The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 587 – Useless trait?

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Percy swore, struggling to come to terms with this development.

This was the one outcome that he hadn’t expected. Admittedly, Zoris had mentioned that it was possible to get a duplicate fiend, but he’d also said that it was exceedingly rare.

Sure, it was Percy’s fourth attempt, and each trait he absorbed permanently worsened his future odds. Even so, there were too many types of fiends out there. He didn’t know how many exactly there were, yet this shouldn’t have happened without some truly horrible luck.

“Now what?” Orin asked. “Are you still going to absorb it?”

Percy frowned, genuinely unsure. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t any benefit to acquiring a second instance of the same trait, and this was a lot of pain to go through over nothing.

At the same time, absorbing a fiend was the only known way to reshuffle his compatibility. If getting more aspects kept increasing his limit, he would eventually have to absorb an Argalios into his fourth slot if he wanted a chance to get something else for his fifth.

“I suppose there’s no reason to put myself through this for some undetermined future gain,” he said with a sigh. “If my capacity does increase, it won’t be too late to absorb both fiends.”

He’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t disappointed, but he knew that with three unique traits as well as a faint hope of eventually gaining more, he was already better off than every other soul affinity mage in the universe.

Having made his mind up, he was about to deactivate his boosting art, when a silver object phased through the ceiling of his living room, shooting toward one of his wounds. Another fiend. Percy hadn’t planned to lure more, but his surroundings were still saturated with soul mana, and he had yet to stitch up his injuries.

Hastily blocking the invading creature with a wall of willpower, he wrapped his domain around it, trapping it inside a transparent bubble. Expelling the Argalios from his body too, he nearly got rid of both fiends when he noticed something that made him hesitate.

“The second one is different!” He gasped.

It was among the smaller fiends that he’d ever seen, tiny enough to fit comfortably on the fingernail of his pinkie. It looked a bit like a chubby ant, though it had four heads. Thinking back to his conversations with Sol, he realized that it was the one his friend had originally wanted to absorb before meeting him.

Percy had asked her about it during their expedition to the Mirror Lake. Apparently, it was called a Synergio and would grant the Multitasking trait. Sol hadn’t elaborated on its exact effect, but it did sound like it would be quite useful to somebody as busy and with as many bodies and clones as him.

That said, he didn’t rush to absorb the creature, knowing that something fishy was going on.

“How could I have attracted two different fiends?” he asked – mostly himself – though he did instinctively toss his mentor an uncertain look. Orin shrugged helplessly, clearly unable to offer any answers.

Each person was supposed to only be compatible with a single type of fiend at any given time. In fact, Percy distinctly remembered having attracted multiple creatures during one of his previous attempts, and they had all been identical to one another.

As ecstatic as he was to have found a way out of his predicament, Percy wasn’t going to put anything inside his soul until he figured out what the hell was going on.

Sending the duplicate Argalios away, he held onto the trapped Synergio for now as a potential candidate. At the same time, he pushed his boosting art to its limit, expelling phantom mana from his body. The fastest way to get some answers was obviously to attract more fiends and see which ones arrived.

Orin and his relatives in Bogside town watched patiently as he resumed the arduous task of luring the creatures to Remior. Elaine and Archibald hadn’t seen any of what had just happened to his human body, but he’d still informed them about it to sate their curiosity. It was the least that he could do given their support.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Unlike the previous days, Percy asked everyone to bear with him well into the night, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible. He didn’t want to have to keep the fiend trapped for days, nor to lose the phantom mana that he’d already accumulated.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long for more creatures to attend the faux buffet. Weirdly enough, there was no Synergio or Argalios among them this time – in fact, every single one was from a different species!

Percy waited until he caught over a dozen fiends to be certain. He even found a three-winged cricket – a Synthetis, like the one that had given Rei her Composing trait – and another fluffy moth – a Nyctovios, like the one that had granted him his own Insomnia trait – along with many others that he didn’t recognize.

“Now they’re just messing with me…” he muttered, unable to make sense of this.

Maybe he should be happy that he got to choose what trait to absorb, but this went against everything he knew about spectral fiends. Did his fusion with Micky somehow change his soul at a fundamental level, removing the restriction that plagued every other sapient in the universe entirely? It sounded like a stretch, but he had no idea how else to explain this.

Thinking of something, he got rid of all the duplicate fiends, keeping only the new ones trapped to lessen the strain on his mind. Next, he pulled out a book from his spatial seal, rereading the title on its synthetic cover, written in the Vault’s language.

‘Index of Spectral Fiends’

He’d bought it during his most recent shopping spree. It had been dirt cheap, and he’d thought that it might help in case he had a tough time figuring out what his new trait did. Admittedly, he hadn’t expected to refer to the tome before even absorbing the fiend.

Flipping through the pages, he skimmed through its contents in search of clues. He wasn’t sure whether the information on any given creature would shed light on his situation, but he had no idea where else to turn to.

Before long, he found mentions – and even illustrations – of all the fiends suspended in his domain. He didn’t know if the index was complete, but it hadn’t missed a single one so far. Some of the associated traits sounded quite interesting, so he wasn’t sure which one he would pick if he truly got to choose whatever he liked.

‘No… I’m thinking about it all wrong. If I do get a free pick, there’s no reason to limit myself to just these few. I can take my sweet time browsing through the book and even consulting with Zoris to decide what the best trait for me is, and keep luring fiends until I get one!’ he realized, the possibilities making him salivate.

Reality was a cruel mistress, however. About two-thirds into the tome, Percy stumbled upon a peculiar entry that offered a different explanation to his situation. It depicted something akin to a slug with numerous wriggling appendages. It looked nothing like any of the fiends that he had captured, yet Percy couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow the more he read about it.

‘Amorphos – Grants the Mimicry trait. This creature rarely appears in its true form, instead preferring to imitate the shape, size, texture, and even behaviour of other spectral fiends. Countless soul affinity mages throughout the universe have experienced the tragedy of luring the spectral fiend of their dreams, only to be disappointed by their manifested trait. Amorphi reveal their true colours under extreme discomfort.’

Not wanting to jump to any conclusions, Percy wanted to confirm his suspicions first. Luckily, the index had told him precisely how to do that.

‘Hmmm… extreme discomfort…’

Borrowing soul-freezing ice mana from his elemental body, he fed it into the invisible bubbles. He was careful not to use much, as the resource was extremely potent and the creatures fragile.

Sure enough, the slightest sliver caused the spectral fiends to shiver uncontrollably, their frames twisting and melting like wax. The tiny ones expanded rapidly while the larger creatures shrank like deflated pufferfish, all of them eventually ending up just small enough to fit inside a strawberry.

Their new forms were difficult to pin down – even more so than other fiends – though Percy was confident that they resembled each other and the entry in the index closely enough.

“Figures…”

He chuckled, though perhaps he should be crying. In the span of a few hours, he’d gone from planning to absorb an unknown fiend, to fearing that his fourth slot would get wasted, to thinking that he could freely pick whichever trait he wanted, and finally back to being locked to a single new fiend – much like he had originally expected. Regardless, this outcome made more sense than anything else he’d considered.

“I suppose that the torture session from hell is back on the table,” he told the others, bringing everyone up to speed.

Now that he knew that the trapped creatures were the same, he didn’t need multiple, nor did it matter which one he picked. Getting rid of all but the first that he had summoned, he forced it back into his channels, carrying it to his core.

Once Orin and his relatives confirmed that they were ready to support him in case something went wrong, he finally began grinding the creature down, scattering its microscopic remains across his soul.

Feeling his three existing trait stir from their eternal slumber, he rolled a strip of cloth and bit on it so that he wouldn’t break his teeth. Balling his fists, he braced himself for the worst.

And… well… the worst didn’t disappoint.