Chapter 95 Switch

With Eleven as the guide, they traversed the forest outside the city for a while, before they arrived at a seemingly normal-looking tree.

"This is where my hideout is, since you already know what I want to achieve, I hope that you'll keep this to yourself."

"Of course.", Lucas said with a smile, but internally he was a bit confused. 'What is he talking about?'

'He said that we apparently know what his goal is, I think, but I don't think we ever mentioned anything about that?'

'No, maybe he suffered a head injury during our little test. Also, is his home a tree or is it like Elam's cabin?'

Eleven said a few runes and made a few signs with his hands. Focussing on both things at once was a bit annoying, but he had two minds working to the figurative bone trying to remember every detail.

Part of the tree made way for a door-like entrance, unlike Elam's illusions, this physically made the tree move some of its bark, showing its hollow insides. There were circular stairs leading downwards. Going downstairs revealed a room filled with tubes and little flasks. Roots from the tree were holding the ceiling up. The ground was pure wet dirt, but hard enough to not turn into mud. It felt like the chamber blocked all outside noise, only when one focussed could one hear little insects or vibrations from the surface.

The room was a bit damp, with a strangely refreshing smell. Lucas' nose picked up a few scents he recognized, most were harmless, but there were some that could be attributed to poisonous plants, putting him a bit on edge. He knew some things about Eleven, but he knew that he had been too forceful with the matter. Now, Eleven thought he knew everything, which couldn't be further from the truth.

Lucas had some speculations and ideas, but no concrete proof. Some of his theories were proven correct once Eleven admitted them, but besides that, there wasn't all that much to go on. The room was tiny, yet big. There was a lot of room, but it was filled with tons of papers, books, flasks and a desk, making the room very clustered and packed.

'Makes me think of Venion's room, he also didn't know what structuring was'

'Yeah, and he wanted to kill us, pretty accurate comparison.'

'Eleven doesn't want us dead, he wants our help, he just wanted to see if we were strong enough. That's all.'

'And now he knows one of our strategies, he could easily use it against us.'

'So what? Don't we have a bunch of strategies against our strategies?'

'That doesn't change the fact that he knows about one of them, though!'

Lucas had to stop his inner monologue when Eleven pushed some papers aside to show Lucas a piece of parchment. His eyes were focussed and sharp, he was eager to see what Lucas would make of it.

"This is it, what do you think, sir Conrad?"

'Sir Conrad? When did we become a senior?'

'Who cares, look at those runes! They are all about necromancy!'

For once in a long time, his other personality took over. His interest in the field Eleven presented him was great enough to bring out his other half.

"Who wrote this? This is absolutely beautiful!"

"Thank you, Sir Conrad, this was made by... someone of high rank. I received this with the explicit task to understand them."

"Now that's a lie if I've ever heard one, hahaha. Don't lie to me, boy, I can see right through you!"

'What the hell are you doing?! That's not how to approach someone, why did you take control when we need to talk? You can't converse properly!'

'Shut up, it's my turn for a while, okay?'

Eleven froze up for a moment, Lucas' personality changed so drastically, he didn't know what to say. Eventually he loosed up, he couldn't hold a candle to the man in front of him. He figured out his identity with only a few sentences and beat him in record time. He could even see through his lies, not that he was a great at deceiving someone else, but now he lost completely.

"I'm sorry, I'll speak the truth. I stole this and want to use it, but can't figure out how to. After seeing what you can do, I imagined you would be capable of helping me."

"See, you can speak the truth, I'm not gonna hurt you.", Lucas said with a smile, but Eleven saw it as a thinly veiled threat. 'I guess I can't lie to him anymore, or I'll be in trouble. He already knows too much anyway. '

Lucas scanned the paper many a time, his brain was fully churning trying to figure it out. Normally, he would only have half of his mental capacity working on things since his other half had its own desires, but now, they both worked together. Hundreds of calculations were flying around in his head, runes were placed next to each other before being coupled with others.

Eleven stayed silent to give him enough room to think. He could probably attack Lucas now and kill him, but he had decided to give it a chance. If he did do it, then there would be no more chances of reconciliations.

While Eleven was waiting, Lucas was starting to get somewhere. Runes were difficult to understand, and depending on the color of core, you could make faster progress when it came to certain runes. His core was a combination of light and dark, while the same could be said of his mind. His darker mindset stayed hidden most of the time, only helping during battles, but now, he was out. Having full control over the body felt a bit strange at first, but he quickly got used to it.

The way he thought was drastically different from his lighter side, but right now, it was very fitting. The runes of necromancy felt different from others, the ones Gilbert gave were all plastered on top of each other, so he couldn't understand them that well. But now that they were written so beautifully next to each other, he was starting to see a pattern.

"You want to make a corpse talk?", Lucas said impulsively, turning his head to Eleven.

"Yes! Did you figure out how the runes work?!", Lucas was taken aback from the enthusiasm Eleven showed, like he was a little kid waiting in line for a new toy.

"No, not yet, whoever made this made sure that you wouldn't figure it out."

"Huh, what do you mean?"

"I'm saying that the asshole who wrote this down forgot to include a few runes. This shit's incomplete, there's no way to create a decent spell from this."

'Only a few tricks and weak offensive spells.'

'At least you realize what you definitely cannot say. My goodness, once we're out of here I want control back, you can't possibly converse with anyone.'

Eleven was looking around the room, before throwing a bunch of papers around. He didn't look mad, merely searching for something.

"The hell are you doing? Throwing around stuff won't change it."

"No, I have this! This, right here!", Eleven was pushing flasks and books aside, finally letting Lucas see part of the walls. The familiar wet dirt entwined with roots was present, but also a circular hole big enough to crawl into. Eleven reached inside with his hands before pulling back a body.

"Couldn't you at least preserve it in a decent manner, this is just plain disgusting.", the body Eleven pulled from the hole was a naked older man. He was covered in dirt and insects had found themselves the perfect breeding ground. The man's body was a living ecosystem.

"I'm sorry sir Conrad, this isn't the body I want to speak to, but he should have the necessary runes missing from the page, I hope."

"You hope? At least be certain before bringing in a decomposing corpse that smells like death in here, there's barely any room for the smell to escape to."

"No worries, sir Conrad, I'm prepared.", Eleven took one of the flasks on the stand and opened it. The liquid turned into a gaseous form and spread around the room, giving it a fresh scent.

"So that's what you used to clear the smell? Can you do the same with poison?"

"I've tried, but the doses are too small to make a difference."

"Too bad, would've been useful. Anyway, let's check what this old bag of bones has for us, shall we?"

Eleven nodded before cleaning up the body with water magic to make it easier for Lucas. Lucas waited until Eleven was finished, he was pondering about the poisonous gas, thinking it would be great if he could figure out how to effectively use it. But his attention had to be placed on the body once more, since Eleven was swift in cleaning it.