The fortress was already much more lively when they got back as more and more people arrived, setting themselves into the same groups they worked with when attending the Academy. All of it was happening seamlessly and organically, without a need to coordinate the arriving Misfits. The news of Lia's party setting itself up as an Adventurer organization reached back to the Academy very quickly, and most who were in the Misfits already knew where they would go after graduation.

"How are you?" Lia asked, visiting Louise in her room, sitting down on the edge of her bed.

"Fine, I am already feeling energetic, but Lorin said it is best to take it easy for now."

"The rest of the group was also coming down with a kind of sickness, but nobody suffered as hard as you," Simbad said, watching her, standing next to Sion while a golden disk was lying in Lia's lap. "Do you have any idea why?"

"No." She shrugged, "Well… I have one, but I think it's stupid."

"I also had many stupid thoughts!" Lia giggled while the two standing beside them nodded immediately. "Hey!"

"Ehehe~" Louise giggled, watching them, happy to be back in the Misfits, even if she was just a subordinate. "Well, I was the only one with light-based magic in our group! I heard that it is suspected to be the work of a mage with light affinity! Maybe my resistance was stronger?"

"Highly plausible." Sion agreed, exchanging a glance with Simbad, "It is possible you were hit with a stronger spell than the rest."

"My only question is, why?" She asked, not really expecting an answer. "Is it a necromancer? Someone brainwashed to serve the Undead?"

"That is one possibility, but we don't think so," Lia answered, scratching her chin. "We are planning an expedition. Are you in?"

"Of course!" She perked up at once, "I want payback!"

"Hehehe, good! It won't be a big group; we don't want to scare them away. It will be Simbad, Sion, and you as the core. I will come along with Aurora as I will be the perfect bait, not having any affinity toward light spells! Plus, we would like to see if our invisible douche targets people with darkness as their element, or is he afraid of them?"

"Or she," Sion added quickly. "It is an insidious way of attacking someone! My bet is on it being done by a woman."

"Hey!" Lia and Louise protested immediately.

"Or a kid." Simbad added, unpetrubed. "None of it was fatal; I could see a young, isolated mage practicing his or her spells. Playing with it."

"It was almost fatal…" Louise pouted. "And if it is a kid, then I still want payback! I don't care, I would still kick him… or her," she added with a pause, looking at Sion, "between his or her legs! Hmph!"

"Fine, fine!" Sion threw up his arms, "I was just saying! Girls can be scary when angry!"

"Experience?" Lia grinned.

"When are we going?" Simbad questioned, trying to drive the discourse back to its original goal.

"A few days." Lia tilted her head, looking at Louise, who nodded, showing she would be ready. "We will let you rest until everything is set up; we go after that! Until then, all our groups will avoid that zone. I will send people out to try and gather information if this has happened before or if it is something new!"

"Do you think it is targeted directly at us because we are the Misfits?" Louise asked before they left her room.

"I hope not!" Lia shrugged, annoyed by the concept.

…

….

……

"She was certainly hit by a spell." Hajna appeared before the Misfits as they were having a meeting, placing the golden disk in the middle of their round table.

"Do you have any idea how?" Lia asked, crossing her fingers and resting her chin upon them, watching Hajna's face.

"From the clues, your people's report, the other victims, and the minimal residue I managed to scan on them, I reconstructed a few possible scenarios."

"You have multiple ideas?" Lorin asked, surprised, attending the meeting along with Opparu, who was now considered one of the leaders too.

"How marvelous…" The old man whispered, mesmerized by the complex diagram on the disk and how it housed an artificial being who looked very much real. If not stated differently by Hajna herself, he would have thought she was a living being… even now, he questioned whether she was truly a projection and not someone trapped in a machine.

"Thank you." Hajna smiled at him before continuing. "This is the closest of my ideas," She explained, waving a hand, and to everyone's surprise, a holographic image appeared above the disk, displaying Louise… utterly naked in a T-pose.

"Err… Hajna…” Ceiline cleared her throat, "This is very… immoral!!"

"There are no genitals displayed. Look closely."

"True…" Opparu murmured, acting like it was perfectly normal when everyone looked at him. "She is still a beauty."

"Her butt is nice," Rinzen added, making Lia laugh and knock on the table, stopping the others from interjecting.

"Continue, please!"

The moment she said that the image changed, and layers of skin gave way, displaying Louise's innards, her muscles, bones, and organs like a live dissecting playing out before them. Multiple parts of her body were detached and magnified, showing how the 'sickness' spread and affected her.

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"I ran my simulation multiple times." Hajna explained in detail, "Going through my database, we had 12 spells that could work the same way. From that 12, I narrowed it down to one that had a 97% match with the effects of the spell Louise was hit by."

"Oh?" Aurora tapped the table, writing with her index finger. "That is already almost an exact match! Could it be somebody who found an old spell of yours? Your people's?"

"The probability for that is low, but it is possible. My conjecture is that it is a self-made spell, but the effects should be almost identical to ours."

"Which is?" Sion asked, leaning forward, gazing at Hajna instead of the replaying simulation.

"Our attacker works with a light on a different spectrum, one that the human eyes can't perceive. You are aware of how light works, yes?" She asked and continued after receiving some nods, although Raufon's and Keily's were not a hundred percent honest. "In my time, we categorized them as rays. There were different types derived from studying how light works, changes, and the effects it can have on different objects. There is more to it than you can see with your eyes."

"So Louise was hit by an invisible beam?" Simbad asked, leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed, thinking about counter-measures against a spell they can't perceive.

"Yes." Hajna nodded, "We had multiple names for them-"

"Please, not those hard-to-pronounce, alien-to-hear words again!" Keily moaned, pulling on his ears.

"Khm!" Hajna looked distressed for a moment before continuing. "Well, those invisible rays of light can have adverse effects when hitting organic targets! Even worse, they can easily bypass thick surfaces, armor, or primitive protections! They were the preferred spells of assassins in our Empire."

"No wonder," Rinzen agreed placidly, "They can be mistaken for poison, mistreated, and then misleading the enemy. If it can show its effects way after it was cast by the assassin, it is even better. Truly the ideal weapon for hidden killers!"

"Yes." Hajna agreed, sounding proud in a way, "It affects organic tissue the worst, the cells that are the building blocks of living beings."

"Cells?" Ceiline asked, interested.

"I forgot that so much knowledge has been lost…" The ancient projection sighed sadly, "Living beings, all of you, are made up of many complex cells. Think of it as you, yourself, being a walking and talking magic formation of blood and flesh!" She went on, turning into a teacher, "There are millions of spells that can affect you, like healing spells! Regenerating those injured tissues! If you can heal them, you can injure them the same! 'Poison' them, kill them!"

"What can heal can also kill. It only depends on its dosage." Lia murmured, rocking back and forth with her chair.

"Yes." Hajna agreed, "Those invisible spells of light are destructive when aimed at living beings. Give it a strong enough concentration, and you will be flayed alive! Burned from the inside! Your organs scorched, blasted into pieces, dismantling you while you die an agonizing death."

"We have to capture the one who has such spells," Raufon said, his voice firm, looking at Lia, waiting for her opinion.

"I agree." She nodded back at him, "First, we need the culprit alive to interrogate and investigate!"

"Can we defend against it?" Aurora asked at once.

"Yes. Multiple types of metal can dampen, deflect or reflect such rays. Although they may turn out to be cumbersome to wear. The easier solution is me teaching you the spell." She watched Sion and Simbad with a smile, "Same with the girl, Louise. I can tell you everything about it and how to use a spell that lets you see the different frequencies of light. With that, your mages could detect it easily!" Hajna finished with a beaming smile, happy to share more of her knowledge and the past of the Eternals. She wanted her old Empire to be acknowledged and become part of history, so people would still remember them even if they were gone.

"Let's do that!" After thinking about it, Lia clapped, "Record everything down and then send it back to Mom! I am also going to talk with the Silly Fox!"

"Yes!" Answered everyone in unison, acknowledging her words as an order before standing up from their chairs.

…

….

……

"Interesting!" Lucian mused, listening to Lia's explanation. His young student's face was floating above his desk, coming from a projection of a unique, long-range communication disc. "When can you send her over?"

"After we are done on our end. Will you pick her up by yourself?"

"Of course! What about the Six? Did you notify them yet?"

"Only told Mother about it." She shrugged, "She will decide the rest, but she was fine with my idea of sending it to you."

"You are not sending it to me." Lucian laughed, "You are passing it on to Somia."

"And I am more than intrigued." The woman in question popped into their conversation through Lucian's bracelet, appearing next to him. "The images you showed of that ancient device are similar to what I came up with."

"I had a hunch!" Lia chuckled, "You do look similar! Although, when you appear, you look more ethereal; she is almost like flesh and blood. Only... your hand goes through her if you try touching her!"

"Probably because I am a soul, and she is an artificial construct." Somia mused. It was the first time for Lia and Lucian to see her this interested in something, displaying any real emotion. "At first glance, the only difference I see is the fact I bound my soul to a complex system. I injected my own consciousness into it. She herself is a system that was made to be a copy of another's consciousness. She is not… real per se. Yet she is. Hm…”

"I am getting none of that, and honestly?" Lia groaned, rolling her eyes, "I don't care!"

"Ahaha~!" Lucian cut in with a chuckle, "I will tell Cici about it… she will be more than interested too!"

"If you want, you can come and talk with her now!" Lia offered, knowing Lucian could teleport to them at will.

"Maybe next time; I am in the middle of planning the next Egg Hunt."

"Ah…" Lia sighed, leaning back in her chair, feeling nostalgic and also a bit sad, "I miss it… What about the Misfits? Are they still banned?"

"Of course!" Lucian grinned, "More than that! I banned them from recruiting from the 1st-year students!"

"What?! You can't do that to me, Silly Fox! You are being extra silly! No, a bully! Bully Fox!" She yelped, feeling indignant, already trying to calculate if she could teleport to Lucian or not… but, unlike him, she was not yet in the rank of Three Ri.

"Ahaha, okay, okay, I did not ban them fully! I restricted them to only recruiting 50 people per year!"

"That is too low!"

"Don't care!" Lucian waved his hand, "I am the Headmaster and not you! The year you left, all the newcomers joined the Misfits! Or wanted to, before I stepped in! Girl, you left a ticking time bomb on my desk; I had to defuse it!"

"Uuuuu! Just watch! When I become the Headmaster… ooooooh, you will see! Hmph, hmph!"

"Blah, blah, blah!" The fox grinned, "I helped you! Now your group organizes very strict selection tournaments! You only recruit the best of the best! You should thank me instead!"

“Mhmhm… mhmhm…” Lia said something, but it was so quiet that it was partially unintelligible.

"I will take it as a 'Thank you, Headmaster, the best teacher in the world, my one and only Master!' Okay?"

"Pft! Suuuuure! Egotistic Silly-Bully Fox!" Lia grumbled, sticking her tongue out at him.

“Good~ Now… Be careful, okay? We had Undead reports inside Honu territory."

"How close?" She asked, her face devoid of the previous sulkiness.

"Close by…" He replied. "Two towns were burned to the ground by us… 12 000 souls lost in four days."

"Damn it…"

"And we did not find the nest yet."

"Got it." Lia nodded, fixing her sitting position. "I will keep an eye out."

"Mhm. That is all I ask for. Call me when you finish."

"Will do! Until then… have fun playing with your eggs, Silly Fox!" She giggled, closing the connection before he could reply.

"Heh… that cheeky little brat!" Lucian laughed on the other end, bringing up this year's plans for the Egg Hunt and the participating Misfits, who would play the role of adversaries once again, a tradition set by Lia and her original crew.