The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 663 – Calamity affinity (4)

Percy found himself inside a somewhat cozy study. The room was far smaller and simpler than what would befit the lofty existence who owned it, though it wasn’t without its magical quirks.

Every solid surface in the office – from the walls, floor, and ceiling, to the desk, bookshelf, and every other piece of furniture – were made of a single material. Percy was tempted to describe it as wood, since there was no mistaking the patterned, grainy texture that was common in many places across the universe, yet this particular variant of wood was quite different from the norm.

It was smooth and glossy, resembling jade more than anything organic, complete with a soft green lustre that illuminated the study uniformly, so that it didn’t require any other light source.

Percy would have been quite perplexed if he hadn’t come in contact with something similar before. The thick, minty scent in the air, coupled with the warm embrace of life mana everywhere around him only confirmed his guess, giving him a pretty good idea of where the portal had sent him.

However, he had more pressing things to worry about than his location.

On the opposite side of the desk sat a female Inimit, her skin smoother than porcelain and her brown feathers so perfect that Percy wasn’t sure they were even real. It felt equally likely that a famous artisan had moulded them out of the finest clay, assuming that one could even find a person that skilled or a material that flawless.

The woman was, without question, the youngest-looking adult Inimit he had encountered so far, which was exactly how Percy knew that she was actually the oldest of them all.

Having no idea what the proper etiquette was in this situation, he froze before the goddess, oscillating between introducing himself or bowing deeply. Eventually, he decided to simply remain silent until she addressed him. Kassorith and Micky didn’t seem to disagree.

The deity regarded him for several long seconds, her kind but piercing eyes scrutinizing his host’s body from head to tail-tip.

Percy wanted to swear, suddenly feeling quite grateful towards Metatron for having had the foresight to mask Kassorith’s second core as thoroughly as he had. Percy had thought the titan overly paranoid at the time, though he was now hoping that the sludge the Thess’kalan had forced into his channels would be enough to hide the organ.

“Don’t be so tense, child.” The goddess spoke in a soft, almost motherly tone, her gaze easing just enough for Percy to let out the breath that he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. “I apologize for bringing you here as abruptly and forcefully as I have, but I lacked the time to extend a proper invitation. While you are my guest, I promise that no harm shall befall you. Even if you have some choice words for me or the manner in which I have abducted you, I won’t judge,” she added with a chuckle.

Percy could do nothing else but nod. A few choice words did admittedly cross his mind, but he didn’t dare to utter them. The good news was that the goddess didn’t seem to have seen through the façade, so the worst might not come to pass.

“Do you know who I am or why I brought you here?” the beaked woman asked, cutting to the chase after realizing that Percy wasn’t going to talk unless prompted.

He shrugged. “I can tell that you are an Inimit deity. I imagine that my performance in the flowerbed has caught your attention, but I have no idea why it would.”

The goddess bobbed her head, seemingly satisfied with his response. “My name is Ishkuria,” she said, letting the words linger for a couple of seconds.

The revelation caused Percy’s borrowed eyes to widen, the tension that had previously left Kassorith’s body returning with a vengeance. Truth be told, whether she was a titaness at the peak of the Elemental Acquisition stage or a newly-ascended goddess didn't really make much of a difference to Percy, as she would be able to squish him like a bug in both cases. However, he was worried that tinkering with Kassorith’s mana inside her Decree had exposed his secrets.

Ishkuria rhythmically tapped her nails against the jade-coloured desk, her gaze adopting a slightly more admonishing quality. She didn’t seem angry exactly, but she didn’t look very pleased either. “Normally, this is the part where you introduce yourself. Do you plan to keep standing there like a mute?” She sighed. “Whatever… I believe your name was Kassorith?”

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Her frustrated quip startled Percy, who hadn’t even registered how rudely he had acted. Spending most of his days working in an underground cave, surrounded mainly by magical minerals and giant insects, clearly hadn’t done much for his social skills. The few people he did interact with every now and then – even the gods and titans among them – didn’t care about decorum.

“Forgive me, Your Divinity,” he replied with an apologetic bow. “That is correct.”

“Well, Kassorith… you are right that your earlier performance is what brought you here. Long story short, I have a request for you. It will require a significant sacrifice on your part, but you are allowed to decline. Still, I would like you to hear me out before answering.”

Percy nodded at her to speak, genuinely curious to see what a titaness even more powerful than Phoebe or Metatron – probably the strongest entity that he had ever laid eyes upon, in fact – could possibly want from him.

“As the owner of a metal affinity and one who has wielded ice mana so skilfully through my Decree, I trust that you are quite familiar with affinity fusion. I wonder, however, whether you can tell me the difference between the fusion of two common elements, and that between two rare ones.”

Percy tilted his host’s head slightly. At first, he thought that it was some kind of trick question, though he realized that the titaness probably just wanted to gauge his current understanding.

“The fusion of two common elements is what we call a composite affinity. It can be produced by combining its components, but there are also mana cores that generate it directly. Meanwhile, the fusion between rare elements is inherently unstable and cannot be found in nature. A mage can still create it by fusing the right elements, but no such mana cores exist,” he explained, practically regurgitating the definition from the Moirai research material he and Gabe had read in the Vault years ago.

The titaness bobbed her head slightly, having clearly expected that answer. “What about the fusion between three or more common elements then? Is it any different?”

Percy thought back to his conversation with Phoebe before replying. “The fusion between three common elements is stable and can be found in nature, though three-elemental cores still do not exist – albeit for an entirely different reason. A mortal’s mana core is simply not durable enough to contain such mana types, so they are generally used by gods in the Elemental Acquisition stage.”

“Almost correct,” Ishkuria acknowledged. “This is the main reason why such combinations of mana hadn’t even been classified as proper ‘affinities’ until recently, though there is now a fairly new term to categorize three-elemental fusions, as well as a growing number of methods for mortals to use them.”

Percy’s soul was already in turmoil. Between Micky and Nephthys, he technically already had access to three common elements. He would still need to master lightning, acid, and maybe sound with his familiar’s help before considering anything more ambitious, but if there was a way to go even further, he definitely wanted to know it.

“Am I right to assume that the Void and Moirais’ Decrees are among those methods?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Ishkuria admitted. “They turn the impossible into barely possible, but they aren’t without their flaws. Splitting the common elements between multiple cores is an acceptable way for a mortal to accommodate enough of them to fuse into a calamity affinity, though it’s much harder than it sounds.”

“Why?” Percy protested. “I understand that the difficulty grows exponentially with the number of mana types involved, but I’d expect that, out of a pool of millions of talented and determined mages, a few would eventually succeed.”

“A reasonable assumption,” the titaness agreed. “The problem is that calamity affinities differ from composite affinities in more ways than mere complexity. Let me ask you this: if instead of a single metal core you had possessed separate earth and lightning cores, how would you have gone about fusing your mana types?”

Percy spent a few seconds to consider the options. “I would ask somebody to teach me directly. Or I would study someone who possesses a metal core. If I couldn’t find anybody like that, I guess that I’d just pick up a piece of metal and play around with my mana until I managed to produce something similar.”

“Spot on,” Ishkuria said, before shaking her head. “But what if the only mages capable of using it are gods whose methods aren’t applicable to you? What if you can’t find anybody with a mire or conflagration core to study? Picking up a steel dagger or a piece of ice is easy enough, but can you really hold drought or tempest in your hands?”

Percy’s eyes flashed with realization. Calamity affinities weren’t just complex. They were violent, difficult to wield – or even describe – and looking for a teacher to learn from or a suitable example to study was an exercise in futility. A god might be able to play around with a conflagration in their internal world – and that might even be exactly how those in the Element Acquisition stage went about mastering such concepts – but a mortal couldn’t.

At least not before reaching White or Clear, and even then, it wouldn’t be easy.

“You aren’t wrong, though. Given enough two-cored mortals with three or more common elements, a few of them are bound to figure it out,” Ishkuria said. “Unfortunately, the Moirai havebeaten us in this race as well, becoming the second faction in the universe to produce mortal calamity users. My hope is that you will help me turn our alliance into the third.”