Today I spent most of my time trying to figure out as much about this desert as I can. And I did learn quite a bit.

One thing I learned is that the person who actually created it in the first place did so using a type of magic called ‘nuclear fire’ which differs from regular fire in that it is significantly more destructive for the same cost and leaves behind barren wastelands. The few people that do figure out how to use it, usually through some knowledge inherited from a previous life, either rapidly become true immortals, or die, usually the latter. They all also have come together and agreed to never teach anyone how to actually make use of it, and they kill anyone who abuses it or teaches other people how to use it. I think this is a good thing because this stuff terrifies me, even more so because this is absolutely what the scholars will send after me if they want to get rid of me.

Of course, this does cause some problems for me. The wielders of nuclear fire are able to fix the after effects, some of them are anyway, but they refuse to teach anyone else. Apparently figuring out how to clean it up very easily leads into learning how to use it yourself. Which means that if I actually succeed I will probably be visited by one of those people regardless if of if I use the method they use to clean it up. I won’t let that stop me though.

I learned a couple of other things too, like the fact that there used to be a city in the desert, before it was a desert. And the fact that it is shrinking, just really slowly. Also, it is the dirt and sand that contains the poison, which always leaves the options of just gathering it all up in one place. Maybe as a last resort. The clockwork creatures are resistant to it, not immune, unfortunately, but they don’t immediately get violently ill from being near it.

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I should probably mention that the cities Par has been capturing have been in the opposite direction from this desert, so it hasn’t really been a problem for them so far but will eventually become a problem.

Now the question is how am I going to work with this stuff? Any expendable undead just ends up dying before they can do anything useful. I can’t heal any damage done to the clockwork creatures, and there will be damage if they help with this, so I would rather not have them handle it for me. I could maybe get away with using a puppet made out of wood if I was really quick. I might have to do some trial and error to figure out what works best as a defense against this poison.

The dungeons have made progress towards figuring out why healers aren’t able to use necromancy. It turns out I was right when I said it probably had something to do with the soul. Of course, a good chunk of necromancy has to do with the soul, so it's hardly a wild guess. The dungeons seem to agree with my idea that something had to have caused it to work like that intentionally, though there is no proof of that yet. I don’t even know how we would even go about proving that.

Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel. We had another date night today, which I always enjoy. We both got large bowls of ice cream, something I haven’t had in quite a while, and competed to see who could eat them faster. We could both eat at about the same speed, but despite my ability to heal a brain freeze it still costs my valuable moments that Azrezel, with his undead inability to feel pain, simply didn’t experience. After that, we watched a play, something about a horse flirting with a dragon ended up being hilarious. At the end of it we laid down together, and because neither of us actually need to sleep we just ended up cuddling for a while.

Anyway, Good Night Diary.