PathOfPen

Chapter 473 – Cauldron

Percy groaned as the spinning shards slammed onto his chest, grinding against the shirt. The fabric tensed, countless tiny runes flaring up near the impact area, robbing the constructs of most of their momentum and preventing Micky’s attack from piercing through. Still, the blow sent Percy sliding back, his cloth boots carving a pair of narrow trenches across the wet boulder.

‘Okay… I suppose it was never going to make me completely invincible,’ he admitted with a shrug...

Chapter 472 – Cloak

Taking a break from weaving, Percy allowed his consciousness to drift into his familiar’s head, following his companions’ latest efforts. The crow had made significant progress with his boosting art, the Masterful spell now getting close to its most impressive upgrade yet.

The clone mainly assisted the bird with the Dance while devoting some time to a few projects of his own. He’d already taken advantage of Obatala’s Approval and Micky’s grade to awaken and lock a nascent doma...

Chapter 471 – Consuming the leaf

A rush of memories accompanied every painful throb in Percy’s head. His trip to Thess’kala hadn’t been his longest, but it had been densely packed with excitement, important knowledge and high-stakes battles. At least he’d grown a lot better at assimilating his clones, so he managed to wrap his mind around the key points fairly quickly.

Fully consolidating his gains would take a lot longer, since there were several things he had to deal with, and much of it had to be done in a v...

Chapter 470 – Return to Melodia

Percy clicked his tongue in annoyance upon sensing the disturbance in the cord. He’d been expecting the clone to return at some point – since he’d been gone for a while – but interrupting his work was always unpleasant.

‘Oh well… I suppose I was going to scrap this batch anyway,’ he thought, ripping the construct to shreds and letting it scatter in the wind behind Micky.

Technically, Percy could have stored the magical cloth away and resumed his efforts late...

Chapter 469 – Felhald (2)

‘If I’m lucky, she’s buried in a ditch somewhere…’ Machaon thought before shaking his head.

Technically, nobody had seen Nesha since before Percy’s infiltration of the Thirsty Valley, so there was a slim chance that she was dead. Perhaps, one of the Red-born’s enemies had managed to get to her before they got killed. Or, maybe, Percy himself had grown tired of the girl, feeding her to his monstrous crow to get rid of the dead weight.

But this was to...

Chapter 468 – Felhald (1)

The sun had already set by the time Machaon left his garden. He flew toward his family’s grand estate at a leisurely pace – leisurely for him, at least. Anyone below Violet would have found the rush of wind difficult to endure, yet Machaon barely registered it as it crashed against the thin film of willpower covering his body. He didn’t have to expend even a drop of mana to travel at this ridiculous speed.

Taking a few pieces of paper from his pocket, he unfolded them, examining t...

Chapter 467 – Machaon

‘He’s late. I hope he hasn’t run into trouble,’ Machaon thought.

Unfolding part of his domain, he blocked the gentle breeze disturbing the pond’s surface, forcing the water to still. Using the clear liquid as a mirror, he examined his face, noticing a few undue creases on his forehead, along with a couple stray strands of blond hair that had somehow escaped from his ponytail.

He forced himself to calm down, combing his hair into shape with his fingers, before ty...

Chapter 466 – Betrayal

‘There’s no point resisting, Percy,’ Kassorith said, a mental sigh faintly echoing through their muted connection. ‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to double cross you this time. Sadly, it’s no longer up to me. You sealed your fate when you revealed your existence to my master.’

Percy didn’t bother replying, being too busy holding on to his host’s soul. The cold-blooded Thess’kalan was trying to evict him even more aggressively than the previou...

Chapter 465 – Ingenuity

Flying through the sea of clouds, Kassorith couldn’t help but toss the occasional glance at the amethyst badge pinned to his tunic, on the side opposite his spatial device. It was only half the size of his palm, the deep, purple gemstone cut into a pentagonal shape, the faint outline of a clawed hand carved onto its face.

The object didn’t actually have a function other than allowing him to enter the void tournament. Still, he wasn’t in a hurry to store it away. No way he would fo...

Chapter 464 – Formation

Before long, a new flock of enchanted weapons hovered silently by Kassorith’s side. Percy and his host had spent several minutes replenishing their reserves and replacing the constructs with the new model, their body almost paralyzed completely by the time they were done. Suffice to say, they wouldn’t last long enough for another attempt, should their next attack fail.

‘Charge the swords with about half as much lightning mana as you can muster and leave the rest to me,’...

Chapter 406 – Pinesap town

Seeing the first of the small houses appear on the horizon, Elaine exhaled in relief. It had been around two months since they’d left the Valley, but they’d finally made it back to the Camelot province.

They’d completed the trip much faster than the last time, too. Elaine’s higher grade and their Insomnia trait had certainly helped – along with the fact that they didn’t have to worry about any companions keeping up.

They could’ve arrived even sooner, but they’d tri...

Chapter 463 – Final round

Kassorith’s eighth fight was strange, but also rather straightforward. His opponent simply stood in the centre of the arena, unarmed and unmoving. A single powerful spell – or even a well-placed slash of Kassorith’s enhanced claws – would have been enough to win Percy and his host the battle, and the whole tournament with it.

At least in theory.

Unfortunately, the burly man they were facing hadn’t made it this far into the competition by being an idiot. Ice mana – like...

Chapter 405 – Soul-freezing

Sitting on Micky’s back, Percy was preparing the ingredients for his mana threads as he paid the clone some attention. After seeing the latter make some tangible progress with the new mana type, he’d started sending him soul mana to accelerate the process.

Another week had passed since the battle against House Ypnos’s mages, and the clone could already reliably produce about a talonful of augmented snow every couple of minutes. Only, the substance now sported a dull grey colour, a...

Chapter 462 – Void tournament

‘I’m going to miss your affinity when I’m gone,’ Percy said.

His host’s metal mana was among his favourites, offering many advantages over his own pure mana. In fact, Percy didn’t think he could use his new trick without it – be it the original Instantaneous Imprint spell or its most recent upgrade, the Instantaneous Armament. Both of those relied on the malleability of Kassorith’s mana, which Percy’s lacked. Of course, having a spell he couldn’t use with hi...

Chapter 404 – Silver snow

The clone exhaled in relief as Micky flipped over the Blue’s corpse, pecking out his core – and a large chunk of his crumbling soul with it.

The man’s high-speed regeneration had been annoying to deal with, but overpowering him had only been a matter of time. After all, the mage had probably been in his current grade for years, his strength having long plateaued. His weaker affinity certainly hadn’t done him any favours either.

Micky, on the other hand, was still in a stat...

Chapter 461 – Den

Lifting the bottom of the shaft off the floor, Percy spun the weapon a couple more times, before glancing back at his opponent. It was difficult to make out any of the blurry details, but he still caught traces of pain in the woman’s expression and caution in her stance as he spoke.

“Come on. Time to end this.”

The female disciple didn’t need to be told twice. Despite her injury, she held the advantage, but that wouldn’t last much longer. If left alone, Percy would gathe...

Chapter 403 – Second Parade

A grey streak shot through the battlefield, bouncing from platform to platform around the earth mage. It was naturally Percy, who took advantage of his higher mobility to dodge all his opponent’s attacks.

Domain blasts and stone constructs of all shapes and sizes fell everywhere, leaving the rocky terrain full of craters as wide as houses. As for the snow, it was long gone, the ground beneath the two combatants laid bare.

No matter what the woman did, she couldn’t get anywhere...

Chapter 460 – Seventh round

The wounds weren’t that troublesome, but the toxins spreading through Kassorith’s veins were a lot harder to deal with. A wave of nausea slammed into Percy’s borrowed head, causing his surroundings to turn blurry as insidious tendrils of weakness seeped into his muscles. The ritual had elevated his host’s resistance to the substance, of course, but it had raised the potency of the woman’s venom just as much. In fact, Percy was willing to bet that his opponent had undergone more ritu...