As expected, Percy’s group reached their destination a few minutes after their brief chat. Micky was already fast enough to fly to any corner of the continent in under an hour, so it wasn’t all that surprising that the addition of Nesha’s amateurish spatial compression had completely trivialized the journey.
Scanning the vast canyon for their targets was also a lot simpler than the time Percy and his fellow aspect had accidentally discovered the underground dens of the wood goblins. Not only had they come here with a specific purpose in mind, but they also possessed superior tools to accomplish their goal faster.
Asking the Huehuan to deploy twelve fist-sized sentries, Percy took control of half the constructs and helped his friend spread their sensory domain across the entire canyon.
Despite having spent most of the past year working on the spell, Micky had unfortunately failed to make any significant improvements. He’d grown better at disguising his minions, coordinating their positions and switching between them, but he hadn’t managed to increase his actual capacity much.
That appeared to be a problem that Percy and Micky could only solve by enhancing their cognitive abilities – such as by upgrading their mindset, producing and cooperating with more soul clones and familiars, or acquiring specialized spectral traits like Sol’s.
The passive boost from their next promotions might help slightly, but there was a good chance that it would also expand the maximum number of sentries that Micky could manifest, in which case the situation wouldn’t change all that much.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ Percy thought with a shrug. ‘Even a fraction of Micky’s sentries are good enough for most situations.’
Carving out a small cave at the side of a cliff with his willpower, Percy summoned four chairs, a small table and a few snacks from his spatial seal, inviting his companions to take a short break in the shade while the sentries did their job.
Locating the canyon ogres only took a second – largely because the creatures made no effort to hide. According to Elaine, the demi-humans didn’t reproduce as fast as the wood goblins, but they made for even more formidable combatants than the swamp trolls, and lacked any serious threats to their population.
Weaker mages generally didn’t bother scaling the steep cliffs of the canyon with their bare hands just to get the same quality of combat practice that they could find elsewhere. Elaine had only chosen this area to train in her youth because of its harsh environment.
Blues could obviously fly through the canyon and slaughter the demi-humans with ease, but nobody at that level had any reason to do that. House Niobe also prohibited foreign Blues from invading their territory, partly for security reasons and partly to protect the habitat of the rare creatures.
Consequently, the ogres had survived and even thrived in this little pocket of Remior without much difficulty.
“Should we have asked for permission before coming here?” Elaine suddenly asked.
“Nesha and I are technically Greens, so you and Micky are the only ones who have violated their rules.” Percy chuckled. “Don’t worry. We’ll visit you in prison if you get arrested.”
“Very funny,” Elaine said with a deadpan expression. “Seriously though. Won’t they take offense?”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” Nesha shrugged. “Percy isn’t planning to harm the ogres. He just wants to look for alchemical reagents that nobody else is interested in and grab a few samples to bring back to the Guild. Besides, I don’t think that anybody will be in the mood to complain once he starts giving free mana cores to their mages.”
Ignoring his friends, Percy paid closer attention to the ogres. They were far burlier than the goblins, standing a full head taller than the average human. They were much closer in shape to the trolls, but that was where the similarities with the swamp creatures ended.
The ogres’ skin was smooth and toned, sporting a pinkish hue no different from a human’s. At the very least, it lacked the green pigment, or the disgusting warts and granules that characterized the other tribes. Their eyes were also surprisingly human-like – complete with white scleras and dark pupils that looked nothing like the bulbous eyeballs of the trolls or the glowing yellow eyes of the goblins.
Percy might have even mistaken the creatures for an isolated group of primitive humans if not for their pointy fangs, clawed digits, and throbbing muscles that helped them navigate the steep cliffs of their habitat.
‘Alright, that’s enough sightseeing,’ he told himself. ‘Now, where are my herbs hiding?’
The ogres lived inside caves – similar but deeper than the one that Percy and his companions were currently sitting in. There weren’t many plants in the area, so Percy guessed that the creatures were carnivores that survived by hunting down any beast dumb enough to wander into the canyon. The sea of bones littering the bottom of the ravines corroborated that guess.
After carefully scanning the interior of the caves, Percy failed to find what he was looking for, though he didn’t let that discourage him.
‘If there’s a magical plant growing in the area, it must be under the bones,’ Micky speculated. ‘It’s not only the best source of nutrients, but also a good explanation for how the skeletons break down without causing the canyon to overflow.’
Percy nodded, thinking along the same lines. Unfortunately, the bony layer at the bottom of the ravines was easily a couple dozen metres deep, making it even harder to penetrate with Mana Sense than the goblins’ tunnels.
Even Soul Vision wasn’t as helpful as Percy would have liked. While it could peer far deeper through mundane surfaces, the hypothetical plant that he was looking for would probably be quite underdeveloped spiritually. The ogres weren’t even living at the same spots to help him narrow down the search.
Percy sighed. ‘Oh well… I guess that this will take a little longer than expected, but I’m not leaving until we’ve looked under every single bone in the canyon.’
Willing the sentries to phase about halfway through the bones so that they could scan the entire layer more easily, Percy and Micky commenced their arduous search. The range of their Sage’s Pond shrank greatly due to the obstruction, but the canyon wasn’t that large in the first place. Combing through the whole place shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.
After bringing Nesha and Elaine up to speed and advising them to make themselves comfortable, Percy split a sliver of attention to chat with them while focusing predominantly on his sentries.
About an hour of failures later, traces of doubt inadvertently began to creep in. Percy and Micky had still only searched about half the canyon, but they felt that they should have already found at least a couple of samples if there were any.
‘Weird. Were the other ingredients really just a coincidence?’ he asked.
It wouldn’t be the end of the world if he had been wrong. He wasn’t even sure what exactly he was hoping to get out of these ingredients, as his goblinsight potion honestly wasn’t nearly as useful as the trollsfury ink. Percy had mostly come here to satiate his curiosity. It wouldn’t be his first, nor last project to hit a dead-end – as that was just the nature of research – and there were plenty of other ways to build his strength up.
Just as he was starting to debate whether it was worth making Nesha and Elaine wait another hour, Percy caught a glimpse of a strange figure.
‘Micky...? Do you see that too?’
‘What the hell? Why doesn’t that ogre have a mana core?’ the Huehuan asked back.
The other demi-humans in the area ranged between Red and Orange, with the occasional Yellow standing out – so nothing too impressive. But they all had mana cores, like every other creature in the universe. This one didn’t, for whatever reason.
‘It’s not just that,’ Percy said. ‘If you look closely, it has no soul or a body temperature. Hell, I’m not even sure that it has a physical body.’
‘You’re right… is it some kind of illusion?’ Micky mentally gasped. ‘Do you think that we’ve been discovered by our enemies?’
Percy tensed, but that only lasted for a couple of seconds before he shook his head. ‘Impossible. Our decision to come here was fairly spontaneous, and we told nobody where we were going. Even if Machaon had received word immediately and somehow guessed our destination, he couldn’t have possibly intercepted us so quickly.’
While Percy and his fellow aspect were trying to make sense of the mysterious demi-human, the creature itself was sitting leisurely at the edge of a cliff, gazing at nowhere in particular. Unlike the other ogres that Percy and Micky had mostly ignored, this one showed no interest in socializing with its kin or grabbing something to eat.
Examining the coreless entity carefully, Percy realized that it even appeared a little different from the rest. Its body was slightly leaner but still toned, while its skin sported a faint green hue that the other ogres lacked. The corners of its ears were pointy as its eyes shone dimly with an ominous yellow sheen, reminding Percy of the goblins. At the same time, two long tusks protruded from its bottom jaw – a feature unique to the trolls – while its scalp was covered in short hair that Percy had only ever seen on actual humans – on Remior, at least. Never demi-humans.
‘That thing… is not an ogre at all!’ he said, drawing a sharp breath.
Without warning, the mysterious demi-human leapt off the edge, plummeting to its doom without a care in the world.
As soon as it neared the bottom of the ravine, its immaterial body slowed down, allowing it to land on the bones softly, without so much as shifting them. Then, it did something that sent a chill down Percy’s spine.
It snapped its head in a seemingly random direction – except that it wasn’t random at all. It was staring directly at the nearest sentry, even though the construct was currently invisible, located over a hundred metres away, and obscured by a thick layer of bones!
Panicking, Percy shot up, knocking the table and chairs down while startling Elaine and Nesha. He was of half a mind to grab his companions and fly away as fast as possible, though he had no idea if he could even escape whatever this was.
“Is it Phoebe?” Micky asked. “It wouldn’t be her first time spying or pranking us.”
Percy considered it. He honestly couldn’t imagine anyone on Remior but a deity pulling such a stunt off, though this looked quite different from the titaness’ previous antics.
He’d already seen through her disguise once, even before upgrading his sensory domain to its current level, so he wasn’t sure if the goddess could trick him this thoroughly.
Whatever the creature was, it didn’t seem to be in a hurry to chase or attack Percy. Instead, it did something else that caused him to raise an eyebrow. It turned away from both the sentry and Percy’s real body, walking casually for a few seconds until it reached one of the spots that Percy and Micky had yet to search.
Halting its steps, it lifted its right arm and gestured at the sentry to follow it, before pointing somewhere underground with a smile on its face.
Percy hesitated. He didn’t know what he was dealing with, nor why it bore such a striking resemblance to not only every species of demi-human that he had previously encountered, but even regular humans. What he did know, was that its capabilities clearly went beyond the scope of the Colour realm.
Still, his curiosity got the better of him.
“Worst case scenario, the sentry gets destroyed,” he told his fellow aspect. “If it shows any sign of coming this way, we bolt immediately.”
The Huehuan nodded, before taking control of the invisible rat and moving it closer to where the demi-human was pointing. Once their sensory domain reached that spot, they saw a thick root covered in thorns protruding from the left eye socket of a cracked skull, buried at the very bottom of the pile of skeletons.
Most notably, the skull was roughly shaped like a human’s, albeit a little larger and with a jaw full of pointy fangs, indicating that its owner had been one of the ogres. The root shone with an Orange colour within Percy’s Mana Sense, though it was a lot dimmer than other ingredients of that grade.
Moving the sentry even closer, Micky turned it partially corporeal, clawing through the outer layer of the reagent and revealing a much denser Orange colour.
“That’s it… what we came here looking for,” Percy muttered in disbelief. “The ogre bones are relatively scarce, and the roots’ bark seems to have properties similar to concealment runes, which is why we had so much trouble finding them.”
Had this been ten minutes earlier, he would have been ecstatic to confirm his suspicions, though he wasn’t in the mood to celebrate right now.
Shifting his attention back to the strange demi-human, he was prepared to ask the creature who it was or why it was helping them, only to find out that it had disappeared without a trace.
“Shit. We’re leaving. Now!” he yelled at his companions, two-thirds of whom were still giving him odd looks. The explanation could wait for when they were safe.
Micky moved even faster than him, leaping out of the cave and transforming into a giant crow again. Grabbing Nesha and Elaine’s arms, Percy followed behind his fellow aspect, practically tossing himself and the rest of the group onto the bird’s back.
At the same time, he called back the sentries, though he still made sure to have the three rats closest to the root transform into moles and work together to dig out a big chunk of the plant. Percy would have liked to collect more samples, but this piece might be enough to grow more if it was anything like the moss and mushrooms.
Either way, he didn’t want to stay in the canyon a second longer.
“Percy! Will you calm down and explain what’s going on?!” Elaine demanded. “Weren’t we going to visit House Niobe?”
“Some other time, perhaps,” Percy said.
He knew that he might be overreacting, since the mysterious creature hadn’t shown even the slightest sign of aggression. If anything, it had only helped them find the root they’d been looking for. However, Percy was too thoroughly spooked by the demi-human’s inexplicable abilities to risk it – especially with not only his main body, but Elaine and Nesha’s survival on the line.
He only calmed down slightly after flying a hundred kilometres away from the canyon, though it wasn’t until the Fungal Spire appeared on the horizon that he truly allowed himself to relax.