The obsidian golem spun like a cyclone of death, its six blade-shaped arms making shrill sounds as they sliced through the air. Skidding atop the black liquid, its dark frame blended with the bright yellow glow of its enchantments, turning it into a blur. Riding up and down the waves that its own violent movements stirred, it chased Cassiel around the cube, trying to cut him to pieces.

  ‘Shit, we’re about to get hit!’

  Gritting his host’s teeth, Percy focused a chunk of pure mana on their chest, barely preventing the golem from splitting Cassiel in half. The boy still ended up with a nasty diagonal wound across his torso, causing him to wince.

  The soft cyan mana made for a fragile barrier, but that was the price that Percy had to pay to keep Reinforcement secret from Metatron. In the ‘swarm’ challenge, he’d at least been able to use Self-conversion to refuel his host’s second core, giving them more literal firepower to unleash on the smaller constructs.

  Here, its best use was keeping them alive.

  Emptying a few healing potions into the child’s stomach, Percy resumed the chase, carefully studying his opponent’s movements in search of an opening. This wasn’t the first time they’d attempted this wave, but getting a read of the golem’s erratic attacks was a million times harder without his mutated eyes. Then again, without a soul to examine, even the Sovereign’s Eye might have not been nearly as effective.

  ‘There! Whenever it’s about to catch up, it speeds up for a few seconds, but it has to slow down afterwards.’

  Taking a deep breath after the other – as deep as he could manage without causing the cut on Cassiel’s chest to widen, at least – Percy pushed the boosting art to its absolute limit.

  The boy’s muscles swelled as his veins squirmed beneath his reddening skin. The straight, cyan lines leading to his sternum shone brighter, as did the flame-like orange lines spreading out of his abdomen.

  Sadly, Percy’s host was held back by more than his primary affinity. His petit stature made him way too physically weak for his grade, the human-sized golem before him looking like a towering monstrosity.

  Luckily, Cassiel was just as agile as he was supposed to be. More, even.

  Pumping pure mana into their second core, Percy converted it into additional fire mana, using a few pre-casting exercises to spin and compress the flames. Dancing atop the roiling lake of tar, he gracefully evaded the construct’s deadly swings, biding his time.

  The moment he saw the golem’s attacks slow down, he slipped through a gap between the weapons, leaping to his opponent’s chest. Placing both hands on the construct, he finally unleashed all the fire mana he’d been preparing, the skin on Cassiel’s palms blistering under the heat and pressure – despite his resistance to the affinity.

  The golem was sent flying back, crashing against the wall with a deafening boom, cracks spreading all over its body. The runes blinked several times as it tried to stand, though its job only got harder as it slid down the dented surface and into the liquid metal.

  The substance rushed to repair it, but the damage was too extensive. Crumbling faster than it could recover, the enchantments on the golem’s body finally went dark as the cube announced Percy’s victory.

  “Congratulations! Wave 6 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”

  “Awarded credits: 1800. Current balance: 37009.”

  “Awarded credits: 1800. Current balance: 24300.”

  “Wave 6 is a special milestone. Bonus reward is available. Please voice your request. NOTE: Bonus reward is limited to the Yellow grade.”

  “Just… save this one for later too…” Percy said amidst pants as the black swamp got drained into the floor, all the scratches and indentations on the walls of the cube being undone in real time.

  “Evaluating request…”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Evaluation complete. User ‘Percy’ has 11 bonus rewards pending. User ‘Cassiel’ has 3 bonus rewards pending.’

  Finally.

  It had been six months since he arrived at the Vault, all three of his clones and hosts having worked tirelessly to reach this point.

  Everyone had made it past the sixth waves of the combat challenges. In fact, the others had had an easier time, since their hosts possessed air and water affinities respectively, which they were more familiar with. However, none had dared to attempt the seventh waves, as the jump in difficulty would inevitably be too high, and the risk too real.

  That said, the Orange and Red clones had managed to climb much higher on the magiscript ladder. The former had cleared the twelfth wave, just barely getting to the second bonus reward, while the latter had even cleared the fifteenth.

  This was the kind of achievement that Percy doubted any of the Vault’s residents could boast of, unless they somehow discovered their own method of cheating their way into the lower grades like him.

  According to the Yellow clone’s estimates, the waves that had stumped his siblings should be on par with his own in difficulty. Based on what they had told him, where the Yellow level demanded more complex enchantments, the lower grades focused on a greater volume of runes, though the end result was the same.

  ‘Alright. I think this is about the most we can realistically hope for,’ he thought.

  He still wanted to try the tenth wave of the Yellow magiscript challenge later, and the others probably wanted to push for an additional wave as well – considering that they shared his personality.

  However, the weaker clones had finished the bulk of their challenges earlier than him, so they’d been waiting for him to buy them some books for a few days already. It would be inefficient to delay them any further, plus he was eager to spend some of his earnings.

  Before he began his shopping spree, there was someone that he had to check up on, however.

  ‘Cassiel? How are you doing?’ he asked his host. ‘I know the past few months have been intense, but you’ll be able to buy whatever you want for a very long time with so many credits.’

  The boy had never complained, no matter how boring the magiscript challenges had been, or how dangerous and painful the combat ones did. He’d obviously accumulated fewer credits than Percy, but he’d still amassed nearly as many as Gabe had had, back when Percy had first met him, despite his lower grade, lack of a blessing or bloodline, and having a pure affinity.

  ‘I’m doing great sir,’ a childish voice rang inside Percy’s soul. ‘A little tired, but I’m eternally grateful for the opportunities you’ve given me.’

  Percy shook his head. ‘Don’t thank me. If anything, it was selfish to force this on you for my own benefit. I’m glad that I was able to compensate you for your help though. Be careful not to spend all your credits and bonus rewards at once. I suggest you take a few weeks to think carefully before buying anything.’

  The boy nodded. Percy wasn’t going to touch his host’s rewards, even though they could technically share. He’d earned more than enough stuff on his own, so he wouldn’t even entertain the idea of taking advantage of the kid.

  Pressing his hand against the wall, he watched a rectangular exit form with a burst of compressed air. Leaving the challenge cube for the first time in a while, he found a long line of people waiting for their turn outside, their expressions marred by irritation and impatience.

  “Sorry about that!” he hurriedly yelled, bowing his head apologetically at the glaring giants.

  In his defence, he hadn’t slacked a minute inside the cube. He’d just had too many difficult challenges to complete. The magiscript ones had only taken him a few days, because he’d been proficient enough to clear them with relative ease, but the combat challenges had required several attempts each.

  Moving past the grumbling crowd, he found an isolated spot to sit, relaxing for a few minutes so that he wouldn’t browse the database with an exhausted mind and make any avoidable mistakes. Only once he was more or less back in shape did he dare to get his rune index printed again, skimming through it for inspiration.

  Percy had come here with several, very specific runes and enchantments in mind, but it wouldn’t hurt to broaden his horizons. While he was far more proficient in magiscript than someone his grade had any right to be, he understood that he had several shortcomings to overcome.

  He’d specialized in certain enchantments that he regularly used in combat or alchemy, but his scope was embarrassingly narrow. To this day, he didn’t even know the runes for lots of simple, everyday objects that they had on Remior.

  This included things like the weighted clothing that he’d used in his youth, the enchantments the Alchemists’ Guild used to trap much of the excess ambient mana from the Fungal Spire inside the settlement, or the self-cleaning enchantments on their robes.

  ‘That’s all in the past. By the time I leave this place, I’m going to be a well-rounded master…’ he decided.

  Other than that, there were plenty of interesting rewards he wanted. The spatial seals would massively expand his storage capacity, and the test might allow him to safely absorb an extra fiend once he returned home.

  That would only cost two of his eleven bonus rewards!

  Percy had yet to decide what to do with the rest. Finally, there was also the seal-crafting knowledge he needed, the potentially new alchemic principle that he wanted to look into, the issue of the void tournament to discuss, and another thing that he wanted to learn more about. Thinking about all of that, his borrowed lips couldn’t help but part into a wide, toothy grin.

  ‘The hard part is mostly over. Time to enjoy the fruit of all our labour!’

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