Spit-roasting the Blood Carp over the campfire, Sand reassessed his actions over the past few days. Accepting Lirael’s offer of discipleship wasn’t wrong. Really, what other choice did he have in that situation? And it was much better than the worst-case scenarios he had imagined. Cooking for the Thralls in order to get on their good side wasn’t wrong either. It would instead be strange if he didn’t try to improve his relationship with them. Even his decision to reveal the spice formula he had accidentally stumbled upon in a bid to impress the Vampire Princess was justified by his ignorance of its true value.

He had knowledge of the future, sure, but that didn’t make him omniscient. For instance, even though Lirael had made it abundantly clear that the spice formula was valuable, Sand still had no idea how exactly that worked out.

In his previous life, he had been a slave for the first hundred years of his life. He had worked his way up the hierarchy of the restaurant he had been sold to by dint of simply outliving the other slaves there. Just when he was getting comfortable, he had been sold off to another restaurant that was in need of some experienced staff. He’d been bounced around from eatery to eatery after that, before finally being purchased as a caretaker for an old orc couple by their son – a yellow mage who had no time to look after his parents. So he could work more efficiently, the mage had initiated him to magic. It was then that his magical talent had been exposed.

After that, all thoughts of treating him like a utility slave had been thrown out of the window and he had been auctioned off. The final bidder, a high-ranking orc mage had him trained as a member of his personal militia. When the orc had failed to return after the Red Wedding, Sand, who had been left behind, had seized the chance to flee along with several other slaves, looting the mansion along the way.

It was when he was being chased down in the aftermath, his companions being picked off one by one, that he had chanced upon the abandoned Dungeon of the Blood Gourmand. He had lived beyond that day while the others hadn’t and he had gained an inheritance that allowed him to take revenge for them.

He was a warrior first, chef later, and merchant never. Most of his time had been spent fighting and running from orcish pursuit and even when he had worked in the culinary sector, all he had known about spice was that, in the desert, water cost more. He could be forgiven for underestimating the sale price and demand for a commodity that his life experience had taught him was worthless.

Sand sighed. Taking the well-cooked carp off the fire, he used his knife to shear the charred skin and scale before taking a bite off the fish. Well, he’d have to keep his eye out for tripwires like these. It was near impossible to avoid the occasional stumble, but he’d just have to ensure that he didn’t go sprawling on the ground.

Lirael stood with her eyes closed in an unnamed region of the Myriad Toxins Desert Area, trying to orient herself. She was loath to admit it, but she was a little lost. As to why she was only a little lost and not thoroughly astray – she had a map. A very expensive map that had wiped out a large chunk of her savings before she had embarked on her trip here. An ancestor of hers had explored the Tyhr Desert around a century ago and mapped it out extensively. The Myriad Toxins Desert Area had been one of the places he had visited and upon his return to the family, he had contributed the map to the Archives. Knowing her destination beforehand, Lirael had checked it out and made a copy, using it to chart out her travel plans.

Unfortunately, the Desert had a very dynamic topography – sand dunes could become depressions within hours and depressions, dunes. Oases had been known to dry up within months, or spring up unannounced. The smaller branches of the rivers that trickled down from the Spine of the World changed their courses from decade to decade and the five main rivers had been known to shift every century.

The map was a hundred years old, inaccurate and expensive. It was also the best the family had. After all, Vampires had all but ceased their activity in the Tyhr Desert and the Thousand Seas after exiling the Orcs and the Nagas there. So, Lirael had clenched her teeth and bought a copy. She had been lucky that her first stop, Gehenna, had been where it was marked on the map. She had purchased more up-to-date maps of the locality from Silveros and supplemented her own, managing to reach the Myriad Toxins Desert Area without incident. The Orcs had no knowledge of what lay within this death-trap of a location; for any brave – or foolhardy – enough to enter had never been heard from again. So, once again, she was on her own, reliant on her obsolete map for direction. That was how she had ended up in her current situation.

As her mana poured into her Tier 1 Memory Shard, images flashed past in her mind like patterns in a kaleidoscope before resolving into a broad room with a domed ceiling. Sunlight streamed in through the windows placed high above the ground, catching the tint of the stained-glass panes and turning the entire room into a riot of colours. Other than heavy blinds for the windows the room was bare of any furnishings, not a single table, chair or bookshelf in sight.

The line of sight in the image shifted around, taking in all aspects of the empty room before turning to face a man. A tall, thickset man with skin weathered by long years at sea. His long, dark grey hair was tied in a bun and he had his beard in a braid; an iron ring at the end holding it together. Intermittent flashes of purple lightning lit the depths of his storm-grey eyes.

He wore a black long-coat with silver chains clasping its front together in place of buttons and the Enzeal insignia, an inverted triangle embedded in a circle, was embroidered in silver thread on his left breast.

Lirael’s voice rang out in the memory, “Uncle, is this the vaunted Atlas Vault? I expected more –” a slender hand appeared in the frame, indicating towards the empty space, “– you know, maps. Or, isn’t that what we are here for?”

“Patience, girl. You didn’t expect the maps to be physical, did you now? There are better ways to preserve knowledge than vellum and ink.” The man’s tone, contrary to his rough semblance, was quite genteel. A voice more suited to imperial courtrooms rather than the high seas. That is, if one ignored the muted rumble of distant thunder that accompanied each of his words, lending them an unparalleled aura of aggression.

Reaching into the outer pocket of his coat, he drew out a rectangular silver token and tossed it towards the centre of the room. At the peak of its arc the token stopped, rotating slowly as it floated in midair, glinting as it caught the coloured sunlight. Then, without warning, it stilled. The blinds all around the room dropped, plunging the room into darkness.

The token bloomed with a mystical brilliance and images appeared on the walls, floor and ceiling of the room – projections of land and sky. A star chart sparkled down from the vaulted ceiling and images of plains, mountains, rivers and seas decorated the floor beneath the two Vampires’ feet. Large swathes of the map though, were a blank white. Oddly, none of the token’s light shone on the two Vampires, only the dim glow of the projected map underlit their figures.

Striding to the centre of the room, the man indicated for Lirael to approach. Pointing down at the ground, he said, “This is where we are now – the Capital of the Enzeal Kingdom.” He waved his hand towards the wall that carried the symbol for ‘south’, specifically towards several blank patches on the map in that direction. “Those are the cities of the other Vampire nations. We don’t have proper maps for them as they are protected by Embryonic Dungeons and all surveillance shards not approved by the City Lords expire there.”

Pointing to the lands further south and towards the west which had even more extensive blank patches, he said, “That’s the Golem Empire over to the south while the Rakshasa Hordes occupy the western grasslands.”

Turning north, he indicated towards a huge mountain range that ran from east to west, dividing the continent in two unequal halves. “The Spine of the World. Beyond that lies the Tyhr Desert, and at the northernmost edge of the desert lies the Myriad Toxins Desert Area – your destination.”

“There are two ways you can reach there,” he continued. “You can either embark from the numerous ports that line the eastern border of our country, voyage through the Thousand Seas, and finally, cross the Perpetual Thunder Desert Area. Or, you can cross the Spine of the World and make your way through the Orcish territories. If you would let me accompany you, I would recommend the former but since you won’t, the latter is the safer, albeit more time-consuming option.”

“Thank you, Uncle. I wouldn't have known where to look for a solution to my problem if you hadn’t pointed it out to me.” Lirael heard herself say.

Ezekiel Enzeal shook his head. “Don’t get your hopes up, girl. There’s no guarantee that you’ll find what you seek there.”

Lirael smiled in a self-effacing manner. “Unlike in the Sangre prince’s bedroom, at least there is a chance that I will.”

“That there is,” Ezekiel agreed with a sigh. “Well, take that token you purchased out then.”

“This?” asked Lirael as she held out a circular crystal coin.

Taking it from her, Ezekiel flicked the coin at the floating silver token which immediately absorbed it before glowing even brighter, magnifying the map of the Tyhr Desert till it occupied the entirety of the room. “Go on then, memorize it. It will revert back in ten minutes.”

In the memory, Lirael began to methodically walk across the room, starting from one corner, while staring down at the projected map on the ground. Reaching the opposite wall, she took a few steps to the side before walking back to the other side of the room, repeating the process until the entire area of the floor had been recorded in her Memory shard. When she reached the position of the Myriad Toxins Desert Area, she paused the memory playback and studied the map in her mind.

This was the limitation of the Tier 1 Memory Shard. It could record a memory, replete with sight, sound and touch but every time it was accessed, one would need to play the memory from the beginning. She could stop the playback whenever she pleased but there was no way to skip to the part she wanted to. Another problem was that while it was in use, she wouldn’t be able to move her real body as she would be fully immersed in the past. So, for the duration of the memory, she would be helpless. Her Agility shard somewhat mitigated the second weakness as it could speed up her personal perception of time by a maximum of thirty-two times. So, while she took an hour-long jaunt down memory lane, less than two minutes would have elapsed in the real world. Even then, the shard wasn’t one that could be used in battle.

Promoting the shard to Tier 2 would let her choose which part of the memory she wanted to start experiencing from. It would also extend the storage capacity from one day’s worth of memories to over a week’s worth. At the same time, it would allow her to record memories in disjoint chunks instead of limiting her to one contiguous memory as in the case of the Tier 1 shard. In short, the Tier 2 shard was infinitely superior to the Tier 1 shard. Then, why was it that she was still making do with the inferior version?

The reason lay in the inherent limit mages had regarding the number of shards they could fuse at the same time. Every time a mage promoted a small stage, they would gain the ability to fuse one more Tier 1 shard – in other words, gain a skill slot. An initial stage Red Mage had only a single skill slot. A middle stage Red Mage had two skill slots. A peak stage Red Mage had three skill slots and so on. Thus, a peak stage Violet Mage could fuse fifteen Tier 1 shards.

The Tier number of a shard was indicative, not only of its effectiveness, but also of the number of skill slots it occupied. So, before creating their Embryonic Dungeon, a mage could at most have three Tier 5 shards. Afterwards though, the shards that were used to form the Dungeon wouldn’t occupy the skill slots so the mage could fuse more shards. This, apart from near-infinite mana, was why a mortal mage would never be on par with a Dungeon Mage.

Lirael had thirteen slots occupied with two left blank so that the next shard she had planned to fuse into her Dungeon, the Seismic Sense shard (currently at Tier 3), had enough space to grow. Upgrading the memory shard would require serious reshuffling of her current shard configuration. It would have to wait until she solved her predicament and fused the Seismic Sense shard into her Dungeon, freeing up space.

Opening her eyes, she turned to Vlad who had been standing guard by her side. “It seems that the detour to search for Netherfire Serpents threw us off our trail,” she said with a sigh. “We are nearly a hundred miles west of our goal.”

Vlad just stared back, uncommunicative. Lirael’s lips twitched. “At this time, you should sympathize with me," she pouted. "My ankles are going to kill me with how I’m abusing my shards.”

Struggling for words, the confused Thrall opened and closed his mouth several times before squeezing out two words with a voice reminiscent of colliding rocks, “There there?”

Chuckling at his awkwardness, the albino Vampire wrapped the Thrall up in her Domain and their figures blurred as they vanished from the spot, leaving a trail of afterimages in their wake.