"Yeah, there's no way to make them float above the Sage Staff." Solus pondered. "Anyone with half a brain would shoot them down first and disable the staff. Not to ntion a bunch of flying eyes would be creepy and disgusting. It would terrorize the children.
"Off the top of my head, I say we should fuse all six Balor eyes in the Yggdrasill wood. They are both living tissues, and the sa enchantnt that preserves the wood would preserve the eyes."
"It also offers you the ability to have the eyes sink below the wood's surface when we are not fighting to hide the Sage Staff's true purpose and make it less creepy." Lith nodded.
"Moreover, with the ability of Balor's eyes to draw in large amounts of elental energy, the staff would have the next best thing to a breathing technique of its own. It should help you sustain your human form longer while away from a mana geyser."
"Sothing like this?" Solus conjured the hologram of a version of the Sage Staff with the Balor eyes arranged in a vertical line along the haft, with a Spirit crystal between the orange and yellow eyes.
Seven more crystals arranged in the sa sequence rested on the head of the staff, floating in the air and orbiting in perfect synch from ti to ti.
"It looks perfect." Lith said.
"It looks awful." nadion appeared from his shadow and clicked her tongue.
"This is a private conversation, Mom." Solus replied.
"I'm not here as your mother, young lady, but as your Forgemastering teacher." nadion's eyes narrowed. "Or did you change your mind and don't want to inherit my legacy anymore?"
"Point taken. Sorry, Mom. It's just that you are so nosy and bossy that I forgot about our arrangent. I thought you were just ddling as usual." The honesty in Solus' words stung nadion more than any insult could.
"I'm not nosy or bossy, and I don't ddle!" She snarled. "That said, how would you grab that thing? Would you be okay constantly touching one or more open eyes during a fight?"
"No, I wouldn't." Solus retched at the idea.
"Then what about this?" In nadion's version of the hologram, the sequence of the Balor eyes was the sa, but they were arranged horizontally in a circle, matching the resting position of the floating crystals.
"With this configuration, the six eyes channel the six elents in the sa point at the center of the Sage Staff. From there, it only takes a spark of your life force from the Spirit crystal to turn them into mana ready to use."
"That's brilliant-"
"I'm not done." nadion raised her hand with the palm out, gesturing for Solus to wait. "Also, by aligning eyes and crystals, you can establish a solid frawork for your mana flow that should improve the stability and output of the Sage Staff's enchantnts compared to Vorgh's."
nadion flicked her fingers, and the mana crystals in the hologram ford a Silverwing's Hexagram. Instead of forming a circle like Vorgh's staff would, the mana ford a frustrum, with a smaller Hexagram passing through the Balor eyes.
The miniature array exerted no effect in itself, but shaped the mana and arranged the runes in the proper order like a mold. It allowed the upper array to form faster and be easily repaired in case the mana it held was damaged.
"That's brilliant, Mom!" Solus said, and this ti nadion didn't interrupt her.
"Thanks, sweetie." nadion smiled and then turned to look at Lith. "How did you get the idea to lure Vorgh at the Indech reveal?"
"He was the best candidate, and we needed his staff." Lith shrugged. "Solus' deep violet core is too weak to conjure a proper Blade Spell, but I thought that a full set of Balor eyes and a complex power core might do the trick."
"Just one thing. You know that you don't need more than one weapon to cast different Blade Spells, right?" nadion asked.
"I know." Lith replied. "My goal is to craft sothing capable of bringing Solus' mana core to at least the violet level for Blade Spells. Without one, she won't be able to face Divine Beasts, let alone Jorl's tower."
"Yeah, I don't want to rely on the Bleed." Solus said. "Its energy supply is limited, and the people we sacrificed to fill those tanks still weigh on my conscience."
"Yet without the Bleed, the Dryad's blow would have sapped Lith's strength to save you, and Jorl would have killed him." nadion said, making Solus' conscience turn quiet.
"My conscience is clear, instead." Lith snarled. "We didn't pick on random people, but the bastards who tried to kidnap Mom. If not for the Bleed, I would have left them in Grandma's Pits of Agony for the rest of their miserable lives. If you ask , they got off easy."
Lith had sacrificed ten Awakened to the Bleed, and the result was three tanks filled with a prismatic liquid comprised of mana and life force that matched Solus' to perfection.
During the fight with Jorl, one of the tanks had consud about one-tenth of its content, and an empty space was now visible at its top. And that only thanks to the uncanny constitution that Solus' bond with the tower granted her and Protectors' tily rescue.
Otherwise, she would have suffered much more serious injuries and potentially consud more than a tank.
"By my Mom, I love having my body back, but life was so much simpler when I was just a ring on your finger, Lith." Solus sighed.
"We can go back to that arrangent if you want." Lith shrugged. "But that ans that you can't fight by my side and must prioritize hiding your presence. If you're okay with providing intelligence and spells, I am too."
"No, I'm not." Solus gritted her teeth. "I suffered too much and waited for too long for the mont I could be more than a voice in your head. I won't throw everything we fought for away just because my life isn't perfect."
She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the partially empty crystal tank of the Bleed, taking deep breaths to calm down.
"Let's get back to work." After a few seconds, Solus straightened herself up and looked Lith in the eyes. "What's our next move?"
"First, we need to dismantle your Sage Staff, but that's not sothing we can do on our own." He said, and she nodded for him to continue. "Creation Magic only works on inanimate materials, whereas Yggdrasill wood and Balor eyes are organic.
"Necromancy might do the trick, but it will also decrease their magical potential. To do this right, we need Grandma's help, if not even a lesson about her Rebirth Magic."
"Let's get going, then." Solus nodded and Warped the Starforge tower to the Blood Desert.
They could often talk to Salaark in the Mansion when it was her turn taking care of the babies, but she wouldn't help them there. Lutia was still part of the Griffon Kingdom, hence Tyris' turf.
The Overlord refused to ddle in foreign affairs or risk that her Griffon friend might be tempted to take a peek at her work. If Lith and Solus ca to her in the Desert, instead, they were inside Salaark's turf and her honored guests.
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