[B8 START] Chapter 831 – Remior’s golden century – Recombination (Patreon)

‘Percy! Are you going to check your damn rWatch?!’ Micky demanded through their connection. ‘It’s the third time Nesha’s called me, and I can only imagine how many times she’s tried calling you directly. I feel bad ignoring her. I’m going to answer.’

Percy clicked his tongue, not even attempting to stop his friend. He was too busy lamenting yet another batch of wasted ingredients, though he knew that only about half of the blame for his failure could be pinned on the interruption. The rest was his own fault.

Between his ridiculous mental capacity and alchemic expertise, it was virtually impossible for him to mess up any other recipe, regardless of external disturbances. Unfortunately, recombination was nothing like the other alchemic principles that he had registered.

The sheer number of ingredients and complexity of the recipe made brewing even a single dose of synthetic nectar a monumental challenge. Percy wouldn’t be matching the hive’s output anytime soon, even if he suddenly became a million times better at this, which made the principle somewhat useless to him at the moment.

However, he’d be a fool not to invest some time exploring the topic further, because it had the potential to turn every barren world in the universe into a greater spring, without having to import a special species of beasts on every planet.

Percy had invented the principle a few decades back, after finally visiting that lesser spring for which he had bought a karmic compass during his first auction. The alchemists on that planet had technically been working on something slightly different: refining their existing form of stable beast mana into a more potent variant, akin to royal jelly. Unfortunately, they had yet to succeed.

Percy had used his Internal Sight to study how Starry Wasps generated nectar and royal jelly in their own bodies, and cross-referenced his findings with the lesser spring’s ongoing research to complete the principle.

It was common knowledge that beast mana was a chaotic mixture of other affinities. It didn’t require the understanding needed for a proper affinity fusion to create, and its main property was devouring other mana types or even mundane materials to convert them into growth for its owner.

There were as many variants of beast mana as there were beasts in the universe, since every single creature possessed its own unique signature. There were even differences between individuals of the same species, though they also shared certain characteristics.

Technically, the same was true of other affinities, as no two water users wielded the exact same variant of water mana, but this property was far more pronounced in beast mana and was one of the reasons it tended to dissipate the moment it left its owner’s body.

Certain species of beasts – like the Starry Wasps – developed unique varieties of beast mana that could remain stable once extracted. This usually happened with highly social beasts that needed to share their accumulated mana with other members of their species, but Percy speculated that there might be all sorts of other evolutionary benefits to developing this trait. Perhaps some creatures needed to stash their supplies if they lived on planets with alternating seasons of abundance and scarcity, or ambush predators might have evolved some form of bait to lure unsuspecting prey into their maws.

Regardless of the cause, the secret behind synthesizing nectar was to simply recreate the wasps’ exact mana signature. Thankfully, Percy only needed to mimic the resource at the species level – not match the beast mana of any individual bug.

The result was a viscous, amber liquid almost identical to natural nectar. Percy would need to develop a slightly different combination if he wanted to create synthetic sizian meat, or a similar resource found on a different lesser spring. It didn’t really matter what he picked, because any form of stable beast mana could be converted into cleansing resources through the other alchemic principles that he had mastered.

The problem was that he had to use thirty-three different ingredients of various affinities – some of them extracted from Orange plants and others from Red ones – across twenty-four different steps. And this was after simplifying the recipe a lot, since the first iteration had required twice as many ingredients and four extra steps.

Fortunately, some of the reagents had common or composite affinities with overlapping elements, so the consolidation principle had allowed Percy to cut out some of the redundancies as long as he maintained the proper ratios. He hoped to improve upon the recipe further, but that was obviously a work in progress.

The good news was that Percy’s brewing yield for regular elixirs had climbed by another eight points over the past century, reaching seventy-seven percent.

He owed that improvement partly to his three cores advancing to Blue, partly to the accompanying gains in his mental pockets and cognitive prowess, partly to his upgraded equipment and the new principle he had registered, but mostly to the tens of millennia of brewing experience that he had inherited from Nephthys and the decades the two of them had spent homogenizing and consolidating their understanding.

Percy had finally surpassed Phoebe’s current level and was confident that he’d be competing with the likes of Ea by the time he attained divinity, though his yield was still atrocious when converted from a three-step recipe to a twenty-four-step recipe.

Percy had originally studied the recombination principle for the same reason as the alchemists on that lesser spring. He’d hoped to replicate his fellow aspect’s royal jelly, which was far scarcer than regular cleansing resources. Unfortunately, it seemed like superior forms of beast mana were far harder to produce in a cauldron.

‘All in due time,’ Percy thought with a sigh.

Other factions would do anything to get their hands on even the modicum of knowledge that he had developed on this subject, though Percy felt that his accomplishments in alchemy over the past few decades had been relatively modest compared to everything else he had achieved.

‘She says that the match is starting in five minutes,’ the Huehuan interrupted him again, summarizing his conversation with Nesha. ‘She’s already there with Elaine’s family, waiting for you. You’re going to miss it.’

‘Great! Thanks for making sure I don’t,’ Percy replied, feeling the urge to roll his eyes.

‘Don’t be like that. I’ll be there too,’ Micky replied. ‘See you in a bit.’

Percy frowned. Five minutes was more than enough to make the trip, but the organizers of these tournaments had developed the annoying habit of running twenty minutes of sponsored advertisements before each fight. The only thing Percy might miss would be a pitch on why wingless hovercraft were thirty percent more efficient than the old models. Useful vehicles for weaker mages, but he could fly much faster with his willpower.

Still, he’d rather not get yelled at by his girlfriend and cousin again, so he promptly stored away any ingredients that would spoil if he left them out of his seal. He’d clean the rest of the mess later if the maids didn’t.

Checking the greyish purple device wrapped around his left wrist, he noticed that Nesha had indeed called him seven times in the past hour before turning her attention to his soulmate. He had four missed calls from Elaine too, and the women had even roped Gawain into calling him once.

Percy deactivated the muting enchantments but didn’t bother to return the calls, since Micky had already relayed their message. He knew that he’d get chewed out once he reached the stadium, but there was no point in going through the fight twice.

‘Why do we have to watch every one of Owain’s matches anyway?’ Percy wondered as he flew out of his lab.

Thin veins of colourful magiscript ran through the polished concrete walls and laminated wooden floors of his mansion, their glow brightening as they registered their owner’s presence.

A series of person-sized holes opened in Percy’s path, allowing him to tunnel through the floors without actually displacing the material beneath the runes. It was the simplest application of spatial portals, since the enchantments only moved his body by a few centimetres at a time. They were cheap enough to run on ambient mana, though they still required a magiscript expert with a space affinity to draw the actual runes. Nesha had personally installed the enchantments into their residence after studying and improving the blueprints that Percy had brought from one of his clones’ adventures.

With a single leap, he passed through all five stories of the building to land on the roof. Sighing, he decided to keep his thoughts about the match to himself.

It wasn’t like Percy didn’t care about his younger cousin – he wouldn’t have given Owain a pair of Cradles and so much Gloomy Dawn if he hadn’t. However, the “boy” was a double Violet with a rare and a composite affinity, as well as one of the most talented fighters of his grade. He might face some serious competition in the world tournament a few months later, but the regional one was pretty much in his pocket already, since they didn’t let Whites participate.

Not to mention that Elaine’s brother was already like a hundred and thirty years old – twice Percy’s age when he’d single-handedly defeated the Great Houses. Owain had clearly grown up a long time ago, and had never asked his whole extended family to watch his every fight.

It was just Nesha and Elaine who had made it their life’s mission to involve Percy in all sorts of family activities like that. They argued that those were precious opportunities to bond and maintain their ties. Percy didn’t necessarily disagree, though he could do without all the guilt tripping.

‘Then again, this is such a silly thing to be complaining about,’ he reminded himself with a chuckle.

He’d take attending his cousin’s match or the inauguration of his grandfather’s beauty clinic over infiltrating the Thirsty Valley or fending off an army of nobles.

Alas, Percy understood that this hard-earned period of peace wouldn’t last forever. The situation on Remior was finally stable, and it was time for him to start making big moves again.

‘Not today,’ he decided, shooting towards the teleportation platform at the edge of the city. ‘Let’s enjoy this just a little longer.’