‘Good luck with that, you bastard!’ Percy yelled through their rapidly fading connection.
Willing all the controlled preservation runes to deactivate, he instantly slowed his host’s recovery speed to a crawl, but he didn’t stop there. Percy’s soul squirmed and shifted, over a dozen claws digging back into Kassorith’s injuries, carelessly ripping many of the stitches apart as he tried to grab hold of the Blue.
His host intensified the efforts to evict him, of course, but Percy wasn’t having it. Countless spider-like limbs and long, flailing hairs sprouted along the surface of his wisp, allowing the claws to dig even deeper, and to forcefully latch onto the Blue’s soul.
‘I’m not going anywhere until you give me what I want!’ Percy said.
Their connection had already weakened dramatically – it was like shouting through a wall – but he knew his host had heard him.
Percy wouldn’t have been as forceful if the Blue had been more honest. There was a chance that the means Kassorith’s people used to extend their lifespan were genuinely difficult for Percy to obtain, but the Blue could have just said that directly and made his case – instead of trying to stab him in the back. Either way, Kassorith was clearly a piece of shit, so Percy didn’t feel an ounce of regret over his actions. If anything, he felt quite pleased with himself for having had the foresight to prepare for this.
‘Fine! Just stop trying to kill me!’ the Blue hissed, his voice dripping with venom.
The wave of rejection slamming against Percy weakened, though it didn’t disappear completely. Part of it was instinctual, and it was pretty clear that his host didn’t actually want him to stay.
Regardless, this was workable. Burrowing back into the Blue’s injuries, Percy reactivated the enchantments. He’d been careful not to damage too many during the conflict, though the man’s survival still hung by a thin thread.
‘I’m warning you now, so you don’t come crying to me later. If you try this one more time, you’re dead,’ Percy said, leaving no room for debate. ‘Tell me how I can extend my lifespan, and don’t even think about lying again.’
The Blue clenched his fists in response to the threats, his soul boiling like a volcano about to erupt. But he swallowed whatever he was about to say, probably knowing he wasn’t in a position to decline.
‘I may have lied about my bloodline, but I genuinely meant it when I said I can’t help you. The leaves we consume to extend our lifespan are limited – there aren’t enough even for all of our Yellow-borns – let alone anyone else. There are long queues to obtain one.’
Percy grimaced. The main advantage of the cyan powder was that anyone with a pure affinity could learn to produce it. This pretty much guaranteed that every lesser spring could evolve into a greater spring, as long as they knew the secret. The last thing he needed was to depend on some obscure resource he couldn’t even acquire on Remior.
‘How often do you need to eat these leaves for them to work?’ Percy asked.
Kassorith’s response filled him with hope.
‘Just once in your lifetime. The effect is permanent.’
‘Once?!’
Percy broke into sardonic laughter. On one hand, he was elated to hear that he only needed to get his hands on a single leaf to bring to his main body. On the other, the information only infuriated him further.
‘And you thought you were better off lying to me and trying to screw me over instead of helping me get one?!’
Kassorith shook his head.
‘It’s not as simple as you make it sound. The tree produces fewer leaves each year than the number of new Yellow-borns. Our leaders are naturally quite peculiar about who gets them.’
Percy nodded inwardly, though he wasn’t deterred in the slightest. All he heard was that there was a chance. He’d overcome much worse odds in the past.
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‘This queue… is it just first-come-first-served, or are there other criteria?’
‘Having a good bloodline or a rare affinity moves you closer to the front. Bribing the people in charge works too, but that’s beside the point. I already got mine when I was young – I can’t ask for a second.’
‘Then find me someone who can,’ Percy insisted. ‘I don’t care who it is, or what they want in return – I’ll find a way to make it worth their time. You’d better start treating this seriously, Kassorith, because I’m not leaving your planet without a leaf.’
Percy hadn’t told his host about the Moirai Decree yet, but there was no doubt it was worth more than the life-extension resource. Kassorith’s people had already wasted one of their leaves on him – and he was someone with both a bloodline and a composite affinity. In other words, Percy had already preserved their investment merely by saving the Blue’s life and even increased his value by giving him the seed of a new core.
Kassorith sighed in defeat. ‘I’ll have to ask my master…’
Percy shrugged, not giving a damn who his host had to talk to, as long as he got what he wanted.
Drawing some metal mana out of his core, the Blue manifested a greatsword taller and wider than he was, the oversized construct slamming into the ground with a heavy thud. Kassorith wrapped his tail around the hilt a few times, leaning on the blade with his elbows before willing the weapon to shoot toward the clouds.
Percy tried not to dwell on how disturbingly similar his host’s method of flying was to his own, choosing to focus on more pressing matters.
‘The ambient mana is so thick!’
He hadn’t realized it earlier, but refilling his core here would take half the time it did on Remior. He didn’t know if it was a property of the planet or a specialized Decree cast by one of the local titans, but training and fighting would be incredibly convenient. It was a pity he couldn’t stay – or take the ambient mana back with him.
Another thing that stood out to Percy was the absurdly high altitude of the town they’d just left. The moment they took to the skies, he saw clouds everywhere – above, below and around them. The town itself had been perched atop what at first seemed like a flat, rocky plain. No… An island. Its perfectly circular perimeter was bound by a steep cliff.
‘A mountain? More like a stone pillar…’ Percy thought as the ruins receded behind them.
It wasn’t the only one either. More pillars loomed ahead, faint outlines piercing through the veil of clouds. They all shared the same narrow, cylindrical shape, but varied in height. Some vanished into a dense ceiling of mist above, their peaks way too far to make out. Others were even shorter than the one Percy and his host had left behind. As for their bases… they were too deep to see. Percy couldn’t help but wonder what lay down there – solid land, or a vast body of water?
‘It’s an ocean. Large enough to cover the whole planet,’ Kassorith muttered, having clearly guessed his thoughts. Though he sounded more annoyed than informative. ‘Now, will you please stop gawking at everything? It’s distracting.’
‘How do people below Blue travel from pillar to pillar if they can’t fly?’ Percy asked, undeterred. He was going to get his free tour one way or another. ‘Don’t tell me they have to climb down, sail across, then scale the next one…’
That sounded wildly impractical. From what he could tell, most pillars were tens of kilometres apart and just as tall – if not taller.
Kassorith rolled his eyes. ‘If two pillars are close enough, people build bridges. The major cities and sects have teleportation platforms. Some factions own flying vehicles for the lower grades, or hire Blues for escorts. But for the most part, Greens and below tend to stay put…’
Percy nodded, fascinated by what he was hearing. Teleportation platforms? Flying vehicles? Was this the norm in other greater springs too?
These were things he would have expected from the Vault, though the artificial world wasn’t nearly large enough to require them in order to function properly. Evidently, the technology that other peak factions possessed didn’t lag as far behind Metatron’s as Percy had originally thought.
Kassorith wasn’t the only Blue flying in the area. Hundreds of others flitted through the clouds, each using a more ostentatious method than the last. One rode atop a glowing four-winged horse sculpted from pure mana. Another floated inside a sleek carriage powered by a lattice of colourful runes pulsing in unison across its wooden frame. It seemed that here, travel wasn’t just about getting from place to place – it was a performance.A symbol of status.
‘You never told me where you’re from,’ Kassorith suddenly said.
‘Nor will I,’ Percy replied.
‘Come on, what’s the harm? This is Thess’kala. See how easy that was?’
Percy stifled a chuckle. His host had done an admirable job trying to mask his sinister intentions, but he clearly lacked experience in interacting with another’s soul.
‘Do you take me for a fool? I thought I’d made it clear enough that I don’t trust you any farther than I can throw you. Just shut up and fly to your master.’
Percy held all the leverage as long as the Blue’s survival depended on him, but he clearly understood that he couldn’t afford to as much as hint at his origin. This place – Thess’kala – could probably crush Remior with ease if he made a mistake.
‘It was worth a shot,’ Kassorith replied, not appearing to care in the slightest that his intentions had been seen through. ‘Don’t think that threatening me will end well for you, country bumpkin…’
Percy grinned.
‘We’ll see…’