The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 643 – Adaptive Arsenal

In many ways, Kassorith’s first match could be considered one of the most difficult for him in the entire competition. The male Denyte didn’t exactly stand out among the Thess’kalan’s opponents, but he was the only one that Kassorith had been forced to face without any prior knowledge.

The scaled man had slithered onto the stage blind, relying on instinct and hurried guesses rather than proper planning. At least, Percy didn’t think that the fight would have been nearly this close if they’d been familiar with the steam mage’s skillset and prepared for it. Thankfully, this wouldn’t be as much of a problem moving forward.

With over two weeks to get ready for their next battle, Percy and his companions took their sweet time replacing the rest of Kassorith’s blood and healing his injuries.

The Thess’kalan’s bloodline had been difficult to use in the regional tournament, because the matches had been held much closer to one another. This ceased to be an issue when they had all the time and food they needed to rebuild the scaled man’s mass.

Moult appeared to synergize as well with the Penitent’s Decree as they had predicted, though Percy’s feelings about that were somewhat mixed. Leaving the tournament aside, Kassorith would be able to generate a lot of ruby powder for other people by shedding his skin and consuming regular food to regrow his body.

It was similar to Archibald’s clones in that regard, but Kassorith should be able to produce the resource even faster, meaning that Metatron would be able to pass the mutation to all of his people relatively quickly.

‘I should have charged him for it,’ Percy realized, though it was too late to renegotiate with the pentapus.

His only solace was that the titan didn’t seem to possess any bones or other hard body parts of his own, so he might be unable to personally absorb the powder.

Other than Percy’s concerns about the Vault and his host’s condition, he made sure to watch every match in their group to ensure that they weren’t caught off guard again. Ignoring the roar of the crowd, he dissected every spell and movement that fell within his Sage’s Pond – and even those that didn’t – with clinical focus.

Kassorith’s second match was against a male Maradorian with a metal affinity like his own, albeit augmented by a blessing. That was already quite annoying, since the man’s mana type was arguably among the best for defence, and the blessing only made it even better.

If that hadn’t been bad enough, the frog-person’s skin sported a bright golden-white colour indicative of a secondary light affinity, granting him some level of resistance to higher temperatures, among other things.

Between his nigh-impregnable shell and his increased ability to withstand Kassorith’s most potent attack, the Maradorian was almost impossible to take down. The cherry on top was that his faster mana regeneration ensured that Kassorith never stood a chance of outlasting him, and the incantations he chanted from within his metallic defences further empowered his magic. The rhythmic croaking of his spells echoed from inside the smooth dome, steady and infuriatingly calm.

This was exactly the sort of battle that would have stumped Percy if he hadn’t studied the Maradorian beforehand. With over a week to prepare, however, he had managed to figure out a way to crack the man’s armour.

The answer had been to add reversal runes to his prized formation to flip its effect from extreme heat to severe cold.

That alone wouldn’t have been enough, since lightning mana was less effective at cooling things down than heating them up, and the reversal runes further lowered the efficiency of the enchantments. Even though the Maradorian didn’t have any resistance towards cold temperatures, the freezing stream would have never made it through the reinforced steel.

This was why Percy had played around with flickering the reversal runes on and off, rapidly cycling between heat and cold to induce a powerful thermal shock and break his opponent’s shell. Of course, he had still spent dozens of hours designing the enchantments so that they wouldn’t destroy their own medium.

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His host’s third match was against the female Ollorian with the plasma affinity that they had watched on the first day of the competition. Her twisted leg was as unmoving as before, yet the air around her vibrated with barely restrained violence.

Their only way to avoid getting sniped down by the deformed woman had been to immediately spend over half of their mana to swiftly construct a thick barrier, engraved with a handful of simple enchantments. By adding more unit cells over the next minute or so, Percy and his companions further improved their shield, allowing it to withstand the Decree-empowered blasts.

The problem with that solution was that they had already consumed most of their mana, leaving them with very little to use for mobility or a counterattack. As a result, they were basically sitting ducks, unable to do anything but endure the Ollorian’s unceasing onslaught.

Once again, it was Percy’s preparations that saved the day.

Having seen this situation coming weeks ago, he had worked tirelessly to design unit cells that were as effective for their barrier as they were for their ultimate attack. Rather than going all-in on structural integrity enchantments, Percy used reverse-heating enchantments like those that had won him the second match.

Using the cold generated by the unit cells defensively, he negated the Ollorian’s plasma attacks. Consuming lightning mana to counteract the woman’s spells in this manner wasn’t as efficient as Percy would have liked, but this approach allowed him to more easily recycle the metallic barrier into an offensive formation to fire back with.

Putting pressure on Kassorith’s opponent, Percy was able to advance towards the somewhat-immobile woman and ultimately knock her out with a powerful attack.

Kassorith’s matches never became easy per se, but they did grow easier as Percy and his companions collected more information about their opponents and came up with all sorts of interesting ways to take advantage of their runes.

Luckily, they wouldn’t have to fight against the Denyte with the time affinity or the two-cored mages until later, so they remained undefeated for the time being, overcoming one powerful Blue after the other. Each victory drew louder cheers from the stands, though Percy barely registered them anymore.

Winning a battle granted them two points, allowing them to stay at the very top of their group – tied with a few others of course. Draws yielded only a single point to each participant, though they appeared to be somewhat rare in the void tournament. At least, Percy hadn’t seen any match in his group end in a draw yet.

After the Thess’kalan’s seventh victory, Percy was surprised by an unexpected notification.

[Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Spectral Art: Instantaneous Formation – Masterful -> Spectral Art: Adaptive Arsenal – Masterful!]

Picking his borrowed jaw off the floor, it wasn’t hard to see where the upgrade had come from, even though Percy hadn’t exactly planned it.

Through his Instantaneous Imprint, Armament, and Formation spells, he had learned to leverage his Scribing trait and runecrafting skills to create enchantments, enchanted weapons, and even intricate formations in real time.

Percy and his companions had only grown better at this due to their impeccable teamwork and accumulated experience, allowing them to create much more powerful formations – and to do so faster than before.

However, it wasn’t just the depth and potency of their magiscript that had improved, but also its breadth and adaptability. Having read dozens of new books and incorporated countless new enchantments into his arsenal after his last prolonged trip to the Vault, Percy had grown into a far more versatile enchanter.

His mind felt less like a toolbox and more like an ever-expanding workshop. His efforts in the tournament had taught him to apply his wealth of runecrafting knowledge on the fly, and to approach his fights more like dynamic puzzles to solve than rigid tasks to complete.

Managing all of his resources efficiently – be they mana, willpower, time, mental prowess, or even more situational things like his distance to an opponent and his relative advantages over them – Percy had slowly become able to build whatever he needed at any given moment or even alter his constructs as efficiently as possible.

Having already been classified as a Masterful spell, the upgraded Spectral Art was hopefully even closer to the peak of the tier, giving Percy yet another powerful weapon to fall back to. A quiet thrill ran through him at the thought of testing its limits with his own body.

It would be harder, as he wouldn’t have access to Kassorith’s assistance or affinity. Ice and phantom mana weren’t nearly as compatible with the new spell as metal. Then again, that had also been true about the previous iteration of his Spectral Art, yet Percy and Micky had still found ways to make it work, so it was probably just a question of time and practice.

‘If you’re done getting excited over your upgrade, we need to figure out how to win our next match,’ Kassorith reminded.

Percy mentally nodded, his mood turning more solemn. His new spell notwithstanding, next week’s battle promised to be a true test of skill. After all, they weren’t facing any random opponent, but one of the three monsters in their group: the Inimit with a pair of Blue cores.