It was night in the mountains of Shi'en. The darkest time of the day, when the moon has not yet risen and only dim stars illuminate the earth. The best time for those whose deeds must remain secret. At least that's what Faraz wanted to achieve. What he didn't expect was that the old and secret portal, located a hundred meters below the surface, would be so unstable that it would chop off the sorcerer's arm to the elbow. Like any magician, he was ready to endure pain, but only if he expected it. Now it came suddenly and Faraz could not restrain himself. Shouting out a small portal room, he began to give himself first aid. It was lucky that, being deep underground, he could not give himself away with loud screams.
One might wonder if the loss of an arm is so painful that an experienced wizard could not restrain himself? Of course, if you lose your hand, you can keep silent. Far from the most painful injury. In addition, the cut was perfectly smooth. This is not comparable to a shattered and burned limb. But the portal cut off not only the sorcerer's hand, but also the part of the aura surrounding it. Losing part of the aura is a completely different conversation. An ordinary person who had never felt his aura before could go completely crazy. Wizards, in the course of their training and life, experienced many wounds of the aura and got used to this kind of pain. But strength of the pain was still too great and it was impossible to keep silent. By the way, the notorious loss of a piece of aura was not a serious injury. If the magician does not interfere with the healing process at all, then it will return to normal within a day. Thanks to conscious actions, it can be healed in an hour. There will be no deterioration in the qualities of the aura after that either. On the contrary, there may be a slight improvement. Magicians in pursuit of this could cripple their aura day after day and heal it again, becoming stronger. However, the downside was that the improvement was only a measly fraction of a percent, with which it was also acquired with great pain. This was the only thing that stopped wizards from such an extremely "exciting" pastime as injuring their aura and healing it.
Faraz was not worried about his arm. If it happened that he would stay with the stump for the duration of the mission, it would not hurt him in any way. A high-level sorcerer does not need any organs and body parts, except those that are sufficient to maintain life. Objects would be moved by a telekinesis spell, enemies would obviously be killed by magic, the world would be perceived in the best and most accurate way - by the enchantment of knowledge, and the magician himself moved by levitation. Of these, levitation was the most inconvenient. A person is still not a bird and flying is not his native element. Also the weaving of the flight was still quite " clumsy " and "ungainly" in the sense that even if it was feasible to fly in one direction, then sharp turns or aerobatics were impossible. It turned out to be a funny situation in which, for a magician, the most important parts of the body, apart from the vital ones, were the legs.
But on the other hand, any supreme mage can easily grow a new hand. And much faster than an aura. So in ten minutes he was already groping and examining his new limb, making small adjustments to the healing spell to create the right tone and skin type to match his whole hand. You didn't have to be a life wizard to do this, just have enough skill, and Faraz had plenty of it. He was, after all, the strongest mage of his native country, Navobad. And everything would be fine, but in terms of magic Navobad was the weakest kingdom. Of course the other countries naturally did not hurry to help the witchcraft science of their neighbor. Being the best among the worst was not a good position. Most importantly, the makings were excellent. In order to stand on a par with the world's great magicians, there was a catastrophic lack of knowledge.
Due to the lack of prospects at home, I had to leave my own country without completing the training contract. Every magician in every country, except for extraordinary cases, was trained for free. But in return, the graduate had to work off the debt, up to three years performing tasks of the local analogue of the guild of magicians or the royal power. His training lasted, like the rest of the magicians, for five years. But due to the scarcity of teachers' knowledge, Faraz passed all exams in all subjects in three years. It's not so much his genius as the squalor of his native academy. Over the next two years of practice, the sorcerer has already become the strongest of the wizards of his country. And so began three years of his forced labor. They literally plugged every hole in the kingdom by his labor. And if in childhood patriotism reigned in his feelings for his native country, now there is an aversion to the state. Navobad was a sleepy swamp where no one wanted to change anything, and instead of eliminating the sources of problems, they tried not even to deal with the consequences, but rather to hide them from the public. The poor quality of the elites and the lack of political will led to very sad results. But this point of view was very one-sided. Being an adequate person, Faraz understood that there were simply no resources to solve the current situation. His country was poor in ancient times, was poor now and will be the same in the future, if nothing unexpected happens, like the discovery of gold mines by miners or the elixir of immortality by alchemists. Although even in this case, any other country could declare war on his own and take away an unexpected source of income.
Faraz was an orphan and therefore nothing kept him in Navobad. Lack of prospects is the most important problem for ambitious people. Unable to work hard for two more years at the hardest jobs and put up with the prospect of remaining on the margins of the civilized world, the sorcerer fled his country without fulfilling the terms of his contract. Because of this, the way back was ordered for him. He became an enemy to all the magicians of his country, as he took their secrets with him. If you think about it, it was stupid, because in comparison with other countries, there were no magical secrets at home. In any case, now a hunt has been announced for Faraz there. But even if no one was chasing him, the magician would not return to Navobad.
In the first couple of months, the fugitive did not know what to do. The last eight years of his life were a frantic race against time in which he did not take the slightest respite. He worked hard with only one goal - to become the strongest magician. First, the magician tried to do research. He understood that discoveries in those areas that were least developed among the most advanced states in magic could give him the greatest advantage. Thanks to this decision, Faraz, who had been continuously researching chaos magic for five years, was now its most skilled adept. However, then the sorcerer realized that in this way he would achieve nothing. One, even a genius magician, will not be able to overtake the entire magical world. He could only prepare a few trumps, but he could not stand at the head of all the wizards. And every year the gap between his knowledge and the knowledge of other magicians only grew. It was such reflections that led him to the path he was following now, namely the theft of magical knowledge from laboratories and repositories of other countries. Since it is impossible to obtain this knowledge legally, then you will have to use an alternative and not at all legal way. And for four years now, Faraz has been doing nothing but attacking magicians from other countries for the purpose of further interrogations or infiltrating secret facilities in order to find information about modern magic that he needs so much.
It was for this purpose that Faraz came to Shi'en. The wizards in this country were not the strongest and did not have outstanding knowledge, but they were much better than the magicians of his homeland. And at the same time, in terms of the strength of the magicians, Shi'en was not comparable to the same Akad empire, from which it was not possible to steal anything, at least with his current strength. The sorcerer moved between the countries with the help of a system of old, decommissioned spy portals. Each country had a whole network of such. Due to the fact that they were underground or under water for the sake of disguise, the portal rooms had to be broken from the inside in order to get out. Therefore, they were disposable, which means cheap. Cheapness and antiquity, in turn, led to such incidents as cutting off a hand during today's teleportation. Right now he was using the secret portal network of Innsbruck. It was the largest and at the same time the least guarded.
Logically, their portals belonged to the second type of stationary portals, which means it was only necessary to get a key and password to use them freely. Innsbruck is a huge country with a whole army of bureaucrats who are not clean on hand. He bribed someone, blackmailed someone, and now Faraz already had a map of the old network of spy portals with all the keys and passwords. Of course, he would not have obtained data on fresh portals so easily, and maybe he could not have gotten it at all, in principle, because they were from the military or intelligence officers. They are not so easy to approach. You won't have time to look back as you will find yourself in casemates or even worse on the block. While the information about the old portals was in the state archive with the lowest level of secrecy, since it was useless now and nobody really needed it. No one, except a magician who wants other people's secrets.
As soon as the sorcerer's aura finally healed, he created a "miner's shield" around himself and destroyed the portal room with several earth spells. The earth mixed with stones immediately surrounded him from all sides. Only the shield saved him from being instantly crushed. "Miner's Shield" is a general shield spell that prevents solid objects from penetrating inside it. It had a rigid shell that prevented deflections, as well as the most useful property in this situation – automatic self-digging. This function worked due to the following principle: the shield was configured with a low speed to carry all objects touching it from the top to the bottom, and since the surrounding boulders weighed much more than the magician himself, it was not they who moved down, but the sorcerer slowly floated up. The pointed shape of the shield also contributed to this. At this rate, he was supposed to get out in about thirty minutes, so the magician plunged himself into a lethargic sleep so as not to waste the limited oxygen, not forgetting to fill the weave of the shield with mana before that.
Once on the surface, Faraz used several camouflage weaves, rolled up his aura and ran in one direction he knew. Always in such cases, he secretly grinned at the fact that everyone, even the most powerful magicians, had to run like ordinary soldiers, unless of course they wanted to be noticed. Running through the mountains, gods, what could be better than this? His sharpened vision picked out the smallest irregularities in his path, not allowing him to stumble even in the dim illumination of the stars, cold air rushed into his lungs, burning them with its touch, his heart was pounding joyfully, not so much driving blood through the body, as expressing his spiritual uplift. This was not a little facilitated by the beautiful view that opened from his road. On the right, huge ocean waves crashed against steep rocky ledges, while on the left towered the highest mountain range in the entire known world, going up for many kilometers. And in the middle between this splendor, which could not hide under the veil of the night from the keen gaze of the magician, a small figure of a man ran. Probably, after magic, it was his favorite pastime - running among the wonders created by nature. All that was missing was music. But you can't drag minstrels with you.
But nothing lasts forever, and after two hours, having traveled no less than forty kilometers, the sorcerer reached his destination. The entrance to one of Shi'en's underground laboratories. As his informants had reported, this was where dark magic was being actively researched for its ability to create shields. It was a very tidbit of information, designed to fill in Faraz's lack of knowledge in two areas at once - mobile shields and darkness magic. He was rather weak in both, and he hoped to remedy that very soon. The mage had spent considerable time first healing his aura, then climbing out from under the rubble, and then leaping from one rock to another in the mountains, so it was morning. There was no point in attacking in the sunlight; accordingly, he would spend the day observing the object of his robbery and only begin the assault at night. Actually, the cover of darkness didn't do much; after all, the lab staff were all mages and could see perfectly well in the dark. But the night attack had the advantage that at that time most wizards would use the portals to go home. Those who didn't would still sleep in their chambers. Mages had far less time to sleep than humans-about two hours-but it was impossible not to sleep at all, at least not that Faraz had ever heard of. It wasn't hard to fall within that two-hour window either, since everyone chose about the same time for their sleep, since they worked in large teams and adjusted to the work schedule.
Faraz spent half a day lying on the bare and sharp rocks, watching his target. Magic naturally made it not as painful as it was for ordinary people, but it was still not pleasant. There was no change in the facility, no one went in or out, as there were portals in the lab that everyone used to move around. If the sorcerer had been reckless enough, he would have used those portals for his escape after the operation. Technically, there was nothing to stop him from doing so, just walk into the portal room and teleport wherever he wanted. That's a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but that was the gist of it. There was no way to trace the teleportation point, and the portals were universal, which suited such an audacious plan completely. Eh, dreams, dreams. In reality, as soon as his infiltration was detected, the portals would be blocked immediately. And unblocked only when reinforcements are sent. And getting acquainted with that reinforcement was not at all in the mage's plans. All mages knew what happened to those who broke the magic code of Shi'en. Better to die right away. Tired of fruitless observations, the sorcerer, having moved a few kilometers away from the entrance point, fell asleep, setting the magic alarm for two in the morning - the usual time for falling asleep mages in the laboratory.
It wasn't easy to wake up. The spells provided the most comfortable sleep possible, if only for the mana. And he was even more modest, limiting himself to basic spells, a little afraid of detection. But knowledge won't steal itself, and after refreshing the energy reserves in his cloaking charms, he jogged to his destination. The mood was fighting, the escape routes prepared, the reserve full. At this moment Faraz especially regretted his limited knowledge. If he were at least a graduate of Innsbruck or Nisfar, he could not steal crumbs of knowledge like some human robber, but tear the place apart and take what was his by right. By the right of the strong, of course. What is there to tear apart, why would he even need Shi'en 's wretched laboratory, he would already have all the knowledge he needed, which even Sheehan's men don't have. But it could still be fixed. All great mages started at the bottom, which didn't prevent them from climbing to the peak of their power.