The Lone Wanderer

Percy spent the next few hours brewing Aurora Dew and healing potions, though his mind had drifted elsewhere. He was thinking over his idea, fleshing out the details. Alchemic principles were typically quite broad and could be applied in several ways. While pacification, redirection and deattunement were generally considered the pillars of elixir making, there was no reason why he couldn’t use them while brewing potions too.

‘In fact, that’s probably how the Guild’s alchemists brew some of the potions I’ve seen before…’ he reminded himself.

This was something he had deduced years ago, but his understanding of alchemy had grown a lot since then. By now, he was confident he could even pinpoint the exact steps his colleagues had taken when designing their recipes.

The healing and magic potions were the simplest ones, only involving a single primary ingredient each, as well as the extraction principle. The enlightenment potions were probably a step beyond that, requiring a round of pacification too – maybe more – to get them to last for hours. As for the rejuvenation potions, they were easily the most complex of the bunch. Not only did they involve two primary ingredients, they likely needed a round of deattunement to blend them without issue, as well as several rounds of pacification to stretch their effect overnight.

What Percy hoped to do with the mushrooms would fall somewhere between the enlightenment potions and the rejuvenation potions in difficulty. Pacifying the essence of the green mushrooms would cause the healing potions to act in a delayed manner. That way, they’d behave more like regeneration potions – enhancing the body’s natural recovery over a prolonged period of time. Thinking back, he was confident the moss he’d used on Atlantis was actually a naturally pacified ingredient.

In any case, the slower regeneration definitely aligned better with his current needs. After all, it wasn’t a sudden spike of healing that he needed, but a more extended effect, which lasted as long as the boost of the crimson mushrooms did. Like that, it would more easily counteract the damage, before it had the chance to spread and accumulate in his body.

As for deattunement, it could help him combine the two ingredients more smoothly, so that they wouldn’t mess with one another. Of course, neither life nor fire mana were quite as aggressive as beast mana, but they weren’t exactly docile either. If he could prevent them from lowering each other’s efficacy, the resulting potion would be both safer and more potent.

‘I should break it into four steps: Extraction, pacification, deattunement and extraction.’

The recipe was pretty much set in stone. The life mushrooms had to be extracted first, as he only wanted pacification to affect them. The crimson mushrooms already acted slowly enough. Next, he had to deattune the resulting regeneration potion, before extracting the crimson mushrooms directly within it. Suffice to say, going through so many steps would negatively affect his yield.

‘Ok. Assuming this works, I’ll need two types of secondary ingredients.’

Luckily, Percy had some crushed rainbow grass left, as he’d packed more than he needed before leaving the Guild. Unless the mushrooms proved incompatible with it for whatever reason – which was unlikely – he probably had deattunement covered. Sadly, he didn’t have anything suitable for pacification on him.

‘Hopefully Baldy can help with that.’

As far as Percy knew, his family didn’t have any active alchemists right now. House Avalon made enough money to cover their needs via other ventures – whether that was through the towns they owned, or through the healers they lent to their allies. It had been centuries since they last needed to send one of their members to the Guild.

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However, they’d probably accumulated a ton of junk in their warehouse over the years, and some ingredients could survive for a long time before going bad. If he got lucky, he might find a batch or two that he could use.

‘Alright, I’ll go ask him in a couple hours. He’s probably still training with Nesha right now…’

Activating Synchronization, Percy began fusing and sending his mana over to Micky for the next hour or so, hoping this would be enough to top him up. From what the crow told him, he’d already met up with Elaine, and she was currently out looking for some food to bring him.

Apparently, Micky had even made some progress in consuming his air mana through his mutated feathers, confirming that this was indeed a more efficient way to go about it. Currently, he was working on fully integrating this variant of mana conversion into Hibernation.

‘Wow. This will definitely be a Refined spell once it’s done.’ Percy whistled in appreciation. ‘Keep it up, buddy!’

Once he was sure his familiar was alright, Percy stored his alchemy equipment away, leaving only his jar outside. With his boosting art active, he grabbed a handful of teal powder, before starting to work on replacing his first scythe. All his reinforced constructs were made of five variants of teal mana nowadays – regular mana, crystallized mana, and three intermediate steps.

While his mana threads weren’t up to par quite yet, he did constantly discover stronger and stronger ‘alloys’ to use for his armour and weapons while experimenting. Of course, he had already run into diminishing returns, with the improvements being both scarce and modest. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He took that as an indication that he was getting closer and closer to his goal.

***

‘I’ll craft the second one tomorrow…’ he exhaled, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

Packing everything else up, he only left the newly forged scythe in the lab. Sadly, it was too large to fit in his amulet, and he didn’t want to carry it around the house either. Turning it invisible, he propped it up against a wall, hoping none of his relatives would come snooping overnight.

‘Worst case scenario, I’ll have to answer a bunch of awkward questions.’ he shrugged.

Having sorted everything, he headed to Baldy’s office, hoping to catch him there. He ought to have finished training Nesha by now. A couple minutes later, Percy knocked on the door, getting invited in almost immediately – to his relief.

“How’s Galahad treating you?” Archibald cut straight to the chase.

“Huh, I didn’t know he told you about it. The training is definitely tough, but I appreciate it.”

Baldy nodded.

“He’s not a bad person…” he sighed. “A little stern, perhaps. And quite prejudiced against low-borns. But he does want what’s best for our family.”

Percy remained silent for a moment. He pulled a chair across from Baldy, before plopping down.

“I get that, but that’s exactly why I was surprised by his offer. After all, your hopes of starting a new branch of the Clone bloodline are going to get dashed when I leave. Isn’t training me a waste of his time? From the family’s perspective, I mean.”

But Archibald shook his head.

“I think he’s starting to see you as more than just your bloodline. As he should. He’d be a fool to not realize your potential by now. I can’t speak about your grade or lifespan, but I can tell you one thing. I’d be surprised if your fighting strength doesn’t surpass mine at some point.”

Hearing his grandpa’s high praise, Percy failed to suppress a smile. Reaching a Violet’s strength as a Red-born wasn’t a small feat. And he did feel confident he’d get there, given how far he’d come in less than a decade.

That said, fighting strength wouldn’t be enough to reach his goals. Sure, it would help him – both in protecting himself and earning whatever resources he needed – but it wouldn’t extend his lifespan. Only advancements could. This was why he had to keep drinking Aurora Dew, and to keep searching the cosmos for another solution. It was also why he had to leave his family’s mansion, to head to the Thirsty Valley. Currently, it was the fastest way for him to reach Yellow.

“How’s Nesha doing?” he asked, changing the topic.

“She’s working hard. Very hard. Harder than the three of us did back in the day, actually. After all, I only have less than a month with her, whereas we spent several back then.”

“Do you think her body will be ready for Circulation by the time we leave?” Percy asked, though he could already guess the answer.

“Unlikely. But she’ll be close. Between the training she did on her own over the past few years and my accelerated sessions, she’s over halfway there.”

Percy nodded.

“What about your fancy mushrooms?” Baldy asked. “I trust you won’t let my clones’ sacrifice go to waste?”

“About that…” Percy grinned.

“This is actually why I’m here.”