Before doing anything else, Percy wanted to get his host’s living arrangements sorted. Heading back to the residential area, he soon located Cassiel’s old room under the boy’s guidance, reminded of how tight it was.

  The kid didn’t even have a shower like Gabe. Apparently, that wasn’t a luxury the talentless residents of the Vault could expect. If Cassiel wanted to wash up, he had to request scented mist to be dumped into his room, his bed made by some kind of “hydrophobic” fabric so that it wouldn’t soak the moisture.

  ‘Yeah… you’re not going to be staying in this shithole kid. Not if I can help it,’ Percy said, gathering his host’s scattered clothes.

  This was why they’d stopped by the place. Cassiel didn’t have much – just a couple of standard, synthetic shirts and trousers that one could request from the system. He could have just asked for new ones, but Percy thought that his host might be emotionally attached to his old clothes – considering that they were his only possessions.

  Leaving the building, he headed to the residential cube where his friends lived, making his way to Gabe’s floor. Asking the system for an unoccupied room, he picked the one closest to the others, dropping Cassiel’s stuff in a corner.

  Judging by his racing heart, the boy was ecstatic to see his new place. After gawking at the embedded shower for a few seconds, he gently caressed his soft mattress, this one made of something less uncomfortable. He looked eager to rest on a bed that actually fit him for a change, though he’d have to wait for Percy to leave before he could sleep. All things considered, this room wasn’t anything fancy either, but it was much more spacious than the previous one, feeling even larger due to the boy’s small frame.

  ‘Metatron is an efficient bastard, if nothing else,’ Percy thought, his borrowed lips curling into a bitter frown.

  The titan didn’t waste a square centimetre of space. There was no way the hulking sapients with the horns could have lived in Cassiel’s old room – children or not – meaning that Metatron provided each resident with a room tailored to their size.

  Not only did he make full use of the artificial world’s space, he also counted the seconds he gave each of his people, letting the low-borns starve if they failed to prove their worth after a few years. Everything was a transaction – from the bites of food they were allowed to eat, to the breaths of air they could inhale, to the size of bed they had to rest on.

  Percy sighed.

  This was nothing new, but seeing even a Yellow-born treated this way was quite eye-opening. Back on Remior, even a Red-born commoner usually got to live with more dignity, let alone someone like Elaine who had lived like a princess growing up.

  “Cube, I want another hard copy of my books. Stack them by the corner. User ID: WANDERER.”

  “Authorization granted. Evaluating request…”

  “Evaluation complete. Delivery in 2400 rits.”

  Percy raised an eyebrow. That was a long time to print a bunch of books. Then again, he owned several books now.

  The system began immediately, a hole opening in the ceiling with a burst of compressed air, one steaming-hot book landing on the floor after the other, forming a rising pile.

  The stack would take up a non-negligible amount of space even in Cassiel’s new room, but it was ultimately a small price to pay for seven thousand credits’ worth of knowledge. Percy didn’t mind sharing his growing personal library with his future hosts, to save them some money.

  In fact, he wasn’t going to stop with his friends at the Vault. He intended to put the new seals that he was about to purchase from Metatron to good use, bringing as many copies of the books as he could fit for his family, Nesha, and the rest of Remior.

  He didn’t know whether House Etna would be willing to ditch their runecrafting language in favour of a new one, as they would have to change everything, from their books to the academy’s curriculum, but they could certainly draw a mountain of inspiration from the Vault – at the very least.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Seeing as the system was still printing books, and that Percy didn’t have his new storage devices yet, he moved on to something else.

  “Cube, I believe I can spend a Yellow bonus reward to get my capacity for spectral fiends tested.”

  “Evaluating request…”

  “Evaluation complete. The request falls well within the parameters of your reward. Proceed to claim?”

  “Do it.”

  “Choice confirmed. Bonus reward ‘testing user’s spectral capacity’ requires specialized equipment. Please follow the indicators to the designated area.”

  “Indicators? Wha–” Percy swallowed what he was about to say as a bunch of arrows lit up on the floor. Something similar had happened back when he’d first tried to find the way to Gabe’s room.

  Following the glowing symbols out of the building, he was led to a couple of blue square outlines shining softly about three metres apart from one another. Each was more than large enough for a grown man to stand inside, though he guessed that he was supposed to step on the green circle blinking between them instead. As soon as his host’s feet touched the enchantment, the system spoke again.

  “Commencing ‘spectral capacity test’. WARNING: User is advised to not move until the test is over. Failure to comply may result in an incorrect assessment. The bonus reward will not be reimbursed in such a case.”

  Before the cube was even done speaking, a curved pillar with a square cross-section rose from one of the blue outlines, arching above Cassiel before connecting with the other. Numerous enchantments flashed rapidly across the inner wall of the semi-circular construct, only some of which Percy recognized.

  ‘Well… that explains why we had to come here for the test,’ he thought. He doubted that the weird arch could spawn anywhere in the artificial world. Even if it could, it sure wouldn’t fit inside the boy’s room.

  The runes on the metallic instrument turned silver, snapping him out of his thoughts. They kept growing brighter until he finally felt something stirring inside his soul. The spectral fiends awakened from their slumber one after the other, a set of insectoid limbs sprouting along his wisp, followed by thin hairs and a series of ever-shifting inscriptions.

  ‘Ah, here we go again…’ He sighed mentally, bracing for what was bound to be a painful experience.

  Oblivious to his thoughts, the enchantments kept rousing the traits, the legs bending in all sorts of unnatural directions as the hairs flailed wildly, wrapping around the limbs and trying to entangle their joints. Even the markings refused to play nice, shifting the landscape on the surface of Percy’s soul, trying to push the limbs and hairs aside, only to provoke their wrath in the process.

  Percy winced, though he was glad that his host didn’t seem to share his pain. No nine-year old deserved to be subjected to something like this.

  Trying his best to keep his emotions from spilling through their connection, and his borrowed body from twitching too much, he endured the effect of the invasive enchantments as the arch kept pissing the fiends off.

  At some point, the chaos reached its apex. It was still a far cry from when Percy had actually absorbed his third trait, but the pain utterly dwarfed just about anything else he’d experienced over the years.

  The equipment clearly wasn’t done with him just yet, however. Percy scarcely registered a new series of runes lighting up along the arch, heating his body up.

  ‘No… not my body…’ he realized through gritted teeth.

  The enchantments appeared to bypass his host’s flesh entirely, targeting his soul. Fuelled by soul mana, they seemed to work like a much more potent version of the heat runes that he had used to fend off the spectral fiends living near the Mirror Lake.

  Unfortunately, Cassiel wasn’t spared this time. What the boy was feeling was probably a mere fraction of Percy’s agony, but the latter’s wisp still ached for the child as he clenched his tiny fists.

  ‘Hang on, kid. I don’t think it’ll be much longer,’ he consoled him, hoping that he was right.

  Thankfully, the heat died down soon enough, prompting the next change. The temperature seemed to plummet this time, reminding Percy of his soul-freezing ice mana. Of course, the effect was much weaker, the enchantments merely trying to probe – not kill – him.

  Following the spectral chill, he felt countless ants crawling all over his soul, gnawing at it from inside out, the pain reminding him of the time he’d splattered wasp acid on his body. After that, there was a high-pitched noise that would have surely ruptured his eardrums had it been targeted at them, a crushing pressure that squeezed his soul into a fraction of its size, and several other unpleasant effects.

  ‘I guess it’s checking how my soul responds to different stimuli, trying to quantify its durability or something…’

  Luckily, the test only lasted a couple of minutes, though they’d felt closer to hours. Cassiel was drenched in sweat by the time the enchantments died down, the arch soon receding back into the floor.

  ‘Kid, are you okay? I would have asked one of my other clones to do this if I’d known how much it would hurt.’

  Not that his other hosts deserved the treatment, but at least they were both adults.

  ‘It’s fine. This is nothing compared to starving for weeks, unable to even sleep,’ the boy replied with a shake of his head.

  Percy was about to say something else, when the system spoke first.

  “Test complete. Processing results…”

  Forgetting about everything else, he waited with bated breath to hear the verdict.

  “Processing complete. Access ‘spectral capacity test’ report?”

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