Before long, a new flock of enchanted weapons hovered silently by Kassorith’s side. Percy and his host had spent several minutes replenishing their reserves and replacing the constructs with the new model, their body almost paralyzed completely by the time they were done. Suffice to say, they wouldn’t last long enough for another attempt, should their next attack fail.

‘Charge the swords with about half as much lightning mana as you can muster and leave the rest to me,’ Percy told Kassorith – who was a lot better at wielding his own mana types.

The Thess’kalan was still oblivious to Percy’s plan – since the latter hadn’t bothered to share any specifics – but he followed the instructions without protest, clearly trusting him enough by now. Kassorith flooded the weapons with electricity, causing them to buzz with power, though there was a noticeable difference from their previous barrage.

The indigo flashes zapping through the enchantments now sported a reddish hue, the swords radiating a lot more heat than before. The extreme temperature differential distorted the air, transparent plumes rising up, as the thin sheet of frost beneath Kassorith’s tail cracked under his weight. The change relieved Percy and his host from their growing discomfort, though they both understood it wouldn’t last long. Based on their rapid consumption, their core would dry up in the next few seconds, leaving them exposed again. The sharp scent of heated metal lingered in the air, tickling Percy’s borrowed nostrils.

Not wasting any time, Percy allowed his spectral trait to take over, having found a brand-new canvas to draw his runes on, as well as a new brush. Working in tandem with his host, he launched the swords once more, though he didn’t aim directly at their opponent. Instead, he steered the trajectory of their constructs away, knowing that not doing that would have only given the ice user’s domain a chance to rob the steel of its accumulated strength.

The sharpened blades arrived at their destination in an instant, sinking about halfway into the tiled floor. Kassorith’s opponent spared the swords just a sliver of attention, his focused expression giving way to a faint frown – curious and amused in equal parts. The poor fool hadn’t the slightest clue what they were up to. Not that Percy was much more confident that his plan would work, but he was already committed to finding out.

“Here goes nothing,” he spat through gritted gums, letting the Scribing trait adjust the weapons slightly, shifting them along the floor by a few centimetres. He even softened the metal, bending the blades into smoother, interlocking curves.

Something clicked in his mind – feedback from a new layer of enchantments under his control. The confirmation of his plan’s feasibility caused the corners of his borrowed lips to curl up, while the ice mage’s smirk froze on his face instead, most ironically. At the same time, the temperature in the arena began to rise at a modest pace. The air carried the faint tang of ozone and scorched dust, the sort of detail that even the crowd might have felt prickle on their tongues if not for the various barriers blocking the scent. The change wasn’t very obvious at first, but Percy wasn’t that surprised that his opponent had noticed it. Given how he fought, the man was probably even more sensitive to things like that than Kassorith.

Even so, it wasn’t until several seconds later that the ice mage seemed to fully wrap his mind around what had happened, his eyes widening in shock. Simply put, Percy had used the swords themselves as the ink, drawing yet another layer of heating runes onto the arena!

The blades formed the strokes of the magical symbols, the heat released by the smaller runes along their metallic surfaces blending with the residual lightning mana to fuel the new enchantments. If one paid close attention, they would notice that the crackling bolts of electricity now sported an even deeper crimson colour, as more of their power got converted to heat. Their effect had already surpassed what should be possible with a simple fire affinity. In fact, Percy was confident the constructs were now approaching the temperature of Gabe’s mana – despite lacking his friend’s aptly-named blessing.

To accomplish this, Percy had actually taken a page out of Metatron’s book. The titan had invented an entire runecrafting language with the express purpose of allowing the runes to be combined more easily – either by overlapping the symbols, or by linking them side-by-side into tightly packed networks of unit cells.

Those weren’t the only ways to double down on their effects, however. Percy was probably just reinventing the wheel, but he now realized he could also draw the enchantments on separate, yet overlapping, mediums. Of course, it wasn’t like he could have even attempted this in the past. Before obtaining his latest trait, he hadn’t been able to control so many constructs with such precision, nor did he possess any enchantments that could be used in this manner – amplified to such extremes.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

“It doesn’t matter,” the ice user whispered, unconcerned, breaking his silence for the first time since the start of the battle. His voice was soft, but Percy and Kassorith heard it clearly, as did the spectators, most likely, thanks to the stadium’s enchantments feeding the sound through the barrier and amplifying its volume. “I’ll admit this is a clever trick – better than anything my previous opponents have tried. But it’s not enough to break through my bloodline.”

Percy’s smile only widened at his opponent’s lazy taunt. “Who said that I was done?”

Grabbing the hilt of the nearest longsword – one planted within an arm’s length of his host’s body – he drew the rest of Kassorith’s lightning mana, pouring it into the construct. The colour shifted once as it flashed through the runes, and a second time as it leapt to the swords next to it.

But that was just the start.

A crimson chain continued to hop from one group of interlocked weapons to the other, each set radiating a tremendous amount of heat with every deep flash, causing the very ground beneath them to suffer. The ice cracked and the water boiled, even the stone turning red-hot for the briefest of instants. The crowd gasped audibly now, the heat so intense that even the protective wards buzzed in protest. The roar of evaporating frost filled the stadium like a chorus of angry spirits.

One by one, the runes lit up across the floor, a rhythmic dance of hellish bolts spreading through the battlefield. The superheated mana picked more stray electricity along its path, the enchantments blinking faster with each violent revolution. Before long, it was almost impossible to tell them apart, the mana jumping so quickly between the constructs that the whole tapestry of magic seemed to settle into a permanent blur, humming with ill-concealed fury.

Judging by his unimpressed gaze, the ice mage still didn’t believe he was in any real danger. From his vantage point – smack between all the medium-sized runes – he couldn’t truly see what was happening. But Percy saw everything well enough, the longswords’ precise locations clear in his mind.

“Let’s see how you do against this one,” he said as one final rune took form, falling under his control. It was a single heating rune, not that different from all the others giving it its shape – except, of course, for its sheer size, the colossal amount of scorching mana fuelling it, and the two prior layers of similar enchantments supporting it.

An ominous flash filled the frozen dome, dispelling the oppressive darkness. Percy barely registered the crystalline ceiling cracking open like an egg before a crushing wave of hot air slammed onto his host, pressing him against the barrier. Despite Kassorith’s resistance to heat, his high grade, and the two domains protecting his body, Percy and his host still felt a rush of searing pain on their chest and face, the blast peeling their scales off and frying the soft flesh beneath. It almost felt like their eyes had melted within their sockets, Kassorith’s heat-sensitive tongue burning to a crisp like a cheap wick. The stench of scorched flesh clung to the air, sickly sweet and impossible to ignore.

This second-hand blast that they themselves had caused might have killed them, if not for a foreign sensation spreading over their body the very next moment, preventing further damage. Percy struggled to understand what was going on, because most of his host’s senses had stopped functioning properly. Still, he scarcely registered a series of complex enchantments drawn by another’s hand covering their burnt flesh. Those were naturally the stadium’s runes, having activated to save Kassorith from certain death – the match was over!

Percy would have grinned if the heat hadn’t twisted the muscles on his host’s face beyond his control. Getting saved by the stadium would have normally meant their disqualification. However, if Kassorith had suffered so much damage while standing at the very edge of the arena, their opponent was bound to have had an even worse time – located in the epicentre of the blast as he was.

‘Use your bloodline,’ Percy advised.

Kassorith didn’t need to be told twice, the two of them soon finding themselves in a brand-new, child-like body. They didn’t rush to consume their discarded flesh, their priority being to use their now-repaired eyes to examine the aftermath of their attack.

There was no trace of the frozen dome left. Smoke still rose from the centre of the arena, making it difficult to see what had happened to their opponent. A wide, circular crater spanned about a third of the floor, filled with boiling magma. A body floated atop the viscous liquid, protected from the extreme heat by the same colourful runes that Percy and Kassorith had seen so many times during the tournament. The man was still alive, a pained expression visible on his face. His scales had been charred black from head to tail, leaving the ice mage in an even worse state than the dried-up husk that Kassorith had just discarded.

The crowd – that had previously gone silent as they waited for the outcome with bated breaths – suddenly erupted in cheers, the announcer’s booming voice declaring Kassorith’s victory. The tiny Thess’kalan’s heart thrummed excitedly in his chest,his small claws trembling as adrenaline coursed through his veins. But Percy didn’t care about any of that, his attention drawn to his new notification.

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