Chapter 176 – Stitching

Percy had chosen a Red host this time. The lower grade might be a little annoying, but this was the first soul he found today that was both sentient and in a relatively decent condition – right past the threshold where it could be possessed.

Naturally, he wasn’t planning to return to the Vault just yet – his main body was still busy finishing up the armour spell. In fact, Percy had decided to not bother with the artificial world again until all the madness surrounding the lotus died down a little. There was no point, as he had plenty of other things to be working on in the meantime.

‘Hello? Anyone there?’ he asked once he found himself inside his new vessel.

‘Wh-Who are you?’ a timid voice rang in his mind. It sounded young too.

‘Oh shit! Did I finally stumble upon a regular person?!’

Percy was ecstatic to get a normal response for a change. Not an overly defensive outburst like Micky’s, or a snarky remark like Gabe’s, or a brain-dead host like Takeo. Just somebody asking the obvious questions!

‘My name’s Percy.’ he replied. ‘Do you understand what happened to you?’

‘I’m Enki.’

The child then remained silent for a few seconds, seemingly recalling his circumstances.

‘I… I was playing around the Marble Reef when something bit me… I didn’t think much of it at first, but I started feeling a little sick at some point… I tried rushing back to the orphanage and then… The next thing I remember is you.’

Listening to his host, Percy felt his metaphorical heart clench. The poor kid was just out having some fun when disaster struck. While it was nice they weren’t being hunted by an enemy or anything of the sort, he wasn’t sure how much of a problem the venom in their veins would pose moving forward.

‘Alright. First things first. I’ll try to patch our souls up so we can move around. We’ll deal with your physical condition later. But I’ll need your cooperation for this. Is that ok?’

The boy sent a mental nod back, which was more than enough for his soul’s innate resistance to disappear, allowing Percy to interact with it more easily.

Scanning the soul, Percy was somewhat surprised at how little damage the poison had caused. The cracks were admittedly quite deep, but they were also narrow and fairly scarce. As far as he could tell, Enki could have probably survived this on his own, had he been a bit luckier.

‘And now, he’s going to die regardless of what I do…’ Percy thought grimly.

He could patch the boy’s soul temporarily, but unless they found an external source of soul mana later, Enki wouldn’t survive. Percy still had no idea what kind of world he’d found himself in, or if they had any soul healers available – but from his past experience, he didn’t think their odds were great.

‘I can’t let that happen. Should I try healing him myself?’ he suddenly thought.

It was more than a long shot. It easily bordered on impossible. Percy had never succeeded in healing his hosts’ souls before – it took way too much mana for his measly stash. If he tried to do this instead of patching the boy up, he’d probably fail, wasting his opportunity here. Of course, he had no idea if there was anything of value in this world, but that was how all his clones started out. That said, the thought of putting his gains before the boy’s life left a sour taste in his mouth.

Besides, there was technically no better patient to experiment on than Enki. The kid was only at Red, which meant his soul would need the least possible amount of mana to heal. Even better, his injuries were less severe than most of his hosts. If he couldn’t heal this boy, he wouldn’t be able to heal anybody.

‘Alright, I’ll give it a shot. Worst case scenario, it’s still valuable practice.’

Pulling a trickle from his stash, he guided it to one of the cracks. Using Mend, he directed the mana along the wound’s surface, pouring it in several interspaced locations. The crack wanted to drink the mana up directly, but Percy held it back, forcing it to work on the soul’s natural regeneration instead, just like the mysterious girl had taught him.

It worked, a few tiny tendrils sprouting like blades of grass after a spring rain. But this was never going to be enough…

‘I’ve already spent quite a chunk of mana, for so little… No way I can close all the wounds like this…’

Yet, just when he was starting to reconsider his decision, something strange happened.

A primal instinct kicked in, forcing him to yank the thin tendrils up, pouring more mana in them. At first, Percy panicked, thinking he’d gone crazy. If this kept going, he’d waste even more of his stash for nothing!

He was about to stop himself, when his instinct intensified, causing another unexpected change. Percy felt his soul squirm and shift, seemingly transforming in some manner. The whole thing was extremely uncomfortable, as if somebody was bending his limbs the wrong way, trying to mold them into a weird shape. Except, there was no bone or flesh inside his soul wisp, so it didn’t hurt.

He couldn’t actually see what was happening, but he could almost swear his soul had just sprouted a dozen thin, insect-like legs! Each of them pounced greedily on the tendrils, grabbing them, and pulling them, and spinning them to their liking.

Percy might have thrown up, had it been an option. But he stopped fighting back, letting his soul do as it pleased. By now, he’d be a fool if he didn’t know what had caused this.

‘What the hell?! Is my trait acting up again?!’

Apparently, Weaving had a few more surprises for him than he had initially expected. Of course, he still had no idea how it could possibly help in this situation, but the trait had never given him any reason to mistrust it in the past. Besides, Enki was doomed anyway, unless he found a way to save him.

Over the next few minutes, Percy observed his own soul as it cultivated the tendrils in the boy’s soul, growing them longer still, knitting them together into a weird structure. His original plan had been to stick them to the opposite side, and then fill in the gaps between them as the girl had shown him. But this wasn’t what his trait was doing. Instead, it treated the tendrils like wool, trying to guide them into a strange shape.

‘Some kind of spiderweb, perhaps? How would such a thing even help?’

That said, it was too late to give up just now, as he had already invested a hefty sum of mana into this. Letting the trait fully take over, Percy fell into a trance, watching it as it continued working on its bizarre task. More and more tendrils grew from the wound, soon joining the others in the complicated tapestry, as Percy’s mind struggled to make sense of its ill-defined shape.

He barely even registered when the trait was done, finally pulling at all the loose ends, bringing the two chunks of Enki’s soul closer together. At the same time, the mind-bending shape folded and rotated upon itself, as all the contours settled in place.

It was only now that Percy finally recognized the pattern too. Evidently, his trait hadn’t worked in a vacuum, drawing inspiration from some unknown dimension. No. Everything it had done, it had pulled it straight out of Percy’s mind, manifesting an enchantment he was intimately familiar with, having spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours drawing it during the past year.

A preservation rune!

And, evidently, weaving the enchantment out of Enki’s very soul had made it a dozen times more potent than anything Percy could have accomplished with his limited mana. As soon as it took shape, the rune bathed both of their souls in a gentle radiance, slowing their decay noticeably.

At the same time, the boy’s soul passively absorbed whatever scant motes of mana neared the wound, using them to bolster its own recovery. The improvements were minuscule, but between the more efficient recovery brought about via the Mend spell, and the potent preservation afforded by the rune…

‘The healing is outpacing the decay! I think the boy will recover by himself given enough time!’

The importance of this breakthrough could hardly be overstated. This time, Percy had only managed to apply it to a Red kid in a relatively salvageable condition, but who was to say what he could accomplish in the future, given more practice and more mana? Like this, he might be able to save his hosts from certain death, doing some real good wherever he visited!

‘Well, let’s not get ahead of myself. The boy is still dying…’ he reminded himself, dousing his bubbling enthusiasm.

He’d only healed a single crack so far, and it had already cost him around 10% of his stash. Plenty of wounds remained, and he’d have to tend to them even more efficiently if he hoped to save Enki in time.

Diving back into his work, this time with newfound purpose, he worked in tandem with his trait, using Enki’s soul as the very fabric to weave his enchantments. Everywhere he touched, the tendrils bent, and stretched, and interwove with one another, bringing the runes to life.

‘I can’t believe this actually worked.’

Percy paused at some point, examining Enki’s soul. It still looked a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, but it felt a lot more stable. Naturally, he hadn’t managed to salvage every single piece – a few were either too damaged or too small for him to properly stitch together. Not to mention that his mana was already running dangerously low. That said, he was confident he had done enough for the boy to survive.

Pride and relief blended together, fanning the flames of triumph in Percy’s heart. And… his Status seemed to share in his excitement.

[Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Mend – Crude -> Spectral Art: Soul Stitching – Refined!]