‘Wow… it looks like there’s more I can accomplish with my traits than I originally thought…’
It wasn’t like Percy had slacked back ho. He had already incorporated his new ability into his runecrafting, elevating it to the next level. As soon as his clone had returned from Twilight City, his main body had quickly upgraded his Superior Runic Grid – the Refined spell he had developed with Nesha’s help – into a Masterful Spectral Art.
He hadn’t added any new enchantnts, largely because he didn’t know any. He hadn’t been in a rush to return to the Vault and buy more either. However, he had managed to shrink the palm-sized, clover-shaped unit cells further. Their current iteration was small enough to fit on a fingernail, aning that he could probably include more than ten thousand of them on a single layer of his new armour – once he finished crafting it.
Since the eventual piece of enchanted cloth was bound to contain multiple layers, and due to each unit cell involving eighteen runes, the final construct would probably include over a million runes in total! It was a daunting project, requiring him to find the right balance between his two traits – a goal that Percy’s main body was still working on. Changing his approach slightly, he had decided to spin the silk directly into an enchanted fabric, as it was the only way to preserve the material long enough to reach the end.
That said, the fundantal way in which he drew the runes hadn’t changed.
Whether he carved them into his reinforced mana or wove them out of the grey silk, Percy had always prepared the enchantnts slowly, putting great care into every single line – every stroke of his runes. Speed and simplicity had never been a priority, because he usually had as much ti as he needed to prepare his constructs before a fight.
‘Well, I suppose not having a domain didn’t make things easier for
in the past,’ he reminded himself.
He couldn’t wield his mana with as much finesse as he could his willpower in a Blue body, so stamping finished enchantnts into his constructs would have been nothing but a pipedream.
‘Colour
impressed,’ Kassorith suddenly said, snapping Percy out of his thoughts. ‘I won’t ask you how you’ve accomplished this, but it’s still not enough – a couple of runes won’t make a difference. Hell, even if you cover the sword in enchantnts, a single weapon can’t get us through the tournant…’
Percy nodded, his brain already racing at a hundred miles an hour as he considered how to best leverage his new spell. The most powerful enchantnt he could currently produce was naturally his Supre Runic Matrix. Unfortunately, even with the ability to imprint a rune – or a bunch of them – in an instant, it would take him several hours to enchant a single sword. There was no way an opponent would give them that long – certainly not one as powerful as a Violet.
‘I’ll have to simplify the unit cell a lot, and draw much fewer of them…’
His host didn’t need concealnt runes. His tal mana couldn’t turn invisible anyway, and all of their opponents would be skilled at using their domains. Adaptation runes weren’t necessary either, since they weren’t planning to use any mana types other than Kassorith’s. Finally, Percy could probably ditch the preservation runes too. He’d have to destroy all the constructs at the end of each battle anyway, to reduce the risk of sobody recognizing the Vault’s language. Kassorith hadn’t said anything about it, but Percy didn’t know if the spectators at the tournant would be more knowledgeable.
This was a greater spring, after all.
In any case, all of Percy’s other runes would be useful here. The sharpness, lightness and structural integrity enchantnts were the key to improving the constructs – the whole point of this project. The controlled self-repair enchantnts were also indispensable, as Percy and Kassorith would be relying on them to replicate their empowered weapons. That way, Percy would only have to enchant a single sword, and that would instantly give them the ans to produce a hundred of them.
‘Actually, I might only need a piece of a sword…’ he realized.
Once again, he was being led astray by his preconceived notions. He was used to his own reinforced mana which was much more difficult to work with – Percy had to give it the right shape before enchanting it, and he couldn’t easily alter it afterwards.
But Kassorith’s mana was a lot more uniform and malleable. In theory, Percy should be able to draw a few unit cells on a piece of the blade, using the self-repair enchantnts to create more copies. Then, he could deactivate the enchantnts to reset their mory, turn the edges of the fragnts liquid to fuse them together, tweak the lump of tal into a proper sword, and then reactivate the runes to morize the new shape.
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‘I might be able to draw a sowhat dense grid after all…’
It wouldn’t be nearly as dense as what he was trying to do with his silk, but he could still fit dozens of unit cells on each construct. The sharpness, lightness and structural integrity enchantnts would be fine without control runes too, so each unit cell would only need a total of eight runes – fewer than half of the original. That should make them even easier for Percy to prepare in real ti.
The only downside was that they wouldn’t be able to fuel the swords out of ambient mana without the Carnival. Kassorith would have to manually pour mana from his own core into the weapons every ti he wanted to repair or replicate them. It wasn’t ideal, but it was more than manageable.
‘I can do this in stages. There’s no reason to draw all the unit cells at once.’
Percy could probably prepare a coarse grid within twenty to thirty seconds, giving Kassorith a template to use for a few minutes. At the sa ti, Percy could slowly fill in the gaps with even more runes, passing his host progressively stronger versions of the longsword in regular intervals. Once he couldn’t improve them any further, Percy would be free to jump into the fight with his domain, giving the Blue one final trump card.
Having to slowly build up power over the course of the battle wasn’t great – especially while getting besieged by a Violet-level mage. However, it was already a miracle Percy had found a thod to strengthen his host in such a short ti, and with his hands practically tied behind his back.
He doubted he’d find another.
‘It sounds promising,’ Kassorith admitted after listening to Percy’s explanation. ‘If the runes are as potent as you claim, the elder in charge of the evaluation might give us the trim. But I’m more worried about the tournant. I don’t know if our opponents will give us a chance to prepare – especially after they learn about the runes.’
‘We’ll figure it out. Try to win the first battle with that attack you showed
earlier. We won’t reveal our second domain until the next fight. And we’ll hide the runes until the one after. Then, I guess you’ll just have to keep your distance from them to buy ti for .’
Admittedly, this wasn’t the best plan, but Kassorith was faster than most Blues. Percy hoped that would be enough.
‘What’s the deal with that tournant anyway? Why does your master want you to participate so badly?’
‘These regional tournants are pretty important for my people. There are generous rewards for every victory – for both the participants and their sects. It’s also a great way to gain fa and prestige.’
Percy perked up. This sounded like a bigger deal than he’d initially thought.
‘Do we have to compete against mages from all over Thess’kala though? How does Syrreneth expect us to make the top sixteen?’
‘It’ll be really tough, but not impossible,’ Kassorith said, before elaborating. ‘The competitions are segregated by grade, so we’ll only have to fight against other Blues. We have over a million of those on our world, but only about fifty thousand are elite disciples. And only a tenth of them are truly deserving of their status. The rest won’t even consider joining.’
Percy swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure if they even had five thousand regular Blues on Remior, let alone ones capable of fighting Violets. Not to ntion that Thess’kala had over a hundred thousand actual Violets.
But his host wasn’t done. ‘The good news is that they’re not all competing at the sa venue. There are ten regional tournants happening at the sa ti, so we’ll only have to deal with five hundred elite disciples at most. Not even that, in fact, since many are training in seclusion, are out on missions, or otherwise occupied. It’s an elimination-style tournant, so there will only be a total of eight rounds if we’re lucky. And we’ll make the top sixteen if we win four tis in a row.’
Percy frowned. Their odds weren’t terrible, but defeating the equivalent of four Violets wasn’t going to be easy.
‘That bastard… was that why he was smirking?’ he wondered, thinking back to Syrreneth’s expression.
The Violet had set him up, probably not expecting him to et his demands. Either way, Syrreneth and Kassorith had nothing to lose. As long as Percy got his host a trim and won a couple of rounds in the tournant, the Broken Fang Sect would get showered in rewards – as would the Blue’s master.
As for Percy reaching the top sixteen and earning himself a leaf?
Even on the off-chance he succeeded, the rewards the Violet would earn would probably be more valuable than the life-extending consumable. However, the elder had gravely miscalculated. For one, Percy had no intention of leaving Thess’kala empty-handed. So what if he got eliminated early? He’d stick around and look for another way to get what he wanted. Besides, the idea of earning a valuable reward after every victory filled him with greed.
‘Top sixteen? What a joke. I’ll win this thing if I can.’
Eight rounds ant eight rewards!
Of course, Percy had already benefited from this trip. Leaving the leaf aside, just his new spell and the cleansing technique his host had shown him would already help a lot down the line. But if he played his cards right, participating in this tournant might be one of his most profitable ventures yet. There was a good chance Kassorith would try and hoard the rewards, but whether Percy would let him keep anything would ultimately depend on how useful the prizes were for him…
‘Can you stop daydreaming about the tournant?!’ the Blue asked in annoyance. ‘We haven’t even passed the evaluation yet. Are you sure you can get this spell – the one you’ve literally just invented – into a useable state in the next ten days?’
Percy shrugged. ‘Have I ntioned that we don’t need to sleep?’
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