The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 623 – Lanthaniel

“I think I’m going to need more information than that,” Percy muttered as he watched the god approach.

Lanthaniel was a hulking humanoid twice as tall as most sapients, perhaps standing a few centimetres taller than even his own people. His dark brown skin was smooth and flawless – universal evidence of eternal youth that every deity shared – yet his muscles bulged with barely concealed strength.

Unlike his lesser tribesmen, Lanthaniel was dressed elegantly. A silken toga was draped over his left shoulder, covering only a single breast while stretching diagonally over his broad chest. A strange piece of jewellery adorned his right horn. It looked like it was made of pure gold, sporting a unique maze-like pattern that spiralled around the bony protrusion, covering it from base to tip.

Every thundering step the god took sent a tremor through the training room. Unlike the likes of Metatron and Phoebe, Lanthaniel either didn’t know how or didn’t care to conceal his power, an aura of unmistakeable authority constantly oozing out of his massive frame.

“Well, there isn’t much to say,” the pentapus replied. “Lanthaniel’s situation gives us the perfect excuse for your magiscript. Back when he first pledged loyalty to me, he was only a newly promoted god, so he didn’t have access to the kind of sensitive information I needed. That wasn’t ideal for me, so…”

“You gave him a little ‘offering’ to bring to his superiors and rapidly climb the ranks?” Percy guessed.

“Precisely. There was this other subordinate of mine who had been foolishly plotting to betray me at the time, so I figured that it was an excellent opportunity to get rid of him and improve Lanthaniel’s status in the process. After capturing and executing one of Metatron’s evil henchmen, Lanthaniel looted a lot of magiscript knowledge from the corpse, spreading it across Tauros. Since then, the greater spring has developed rapidly, the other members of the Void Hand have been begging them to share their fancy new runes, and Lanthaniel has been hailed as a hero among his people.”

Percy listened carefully to the titan’s explanation, feeling a lot better about the mission by the time Metatron was done. Still, there were certain details in the plan that had yet to click for him.

“This sort of explains where magiscript and Lanthaniel came from, but not why a god from Tauros decided to sponsor Kassorith.”

Metatron did the shrugging thing again. “That’s another benefit of blaming all your strange abilities on your bloodline. We’re going to make it sound so powerful that any smart god would be drooling at the thought of taking Kassorith in. If anybody asks, you’ll claim that Lanthaniel learned about you from an acquaintance on Thess’kala and decided to sponsor you. He asked you to keep the details of your bloodline hidden and try to earn a ticket to the void tournament by yourself, since he didn’t want to expose your talents and turn you into a target too early…”

Percy nodded, finally understanding the rest. “And as soon as we won the competition, Lanthaniel decided that it was finally time to swoop in and extract us from the sect, killing poor Syrreneth who tried to get in the way. Does Lanthaniel possess a space affinity?”

Metatron shook his head. “Gods don’t need a space affinity to create small, short-range portals. Anyone can punch a hole through space with enough power. Usually it isn’t worth the effort, since it’s easier to just fly through such a short distance. However, it’s convenient if you’re trying to grab somebody from an alien planet without daring to get too close. Unfortunately, such lousy portals can easily be distinguished from my own masterpieces, but I bet that enough time passed from Syrreneth’s death to when his corpse was discovered that any evidence was lost.”

“Does the Void Hand allow such overt acts of aggression between member-factions?” Percy asked.

This time, it was Lanthaniel who snorted, doing so with enough force to flick a golden ring hooked through his muzzle by a full ninety degrees before speaking in a deep voice. “Aggression? For snatching a mortal and killing another? If Thess’kala didn’t want that to happen to their prized disciple, they should have just given Kassorith more reasons to stay.”

Percy smiled wryly, mentally debating whether to remind the god that this was just their cover story. Kassorith wasn’t really all that talented – or at least he hadn’t been – nor was his bloodline truly that special.

“If that’s everything, I’ll be eagerly waiting for your results,” Metatron said, practically shooing them away.

“Wait!” Percy yelled, trying to stop the titan before he teleported them outside the cube. Sadly, he was too slow, though that didn’t stop him from trying. “We’ve only gone over Kassorith’s backstory and abilities! What about the rest?! When’s the tournament? How are we getting there?”

“Come,” Lanthaniel – who had also been transported outside – said, gesturing at the Thess’kalan to approach. “I’ll answer your questions on the way.”

At the same time, a colourful dot lit up in the god’s sternum, right where his mana core had once been, before expanding rapidly into a swirling vortex twice as tall as the deity himself.

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Percy was taken aback by the strange display of power, only to eventually realize that Lanthaniel was inviting him into his internal world. The thought of placing himself at the god’s mercy made him uncomfortable, but he understood that he was just being silly.

Lanthaniel could easily hurt Percy even without him entering, and so could Metatron. If the titan was planning to betray him, there were less contrived ways to do it than inventing this whole void tournament story.

Either way, Kassorith didn’t seem to share Percy’s concerns. Without even asking for his guest’s opinion, he slithered into the wobbly portal, soon landing atop a mound of sand. The Thess’kalan promptly tried to push himself up, though Percy didn’t need to wait for his host to examine their surroundings, his omnidirectional senses quickly expanding to the edges of the relatively small space.

He and Kassorith were standing in some sort of miniature desert – just a patch of land barely a couple of kilometres across. The place was mostly dark, though there was a pile of objects tightly packed a few hundred metres away, a few items glowing just brightly enough to barely illuminate the internal world.

‘It looks a bit like the inside of our storage seal,’ Micky pointed out. ‘Just… several times larger and filled with mana.’

Percy nodded mentally. It only made sense that a god would keep their stuff in their internal world.

Overall, this place wasn’t much larger than Nephthys’s pyramid, the biggest difference being that it unfolded into a single, flat plain rather than being rolled up into a tall, three-dimensional structure. Percy guessed that Lanthaniel was also a relatively young god still in the Self-Discovery stage.

‘There are two types of mana here though…’ he noted. ‘Earth and air. He must have ascended with a dust affinity.’

All things considered, Percy was a little disappointed by the deity’s internal world. It was honestly quite pathetic. Leaving aside how much smaller it was from a real world, it felt broken in too many ways to count.

Sure, there was land for them to step on, oxygen for them to breathe, and some mana for them to absorb, but that was it.

For the most part, it wouldn’t be unfair to call this an inhospitable wasteland. There were dust particles in the air, forcing Kassorith and Percy to filter them out with their willpower as they breathed. The place was also frigid and claustrophobic.

There was no ceiling above the sand, yet Percy’s senses cut off abruptly past a certain point, almost as if space itself stopped existing beyond some invisible boundary.

“If you look around carefully, you’ll find formations that generate heat and water, as well as enough packed food to last for several months. Feel free to adjust the enchantments to your liking,” Lanthaniel said, his booming voice sounding even louder than before, his every word causing the whole plane to shake.

Percy nodded for him to continue.

“We’ll be travelling for around three Thess’kalan months. I could probably fly you there in half the time if I rushed, or Metatron could have just teleported us closer, but there’s no point. The next tournament won’t start until then. I suggest that you make use of this time to train – or do whatever you want without bothering me.”

Percy sighed. He would have honestly loved to chat with the god for a bit longer, wishing to ask him how mages in the Concept realm traversed the cosmos, yet it didn’t sound like Lanthaniel was interested in giving him a lesson.

With nothing else to do, Percy pulled enough red powder out of his seal to form a person-sized pile by his host’s tail, prompting Kassorith to start consuming it. Percy hadn’t bothered to grind the particles this time, guessing that a Blue with an enhanced physique wouldn’t have any issues processing them like this.

While the Thess’kalan was busy munching on the substance, Percy took some time to study the mana in this space.

He couldn’t easily perceive Clear mana, so it had felt almost like regular ambient mana at first, though it didn’t take him long to realize that it was several times denser. Trying to absorb it made him feel like he was submerged inside an ocean, pulling a slab of steel through his channels.

More importantly, the substance seemed to pop into existence out of nowhere. While mortals had to absorb and convert mana from their surroundings, it looked like gods could generate their own mana internally.

‘No wonder that even newly promoted deities are considered dozens of times stronger than demigods…’

While those at the peak of the Colour realm and those at the bottom of the Concept realm wielded the same grade of mana on paper, gods seemed to have access to a practically endless supply of it.

That made Percy question why the natives of Huehue had valued the Dance so highly. If deities couldn’t raise their grade any higher, and didn’t have any need for ambient mana, what was the point of the Masterful spell?

‘There must be some important detail that we’re missing,’ Micky pointed out, careful not to let Kassorith overhear the conversation.

Percy nodded.

Either way, absorbing the thick mana was a strange experience. At first, Percy found himself struggling to convert even a single mote, but that turned out to be caused by Lanthaniel’s willpower permeating the substance. After Percy wasted several minutes trying and failing to seize some, the god seemed to realize his blunder, loosening his hold over the mana just enough to let Kassorith absorb it.

Suffice to say, the mana was impossibly potent, with a single droplet being more than enough to refill Kassorith’s core in an instant. However, it seemed to lack certain qualities of ambient mana from the outside world.

The Thess’kalan’s primary core shared the earth affinity with Lanthaniel, so replenishing half of his reserves incurred almost no losses. That said, turning air mana into lightning was terribly inefficient, and the internal world lacked pure mana or any other components of ambient mana that Percy was used to.

Fortunately, the sheer density of the god’s mana still made this a non-issue.

“Interesting. With so much mana and no need for sleep, we can probably get a lot of extra training done in three months. Are you sure that you don’t mind us going all out in here?”

A boisterous laughter filled the air, causing the drifting particles of dust to vibrate. “I doubt that you can cause any serious damage to my internal world itself. I would just caution you to avoid breaking my stuff. There’s nothing too valuable, but you won’t survive if the formations stop working or you destroy all the food.”