Chapter 232: Self-repair

Percy’s top priority during this trip was the self-repair enchantment. While his reinforced mana had proven an excellent material for his constructs, its greatest drawback was that it didn’t last nearly as long as he would like. Even when he used his preservation runes to extend the lifetime of his spells, the sheer amount of time he had to spend maintaining them made many of his projects untenable.

Of course, this applied just as much to his scythes, as well as anything else he might create, but the problem was most pronounced when it came to the Phantomscale Raiment. It simply involved way too many components, making its upkeep an absolute nightmare.

‘Let’s see… The simplest version of the enchantment requires the memory and growth runes…’

All in all, it wasn’t that complicated. As the name implied, the memory rune would essentially memorize the shape of an object as it was at the very moment when the enchantment was activated. From there, it would constantly feed this information into the growth rune – much like a magical blueprint. In turn, the growth rune would restore the object to its intended shape whenever it deviated however slightly.

That said, there were countless variants of these runes – much like the rest Percy had come across during his studies. Usually, they differed depending on the materials the enchantment would consume to repair the item. After all, the lost materials couldn’t be replenished out of thin air.

Luckily, all of Percy’s constructs were made purely out of his own mana, so he hadn’t needed to look beyond the simplest variants. According to everything he’d read, the final product would be extremely straightforward to use in his case. He’d only need to pour some mana into the runes once per day, and they would take care of the rest, keeping his armour in top condition. By adding his preservation runes to the mix, he could extend that time even further.

‘It’s not even that important. Spending a minute or two per day is infinitely better than having to reforge the whole thing from scratch…’

Then again, there were a couple more issues he’d have to solve before he could apply this to his armour, but those were for after he returned to Remior. Right now, his priority was to actually master the enchantment.

‘The Vault’s magiscript offers two primary approaches to concatenating runes.’

As Percy had learned pretty early on, combining runes required them to be linked together in some manner. Most runecrafting languages – including the one they had on Remior – only provided a single avenue of doing so. Usually, it involved drawing the runes side-by-side, taking advantage of some shared feature to fuse them together.

The brilliance of Metatron’s language was that it also allowed one to stack multiple runes on top of one another, thanks to the circular shape most of them had in common. This gave its users many more options when trying to enchant an object, allowing them to create far more interesting things.

‘The good news is that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel just yet…’

he exhaled in relief.

Self-repair enchantments were extremely common, and the book Percy had bought contained countless examples. Of course, it wouldn’t always be this easy. Once he started improvising his own enchantments, Percy would have to get better at figuring this out by himself. Luckily, this was a project for later. Besides, even just copying the enchantment down came with its own share of challenges.

As always, when merging multiple runes, one had to keep both their individual effects in their mind, as well as their joint function. Consequently, the difficulty climbed exponentially with the number of involved runes.

“Cube, start the magiscript challenge, Orange level, wave 2. User ID: WANDERER.”

Noland raised an eyebrow in surprise, but Percy reassured him that there was nothing to worry about.

“Authorization granted. Wave begins in 18 rits.”

Obviously, he wasn’t even close to meeting the requirements just yet. Then again, there was no penalty for failing the magiscript challenge, so there was no reason why he couldn’t practice inside it. That way, he could keep track of his progress too.

“Wave begins. May your challenge be successful!”

***

‘

Enchantments: Memory (General, variant #61), Growth (General, variant #24), Self-repair (General, variant #3145). Difficulty: 1.6. Runes drawn: 1231. Time taken: 20000 rits. Success rate: 34%. Score adjusted due to difficulty: 54%. Wave failed. Try again?’

“No. And please stop listing the variants I used. The messages are getting a little clustered.”

“Choice confirmed.”

It had been over a week since Percy began practicing. As expected, getting the new runes down had been a piece of cake – relatively speaking. It was just merging them together that was proving quite a pain in the ass. Not only was it much more time consuming, his success rate on the self-repair enchantment by itself was still below 20%. That said, he’d discovered quite a few new interesting things while experimenting in the challenge.

‘This might go better than expected.’

he couldn’t help but grin.

Apparently, the cube counted the self-repair enchantment and its components as different runes when drawn separately. For the second wave of the challenge, Percy needed to draw ten runes in total, which he had originally planned to achieve after learning the new batch of runes. However, he hadn’t considered the possibility of cheating his way with combinations.

‘Just sticking the control rune onto all the others might be enough to get me through the third wave too!’

Between the self-repair enchantment and 9 controlled variants, he would have access to 20 enchantments in total. He still didn’t know what the requirements of the third wave involved, but that ought to be enough, right?

And it got even better than that! The greatest downside when concatenating runes was the added difficulty. However, it seemed the system was more than willing to compensate him for that –

at least to an extent

– by adding a difficulty modifier and adjusting his final score.

In any case, there was a reason why Percy had taken a break from runecrafting, and it had nothing to do with the challenge. Rather, it was his host that had prompted him to pause for a few minutes.

‘Wow. When you told me you’d be spending all your time doing this, you weren’t kidding.’

Noland whistled.

‘I hope this Metatron guy doesn’t make his test subjects learn magiscript. My brain ain’t built for sitting around all week…’

Percy couldn’t help but roll his eyes. It hadn’t been that long since the guy begged him to bring him here, sick of labouring all day in his underground hell.

‘I take it you’re done clearing your channels?’

he asked, changing the topic.

Noland nodded, eagerly drawing some ambient mana into his new core, revelling in the feeling of power rushing through his body. Percy didn’t pay that much attention, however, having experienced this sort of thing a few too many times. Instead, he scrutinized the mana itself carefully, trying to discern its affinity.

‘Bad news for you.’

he said, instantly recognizing the unmistakable feeling of pure mana gushing out of his abdomen, forming a small cyan dagger in his hand.

Though this was good for

him.

Drawing the runes with a familiar affinity would be much easier.

‘I don’t really mind. A second core is still a second core.’

Noland shrugged.

‘A healthy attitude to have.’

Percy nodded, slightly jealous to see how much better his host had taken the news. Then again, Percy had been a teenager when this happened to him…

Shaking the pointless thoughts out of his head, Percy gave Noland a few minutes to stretch a little and grab himself a snack, before walking back to the centre of the room.

“Cube. Start the challenge again. User ID: WANDERER.”

This time, he intended to put the self-repair enchantment aside for a few hours, to earnestly tackle the wave. Between the new core and the cheat he had recently discovered, he already possessed all the tools he needed to clear it. This way, he’d be able to learn the next wave’s requirements early on, giving himself ample time to prepare.

‘Ok then. Let’s do this thing.’

he took a seat, reading the prompt one last time.

‘Draw any ten runes 1500 times in total, in under 20000 rits, with at least a 95% success rate. Each individual rune has to be drawn at least 100 times.’

***

The most annoying part about the magiscript challenge was how long each attempt took. By Percy’s estimates, 20000 rits were already nearly seven hours, and this was still a relatively low level.

‘I sure hope I got it this time…’

he sighed. This was actually his second attempt after having made his mind up. Suffice to say, it was with bated breath that his eyes landed on the prompt.

‘

Enchantments: Preservation, Concealment, Hardness, Absorption, Control, Memory, Growth, Controlled-preservation, Controlled-concealment, Controlled-hardness. Difficulty: 1.2. Runes drawn: 1500. Time taken: 19743 rits. Success rate: 83%. Score adjusted due to difficulty: 99%.’

‘Thank Phoebe!’

It was mostly the controlled variants that had held him back. The score adjustment itself had made up for his lower success rate, but it hadn’t given him any extra time, forcing him to just barely complete the wave by the skin of his teeth. And that was after filling the last 500 spots in his quota with the simple control runes. Alas…

“Congratulations! Wave 2 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”

“Awarded credits: 200. Current balance: 229.”

‘Ok. I think I get why you’re doing this.’

Noland pitched in.

‘I admit, this is quite the adrenaline rush you get once you succeed.’

‘Right?!’

Percy would have hugged him if they weren’t sharing a body.

Of course, the exhilaration of beating a wave was only a small part of it. The real prize were the amazing spells he’d be able to craft once he returned home.

‘Oh well… One step at a time. First, I need to master the enchantment. Then, I’ve got a few more books to read before trying the third wave. And there’s the other cheat we brought along…’

Percy hadn’t forgotten about the explosives they had prepared for the combat challenges. The idea of blowing those annoying spider golems to shreds was honestly one of the things keeping him going.

‘Just a little longer…’