The wounds weren’t that troublesome, but the toxins spreading through Kassorith’s veins were a lot harder to deal with. A wave of nausea slammed into Percy’s borrowed head, causing his surroundings to turn blurry as insidious tendrils of weakness seeped into his muscles. The ritual had elevated his host’s resistance to the substance, of course, but it had raised the potency of the woman’s venom just as much. In fact, Percy was willing to bet that his opponent had undergone more rituals than Kassorith.

Not waiting for him to regain his bearings, the female disciple was already upon him again. Percy didn’t think he’d have to worry about a second mind blast this soon, but the venom had still left him in a bad place. Adding what little mana his host had been able to gather, Percy extended his weapon’s reach slightly, hoping it would help.

His wild swings did appear to give the woman pause, keeping her at bay. Percy slithered closer and closer to the edge of the arena, doing everything he could to buy time, knowing that strengthening his weapon was his best shot. Still, he understood that his opponent wasn’t in a rush either – she was clearly happy to let her venom do its job as she accumulated more mana, opting for caution over unnecessary risk. The more Percy focused on the battle, the more the crowd’s cheers dimmed in his ears, leaving only the rasp of his own ragged breaths to anchor him.

‘You’re going to lose all your ingredients at this rate,’ Kassorith’s voice rang through Percy’s soul, carrying a hint of poorly concealed glee. At least the Thess’kalan hadn’t made any efforts to actively sabotage him, but Percy could tell that his host didn’t much care if they got eliminated this late into the tournament.

‘Just do your job and let me worry about the wager,’ Percy spat, not bothering with Kassorith.

The fight wasn’t going as well as he would have liked, but he hadn’t given up yet. As difficult as it was to handle the woman’s illusions and venom, Percy had his own advantages to rely on. Unlike his opponent – who had to exhaust her mana whenever she produced a new illusion – Percy could keep pouring metal into his construct, slowly building his strength up over the course of the battle.

At the same time, his host’s body was working overtime to purge the toxins, and Percy was rapidly adapting to both the woman’s movements and his own physical capabilities. Whether he would last long enough to tip the scales in his favour was still up in the air, but he hadn’t bet his hard-earned resources on nothing.

A few breaths later, the woman left herself wide open again. Percy realized it was a trick as soon as she allowed his dagger to sink into her exposed torso, but it was already too late. Once more, his opponent’s injured flesh vanished rapidly as his host’s brain registered the new wounds on his tail. At least Percy had been careful to guard Kassorith’s throat from every angle – else they might have lost already.

Even so, the fresh injection of venom was most unwelcome. Percy swayed back and forth, struggling to stay upright as the woman’s attacks grew more aggressive. By now, his dagger had reached the size of a shortsword, which definitely helped against his unarmed opponent. Still, it wasn’t enough to bridge the growing gap between them – especially since the weapon felt heavier in his grasp with every passing moment, each swing a monumental challenge.

‘I need to do something fast, or I’m really going to lose,’ he thought in alarm, racking his brain for anything that might help.

Adding an enchantment or two onto the construct would make it a lot easier to wield, but his Instantaneous Imprint spell was difficult to cast in this situation. His thoughts were a complete slog thanks to the venom, and the woman kept him under a lot of pressure. In theory, he could give Kassorith control of their body for a few seconds, but the man had made it clear that he didn’t have much experience fighting like this. They might lose before Percy drew even the first unit cell onto the blade.

‘It doesn’t need to be a complete unit cell,’ he reminded himself.

The structural integrity enchantment wasn’t necessary, as the woman would struggle to damage the weapon with brute strength alone. Regular Blue-grade steel wrapped in a couple of domains was plenty for this kind of battle. Percy only needed sharpness and lightness runes to wield the sword better, along with controlled self-repairs to replicate the enchantments.

‘Just two unit cells, with five runes each,’ he thought, before mentally shaking his head. ‘No. Not even that.’

Only one of the unit cells had to contain everything. The other could be a simple self-repair, without even a control rune. As long as he managed to copy the larger unit cell once, he’d have everything he needed to produce as many of them as necessary. So, really, he only had to draw a total of seven runes on the construct. Could he do it? While defending against the woman’s relentless onslaught? Maybe not. But it wasn’t like he had an alternative. If this failed, he’d lose anyway, so it wouldn’t hurt to try.

‘The sword is large enough for now,’ he told Kassorith. ‘Stop adding to its bulk.’

‘Do you want me to pass you lightning mana instead?’ the Thess’kalan asked.

‘No. Keep gathering metal mana – we’re going to need it later. But use it defensively for now. If you can block some of her attacks, it’ll help a lot.’

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Percy didn’t wait for a response, splitting a sliver of his attention and just as much willpower to stamp the first rune onto the base of the blade. The woman didn’t miss the chance to slash at him again, though Kassorith reacted just in time to gather some liquid steel onto their forearm, a blooming patch of metal stopping two of the claws. Still, enough venom found its way into their circulatory system to dull Percy’s senses by another step.

At least, the lightness rune was fully functional, making the construct a touch easier to swing. Happy with the trade off, Percy continued to plant one enchantment after another onto the weapon as more tiny shields appeared on Kassorith’s body. Most of the woman’s slashes still found their mark, since it was impossible to accurately predict her attacks. Her mind mana – which she happily used whenever she accumulated enough – didn’t make things any easier.

Every few blows, she spat more venom onto her hands, giving Percy a chance to draw an extra rune. Before long, his host’s pale body was a mess of reddish-purple cuts and metallic patches, but at least the initial set of enchantments on the shortsword were complete. That was only the first part of his plan, however. If he wanted to win, he’d have to scale the runes to cover the whole weapon. Only then would they have enough of an impact on the battle.

‘She’ll never give me the chance to do it slowly. I’ll have to streamline the process…’

During their earlier matches, Kassorith had bought him enough time to copy the enchanted fragments and fuse them together, but the current situation didn’t allow for that. Knowing he was swiftly running out of time, Percy liquefied the sword completely, taking extra care not to distort the magical symbols even slightly. If he made a mistake, the enchantments would easily lose their effect, and his opponent would never give him a chance to replace them.

Moving the two unit cells apart, he allowed the metallic patches on Kassorith’s body to flow to the weapon. Flooded with mana, the smaller self-repair soon produced a copy of the larger unit cell where the first one had been. Percy promptly dragged the new enchantment away, making space for more.

The woman seemed to realize he was up to something.

Changing tactics, she now aimed her attacks directly at the liquefied weapon, trying to destroy it before it solidified. Percy used his own body to shield the construct. He knew suffering more damage wasn’t ideal, but losing the sword at this critical moment would be even worse.

The pain and dizziness caused him to mess up a few of the new unit cells, wasting some of his efforts. Still, he maintained enough mental clarity to guard the existing ones with everything he had. Even better, the Scribing trait reacted violently to the woman’s attempts to ruin the enchantments, sending a ripple of cold fury through his soul that sobered him up slightly. The absorbed fiend’s influence accelerated Percy’s efforts, letting him feed more metal mana into the self-repairs, the unit cells doubling and quadrupling in record pace.

Soon, the whole sword was covered in unit cells, but Percy didn’t stop. He gathered all the metal mana coating his body, along with the excess that Kassorith was still providing him with. Percy even dragged the steel from the blade’s interior to the surface, changing the whole construct into a writhing blob of enchanted liquid. Before long, he had more unit cells than he knew what to do with, his desperation causing something to click in his mind, a new idea taking root.

‘What I’m doing… using the self-repairs to replicate my runes… isn’t that a form of writing too?’

It was, wasn’t it? Percy had been using his enchantments like this ever since he invented his Spiritforged Effigy. It was just a trick he’d come up with to save time, and it had served him well once he incorporated it into his weapons.

But it was so much more.

The liquid mana was just another canvas he could draw on – albeit a somewhat inconvenient one. The self-repairs were merely a tool to draw with – another quill he could dip in his mana, not that different from his regular method of drawing runes, nor the Instantaneous Imprints he applied using his borrowed domain. And as with every other type of writing, his spectral trait was the steady hand holding everything together, forcing its rigid standards onto Percy’s work.

As the realization dawned on him, the unit cells flowed along the liquid surface unbothered, moving closer to one another. The symbols interlocked, the intricate runes now feeling more like a part of the material itself – an inseparable feature of its texture.

The woman continued to attack, landing blow after blow. At some point, she stopped reapplying venom to her claws, clearly deciding that it was better to interrupt Percy’s forging at all costs, than to further mess with his senses. Meanwhile, Percy protected the ever-shifting blob as best as he could, guarding his throat with his free elbow. He even helped Kassorith draw more mana from their core, covering the weapon in enchantments inside-out.

Deciding he’d gathered enough, he allowed the construct’s shape to settle at last. The countless lightness runes robbed the weapon almost entirely of its weight, allowing Percy to wield the enchanted steel as if it was an oversized feather. A flash of silver spun around his borrowed hand, the elongated lump of metal slicing through the air faster than it had any right to.

The female disciple realized what was happening a moment too late. By the time she leapt back, Percy had landed his first true counterattack since the start of the battle – and a rather debilitating one at that. A chunk of flesh hit the ground with a wet splotch, a pained groan escaping the woman’s lips. Percy’s vision was blurry – his other senses not doing much better – but he still scarcely registered the blood spraying from his opponent’s left shoulder, and the thick scent of iron filling the arena, drowning out the acrid tang of venom.

In his hand, the weapon’s rotation came to a halt, revealing its shape. He was holding a long, cylindrical shaft, the texture of the delicate engravings feeling familiar in his palm. Percy used the construct like a cane to stop himself from collapsing, his surroundings spinning as the sting of his countless wounds made even standing a challenge.

Still, he couldn’t help but smile, feeling at ease beneath the crescent blade, the crimson light reflecting off its blood-stained edge a clear sign of things to come. Naturally, it wasn’t a longsword – or any type of sword – that he’d forged this time. Rather, it was a weapon he was far more comfortable wielding. Even with his opponent now missing an arm, Percy knew that the odds were heavily stacked against him. Yet, he somehow struggled to imagine himself losing with the powerful scythe firmly in his grasp.

[Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Spectral Art: Instantaneous Imprint – Refined - Spectral Art: Instantaneous Armament – Refined!]