Chapter 775: Remior

Percy was walking back to his residence in the settlement, accompanied by Micky in his Huehuan form and Zoris on his finger. They could have flown, but it was a nice day for a stroll, so they figured that they could use the time to discuss their alchemical ventures as well as other related topics, all the while enjoying the bright sunlight and the joyful dance of the magical motes raining down from the Fungal Spire.

‘I believe that the creature we saw in the canyon might have been Remior,’ Percy said, his own words sending a chill down his spine.

He was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that the very ground that he had stood on his whole life had once been a person like him. The idea that he might have actually met an incarnation of the Ancient only made the thought even more surreal.

‘According to what Zoris and the Broodmother have told us, Remior has to have been a member of an enlightened race: not a simpleminded demi-human,’ Micky argued. ‘He must have turned into a planet long before the first signs of life emerged on his body. Why would he look anything like the common ancestors you share with the trolls and goblins?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Percy admitted. ‘Perhaps, new life has a natural tendency to follow a similar evolutionary path to the Ancient that had spawned it, or maybe Remior simply chose to greet us in that appearance on purpose. Either way, he’s the only one who might remember what my people used to look like.’

Even if life was indeed predisposed toward a certain appearance, Percy knew that the connection had to be loose and fleeting. After all, humanity had already shed their green skin, glowing eyes, and pointy ears a long time ago, and the other tribes sharing the planet had gone down different paths entirely.

If somebody like Phoebe were to become a planet one day, the people that might eventually appear on her body would deviate even further from her ancestral lineage. Despite Percy’s doubts, however, this was the closest thing to an explanation that he’d been able to come up with.

‘I wouldn’t rule it out,’ Zoris said, jumping into the conversation. ‘Ancients rarely stir from their eternal slumber, and I can’t recall any documented cases of them sticking around long enough to answer questions, but people have reported that their avatars often look oddly similar to the creatures that they have produced. Scholars are still debating whether the Ancients choose an appearance that is simply more likely to put their children at ease, or if it’s truly a recreation of their original body.’

‘But why would Remior show himself to us specifically? Why now, and why in the middle of nowhere?’ Micky asked, clearly unconvinced.

Percy shrugged. ‘I may be able to answer the second part of your question. Remember the huge chasm that we carved into the ground outside the Whistling Woods when our army’s willpower clashed against Machaon’s? On a planetary scale, it shouldn’t have registered as anything more than a papercut: if even that: but it still sounds like a great way to draw Remior’s attention. After waking up, he likely noticed the turbulent times that have engulfed the planet, and the fact that the two of us are smack in the centre of the whole mess, eventually deciding to keep an eye on us.’

Micky scratched the back of his head, seemingly considering Percy’s explanation. In the end, he didn’t say anything else, which probably meant that he had found it plausible.

Honestly, Percy felt that this was good news. He had no idea what Remior’s intentions were: or even how lucid the Ancient had been: but he didn’t think that the slumbering planet had meant him harm.

Whether Remior had approached him and Micky out of pure curiosity or some other motive, the hints he had dropped about Percy’s ancestry and the magical ingredients appeared to have been intentional. The sentient world had presumably noticed Percy’s mutated body and chosen to help him strengthen it further. If nothing else, Percy was more confident that he would survive the modified ritual, which made him even more eager to complete his preparations.

The root he had harvested from the canyon had thankfully proven just as easy to cultivate as the other ingredients. After filling another cavern with the herbs, Percy had experimented extensively with them, eventually figuring out how to brew them into something useable.

The new potion was earth-based, and mainly affected a person’s skin and muscles, making them more durable. Percy guessed that this was what made the canyon ogres such excellent climbers: it helped them get a stronger grip against the steep slopes of their habitat and protected them from the occasional fall.

After testing several variants of the potion, Percy had settled on a cream that had to be applied directly to a person’s skin. He’d used the restructuring principle and secondary ingredients rich in mud mana to increase the viscosity of the root’s essence: in a manner somewhat reminiscent of how he brewed his trollsfury ink. The only difference was that the cream was even thicker.

He’d named the new product “ogreskin ointment”, and was actually quite happy with this one, because he could see himself using it even if the ritual proved unsuccessful. After all, even a temporarily strengthened body should improve his ability to resist his familiar’s corrosive mana.

Percy’s experiments with the roots had only lasted a few days, and this wasn’t even the only thing he’d done during that time.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

While waiting for the ingredients to grow, Percy had discreetly asked Archibald and Orin about other tribes of demi-humans. Besides the three that he’d originally been aware of, he’d only managed to learn of two others, and he’d actually visited both of them before the clone’s return from Melodia.

The first species were the kobolds: creatures that closely resembled the wood goblins. They had the same diminutive stature and pointy ears, though their backs were hunched and their skin sported a pale, sickly green colour that had reminded Percy of spoiled milk.

Unlike their healthier-looking cousins, the kobolds lived entirely underground, inside a vast network of tunnels located in the southern side of the continent. They didn’t possess the goblins’ glowing eyes either: in fact, the poor things were completely blind.

They did have excellent reflexes, however, allowing them to survive by ambushing smaller animals unfortunate enough to enter their dark kingdom.

During that trip, Percy hadn’t been as worried about the mysterious demi-human that he now understood to be Remior, though he’d still only brought Micky with him, seeing no reason to risk Nesha or Elaine’s lives again. The journey had taken a bit longer due to the lack of spatial compression, but he’d moved swiftly and covertly enough to guarantee his safety.

Finding the ingredient that had inherited the kobolds’ discarded traits hadn’t been too difficult. Remior hadn’t bothered to show up that time, but Percy and Micky had easily found lots of indigo-coloured flytraps scattered inside the tunnels, living alongside the demi-humans. In addition to helping the creatures preserve their fading lineage, the plants also benefitted the kobolds by keeping their habitat relatively pest-free.

Once he was happy with the ogreskin ointment, Percy had moved on to the flytraps, eventually brewing them into a lightning-based product that he had dubbed “koboldflash breath”. As the name implied, this one was an inhalable that he had brewed by mixing the flytraps with secondary ingredients rich in air mana.

Brewing and handling the gaseous substance was barely an inconvenience, because Percy’s cauldron was already airtight and highly pressurized, and he could easily prevent any leakage with his domain.

After passing through a person’s lungs, the airborne potion bonded to their nervous system, sharpening their reflexes for a couple of minutes.

The fifth and final tribe of demi-humans were the hobgoblins that lived inside a saltwater marsh located along the eastern coast of the continent. They resembled a cross between the wood goblins and the swamp trolls, with muscular bodies about as large as a human’s. They slept, hid, and hunted among the mangroves, and they seemed to do that for over twenty hours per day, in a ridiculous display of endurance.

Upon entering the marsh, Percy had noticed that the place had been full of leeches, ticks, mosquitoes, and other blood-sucking pests. However, the parasites had appeared to actively avoid the hobgoblins for some reason: at least more so than other animals living in the area.

After observing the demi-humans for a couple of hours, Percy had seen a slightly more daring mosquito attempt to take a sip of blood from a hobgoblin’s neck, only to drop dead mere seconds later.

At first, Percy’s heart had skipped a beat, as he had thought that the demi-humans’ blood might be toxic, and that whatever special trait they possessed might synergize well with his Greater Thess’kalan Physique.

His assumption had later proven to be partially incorrect.

He’d found another pair of different but similar-looking ingredients, much like the mushrooms that he had harvested from the trolls. It was flowers this time, though they weren’t poisonous as he had initially guessed. Half of the plants sported glowing green petals rich in life mana, while the rest were azure and appeared to contain water mana.

Mixing the two reagents into a single potion had proven slightly more complicated than the ointment or the inhalable, because Percy had needed to find the correct ratio between the two flowers, on top of including deattunement and pacification steps to ensure that the distinct mana types interacted in a beneficial way.

The good news was that he had managed to skip the restructuring step, as his fifth potion had turned out more effective when ingested in its default, liquid form.

The greenish-blue substance appeared to seep deep inside Percy’s marrow when consumed, temporarily changing something about the very quality of his blood. For a few minutes, his body seemed to draw more oxygen from every breath, allowing him to exert himself less than he normally would.

He’d even tried feeding some of his blood to a couple of leeches that he’d brought with him from the marsh, only to watch them die on the spot.

To this day, Percy still wasn’t sure what exactly the fifth potion did, but it appeared to have something to do with his metabolism. It was the only thing that would explain both the hobgoblins’ heightened endurance and their ability to fend parasites off. He’d named it the “marshblood tonic”, largely because “hobgoblingsblood” didn’t really roll off the tongue.

With five magical potions designed to grant him the demi-humans’ traits as effectively as possible, Percy had been itching to begin the ritual for weeks. He’d ultimately chosen to delay a little longer, partly to wait for Zoris and the clone to return from Melodia, and partly to complete a few additional preparatory steps.

He’d also asked around for other tribes of demi-humans that he might have missed, having even gone as far as to contact the patriarchs of the allied families and the Guild’s elders. He didn’t think that there were any spies or traitors in the alliance: mostly because their spectral contracts would kill them if they tried to stab Percy in the back: though he would still have to be more careful when visiting another tribe of demi-humans.

In the end, his worries proved unnecessary, as nobody seemed to have heard of any others.

That didn’t necessarily mean that there weren’t any: perhaps there was an isolated tribe somewhere that humanity had never discovered or, maybe, every other subspecies that had branched off his bestial ancestors had already gone extinct.

Either way, Percy wasn’t planning to go on a wild goose chase, as he was more than happy with the set of catalysts that he’d already accumulated. The Ancestral Lineage Sect on Thess’kala had only paired their demigods’ Heartblood with a couple of secondary ingredients, and Percy had already prepared over twice as many.

If he was right about the ritual, his potions were bound to stir something within his blood, pushing the mutation down a different path.

If not?

Well… as long as he didn’t accidentally kill himself: which was admittedly a very real possibility: he’d only miss out on a negligible boost to his current physique, as undergoing a third bath without modifications wouldn’t do much.