Calling the Oath of Self-Destruction a spell was a bit of a stretch, but Percy’s Status did have a track record of rewarding him for taking advantage of his existing abilities in innovative ways. In theory, the clones had always been capable of destroying themselves even without a specialized spell – simply by cutting themselves open with a knife fashioned out of soul mana. However, that might be difficult to pull off under the gaze of a deity. Thanks to Kerfyl’s Decree, Percy had a guaranteed and automatic way for his main body to reclaim a lost cord.
Sadly, the original wouldn’t recover the spatial seal or its contents. The good news was that there wasn’t anything irreplaceable inside it – just a bunch of elixirs, books, and other resources that he’d planned to give to Sol. The zelesian beads were still safe at home.
The seal itself was admittedly quite precious – especially since the current clone possessed a quarter of Percy’s capacity. He’d been given more than usual, because the other clones were either with Nephthys or Percy’s relatives and hadn’t needed seals of their own. Losing this much storage space wouldn’t be ideal, but Percy and Micky were willing to gamble it away for a shot at participating in the auction.
‘Percy? Everything okay?’ Tiberius asked.
‘I was finishing up the stitches,’ Percy replied with a half-truth.
Fastening the spectral strings that comprised the final preservation rune, he tapped into his host’s senses. His new body instinctively tried to inhale, only to find his lungs squeezed tightly and not a whiff of air outside his nose or mouth.
Percy didn’t panic, having been informed about this issue. Reaching to the original, he requested some air mana. He made sure to specify that he wanted the regular version – not the gaseous form of soul-freezing ice, since his host might not be able to handle or breathe it in.
Well… technically, it wasn’t possible to send normal air mana through the cord. The main body would have to attach at least soul mana, but the resource would be functionally identical in its corporeal state. Even if it wasn’t, the clone should be able to break it apart into its components.
A few seconds later, Percy received the promised trickle of mana, confirming that his ethereal cords were capable of bridging internal worlds with the broader universe. With any luck, it also meant that the clone would be able to escape away from this place if the need arose.
After instructing Micky to keep drawing mana from the cord to continuously manifest breathable air inside their host’s lungs, he finally opened his borrowed eyes.
‘This internal world is nothing like Lanthaniel’s.’
Percy had thought that the Tauren deity’s patch of desert had been rather small and barren but, compared to this, it might as well have been a luxurious palace. His host was floating in a void, surrounded by debris and a pair of corpses. One of the bodies was intact, but the other had been bisected, a trail of guts and blood flailing behind each half. Tiberius hadn’t mentioned an injury like that, so it must have occurred after the trio’s suffocation.
The Violet’s heart clenched at the sight of his dead companions, though Percy didn’t have the time to console his grieving host. He did, however, briefly examine the fallen mages to better understand what these people looked like.
‘Is that armour they’re all wearing?’ Micky asked, gawking at the plates of polished gold covering the Green-borns from head to toe.
‘I think that’s just their skin,’ Percy corrected his friend upon noticing that the strange exoskeletons transitioned seamlessly into their dark, pupilless eyes and orifices. The golden shells appeared to even cover these people’s privates, which made Percy wonder how they relieved themselves. Then again, this was neither the time nor the place to ask Tiberius about that.
The only piece of actual clothing they wore were long, dark capes attached to their shoulders and flowing all the way down to their heels – or at least they would if they were to stand still.
The largest objects in the void were the spinning fragments of what had once been some kind of metallic disk with a diameter of around a hundred metres. Percy guessed that it had been the platform that everything else had previously stood on.
The owner of this internal world had clearly possessed an air affinity and no other mana types, giving rise to a world that was corporeal but didn’t contain any solids by default. They had likely imported the metallic disk to give the mortals a place to stand, though the object didn’t seem to have survived the devastation.
Allowing his Sage’s Pond to unfold, Percy scanned the place more carefully. His senses only managed to expand up to around a hundred and fifty metres in one direction and a hundred in another before hitting an impenetrable barrier, meaning that the internal world was only about quarter of a kilometre across.
‘Only an eighth of Lanthaniel’s, so a two hundred and fifty-sixth of the volume,’ Percy calculated.
Was this roughly the difference between a god at the peak of the Self-Discovery stage and one that was close to the bottom? Maybe, though Lanthaniel had also ascended with a composite affinity, so the difference was even larger than that. Phoebe had mentioned that internal worlds grew with time as well as comprehended concepts, so Percy would likely need a bigger sample to fully make sense of the underlying mechanics.
More importantly, this internal world felt even more broken than the hulking deity’s – and in more than one way. The concepts that the dying god had mastered were clearly incomplete, and this space didn’t have a shred of mana, nor was it producing any. Some of those deficiencies could surely be blamed on the god’s untimely demise, but he had clearly been relatively unimpressive even in life.
Furthermore, the void was cracked.
Percy felt a sting in his mind as his Sage’s Pond spread over certain spots. He didn’t suffer any actual injury, but merely paying attention to the fissures hurt, making him want to avert his gaze.
‘How bizarre. I’m guessing that these rifts were caused entirely by the god’s death,’ Micky said. ‘I bet that they’re also what tore the corpse in half, so be careful not to fly into them by mistake.’
Percy nodded grimly, though he didn’t give up on studying the distortions. If his friend was right, the air and mana must have leaked out through these dimensional holes, which likely meant that they led to the outside world. Positioning his host at a safe distance, he tried to probe the nearest rift with thin tendrils of willpower.
Fortunately, the crack wasn’t “sharp” at every angle. Like a broken shard of glass, it seemed to have “flat” sections that were safe enough to touch. Percy still wasn’t ready to approach it, but he tried to push his domain through. His efforts were met with a lot of resistance, but the barrier felt softer than the impenetrable boundary of the internal world.
Methodically poking at the almost-spongy wall of space, Percy located a few spots that were even thinner. Applying more pressure, he finally managed to drill all the way through.
Pushing his Sage’s Pond through the narrow tunnel, he peered outside. Ignoring the deity’s broken corpse for the time being, he tried to examine the divine battlefield, only to be instantly blinded by a bright flash. Not giving up, Percy waited a couple of seconds before sticking his sensory domain out again, this time doing so more successfully.
‘What the hell? Are these spells?!’
The gods were too far away and moving too fast for Percy to get a proper look, but he couldn’t have missed the enormous projectiles they hurled at one another even if he’d wanted to: meteors as large as mountains, fireballs big enough to melt the asteroids in an instant, and entire seas vast enough to swallow the scorching suns whole.
Strangely, the scene was completely muted. Despite the humongous explosions and the blinding flashes of light, Percy couldn’t hear anything but his host’s heartbeat. Evidently, sound couldn’t travel through the vacuum of space.
This could hardly even be called a battlefield – it was more like somebody had shaken everything off the surface of a planet and stirred the mixture inside the world’s largest cauldron. The sheer devastation that the warring deities were unleashing upon one another made the apocalyptic battle between the Lone Wanderer and Machaon look like a couple of children throwing fistfuls of mud.
Every few seconds, a brief pause in the magical barrage allowed Percy to examine the space beyond the battlefield. It was just another void, albeit an infinite one, not that different from what remained of the god’s internal world if one were to ignore the stars shining in the distance.
‘And to think that Rhaziel is even stronger than them… We still have a long way to go,’ Micky muttered bitterly through their connection.
They didn’t know how powerful the head of the Felmaran pantheon was, but it was doubtful that one could earn the title “Proudheart” if they were merely at the bottom of the Self-Discovery stage.
Percy wanted to say something to encourage his fellow aspect. Together, they had clawed their way from the bottom of the Colour realm to near the very top – if not in actual grade, then certainly in fighting strength. However large the gap separating them from their enemies was, they would bridge it in due time.
Unfortunately, his host didn’t give him a chance to say anything to that effect. ‘I know it’s an impressive scene if you’ve never experienced anything like it, but I’m afraid we have more pressing things to worry about.’
Withdrawing his senses from the rift, Percy realized that the destruction of the internal world was accelerating rapidly. There were already three times as many cracks, each several times longer than before. If this continued, there wouldn’t be any safe place to float in a minute or two. Worse still, the fragmented space had spread to the boundary of the internal world, destabilizing it and causing it to shrink.
The kilometre-wide sphere was clearly about to implode, with Percy and Tiberius still inside!