The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 627 – Scouting

At first, Percy was quite excited to spend a few days shopping inside the space station, thinking that he might find another way of strengthening his host before the competition.

After learning about the special Decrees that the members of the founding factions were born with, as well as the second cores that so many of them had awakened, he realized that he and Kassorith would need all the power they could get if they wanted to make it far enough into the event.

Lanthaniel hadn’t mentioned spells, mutations, alchemic principles or equipment being available as rewards in the tournament, so Percy had assumed that anything less than a Decree wasn’t valuable enough to make it into the prize pool.

That suited him just fine, since he wouldn’t want to waste his limited rewards on anything less potent than divine magic either, yet he wouldn’t mind buying something useful from the shops. After all, he’d claimed some rather interesting rewards from the regional tournament on Thess’kala, and a peak faction like the Void Hand was bound to have even better stuff.

Sadly, it soon became clear that he had misunderstood the purpose of this place.

None of the shops sold weapons or powerful magical objects, focusing mostly on everyday items like elegant clothes, expensive perfumes, flashy jewellery, and other products of decorative or recreational value.

Simply put, the entire space station was more of a lounge for tourists – a cultural hub for guests to unwind and enjoy themselves for a few days before the start of the event.

The revelation initially left Percy disappointed, though Micky eventually convinced him to give this place a chance. They rarely took time off from training and never shopped for things that wouldn’t directly make them stronger, so this would be quite a novel experience for them both if they allowed themselves to have some fun. It wasn’t everyday they got to visit a place like this, nor did they have anything better to do.

The good news was that those who were here for the tournament – which was almost everyone on the space station – were allowed three meals a day for free from any restaurants of their choosing as a generous display of hospitality from the Maradorians.

Even the prices in the shops were more than affordable… well… relatively speaking. They might be prohibitively expensive to mortals at the lower grades, but the void tournament was an event for the proudest sons and daughters of the alliance. The weakest of them were Blues as powerful as Violets – people who would be treated like royalty anywhere in the universe, so none of them was supposed to have any trouble buying whatever they wanted.

Of course, Percy didn’t have any money whatsoever, but Kassorith luckily did, as the Void Hand’s currency was apparently uniform across all of its member-factions, including Thess’kala. The same was true for their language, fortunately, which was why Percy didn’t have any issues understanding these people so long as he possessed Kassorith’s body.

Despite knowing that his money would practically become worthless the moment they escaped from Marador Prime, the red-scaled prick still refused to lend Percy and Micky some at first, though they eventually managed to guilt trip him into sharing after reminding him of the mutation they had recently given him for free.

Or well… it might be more apt to call it coercion than a guilt trip, since Kassorith didn’t exactly have much of a conscience.

Either way, Percy wasn’t interested in clothes or accessories, though he did find some trinkets that piqued his fancy. He ended up purchasing a few devices meant for recording and playing sounds.

The enchantments on them weren’t anything special – he could probably design something better with the Vault’s magiscript if he wanted – but the technology behind the objects wasn’t the point. He bought dozens of discs that contained songs from across the alliance, thinking that they would make for great gifts for himself and his loved ones.

When all was said and done, Percy had to admit that it was nice to truly relax for the first time in Phoebe-knew how long, though that was not to say that he hadn’t done anything productive during his stay at the space station.

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While he and his companions had been busy browsing through the alien stores, he’d taken every opportunity to spy on any Blues unlucky enough to cross his path, learning as much as possible about his prospective rivals.

He hadn’t seen any Maradorians on the space station, so he was operating under the assumption that they were already on their planet, with even those who didn’t originate from Marador Prime having likely arrived earlier than everyone else. However, he did meet plenty of people from the remaining founding factions.

Other than the Denytes from earlier, Kassorith had introduced him to the Ollorians – some of the ugliest creatures that he had ever laid eyes upon. Percy generally didn’t like imposing his subjective beauty standards onto other races, nor did he enjoy judging anyone for their looks, but even he had to admit that these people looked objectively disgusting.

They vaguely resembled humanoids, but their features were deformed beyond reason. It clearly wasn’t a natural phenomenon either, since every Ollorian looked different from the rest, and their bodies were completely asymmetrical.

Some had a missing leg or an arm too many; others had an eye larger than the other, a mouth without teeth, a crooked nose with three nostrils, or a pointy ear sticking out of their forehead. And those were just the unsettling configurations that Percy had the right words to describe.

Kassorith explained that this was all the result of their ancestral Decree.

Apparently, the Ollorians were among the oldest greater springs in the universe, and the titan who had cast their signature Decree had done so from back when they had still been a lesser

spring, millions of years ago.And he had done a sloppy job at it, to say the least.

The Decree had technically always been functional, since it had fulfilled its primary purpose from day one. It greatly increased the potency of the Ollorians’ spells, giving them a huge advantage against others of the same grade.

Sadly for them, the original version had come with… certain drawbacks that they’d had to learn to live with. Percy was familiar with blighted bloodlines such as the one that members of House Tantalus had once possessed, though this was his first brush with what he would describe as a blighted Decree.

For better or worse, the Ollorians were far more developed nowadays, so they had supposedly managed to iron out the wrinkles in their Decree hundreds of thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, the flawed prototype that their titan had cursed them with had done lasting damage to their lineage that still haunted them to this day.

Upon learning about all of that, Percy was glad for once that this particular Decree wouldn’t be offered among the rewards of the competition. Fixed or not, he would rather not take such a risk, preferring not to look like a misshapen blob of flesh the next time his girlfriend saw him.

Despite the Ollorians’ appearances, Kassorith had assured Percy and Micky that they weren’t any weaker than the other founding factions. After all, if their Decree hadn’t been an extremely powerful one, they would have never inflicted it upon their people.

The third major faction present on the space station were the Inimits. Percy would describe them as bird people not too dissimilar from Huehuans, though their beaks were shorter and curvier, like those of hawks. Rather than a second pair of arms, these people had a pair of brown wings sticking out of their backs.

Percy had to admit that he was somewhat jealous of them.

As a child, he had always dreamt of advancing to a high enough grade that he could fly – a dream that would have remained unfulfilled if he hadn’t discovered his bloodline, since he would have never grown as powerful as he was.

Thankfully, he could even fly using just his willpower now, but it was one thing to have to grow as powerful as a Violet to obtain this ability, and another thing entirely to be born with wings that even a Red-born child could use to soar through the clouds.

More importantly, the ancestral Decree of the Inimits was among the most coveted in the alliance, which was saying something given how powerful all of them were. It allowed them to infuse meaning into their feathers, imparting them with potent enchantments without the need for runes.

Lanthaniel assured Percy that the enchantments were weaker than the Vault’s magiscript, though they weren’t much worse than other runecrafting languages. Considering that the Inimits could apply a multitude of effects at a moment’s notice – much like Percy could – without having to study any complex subjects, they were an extremely resourceful people.

All things considered, he and Kassorith had their work cut out for them. Especially since they’d already seen six people with twin Blue cores and four more with a Blue and a Green one among the founding factions.

Adding the Maradorians that weren’t on the space station or any lone geniuses that they might have missed, and even making the top sixteen was starting to look like quite the challenge, let alone the top eight. If they got unlucky and too many talented people ended up in their group during the second round, they might not even make it to the actual tournament.

With a heavy heart, Percy and his host bid Lanthaniel farewell on the third day, stepping on a teleportation platform that beamed them straight onto the planet’s capital.

Whether they were ready for it or not, the void tournament was about to begin.