The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 616 – Ruby

Having already seen how the red substance had affected the Starry Worker, Percy focused primarily on how it might interact with Nephthys’s other mutations.

In the spots where the dull grey colour of the wasp’s Soul Predator mutation had yet to spread, her exoskeleton slowly assumed a deep red colour that wasn’t too dissimilar from the pyramid-shaped gem on her forehead.

‘It’s probably a coincidence. The colour of her internal world came from her original affinity. I don’t think that the material from Ruby Heart has anything to do with mind mana,’ he thought.

Nephthys’s golden watermark patterns converged at her forehead, forming a frame of the same colour around the triangular object and cleanly delineating it from the rest of her reddening carapace. Several patches of star-specked chitin that included the familiar’s head retained a greyish hue from the Soul Predator mutation that overlapped with the new colour, differentiating it further.

At this point, Nephthys’s appearance was so different from the rest of her species that Percy was starting to question whether it was apt to keep referring to her as a Starry Wasp.

‘Perhaps “Ruby Wasp” is more fitting. If we ever manage to rescue the Queen’s other daughter, there will be two branches of the royal lineage anyway…’

Oblivious to his thoughts, Nephthys continued devouring the magical substance until there was nothing left. Her body stopped changing close to the end, though she kept going for good measure. Percy even got a notification this time – which hadn’t happened with the Orange bug.

[Congratulations! Your familiar has acquired a new mutation: Ruby Carapace!]

Having seen that coming from a kilometre away, he quickly pulled up the extended section of his Status that contained Nephthys’s information, to confirm the mutation’s effects.

___

[Ruby Carapace] – Reinforces one’s carapace.___

It was simple and straightforward – perhaps one of the shortest entries in his Status. Percy hoped that he would also obtain something similar after eating the material.

For the next few days, Percy had two of his clones travel repeatedly to Ruby Heart to bring back enough powder for the Starry Queen. It would have arguably been more efficient to combine two seals into one with four times the volume, but Percy ultimately decided against that.

Filling such a massive container up would take several times longer than the smaller seals, meaning that his clones would risk getting dragged closer to the quasi-divine beasts by the enormous whirlpools. He’d rather make a few more trips and stay safe than get his clones eaten by the eels.

Once Freddy visited him, Percy found an opportunity to commission a few live test subjects from the plump vendor, eventually getting his hands on a couple of rats and a squirrel.

Unlike the Starry Worker he had previously experimented on, the new critters were all at Red, so Percy ground the substance into fine powder before feeding it to them. Thankfully, all three animals survived the transformation without exception, proving once and for all that the material worked on mammals as well.

Unfortunately for the poor beasts, they didn’t get to enjoy their new mutation for long. Percy carved them open to study their skeletons, noting that they had experienced similar changes to Nephthys’s chitinous exterior.

Feeling more confident in his own survival, Percy spent several hours upgrading his cylindrical constructs and crushing a large volume of the material into fine dust. He didn’t dare to ingest any of it until he was certain that he hadn’t missed any stray needle-like particles that would end up lodged into his throat or rupture his stomach.

Once he was ready, he mixed the powder with water to create a soft, crimson paste that he would hopefully have an easier time swallowing – much like he had done with his crystallized pure mana before inventing the Aurora Dew.

Lacking the beast affinity, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to consume or digest enough of the substance to match his body weight in a single sitting, so he took things slowly. Over the next few days, he ate a portion whenever he stopped feeling stuffed, letting it work its magic on his body.

As early as during his first meal, the material started latching onto his bones, seemingly breaking and rebuilding his skeleton from inside out. The process was more painful for him than it had been for his reptilian host inside the alien ocean, but Percy wasn’t fazed in the slightest, having experienced far worse things.

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Interestingly, the substance didn’t stop with his bones, trying to reforge his teeth and nails as well. This was something that he had expected due to his experiments on the smaller mammals, but he was luckily able to keep the transformation at bay using his Mimicry trait.

Objectively speaking, getting a free upgrade to his teeth and nails wouldn’t be a bad thing, but Percy wasn’t very keen to end up with Remior’s creepiest grin, nor an unwanted manicure.

About a week later, his bones stopped absorbing powder as his Status finally notified him of his success.

[Congratulations! You have acquired a new mutation: Ruby Bones!]

Quickly skimming through his page, he confirmed that the description of the new mutation was more or less identical to Nephthys’s version – aside from having affected a different body part of course.

Percy was admittedly tempted to cut himself open to check whether his bones looked like rubies. In the end, he decided against it, not wanting to inflict such a serious injury to himself just to sate his curiosity, even though he had more than enough Green healing potions to mend it afterwards. The fact that his Status had registered the mutation was more than proof enough.

‘That’s good. I can dangle this like a carrot to sway more noble families,’ he thought with a smirk.

In theory, Percy had already done more than enough to win over every House on Remior. Sadly, people were oftentimes more greedy and shortsighted than he would have liked.

In their eyes, the Fungal Spire belonged to everyone – not just Percy – which was actually a sentiment that he agreed with. Just because he had happened to save the Starry Wasps from the brink of extinction and ended up managing the entire planet’s supply of nectar, it didn’t mean that the resource would automatically belong to him until the end of time, nor had he behaved as if it did.

Percy had insisted on not providing House Asclepius with any elixirs to pressure them into turning their patriarch over, and nobody had said much about that considering the man’s crimes. Even so, the Alchemists’ Guild had to continue providing all the other families with elixirs whether Percy liked them or not, otherwise the whole planet might revolt.

Percy had also contributed to Remior in several ways that had nothing to do with the Starry Wasps. Sadly, there wasn’t enough Aurora Dew to please everyone yet, and the cyan paste was something that every noble family could easily produce by themselves now – meaning that they no longer needed him.

Percy’s contributions in the field of runecrafting would also benefit the planet greatly in the long-term – and they had won him some powerful allies in the form of House Etna – but other families had never dabbled in the art much to begin with, so not everyone appreciated its importance.

Was it unfair that so many Houses were this quick to forget about Percy’s contributions after just a few short years?

Sure. And not everyone had done that. Many families were still immensely grateful to him and had pledged their loyalty and willingness to support House Avalon in the coming war. However, Percy wasn’t naïve enough to rely exclusively on something as flimsy as gratitude.

The red powder was somewhat different. Unlike the elixirs, nobody could accuse him of hoarding a public resource and using it for personal profit, since this was something that he had discovered and procured entirely with his own means.

Furthermore, unlike the knowledge and techniques that he had openly shared with the noble Houses, acquiring more of the crimson substance required Percy’s continuous cooperation.

Everyone who wanted to enhance their bones would have no choice but to humbly request his assistance. If they wanted their children and grandchildren to use it too in the future, they would have to ensure that they remained in his good graces.

Of course, Percy’s latest find wasn’t exactly a panacea for his political troubles either. Most mages didn’t even care about their physical strength, as they couldn’t compete with beasts on that front. The value of the new mutation would be limited to those with bloodlines that gave them an edge in close combat.

Such families did exist, and Percy even knew of some personally, so he hoped that the red powder would buy him some additional support. However, negotiating with nobles wasn’t his strongest suit, so he was going to leave such things to others that he trusted, like Orin and his Grandpa.

‘Speaking of whom, Baldy should also find the mutation useful,’ Percy realized.

Archibald didn’t exactly fight with his physical body either, but he did command an army of life clones that couldn’t use a shred of magic and had to rely solely on their fists. A single Violet human couldn’t compete with a beast or a spell of the same grade with brute strength, but what about a hundred of them?

Since Archibald’s clones were built using his own body as a template, they would hopefully inherit his reinforced bones without having to be fed the red powder individually, otherwise passing each of them the mutation would be extremely impractical.

Fortunately, the Starry Worker that Percy had experimented on had already evolved into a Starry Soldier. Despite its body growing by several times, its carapace had retained its ruby-like lustre. This would suggest that the material had altered the creature’s body at a deeper level, causing a permanent transformation.

At the very least, this was a sign that Percy wouldn’t have to make another trip to Ruby Heart whenever Nephthys evolved, and he hoped that something similar would apply to Archibald and his life clones.

If it worked, Percy might consider giving his spare set of Thess’kalan ingredients to his grandfather as well, since boosting the power of his strongest supporter might be the difference between surviving the war or losing everything he cared about.

Still, things weren’t that desperate yet, so Percy would rather hold on to the vials for now, having not given up on studying the latent potential that might lie within his human ancestry.

After passing Freddy a few samples for himself, the Guild’s six elders, and to send to his family in the Camelot province, Percy moved on to a different project. The new mutation would definitely help in the void tournament, but it wasn’t enough by itself. If he wanted Kassorith to climb high enough to qualify for the Void Decree, Percy had to do more.

Luckily, he had come up with an idea years ago, as early as during Micky’s fight against Acton’s father, though he had shoved it to the back of his mind until now.

‘Time to see whether I can pass some of my mutations to Micky…’