Percy found himself surrounded by mutilated corpses – so thoroughly disfigured that even he, hardened by experience as he was, struggled to keep his gaze on them.
They seemed to belong to the same species as his host – mostly humanoid from the waist up, with their lower halves replaced by long, serpentine tails that stretched out for a couple of metres. White scales coated their bodies, two curved fangs jutting down from their upper lips. Their forked tongues hung limp, resting atop ground still wet with blood. Their crimson eyes, slit-pupiled and glassy, still held a fading spark of horror. The males were burlier than the females, their necks and the side of their heads flaring outward in cobra-like hoods.
‘What the hell happened here?!’ Percy asked, his opinion of his host having sunk to a new low.
‘I got ambushed,’ the Blue replied flatly. ‘I fought to escape. I almost made it, but not quite.’
The man pushed himself upright and immediately slithered away, seemingly unwilling to let Percy examine the carnage a moment longer than necessary.
‘Yeah… not buying it…’ Percy thought to himself.
There were children among the bodies. Did that bastard expect Percy to believe the kids had attacked him too?
Clearly, only a couple of the man’s opponents had been powerful enough to hold their own, rapidly dimming fragments of their Blue cores still visible via Mana Sense. The rest had to be Green or lower, the organs having crumbled already.
All of them had died the same way: impaled by conjured steel swords – constructs made of Blue mana. Percy’s host was the only one sporting wounds of a different kind – a few burn marks, scattered and severe, some of them serious enough to have led to the man’s death.
There was no question – he was the aggressor here, not the victim.
As they moved away from the centre of the massacre, Percy got a better look at the area. It appeared to be a town – or used to be, at any rate – some intact buildings still standing in the distance. Most of them had been reduced to rubble, however, smoking puddles of molten rock and hill-sized mounds of fine dust mixing in with the gravel. The air reeked of burnt flesh and spilled blood, the silence so complete it pressed down on the senses.
A ghost town. A graveyard.
Another thing Percy noticed was that his host had an extra sense – one that he’d experienced before, but only in beasts. Never in sapients. Every time the man’s forked tongue flickered, Percy could feel the temperature of their surroundings in sharp, granular detail. Some parts of the battlefield still burned hot enough to incinerate flesh on contact. But the bodies?
Cold as ice. All of them.
For some reason – one that Percy didn’t much care for – this sack of shit had decided to attack an entire town by himself, butchering every last inhabitant. The strongest among them had clearly put up a fight, just barely managing to drag their enemy down with their last breaths.
‘And the bastard still has the gall to lie to me.’
The realization left a sour pit in his stomach. He couldn’t help but question whether saving this man’s life had been a mistake. Of course, it wasn’t too late to change that. It would only take Percy a single thought to unravel all the stitches, and to tear the Blue’s soul apart for good measure. He was really tempted to do just that – gains be damned.
But he hesitated.
Killing his host wouldn’t bring his victims back to life. It would only rob Percy of the opportunities he’d travelled so far for. Sighing inwardly, he decided to wait. He wasn’t in a hurry – he could end the Blue whenever he wanted. At the very least, he had no intention of letting him harm another innocent under his watch. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t wring what he wanted out of the old monster.
‘As for what comes later… we’ll see…’
Having made his mind up, Percy was about to demand the cleansing technique he’d been promised, when the Blue suddenly froze in his tracks. Without a word, he removed his clothes – a loose, sleeveless tunic hanging open over his chest – before triggering some change within.
Percy felt their flesh squirm and their innards churn as a profound sense of wrongness overtook their shared body. Their scales instantly dried and withered, the man’s jaw opening wide enough to swallow two watermelons side by side as Percy’s perspective shifted.
Their surroundings faded to black, a wave of nausea rattling their brain. A moment later, Percy found himself wedged tightly inside a narrow tunnel. The air was warm and humid, stinking of rotten flesh. His host wriggled, pressing against the walls as he pushed forward. Their body expanded and grew stronger with each movement, the tunnel stretching and losing its integrity.
A flash of white appeared ahead.
The Blue reached for it with a now-tiny hand, grabbing at the end of the tunnel to pull himself outside. Blinded by the light, Percy couldn’t help but squint for a moment, the colours around them eventually settling into those of the ruined town.
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Percy looked down.
Their body had been reduced to that of a young child. Their scales were now fresh and unblemished, their previous injuries gone like a bad dream. The tunnel they’d just crawled through had been the Blue’s own throat, the hollowed husk of their old body carelessly lying beneath them like a worn coat. Scooping the blue tunic up, Percy’s host draped it over his new shoulders, the cloth now a few sizes too large. The man didn’t seem to mind, however, having clearly experienced this many times before.
‘What a bizarre ability…’ Percy thought.
It was undeniably useful, but it raised a few questions. Had he misjudged the Blue? Maybe those “children” had been adults after all, killed while recovering from their injuries. Perhaps, the man hadn’t lied about the ambush.
‘No. There weren’t any discarded bodies near them. Besides, our grade hasn’t dropped, so there’s no reason theirs would have…’
Percy was almost certain those kids had been actual children.
Besides reevaluating his host’s morality, Percy couldn’t help but wonder whether this ability could be used to reverse a person’s age – allowing mortals to live longer, thus reaching a higher grade. Hoping for some answers, Percy pulled up his Status, though he made sure to keep the information to himself, still not ready to trust his host.
___
Kassorith (Percival's clone)
Mana cores:
- [Mana core 1 – Blue – Metal]
- [Mana core 2 – Seed – ???]
Domain:
- [Field – Awakened]
Bloodline:
- [Moult] – Rebuild your body by shedding your skin and any damaged organs. The amount of discarded flesh and thus the size of the new body are determined by the extent of your injuries.
Spectral traits:
- [Weaving] – Boosts one’s proclivity in manipulating one-dimensional structures.
- [Insomnia] – Eliminates the need for sleep.
- [Scribing] – Boosts one’s proclivity in expressing meaning onto any written medium.
Spells:
- [Soul-to-soul – Crude]
- [Spiritforged Cauldron – Refined]
- [Spectral Art: Phantomscale Regalia – Masterful]
- [Spectral Art: Phantomspun Silk – Masterful]
- [Spectral Art: Supreme Runic Matrix – Masterful]
Alchemic principles:
- [Extraction] – Separate and condense an ingredient’s essence.
- [Pacification] – Delay an ingredient’s activation rate.
- [Redirection] – Adjust an ingredient’s effect.
- [Deattunement] – Prevent multiple conflicting ingredients from reacting with one another.
- [Bonding] – Enrich an ingredient with crystallized pure mana.
- [Restructuring] – Alter an ingredient's phase.
- [Scaling] – Brew a greater volume of ingredients at once.
Decrees:
- [Phoebe’s Decree] – Grants access to your Status.
- [Moirais’ Decree (Incomplete)] – Grants the seed of a second mana core. Requires potent life mana to germinate.
- [Metatron’s Decree] – Open a one-way portal to the Vault of Magic at will.
- [Ea’s Decree (Modified)] – Augments and enhances your Status.
- [Obatala’s Decree (Modified)] – Augments and enhances your Status. Allows you to effortlessly deploy your domain in its strongest state.
___
There was a lot to unpack.
As Percy had suspected, his host possessed the composite metal affinity. The blood-soaked constructs sticking out of the corpses, along with the three sets of mana channels coursing through Kassorith’s body – earth, lightning and a third type Percy had never seen before – left no doubt that the Blue had been the one to slaughter all the townsfolk.
Evidently, Kassorith’s Moult was his personal bloodline – not some species-wide trait. His victims wouldn’t have shared it unless they’d all been related to him by blood – something Percy considered not only unlikely, but also disturbing in its own right.
‘They couldn’t have all been at Blue, or he wouldn’t have stood a chance,’ Percy reminded himself.
Yeah… the kids had probably been kids.
This man was a complete monster.
Other than that, Percy had access to a domain – just the standard version that every Blue got by default – as well as his spectral traits, alchemic principles, and whatever spells he could cast from this body. That said, he’d already exhausted his reserves of phantom mana, so he wouldn’t be able to do much. If Kassorith’s bloodline was the result of a Decree – and it probably was – it didn’t show in Percy’s Status. Percy could still activate the ability while possessing his host, but it didn’t look like he’d be bringing it back to Remior.
‘I hope it wasn’t just because of this Moult bloodline that their world turned into a greater spring… What a waste of a trip that would be…’
The good news was that Percy didn’t feel like activating the bloodline had extended their lifespan. If it had, the effect wasn’t nearly as dramatic as what happened when somebody advanced. This filled him with hope that Kassorith’s people had found something else to rely on. Then again, it was possible that the bloodline’s effects only accumulated after repeated use.
Oblivious to Percy’s thoughts, the man – no. The boy – tore a chunk off his discarded flesh, rolling it into a ball the size of an orange before swallowing it whole with a wet gulp. Percy gagged internally. This was the second time today his host had nearly caused him to throw up. Though he didn’t say anything, curiously watching the changes unfold.
Kassorith kept at it, devouring the withered body parts piece by piece, the gnarly chunks dissolving rapidly inside his stomach as the Blue grew taller and stronger with each passing second. By the time he was done, he’d regained most of his missing height – only falling a few centimetres short. Scanning their surroundings, he made his way to the nearest corpse, repeating the process to recover the rest of his mass.
Percy shuddered.
Thankfully, the body had belonged to an adult, since he didn’t think he could have stomached the sight of his host cannibalizing a dead child – certainly not while sharing his senses.
‘I think I’m done watching you do all these fucked-up things,’ Percy said, finally losing his patience. ‘I’ve upheld my end of the bargain. Time for you to pay up.’
A flicker of protest rose in Kassorith’s soul – but he stifled it quickly.
‘Alright,’ the Blue said. ‘I suppose it’s time for my daily cleansing anyway.’