Percy’s heart skipped a beat as he read the notification. Not wasting time, he pulled up his Status, his gaze landing on the relevant section.

___

Alchemic principles:

* [Extraction] – Separate and condense an ingredient’s essence.

* [Pacification] – Delay an ingredient’s activation rate.

* [Redirection] – Adjust an ingredient’s effect.

* [Deattunement] – Prevent multiple conflicting ingredients from reacting with one another.

* [Bonding] – Enrich an ingredient with crystallized pure mana.

* [Restructuring] – Alter an ingredient's phase.

* [Scaling] – Brew a greater volume of ingredients at once.

* [Compression] – Elevate an ingredient to the next grade.

___

Okay… there was nothing particularly illuminating there, the new entry merely telling him what he already knew about the principle. Still, this was great news. If his previous experience was anything to go by, his eyes should allow him to improve much faster now.

‘About time,’ the clone said. ‘Can you take that ritual bath so we can go back?’

‘Almost there,’ the original replied with a sigh. ‘Just let me brew a few more potions first – unless you don’t mind me poisoning us to death.’

‘Is it actually that dangerous?’ the clone asked.

Percy shrugged. ‘For a Thess’kalan, no. But I don’t think a human body was ever meant to be injected by that many toxins.’

The clone said nothing more, allowing Percy to return to his alchemic endeavours. As soon as he commenced a new brewing session, he noticed some interesting changes. More solid lumps appeared beneath the surface of the concoction. Or rather, it might be more accurate to say that he could now spot more of them.

Pushing the rotation runes to their limit had allowed him to solve the main issue he’d been facing – helping the Yellow strands band together a lot faster. However, that had come at a cost. First, it had robbed Percy of one of the tools he’d been using to dissolve the lumps, leaving him only the heating enchantments to work with. Secondly, the thick layer of Yellow mana grinding against the crystalline walls of the cauldron had greatly accelerated the formation of new impurities. Finally, the violent currents of liquid had obscured many of the smaller lumps, preventing Percy from addressing them effectively.

Luckily, that was all in the past now.

His newfound understanding of the compression principle seemed to resonate with his Sovereign’s Eye, allowing him to peer a few centimetres deeper into the concoction, spotting many of the hidden lumps. Activating the heat runes closest to them, Percy methodically eliminated the magical cancers gnawing at his precious potion, allowing more of it to coalesce. Six minutes later, he bottled up the result.

“Forty percent already!” he exclaimed, drawing a sharp breath.

It was still much lower than he should be capable of with more practice, but this could already be considered somewhat efficient. Over the next four days, Percy consumed half of his gravity ingredients to compress all his healing potions to Yellow, accumulating a few thousand doses. By the time he was done, his yield had passed sixty percent, almost on par with his usual proficiency.

He would have loved to spend a little longer to close the remaining gap, but he had used up all the Orange potions. If he wanted, he could brew more, since he had plenty of green mushrooms left, yet he knew that wouldn’t be the best use of his time.

Especially since his time had just run out.

Right as he was trying to decide whether to undergo the ritual with what he had, or play it safe by preparing a few Green potions first, he caught something strange by the corner of his eye. It was an inky-black line, no thicker than a strand of his magical silk, though it didn’t seem to contain even a drop of mana. Recognizing what the line was made of took him a couple of seconds, because of how many different channels of information his mutated eyes tended to perceive.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

‘Inky-black? Willpower?’

The line stretched for hundreds of metres – so far away from the island that Percy struggled to locate its source. One end was approaching slowly, however, pointing straight towards him. It stopped just a few metres away, giving him an ominous feeling. Percy was about to jump out of its path, when he realized that Micky was standing right behind him. Whoever was responsible for this phenomenon had cleverly aimed it towards both of them.

‘Enemy attack!’ he warned the others through the cords, though he didn’t wait for a response. Hurriedly grabbing two ends of his Phantomwoven Cloak, he used his willpower to tear a couple of wide strips, squeezing them into a messy, melon-sized sphere in front of his chest.

And just in time too.

An arrow whizzed along the line at a tremendous speed, ripping into Percy’s clumsy barrier. The enchantments lit up to block the projectile, though the fabric still exploded into a storm of grey shreds, the force sending Percy crashing into his familiar.

Thankfully, Micky and the clone had already caught up, extending one of their oversized wings to arrest Percy’s momentum, helping him to his feet. Glancing at the damaged rags draped over his forearms and the pieces of torn cloth littering the ground around him, Percy realized – to his great horror – that the attack had penetrated about two-thirds of his folded-up cape.

‘What the hell?! Micky had such a tough time piercing through a single layer with his shards!’

A trickle of cold sweat ran down his back as he realized how close he had come to losing his life. Had he spotted the attack a fraction of a second later or acted less decisively, the projectile could have easily skewered both him and his familiar. Clearly, their enemy possessed a very troublesome affinity. Thinking back to the construct, Percy tried to identify its mana type.

‘It was pitch black like the line, but it contained more than just willpower…’

The projectile had sported a dark colour even in his regular vision, reminding him of Nesha’s spells. Was that what it was? Space mana? Only, unlike his girlfriend’s constructs, the arrow had shone in a deep Blue light in Percy’s Mana Sense.

“Impressive,” a male voice suddenly said, breaking him out of his thoughts. “I’ve heard rumours that you could perceive one’s domain, but I didn’t expect you to see my willpower so clearly. Only a handful of Blues have ever survived my opening blow, and only because they had powerful sensory-type bloodlines.”

Percy scanned his surroundings in search of the assailant, though there was nobody in sight, nor could he tell where the sound was coming from. At least there weren’t any more of those black lines coming after them just yet.

“Who sent you?” he asked, hoping to gather some information about his opponent, or to at least buy himself some time. He was already taking one deep breath after another, filling both his channels and his Cloak’s self-repair runes with phantom mana.

“You don’t really need to know that, do you? Since you’re about to die and everything,” the man replied, before sighing deeply. “If it’s any consolation, this isn’t personal. You only have yourself to blame for pissing so many people off – the bounty on your head is just too high to ignore.”

Not bothering to chat with the would-be assassin any longer, Percy hopped onto his familiar’s neck, asking Micky to take off. The Carnival was almost done activating, but he wouldn’t be able to fight an opponent he couldn’t see, and staying put wouldn’t be wise.

As soon as the crow gained some altitude, Percy spotted three Blues, each approaching from a different direction. The space mage didn’t seem to be among them, however, as three new lines manifested, extending toward Percy and Micky from elsewhere.

It was quite impressive that the space user could stretch his willpower so far from his body – which spoke volumes about the man’s experience and skill. The purpose of the lines was either to guide the projectiles with greater precision, to accelerate them massively, or to boost their lethality. In fact, Percy was willing to bet that they did all three.

Sharing Percy’s vision, Micky and the clone barely managed to dodge two of the arrows. There wasn’t enough time to avoid them once fired, and Percy was the only one who could perceive the space user’s domain – thus predicting the trajectory of his attacks a moment earlier.

Even so, evading all of them wasn’t easy. The third construct punched a fist-sized hole through a patch of living ice in the crow’s wing. At least it didn’t hurt, nor did it slow his movements much, yet they all understood how easily the projectile could have turned Micky’s brain into minced meat.

‘Just great…’ Percy spat, his features twisting into a grimace.

Four Blues were already bad news – even without their leader being a veteran assassin with a space affinity. Escaping from such a person wouldn’t be easy, since he could probably travel faster than him or Micky and harass them repeatedly from afar.

But it didn’t matter.

Percy had no intention of escaping. Doing so would only give their enemies a chance to team up with another group of bounty hunters. As long as the space user drew breath, Percy would never be able to undergo the ritual in peace.

So, he had to make sure that his opponent suffocated…