The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 650 – Clawing up the rankings

In theory, Percy and his host could earn points ten times faster by cleansing the beasts than outright killing them. In practice, dragging the metallic construct around and having to slowly subject each creature to the purifying beam for over a minute would greatly bog them down, so they’d only be twice or thrice as fast as before.

‘It’s good enough. We can probably compete for the top ranks like this, though we need to find a new hunting spot first,’ he thought.

Flying toward the northwestern edge of the circular landmass, Kassorith crossed the ring-shaped river to enter one of the twelve strips of desert spiralling outwards. Percy wasn’t happy that they had to waste time relocating, but they would have honestly needed to do so even if their previous hunting grounds hadn’t been cleaned up by their rivals.

Nobody had cared much about Kassorith earlier, as he’d never climbed higher than the sixth spot in the event, and his hunting approach hadn’t stood out in any way. Things were bound to change over the next day or so.

Once the Thess’kalan started rising through the list, he was going to catch a lot of attention. It would be easy for his rivals to figure out how he had accomplished that or how they could stop him.

Percy was most worried about Remlat, whose participation in the elimination phase of the tournament would be directly threatened by Kassorith’s ascension. If the two-cored Inimit realized that the Thess’kalan was on course to overtake him, he might switch tactics, opting to obstruct him than compete fairly. Destroying the bulky formation or slaughtering Kassorith’s targets before the crimson beam managed to cleanse them wouldn’t be too difficult.

In light of that, Percy felt that isolating themselves from other participants wasn’t a bad idea. Sadly, it didn’t take long for him and his spectral companions to run into another problem.

‘Everything here is dead too,’ Micky said as their host’s features twisted into a grimace. ‘They must have beaten us to this direction as well.’

It had been over ten minutes since they crossed into the new patch of golden sand, yet they hadn’t seen even a single live beast – only carcasses of creatures that had clearly been slain by powerful spells rather than claws or fangs.

‘It must’ve been a while since the others decided to abandon the central region,’ Percy guessed. ‘It probably happened while we were preparing the formation. If I’m not mistaken, we might have even been the last ones to leave.’

‘Should we try the next region?’ Kassorith asked.

Percy mentally shrugged, steering the greatsword by ninety degrees to the left and shooting toward the neighbouring strip of land with the giant formation in tow.

Reaching and scanning the new area took another fifteen minutes, and the results weren’t any better. Not giving up, Percy and his companions decided to try one final time, though the third patch of golden dust appeared no less ravaged than the last two.

‘Damn,’ Kassorith cursed. ‘Don’t tell me we wasted all of that time perfecting the enchantments only to end up with nothing to use them on.’

Percy massaged his host’s temples as he considered their next move. ‘Things might not be that bad. It might take a while, but we should eventually stumble upon some live beasts if we stick with this region.’

With eighteen contestants and only twelve paths, it was a given that Kassorith would have ended up in this situation after losing the head-start. However, the problem was only temporary.

The spiralling strips of desert were far narrower where they bordered the circular landmass, their width barely reaching a hundred kilometres across. If the participants who had picked this direction had wanted to discourage others from following them, slaughtering every creature near the beginning of the zone was a no-brainer.

Fortunately, these areas spanned the entire planet. They should be dozens of times wider about halfway around the globe. There was no way a couple of Blues could eliminate every single beast in such a colossal region, so it would only be a matter of time until they gave up and stuck to their own narrow lanes.

Left with no other option, Percy and his companions pressed onwards, scouring the land for surviving animals. Judging by the relative scarcity of the carcasses, the density of beasts should have been lower than it had been in the central region even before the contestants had started massacring them.

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Finding the first target took over half an hour, though Percy and Kassorith managed to cleanse three more in the following thirty minutes. By the end of the second hour, they stopped finding carcasses entirely, indicating that they had probably diverged enough from the paths of their predecessors.

Free to hunt to their heart’s content at last, they averaged about twenty beasts per hour – about half of what they would have found in the central region near the start of the event, or an eighth if they had killed instead of cleansing them.

Leaving aside all of the time they had lost, two hundred points per hour was honestly a good pace, and they still had plenty of time to make it count. After settling into their new routine, Percy finally took a moment to pull up the scoreboard again, eager to check how far behind Kassorith had fallen.

‘Falanor: 3901 points,

Zurvanai: 2224 points,

Remlat: 1688 points,

Semleni: 1557 points,

Tereth: 1533 points,

…

Kassorith: 1321 points,

…’

‘Okay… this is salvageable,’ Percy concluded after performing some mental calculations.

Preparing the formation and finding a new place to hunt had cost him and his companions about three hours. Their rivals had obviously kept themselves busy during that time, causing Kassorith to drop by another handful of ranks, all the way to tenth place.

But it wasn’t as bad as Percy had feared.

Everyone had been affected by the lower density of beasts outside the central region, and Falanor was probably the only person besides Kassorith who hadn’t accumulated any negative influence from his targets. Cleansing the creatures rather than killing them wasn’t corruptive, and even if it had been, the man would have resisted the dark smoke just fine with his blessing.

The other participants, on the other hand, had clearly been forced to take a few breaks, which had slowed them down significantly. Better still, Kassorith should have around twenty-nine hours left to catch up, which was plenty given his current speed.

Happy with his assessment, Percy concentrated on the hunt, cleansing one beast after another and hoping that it would be enough.

It wasn’t easy.

Dragging the heavy construct around was tiresome, and the inefficient runes on the formation placed a much greater strain on Kassorith’s reserves than before, forcing him to keep replenishing his mana between targets.

Even the act of cleansing the beasts was a struggle, as Percy and his host had to carefully monitor the inputs and outputs of their enchantments, as well as the condition of their targets, lest they killed the creatures by accident or wasted too long purifying them.

All things considered, maintaining their current pace forced them to exert themselves physically, magically, and mentally for hours without end. The trio managed to get around that by rotating tasks between themselves.

Initially, Percy was in charge of dragging the formation around and restoring their reserves, Micky was the one pinning the beasts down and paying attention to their condition, and Kassorith was operating the enchantments. Whenever they grew sick of those tasks, they switched things up, allowing them to persist.

At some point, the sky grew dark.

Percy was momentarily taken aback by the change, having almost forgotten that Spiralis B-3 was technically just a regular planet orbiting its own star. Without realizing, he had started thinking of this place as an artificial environment that was not subjected to things like the weather or a day-night cycle.

In any case, he didn’t even bother trying to calculate how long a day was on this planet. The data was too warped by the insane geographical distance that he and his host had traversed since the beginning of the competition, as well as the disorienting path that they had taken through the spiralling strip of land.

While he didn’t have an accurate way of measuring time either, he estimated that another fifteen hours should have elapsed since he last checked the rankings. He and his companions had cleansed hundreds of beasts during that time, so he hoped that they had finally closed the gap to the top.

Pushing aside the disturbing imagery of frothing maws and agonized expressions that would surely haunt him for years to come, Percy pulled up the list once more, eager to check up on his opponents.

‘Falanor: 6327 points,

Kassorith: 4207 points,

Zurvanai: 4100 points,

Remlat: 2755 points,

Semleni: 2432 points,

…’

‘Finally!’ he exclaimed in relief.

Falanor was still solidly above Kassorith, but they had actually managed to overtake even Zurvanai – let alone Remlat. Percy still wasn’t sure how their performance in the special event would be rewarded, but he felt that they should be granted at least a couple of points more than the Inimit, thus making up for their previous loss at the bird-person’s hands.

Azalotheen – the two-cored Maradorian – had fallen even further behind, meaning that Percy and Kassorith might not have to worry about him even if he defeated them later on in the tournament.

Of course, losing to the frog-person might cause them to fall behind Remlat again, so they’d have to do their best to avoid that. There would also be another special event at the end of the group phase, which could easily shuffle the scoreboard once more.

‘Let’s not get complacent,’ Micky warned. ‘This event isn’t over yet. We have to keep going at the same pace if we don’t want Zurvanai to pass us again.’

Kassorith mentally nodded, flying toward a hairy bat that had just entered the range of their senses.

‘Do you guys want to switch things up one last time?’ Percy suddenly asked, taking his companions by surprise.

‘What do you mean?’ the Thess’kalan asked back.

‘Well… I’ve been playing with an idea for a while. I don’t know if it’ll work, but we still have over a dozen hours left before the end of the event. It’s going to be close, but we might be able to catch up to Falanor too if this works.’