Clenching her fists, she nodded, a silent understanding settling between them. The best way for her to help Percy and Micky was to assist the clone with his current task. His main body would have to replicate their success on his own later, but it would hopefully be easier the second time around. Especially if they managed to register the spell upgrade before the clone left.
Gathering mana from both of her cores, she allowed them to blend between her hands, merging into something new. Nesha hadn't found time to work on the Dance – drawing so much ambient mana inside the inn wasn't very practical anyway. However, she had made a lot of progress with affinity fusion.
Motes of black clung to the earth mana, the brown substance turning darker and folding rapidly onto itself, before eventually settling into something denser. As soon as the mana calmed down, Nesha willed it to manifest into a construct, a pitch-black orb seemingly cast out of obsidian forming between her hands.
She didn't stop there. Preparing more of the substance, she added to the sphere, slowly moulding it into something larger and shaped differently. An hour later, a glossy statue stood in the middle of her room, as tall as she was. It was humanoid, though its features weren't very defined. According to Percy, it somewhat resembled the golems he had faced in the Vault's Yellow combat challenges, though its purpose was very different.
This was the object they'd be carving their enchantments onto.
Percy marvelled at the human-shaped construct for a second, once again reminded of how handy his girlfriend's fused mana was.
The glossy stone – which they'd dubbed dimensional onyx – greatly resembled the material their spatial amulets were made of, though there were a few key differences. Nesha's creation lacked the bright, star-like specks scattered across the surface of the amulets. More importantly, this wasn't a naturally occurring mineral but a material fashioned out of a mortal's mana, meaning it wouldn't last indefinitely by itself.
Even so, it was remarkably practical.
It was easier to produce than Percy's crystallized mana – at least before he'd started cheating with his Spiritforged Effigy. It also survived much longer – a couple of months even without preservation runes. Finally, it drastically boosted the power of Nesha's enchantments.
Still, its temporary nature meant that they couldn't use it to craft true spatial amulets. Not unless they were fine with the artifacts collapsing one day and dumping their contents in some random location – or worse, destroying them outright. Even if Nesha equipped them with self-repair enchantments – which she had already learned how to draw – they wouldn't function properly with anyone else's mana. Sadly, Percy and Nesha understood how hard-pressed they would be to find a second person with her unique combination of affinities, even among the Moirai – let alone somebody capable of fusing them in the same way.
If they wanted to craft more permanent spatial amulets, they'd need to acquire dimensional marble – the very material that had inspired the name of Nesha's fused mana. The problem was that the resource was heavily monopolized by House Etna, and they were currently wanted fugitives.
Other controlled resources – like elixirs – weren't as difficult for them to obtain. Elixirs were thousands of times cheaper per unit, and they exchanged hands in massive quantities across Remior. After all, a huge percentage of the population needed to consume them on a daily basis. Compared to that, there were very few spatial amulets around, and they were reserved for the elites at the top of the noble families. As for their raw materials, very few outside the Great House even had a use for them.
'Thank Phoebe we don't have a shortage of storage space anymore…' Percy thought.
Nesha had originally learned runecrafting with the hopes of crafting more of the useful artifacts for the group, but they'd luckily outgrown that need. Even better, she had found several other uses for both the esoteric art and her fused mana.
Specifically, the material was perfect for her traps.
She couldn't store them inside the amulets because their enchantments were fundamentally the same – intentionally unstable pocket runes meant for killing or maiming rather than storing or preserving. Still, Nesha could pack a lot more power into the dimensional onyx than she could on regular stone.
By adding self-repair enchantments and concealment runes into the mix, she could maintain the traps and unleash them onto her unsuspecting victims a lot more easily. The only reason she hadn't filled her room with traps was because she'd rather not have to explain herself to the innkeeper should he decide to stick his nose into her business one day.
Regardless, Nesha's affinity fusion wasn't the point of their current project – just the convenient material that they'd been using for a while.
In fact, Percy and Nesha had gone out of their way to ensure that all the enchantments involved could function irrespective of one's affinity. They were much more interested in the underlying theory than any individual application, and Percy needed all the new skills and knowledge they acquired to be transferable to his main body – who possessed an entirely different set of mana types.
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'I'll go first,' Nesha said, snapping him out of his thoughts.
They typically took turns drawing the runes, the short breaks helping them rest and consolidate their gains.
Nodding internally, Percy watched his girlfriend fuse some mana around her finger before engraving an intricate enchantment onto the statue. It contained control, growth and memory runes – the building blocks of Percy's own controlled self-repair enchantments – but that wasn't everything.
There was a fourth type – the adaptation runes.
Adaptive self-repair enchantments differed in that they could accept foreign mana types. This was meant to somewhat mitigate the issues Percy and Nesha were facing, though it didn't solve them completely.
Enchantments like this would behave in all sorts of unpredictable ways when infused with the "wrong" mana type. The exact results would depend on how the new affinity interacted with the runes or with the original mana types that were supposed to be fed into the enchantments.
For example, injecting ice mana into an adaptive heating enchantment designed to be fuelled by fire mana would either weaken its effect severely, or even reverse it entirely in some cases, causing the runes to sap heat instead of emitting it. These interactions weren't universal, however, and had to be tested on a case-by-case basis.
Adaptive self-repair enchantments fed with the wrong mana would usually still do what they were supposed to, though they would introduce flaws during the regeneration. If done repeatedly, the constructs in question risked falling apart. In other words, Nesha would still find it difficult to craft spatial amulets for others. Repaired with other affinities, the devices might last a little longer than they would if left alone, but they would still crumble in the end.
The same was true for Percy's scythes.
Given how he fought, his weapons tended to shatter and regenerate hundreds of times during the span of a battle. There was no way they would survive something like that if he fed them with the wrong mana. Even worse, others wouldn't be able to use his constructs either, and not just because of this incompatibility. Without access to Percy's soul affinity or the willpower embedded in the weapons, they'd also be missing out on the scythes' autonomy.
That didn't mean the adaptation runes were useless, however – had that been the case, Percy wouldn't have bought the books on them.
Repairing a construct with a different affinity often infused it with unique properties. There was typically a sweet spot where an object could be altered in a beneficial way without its structural integrity being compromised.
Thankfully, it was always possible to reset the constructs to their flawless state by simply repairing them with the correct affinity. If Percy was careful, he hoped he could channel Micky's soul-freezing ice into his scythes at key moments to increase the lethality of his attacks, before flooding them with phantom mana to restore them to their original form. He had no idea what the exotic resource might do to his armour, but he was interested in exploring that too.
Outside of that, he also hoped his clones would be able to maintain the scythes longer like this. Normally, their finite stash of mana wasn't enough to get them far, but the adaptive enchantments would let them borrow mana from their hosts. Of course, the clones would still have to use the weapons sparingly. Not to mention that the scythes would have a much lower impact whenever Percy possessed Greens or Blues.
That said, having more options was never a bad thing.
As soon as Nesha was done adding the fourth rune into the enchantment, she paused for a moment to examine it. Only once she confirmed that it worked as intended did she continue. The first controlled self-repair enchantment was always the most crucial, because it would allow them to undo any subsequent mistakes – at least within its range of influence.
However, their project was a lot more ambitious than this.
What they'd been trying to master over the past year wasn't any individual rune or enchantment – no matter how complex or useful it might be. Sure, they'd done that too – they'd learned the Vault's written language and read all the books back-to-back multiple times. They'd grown proficient with all the runes they had access to and even learned to combine them in various interesting ways. They'd even developed a large pseudo-enchantment involving eighteen different runes – the one that Nesha was currently drawing on the statue. The intricate self-repair enchantment she'd already carved was nothing more than a small part of a greater whole.
But there was something else that had consumed most of their time.
Something much more difficult, and downright fundamental to the art of magiscript. It had to do with the way an enchantment could be drawn repeatedly and linked unto itself to amplify its effects and expand its scope. In fact, after having studied this topic deeply, Percy was confident that this was the very requirement that differentiated those capable of undertaking the Green level of the Vault's magiscript challenge from those who weren't:
Unit cell theory.
Nesha continued carving symbols into the construct's shoulder, the pseudo-enchantment gradually taking shape.
Each rune had a circular design, but the final pattern looked anything but round – thanks to the intricate ways she'd connected them. Some runes were nested inside others, forming concentric circles. Others had been fused side by side. A few even overlapped partially, with Nesha cleverly exploiting shared features to create a more compact arrangement.
By the time she finished, the pseudo-enchantment resembled a clover – roughly the size of her palm. They'd made sure it could just barely wrap around the shaft of Percy's scythes. It contained five distinct enchantments, each broken down further into multiple runes.
The first was the self-repair enchantment she'd started with, incorporating control, adaptation, memory, and growth runes.
The second was another big one – the structural reinforcement enchantment that they had studied from the most recent batch of books. It included two runes Percy had already been familiar with – the hardness and force absorptions runes that he'd been drawing on his armour for years – alongside the new integrity runes meant to unify and enhance their effects. Like the self-repairs, they'd also added control and adaptation runes to ensure it could accept foreign mana and be toggled on or off independently.
In fact, they'd done the same with the remaining three enchantments – which would have otherwise only consisted of a single rune each: preservation, concealment and lightness runes – classic staples of many magical items.
Percy and Nesha were proud of the monstrous pseudo-enchantment they'd spent months developing, knowing it would serve them well in the future. Percy intended to incorporate it directly into his armour, and even Nesha was considering designing something similar for her own use after he was gone.
Everything they'd included so far was universally applicable, so it could easily form the core of all their enchanted objects in the future. That said, they both understood they'd have to add more specialized components for certain applications.
For example, Percy would need to include sharpness runes for his scythes – naturally paired with their own adaptation and control runes. When it came to his cauldron, things got a lot more complicated, since he'd have to add heat, pressure and rotation runes as well as several more controls. He wasn't very thrilled about having to accomplish all of that by himself though…
'I'll worry about that later. At least, the new trait will help.'
'You know,' Nesha said as soon as she was done, wiping sweat off her brow. 'I still can't believe your main body got himself a runecrafting trait after we spent a year practicing without it…'
'Tell me about it…' Percy concurred. 'I'd wanna slap him too, if he wasn't me.'
Well… it could have been worse. Had Percy absorbed the Symbolon right after parting ways with Nesha, he would have still lacked a way to get the trait to her, and they would have spent the whole year frustrated about it.
Besides, he wasn't sure he would have been willing to trade Insomnia for Scribing. While he had yet to see how potent his new trait was, the previous one had also helped them plenty. Either way, they knew they hadn't wasted their time. Nesha would have needed to learn everything without the trait anyway, and the extra challenge had only pushed them to improve further.
Taking over Nesha's body, Percy stretched their fingers before replicating his girlfriend's actions. He began drawing a copy of the pseudo-enchantment next to the original. The second clover-shaped formation was mirrored, slightly rotated and shifted by a few centimetres. It was meant to be fused to the first one in several places and this was the optimal layout they'd discovered so far. It would allow them to pack the clovers as tightly as possible – hopefully fitting hundreds of them across the construct when all was said and done.
The clover was their unit cell – the building block of a much larger enchantment.
Some of the most sophisticated enchantments in existence – such as the one engraved on the gargantuan cube that contained the artificial world – were composed of trillions upon trillions of runes, if not more. No single person could hope to draw or even comprehend all those enchantments at once. Not even someone as powerful and talented as Metatron – the very titan who had invented magiscript.
The only way to handle something of that scale was to break it down into smaller, more easily digestible components.
Each unit cell could be as complex as the one engraving it could handle. Somebody like Metatron could probably fit thousands or even tens of thousands of runes into a single unit cell. In fact, that was exactly what the titan had done when he created Percy's storage seal.
Percy didn't know if that had been the titan's limit, but he did know one thing – Metatron hadn't used actual magiscript while crafting the artifact. The whole seal – advanced as it was – was nothing more than a single unit cell. Percy hadn't been able to tell at the time, but he had learned a lot more about the topic after reading the books.
Another thing he'd come to realize was that Metatron had designed the seal in such a way that it could easily be upgraded in the future, by simply linking it with an identical copy. Currently, its internal space was limited to a single cube ten metres across, and it could only be split in half up to three times – for a total of eight smaller seals as large as crates.
Fusing it with a second seal would double the cube's dimensions, or equivalently, allow it to be divided into up to sixteen of the smallest ones. Adding another two seals would double it further and so on.
'The bastard wants me to keep begging for more…'
Percy had to suppress a bitter chuckle. Back when he first obtained his seal, he'd thought he'd never run out of storage space again. The problem was that he'd been forced to split it into its smallest denominations to equip all of his clones, which was quite inefficient with regards to its volume.
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Perhaps, the ancient god had expected Percy's clone capacity to increase. With a single move, the old fox had not only given Percy a reason to keep earning credits, but also given himself a way to monitor Percy's limits.
Shaking his head, Percy concentrated on the task at hand. His dealings with the titan weren't a priority right now.
In any case, linking multiple unit cells into a grid was a way for Percy to cheat his way to a much larger pseudo-enchantment. The end result would be a lot more potent than if he simply included the same number of clovers separated from one another, as joining them together would not only amplify their effects but also allow them to permeate each other more seamlessly.
If Percy hadn't horribly misunderstood the underlying theory, this would improve his armour in several ways.
The blind spots in his concealment runes should finally disappear, allowing him to completely hide his constructs from anyone below Blue. This would also eliminate the weak spots previously found in the gaps between the hardness and absorption runes, offering better protection. Finally, it should speed up the regeneration provided by the self-repair enchantments.
Obviously, there were still limits he couldn't overcome.
Doubling the number of runes or joining them better wouldn't double their potency. Runes were like whispers in the universe's ears, asking it to lax its rules slightly in certain ways. Having twice as many mouths whispering at the same time might affect the world's willingness to comply, but there were diminishing returns.
Still, this was good.
Between the new runes and enchantments, how much better Percy and Nesha had gotten at drawing them, and their ability to combine them, he was feeling confident he could have meaningfully upgraded his armour even without taking the silk into account.
Now, they just had to register that pesky spell upgrade that had eluded them for weeks.
A few minutes later, he was done, a second clover tightly joined with the first. Passing the reins to Nesha, he watched her draw the third one, before taking over for the fourth. Like that, they took turns adding more unit cells to the grid, slowly covering the statue's body in runes.
Every now and then, one of them made a mistake, forcing them to rely on the previously drawn self-repairs to erase the new symbols. They didn't let that get to them, however, being used to the process by now.
As soon as the last rays of sunlight seeping through the gaps in the curtains disappeared, they took a longer break for dinner. Nesha had decided to pause her information-gathering for the rest of the week, so they dove back to the project almost immediately after.
By the following night, they had engraved the construct's right arm and much of its chest with clovers.
Two days later, the grid had expanded to the rest of its torso, head and second arm.
It wasn't until the fifth afternoon that Percy managed to draw the final rune on the statue's left foot, plugging the last hole in the network. They didn't even get a chance to examine the enchantment to make sure the unit cell was functional when Percy's Status spoke.
[Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Intricate Runic Grid – Refined -> Superior Runic Grid – Refined!]
Seeing the notification, his borrowed lips curled up.
'Did you also…?' he asked.
'Mhmm,' Nesha replied with a nod.
This was a spell they'd registered several months ago, and one that they had upgraded together every step of the way. They could both use it separately, of course – otherwise their Status might have not recognized their achievement – though each of them would need a lot more time to draw all the clovers by themselves.
The original spell – Fine Runic Grid – had been a Crude one. At the time, the unit cell had only contained a single enchantment involving a measly five runes – a huge victory at the time, but not that big a deal in hindsight. In addition to their smaller scope, the first iteration of the enchantments had been even bulkier than today's clovers – Percy and Nesha had only been capable of fitting a fraction of them onto the same surface. Even worse, the resulting pattern had been flawed – riddled with gaps and mismatched connections.
Yet, Phoebe's Decree had still surprised them by registering their prototype as a proper spell.
Percy hadn't expected that, because his Status had never bothered to acknowledge his enchantments on their own before. Granted, many of his spells included runes, but the enchantments had always been part of something bigger – never the focal point of the spell. Evidently, that had only been a testament to Percy's previous lack of skill. Even in its imperfect state, the Fine Runic Grid had clearly packed enough punch to be recognized as a Crude spell, irrespective of what it had been drawn on.
After doubling the number of enchantments and runes, shrinking the unit cell further, and improving the quality of the grid, he and Nesha had elevated the spell to Refined. Though they hadn't stopped at that, knowing that there had still been room for improvement.
And today's notification had just proven them right.
'I suppose this is goodbye then…' Nesha said once they caught their breath.
'I suppose it is.' Percy sighed. 'Are you sure you'll be okay by yourself?'
'I've been by myself for months you know… Even if somebody had recognized me, there's only so much you could've done to help.'
She wasn't wrong. Percy could have informed his main body, though it wasn't like he and Micky could have broken into the city to rescue her. Hell, they'd been driven out of the damn continent. Not to mention returning to such a crowded location – watched by the Root and governed by over a hundred Blues.
Still, knowing how she was doing had given him peace of mind.
He wouldn't have that, moving forward.
Percy was also worried about Elaine, of course – especially after losing contact with her – but this was different. His cousin was a Blue and had their family to watch over her. Sure, House Avalon was in hot water too, but it was something.
Nesha had nobody but him.
'Be careful,' he said, steeling his resolve.
Only once she nodded did he start retracting his wisp from her injuries.
Leaving a host had never been as bittersweet. Over the past year, there had been several times when he'd wished he'd had a physical body to embrace her. Even so, he'd thoroughly enjoyed being by her side. Even ignoring their magical achievements, he was more than happy to bring these memories back to his main body.
Right as the cord was about to yank him away, Percy paused for a moment to examine the contents of his seal. Once he confirmed for the hundredth time that all the secondary ingredients the original had commissioned were there – including those sweet gravity plants that he'd been waiting for – he finally left his girlfriend's body behind.
His thoughts blended with another's the following instant.
Memories of close battles, numerous spell upgrades, and countless adventures on distant worlds flashed through his mind. They almost buried his time in Twilight City beneath a mountain of other experiences.
But he didn't let them.
Percy clung to their shared laughs and the feeling of his girlfriend's lips parting into a smile, his heart already thrumming with longing. Opening his eyes, he found himself on Micky's back – exactly where he'd been the previous second – but also not. The clone's return had caused him to mess up the strand of silk he'd been working with, yet he didn't much care. He could spin more later.
Feeling the cool breeze licking his face, he couldn't help but compare it to the acrid stench of piss and excrement seeping into Nesha's room, or the stale city air that they'd been breathing for months. Strictly speaking, this was an upgrade – yet Percy couldn't help but focus on what was missing. Clenching his fists, he made a silent promise to himself…
'I'll reach out as soon as I can.'
The clone had been searching for a new body for months. Percy had no idea whether his three counterparts had gotten any luckier, but he certainly hadn't found what he'd been looking for. He'd actually skipped half a dozen lesser springs during this trip, each missed opportunity like a stab in his severed little soul.
But it couldn't be helped.
Lesser springs were good, yet Percy understood he couldn't afford to get distracted every time he encountered one. Sure, there was always a chance – albeit a small one – that he'd find a new Decree or alchemic principle, but he knew he would be very unlikely to extend his lifespan or accelerate his advancements by relying on them alone. After all, if these worlds had what he was searching for, they wouldn't have been classified as lesser springs in the first place, would they?
That was why he'd decided to steel himself and reserve his time for only the most promising places in the universe. That wasn't to say he wouldn't visit more lesser springs in the future, but they had to truly stand out for him to bother – much like Gallimus did.
Or at least, that had been his goal at the start of his mission.
More than once, Percy had considered giving up and settling for the next lesser spring he saw. Perhaps, his criteria had been unreasonable to begin with. What if he never found a greater spring? Would he waste his whole life searching for a needle in a haystack? Maybe his best shot was to gather minor insights from lots of lesser springs instead, slowly building his own ladder to divinity, one plank at a time.
'Get a grip, Percy! It's only been a few months!' he kept telling himself.
He'd always known it would be difficult to find one of the peak worlds. Besides, he hadn't really wasted that much time yet. He could reconsider in a decade – or ten – if he kept finding nothing. On top of that, his main body had asked the clones to stay away for at least six months – unless of course they found something genuinely valuable. Percy was currently working on consolidating his gains and upgrading his armour, so he didn't want to be interrupted too frequently. Thus, the clone had been forced to stick to his monotonous journey, endlessly scanning the sea of souls while counting the days to his return.
It was one day – or night… he couldn't really tell – like any other, when it finally happened.
A giant world, several times larger than Remior appeared in the distance. Granted, Percy couldn't observe the planet itself, but he could see the dense swarm of souls that stretched as far as his senses could reach. After a rough count, he estimated this world was home to over a dozen times Remior's population. And that wasn't everything – their average grade was much higher too. Greens and Blues were practically everywhere, and he guessed they had over a hundred thousand Violets, tens of thousands of Whites and thousands of demigods!
Most notably, they also seemed to have hundreds of gods! Their joint radiance made it difficult for Percy to even glance at the place, let alone examine his potential hosts carefully.
'I'll manage,' he thought, his soul lighting up with greed.
This place was obviously teeming with danger – but also brimming with opportunity.
It had to be a greater spring, right?
Even if it somehow wasn't one, it would still be the most developed lesser spring Percy had ever seen. Either way, he knew his main body wouldn't blame him for taking his chances.
Unfortunately, he had yet to perfect his new skill. Percy wasn't confident in fully possessing an unwilling host, though he estimated he would still have a few decent options even in that situation. Another issue was that he hadn't kept the connection to his main body open, which meant that he was limited to his own stash. Healing a Blue wouldn't be easy with so little mana.
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Well, it couldn't be helped. The original had been way too busy to keep four cords open for months on end. Perhaps, Percy would be better served going for a Green host, though he didn't want to be too restricted. On Remior, Greens did hold some status. But here? They were probably worthless – no more than commoners.
'Let's go for a Blue. I'd rather not find myself trapped in a tiny village. I'll just have to pick the one with the lightest injuries and hope I can fix them…'
Having made his mind up, Percy searched for a dying soul suited to his needs. After dismissing several choices, his gaze landed on one he found promising.
'Not too old, nor too young… Probably a Yellow-born who's lived for a couple hundred years…'
That didn't sound right.
If this was a greater spring, shouldn't a Yellow-born have advanced to Violet by that age?
'Have I made a mistake?' he couldn't help but wonder.
It was possible.
Though it was also possible that these people didn't have a way to accelerate their advancements, but instead a method to directly extend their lifespans. Something like that could also allow a Yellow-born to ascend past White, though Percy would be slightly disappointed if this was the case.
Ideally, he wanted a way to reach Green sooner. It would not only extend his lifespan, but also raise his fighting strength – something that he desperately needed, given how many enemies were waiting for him back on Remior.
'Then again, this might be a good thing…'
For a while now, he'd been operating under the assumption that many of the greater springs had achieved their elevated status thanks to the same cyan powder that he'd incorporated into his Aurora Dew. It would make sense, considering how easy the resource was to produce. The problem was that the knowledge was now useless to him, so he couldn't help but hope for something different.
'Well… either way, there's no point in guessing. I'll have my answer soon enough.'
Not wasting any more time, Percy dove straight toward the soul he'd singled out. Other than looking for somebody more lightly injured, Percy had picked a Blue located as far away from the gods as possible, just in case. It hadn't been easy, because the deities seemed to be scattered around the planet, but he had done his best.
Entering his host's body, Percy was greeted with a wave of suspicion. Not that strange, but also not a great sign of things to come.
'Who are you?' a voice cold like a serpent's hiss rang through Percy's soul.
'Unless you have a way to heal yourself, I'm your only shot at survival,' Percy replied matter-of-factly.
His host didn't respond immediately, seemingly taking a few seconds to evaluate their options.
'Name your terms,' the Blue eventually said, somewhat guardedly.
'I know this is a greater spring. And I know what that means,' Percy said, cutting to the chase. 'I'll heal you if you give me what I want.'
Had his host been a child like Enki or Duwa, Percy might have offered to help them for free. That said, he had no intention of giving his services away to everyone he met. This was Percy's first greater spring since the Moirais' world – which he'd only visited by accident decades ago – so he wasn't going to walk away empty-handed. Besides, this person was a centuries-old Blue – they could afford to pay up.
Some hesitation bubbled up within his host's soul, though it didn't last long.
'Fine… I'll pass you my people's core cleansing technique.'
Percy thought he heard wrong.
He'd already surmised that he was dealing with a life-extension method – not a means of advancement. The Blue had also agreed a little too easily considering their initial reaction.
'Are they trying to screw me over?' Percy wondered, though he kept those thoughts to himself.
Outwards, he simply gave his host a mental nod before beginning to stitch their injuries. Either way, Percy knew he had all the leverage.
Manipulating the silver tendrils extending out of the Blue's wounds, Percy weaved them into preservation runes like he usually did. Only, this time, he added a little extra – he included a control rune in each enchantment, giving him the ability to freely turn their effects off later, in case his host tried anything funny.
Even without doing this, Percy could still cause a lot of damage on the way out, but that would destroy the preservation runes, and he didn't think he'd have enough mana to replace them.
This way, he would be able to freely flaunt his control at a moment's notice, forcing the Blue to back down. Temporarily deactivating the preservation runes wouldn't worsen his host's injuries, but it would accelerate the soul's degradation, possibly beyond its ability to recover.
'Hopefully, it won't come to that.'
As long as the Blue upheld their end of the bargain, all would be good. Still, Percy couldn't shake the gut feeling that his new host couldn't be trusted, and he'd rather not turn his back to the old monster.
He'd only managed to stitch about half of the man's – Percy thought his host was male – injuries when his mana ran dry. Perhaps, he could have done more if he hadn't wasted it on control runes, but he was confident he'd done enough for the Blue to survive – as long as he behaved.
Tapping into his host's senses, Percy felt their eyes opening, a grotesque scene greeting him…
Percy found himself surrounded by mutilated corpses – so thoroughly disfigured that even he, hardened by experience as he was, struggled to keep his gaze on them.
They seemed to belong to the same species as his host – mostly humanoid from the waist up, with their lower halves replaced by long, serpentine tails that stretched out for a couple of metres. White scales coated their bodies, two curved fangs jutting down from their upper lips. Their forked tongues hung limp, resting atop ground still wet with blood. Their crimson eyes, slit-pupiled and glassy, still held a fading spark of horror. The males were burlier than the females, their necks and the side of their heads flaring outward in cobra-like hoods.
'What the hell happened here?!' Percy asked, his opinion of his host having sunk to a new low.
'I got ambushed,' the Blue replied flatly. 'I fought to escape. I almost made it, but not quite.'
The man pushed himself upright and immediately slithered away, seemingly unwilling to let Percy examine the carnage a moment longer than necessary.
'Yeah… not buying it…' Percy thought to himself.
There were children among the bodies. Did that bastard expect Percy to believe the kids had attacked him too?
Clearly, only a couple of the man's opponents had been powerful enough to hold their own, rapidly dimming fragments of their Blue cores still visible via Mana Sense. The rest had to be Green or lower, the organs having crumbled already.
All of them had died the same way: impaled by conjured steel swords – constructs made of Blue mana. Percy's host was the only one sporting wounds of a different kind – a few burn marks, scattered and severe, some of them serious enough to have led to the man's death.
There was no question – he was the aggressor here, not the victim.
As they moved away from the centre of the massacre, Percy got a better look at the area. It appeared to be a town – or used to be, at any rate – some intact buildings still standing in the distance. Most of them had been reduced to rubble, however, smoking puddles of molten rock and hill-sized mounds of fine dust mixing in with the gravel. The air reeked of burnt flesh and spilled blood, the silence so complete it pressed down on the senses.
A ghost town. A graveyard.
Another thing Percy noticed was that his host had an extra sense – one that he'd experienced before, but only in beasts. Never in sapients. Every time the man's forked tongue flickered, Percy could feel the temperature of their surroundings in sharp, granular detail. Some parts of the battlefield still burned hot enough to incinerate flesh on contact. But the bodies?
Cold as ice. All of them.
For some reason – one that Percy didn't much care for – this sack of shit had decided to attack an entire town by himself, butchering every last inhabitant. The strongest among them had clearly put up a fight, just barely managing to drag their enemy down with their last breaths.
'And the bastard still has the gall to lie to me.'
The realization left a sour pit in his stomach. He couldn't help but question whether saving this man's life had been a mistake. Of course, it wasn't too late to change that. It would only take Percy a single thought to unravel all the stitches, and to tear the Blue's soul apart for good measure. He was really tempted to do just that – gains be damned.
But he hesitated.
Killing his host wouldn't bring his victims back to life. It would only rob Percy of the opportunities he'd travelled so far for. Sighing inwardly, he decided to wait. He wasn't in a hurry – he could end the Blue whenever he wanted. At the very least, he had no intention of letting him harm another innocent under his watch. But that didn't mean he couldn't wring what he wanted out of the old monster.
'As for what comes later… we'll see…'
Having made his mind up, Percy was about to demand the cleansing technique he'd been promised, when the Blue suddenly froze in his tracks. Without a word, he removed his clothes – a loose, sleeveless tunic hanging open over his chest – before triggering some change within.
Percy felt their flesh squirm and their innards churn as a profound sense of wrongness overtook their shared body. Their scales instantly dried and withered, the man's jaw opening wide enough to swallow two watermelons side by side as Percy's perspective shifted.
Their surroundings faded to black, a wave of nausea rattling their brain. A moment later, Percy found himself wedged tightly inside a narrow tunnel. The air was warm and humid, stinking of rotten flesh. His host wriggled, pressing against the walls as he pushed forward. Their body expanded and grew stronger with each movement, the tunnel stretching and losing its integrity.
A flash of white appeared ahead.
The Blue reached for it with a now-tiny hand, grabbing at the end of the tunnel to pull himself outside. Blinded by the light, Percy couldn't help but squint for a moment, the colours around them eventually settling into those of the ruined town.
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Percy looked down.
Their body had been reduced to that of a young child. Their scales were now fresh and unblemished, their previous injuries gone like a bad dream. The tunnel they'd just crawled through had been the Blue's own throat, the hollowed husk of their old body carelessly lying beneath them like a worn coat. Scooping the blue tunic up, Percy's host draped it over his new shoulders, the cloth now a few sizes too large. The man didn't seem to mind, however, having clearly experienced this many times before.
'What a bizarre ability…' Percy thought.
It was undeniably useful, but it raised a few questions. Had he misjudged the Blue? Maybe those "children" had been adults after all, killed while recovering from their injuries. Perhaps, the man hadn't lied about the ambush.
'No. There weren't any discarded bodies near them. Besides, our grade hasn't dropped, so there's no reason theirs would have…'
Percy was almost certain those kids had been actual children.
Besides reevaluating his host's morality, Percy couldn't help but wonder whether this ability could be used to reverse a person's age – allowing mortals to live longer, thus reaching a higher grade. Hoping for some answers, Percy pulled up his Status, though he made sure to keep the information to himself, still not ready to trust his host.
___
Kassorith (Percival's clone)
Mana cores:
[Mana core 1 – Blue – Metal]
[Mana core 2 – Seed – ???]
Domain:
[Field – Awakened]
Bloodline:
[Moult] – Rebuild your body by shedding your skin and any damaged organs. The amount of discarded flesh and thus the size of the new body are determined by the extent of your injuries.
Spectral traits:
[Weaving] – Boosts one's proclivity in manipulating one-dimensional structures.
[Insomnia] – Eliminates the need for sleep.
[Scribing] – Boosts one's proclivity in expressing meaning onto any written medium.
Spells:
[Soul-to-soul – Crude]
[Spiritforged Cauldron – Refined]
[Spectral Art: Phantomscale Regalia – Masterful]
[Spectral Art: Phantomspun Silk – Masterful]
[Spectral Art: Supreme Runic Matrix – Masterful]
Alchemic principles:
[Extraction] – Separate and condense an ingredient's essence.
[Pacification] – Delay an ingredient's activation rate.
[Redirection] – Adjust an ingredient's effect.
[Deattunement] – Prevent multiple conflicting ingredients from reacting with one another.
[Bonding] – Enrich an ingredient with crystallized pure mana.
[Restructuring] – Alter an ingredient's phase.
[Scaling] – Brew a greater volume of ingredients at once.
Decrees:
[Phoebe's Decree] – Grants access to your Status.
[Moirais' Decree (Incomplete)] – Grants the seed of a second mana core. Requires potent life mana to germinate.
[Metatron's Decree] – Open a one-way portal to the Vault of Magic at will.
[Ea's Decree (Modified)] – Augments and enhances your Status.
[Obatala's Decree (Modified)] – Augments and enhances your Status. Allows you to effortlessly deploy your domain in its strongest state.
___
There was a lot to unpack.
As Percy had suspected, his host possessed the composite metal affinity. The blood-soaked constructs sticking out of the corpses, along with the three sets of mana channels coursing through Kassorith's body – earth, lightning and a third type Percy had never seen before – left no doubt that the Blue had been the one to slaughter all the townsfolk.
Evidently, Kassorith's Moult was his personal bloodline – not some species-wide trait. His victims wouldn't have shared it unless they'd all been related to him by blood – something Percy considered not only unlikely, but also disturbing in its own right.
'They couldn't have all been at Blue, or he wouldn't have stood a chance,' Percy reminded himself.
Yeah… the kids had probably been kids.
This man was a complete monster.
Other than that, Percy had access to a domain – just the standard version that every Blue got by default – as well as his spectral traits, alchemic principles, and whatever spells he could cast from this body. That said, he'd already exhausted his reserves of phantom mana, so he wouldn't be able to do much. If Kassorith's bloodline was the result of a Decree – and it probably was – it didn't show in Percy's Status. Percy could still activate the ability while possessing his host, but it didn't look like he'd be bringing it back to Remior.
'I hope it wasn't just because of this Moult bloodline that their world turned into a greater spring… What a waste of a trip that would be…'
The good news was that Percy didn't feel like activating the bloodline had extended their lifespan. If it had, the effect wasn't nearly as dramatic as what happened when somebody advanced. This filled him with hope that Kassorith's people had found something else to rely on. Then again, it was possible that the bloodline's effects only accumulated after repeated use.
Oblivious to Percy's thoughts, the man – no. The boy – tore a chunk off his discarded flesh, rolling it into a ball the size of an orange before swallowing it whole with a wet gulp. Percy gagged internally. This was the second time today his host had nearly caused him to throw up. Though he didn't say anything, curiously watching the changes unfold.
Kassorith kept at it, devouring the withered body parts piece by piece, the gnarly chunks dissolving rapidly inside his stomach as the Blue grew taller and stronger with each passing second. By the time he was done, he'd regained most of his missing height – only falling a few centimetres short. Scanning their surroundings, he made his way to the nearest corpse, repeating the process to recover the rest of his mass.
Percy shuddered.
Thankfully, the body had belonged to an adult, since he didn't think he could have stomached the sight of his host cannibalizing a dead child – certainly not while sharing his senses.
'I think I'm done watching you do all these fucked-up things,' Percy said, finally losing his patience. 'I've upheld my end of the bargain. Time for you to pay up.'
A flicker of protest rose in Kassorith's soul – but he stifled it quickly.
'Alright,' the Blue said. 'I suppose it's time for my daily cleansing anyway.'
Remove
As fed up as Percy was with his host, he couldn't help but feel a sliver of excitement at the prospect of learning a greater spring's cleansing technique. Strictly speaking, he was already using one of those – the modified version of the Whirlpool of Two Streams that the Vault's researchers had somehow stolen from the Moirai. However, it did nothing more than allow someone with two cores to cleanse both at the same time – saving a few valuable minutes per day. Percy had no idea what Kassorith's technique did, yet he didn't doubt it would be valuable.
The Blue reached for an emblem pinned to the upper-left side of his tunic – Percy hadn't even noticed it before. It depicted the image of a coiled snake, a single fang jutting down from the right side of its mouth. The object was made of a dark mineral, countless dots glittering like stars along the edges.
'Dimensional marble?' Percy guessed, recognizing the material.
Sure enough, the moment his host touched the pin, a second object popped into existence inside his free hand. The spatial pin was clearly easier to use than the amulets they had on Remior – though it wasn't quite on par with the spatial seal Metatron had personally crafted for Percy. He had no idea how the pin's storage capacity compared, but he wouldn't be surprised if it fell somewhere between the two extremes.
'Watch carefully, because I'll only show you once,' Kassorith said, snapping him out of his thoughts.
Coiling his long tail a few times, the Blue "sat" in the middle, tossing the object he'd extracted from the pin into his mouth. Percy barely caught a glimpse of the tiny, transparent pill, its volume only about half of an elixir's. This was quite surprising, since the dosage for core-cleansing resources was generally fixed across worlds. After all, the mana cores of sapients typically came in a standard size and could therefore endure about the same amount of beast mana during each session.
Evidently, that didn't apply here.
Keeping his thoughts to himself, Percy carefully observed his host's actions. Kassorith allowed his mana to mix with the dissolving pill inside his stomach, before drawing some of it back to his sternum. So far, he hadn't done anything out of the norm.
It wasn't until the mana entered his core that the Blue finally did something strange with it. Instead of allowing it to freely spread within the organ, he first compressed it into a tiny sphere in its centre, before letting go. The cleansing mana slammed violently against the core's walls, making Percy fear that the organ would crack open like an egg. That didn't quite happen – at least not yet – but several tiny cracks did form along the crystalline walls, stinging as the beast mana seeped into them.
'What the hell?! Is he trying to kill himself?'
Not that Percy cared about the man's well-being that much, but he'd rather not return to Remior so quickly. Luckily, his host appeared a lot more careful the next time he moved the beast mana to his sternum. He still didn't allow it to freely interact with the organ, but he didn't repeat his reckless approach from before either. Instead, he gathered a much smaller quantity of mana, sending it into the cracks with surgical accuracy. The beast mana gnawed at the walls of the cracks, causing them to widen and deepen, the burning sensation in Kassorith's sternum growing in intensity. The experienced Blue didn't seem to care, however, sending one wave after another into the cracks.
The cleansing session was over fifteen minutes later.
It wasn't that surprising, considering the low dosage. Yet, Percy felt like their core burned as much as it was supposed to – if not slightly more. Examining the organ carefully, he tried to wrap his mind around what his host had done. The first wave of beast mana had been way too forceful, but that seemed to have been on purpose. It had revealed the weaknesses – the impurities – in Kassorith's core.
Those were exactly the spots that a mage needed to get rid of, in order to strengthen their core over time. The following rounds had been gentler, but they had targeted the same spots far more accurately, causing the cracks to gradually expand in a very specific way. Kassorith had purged the weakest sections along the crystalline walls, leaving the rest of the organ intact.
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Overall, the damage to the core wasn't any more severe than what a regular cleansing session would have accomplished. Percy guessed the cracks would still heal by tomorrow, reforging the inner layer of the organ stronger than ever. Only, the Blue had achieved the same results while spending half the time and resources.
'This is the Cascading Cracks technique. I hope I don't have to explain why,' Kassorith said.
Percy nodded, pondering over the implications. His host had made it look easy – which wasn't all that surprising, considering the fact that Kassorith had probably been doing this once a day for centuries. However, Percy would have to practice a lot to master it, since the initial burst of pressure was exceedingly dangerous.
Had Kassorith drawn a single additional drop of beast mana to his core, or unleashed the wave even a touch more forcefully, he could have seriously injured himself. Even if he hadn't, he could have easily delayed his subsequent recovery, missing tomorrow's session. On the flipside, if he'd used less power, he might have failed to reveal all the impurities. In that case, he wouldn't have targeted them later, which would have made the cleansing session less effective than normal.
During the subsequent waves, things hadn't been nearly as dangerous, but concentrating the beast mana in so many spots was also quite a challenge. After all, the cracks were minuscule – nearly imperceptible – and there were dozens of them. Not to mention that controlling mana inside one's core was much harder than doing it externally, and the mana wasn't even solely Kassorith's – since it was mixed with the foreign beast mana contained in the pill.
If Percy failed to control the mana properly, it could easily target the healthy sections of the organ – the ones that didn't need cleansing. The damage would still probably heal by the following day, so it wasn't inherently dangerous, but it would be a waste of the beast mana, eliminating the primary benefit of the technique.
'Still, if I can learn this, I'm going to save so many elixirs down the line,' Percy thought, his borrowed heart skipping a beat.
He and Micky had already accumulated enough resources to last them seventeen years, and that was without taking into account his brewing yield which was bound to increase once he upgraded the cauldron and registered the new principle. The Cascading Cracks technique could theoretically allow him and his familiar to consume half as much Aurora Dew during each session, effectively doubling their stash. After all was said and done, it might last them for nearly forty years!
'Well, that's assuming that the regeneration brought forth by the cyan powder doesn't interfere with it… I'll also have to modify it to work with my current technique, or I'll end up having to spend twice as long for both cores…'
Figuring the specifics out would take a lot of work, but the impact of this technique couldn't be overstated. Percy wasn't just thinking about himself, but Remior as a whole.
Currently, his people only had enough elixirs for a fraction of the population – unless they diluted them of course. That number would drop even lower as soon as the secret of the Aurora Dew spread. This was one of the reasons why Percy hadn't been in a hurry to share the recipe with everyone. If things got handled poorly, a lot of people would suffer – Red-borns and Orange-borns predominantly, but lots of Yellow-borns too.
The Cascading Cracks technique wasn't enough to fix everything by itself, but it was a start. If Percy also taught his alchemic principles to the rest of the Guild, helped everyone upgrade their cauldrons, and looked for more efficient ways of extracting nectar from the wasps alongside his new familiar, they would be that much closer to a complete solution.
Still…
'Do you take me for a fool?' Percy suddenly asked, turning his attention back to his host.
'What do you mean?' Kassorith asked in response, clearly playing dumb.
'It's a useful technique, but you know damn well this isn't what I asked for. This is a greater spring, isn't it? How is your little trick going to accelerate my advancement speed or extend my lifespan?'
'It won't.' The Blue shrugged. 'I'm sorry to break it to you, but the only reason we have so many gods is due to my bloodline. Every time we use it, it adds a few years to our lifespan. We've spread it to all the powerful sects, and our titan's Decree makes it easier for parents to pass their bloodlines down to their descendants. It's a real shame, but there's nothing I can do to help you.'
Kassorith's words sounded sincere, but Percy had dealt with hundreds upon hundreds of hosts by now. He might not have his girlfriend's bloodline, but he still took pride in his ability to sniff out bullshit from a mile away.
'Try again with something more believable,' he snarled. 'I've experienced enough advancements to tell that shedding your skin earlier didn't add a single day to your lifespan, let alone a few years.'
The Blue's poorly concealed smirk froze on his face, his expression turning cold. Percy expected the man to lie again or try to renegotiate the terms of their agreement, but Kassorith turned out to be even more shameless than he'd expected.
Rather than honeyed words or offers of valuable resources, it was a wave of rejection that slammed into Percy's soul, forcefully unlodging him from many of his host's injuries. Remior's pull instantly strengthened, inadvertently helping the Blue along.
Kassorith was trying to get rid of Percy!
Good luck with that, you bastard!' Percy yelled through their rapidly fading connection.
Willing all the controlled preservation runes to deactivate, he instantly slowed his host's recovery speed to a crawl, but he didn't stop there. Percy's soul squirmed and shifted, over a dozen claws digging back into Kassorith's injuries, carelessly ripping many of the stitches apart as he tried to grab hold of the Blue.
His host intensified the efforts to evict him, of course, but Percy wasn't having it. Countless spider-like limbs and long, flailing hairs sprouted along the surface of his wisp, allowing the claws to dig even deeper, and to forcefully latch onto the Blue's soul.
'I'm not going anywhere until you give me what I want!' Percy said.
Their connection had already weakened dramatically – it was like shouting through a wall – but he knew his host had heard him.
Percy wouldn't have been as forceful if the Blue had been more honest. There was a chance that the means Kassorith's people used to extend their lifespan were genuinely difficult for Percy to obtain, but the Blue could have just said that directly and made his case – instead of trying to stab him in the back. Either way, Kassorith was clearly a piece of shit, so Percy didn't feel an ounce of regret over his actions. If anything, he felt quite pleased with himself for having had the foresight to prepare for this.
'Fine! Just stop trying to kill me!' the Blue hissed, his voice dripping with venom.
The wave of rejection slamming against Percy weakened, though it didn't disappear completely. Part of it was instinctual, and it was pretty clear that his host didn't actually want him to stay.
Regardless, this was workable. Burrowing back into the Blue's injuries, Percy reactivated the enchantments. He'd been careful not to damage too many during the conflict, though the man's survival still hung by a thin thread.
'I'm warning you now, so you don't come crying to me later. If you try this one more time, you're dead,' Percy said, leaving no room for debate. 'Tell me how I can extend my lifespan, and don't even think about lying again.'
The Blue clenched his fists in response to the threats, his soul boiling like a volcano about to erupt. But he swallowed whatever he was about to say, probably knowing he wasn't in a position to decline.
'I may have lied about my bloodline, but I genuinely meant it when I said I can't help you. The leaves we consume to extend our lifespan are limited – there aren't enough even for all of our Yellow-borns – let alone anyone else. There are long queues to obtain one.'
Percy grimaced. The main advantage of the cyan powder was that anyone with a pure affinity could learn to produce it. This pretty much guaranteed that every lesser spring could evolve into a greater spring, as long as they knew the secret. The last thing he needed was to depend on some obscure resource he couldn't even acquire on Remior.
'How often do you need to eat these leaves for them to work?' Percy asked.
Kassorith's response filled him with hope.
'Just once in your lifetime. The effect is permanent.'
'Once?!'
Percy broke into sardonic laughter. On one hand, he was elated to hear that he only needed to get his hands on a single leaf to bring to his main body. On the other, the information only infuriated him further.
'And you thought you were better off lying to me and trying to screw me over instead of helping me get one?!'
Kassorith shook his head.
'It's not as simple as you make it sound. The tree produces fewer leaves each year than the number of new Yellow-borns. Our leaders are naturally quite peculiar about who gets them.'
Percy nodded inwardly, though he wasn't deterred in the slightest. All he heard was that there was a chance. He'd overcome much worse odds in the past.
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'This queue… is it just first-come-first-served, or are there other criteria?'
'Having a good bloodline or a rare affinity moves you closer to the front. Bribing the people in charge works too, but that's beside the point. I already got mine when I was young – I can't ask for a second.'
'Then find me someone who can,' Percy insisted. 'I don't care who it is, or what they want in return – I'll find a way to make it worth their time. You'd better start treating this seriously, Kassorith, because I'm not leaving your planet without a leaf.'
Percy hadn't told his host about the Moirai Decree yet, but there was no doubt it was worth more than the life-extension resource. Kassorith's people had already wasted one of their leaves on him – and he was someone with both a bloodline and a composite affinity. In other words, Percy had already preserved their investment merely by saving the Blue's life and even increased his value by giving him the seed of a new core.
Kassorith sighed in defeat. 'I'll have to ask my master…'
Percy shrugged, not giving a damn who his host had to talk to, as long as he got what he wanted.
Drawing some metal mana out of his core, the Blue manifested a greatsword taller and wider than he was, the oversized construct slamming into the ground with a heavy thud. Kassorith wrapped his tail around the hilt a few times, leaning on the blade with his elbows before willing the weapon to shoot toward the clouds.
Percy tried not to dwell on how disturbingly similar his host's method of flying was to his own, choosing to focus on more pressing matters.
'The ambient mana is so thick!'
He hadn't realized it earlier, but refilling his core here would take half the time it did on Remior. He didn't know if it was a property of the planet or a specialized Decree cast by one of the local titans, but training and fighting would be incredibly convenient. It was a pity he couldn't stay – or take the ambient mana back with him.
Another thing that stood out to Percy was the absurdly high altitude of the town they'd just left. The moment they took to the skies, he saw clouds everywhere – above, below and around them. The town itself had been perched atop what at first seemed like a flat, rocky plain. No… An island. Its perfectly circular perimeter was bound by a steep cliff.
'A mountain? More like a stone pillar…' Percy thought as the ruins receded behind them.
It wasn't the only one either. More pillars loomed ahead, faint outlines piercing through the veil of clouds. They all shared the same narrow, cylindrical shape, but varied in height. Some vanished into a dense ceiling of mist above, their peaks way too far to make out. Others were even shorter than the one Percy and his host had left behind. As for their bases… they were too deep to see. Percy couldn't help but wonder what lay down there – solid land, or a vast body of water?
'It's an ocean. Large enough to cover the whole planet,' Kassorith muttered, having clearly guessed his thoughts. Though he sounded more annoyed than informative. 'Now, will you please stop gawking at everything? It's distracting.'
'How do people below Blue travel from pillar to pillar if they can't fly?' Percy asked, undeterred. He was going to get his free tour one way or another. 'Don't tell me they have to climb down, sail across, then scale the next one…'
That sounded wildly impractical. From what he could tell, most pillars were tens of kilometres apart and just as tall – if not taller.
Kassorith rolled his eyes. 'If two pillars are close enough, people build bridges. The major cities and sects have teleportation platforms. Some factions own flying vehicles for the lower grades, or hire Blues for escorts. But for the most part, Greens and below tend to stay put…'
Percy nodded, fascinated by what he was hearing. Teleportation platforms? Flying vehicles? Was this the norm in other greater springs too?
These were things he would have expected from the Vault, though the artificial world wasn't nearly large enough to require them in order to function properly. Evidently, the technology that other peak factions possessed didn't lag as far behind Metatron's as Percy had originally thought.
Kassorith wasn't the only Blue flying in the area. Hundreds of others flitted through the clouds, each using a more ostentatious method than the last. One rode atop a glowing four-winged horse sculpted from pure mana. Another floated inside a sleek carriage powered by a lattice of colourful runes pulsing in unison across its wooden frame. It seemed that here, travel wasn't just about getting from place to place – it was a performance. A symbol of status.
'You never told me where you're from,' Kassorith suddenly said.
'Nor will I,' Percy replied.
'Come on, what's the harm? This is Thess'kala. See how easy that was?'
Percy stifled a chuckle. His host had done an admirable job trying to mask his sinister intentions, but he clearly lacked experience in interacting with another's soul.
'Do you take me for a fool? I thought I'd made it clear enough that I don't trust you any farther than I can throw you. Just shut up and fly to your master.'
Percy held all the leverage as long as the Blue's survival depended on him, but he clearly understood that he couldn't afford to as much as hint at his origin. This place – Thess'kala – could probably crush Remior with ease if he made a mistake.
'It was worth a shot,' Kassorith replied, not appearing to care in the slightest that his intentions had been seen through. 'Don't think that threatening me will end well for you, country bumpkin…'
Percy grinned.
'We'll see…'
Percy had more questions, but he didn't get a chance to voice them. Diving toward one of the shorter pillars jutting out of the clouds, his host landed on a less-crowded spot near the edge, carelessly tossing the greatsword into the depths behind him.
This place seemed to be some kind of teleportation hub – judging by the organized chaos of platforms scattered over its surface. They were sculpted from dimensional marble; each etched with ornate insignias mixing seamlessly with glowing runes.
Kassorith slithered through the crowded summit, making his way toward the centre of the pillar. There, Percy saw a platform depicting the image of a coiled serpent, a single fang descending from the right side of its gaping maw. Percy recognized it immediately as the same insignia that adorned his host's spatial pin.
Seemingly remembering something, Kassorith paused just before he stepped onto the platform. Without a word, he opened his mouth and pinched his left fang, ripping it out with a sudden jerk. The pain tore through Percy like a jagged bolt, punching through his host's skull with the subtlety of a meteor strike as the taste of iron flooded their mouth.
To his credit, Kassorith didn't so much as wince.
'What the hell was that for?!' Percy asked, trying to dam the pain behind a wall of mental effort. It wasn't easy, because two lines of blood trickled down the Blue's face – the first rolling down his chin, the other swallowed by his throat – offering Percy a constant reminder.
At the same time, Percy recalled that the Blue's left fang had been missing when he first found him – at least until their moulting regenerated it. Percy hadn't thought much of the missing fang, assuming it had been another of the many injuries Kassorith had sustained while massacring the villagers. Clearly, there was more to it than that.
His host answered with a flicker of wry amusement. 'The Broken Fang Sect demands that new members rip out their left fang as tribute – proof of loyalty and conviction. Naturally, healing it is easy, but doing so is frowned upon.'
The Blue finally stepped onto the enchanted platform, brushing his fingers across the pin on his tunic. The runes below his tail ignited in response, weaving a new constellation of light. Evidently, the spatial artifact was more than just a storage device.
Then, the world blinked.
They reappeared on a second pillar, this one quieter, with fewer teleportation platforms. But they all bore the same symbol this time – the one belonging to Kassorith's sect. There were fewer people too, all of them wearing the same style of clothes – a loose tunic draped over their shoulders, its colour matching the grade of their cores. Most were Blues, a few escorting Greens. A solitary Violet stood out, popping into existence atop a platform a few dozen metres away. Some Blues wore noticeably finer clothes, their tunics embroidered with serpentine patterns that gleamed with violet silk, giving their attire a unique trim.
Percy tilted his host's chin slightly in their direction. 'What's up with them?'
'Stop that! Don't even look at those people! Do you want to get us both killed?!' Kassorith snapped at him with a silent hiss.
Percy bit back the sarcastic retort at the tips of their forked tongue. He didn't really care about the Blue's survival, but he didn't want Kassorith to die before he got the life-extending leaf. As much as he hated his host's guts, Percy understood that he had to play nice until that happened. In the end, he remained silent until Kassorith reached the far edge of the pillar. Conjuring another greatsword, the Blue took off again, disappearing into the haze above. Clearly, this place wasn't their destination – only a waystation on the journey.
'I'm still waiting for an answer to my question,' Percy said once it became clear his host had no intention of replying.
'Why do you even care about our clothes? You just want to get the leaf and go, don't you?'
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Percy rolled their eyes. 'I care, because you said that getting one wouldn't be easy. I need to understand your sect if I'm going to negotiate with your master.'
A sigh escaped Kassorith, sharp and resigned. 'The violet trim marks them as elite disciples. On paper, it means they can fight someone above their grade.'
The Blue's words gave Percy pause. Back on Remior, the idea of jumping grades was all but unheard of. At least, until Percy came along. Some talented mages – like Rambert, Jason or Galahad – did stand out among their peers, but only within the narrow confines of their own grade. Even somebody with a blessing and a bloodline couldn't easily bridge the gap to the next one.
Perhaps, it wasn't so strange that this place was different though. It was a greater spring, after all. Thess'kala had more people… more gods… more of everything, really – Decrees, bloodlines, blessings, ambient mana, advanced runecrafting, longer lifespans… It stood to reason that a few lucky individuals would be born with enough advantages to leap ahead.
'What do you mean "on paper"?' Percy asked, catching the caveat in his host's explanation.
'Fighting above one's grade is still quite uncommon. Nine out of ten elite disciples "earn" their elevated status by having connections or flattering the right elder. Even so, I'd rather not mess with them.'
Percy nodded in understanding. As advanced as Thess'kala was, it appeared that corruption was a universal truth.
'What about other grades? Can they get trims too?'
Kassorith hovered for a moment, his eyes scanning the horizon before responding. 'Kind of. Most sects don't accept disciples below Green. And Greens obviously can't jump grades no matter how talented they are, because they don't have domains. So, really, you'll only see elite disciples among Blues.'
Percy felt the urge to compare himself to the residents of the greater spring. It appeared that somebody like him – who could not only bridge a gap of two grades but also kill Blues without having a domain – was a rarity even here. Not surprising, maybe, given all the advantages he'd woven into his arsenal over the years, but the thought still caused the corners of his borrowed lips to curl up. He wondered if the same was true for factions ranked even higher up the cosmic hierarchy – like the Moirai or Sixiang.
Either way, he couldn't help but picture himself in a yellow tunic with a blue trim – something he would have been eligible to wear if he lived here. It wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing combination of colours, but it was possibly one that no Thess'kalan had donned before.
'What about your Violets or Whites? Can't any of them fight against stronger opponents?'
'Some can,' Kassorith replied, before elaborating. 'But they're no longer disciples. Regular Violets – like my master – become sect elders. Those with a white trim are grand elders. Reaching White turns you into a deputy sect master. The strongest Whites – the ones who can stand against demigods – get a golden trim. They get to compete for the sect master's seat.'
'And your actual demigods? I've seen thousands of them scattered across the planet while searching for a body.'
Kassorith shrugged.
'They're called ancestors. Once somebody ascends to that level, they stop getting involved in mortal affairs. They aren't even allowed to help their sects unless they are defending against an invasion. They spend most of their time in seclusion, trying to attain divinity. As for a trim… it's meaningless to them. None of them can fight a true god on their own anyway, nor do they care about past achievements or talent. At that level, there is only one thing that matters – you either become a god, forever etching your name onto our world's history, or you fail and end up forgotten.'
Percy mulled his host's words over. Aside from the sheer number of people at the higher grades that Thess'kala boasted, he was struck by how integrated they remained within their society. Unlike Remior, they didn't seem to corral all their Whites and demigods into a special organization like the Divine Order – at least, not before they actually attained divinity.
That was only to be expected.
On a lesser spring, only the Green-borns could reach such heights. With so few of them, it made sense to gather and protect them to the very end. But on a greater spring, even Yellow-borns could ascend to godhood, making it impractical to isolate them. The more sensible approach was to simply let everyone be – until they crossed the final threshold and shed their mortal coils.
Kassorith came to an abrupt halt, snapping Percy out of his thoughts. Another pillar loomed ahead, tall enough to pierce the ceiling of fog. Unlike the others, its surface was pocked with holes that grew wider and farther apart toward the top. The ones near the bottom weren't very busy, but countless Blues swarmed in and out like bees around the mid-section, while Violets did so higher up.
'We're here,' the Blue said, angling toward a cavern relatively high up. Most of the people flying at that height were Violets, so Percy assumed Kassorith was heading straight to his master's residence, and the man's next words confirmed that.
'Oh… I should warn you – he has quite the temper. Let me do the talking.'