Chapter 748 – Strange beast (Patreon)

The swarm of spectral fiends soundlessly buzzing over and around the Mirror Lake stretched much farther out than it had during the previous expedition. Percy and his companions ran into the tiny creatures a full day before reaching their destination – which would have translated to weeks at their old speed.

Thankfully, dealing with the fiends wasn’t a problem. Sol and Doh had kept the Dance constantly active, partly to accelerate their travelling speed and partly because learning to keep the spell going was important for their artificial advancements.

Consequently, the Melodians’ bodies were surrounded by burning wisps – half of them grey and the other half silver – that set the fiends ablaze whenever they foolishly approached. Percy even drew a few heat runes on his companions’ clothes for good measure, to ensure that they remained entirely unbothered by the ethereal creatures.

The number of powerful beasts also steadily rose as they neared their destination. The dirt beneath the group’s feet gradually grew moist and took on an ominous red hue as the stench of iron became suffocating, stinging the back of their throats. It was clear that countless creatures had died recently in the area, though Percy and his companions didn’t see many carcasses.

They did spot many animals that were either grievously wounded or in the process of preying on one another, but the bodies got picked clean within minutes of the conclusion of each battle, not leaving even bones behind.

Thankfully, Sol and Doh’s Blue cores served as deterrents, keeping all but the most desperate of creatures away. Some battles were unavoidable, but the Melodians made quick work of their opponents, allowing the group to continue toward the Mirror Lake mostly unimpeded.

They didn’t travel in a straight line, as it was more efficient to spiral toward the Elemental Source and scan its surroundings more thoroughly. Percy saw more species of animals in the following hours than he had during the previous few months, the creatures’ average grades also rising sharply.

They’d ran into Green beasts near the Mirror Lake during the original trip, but not as many. Percy wouldn’t be surprised if the beast tide had forced nearly every Green creature on the landmass to migrate to the Elemental Source in search of food.

The elephant-sized animals lived closer to the lake’s shores. Surprisingly, the strongest packs avoided attacking their equally-powerful neighbours, apparently preferring to venture a few kilometres out to hunt down Yellow beasts.

Meanwhile, the weaker creatures tried to strike a balance between staying close enough to the lake to find Orange and other Yellow beasts to eat, yet without placing themselves within the hunting grounds of their overlords or getting their souls ground down by the dense swarm of spectral fiends.

‘I give the Green beasts two months before they run out of food and have to turn on each other,’ Percy told his companions, getting a round of spectral nods back.

He could already spot the occasional clash between elephant-sized creatures, but they weren’t the norm quite yet. Green beasts were smart enough to rein in their impulses and think twice before attacking powerful opponents. That said, Percy had seen hordes of such beasts slaughter everything in sight while training inside the Thirsty Valley, so he could tell that it was only a matter of time before the same situation unfolded here.

“Have you seen anything capable of secreting stable beast mana?” Doh asked, as he couldn’t peer very far into the cloud of spectral fiends even when deploying his willpower.

Sol turned her attention to Percy expectantly as well. Her Sage’s Pond allowed her to see farther than her fellow Melodian, but she didn’t have access to Percy’s sentries. If that wasn’t bad enough, the swarm of incorporeal pests got in her way too, impeding several of her senses and massively decreasing her range.

Percy sighed. “I’m also having more trouble than expected. All my Ponds have shrunk, and my sentries can’t get too close to the lake. In theory, their concealment runes should make them invisible to the fiends, but they can still get discovered and attacked if a fiend bumps into a sentry by accident – which gets statistically more likely the denser the swarm is. I’ve already lost one, so I’m keeping the other nine farther out.”

Even turning his sentries incorporeal or phasing them through the ground didn’t help, as the spectral fiends had the same abilities as Percy’s constructs. He had considered activating the heat runes inside his minions’ bodies to keep the fiends at bay, but the sentries contained a finite amount of spiritual blood and soul-freezing ice mana that wouldn’t last long if they started consuming themselves. The concealment enchantments only worked because they didn’t need mana – the passive glow they obscured was fuel enough.

“I suppose we’ll have to examine the wildlife the good old way then,” Doh said with a shrug.

And so they did. Over the next six days, Percy and his companions methodically stepped closer and closer to the water, scrutinizing any living creature that crossed their path. They did have to take a few breaks for Doh to sleep, but Sol had no trouble protecting her companion.

A familiar rush of inspiration flooded Percy’s mind as he entered the Elemental Source’s range of influence. It was like his soul mana and all its variants had suddenly come alive, trying to form spells and reveal their true nature.

He was tempted to start ironing out the kinks in his magic right then and there, but he didn’t do that. As eager as he was to uncover the mysteries of the soul affinity, it would have to wait until his search was complete. There would be plenty of time for training afterwards.

On the seventh day, when the edge of the lake had already entered the boundary of Percy’s impaired sensory domain, he finally spotted a beast that gave him pause – though not for the reasons that had brought him here.

There was no indication that the beast could produce a resource similar to nectar, though that didn’t make the creature any less interesting. Percy recognized its shape, having run into a member of its species years ago. Had it been any of the other beasts that he and Sol had fought during the previous expedition, it wouldn’t have mattered, but that particular encounter had been especially memorable.

The creature resembled a praying mantis with a milky white exoskeleton, albeit without the claws. It was barely taller than a Melodian, making it by far the smallest Green beast that Percy had ever seen. It seemed to prefer hunting inside the Mirror Lake, despite not being an aquatic creature. Its lighter frame and four powerful limbs gave it the ability to hop atop the surface of the water without sinking, though the magical properties of the Elemental Source clearly helped with that.

Most importantly, the swarm of spectral fiends circled its body, not daring to so much as nibble at its soul. The tiny entities followed the beast in an almost-orderly manner, forming an ethereal cyclone that moved alongside the monster.

Unlike the other Green beasts in the area, the mantis didn’t seem afraid to initiate conflict with its peers – probably because it didn’t truly have peers. Despite its smaller stature and the fact that it couldn’t be too hungry, it eagerly attacked anything that entered its range.

That didn’t include Sol and Doh just yet, as they probably hadn’t been spotted, but Percy watched the creature slaughter an entire pack of giant wolf-like beasts by itself.

The gluttonous mantis never bothered approaching its victims, clearly not being much of a physical fighter – instead, it wielded a far deadlier weapon. Whenever it set its sight on an enemy, it enthusiastically clicked a pair of jagged antler-like protrusions on its head, somehow commanding the swarm of spectral fiends to descend upon its prey like a spell.

Melodian beasts had tougher souls, and that was doubly true of the Green beasts that had survived this long at the shores of the Mirror Lake. Sadly for the towering wolves – fifteen of them in total – it wasn’t enough to protect them from the rivers of spectral fiends that violently slammed against their souls, cracking them open and giving the tiny creatures openings to devour them from within.

To add insult to injury, the mantis didn’t care to consume the entire carcasses of its victims. Like a spoiled prince, it merely dug the still-glowing cores out of the soulless bodies, eclectically sampling just the magical organs while leaving tons of fresh meat behind for scavengers to feast on.

The beast clearly didn’t worry that it would ever regret its wasteful slaughter. And why should it? Unless the day ever came when the mantis was the last surviving creature on the planet, finding enough food to sustain its smaller body would not become a problem.

“I’ll be damned!” Percy exclaimed. “That thing wasn’t an isolated mutant, after all.”

“What is it?” Doh asked, unable to see as far as Percy and Sol.

“It’s the same type of creature that nearly killed us last time,” Percy explained. “The one that pushed us to complete the Dance.”

His borrowed lips parted into a grin as he said that. He’d thought back to that strange encounter a couple of times over the years, lamenting the fact that he and Sol had been forced to kill the mantis.

Percy was quite interested in studying the beast’s symbiotic relationship with the spectral fiends, so he would have loved an opportunity to possess a member of their species.

Unfortunately, the fight had been too close to risk keeping the beast alive. Percy had lacked an empowered cord to contact his main body anyway, and his clones would have struggled to pierce through the higher concentration of spectral fiends swarming over the lake to reach the injured mantis. Finally, Percy hadn’t been able to possess unwilling hosts either at the time, so taking over the creature simply hadn’t been an option.

Things were different now.