The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 647 – Hunting infected beasts

While Kassorith approached the surface of Spiralis B-3, Percy debated internally whether to get this place marked.

On one hand, he had previously decided to mark as many of the Void Hand’s worlds as he could, regardless of their importance. On the other hand, he hadn’t expected to end up on a barren patch of dirt that the alliance only used as a battleground in their tournaments.

Percy’s main body was currently busy with his own project, so bothering him for something relatively unimportant wasn’t ideal. After momentary deliberation, the clone decided to spare his counterparts the effort. Even if they marked the strange planet, they were unlikely to ever return here. They would probably just get rid of the mark later, once they registered enough locations to start straining their minds.

Percy’s disappointment rose slightly when his host finally landed on the surface and confirmed that the whole planet was covered in a desert of gold powder. While Percy rarely used mundane coins nowadays – or any currency for that matter – he keenly remembered that three gold coins could buy him a dose of elixir back home.

Having access to more cleansing resources than he would ever need, he didn’t care for a small quantity of shiny metal, yet he understood that there was enough wealth scattered across Spiralis B-3 to buy everything with monetary value on Remior a thousand times over.

‘It’s such a pity to leave it behind…’ He sighed.

Sadly, it couldn’t be helped. It still wasn’t worth interrupting his main body just to collect magicless materials, and Percy couldn’t risk storing any of the metallic dust into his spatial seal under the alliance’s surveillance. Besides, gold was only valuable on Remior due to its scarcity. If he brought too much back, its price would quickly fall off a cliff.

Shifting his attention to more pressing matters, he focused on the nearest beast that he and his host had spotted on the way down. It looked like some kind of giant fox, though its thick, dark fur looked entirely out of place in the middle of a desert, indicating that the creature had been imported from a different planet.

The alien beast had noticed Kassorith too, so it was already dashing towards the Thess’kalan with a crazed glint in its slit pupils.

‘Wow, the voice wasn’t lying about their aggression,’ Micky mused. ‘This thing looks like it would eat its own mother for glancing at it the wrong way!’

Percy mentally nodded, putting the fox out of its misery by cleaving its head off with a sharp wave of Violet-grade willpower the moment it stepped close enough. The creature’s momentum carried it right through a steep dune. It continued to slide for several metres after that, carving a deep trench through the sand before stopping near Kassorith.

A fountain of blood gushed from the stump, darkening a patch of ground as it seeped into the pale powder. The Thess’kalan had to shield himself with a layer of willpower to avoid getting drenched.

Most curiously, wisps of dark smoke spilled out of the wound. They flowed against the wind, traveling straight towards the Thess’kalan. Whatever the strange gas was, it luckily dissipated into nothing before it touched Kassorith’s scales.

Percy didn’t rush to fly in search of their next target, opting to check his host’s score first. He needed to understand how to amass points as efficiently as possible before scaling his tactics up. The list already looked very different than it had mere seconds ago:

‘Zurvanai: 3 points,

Remlat: 2 points,

Azalotheen: 2 points,

…

Kassorith: 1 point,

Gehitti: 1 point,

…

Elamon: 0 points,

Bereth: 0 points.’

‘Okay. The good news is that killing the beast increased our score,’ Percy confirmed with a relieved sigh.

He’d been worried that they would be penalized for their actions, since the mechanical voice had instructed them to treat the creatures as if they were inherently valuable. However, it appeared like it was still preferable to eliminate the infected beasts than to let them be.

‘The bad news is that the others are already getting busy,’ Kassorith replied. Zurvanai was the female Denyte with the time affinity, and Remlat was the two-cored Inimit who had defeated them a few weeks prior. Both had already clawed their way to the top of the list, which clearly didn’t bode well. ‘Should we go on a massive killing spree and hope that we can slaughter the beasts faster than anybody else?’

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‘No,’ Percy said with a mental shake of his head. ‘Let’s be smart. I doubt that we can compete with them in sheer killing speed, so we would be dooming ourselves if we did that. We have two full days until the end of the event. Losing a few minutes – or even hours – to settle on a more optimal approach isn’t a bad idea.’

‘What did you have in mind?’ the Thess’kalan asked. As unhappy as he sounded, he didn’t attempt to refute Percy’s words.

‘The organizers wouldn’t have gone through all of this trouble for a simple hunting contest. They could have just asked us to destroy a few machines on Marador Prime. There has to be a more efficient way to earn points,’ Percy explained. ‘For now, how about you and Micky kill a few more beasts to see if there are any hidden rules that we aren’t aware of? I’ll take that time to tinker with an idea of mine.’

Percy’s companions grunted in agreement through their connection, taking off toward the middle of the circular zone. It didn’t take them long to spot more beasts, some of them fighting each other while the rest were by themselves.

Micky easily butchered them with his willpower just like Percy had previously done, while Kassorith had to resort to sharp longswords he fashioned out of metal mana since his domain wasn’t as powerful.

Whenever a creature fell, they checked their score to confirm that it was worth exactly one point, regardless of its size or species. In other words, if there was another way to raise their score, it probably had nothing to do with targeting specific creatures.

Another thing that they noticed was that killing a beast appeared to do something to them. Nothing too obvious had happened after the first dozen creatures or so, but Percy and Micky eventually heard something akin to an ominous voice whispering in their ears.

At first, they chalked it up to the planet’s somewhat thinner oxygen getting to them, since their host hadn’t felt anything strange. However, Kassorith reported hearing similar sounds after amassing a few more kills of his own.

Apparently, the feeling had only been delayed in the Thess’kalan’s case because Micky had slaughtered a greater proportion of beasts. Percy hadn’t participated in the hunt at all, but he technically shared a mind and soul with the Huehuan even if their memories were currently partitioned.

The mysterious voice was muted initially, so they didn’t pay it much attention. After crossing the fifty-point mark, however, the noise grew more pervasive. It didn’t speak any language they recognized. In fact, they weren’t sure that it had uttered any coherent words at all, but rather a bunch of animalistic growls.

Even so, the whispers caused their heart to beat faster and their blood to boil. All of a sudden, Percy itched to join his companions in slaughtering the creatures. How dare a bunch of Green vermin plucked from Phoebe-knew where think that it was a good idea to attack a Blue?

Guessing that the black smoke spilling out of the beasts’ wounds was responsible for infecting Kassorith, Percy advised the others to keep their distance from the creatures while killing them, hoping that this would lessen the side-effects. Unfortunately, the negative thoughts appeared to accumulate at the same rate as before.

‘Stay out of my way!’ Kassorith lashed out at Micky as the Huehuan tried to behead a long-necked crocodile. ‘Didn’t you finish the last three off? How about leaving some for me?’

‘Don’t blame me for your lack of skill,’ Micky snarkily snapped back. ‘If you want to kill them, try attacking faster than me.’

A part of Percy wanted to diffuse the tension between his spectral companions. Did it really matter who got the kill? Their points all ended up in the same place, didn’t they?

Another part of him, however, felt utmost disgust at the way the treacherous snake had talked to his friend. Who the fuck did he think he was? The scaled bastard should have died years ago, when he double-crossed Percy. How dare he make demands of anyone?!

Percy suppressed these thoughts. His negative opinion of Kassorith wasn’t exactly a secret, but it was clear that they were all under some external influence. The Void Hand’s system had warned them that they could succumb to the infestation under certain conditions.

‘Stop. Both of you. Let’s take a break from killing beasts for a few minutes,’ he told the others.

Two waves of protest bubbled up through their connection, though Kassorith and Micky both held themselves back in the end. Everyone was smart enough to acknowledge the wisdom in Percy’s words.

Fortunately, the sinister whispers appeared to calm down as they rested. Ten minutes later, Percy felt like they could probably resume their hunt, though he wanted to wait a little longer to study the rate by which the ominous feeling faded.

He had noticed that the accumulated rage had dissipated faster at the beginning. The weaker the whispers grew, the more slowly his mind seemed to purge them.

‘Interesting… So, we’re incentivized to push ourselves as far as we can before pausing. It’s more efficient to kill, say, a hundred beasts followed by a ten-minute break, than it is to take a five-minute break every fifty kills.’

This level of negative influence shouldn’t be enough to severely affect even a regular Blue – let alone the elite participants of the void tournament. However, Percy could absolutely see the corruption becoming an issue if they accumulated five – or maybe ten times – as many kills without stopping.

In that kind of mental state, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine a contestant getting carried away and attacking another, only to end up disqualified from the event.

Percy and Kassorith hadn’t run into others yet, but Blues could cover a lot of ground, and there were eighteen of them scattered around Spiralis B-3, so they were bound to see some in the next two days.

Would a mage that was already on edge manage to resist the urge to strike their rival if they happened to snatch their kill? What if it was also an opponent who had previously defeated them in the tournament, thus causing them to harbour a grudge?

‘We already have a small advantage due to Micky and Kassorith splitting the negative influence in half, but I bet this won’t be enough to get us to the top,’ Percy concluded.

It was finally time to put the fancy purification runes that he had bought from Metatron years ago to the test.