"How are we going to get you into the mines?" Pion asked, looking at Merlin, who was walking up and down in their room, thinking.

"I will need a disguise. I am sure that Elena is monitoring us, especially me, because I am a mage. So, I will need to swap places with Polo."

"With me? How?" he asked, flinching as he pointed at his face, prompting Yuri to look back and forth between the two.

"Doable," she murmured, scratching her chin. "I can easily make Merlin's hair a bit lighter in color to match yours. Trim it at the edges to be shorter, and then you can swap clothes."

"The spymaster at work, huh?" Merlin asked with a chuckle, making Yuri wink at him.

"I may not look like it, but I am a girl. Do you know how many of my bitches were pimped out by me? I learned how to make them cute and fuckable! So don't tease me, boy, or I am going to turn you into a little loli and peg you!"

"What is a loli?" Asked Polo, echoed by Merlin's next question, who was just as confused.

"What is... peg?"

"No idea!" Pion replied while waiting for Yuri's answer, which was only her widened grin.

"I'm not telling! I learned it from Leocchy; if you don't get it, then that's on you. Anyway, let me gather some stuff, and I can use my Yuri Magic to transform Merlin into Polo!"

Only an hour later, Yuri and Merlin were walking out of the Wheelbarrow Inn, heading towards the mines, knowing full well that people were monitoring them from somewhere. True enough, by the time they reached one of the mines' entrances, Elena had already been notified of who had left the inn. Learning about it, she told her men to keep monitoring the building, as it was Merlin, the wizard, whom they should constantly keep track of.

"Why are we stopping?" Yuri asked when Merlin pulled her aside and led her into one of the alleys between two community houses for the poorest workers.

"Leon gave me a task. We are trying to find our own CC mine, so I am also developing a method to help us with that endeavor.

"You came prepared?"

"Yes, I had a few ideas. I am going to try them and see if they work; if not, I can go back to the drawing board. I am not expected to do it the first time anyway!"

"When did you do it? I thought you were wholly focused on Mikan's issue."

"While traveling. I know... Leon is right; I had to shut the issue out of my mind and think of something else to rest a little. So, I began thinking about this issue instead."

"You are a weird boy, Merlin, a very weird one! So, what now?"

"Can we get onto one of the top of these buildings? What do you think?" He asked, taking her words as compliments.

"Sure thing, climb on my back!"

After doing so, Yuri easily scaled the sides of one of the buildings, appearing on its rooftop, five stories high from the ground, only a few minutes later. Merlin didn't show any fear of heights as he hopped off her back and lay flat on his stomach, not wanting others to notice them. The grey rocks were dirty, smudged with decades' worth of grime and snot; nobody had come up to clean them since they were built, but it didn't bother either of them.

"Let's see this first," he whispered, pulling a paper from the little satchel he was carrying with him. "After playing around with the concept of the 'radio' and learning about waves, inspiration hit me. I made this one thinking about what the flying ship may have done on that day!"

"You mean, those pulses you felt? The one you talked about before?"

"Yes! I don't exactly get it, but I have guesses."

"I wonder where your ideas come from. Leocchy says something, and you already have a plan. What's in your head? A library?"

"I... I don't understand it either," he answered, looking at Yuri, a bit unsure how to answer her. "I do have many thoughts that I feel like are mine, but from... like... as if they come from somewhere distant."

"Don't tell me you are going to be our Mikki-3..."

"No, nothing like that!" Merlin protested at once, "It's more like... hm. Like memories? Of a dream? It is hard to put it into words."

"Not that I would be able to understand it. So? You made this formation... and...?"

"Ah, yes, yes. It sends out a wave of magic every 10 seconds. Between those waves, it waits to see if a CC affected by it generates a response. If that happens, the runes will light up, indicating the direction for me. It is straightforward and easy to create!"

"Won't a reaction from the CC alert them? It could be traced back to us, no?"

"If a mage catches it, yes. They would feel it... it is a risk, but I don't think they have one here. Aren't they under the current Empress's rule? Isn't there a war? I don't believe any mage would be loitering here."

"Good point... okay, let's do this!" Yuri agreed, pulling out a dagger from nowhere. Merlin thought for a second about asking where she had hidden it until now, but he ultimately decided against it.

Turning back towards the mountains and the mines, dwarfing everything around them, he activated the formation, feeling the first wave passing through him, heading towards all directions. The waiting felt longer than it was in reality. When the second pulse appeared, he furrowed his brows, waiting for three more instances before canceling the spell and biting his lower lip.

"How was it? Didn't work? You have been making faces."

"It... worked but... also not."

"What does that mean?" Yuri moaned, tilting her head, waiting for Merlin to collect his thoughts.

"The formation is working, and I got good results. It, as Leon says, pinged. But all those pings were here, out in the open. Do you see that big warehouse?" He pointed toward the west, "I got responses from CC from that direction, meaning the resources are being processed and stored there. That is where it pinged."

"A target to rob, gotcha!"

"We are not here to rob them!" He grunted, rolling his eyes, but still found it funny, apparent from her lips quivering, holding back a smile. "This means that the spell is not strong enough to penetrate through solid obstacles... hmm... I expected something like this."

"Maybe we should get closer?"

"Maybe. I will try it again if we can sneak near the entrance. Distance can be a limiter because I had no pings from the castle's direction. Which means it never reached it."

"This city is dense, with thick stone walls, so I am unsurprised. Then come! Let's climb down and try it out again at another position!"

They tested it multiple times, but the results were always the same. Even when Merlin brought out different variants he had designed, none was strong or capable enough to go through the solid walls, even when they stood before the mountainside. Neither version reacted to the CC hidden underground. It was a failed attempt, so Merlin was sent back to the drawing board to modify it.

"I expected you to be more upset." Yuri whispered as they snuck in, following a bunch of workers. Thanks to them climbing and lying on the dirty walls and rooftops, they looked like veteran miners, smudged from top to bottom. Even if their faces were unfamiliar, in this city, that wasn't a rare occurrence amongst the people.

"I expected it. It was only a test run, so I was not devasted by the results. They are invaluable data for determining how to move forward with my revision! Oh..."

The final exclamation came when they finally reached a part of the mines where sunlight had never entered before, yet it wasn't dark—not a bit. Every five meters, a soft, warm glow lit up the tunnels, where people were moving up and about, pushing CC-filled carts on one steel track while empty ones rolled downwards on the other, heading deeper into the belly of the mountain.

"This is clearly the work of formations..." He murmured as they walked, acting as if they were heading to their posts, but when nobody looked, they slipped into one of the abandoned darkened tunnels.

"We can't go far." Yuri whispered, looking back and trying to adjust to the darkness. "If we get lost, we are done for."

"I know. Don't worry; I just need a bit of time to think."

While saying it, he touched the walls, running his fingers around them, clearly searching for something. Yuri couldn't tell what, but she was patient enough to wait for Merlin's explanation.

"Hmm... I can feel magic passing through the walls where there is light... Here, I can't pick up on it. They must have an intricate system that transits magic from CC to CC, producing light. It follows a similar, if not the same, principle we discovered. Something that is no longer active in this tunnel..."

"So you want to say that the mages within the capital know about magic being a wave, which is what you and Leon have been talking about lately?"

"Yes and no. They for sure discovered a way to pass on different types of spells over a long distance. Maybe in an array or something. It is hard to say."

"Why are you so sure they didn't discover the same thing?"

"Because none the books Leon memorized talk about it." Merlin answered her with a smile, "Discovering something and utilizing it but not understanding how it actually works is quite the difference from knowing its whole ruleset! Let's go; let me examine the active part before we leave! I already have some new ideas..."

...
....
......

"You called for me?" Kathrien asked, her bland tone masking her wrathful attitude as she visited the library under the castle where her ancestor, Pascal, was spending his life.

"I did... Empress." He answered, still angry about her tantrums, costing Ishillia too much than she probably realized. "Here." He grunted, holding a staff in his left hand, almost as tall as him, its top decorated with a skull carved from pure CC.

"What is this?" Kathrien asked, taking the documents from his stretched-out right hand.

"These are old records from the Emperor of Magic, Merlin VIII. It took me time to find his codex and decode something useful from it."

"Like your life-extending ritual?" Kathrien asked, unable to control her spiteful, sarcastic manner resurfacing, but Pascal wasn't angered by it.

"Exactly." He chuckled, tightening his grip on his staff. "I know you are waiting for me to kick the bucket. No need to hide it! I would be proud if you would be able to outplay me, but you won't succeed with patience alone, girl. Now, go, study it, and gather the top mages within the Empire! We will begin building the old Emperor's blueprint when you manage to understand it. We have lost enough territory already. If they want it, they can have it... After we burnt it down, that is!"

Kathrien didn't know what the documents were; even when she looked at the drawings, they were way too complex to make any sense by just watching them. But the fact that they came from the Emperor of Magic, one of Ishillia's most enigmatic rulers on par with the Emperess of Death, was enough to know it had to be something devastating.

The war has taken a toll on her daily routines and interfered with his personal life more and more. Something she had been frustrated with since it broke out. The current nobles never knew they should praise one of their previous emperors for keeping Kathrien in check, preventing her from another tantrum, and causing more heads to roll on the castle's marble floor when their meetings were conducted.

"Don't screw this up!" Pascal warned her, "This has to be done precisely as I outlined it for you. I can't leave from here, or I would do it myself!"

"I am not an amateur."

"I am telling you this because if your mental state is not there, and you activate the formation, it will burn you as well. So be prudent." He continued, forming a smile while watching her face twitch, "Screw it up, and you die. Make it work, and all our angsty neighbors learn, once again, why they should fear the name of Ishillia..."