Seeing the first of the small houses appear on the horizon, Elaine exhaled in relief. It had been around two months since they’d left the Valley, but they’d finally made it back to the Camelot province.
They’d completed the trip much faster than the last time, too. Elaine’s higher grade and their Insomnia trait had certainly helped – along with the fact that they didn’t have to worry about any companions keeping up.
They could’ve arrived even sooner, but they’d tried not to overdo it, to avoid getting seen running faster than Elaine should’ve been capable of. They’d also taken a few detours to hunt beasts from different regions. After all, they had to stick with Elaine's story that she'd spent the past couple of years training in the wilderness – so they needed some evidence to back that up.
'Well, it doesn’t matter. We’re here now.'
Percy shrugged. Next, he and his cousin deactivated the nascent Dance as they approached the town. A wave of weakness rippled through their body, the bubbles around them bursting in unison. A harmless spray of water washed over the tall grass by their knees, the cool droplets rolling off the long blades.
The two had deliberately avoided travelling on the road as much as possible. The fewer people they ran into, the longer they could spend working on the spell. And they'd made a ton of progress with it as a result.
Soon after starting their journey, they’d realized the azure ribbons weren’t well suited to Elaine’s version of the boosting art. Water mana was denser and moved more slowly than other affinities Percy was familiar with, so his cousin had struggled to maintain the elongated whirlpools.
Instead, they’d switched to gathering and converting ambient mana into countless small bubbles entering and exiting her body – not too different from her defensive Bubble Coat spell. In fact, they were convinced she wouldn’t have much difficulty merging the two techniques in the future. But that was for Elaine to figure out at a later time – not a priority right now.
Another change they’d made was in how she absorbed the mana into her body. Due to its properties, it wasn’t practical to have a single drop of water mana travel through her entire network. Instead, she only let the bubbles seep into her skin briefly, moving them a short distance to exchange the primed ambient mana with her own, before pushing them out again.
As luck would have it, the wave-like patterns glowing on her body made for an excellent reference point, indicating how far the mana was supposed to travel. Percy and Elaine had observed the best results when they had the bubbles enter through the peaks and exit through the nearest valleys, barely moving an inch through her channels. This gave the whole spell a gentle – if somewhat lazy – rhythm.
Of course, her Status had yet to register the upgrade.
They both understood there were still a few kinks to iron out, but they knew they were getting close. If things kept going like this, they might not even need Galahad's help after all. Between Percy’s experience with two other versions of the spell, and the fact that Elaine had been working on it for years, they’d progressed much faster than they’d expected.
Alas, that would have to wait a little longer, as they were about to enter the town.
'Why are we stopping here first? I thought you were in a hurry to see your parents.'
Percy was also getting a bit anxious. He still had no idea what had happened to Baldy and Galahad after his messy departure from the province. He sure hoped that Deimos hadn’t held his grandfather responsible for his crimes. And he didn’t know what had happened to House Tantalus either. Having lost so many of their strongest mages, they couldn’t have continued harassing his family, could they?
Nesha had tried to ask around during her stay in the city – both times – but it hadn’t been easy to get reliable information on Percy’s House. The whole continent had been in turmoil since before the Lotus bloomed, with hundreds of noble families at war – a centuries-old House getting destroyed seemingly every month.
The chaos was starting to settle, as many of those conflicts had already reached their conclusion. In part, Percy’s exploits had helped with that a little, since he had given the nobles another spicy topic to focus on, but his involvement with the Aurora Dew and the Holy Children had actually muddied the waters even more.
Admittedly, some concerning rumours had reached his ears, but he knew he couldn’t really trust them, as he’d already heard multiple conflicting accounts. Apparently, his family had both been completely razed to the ground as punishment for Percy’s crimes, but also elevated to a Great House by the Order as a reward for his contributions to alchemy. Archibald was both alive and dead, and Percy himself had been a god all along, having hidden his identity and snuck into the Alchemists’ Guild to have some fun.
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Suffice to say, the surest way to find out the truth was to go home and ask.
'I am. But I have a few relatives on my mum’s side here that I haven’t seen in years. It’s a good opportunity to stop by, since it’s on our way,' Elaine replied.
Percy nodded, not saying anything else. They’d reach their House soon enough. Besides, they might be able to ask Elaine’s extended family about Archibald or House Avalon. Commoners weren’t very involved in such matters, but these people still lived in the same province and had strong ties to his family, so they should know more than the rest of Remior.
Moreover, Percy was a little curious about the town. He’d never actually visited any of the towns under his family’s jurisdiction before, so he didn’t mind seeing how they compared to the others they’d passed through during their travels.
This was Pinesap town.
It wasn’t the largest under his House’s control, but it was the one closest to the Whistling Woods. And it was famous in the nearby provinces for a certain edible product native to the region: the whistling sap. It was a sweet, syrupy liquid extracted from the pine trees in the forest.
It was customary to give some to young children when they got their affinities tested, celebrating the start of their new lives as mages. It wasn’t the most lucrative industry – the income was barely worth mentioning compared to House Avalon’s other ventures – but it was a rather wholesome one that nobody wanted to see gone.
Of course, Percy had never actually tried the snack. He’d been way too old by the time Elaine and Gawain had escorted him to the temple, and the sight of a teenager eating something made for children would have given people another reason to look down on him.
Thinking about it, Percy felt the urge to chuckle.
‘Look at how far I’ve come already… from being too scared to eat a bowl of syrup to essentially declaring war on Remior…’
Reaching the town’s border, Elaine circled around it, heading toward the nearest gate. The stone wall was barely a metre tall and a foot thick. It was mostly here to keep pests out, rather than any truly dangerous beasts. Not that there were any in the vicinity, since the Whistling Woods were relatively safe.
There was only a man seemingly in his early thirties guarding the entrance. His cheap linen clothes betrayed his status as a commoner – probably a resident of the town. His Green core would have deterred any bandits from trying to sneak in, though it wouldn’t have done much if House Tantalus was to invade.
The guard waved at Elaine with a smile on his face. Percy didn’t know if the man had recognized his cousin, but he’d certainly recognized the insignia on her clothes. While she still had to hide her grade and her second core, she no longer had to conceal her origin now that she was travelling on her own. The Green’s smile did freeze for a second when he noticed her missing limb, but Elaine waved his concern away, reassuring him that it wasn’t a big deal.
‘Wow, I didn’t know the commoners in our towns had such a good opinion of our family…’ Percy said as soon as the man let them in.
‘There’s some friction here and there, but we generally treat them much better than other Houses.’
Percy nodded. It wasn’t that hard to guess the reason either. Everyone living west of the river understood they’d found themselves on the luckier side of the province. The nobles of House Avalon weren’t saints – even Percy himself had been treated rather coldly by his own relatives as a child – but they might as well have been, compared to the monsters of House Tantalus.
And there was another reason his family was better received here.
Walking around the town, he marvelled at the wooden houses lining up on either side of the street. They weren’t very large – he’d seen bigger houses, and not just in Twilight City, but also many of the other towns. However, they were in good condition – clean and tidy.
Among the residents, Percy spotted a couple people he recognized. Or rather, people whose faces he recognized – save for their dull gazes and vacant expressions. They were carrying heavy-looking crates for the townsfolk.
They were clones.
While Percy had never been to their towns before, he did know a few things about them. Archibald frequently stationed some of their Greens who had the bloodline here, providing the commoners with free labour.
A Green could have up to twenty-seven clones at once, though they typically only maintained a handful each, so as to not affect their mana reserves too badly. Still, with two Greens in each town, and given the strong physique that their clones inherited from them, they lent a ton of manpower to their subjects.
On top of that, these Greens obviously had the life affinity too, meaning that every commoner living on this side of the province always had a powerful healer staying nearby. Thus, nobody had to worry about injury or sickness – not even the Red-borns.
This was the complete opposite from how House Tantalus treated their own people. Not only did they kill and harass them, they didn’t even bother to protect their towns, letting their artificially weakened populations fend for themselves…
‘I guess the situation has calmed down a little…’ Percy said, getting a nod back.
During the war, Archibald had been forced to deploy more mages here, to protect their people. The lack of any visible damage to the structures and the relatively low number of clones walking around indicated that it had been a while since the last raid.
In any case, Percy wasn’t very interested in meeting Elaine’s relatives. It wasn’t like she could introduce him to them either. And since they couldn’t practice the Dance while in the presence of others, he had to find something else to keep himself busy during their stay here. Luckily, he had just the right thing in mind.
‘Time to play with my domain some more.’