Taking a break from weaving, Percy allowed his consciousness to drift into his familiar’s head, following his companions’ latest efforts. The crow had made significant progress with his boosting art, the Masterful spell now getting close to its most impressive upgrade yet.

The clone mainly assisted the bird with the Dance while devoting some time to a few projects of his own. He’d already taken advantage of Obatala’s Approval and Micky’s grade to awaken and lock a nascent domain similar to Duwa’s. Everyone understood that the unimpressive pulses of willpower would barely make a difference in a high-level fight, and that all of the clone’s efforts would go to waste as soon as the original Percy recycled him, but manifesting his willpower in the crow’s body hadn’t been that difficult anyway.

Other than that, he’d also worked on something that would hopefully help the main body coordinate with Micky whenever they fought as a team, though they hadn’t had a chance to test it yet. A few minutes later, the clone and the familiar took a short break, diving into the restless waves in search of their next meal.

The small group no longer spent as much time travelling. Constantly being on the move had made sense on the continent – when they were being chased – but the sea was vast and mostly peaceful. They hadn’t come across any enemies – or even traces of civilization, for that matter – in months. If anything, flying was more likely to draw unwanted attention than camping on the occasional deserted island or ragged rock formation.

Watching Micky sink his talons into another fish dumb enough to swim close to the surface, Percy sighed. ‘Months of seafood, after years of meat… Man, what I wouldn’t give for an apple or a tomato right about now…’

The endless expanse of deep blues and foaming whites had been quite thrilling at first, but its novelty had long evaporated. Percy and his familiar longed to feast their eyes on some lush greens and wooden browns for a change. Even the sound of waves crashing, once calming, now carried a dull monotony that gnawed at his patience. If there was a silver lining, it was that the place was tranquil enough for them to concentrate on their training with no distractions.

‘Better get on with it then,’ the clone said through the cord. ‘The sooner you’re done, the sooner we can return.’

Percy nodded, agreeing with… well, himself. Shifting his attention back to the grey fabric in his hands, he allowed the spectral traits to transform the parts of his soul residing in his fingers, resuming his efforts to fashion the ethereal threads into a network of enchanted cloth.

He’d already spent way longer on the upgrade than he’d ever intended. It had taken him months just to perfect the material after Acton’s death, and several more to increase his output to a somewhat reasonable level. Right when he’d thought he’d been ready to apply the new magiscript skills he’d developed with Nesha’s help to his Phantomspun Silk, the third trait had complicated things further, forcing him to spend another half a year or so resolving the conflict between the two arts.

In fact, it would have probably taken him many times longer if not for the Wiseman’s Murmurs floating inside his head, filling his mind with ideas. The influence of the exotic substance had been subtle and hard to pinpoint with any certainty, but Percy didn’t doubt that it had been one of his primary sources of inspiration, and the main reason he’d been able to overcome so many hurdles so quickly. In many ways, his new armour was even more complex than the Carnival, so it could have easily taken him over a decade of relentless effort to complete by himself.

Pressing on, he allowed phantom mana to gush out of his pores, spinning it into thin threads and weaving those into intricate symbols. Over the past few months, he’d improved on several aspects of the process – he’d made the strings a little thinner and learned to produce them slightly faster. Any further gains would be minor and would require several more years, so Percy didn’t feel like delaying the creation of his new armour to chase perfection.

He'd shrunk the unit cells even more, with each of the clover-shaped pseudo-enchantments now barely spanning two-thirds of a fingernail. Reducing them any further was currently impossible – not because Percy wasn’t capable of drawing smaller runes with the help of his Scribing trait, but because the silk’s thickness would prevent him from capturing the runes’ more delicate features.

Percy had also played around with the enchantments he included in the unit cells, eventually adding heat runes augmented by control and adaptation runes. He knew that ice mana would pair well with them, reversing their effect to turn the mana even colder. He’d also learned during his brief stay at the Mirror Lake that soul mana interacted with the heat runes in a weird manner – even without the aid of adaptation runes – allowing them to repel spectral fiends.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

In other words, Percy was confident that Micky’s soul-freezing ice mana would synergize extremely well with the enchantments. Not that he had any intention of activating them while wearing the magical clothes and turning his own soul into a block of ice, but he didn’t mind having the option of fashioning the new armour into a barrage of deadly projectiles, should the need arise, much like he’d done with its previous iterations.

Finally, there was his crown achievement from the past few months – the method he’d found to address the conflict between his two traits.

Deciding on how to deal with the gaps in the symbols had been Percy’s biggest issue. Runes consisted mostly of empty space, after all, but leaving big gaps between the flexible threads was the quickest way to destabilize not just the enchantments themselves, but also the structural integrity of the entire construct. At the same time, the empty space couldn’t be eliminated entirely, because it was part of the symbols.

Percy had spent a lot of time racking his brain for a solution, eventually finding a way to weave multiple unit cells into one another, shifting each pseudo-enchantment by a few degrees until he settled on a stable configuration that made use of every millimetre of space in the fabric!

The gaps in one rune were now always filled by the silk from another – eight unit cells stacked together, on average, across the fabric. It made the cloth a little thicker than casual wear, but still thinner and more comfortable than even light armour, let alone heavy armour like his Phantomscale Regalia.

Hours passed, and then days, as Percy slowly wove the new construct, one strip at a time. The cloth was made of two layers – not because he couldn’t fit all the enchantments on one, but because each layer served a different purpose. The inner layer functioned as a set of loose-fitting clothes, protecting Percy’s body from harm, without inhibiting his movements much. Meanwhile, the outer layer took the form of a wide mantle and hood that he could either wear for passive protection, fold to guard his vitals from a powerful attack, or tear to shreds, rolling them into projectiles.

Not requiring any sleep, Percy took no breaks but the absolutely necessary ones – to eat, cleanse his cores and relieve himself – letting Micky and the clone take care of scouting, fishing, and cooking their meals.

As the construct approached completion, a new idea took root in Percy’s mind – once again thanks to the Wiseman’s Murmurs, most likely: ‘Should I try sprinkling in a little extra from my Instantaneous Formation?’

Percy didn’t think he would be able to merge his latest Spectral Art with the others, because he couldn’t fully use it in his own body. His mana wasn’t as malleable as Kassorith’s, nor was he able to wield it – or his willpower – with the same finesse. On top of that, his months-long efforts were as far from ‘Instantaneous’ as they could be.

That said, he could perhaps draw some inspiration from the ‘Formation’ part of the spell. Much like he’d done against his final opponent in the tournament, Percy should be able to add some extra unit cells onto the clothes, far larger and coarser than the fingernail-sized pseudo-enchantments. These higher-level runes wouldn’t be as numerous as the ones at the bottom level, but they would hopefully amplify their effects greatly.

This part wasn’t even that hard – Percy just had to be careful when pulling everything together, to force the seam and the overall direction of the silk into the right shape, ensuring that the smaller runes came together to form the larger ones.

‘Okay, this is the last change I’m going to make though. If I keep getting sidetracked by new ideas, I’ll never finish,’ he decided. Clearly, the Wiseman’s Murmurs could be detrimental if someone overindulged in their endless advice.

It took Percy the better part of a day to make the necessary adjustments. Once he was satisfied, he resumed his previous work, this time taking the additional network of unit cells into account. A surge of excitement inevitably rose in his chest, the construct already looking like something a person could wear – the culmination of efforts stretching all the way back to his time in Bogside town, finally about to bear fruit.

On a fateful night, a few hours after Remior’s sun had set, Percy pulled the last thread into place. He froze, doing a double take upon realizing there was nothing else begging for his attention. So immersed had he been on weaving the complicated enchantments, that he hadn’t even realized just how close he’d been during the past few minutes.

He overcame his shock soon enough, however, pouring mana into the dense network of over a million runes, watching a ripple of grey light spread through the fabric. After a few cursory tests to confirm that all the effects activated as intended, and that the material was so strong that even a Blue would have to expend some effort to damage it, Percy allowed his old armour to shatter to dust.

The midnight winds brushed against Percy’s naked body for a couple of seconds, sending a shiver down his spine until he donned the new construct. Once he was done, he took a moment to appreciate how comfortable it felt, and how much safer he was while wearing it.

After stretching his limbs for a minute or two, he pulled the hood up and closed the cape over his chest, his mind already racing with ideas as he considered all the ways it could be used in battle.

[Congratulations! Your spells have merged: Spectral Art: Phantomscale Regalia – Masterful + Spectral Art: Phantomspun Silk – Masterful + Spectral Art: Supreme Runic Matrix – Masterful - …]

[…Spectral Art: Phantomwoven Cloak - Masterful!]