The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 582 – Four months

Percy was used to juggling several different tasks, but he was less used to working with others and having to adjust his schedule accordingly. Had it been just one or two people, it would have been fine, yet he’d been teaching thousands of alchemists and collaborating with thousands more to arrange the mountain-encompassing formation.

He would have preferred to go through the planned lessons one after the other and complete the whole course in a week, but he knew that it was more efficient to give his students a couple of days between lectures, allowing them to absorb his teachings, attempt to put the new alchemic principles into practice and, sure, even get a little rest.

Not everyone could keep going without pause like him, so this was the only way to avoid having to give each lesson multiple times.

The labourers that he had borrowed from the Guild couldn’t work without breaks either. The unit cells that they were helping him draw around the Fungal Spire were quite complex – not to mention downright massive. They didn’t contain that many runes, but each symbol was wider than a house, requiring a lot of effort from his temporary subordinates to put together.

The good news was that the size of the intricate symbols made it difficult for the workers to get them wrong, even without any experience in magiscript. As long as they followed Percy’s diagrams, the enchantments should activate just fine, even if the finer details ended up shifted by a few centimetres.

Percy still had to be the one completing each unit cell, washing the symbols with a wave of mana and willpower while infusing them with meaning. That said, he could outsource over ninety percent of the preparation, which was how he and his coworkers had completed most of the work in just a few months.

Percy merely had to fly along the perimeter of the mountain, magically stamping one unit cell after another into existence, joining it with its neighbours.

‘Tsch. It’s getting late again,’ he thought, clicking his tongue as a carpet of dim, orange light covered his body, the setting sun bathing his surroundings in a crimson gradient.

Unlike Percy, the others had to sleep every night. If not for that, they would have completed the ambitious project a long time ago. As things stood, it would be a few more weeks. Alas, not everyone had a bunch of spectral traits infusing their soul with otherworldly abilities.

Obviously, Percy could have asked the elders to deploy more people to the task, splitting them into multiple shifts so that they could keep supporting him without pause, but he hadn’t seen a reason to do that. It wasn’t like his time was being wasted, as he had other things begging for his attention.

Outside of the giant enchantment and his lessons, Percy had to craft enough cauldrons for each of his students. Many of the senior alchemists still had a tough time preparing for his lectures due to lacking the necessary equipment.

They could get around the issue by lending the tools that he had already created to one another, but producing the rest was still a work in progress.

Once again, this was a task that Percy would have completed already had he focused exclusively on it, but he had no choice but to fit everything into his busy schedule. As a result, he averaged about a dozen or so new cauldrons per day, usually while taking advantage of the downtime between the lectures and waiting for his subordinates to prepare the giant runes.

At just under a hundred tools per week, he estimated that the whole project would take him about half a year in total – of which four months had already passed.

Finally, Percy spent his nights on yet another task – this one entirely for his own benefit. It was precisely what he was planning to do right now as he casually flew back to his residence in the settlement.

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The wind parted before him as the colourful motes drifted aside mere centimetres before rushing into his face, his eyes shielded by the same invisible barrier of willpower holding him up.

Percy could have flown faster, but he didn’t mind spending a few minutes every now and then to appreciate the scenery. The ancient settlement looked especially dazzling from above, the expansive shadow of the Fungal Spire contrasting nicely with the vibrant motes falling like snowflakes from above, illuminating the cobblestone streets and the picturesque buildings.

He began his descend the moment he spotted his house, his feet making a muted thud as he landed softly by his porch. Activating the enchantment on the door, he let himself in, making his way to his personal lab. He’d never really needed it, but he might as well use it since the elders had so kindly bestowed him with one.

At the same time, he took one deep breath after the other, the colourful motes gathering in his lungs before flowing to his cores to be converted to his affinities. A grey star lit up in his sternum as a cyan one did so in his abdomen, though they both rapidly shifted to the greyish-teal colour of his phantom mana as his boosting art fully came into effect.

The channels branching out of his first core spun into a violent maelstrom centred around his chest, as the second set branched out of his stomach into countless orderly lines that reached every corner of his body.

The excess mana spilled out of his pores, extending into numerous blazing ribbons that danced wildly around him, helping him absorb ambient mana even faster as a chorus of spectres filled the house with their cheerful cries.

‘It’s good to have some privacy,’ he thought.

He had to be mindful of using his boosting art in public, as this was one of the few things that he had yet to share with the rest of Remior. It was common knowledge that he possessed the spell, since many Blues had survived the chase a couple of years earlier, but he didn’t want to make it too easy for his enemies to master the technique.

Unlike the other things that he had disseminated, the Dance could potentially allow someone like Machaon to grow a lot stronger in a short amount of time, making it harder for Percy to close the gap separating them. This was especially problematic now that Phoebe had dumped the responsibility of bringing the disgraced patriarch to justice onto Percy.

Having to hide the Carnival was annoying – especially because Percy was trying to make the spell effortless to maintain. Micky had accomplished that years ago with his own version out of sheer necessity – because it had helped with his stamina issues – though Percy hadn’t had a reason to pursue that result as aggressively at the time.

Before the fusion, he had already grown comfortable enough to keep the technique active indefinitely, but it had never become entirely effortless for him. Following the fusion, he had obviously benefitted even more from his former familiar’s experience, though the unique shape of his mana network and the combination of his affinities made his version of the spell slightly different.

‘I’ll have to figure it out by the time I’m ready for my artificial advancement,’ he reminded himself.

If he wanted to permanently raise his grade, he couldn’t have the spell activating and deactivating all the time. He guessed that it might be possible to maintain the increased mana density without the external part of the Dance, but he was certain that his cores alone wouldn’t be enough to support the necessary pressure, so he would definitely need to keep Circulation running for the rest of his life.

Fortunately, some of the runes that he was planning to incorporate into the enchantments would help guide the mana to and from the correct channels, but learning to passively maintain the technique would only make the whole endeavour easier.

Either way, this wasn’t the sort of thing that he could rush. He had to slowly accumulate thousands – if not tens of thousands – of hours of experience maintaining the boosting art over the next few years – much like Micky had done inside the Thirsty Valley during his prolonged captivity.

Sighing, Percy shoved any thoughts of his long-term project aside for now, focusing on the task at hand. His boosting art wasn’t the main thing keeping him busy every night – just another spell that he could conveniently work on while being holed up in his lab.

Pulling his equipment from his spatial seal, he set everything on a counter, filling his cauldron up with the most recent batch of royal jelly that Nephthys and the Queen had sent him, as well as the first set of secondary ingredients.

Activating the enchantments on the construct, he turned the heat up, watching the ingredients as they began to meld together.

Ever since his chat with Paracelsus, Percy had been working tirelessly to upgrade his Wild Art again. Progress had been slow at first, but he had improved over time. In fact, he’d felt that the spell was on the cusp of evolving for the past few days – something that had obviously filled him with excitement.

‘I think tonight is the night. Let’s make it happen,’ he thought, gleefully activating the Wild Art.