As they walked deeper into the Crypt, Zalthus leading the way, he could not help but find himself in deep thought. He felt anxious and his anticipation was like that of a newborn about to discover something foreign.

As he looked back over his shoulders, to the young Goblin, he could not help but smile to himself. Finally someone who was going to answer the question his master had posed for a long time. The very epitome of Chimera Alchemy. Gumir was going to be the person for the job, he had to be.

Looking at the young gob, Naivety could clearly show through his actions. From the uneven steps he took while stumbling around trying to take in every glimpse of the aged crypt and commit it to memory, to the way his eyes wandered from wall to ceiling then again to the opposite wall; it showcased of his lack of exposure but also it also illustrated his inquiring nature.

At least he has a curious nature to him.

Zalthus thought to himself his thoughts wandering far.

Curiousity would be an essential trait in acquiring the knowledge left behind.

More than a century he had lived out his life, he had spent almost half of that time trying to track his master’s hideouts, trying to understand his more esoteric teachings and lastly trying to look for a possible fit to continue the legacy of his master. The same legacy of which he was mocked for, ostracized and his legacy rubbished.

During his old age, before he was shunned by the rest of the magical society, he had invented a path.

A path like no other ever seen I the magical world. No human would be able to take this path and this was due to the level of difficulty in which would need to impact their body and the lack of compatibility to the path. It was quite the interesting path that in the very least afforded one a chance to attaining partial immortality if not becoming fully immortal.

After his master had disappeared from the known world, Zalthus chose to become a wandering alchemist. As the first disciple of the Great Alchemist Alizer, he understood his master and his temperaments well with all the time he had spent in service to him.

Although most knew Alizer as an alchemist, only those who knew him were privy to the fact that he was just but an energy fanatic. He spent his life understanding and in interrogation of energy. His successes in alchemy were only in part of what he had managed to unravel in his entire lifetime. And this revelation, that he had discovered in this old crypt, was one of his best. One that he had said would become his greatest of works. One that would change the world forever.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

The Magical world had rubbished his claims and thrown his research out of the window. They were an old orthodoxed bunch that wanted things done in a certain way, and so they would not accept any of the unorthodox presentations that he had proposed.

This research unpublished and placed in the library shelves of the Knowledge tower, was never spoken of again.

However, upon his disappearance most of his disciples had taken up this research and had wanted to work on creating something of it. Although they were of the same nature as those old orthodoxed elderly bunch, they still paid respects to their master by trying their best to interpret his works in a more “like-him" manner. They had failed terribly. He had not kept tabs with any of them for a long time, yet still they had not announced anything officially so Zalthus still assumed they were still treading their failed paths with their arrogance.

Zalthus on the other hand had decided that he wanted to do exactly what his master had planned for. The correct way. Following the written instructions he had identified this crypt and to his surprise he had found that his master had developed a lot of the scanty theories first suggested in the first research manifesto.

However these were more unorthodox than anything else he had ever read. He just could not imagine what this kind of experiments would have required of him in order to acquire the in depth knowledge he had written down.

The Goblins were the perfect specimen for this new path. No one would accept empowering goblins in their right mind and yet his master had come to discover that the green monsters were the perfect specimens to chart this new path. The main reason being their Malleability as a species.

Goblins were among the only few races that were sentient, capable of reproducing with a multitude of species, able to live in community and most of all know to be able to 'evolve' and also mutate.

So Zalthus started his hunt, a divination decades ago had informed him that he had to be closer to the crypt, the answer had lied there. And so every other decade he had visited the Ladyship by the shore to seek out a divination inorder to find out anything that would be remotely close to a definitive divination and that is how he finally came to know of the little gob, Gumir.

The mundane stone door infront of him rose him up out of his deep thoughts. They had arrived.

“You ready,” Zalthus asked Gumir, who had seemed absent minded for a moment and in deep wonder.

“ Y_yes I am.” Gumir answered quickly shaking off his momentary stupor.

Although Zalthus did not have full confidence in this tiny creature, he was aware that he was all he had; and so he had to make it work.