sequence before he was granted access to the control orb.
Once he had full access to the administration system, he began scrolling through the possible formations he could activate as fast as he could. Finally, after a few seconds, he found the one he was looking for and he selected it without hesitation. "Fuck yes!"
The formation he was looking for to desperately keep him safe was the life-shielding formation. With this formation active along with all of the other concealment formations, he should be able to hide from both Sevrin and his remaining draugr without having to worry about being found.
Well, that was unless the two decided to start destroyed wider areas altogether. In that case, the area in which the Wanderer's Villa was protecting would stick out like a sore thumb. However, he had flown extremely far north in a very short amount of time, he doubted Sevrin would have the power to essentially rewrite the map before he could recover.
Just to be careful, he also disabled the mana gathering formation as he didn't want Sevrin to somehow notice the abnormal movement of ambient mana. The Wanderer's Villa usually pulled mana from the ground up, but he didn't know if Sevrin had some way to track mana, so better safe than sorry.
He slouched down next to the control orb as the exhaustion set in. He had used all but a minuscule amount of his mana in his efforts to kill Grog and then escape. Not to mention he wasn't even able to heal all of his injuries yet. Minor wounds that were not worth the mana to heal had accumulated all over his body, but Kayn didn't have the mana to address them.
Fighting off the desire to sleep on the spot, Kayn pulled himself back up using the pedestal the control orb was placed on before exiting the room and shuffling his way along the wall once again. Eventually finding himself in the washroom, he stood under a shower of water just long enough to wash the blood and gunk off before plopping his body into a bath of warm water.
As much as he wanted to also grind up and throw in medicinal herbs, he just didn't have the energy to retrieve them, nor did he want to spend the effort to grind them up. After making himself comfortable in the water, he closed his eyes, circulating the Void Star technique to hasten his recovery.
He had long learned how to use the Void Star while also casting various spells if he wasn't doing anything too physically intensive. Since he was sitting in place, healing himself and replenishing his mana at the same time wasn't too difficult.
An hour later, most of Kayn's injuries were finally healed up. He was noticing that as he fought stronger and stronger undead enemies, their attacks would leave traces of their mana in the wound, forcing him to push out the corrupting influence before he could fully heal himself.
He didn't notice anything similar when fighting against tougher living beings, but maybe the ones who had injured him just weren't strong enough to leave traces of their mana behind to delay healing. Or maybe it was just due to the mana belonging to an undead being. After being absorbed, maybe it became tainted by their undeath?
It seemed that ever since coming back rather than finding answers, question after question, which he didn't have the time to find answers to began to stack up in his mind. Not to mention that he found himself in extremely dangerous situations far more often than he was hoping, granted he was putting himself into them though. However, this brought up the question that was weighing heavily on his mind.
Was this all worth it?
He could just leave. Right now. He could leave this place and go to find his sister as he had been wishing to do ever since coming back to Talgonoth. Why did his priority switch from finding his way back to home from Earth and finding his sister, to helping these people he barely knew? If he could just go find her, why not do that instead of risking his life over and over again?
The more Kayn thought about it, the firmer his resolution in his decision to stay became. As a minor reason, he had promised Talaro Mancea that he would help him and his people escape from the city, and he didn't intend on breaking his promise.
He also wanted to take revenge on the Carnet Empire and its emperor. His father told him not to worry about revenge, at least until he was strong enough, and now he was. However, he also knew from the information that he received that he wasn't nearly strong enough to face the emperor.
There was also Lydia. If there was even a slim chance that she was alive, he was going to, no he needed to find her! He would scour all of Carnet and Inmortuae if he had to. But once again, he wasn't strong enough to do all of this alone yet, which led him to making the decision to stay.
Power.
He needed to be stronger to kill the Carnet Emperor. He needed to be stronger to find and save Lydia. Last but not least, he needed to be stronger to protect his sister. This last reason was the one influencing him the most at this point.
His sister should be around the age when her core develops, if it hadn't already. He didn't have the knowledge to create an item to hide her aura as a void dragon, nor had he found it among the materials left behind in the Void Loop. He couldn't help but become frustrated with himself.
With the literal libraries of knowledge at his hands, he couldn't find how his parents had done it. Even more frustrating was why they didn't leave any of that information behind. Thinking about it though, his father was the one who placed some kind of seal on Zerana, so most likely he had something to do with their creation. This was important because he was notoriously bad at writing things down and preferred to teach them himself if it was meant to be passed down.
Kayn felt the urge to curse at his father for his attitude, but he couldn't. Ezekiel may not have been the perfect man, but he was a damn good father. In the end, even though he could have escaped more likely than not, he sacrificed himself so that his daughter wouldn't experience a fate worse than death.
Kayn, knowing that it would probably take him years of research to discover how his ring was created, was left with very few options. He could keep Lara locked up within the Wanderer's Villa until he figured out a way to suppress her aura, but that was no way to live.
If he judged Lara's core expansion rate similar to Clementine's, he should have maybe 2 or 3 years before she becomes a 2nd stage mage, when her true nature as a Void Dragon would emerge, whether she had a dark element aptitude or not.
At that point in time, if he couldn't suppress her aura, he would have to either throw her into the Wanderer's Villa or defend her. Not being sure that the Villa could even hide her aura even if it was something within his soul or not, he was left with a single option. He would need to fight off the so-called gods from a Celestial world.
Which brought Kayn to his current decision to stay. He had a literal smorgasbord of cores he could collect, all positing themselves as his enemies. All he needed to do was take advantage of the war and hopefully he would become strong enough to fight back.
These were people who had slain an entire clan of extremely powerful dragons, with small numbers at that. Kayn couldn't underestimate them, nor would he. In order to fight against them, he would need to consume every advantage he could get, no matter how tall of a mountain it was to climb to get there.
If he could climb the two mountains known as Emperor Carnet and Lich King Mitas, maybe, just maybe he would be able to fulfill his promise to his mother of protecting Lara. If he wasn't strong enough by then to fight, perhaps he would be strong enough to retreat through the Void without dying.
He hated the fact that his desire for power had grown so much, and he felt greedy for it, but it was necessary. Without sufficient strength in a world where power rules, he wouldn't be able to achieve his goals, which at this point simply amounted to keeping Lara safe at all costs.
Sure, he wanted to see the end of the road that the Sins and Virtues were leading him down, but he didn't want to travel that road alone, especially knowing that he could have done something more. He watched as his parents on Earth were wheeled out of the operating rooms dead. He failed his new family and brought ruin upon them. He wasn't going to fail Lara.
He didn't expect his family to be with him through his whole journey, but he at least wanted them to be alive as a place to go back to. Now all he had was Lara, and he wasn't going to let anything happen to her, no matter what.
With newfound determination, he focused completely on resting. His first hurdle to overcome was somewhere out there, diligently searching for him with a powerful minion by his side