‘Zoris… I’m sorry you had to go through that crap,’ Percy told the disembodied god during a break.
While Sol didn’t need sleep, they had no choice but to pause their search whenever Doh did. Percy had considered travelling alone with his host, since she was more than powerful enough to handle herself, but he figured that there was no reason to take unnecessary risks just to save themselves a few hours per day.
It would only take a single mistake for Sol to lose her life, despite being stronger than all the surviving fauna on her planet. Slowing down slightly to have an equally powerful companion guarding her seemed like a wise choice.
‘Don’t worry about it, kid,’ Zoris replied with a mental shrug. ‘I understood what I was signing up for when I offered to return to Melodia and pass the blessing to your friends. I’d considered the possibility of the Green-borns learning about my existence, but I’d also known that you would have eventually come back for me – assuming that you hadn’t gotten yourself killed somewhere, of course.’
‘And what if I had?’ Percy argued. ‘You’ve seen first-hand how dangerous my life has been. You could have easily ended up imprisoned by the Melodians, passing them the blessing forever.’
The deity metaphorically shook his head. ‘I told you before: one can’t hope to tread where nobody has stepped foot without taking a few risks. You may have remained hidden from the peak factions until now, but you’ll eventually catch their attention if you keep growing as you have. You’ll need powerful allies when that day comes, and I need to do my own part to strengthen them if I want you to live long enough to give me a new body. Besides, I would have found a way to slip away from the Melodians sooner or later – it would have only taken a moment of inattention from one of their descendants.’
Percy wasn’t necessarily convinced that Sol’s people would have allowed the priceless artifact to slip through their fingers, though he didn’t say anything else, considering any further discussion on this topic superfluous.
Shifting his attention back to the journey, he tried to calculate how long it would take to return to the Mirror Lake. Last time Sol and Doh had made the trip, they had been constrained by the travelling speed of their slowest companions.
With Blue cores in their sternums and Green cores in their abdomens, as well as a boosting art elevating their strength by another grade, the pair of Melodians moved dozens of times faster than the previous expedition. While the trip from their cities to the Elemental Source had lasted several months before, they could now travel from one end of the continent to the other in a mere week.
Unfortunately, their goal wasn’t simply to cross the landmass as soon as possible, but to carefully scour it for all it was worth.
They did possess a map, as their ancestors had scouted out the rest of their planet many times between beast tides. The primitive people had lacked the means to capture and hold territory for long, but they hadn’t remained completely oblivious to their surroundings.
The only issue was that their information was rather outdated. While Sol’s people were aware of the general shape of the continent and the locations of its most important landmarks, the minor details changed greatly from one beast tide to another.
The tallest mountains had presumably endured the endless march of time, but Percy could picture modest-sized hills getting flattened by a few herds of giant beasts. The widest lakes had likely remained intact, but the smaller ponds had undoubtedly dried up after accommodating countless thirsty creatures.
Most importantly, the wildlife should be completely unrecognizable. Forests had shrunk or grown anew, while animals that had once dominated the land had either been driven to extinction or forced to hide in remote corners of the continent, replaced by other beasts that were more suited to survive the latest iteration of their ever-changing habitat.
Percy’s small team had a pretty good idea of what the landmass looked like, yet they hadn’t a clue what creatures or natural treasures they might encounter. Taking the most long-winded route imaginable to the Mirror Lake, Percy estimated that it would take him five more months to get all his questions answered.
Borrowing ten sentries from his main body, Percy had spread them out around his host to accelerate his search. He didn’t bother requesting nearly as many minions as before, because cycling through multiple groups of otherwise immobile constructs wasn’t convenient for this sort of mission.
It had made sense when his goal had been to keep track of the sections of the lake that his army had already cleared, but the continent was too vast to form any sort of closed perimeter. Percy couldn’t possibly station a sentry at every location that he and his companions passed through, so he accepted the possibility of a few species evading his scan if they happened to circle around his squad at the wrong moment.
Speed was more important than being thorough anyway, because more types of creatures would likely die out by the end of the beast tide than slip past him.
‘Is it me, or are trees scarcer than I remember?’ Percy asked at some point.
The ground was mostly bare, and all the trees that the group had stumbled upon had been reduced to half-chewed stumps. Sadly, that also meant that there was no shade to protect the group from the intense sunlight scorching the surface of their planet, though everyone involved was fortunately resilient enough to endure even the harshest environmental conditions with relative ease.
‘Powerful beasts are almost exclusively carnivorous, but they’ll try to fill their bellies with whatever they can in their desperation,’ his host explained.
Percy had been aware of this phenomenon, but it was his first time encountering it at such a world-altering scale.
‘It’s probably because of the Mirror Lake,’ Zoris interjected.
‘How does that work?’ Percy asked, glad to have the wisdom of the ancient deity at his fingertips again.
‘On other planets, the carnage is constant and uniform,’ Zoris explained. ‘Beasts destroy some regions before migrating to others, giving the flora a chance to regrow before returning. On Melodia, there is an Elemental Source constantly pumping out enormous amounts of mana, so its surroundings never dry up completely. You can consider it as a disruption in the ecosystem – a spot that always offers safe haven to the wildlife. When the rest of the continent runs out of food, the surviving creatures are forced to travel to the Mirror Lake to avoid starving. When the destroyed regions recover, the beasts scatter again to minimize competition.’
Percy nodded in understanding. ‘So, the Mirror Lake acts as a focal point for the death and destruction that would have been present anyway?’
‘More or less,’ the ring wraith confirmed. ‘The movement to and from the Elemental Source coincides with the cycle of destruction and regeneration, as well as the rising and falling population of animals, creating the phenomenon that the natives refer to as a beast tide. It’s why you have probably never encountered anything like it elsewhere, but this has been documented before on planets with Elemental Sources.’
‘Isn’t that bad for us?’ Sol asked. ‘It means that the Mirror Lake will be even more crowded than the last time we were there.’
‘That’s how it has always been close to the end of a beast tide,’ Zoris said. ‘You’ll probably run into a lot more Green beasts, and maybe even a couple of Blues, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The four of you have grown strong enough to handle it.’
The group fell silent after that, resuming their search an hour later when Doh woke up. Percy was honestly more concerned that they wouldn’t reach the Mirror Lake in time to examine the accumulated creatures before they slaughtered each other than his host’s safety.
Picking up the pace, the Melodians and their disembodied companions crossed hundreds of kilometres per day, bouncing from one end of the continent to the other several times in the following weeks. Percy and his sentries swept through the land like a colossal comb, scanning everything in their path.
Doh didn’t contribute as much, because he didn’t have a sensory domain of his own, but nobody held it against him. At least his fighting strength should prove useful once they arrived at their destination.
Unfortunately, Percy’s squad didn’t find what they were looking for.
The closest they got to a stable source of beast mana was a type of horse-shaped lizard that frequently oozed a thick, amber fluid from the gaps between its scales. After seeing the creatures feed the strange substance to their young, Percy had asked his companions to slow down and give him the chance to observe them for a couple of hours. In the end, he concluded that the oddly coloured sweat was highly nutritious but ultimately just a mundane ingredient that couldn’t be used for core cleansing.
Other than that, Percy collected a few interesting herbs – though not too many, as the rampaging wildlife hadn’t left many plants standing, be they magical or not. Most of the ingredients that he did find were of the soul affinity, their grade ranging between Red and Orange.
Percy hadn’t had many opportunities to brew soul-based potions before, so he didn’t mind stuffing a few primary and secondary reagents in his seal for later. However, his storage was already packed full of books, and he’d rather not discard them for the sake of a few dubious herbs.
Aside from his arguably modest harvest, Percy noticed that Melodia had multiple giant lakes, just like the one that resided between the natives’ cities. If this was any other planet, he wouldn’t have thought much of it, since every world tended to possess a few unique geographical quirks.
What bothered him was that the Elemental Source that they were currently traveling towards looked almost exactly like these mundane lakes – except for the fact that it was even larger, constantly produced enormous quantities of soul mana, attracted a massive swarm of spectral fiends, and allowed creatures to run on its surface fairly easily.
Okay… those were admittedly plenty of differences, but if one ignored the Mirror Lake’s magical properties, it truly was a lot more similar to the others on this planet than it should have been. It was round and atypically large, the plants growing at its shores were the same as everywhere else, and even the layer of mud at the lakebed appeared to have similar thickness, texture and composition.
‘How does that make sense?’ Percy asked Zoris.
As far as he could tell, Elemental Sources weren’t fixed to specific planets. They could – and had been – moved from one world to another. How could one fit into the local environment so perfectly?
And what would happen if a powerful deity moved the Mirror Lake to, say, Remior one day? Would the Elemental Source change shape or replace its mud with a type native to its new home? Or would it exert some kind of invisible influence on the planet to transform the other lakes into something resembling itself?
‘It is indeed strange,’ the disembodied deity admitted. ‘I never quite registered this oddity myself, since I lack the senses of living people, but you’re right that this shouldn’t have been the case. As far as I know, Elemental Sources have a standard appearance that isn’t affected by the planet they are on, so they tend to stick out like sore thumbs.’
Percy’s doubts only intensified upon hearing the god’s explanation, making him suspect that something fishy was going on with this Elemental Source. That said, he had no choice but to push his questions aside until they reached the magical lake.
A few weeks later – mere days after he and Micky finished elevating their host’s second core to Blue – the group jointly decided that they had seen enough of the ravaged continent. Beasts had been growing scarcer by the day, and it didn’t look like the Melodians were going to find anything interesting outside the Mirror Lake.
Technically, there might be a source of beast mana inside the planet’s ocean – Melodia wouldn’t be the first planet to harvest their cleansing resources from an aquatic species – but Percy’s host wasn’t exactly suited for an underwater expedition, nor was that a priority. The sea wasn’t as affected by the beast tides, so the natives would be able to search the ocean at a later date.
With their options exhausted and their hopes largely dashed, they set course toward the Mirror Lake at last.
If they failed to find a stable source of beast mana there as well, Percy would have to start thinking about importing one, though that didn’t mean that their current trip would go to waste. At the very least, he planned to spend enough time at the Elemental Source to register Basic Soul Control, bringing himself a step closer to his eventual apotheosis, and maybe even elevating his fighting strength slightly in the process.
He also couldn’t wait to solve the minor mystery that had been bugging him about the nature of the Mirror Lake.