“Cube. Restart the ‘swarm’ challenge. Green level. User ID: WANDERER,” Percy said after discussing the matter with his host.

  “Authorization granted. Restarting ‘swarm’ challenge, Green level. The user has already cleared wave 6. Do you wish to resume at wave 7? WARNING: Wave 7 contains elite enemies.”

  “Do it.”

  “Choice confirmed. Wave begins in 18 rits.”

  ‘By the way, you’ve never told me what you’re working toward,’ Percy said. ‘If I’m not mistaken, you were trying to claim a powerful fire spell with your bonus reward when we first met – before being forced to waste it to heal yourself.’

  Gabe sighed. ‘I’ve changed my mind. A fire spell wouldn’t be nearly as useful for me now. A good light spell would help more – if only to draw inspiration from – but I’ve come up with an even better idea. Sadly, I need three bonus rewards to make it happen.’

  ‘Oh?’ Percy couldn’t help but crease his host’s forehead. ‘Is it in the Blue list then?’

  Gabe nodded. ‘If we can get both combat challenges to the twelfth wave and the magiscript one to the sixth, I can combine all of my rewards to buy an affinity-changing treasure for one of my cores.’

  “Wave begins in 12 rits.”

  ‘Interesting…’ Percy replied with a hum.

  He’d long hypothesized that someone with two cores and a pair of composite affinities that had no overlapping elements could develop a grand total of ten distinct mana networks in their body, though Gabe was the first of his hosts actively working to make that a reality.

  It would take a lot of affinity fission and fusion to recombine all the basic elements into four additional composite affinities not native to the person’s cores, so Percy had no idea how practical it would be in combat.

  However, it would synergize extremely well with his boosting art if it worked. A fully cleared and tempered mana network could circulate about as much mana as a core, so Gabe would end up with twelve times the capacity of a regular person, six times the capacity of a regular Circulation user, and three times the capacity of a two-cored mage using Synchronization – like Percy. This was without considering any additional boost to his physique that might allow him to widen his channels even further.

  Someone like Elaine could never achieve this even if Percy brought her two different treasures, because both of her cores already shared the water element. That said, she could still develop a total of six affinities in the future, which was nothing to scoff at. It would give her double Percy’s capacity.

  Gabe would likely have to wait until Blue to get a second treasure by himself, as he wouldn’t be able to earn enough Green rewards sooner than that. Either way, Percy guessed that his friend’s situation was considered among the best-case scenarios for a young Moirai, though he struggled to decide whether being born with two rare affinities would be even better.

  They wouldn’t produce nearly as many combinations, and none of them would result in any additional, stable mana networks, which was quite a loss. Clearly, Percy’s boosting art synergized extremely well with composite affinities.

  However, rare affinities were still generally valued more highly than composite elements due to their unique properties, so it was hard to say for sure which was preferable.

  “Wave begins in 6 rits.”

  ‘What are you going to do if it has multiple uses left?’ Percy asked, thinking of something.

  ‘I’d like to pass it to Tlaloc if both of your clones are still here,’ Gabe replied. ‘I feel really bad for the guy.’

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  ‘Agreed,’ Percy said with a nod. ‘If you can get one with three uses though, I’m willing to trade you a use of a lightning treasure for it.’

  Luckily, Percy’s elemental body was still in his family’s province. He’d ended up staying longer than expected, to help his relatives consolidate their new territory. Even better, he had yet to decide who to spend the extra charges of his own affinity-changing treasure on. So far, he’d used it on Orin, Elaine and Gawain, and he was saving the fourth use for Nesha, though there was still one left.

  Archibald had suggested a few people, but he would probably be happier if Elaine grew even stronger, as she was quickly turning into one of House Avalon’s most powerful members. If Percy played his cards right, he might be able to help Gabe and his cousin upgrade both of their cores ahead of time.

  “Wave begins. May your challenge be successful!”

  ***

  Spinning rapidly, Gabe shaped all six of his wings into giant axes, allowing them to blend into a magical tornado. Combining his own reserves with the ambient mana around him, he used all three of his affinities to turn the heat up, supercharging his attack.

  There were three giant constructs in the tenth wave, all trying to surround him. As early as three waves ago, the cube had started throwing six-legged monstrosities at them, each tall enough to barely fit inside the room. Their heads and clawed paws reminded Percy of a lion’s, the artificial abominations using them to rip anyone dumb enough to approach.

  Even though this was still the Green level of the combat challenges, the constructs had blue runes pulsating along their glossy frames, indicating that they were genuinely powerful enough to threaten mages of the next grade.

  Percy had no idea how large the Violet golems were. If they were any bigger than this, they clearly wouldn’t fit inside the challenge cubes, meaning that there had to be specialized areas for the strongest mortals to train in. Regardless, he had more pressing things to worry about.

  ‘At least these things can’t use domains, otherwise we would have been in trouble.’ He sighed in relief.

  According to the clone in Tlaloc’s body who had faced similar monsters, the Blue golems exhibited extremely high resistance to hostile willpower, greatly weakening the effect of a domain. While a domain wouldn’t faze the constructs, it could be used to strengthen one’s spells, but the golems were still more troublesome against true Blue mages than Greens trying to punch above their grade.

  The golems couldn’t move too fast due to the limited space in the cube, though they’d still formed a tight circle around the two-cored Green, placing him right within their reach.

  Colossal limbs descended upon him one after the other, only to be melted off under Gabe’s heated offensive. He was experienced enough to prevent his spells from harming his own body too badly, though Percy still had to use his host’s elbow to wipe the sweat trickling into their eyes every now and then.

  The constructs foolishly continued putting pressure on Gabe, only to lose more of their mass with every passing second. Unfortunately for them, the man’s bloodline was fuelled solely through ambient mana, and Synchronization had only boosted his regeneration even further.

  Endurance had always been one of Gabe’s strongest traits, and it had only improved since Percy first met him.

  Advancing toward his opponents, he dodged any attacks that he could to preserve the temperature of his wings, using them to deliver devastating cuts across the constructs’ torsos, slowly shaving chunk after chunk of red-hot metal. The first golem collapsed after about a minute, the others following soon enough.

  “Congratulations! Wave 10 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”

  “Awarded credits: 10000. Current balance: 223743.”

  Finally. That was the last of the combat challenges that Gabe had already cleared, leaving only magiscript left before they started pushing beyond the man’s previous limits.

  Not in a rush to continue, Percy wanted to take a break to buy what he’d actually come here for. With two Green bonus rewards, he could grab something else first to throw Metatron off, pretending to only purchase the seal-crafting books after failing to find anything better.

  “Cube, I want to browse through the Green bonus rewards. Is there a way for me to visually study the list instead of listening to you go through it? User ID: WANDERER.”

  “Authorization granted. Evaluating request…”

  “Evaluation complete. The walls of the challenge cube may be used as screens to aid with reward selection. Proceed?”

  The system’s words left Percy’s borrowed jaw hanging.

  ‘Seriously?!’ he asked his host, not bothering to hide his irritation. ‘You couldn’t tell me this back when we first completed challenges together? Do you have any idea how annoying it’s been to navigate through the database?!’

  Gabe shrugged. ‘I thought you knew about it. I generally don’t need to do this, since I already have a pretty good idea of what is available and what I want to buy…’

  Percy sighed. “Yes,” he replied out loud, walking to the nearest wall as countless runes blended into a giant screen. As much as he wanted to punch his friend in the face, it would have to wait until he returned to the Vault with a different body.

  For now, it was time to see what the Green pool had in store for him.

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