The Lone Wanderer

Nesha picked up the knives from the table, before leaving the hut. Percy was still busy using his new trick to repair his injured soul, so she’d deliver the finished tools to Mr. Dylan for him.

On the way to the shop, she didn’t stop playing around with her mana, however, trying to keep it in the shape of an orb. It was annoying, training like this, day in and day out. Not something she was very accustomed to. Still…

‘I don’t want to lose to him.’ she bit her lip. ‘At least, not too badly…’

Percy was already stronger than her, despite being a grade lower. This was a strange thing for Nesha but, seeing him constantly doing his best motivated her to try harder too. While she’d never admit it, she felt like shit guzzling down three doses of Aurora Dew per day while contributing so little to the group.

Of course, Nesha had long known that Percy was hard-working. In fact, she’d learned this as early as during their first month in the Guild, years before their collaboration. But it was one thing seeing the results of his efforts from the outside, and a different thing entirely to live in the same house, watching him train relentlessly from sunrise until sunset. And oftentimes, beyond…

The guy never stopped – except for when he worked on the anvil. But even that, was in part to maintain their cover as commoners and pay the bills, while also helping him get better at reinforcing his pure constructs.

‘Well, there’s also the time he spends practicing with that atrocious ocarina…’ she reminded herself, cringing as the memory of the nail-scraping sound made her want to tear her hair out. She had no idea why he’d kept the darn thing, but at least he only played for Micky nowadays.

In any case, it wasn’t a mystery to her how Percy had grown so strong. Given his abundance of secrets combined with his peculiar work ethic, and anything else would have been stranger. She very much doubted she’d be able to keep up with him, but she wouldn’t forgive herself if she continued to waste her own gifts.

“Good morning! Miss Nesha, was it?” Mr. Dylan asked, breaking her out of her thoughts. “How is Percy doing? I haven’t seen him much lately.”

“Good morning! Indeed, he spends all day working at home.” she said, speaking a half-truth. “I figured helping him out with the chores was the least I could do.”

She handed him the knives, getting some silver coins in return, as well as a couple bars of pig iron that Percy would be using for the next batch. They were heavy, but not to a Yellow. Especially not since she started exercising.

Bidding the man farewell, she brought the metal home, before going out for another round, to restock their supplies. Initially, she’d discussed with Percy the possibility of getting herself a job in the town, but other than her marketing skills, there wasn’t anything else she’d be much good at. Besides, they didn’t really need a lot of money. Percy’s job was more than enough to cover for the necessities and get himself some blacksmithing practice.

In the end, they’d decided it was best for her to pose as a housewife. After all, her current priorities were things she could work on while staying at home. She had to get better with her magic so that she wouldn’t be a liability in a fight, as well as working towards the enchantments for the spatial amulets.

‘If he brings me any…’ she sighed.

Nesha had already grown decent at drawing the pocket runes. Sadly, Percy hadn’t had the chance to bring anything else from the Vault. According to him, it was only recently that he felt confident taking the Red magiscript challenge for some credits, so he only began looking for a suitable host to take there in the past few weeks. And he had yet to find one.

After buying the groceries, Nesha returned home again, taking her second dose of Aurora Dew for the day. Like Percy, her next promotion was a little over a decade away. Reaching Green in her thirties would be a dream come true. People who didn’t know her might even mistake her for a Yellow-born. At least until her peers started hitting Blue a century earlier than her.

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‘Not that there’s any room for us in high society anymore…’ she smiled bitterly.

For the time being, they had to hide from the world. And she didn’t know if there was a way out of their mess either. Their current plan was to lay low for as long as possible and hope for the best. Admittedly, not the most thought out one.

Even beyond their conflict against House Tantalus and their rapidly dwindling supply of elixir, finding a way to placate the Divine Root was arguably their most pressing issue. Percy didn’t mention it much, but Nesha could tell it was weighing on him hard, as nothing else would matter should they get caught.

‘Oh well, I suppose we both knew the risk when we made our choices…’n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Ignoring Percy who was still working on his recovery, she lied with her back on the floor, before beginning a set of sit ups. According to him, it would take her years before she was ready to learn Circulation. Physical exercises weren’t what she had imagined spending the first half of her 20s on. Still, the boosting art was arguably the most useful spell she’d ever seen. She’d be ungrateful to not bother learning it after Percy generously offered to coach her.

She only took a break a couple hours later, once she had grown too tired to keep going. Sadly, they didn’t have a life user nearby for her to cheat her way through this phase of the training as Percy had.

Glancing around the room, Nesha saw Percy still sitting cross-legged in the same spot, Synchronization active. She couldn’t observe his soul directly, but Mana Sense revealed a ridiculous amount of mana pouring into his stomach. It was partially obscured by his bandage, but she did see a huge portion sticking to the ceiling of what she guessed was his wound.

The hole had already shrunk noticeably in the last few hours! Not that strange, in hindsight. Between Percy’s insane mana regeneration and Micky eating Yellow souls to supplement him, he’d only need a week or two to fully patch it up, before sending clones again. And that was only because he had to recreate the entire chunk his clone had lost. Normally, they estimated he should be able to recover within a day once a clone returned, letting him essentially send them out back-to-back!

Drawing some mana from her core, Nesha formed a miniature butterfly, making it fly around the room. Its design was crude, some of its mana leaking with every flap of its misshapen wings, leaving a trail of black motes in its passing. Her mana control was still atrocious, but it was already better than Percy’s. And this wasn’t due to her being more talented or more hard-working than him.

It was a feature of her grade.

A mage’s control over their mana greatly increased with each promotion. This was why Yellows and Greens could form more intricate spells and control them remotely. For example, the time spells of that noble they had faced before fell in that category. This was in stark contrast to Percy’s spells, that he had to essentially prepare before firing. It was why he couldn’t change the trajectory of his throwing knives or his sickles once he launched them.

Of course, that had begun to change a little once he started fuelling his spells out of that strange, fused mana of his. Powered by two Orange cores, his teal constructs were easier for him to control, which was how he was able to more easily change the Mantle to a bunch of projectiles or change his mana’s properties mid-flight. At least, that was their current hypothesis.

‘Oh well… It’s none of my business anyway. I have my own magic to worry about.’ she thought, letting the butterfly disperse once she ran out of mana to fuel it.

Looking out of the window, she noticed it was already dark. She grabbed another vial of Aurora Dew from the amulet, before heading towards the door. One of her current projects was to spread more of her pitfall traps in the Grisly Bog each night, to prepare for when their next enemy arrived. And to keep Micky some company, when Percy was too busy to do so himself.

Yet, right when she was about to leave, Percy spoke, stopping her in her tracks.

“Nesha.”

“Hmmm?”

“Remember when you asked me to give you a second core?”

“Of course. You said it was too dangerous to try that on a friend. Also, that it wouldn’t be of any use to me if I didn’t train with it.”

“Right. Both of those are still true, but a couple things have changed since then.”

Nesha nodded. She still wasn’t quite ready to fight a fellow Yellow by herself, but she was confident she could support Percy and Micky in a fight without hitting them by accident.

“I’m not just talking about your own growth.” Percy added, probably guessing what she was thinking. “This mending art is a game-changer. Obviously, I’d like to spend some more time getting better with it, and it’s never going to be completely risk-free, but it would be hypocritical of me to lecture others about risks when I’m gambling with my own life all the time.”

Nesha’s eyes widened, but Percy raised a hand to stop her.

“Not right now. Keep practicing and think hard about it. If you still want to go through with it, I’ll give it a shot as soon as we get ourselves more elixir.”