Considering it's still early in the morning and we had time for Lia to recover before twilight, I decided to ascertain some limits of my hypothesis.

First, I had Lia produce a light between her palms like last night.

Results: It's possible for me to absorb it as long as I will it, otherwise nothing would happen. Last night had been an exception since I was desperately clinging on to dear life, unconsciously absorbing it furiously.

Second, I tried standing further and further away to test the range limit.

Results: The further we're apart, the less power I was able to absorb efficiently. Therefore, I concluded that skin to skin contact is the most effective way to transfer magic. And I swear to you that it wasn't an excuse to touch or be touched by Lia.

Third, I asked whether Sigrid can use magic. She said yes and I decided to try absorbing it from her.

Results: It didn't work at all, since all her spells are self-enchanting ones.

Fourth, I tried absorbing some power from the marbles.

Results: It works just like a spare battery! But it crumbles to dust as soon as it's used up. Too bad they aren't rechargeable. Good thing I have about 500 of those that I painstakingly collected. I should consider hunting Miords for a change. They did try to kill me after all. Twice. I wonder what I ever did to them to make them hate me so. Did I accidentally insulted their ancestors in my sleep?

I materialized my blade to conduct the fifth experiment. Doesn't really seem to hide it from Rando and Sigrid since that cat's out of the bag.

I channeled some power and made the soublade lit up brightly, this time with Lia as my power generator. She gauged the consumption rate of her power needed to maintain a radius of 3 meters like last night and told us that it's possible to last from twilight to dawn as long as she has at least 50% of her magical reserves left.

As for the upper limit of my maximum capacity, retention duration, and other factors - I suppose it would have to wait until we get back to a more stable environment to test them out. Can't risk burning through Lia's reserves too much since we still need to last the night. With our survival for the night guaranteed, we proceeded to the original plan of our quest: Finding Bastion.

It took us two hours to reach the original spot where Bastion's traces vanished completely. Maybe the Miords ate him? I voiced my thoughts to Rando and his expression turned grim.

"Even if they did, I doubt they'll devour him whole since Miords only feed on magical energy. And since there's no traces of blood or any tracks, we can also rule out the possibility of his carca.s.s being taken away by wild beasts."

I nodded in agreement. Rando's right, back while I was collecting the marbles, I saw a few arrows that Sigrid managed to fire at them. All still in good condition without any sign of corrosion damage. Needless to say, I brought them all back with me and returned it to her. Never hurts to have a bit more ammunition.

After re-investigating for a while, we still couldn't find any clues regarding where he went. From what I've recalled, Bastion had also called upon the help of a Seeker to locate his daughter but to no avail. Wait, what's a Seeker anyway? I asked about it.

"A Seeker is a mage who utilizes magic to see things that are usually unperceivable by ordinary means," Sigrid said.

I looked at her, obviously expecting a more detailed explanation. Noticing this, she just shrugged. Mages, eh? I guess I should try to learn more about them. Despite spending two years in Arthuri, I haven't really learned much about them. Even the Princess herself doesn't know much about them since they're rare. In a way, there might be some ring of truth to what Sigrid said about how Arthuri is still considered primitive since there isn't much knowledge regarding the outer world in there. So far, the only mages I know are Lia and Telara. I once interviewed Telara about the workings of magic and she told me your ability to use them depended on how much understanding you have regarding the category of spells you practiced - such as her own immolation spell which falls under the school of Evocation. Unlike solely depending on your 'feelings' or 'emotions' in cliched settings, using magic also requires its user to have a fundamental understanding of the components of nature, like how Telara uses magic as an oxidiser in order to combust the air to produce flames, whilst Lia uses magic as reactant to brew potions.

Aside from natural talent and magical capacity, I could tell that in order to become a mage, one must first understand the basic workings of the universe at an atomic level. As for how they managed to learn it despite the absence of formal education regarding the topics of physics, chemistry, and biology, I can only infer that they'd probably developed some sort of personal understanding through countless use of the mysterious force.

Casters, on the other hand, are dumbed down versions of mages who don't possess as much natural talent and magical reservoir even compared to apprentice mages. As such, they only could probably learn to cast a few variations of spells throughout their lifetime due to their inability to practice as much due to their small capacity of reserves.

"As we've hit a wall in our investigations, I guess there isn't any choice," I lamented in silence. If there's anyone who might know the whereabouts of Bastion, it would be her.