Chapter 681: – [Redacted] |
‘I can’t believe that we are about to go through with this!’ Percy mentally exclaimed. ‘Ready to make history?’
He was currently sitting on his bed in the settlement, while Micky was staying in his own place in Twilight City. They had both engraved a bunch of additional soundproofing runes on their walls, in case what they were about to do got a little noisy.
They had finished preparing the seals inside Percy’s first core a few days ago, the crystalline walls of the organ currently covered in tiny, interlocking unit cells made solid through magic.
The microscopic constructs were rather fragile individually, but it was a different story once they were activated. In theory, the runes should reinforce each other as much as they did the magical organ that housed them, while the core should also help them stay in place, thus creating a powerful feedback loop.
Neither of the two spherical layers would be strong enough to contain mana of a higher grade on its own but, together, there was a chance.
The flexible connections between the runes should further absorb some of the pressure, and the self-repair enchantments would hopefully quickly replace any odd seal that happened to degrade or get destroyed, before it caused any issues.
All that remained was to put the nascent spell to the test.
Percy and Micky had been itching to do so for a while now, though they had decided to perform a few last-minute experiments on a core-sized cauldron first, to ensure that everything worked as intended.
Just as they had been about to take the final step and repeat the compression process inside Percy’s sternum, the clone on Marador Prime had requested help to possess another host, which had kept them occupied for another few hours.
‘I’m ready if you are,’ the Huehuan replied, already willing the crow constellation in their shared mindscape to merge into the human’s.
Percy didn’t resist, allowing the stars to rearrange themselves into a cloaked figure, the personalities to fuse, and the Lone Wanderer to come to life once more.
Wasting no time, the new entity pushed the Dance to its limits, saturating every corner of the human body – and even the grey wisps that danced wildly around it – with soul mana. He had fashioned the seals inside his sternum out of regular soul mana, and he was planning to construct the ones in his abdomen out of pure mana, since he wanted to upgrade his cores one at a time.
However, the adaptation runes should allow the enchantments to function just as well after consuming phantom mana, theoretically allowing him to circulate the fused resource through both cores in the future. Not only that, but the hope was that the unit cells would automatically upgrade themselves from Yellow to Green halfway through the artificial advancement, allowing them to withstand the extreme pressure more easily.
Once the human body’s channels were unable to contain another mote of mana, the Lone Wanderer willed the enchantments inside his sternum to activate.
Countless runes hummed with magical power at the same time, a violent shockwave reverberating through Percy’s bones and muscles. The thrice-amplified structural integrity enchantments were the first to settle, laying the groundwork to withstand what the Lone Wanderer was about to do.
The flow runes helped him direct the mana into and out of the correct channels, taking over part of Percy’s Circulation pattern. Over the past few years, he had taught himself to keep his boosting art always active like Micky, because he knew that it would be an important component of his artificial advancement. However, he had decided to have the enchantments automate a part of the process, to lower the odds of making a costly mistake and injuring himself.
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Thankfully, the full Dance was only required during the artificial advancement itself. After Percy elevated his grade, he should be able to dial his boosting art down to just the internal part, meaning that he wouldn’t have to go around surrounded by glowing ribbons for the rest of his life.
The fact that his channels would have to remain saturated with mana was still a little annoying, but he would just have to treat them as an extension of his core, and mentally adjust the minimum level of mana that he was allowed to have inside his body at any given time, so as to avoid losing control of his boosting art.
Once both the seals themselves and the mana flow were stable, the Lone Wanderer activated the pressure runes. The enchantments turned on and off at set intervals, introducing a rhythmic oscillation in the organ.
It was the same thing that Percy had to do when compressing his potions to the next grade, though the Lone Wanderer had set the runes up to produce the oscillations automatically, after performing countless experiments outside his core to figure out the correct frequency and amplitude for his mana.
He had made up for the absence of gravity ingredients by taking advantage of the willpower within his own mana. Pressed from both inside and outside, a few Green strands started forming inside the core.
Sadly, these strands were short-lived, collapsing back to Yellow almost immediately. Worse still, the Lone Wanderer could already feel the strain on his enchantments. A few seals crumbled, though they were replaced by new ones before the damage spread. The crystalline walls of the actual organ started cracking too, though the damage was thankfully still negligible.
Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to complete his promotion like this, he activated the rotation runes as well. A tiny hurricane formed within the organ, spinning even faster with some help through pre-casting.
The mana pushed against the reinforced walls even more violently, causing the enchantments to fall apart faster than before, and the organ to crack dangerously. However, the Lone Wanderer’s gambit wasn’t without its upsides.
Pressed tightly together, the Green strands latched onto one another, twisting into thicker bands that didn’t come undone as easily. The volume of mana inside the organ plummeted as the Green colour began to dominate, since it was thrice as dense as that of the previous grade.
The Lone Wanderer was forced to push even more Yellow mana into his core to fill the vacuum.
The immense pressure threatened to crack the organ open like an egg, at least until the seals began to greedily drink some of the Green mana that they had just helped create. The adaptation runes caused the enchantments to restructure themselves, allowing them to withstand more pressure and to slow down the destruction of Percy’s core.
However, it wasn’t enough.
Percy and Micky had been operating under the assumption that their Green mana would eventually start affecting their bodies like a regular promotion would, strengthening their flesh and expanding their lifespan – which was the whole point of this endeavour.
That hadn’t happened yet, and unless it did, the seals inside Percy’s core wouldn’t be able to permanently contain the potent mana by themselves.
Gritting his teeth, the Lone Wanderer kept pushing Yellow mana into the human body’s sternum, watching with bated breath as it got converted into Green. Over half of his reserves had been upgraded by now, which should have been more than enough to induce a change if this had been a regular promotion.
‘Shit. Were we wrong after all?’
Just as he was mentally debating whether to stop before he caused irreparable damage to his core, his muscles surged with new strength. His senses also grew a little sharper, his thoughts clearer, and his soul more sublime.
These were the same changes that he would have expected from a true advancement, though they had come with a delay and weren’t nearly as pronounced. They were modest. Reluctant. Almost as if his flesh hesitated to rebuild itself in this manner.
Still, the faint wave of euphoria coursing through the human body rekindled the Lone Wanderer’s hope. More importantly, his core received enough assistance from the incomplete advancement to further resist the spread of the cracks, allowing him to keep going.
After about two thirds of the mana inside the organ got converted, the changes grew more evident. They accelerated as he neared a hundred percent of his core’s capacity and didn’t stop once he crossed that threshold. Instead, the potent resource spilled into the rest of his mana network, slowly filling up his channels.
That was when the Lone Wanderer understood what had happened.
A natural advancement required a mage to convert a hundred percent of the Yellow mana inside their core into thirty-three percent Green mana. That was the threshold were the physical enhancements would normally kick in.
However, this was an artificial promotion, and one that included Percy’s mana channels, treating them as an extension of his core. His capacity was essentially double what it should have been, which was why the changes hadn’t picked up the pace until he had filled sixty-six percent of the organ – or a third of his body – with Green mana.
Only once his channels were full to the brim did his Status finally speak.
[Congratulations! Your spells have merged: Spectral Art: Internal Seal-Crafting – Masterful + Spectral Art: Intimidation – Masterful -> Spectral Art: Cradle of the Savage Gods – Masterful!]
[Congratulations! Your mana core has advanced: Yellow -> Green!]
A/N: Chapter 681 – Artificial advancement
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