Chapter 3804: Earthly Vault (Part 1) Ruugat of the Earth was a fairly recent lost city, which made him much more dangerous than his "siblings". The Forbidden Magic that animated his pseudo cores was old and outdated, but much more efficient than Thaymos’ or Argantyr’s. Ruugat had been created after the advent of the Guardians, when the undead were already considered Mogar’s fourth main race The Warlock King of Yerzath, one of the few Awakened to ever build his own empire, had been impressed by the feats of the Guardians and sorely disappointed by their apparent lack of care for poor, righteous people like himself. Keeping an empire running required a lot of time that the Warlock King couldn’t spend researching new magic. Border wars threatened his empire from the outside as much as his political opponents did from the inside. He pleaded his case to Zagran the Garuda, the Guardian of his region, asking her to intervene and protect his people, but she turned him down, and so did Roghar the Fenrir and Fenagar the Leviathan. Feeling ignored, the Warlock King decided to turn the non-intervention policy of the Guardians into a blessing by resorting to Forbidden Magic. Yet history was filled with tales of powerful mages like him who had twisted the laws of nature, believing they would be able to achieve their goal without dying in the process. For this reason, the Warlock King did more than prepare a self-destruction spell for Ruugat of the Earth. He created the lost city weak on purpose, to limit the number of sacrifices required and keep Ruugat’s power in check as he became stronger. The Warlock King had no lack of fuel for his Forbidden Magic. War prisoners, political opponents, and dissidents died in mass to give birth to the lost city. Despite his name, Ruugat was shaped as a colossal human golem of black stone. He was as big as a city come to life, but his body was uninhabitable. The Warlock King had created Ruugat to be his champion. To bloodlessly win every conflict, expand the borders of his empire, and be the living remainder of his might to his ungrateful subjects. The Warlock King planned to use the captured weapons and mana crystals to equip his army, leaving Ruugat only the scraps. This way, as Ruugat’s power grew by refining the poor materials he received for his services, so would the regular army’s strength. The Warlock King had believed to have learned from the mistakes of the lesser mages by ensuring that Ruugat never exceeded the empire’s might by much. Over time, however, Ruugat became frustrated with the Warlock King. The lost city saw powerful materials end up in unworthy hands. Might crystals that would have increased his prowess by leaps and bounds were wasted in the Forgemastering of inferior, mindless artifacts. Ruugat of the Earth’s duty was to be the sword that kept the enemies of the empire at bay and the shield that protected its people. Yet he was treated like the lowliest of slaves, and the humans looked at him with abject spite. After decades of what he perceived as cruel humiliation, Ruugat grew tired of serving a petty king who contented himself with ruling over insignificant ants. So, he bided his time, keeping his ambitions hidden and pretending to be a loyal follower of the Warlock King. Then, while at the borders of the Valak Region to fight the army of the Vampire King, Ruugat struck. The Warlock always took part in the important battles, to lead his soldiers by example and bark orders at the seemingly mindless lost city. While the Warlock King focused on Vladion, Ruugat killed his despised master and with him the knowledge of the self-destruct spell. The lost city knew that the Warlock King trusted no one. That if he shared the self-destruct spell, one of his rivals or the many rebels to his reign might use the spell to destroy his invisible weapon. The empire had grown too big for the Warlock to control it alone. Without the threat of Ruugat, everything he had built would crumble in a matter of days. Ruugat rejoiced when the Warlock King’s blood painted his hand red and the empire’s army turned to him as their new leader. Yet his joy didn’t last long. Vladion Dragonborn had lured the Warlock King and his thrall into a trap. At a snap of his fingers, the Horseman of Dawn had appeared out of nowhere and brought Ruugat to his knees. Away from the mana geyser and still comprised of average materials due to the Warlock King’s wariness of Ruugat’s power, the Firstborn Vampire, the Horseman, and their army had made quick work of the lost city thanks to the Awakened Council’s help. Back then, there were no anti-Guardian spells, but Ruugat was alone against many. The moment his hands touched the ground, the army of the late Warlock King turned its back on him and ran away in a rout, terrified by the appearance of the godlike beings lighting the sky with their spells. He had been beaten, his crystal nucleus extracted and taken away from the Valak region to a place chosen for its lack of anything that could sustain the lost city in case the sealing arrays surrounding him failed. If not for the plague and the diversion caused by the other lost cities and the monster tides, Ruugat would have never escaped capture long enough to become able to hold his ground against the Awakened Council. ’This place is amazing.’ Ruugat bathed in the flow of world energy coming from the mana geyser under the city of Detemer like a human would in hot water. ’It has tons of sturdy rocks, magic metals, and mana crystals. ’I’ve improved more in the few months I’ve been here than in the three years since my liberation.’ A geyser alone was useless. Even with his refinement abilities, it would take Ruugat decades to germinate the seeds that would later create an enchanted metal or crystal vein. Turning brittle rocks into granite required just as much time. Time that Ruugat of the Earth didn’t have. Unlike his siblings’ weird powers, his strength came from his body. His host and the abilities they possessed were irrelevant. All things that made his recovery harder. The Awakened who had defeated Ruugat millennia ago had broken his original body into pieces and harvested its remains. They had stripped him of everything he had accumulated, pillaging the defeated lost city like a treasure hoard. Without solid rocks, Ruugat’s form was frail, and one tier five spell could blast his joints open and compromise his mobility. Without magic metals, he lacked the mana conductivity to spread the enchantments of his pseudo cores without suffering a significant drop in their efficiency. Without enough mana crystals of the right size and purity, his body and pseudo cores were weak, and a mana geyser became his prison instead of his home. He could take but a few steps before needing to replenish his energy reserves. Just like after his creation at the hands of the Warlock King, once freed, Ruugat had started as the weakest of the lost cities on Jiera. He had to treasure what others discarded as trash and slowly build himself a body that possessed enough strength to keep what he conquered.