Chapter 676: – Assimilation |
If it hadn’t been for his deal with Zurvanai, Percy might have considered leaving Maradion already. Kassorith hadn’t qualified for the Void Decree, so there was no other reason for him to stay in the floating city until the end of the competition. Every second he spent there was a risk.
Thankfully, Lanthaniel and Kassorith hadn’t been caught yet, but they’d already involved themselves in several suspicious situations. Be it the Thess’kalan’s extraordinary performance in the tournament, the strange disturbances that Ishkuria had caused on Tanarill on his behalf, the mysterious circumstances behind Kassorith’s betrayal of his people, or whatever skeletons the divine spy had hidden in his closet over countless millennia, there were plenty of vulnerabilities that could expose them.
Percy knew that it was only a matter of time before somebody decided to investigate his host properly. If it hadn’t happened already, it was probably because nobody had imagined that Kassorith could escape from Maradion at a moment’s notice via Metatron’s Decree. From an outsider’s perspective, there would be plenty of time to look into, detain, and interrogate the Thess’kalan later.
This was also the main reason why Percy and the pentapus hadn’t discussed the possibility of repeating their infiltration of the alliance the following year, even though Kassorith wouldn’t have much trouble earning another ticket from the regional tournament on Tauros.
It was simply safer to assume that their cover would be blown the moment they fled Marador Prime.
Consequently, Percy’s past few weeks in the capital had been extremely stressful. After discretely following Zurvanai back to her inn, he had asked his host to book a room much closer to hers, so that he could keep an eye on her more easily.
Between the strict terms of their contract and him tracking her movements, it would hopefully be difficult for her to figure out how to get around Kerfyl’s Decree to alert somebody about Kassorith.
Percy’s Sage’s Pond was admittedly not great for spying through closed doors. Walls and other solid surfaces significantly impacted its range – especially when he couldn’t freely deploy his domain out of fear of being noticed, and the inn was filled to the brim with concealment runes. However, he was at least able to tell when Zurvanai was in her room, and whether she was talking to somebody or meditating in silence.
The fluctuations of her soul were luckily both the most informative data points, and the ones easiest to keep track of under these circumstances. They wouldn’t tell Percy anything too specific about the woman, but he would hopefully notice her plotting out a betrayal.
‘If you do that, you’ll have to explain to Metatron why you abandoned Lanthaniel outside of the agreed upon time and with no warning. Just wait a little longer. The next couple of matches should be over by the end of the week,’ Percy said.
Zurvanai had passed through the quarterfinals too, and she had done so rather easily. Sadly, her luck had finally run out when she got pitted against Lohkrat in the semifinals.
Percy had expected the two-cored Maradorian to approach the fight much like Remlat had, by using his teleportation bloodline to stay outside Zurvanai’s range, and attacking her without mana.
It might have even worked – especially if the soul and plasma mage happened to possess Insomnia, or any other spectral trait that bolstered his endurance in some way. However, Lohkrat hadn’t bothered with such cowardly tactics. He had chosen to fight Zurvanai head on, overpowering her with brute force.
The Denyte’s mana devouring bloodline was insanely strong, but not without its limits. It needed time to disassemble a hostile spell. Not much time, and Zurvanai could accelerate the bloodline’s effect further through the clever application of her affinity, but the strategy that had felled countless participants up to that point could apparently be overcome with enough speed and volume of attacks.
Fusing his affinities, Lohkrat had launched a brutal barrage of extremely fast soul-burning projectiles at her, further boosted by his free-type Decrees. The female Denyte had managed to nullify many, but not all of them. Due to their extreme lethality, the few knife-shaped bolts of spectral plasma that had landed had dealt more than enough damage for the stadium’s enchantments to jump to Zurvanai’s rescue.
‘I bet that she would have been able to defend against that if she had awakened her second core already,’ Percy had said at the time, though he wasn’t too hung up on the result.
There was only one match left in the semifinals, after which Lohkrat would undoubtedly destroy his final opponent and claim the championship. When that happened, Percy would be allowed to possess the Denyte and claim the Void Decree, and then hopefully leave this place in one piece.
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‘It’s such a pity that she didn’t let us place a clone in her body right away,’ Micky complained. ‘It would have made keeping tabs on her so much easier, plus we might have even earned another reward after her last victory.’
Percy mentally shrugged. They’d gone over this already, but it couldn’t be helped. He was honestly counting his lucky stars that he had gotten Zurvanai to agree to even the terms that she had, let alone anything more.
Besides, Percy didn’t really have much more to offer her in exchange for another Decree. Nothing that he was willing to part with, at any rate. The crimson powder wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t a good fit for the woman’s fighting style, nor could it be compared to a titan’s handiwork. He wasn’t going to teach her Circulation either, for obvious reasons, and his Sage’s Eye would be gone the moment he stopped possessing her.
Furthermore, there were only a few Decrees that Percy would be able to bring home. He doubted Zurvanai could be swayed to change her picks for his sake.
Outside of his dealings with the Denyte, Percy had tried to make the most of his remaining time on Marador Prime, with varying degrees of success. He hadn’t been able to unearth the location of any other interesting resources through the terminals, nor had he managed to get any other planets marked, but he had made a rather interesting discovery while spying on the other participants.
Generally speaking, everyone in the city was extremely secretive while cleansing their cores. The alliance was a melting pot of countless factions, and many of them possessed unique alchemical brews or interesting techniques that they didn’t want their rivals to learn. This was doubly true of the founding factions that wanted to maintain their superiority over the rest of the alliance. For several months, Percy had failed to learn anything useful, and not for a lack of trying.
Unfortunately for the Void Hand, their mortals still needed to cleanse their cores daily – multiple times per day, in fact, as Percy had verified – so one of them had eventually made a mistake. It was one of the eliminated contestants, a seemingly scatterbrained Inimit, who had decided to cleanse his core without ensuring that his door was completely sealed.
In the winged person’s defence, there weren’t many people from the weaker factions left in the city this late into the tournament, and those from the other founding worlds were probably already privy to his secrets. Furthermore, even though powerful sensory bloodlines or other similar abilities were common in the alliance, the odds of somebody spying on him during his cleansing session had admittedly been minuscule.
Percy hadn’t missed the opportunity to slip his Sage’s Pond through the crack in the enchanted door. Allowing his senses to unfold, he had enveloped the unsuspecting Blue’s body, observing his every action.
Sadly, Percy’s snooping hadn’t revealed anything new, but he had confirmed something that he had previously suspected: those from the founding factions – or at least the Inimits – didn’t drink regular elixirs, but rather a turquoise fluid akin to Aurora Dew.
Kassorith had once told him that the leaders of the alliance had become greater springs long before acquiring their World Tree saplings, and Percy’s latest discovery was further proof that they had originally achieved their lofty status in the same way that Remior was about to.
‘Shit. Do you think Kassorith saw it too?’ Micky had asked.
‘I don’t think that he was paying any attention to that guy, so hopefully not,’ Percy had replied.
The last thing they needed was for Metatron to find out how to accelerate the promotions of his mortals. At least, the pentapus wouldn’t have more than the colour of the elixir to work with. Even the additional cleansing sessions had happened behind closed doors, outside Kassorith’s notice.
Leaving what his host had or hadn’t seen aside, Percy was quite disappointed that the Void Hand didn’t seem to possess any other means of extending their lifespans. He had originally hoped that there was something else that he didn’t know about, but any additional boosts might have allowed them to turn their Red-borns into gods – something that had supposedly never happened in the universe before.
Percy’s main body was almost done setting the groundwork for his artificial advancement, so they would likely know the result by the time the clone returned to Remior. Possibly sooner.
Should their efforts fail, their largest obstacle to attaining divinity would remain unsolved. The first-generation teabags that Ishkuria had given Percy, and the third core that he was hopefully about to get would help, but they wouldn’t be enough.
‘If it doesn’t work, we’ll have to go hunting for greater springs again, and it seems that a whole bunch of them – including many of the most advanced worlds – won’t be of any use to us…’
He sighed, not looking forward to that outcome. However, he decided to drop the matter for now. There was no sense in stressing over something that might end up not being an issue.
A few days later, he was about to meet with Zurvanai to enter the next phase of their agreement. With most of his business on Marador Prime concluded, and with no further need for his enhanced senses or superior domain, Percy finally turned his attention to something that he had postponed since Zath’maan.
‘Here goes nothing,’ he said to himself, willing the inert seed in his mind to activate at last.
He braced himself for a major headache, though he was pleasantly surprised when he suffered nothing of the sort. Even the notification appeared to have changed slightly since Gallimus:
[Overlapping functionality detected. Calibrating Phoebe’s Decree. Status will remain partially unavailable while the assimilation is underway.]
Technically, there was only one additional word in the description: “partially”. A quick test revealed that Percy was still unable to pull up his page, and the range of his Sage’s Pond had shrunk slightly, though it hadn’t disappeared entirely. His domain had also grown weaker, though it was still more intense than his host’s.
‘That’s good,’ he thought, heaving a sigh of relief.
Phoebe’s Decree kept getting better at assimilating other mental-type Decrees with every new one it devoured. Percy would still rather avoid getting into a fight in his current state, but that might not be as much of an issue in the future. At the rate his Status was growing, it would probably be able to instantly digest new Decrees sooner rather than later, possibly without even requiring Percy’s clones to reunite with the main body first.
‘Hopefully after another upgrade or two… Now, let’s go grab our third core.’