The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 629 – Durability

The floor and walls of the assessment room were coated with metal and heavily enchanted, unlike the interior of other buildings that Percy had seen on Maradion. Evidently, even a peak faction had to make some concessions in their décor if they wished to push mages of the Sixth Circle or higher to their limits.

It was easy enough for Percy and Kassorith to locate the spot where they were supposed to stand. Like the attendant had said, there was a circle in the centre of the room that shone more brightly than the other runes.

It was over a dozen metres wide, which wasn’t that cramped, though Kassorith would have been hard-pressed to dodge the sorts of apocalyptic spells that could threaten Violets and Whites with so little space, even if the rules had allowed that.

Slithering into the enchantment with a shrug, the Thess’kalan watched four additional circles light up just outside the first, with the outline of one more faintly visible. At the same time, the remaining symbols inside the room flashed in an ominous red colour, indicating that the test was about to begin.

‘I’ll handle the first few rounds,’ Percy said, allowing his domain to envelop his host’s body. ‘Use that time to produce and enchant as much metal mana as possible.’

Before his companions even got a chance to reply, colourful projectiles of all shapes and sizes began shooting at Kassorith from every direction, slamming into the invisible barrier protecting him and rattling Percy’s willpower in the process.

Having used Obatala’s Approval to lock his domain in its strongest state, he didn’t have much trouble blocking the weakest spells that a Blue could unleash, though he knew that his domain wasn’t strong enough to last until the Violet ones by itself.

Luckily, the others didn’t waste the time that Percy had bought. Micky – who didn’t have access to much willpower at the moment – decided to take control of their mana. Pouring some into a growing pool of liquid steel under their host’s tail, he took a deep breath after another to replenish their reserves as quickly as he was consuming them.

Meanwhile, Kassorith took advantage of the Scribing trait and his own domain to engrave a few unit cells into the material, essentially using a version of Percy’s Instantaneous Armament spell. The Thess’kalan hadn’t been able to cast it before their reunion, but Percy had made sure to bring his host up to speed during their training inside Lanthaniel’s internal world.

A few minutes later, Percy was no longer able to block the attacks with just his willpower.

Having finished drawing the first set of runes, Kassorith left Micky in charge of duplicating and spreading them across the accumulated metal through the self-repair enchantments. Freed from his previous task, the Thess’kalan lent his domain to Percy, buying him more time.

Eventually, even the second layer of willpower proved insufficient, so they had no choice but to fall back to the enchanted mana that they had generated. Luckily, Micky’s preparations were already complete.

Between the wide pool outside their body and the contents of their core, they had amassed twice as much mana as Kassorith’s normal capacity – which was about the best that Micky could have accomplished in so little time without a boosting art.

Percy gave the Huehuan control over half of his willpower, seizing about half of the mana in return. Micky used that to swiftly coat their host’s body in a thin layer of enchanted steel. Meanwhile, Percy took the time to reforge the rest of the material into something more structurally sound.

The attacks which had already been powerful enough to penetrate the domains did so more easily with the strongest layer of willpower gone. Fortunately, they still posed no threat to the metallic barrier. Before Percy was even done reinforcing their armour, he noticed that the sixth circle had finally lit up completely, the outline of the seventh having appeared on the floor.

‘Good job, everyone. I suppose this means that we’ve already passed the test, but don’t give up just yet. We still need to do our best to reach the next level if possible. You’ve heard the lady – if we can’t do that for at least two categories, we might as well forget about getting the Void Decree.’

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Kassorith and Micky didn’t say anything, though Percy could sense their resolve burning hot through their bond. They all understood that the durability test would be among the easiest for them, so they had to at least excel during this one.

The spells raining down on them grew larger, denser and more varied by the second. Some were thin and long like javelins, drilling deep into their defences. Others were blunt and heavy like meteors, trying to crush them entirely.

Percy distinctly noticed several affinities at play. All the common and composite ones were present, with even the occasional rare mana type tossed into the mix. Thankfully, the test wasn’t throwing any soul or mind projectiles at them – they weren’t a great fit for the sort of straightforward durability assessment that this was. However, the Maradorians hadn’t shied away from the occasional blast of space mana, consuming entire chunks of Kassorith’s enchanted armour on contact.

Whenever Percy spotted a black disk flying at them, he concentrated his domain to hopefully block it with just his willpower. Recovering it was a pain, but it was much faster to replenish compared to the enchanted metal mana that they had spent several minutes accumulating.

The difficulty of the assessment steadily rose as the number, frequency and strength of the projectiles climbed to a dangerous level. Luckily, Percy didn’t have to worry about his host’s life, since the room’s enchantments would protect them from any fatal injuries, so he focused solely on enduring the onslaught of magic for as long as possible.

Before anyone knew it, all the metal that they had gathered – three times Kassorith’s capacity by now – had been converted into a bulky structure that looked more like a multi-layered cocoon than armour. It was densely covered in potent enchantments inside-out. It obviously hampered their mobility severely, so it wouldn’t be too useful in a real fight, but it was fine given the rules of the assessment.

Sadly, even if Kassorith and Percy concentrated their willpower in a small area, their joint domain was no longer powerful enough to block any individual spell. Consequently, they couldn’t shield the metallic cocoon from the space mana. Even if that hadn’t been the case, the structure was too large and the dark disks too numerous to stop them all.

Accepting that they were about to receive some damage, they changed their strategy entirely. They allowed their willpower to spread uniformly across the steel barrier, amplifying its structural integrity.

The cocoon was more than powerful enough to shrug off most attacks, though Percy and his companions inevitably lost a lot of steel whenever a blade of space mana landed.

Micky hadn’t stopped gathering mana and expanding the barrier, but it was quickly turning into a losing battle. The structure’s thickness had already plateaued and was beginning to shrink, meaning that they were on borrowed time.

A couple of minutes later, the armour had thinned to about twice Kassorith’s capacity, and its degradation was accelerating by the second. The incoming projectiles had also grown powerful enough that the structural integrity enchantments were no longer enough to fully absorb the impacts.

Shockwaves rippled through the cocoon, reaching the Thess’kalan’s body for the first time during the test.

‘I think this is going well,’ Percy said to encourage the others. ‘At this rate, I’m sure that our mutations will keep us standing until the circle fully lights up.’

The rest of the assessment wasn’t very suspenseful. The seventh circle had already been about three quarters of the way to completion, meaning that it didn’t take long for them to reach the next milestone.

The metallic barrier kept shrinking as the projectiles grew heavier, but the domains became more effective as they focused on a smaller volume. Kassorith’s scales also offered a lot more protection than the body of the average Blue. Even after they began to crack, his Greater Thess’kalan Physique and reinforced bones picked up the slack, buying him more time.

To Percy’s great relief, the seventh circle eventually lit up completely, and the outline of the eighth one became visible.

They could have stopped right there, though they decided to push themselves just a bit longer. Things started getting quite dangerous about a minute after that, the incoming spells having already grown powerful enough to harm a weaker White.

Perhaps they could have lasted another minute if they really tried, since they also had Kassorith’s bloodline to recover from any serious injuries, but Percy didn’t see any point in going that far.

“That’s enough,” he yelled through a narrow opening at the top of the metallic cocoon – what little was left of it anyway. Thankfully, the room’s enchantments were smart enough to recognize his voice and process his surrender, causing the violent storm of magic assaulting their defences to halt as suddenly as it had commenced.

Allowing himself to relax, Percy was honestly quite happy with their performance in the first test, yet he understood that their success wasn’t completely replicable in a real fight.

A live opponent wouldn’t wait for Kassorith to accumulate so much mana, nor would they give him a chance to manage his resources and slowly prepare a barrier like this. If Percy and his companions had abandoned their strategic approach and simply braced themselves against the attacks as they came, they would have still probably lit up the seventh circle, but they wouldn’t have done it as comfortably as they had.

Worse still, he knew that their arsenal wouldn’t be nearly this effective during the remaining tests…