The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 658 – Ishkuria’s Decree (2)

The first participant to be tested was a male Ollorian with an ice affinity who had ranked last in the previous event. Both of his legs were half the normal length and were missing a segment, making even walking a challenge for the disfigured mage, though he could still move just fine using his magic.

Riding a floating chunk of ice to the centre of Ishkuria’s Decree, he plopped down gracelessly atop the bare patch of dirt that the demigod had indicated earlier. Closing his eyes, he clearly connected with the enchanted flowerbed in some way, causing the dancing petals to converge towards him. A colourful screen obscured the Ollorian’s malformed frame as the vibrant hues of the flowers still planted in the dirt grew dull.

The very laws that governed reality shifted around the contestant subtly.

Even Percy, whose host was currently standing dozens of metres away from the disfigured mage, felt Kassorith’s mana core grow more foreign and distant, almost as if the organ no longer belonged to either of them. The mana inside it moved lethargically, behaving in a new and unfamiliar manner.

Percy couldn’t exactly feel the core assume a new affinity – nor was it supposed to work like that for anyone but the person actively using the Decree – so he guessed that it was just a side-effect.

Ignoring the changes to his borrowed body, he focused his senses on the Ollorian. The former ice user wasn’t allowed to choose any affinity that overlapped with his own, so he would have to pick some combination of fire, lightning, or earth.

The demigod had warned them about the difficulties involved with selecting composite mana types, yet Percy expected everyone to ignore that advice. His fellow participants were all prideful people that had already mastered either rare or composite affinities, so he just couldn’t imagine anybody willing to settle for a common one.

Especially with so much at stake. The event was worth a lot of points, meaning that even those near the bottom of the rankings could potentially climb to the top half of the group to earn another reward if they played their cards right.

Sure enough, the Ollorian decided to go with lava. Lightning mana was arguably the most erratic among his remaining options, thus causing him to avoid it like the plague.

‘Hmmm… if we ignore the rules of the event and other personal considerations, water and earth are objectively the easiest common elements to master, so mud would be the safest combination overall. Anyone who is eligible for it will have a huge advantage,’ Percy realized, fully aware that his host wouldn’t be able to choose that.

On the flipside, some participants might wish to forgo a reward in this year’s competition for the opportunity to experience a more challenging element, since that could potentially save them a lot of time after they attained divinity.

Over the next few minutes, the Ollorian struggled to figure out how to channel mana through his arms and manifest orange blobs of molten rock inside his hands. For better or worse, the participants didn’t need to clear any new mana channels, as Ishkuria’s Decree seemed to take care of that by granting them enough pathways to match what they had cleared for their normal affinities.

In Kassorith’s case, that would mean a fully cleared and tempered network, theoretically allowing Percy to activate his boosting art immediately – something that he obviously had no intention of taking advantage of.

‘We still have to decide how much we are willing to reveal,’ Micky pointed out.

The Huehuan was right. Percy was no longer worried about winning the event, though he still wasn’t sure whether he wanted to study his opponents and try to beat them by doing the bare minimum or go all out, just to be safe.

On one hand, he’d rather not draw too much unnecessary attention to his host. On the other, he didn’t want to risk losing to Remlat by holding back. Besides, what was anyone going to accuse him of? Being too talented at mastering new affinities?

‘Might as well give them a show they’ll never forget then. Letting loose at least once in this damn tournament is going to feel so cathartic…’

Oblivious to Percy’s thoughts, the Ollorian worked tirelessly to produce something useful with his new affinity, though he clearly wasn’t doing as well as he might have liked. Despite the passive resistance to higher temperatures that came with his lava core, the disfigured man had managed to repeatedly scorch his palms, the ground around his feet turning into an expanding puddle of red goop that threatened the surrounding flowers.

The short mage had initially tried to mould his mana into delicate constructs, though the task had proven too difficult. Giving up on that, he had resorted to launching orbs of condensed lava as far as possible for a while. He had done his best to maximize the speed, size, and range of his projectiles, but the spheres of liquid earth had yet to travel more than a couple dozen metres before bursting into a sizzling rain that scorched the unfortunate flowers beneath them.

‘Well… all of this is fake anyway,’ Percy reminded himself.

It would take some concentration, but he knew that he could use his Sage’s Pond to peel away the illusion, uncovering the true layer of reality hidden underneath Ishkuria’s magic. The Ollorian’s palms weren’t actually injured, and the flowers that he had seemingly incinerated were still intact.

Even his lava affinity was obviously a charade, the core in his sternum still full with his original ice mana. The disfigured man would probably be able to feel that too with the slightest modicum of effort, though he clearly saw no reason to break himself out of the spell.

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“I’m a bit surprised he’s so bad at it,” a female Maradorian next to Kassorith muttered in a hushed voice.

“That’s probably because you’ve forgotten what your own affinity felt like when you first awakened your core as a child,” Azalotheen replied.

The frog-woman didn’t seem to take any offense at her compatriot’s comment. Everyone knew that Azalotheen had acquired his second core recently, so his memories of mastering a brand-new mana type were far fresher than anyone else in the group.

Percy couldn’t help but recall his own experiences. He may have registered several Masterful spells with his main body by now – and even an Extreme one – but he hadn’t forgotten how difficult it had been to perfect his first few Crude spells as a teenager.

Shaping his soul mana into a dagger or his pure mana into a staff had taken weeks of practice. Micky had originally struggled to make use of his air and ice affinities too, and every time Percy had possessed a host with a new mana type had been another challenge.

The void tournament’s participants weren’t children of course. They were all talented mages who had already mastered one – or in some cases, multiple – affinities, and their higher grades also afforded them with far better control over their mana.

Still, twenty-five minutes was too little time.

Eventually, the world shifted back to its original state, every trace of lava mana, burnt flesh or scorched plants vanishing without a trace. At some point, the Ollorian had given up on finesse, unleashing all of his mana in a single, massive wave that he had only barely managed to control the trajectory of.

The spell had destroyed everything in its path, carving a deep, wide trench that had stretched for over forty metres before being filled with magma. The devastation that he had unleashed had admittedly been impressive, but he had owed his performance mostly to the raw power that had come with his Blue grade than true skill.

Even that superheated river of destruction had now disappeared from the magical garden, the flowers that it had incinerated having returned to their original locations.

Percy and his host held their breath, as did the other participants, waiting for the results. Nobody cared that much about the Ollorian’s performance specifically, but everyone naturally wanted to understand how the event worked.

A few moments later, the flowers around the disfigured man changed colours, their petals assuming various shades of red, orange, and brown. The field of transformed flowers stretched for thirty or so metres in every direction, the diameter of the new circle spanning nearly a third of the flowerbed, though its area only amounted to about a tenth.

“Fourteen thousand three hundred and forty-five flowers,” the demigod announced, sending a visible wave of confusion rippling through the group of participants.

“Sir, do you mind giving us an idea of what that means?” one of the Inimits asked.

The Clear mage shrugged, his wings stretching and folding with the motion. “There are a hundred and eight thousand flowers in the garden, so your colleague has managed to affect around thirteen percent of them,” he explained, confirming Percy’s earlier estimates.

Upon seeing that the mortals were still unsure of how good that performance was, the demigod added, “most mages affect somewhere between five and ten percent of the flowers on their first attempt, with anything above that being considered exceptional. Increasing one’s score gets exponentially harder with each percentage point, since twenty percent is the threshold for a Crude spell, forty for Refined, and sixty for Masterful. Obviously, doing that well would typically require selecting an affinity that one is already familiar with. Picking an element you already possess is a waste of time, so this typically only applies to deities who use Ishkuria’s Decree repeatedly, to accelerate the acquisition of a new concept.”

Percy couldn’t help but scratch the back of his host’s head, reevaluating slightly how much he was willing to dazzle his fellow participants.

‘Showing off a little should still be fine, but a Crude or Refined spell is going to be plenty. Let’s not go overboard…’ he decided.

The demigod called the next person – the moss-bearded Aflegian – to the circle. One after the other, the participants selected composite affinities that they had never wielded before, trying to get used to their new elements as fast as possible to win the event.

The Clear mage had said that anything above ten percent was considered exceptional, but the reality was that almost everyone managed to reach that fairly easily, with most of them converting somewhere between twelve and seventeen percent of the flowers.

‘I guess they aren’t considered elites for nothing,’ Percy reasoned.

A few contestants did even better than that, and Percy didn’t miss the pattern. Every Maradorian managed to affect over eighteen percent of the flowers, with Azalotheen being the first to cross the threshold of a Crude spell by converting twenty-one percent of them.

It wasn’t too surprising. The first frog-person to undertake the test had asked the demigod whether they were allowed to select a mana type that they had a secondary affinity for, and the Clear mage had confirmed that it wasn’t against the rules.

The Maradorians didn’t have any real experience in wielding their secondary elements, but they were at least used to singling them out as they converted ambient mana to their primary affinities, so they weren’t starting from scratch.

Some of them, like Azalotheen, had secondary affinities to rare elements that they couldn’t select directly, but they still had a minor advantage over their peers. Of course, Azalotheen himself happened to possess an actual second core too.

Despite not being allowed to pick either of his true mana types, he had undergone the process of mastering a new affinity twice, so he was obviously quite experienced in applying his broader understanding of mana to new elements.

Sadly, that also applied to Remlat, who had been the second person in the group to cast a Crude spell and convert twenty percent of the flowers.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Micky said. ‘If it was any other event, this would have been worrisome, but we’ve got this one in the bag.’

Percy nodded internally, knowing that his own experience vastly eclipsed anyone else’s.

He was most impressed by Zurvanai, actually, since the female Denyte was the only non-Maradorian mage with a single core to convert nineteen percent of the flowers, surpassing some of the frog-people. She was only two spots behind Remlat which, coupled with her previous lead over the Inimit, should guarantee her the qualification to the elimination phase even though she had really gotten quite unlucky with this event.

‘Good for her,’ Percy thought.

Zurvanai was the one most deserving of the spot to the third round, so he would genuinely feel guilty if she missed it because of his presence. Remlat, on the other hand, already had his second Blue core, so he could afford to skip a year.

Regardless of Percy’s feelings about the other contestants, his host slithered to the centre of the flowerbed, about to commence his own evaluation. It was finally time to end the second special event, and with it, the entire group phase of the void tournament.

And Percy intended to end it all with a bang.