Percy felt his connection to Kassorith’s core weaken for the eighteenth ti today, though the magical dissociation was even more pronounced now that it was the Thess’kalan’s turn to ditate in the centre of the flowerbed. The real organ could still be accessed with enough effort, though it would be like trying to claw Kassorith’s tal mana out of a pit of tar.
In exchange for the temporary loss, a new mana core had ford in his sternum, layered over the original, like a blank slate waiting to be written on. For a second, Percy thought that it had defaulted to a pure affinity, but he quickly realized that he was wrong.
Like rare elents, pure mana could only be accessed by a god who had possessed it before their ascension, and this Ishkuria lady didn’t seem to fit that description. She clearly hadn’t mastered the concepts associated with the pure affinity, so her Decree couldn’t simulate them.
Kassorith’s fake core was currently useless, and would remain so until he made his selection. Five choices presented themselves to the Thess’kalan and his spectral companions in the form of faint ideas that tugged at the edge of their consciousness.
‘Interesting… the Decree isn’t stopping us from picking earth or lightning. Only the rules of the event are,’ Percy noted, though they had already discussed this and decided which affinity to choose.
Kassorith took the lead, exacerbating the playful nature of his mana to introduce the air elent into his temporary core. Once the first affinity was in place, he willed the erratic motes inside the spherical organ to slow down, adding the water elent as well, in a manner similar to what Micky had experienced decades ago.
Two conflicting flows collided inside the organ, slowing each other further and forcing the mana in Kassorith’s sternum to a standstill, thus giving birth to the ice affinity.
Percy was confident that he could win the event with pretty much any composite mana type that he wanted, but he’d rather not take any chances. It was better to go with the affinity that he had the most experience with. As a bonus, air and water were the only two elents that Kassorith didn’t possess in either of his cores, so the Thess’kalan had been rather open to this choice.
Was it a waste of an opportunity to not go for a new affinity?
Not really. Percy could always use his bloodline to possess a host with whatever mana type he wished to experience, so this hadn’t been a factor in his decision at all.
‘Is it , or does the ice mana feel a little off?’ Micky – the resident expert in the subject – asked.
‘It does,’ Percy agreed.
Their fake mana core was a poor imitation of the real thing. The air mana moved more rapidly but less wildly than it was supposed to, and the water mana didn’t feel nearly as heavy or calm as it should.
Wherever the affinities interacted, the resulting composite elent diverged even further from its true nature. Percy could tell that any ice they manifested using this mana would be brittle and less cold, forming much weaker spells.
‘Okay… I suppose we owe the others an apology. Maybe they weren’t complete idiots for failing to produce anything better than a Crude spell,’ he admitted. ‘I wonder why the Decree is so flawed.’
There was no doubt that Ishkuria was a master of the five common affinities and all twenty-six of their combinations, so the shortcomings of the illusion probably had to do with how difficult it was to simulate a mana core in another’s body.
Maybe the titaness simply didn’t know what composite elents were supposed to feel like to a mortal, since she had only possessed a simple water affinity in the Colour realm. Or perhaps, it had been so long since her apotheosis that she didn’t rember what a mana core felt like at all.
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Whatever the case, the value of Ishkuria’s Decree instantly decreased in Percy’s eyes. Experiencing a new affinity through the illusion was a poor substitute for possessing a real core with that elent or ditating near an Elental Source.
Of course, he still understood why the Void Hand treasured this place so much. Practicing inside the flowerbed was ultimately better than nothing. For most people, it was their only chance to ever co in contact with new affinities, and it had the advantage of simulating a grand total of fifteen different elents. Even a peak faction like the Void Hand might not control that many Elental Sources.
In any case, the Decree’s shortcomings weren’t enough to stump Percy and Micky.
The Lone Wanderer’s aspects allowed the barrier separating their mories to collapse, causing the human and crow constellations inside their shared mindscape to blend into a cloaked figure.
Kassorith took a backseat in his own body, content to just watch as his spectral guests took care of the event. The Thess’kalan rely had to relax and pay attention to what Percy and Micky did, morizing the feeling for when he beca a deity.
Using pre-casting, the Lone Wanderer adjusted the flows of air and water mana inside his fake mana core, tweaking the properties of the ice. Splitting the stream into two, he allowed chilling liquids and gases to gush through his host’s arms, expelling them from his palms.
His first attempt was a complete ss, though he quickly learned from the experience and compensated for the peculiarities of the fake organ as he repeated the process a second and a third ti. Little by little, he grew more accustod to the altered variants of his ice mana, putting together a spell that should win him the competition.
About halfway through his preparations, he caught a glimpse of his fellow participants’ stunned expressions. Even the demigod’s beak was hanging loose, as the Clear mage couldn’t have possibly imagined stumbling upon such a talented contestant today.
The Lone Wanderer suppressed a chuckle as his senses briefly brushed over Remlat’s grimace. The poor fool had likely thought that his earlier performance had guaranteed him the victory over Kassorith.
‘Well, tough luck… try again next year buddy.’
Long before the Thess’kalan’s ti was up, the Lone Wanderer felt that he had regained a sufficient grasp over the flawed mana to cast sothing powerful. Splitting the ice into dozens of distinct streams, he converted so to liquids or gases, leaving the rest as solids. He even applied all sorts of additional effects like rotations or compressions to further augnt their effects.
Channelling the magical flows through his host’s arms, he assembled the intricate spell in his palms before releasing it. A series of spinning shards of ice shot through the garden, propelled by bursts of compressed air and jets of freezing water.
The projectiles travelled for over eighty tres before drilling deep holes into the ground. Percy and Micky could have sent them much farther, but they hadn’t wanted the spell to exit the boundary of Ishkuria’s Decree, in case the flowerbed failed to evaluate it.
‘This should do,’ Percy thought as he separated his mind from Micky’s again.
Had they wanted to go all out, they could have done even better than this. The spell they had just unleashed was nothing more than their old Frozen Shards – sothing that they had created over a decade ago.
With the additional experience they had accumulated since then, coupled with a Blue’s control and reserves, they could have definitely elevated the barrage to the Masterful tier even without using soul mana or magiscript. However, there was no need for anything flashier than this.
If anything, Percy would have preferred to water the spell down further, though he wasn’t sure which aspects would be safe to cut without making the resulting attack way too basic.
Percy waited for the garden to acknowledge their performance, though he quickly discovered that there was no way to end the session early. Perhaps flying outside the garden would do the trick, but he didn’t want to risk getting disqualified.
Instead, he decided to wait for Kassorith’s ti to run out, even going as far as to fire the icy barrage a couple more tis close to the end to make sure that the flowerbed registered it.
Eventually, a series of scattered petals converged at the Thess’kalan’s location once again, a colourful cyclone spinning rapidly around him as the illusion finally got lifted. Everyone probably understood by now that Kassorith had blown the others out of the water, though they all still waited patiently for the garden to declare the results.
A few monts later, a carpet of pale and light blue flowers rippled outwards from the centre of the Decree, stretching all the way to where the other participants were standing and beyond.
The colourful wave extended for thirty… forty… fifty tres in every direction without showing any sign of stopping. Only after crossing the sixty-tre mark did it finally begin to slow down, eventually coming to a halt about seventy tres away from the centre of the flowerbed.
“Forty-four thousand six hundred and thirty-six flowers… or… over forty-one percent!” the demigod announced, his voice shaky.
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