PathOfPen
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Chapter 320 – A bit of a situation
🕑 Added 2025-05-03 06:01:01 +0000 UTCIt had been around eleven months since they entered the Valley when Nesha finally managed to activate Circulation. Her version involved lots of black circles of various sizes decorating her body, many of them seemingly disconnected from one another.
The visuals aside, the boosting art bumped her fighting strength noticeably. Between that, and her other spell upgrades, she had finally reached a level where she could take care of the group’s security by herself. Splitting the day with Elaine, she allowed Percy to spend more time on his own project.
And that didn’t even mark the end of her growth – only a significant milestone. She was still making rapid progress with her earth affinity. It was currently at Orange, but it should reach Yellow in six to seven months. As for the corresponding pattern, everyone was optimistic it wouldn’t be as difficult to figure out. Not only was she more experienced in this, but it was just a common affinity. When both of those things happened, Percy should be able to teach her Synchronization too, which would boost her strength by another level.
If there was one thing she’d fallen behind on, it was her runecrafting. She hadn’t had as much time to work on it until now, but things were going to change. Mastering the enchantments for the spatial amulets wasn’t as pressing as it had been before, since they had more storage space than they knew what to do with at the moment.
Thus, she chose to focus on her traps instead.
Her controlled pocket runes had already proven themselves deadly, and she’d hid a few underground in several spots around the Valley – in case of an emergency. But there was plenty of room for improvement. Ideally, she wanted to work the concealment runes and the preservation runes directly into the enchantment, so that her traps would both last longer and be more difficult to detect, without having to rely on a separate concealment rune to cover them. She didn’t need to sleep twelve hours a day, so she still had some downtime during Elaine’s shift to work on all that.
In any case, Percy benefited just as much from her power-up, if not more.
The girls didn’t even complain that he sat around all day. After all, combat practice was technically a good thing, and he was missing out on it. Other than that, Nesha was more than happy with everything he’d done for her, and all the runecrafting books he’d lent her. Elaine was on the same page, plus she wanted him to figure out the Dance. The sooner he did, the sooner he could teach her too.
So, just like that, Percy continued to spend day after day working on his spell.
The whirlpools spiralling towards his pores grew larger and more defined. The twin flows entering and exiting his skin caused them to rotate faster, and to push the ambient mana into his body with even greater strength. His conversion rate climbed too. Not inside his core, since that had already plateaued years ago. That was a given, after passively converting ambient to pure mana with every breath for so long. But both his channels and the ethereal flow outside his body grew better at ‘digesting’ the external mana – the former more so than the latter.
Several more months had passed by the time the next major change occurred.
Nesha and Elaine both advanced their second cores, a few days apart from one another! Elaine, in particular, had grown extremely powerful. Even though she only had a single affinity, the power afforded to her by two Green cores wasn’t a joke. Especially when she used Circulation.
The group even floated the idea of ambushing Acton ahead of time. Leaving the boy’s domain aside, Elaine was probably stronger than him when it came to brute strength alone. It wasn’t impossible to take him out if she had the element of surprise. It would be tough. And risky. Percy and Nesha handling five Greens by themselves wouldn’t be easy either. But it wasn’t necessarily impossible. At least, it wasn’t clear that waiting a decade would put them in a better position, given how many more Blues they’d have to fight.
Sadly, it turned out this wasn’t even on the table.
When he mentioned this to Micky, the crow informed them that the first of the kid’s bodyguards had already reached Blue, a couple weeks ago. The next one shouldn’t be long either.
Left with no other choice, the trio dove back to their training.
A few months later, Nesha finally got a handle on her earth pattern. It took the form of brown lines that resembled fissures, making her look a little like a cracked statue. Upgrading it to Synchronization was relatively straightforward – Percy had already explained how she was meant to use the two instances of Circulation in tandem, to push her body past its limits.
But she’d have to get more accustomed to the spells before she could attempt it, as it required fine control over her mana. Anything short of that, and she could easily injure herself. Unfortunately, Elaine couldn’t upgrade her boosting art in the same way. Though it did grow slightly stronger upon integrating her new core into the pattern.
Not long after that, Percy finally joined them in fighting against the beasts.
With the Dance still incomplete, and without using the other half of his boosting art, he wasn’t confident in fighting Greens. That said, he was more than capable of slaughtering the Yellows.
His appearance while using the spell had changed quite a bit too. The cyan lines on his skin shone brighter than ever before, and that was just the start. They seemed to extend out of his body in several spots, forming glowing trails that followed him as he moved around.
If one paid closer attention, they’d quickly notice these cyan ribbons weren’t static. They were elongated whirlpools, swirling rapidly as they drew ambient mana from the air, delivering it to his body. Other than that, he was shrouded in a faint cloud of cyan mist, giving him an almost sacred look.
Unfortunately, Percy wasn’t too happy with his new spell.
‘Tsch. I knew it would be harder to keep it up while fighting.’
Unlike Circulation – which took effect mainly inside his body – the final part of the Dance was a lot easier to disturb. His fluctuating mana expenditure shattered the fragile balance he had painstakingly created. His erratic movements on the battlefield made it difficult for the mist and the whirlpools to keep up with him, forcing him to devote a lot of effort into maintaining the technique. Consequently, its efficiency dropped by several points during a fight, making it almost comically weak.
‘Mastering this is going to take even longer than I thought…’ he smiled bitterly.
That said, the path forward was clear. The more used he got to the complex spell, the more robust it would be. The faster the whirlpools spun, the harder it would be for his movements to disturb them. If anything, the way he danced around the battlefield was ultimately a good thing. Right now, it was holding him back, but it should eventually allow him to collect more ambient mana from his surroundings than if he was to stand still. Rhaziel’s people were probably missing out on that, having foolishly discarded the physical components of the technique.
But fine-tuning everything and pushing the spell to its very limits would easily take a few more years. Maybe longer.
‘Will it even be possible for Elaine to learn it in time?’
He could try to explain what he was currently doing and the principles behind it, to get her started. However, his demonstration would be a poor substitute for Tlaloc’s. Even worse, she’d have to make several adjustments to the spell, since nobody had a clue how the water affinity even interacted with ambient mana. Perhaps, the whirlpools in the final product would take on a vastly different shape in her case.
If that wasn’t enough, Elaine had zero practice in mana conversion. Unlike Percy, who had two affinities and who had spent some time in the past learning to more deliberately transfer mana between his cores, Elaine would have to work on this from scratch, alongside the Dance.
‘If she can’t learn it in time, beating the Blues is going to be so much harder…’
With a Blue core and the Dance, Elaine would have probably been able to handle the entire group by herself. Now, it very much looked like Percy would have to chip in, taking on one of them. It would all depend on how many of them advanced.
‘Oh well… We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.’
On a more positive note, Percy’s involvement lifted some pressure off his companions, giving Nesha more time to invest in runecrafting. In fact, Elaine also expressed some interest in it for the first time, probably realizing she didn’t have as many avenues to grow, despite her higher starting point. She knew it would be years before she got any good at it, but she seemed to have resolved herself to at least try.
And that wasn’t the only thing she did. She took it upon herself to replace everyone’s tattoos whenever they faded. Percy had brewed a lot of ink of both types before leaving Twilight City, but there was no way Martina’s tattoos would have lasted a decade. Even though they’d never been pushed to the point of having to use them, they still replaced them whenever necessary, in case they bit off more than they could chew one day.
More years passed.
The group continued to improve. Nesha registered Synchronization and even completed her new traps, spreading them all over the temporal Decree, hidden underground.
Percy made great strides with the Dance, getting used to fighting with it. It was already more potent than the pure half of Synchronization, and he’d even started using soul mana alongside it – although he hadn’t tried to elevate that to the Dance yet.
Suffice to say, his combat strength finally caught up to its previous level, and continued climbing rapidly from there. The spell hadn’t registered yet, but he knew it was only a matter of time. In fact, he resumed working on his fighting style too, hoping to get better at manipulating his scythes.
Elaine had also started practicing the Dance at some point. As soon as Percy was able to fight Green beasts again, he took over some of her responsibilities, giving her the chance to work on her boosting art. Once he was certain that his approach was correct, he taught her his methods. Unfortunately, she was still having as much trouble with it as they’d feared she would…
Separated by a few dozen miles, their enemies improved too. A couple more guards reached Blue, bringing the total number to four. One of them was guaranteed to remain at Green, but the last one still hung in the air. This was almost the worst-case scenario!
If that wasn’t enough, Micky told Percy that everyone had grown much stronger, with Acton making the most progress with his magic. Apparently, the – now young man – could use his mud affinity well, and he was currently busy upgrading all his spells with it.
With all the new information, the parameters surrounding the eventual confrontation were starting to grow clearer in Percy’s mind. A few questions remained unanswered for now, but that would change the closer they moved to the fateful day.
However, something unexpected happened one day. Something that could potentially shake things up.
One of his clones ran into a bit of a situation…
Comments
R. Maxwell Steele
Yeah I know his alchemy eyes are wizard eyes now, but I thought for sure he'd perceive use for the time mana in his alchemy. The obvious and most useful tricks would be to use the time mana to slow down his aging. The main factor/obstacle of red borns never making it to God tier is too short of a lifespan. So he should have a bullseye painted on anything with the potential to expand his lifespan. A potion to slow down aging via time mana and another to extend lifespan via soul+life mana. The if the combination can increase his life span by enough margin to equal orange or yellow born lifespans, it would be a huge impact on his odds of success. If he can increase his lifespan past yellow into green, then he's set. Not like he's going to falter on the finish line with lacking a concept, if anything he will have multiple concepts by then.
R. Maxwell Steele
One thing I'm surprised they haven't focused on at all is Micky building resistance to Acton's commands/bloodline. I was thinking by now Micky would have found a way to kill a guard or two. Especially considering as Acton's pet, they can't really fight back, as Acton will defend Micky over his guards.
Dove
I understand Percy isn’t brewing in the valley because of the time difference, but it would be awesome if he figured out a way to use the water globules in a brew, either for a positive effect, or to weaponize them. When they do fight Acton, I wonder if Nesha will be able to use her space affinity to move the globs, or if Elaine can use the water affinity to collect them, and cause a massive rainstorm onto Acton’s group. Of course, all members of the divine root got petals, too, so they might also be finding ways to weaponize the globs, but they’re there to grow and leave, while Percy is there to both grow AND get Micky back. Acton’s group might not bother to try to learn to make use of the terrain here for fighting because they’ll never expect to use those skills again, but Percy is driven to use every advantage in every fight.
Tim
I think Elaine has two green and Nesha 2 yellow. The first advancement should take 1,6 years with dew. The second 16,6 in total. So probably ~11 years in the Valley before anyone advances their first core.
Zy
Wich is the status of the group cores right now? i got a bit lost. And didnt elaine and Nesha advance their second core faster than Percy? Great chapter!
