Based on the soul’s relatively good condition, Percy guessed that it had died with an intact carcass, probably of starvation. It wasn’t like he ever had to deal with half-chewed bodies floating inside the stomachs of other creatures, since he wasn’t able nor willing to possess such hosts in the first place. Still, it was nice to have confirmation that his new vessel was salvageable.
After stitching up the injuries and tapping into his host’s senses, Percy tried to locate its stomach, to feed it some nectar. That simple task proved surprisingly difficult, as the beast appeared to have a rather unique body structure.
It had no limbs, nor a head that was separable from its torso. Its flesh felt soft and squishy, and the creature even appeared to be both blind and deaf. At least, its acute sense of smell allowed a detailed, three-dimensional model of its surroundings to manifest inside Percy’s mind. It could also use Mana Sense and Soul Vision, as the magical senses were automatically packaged into any creature that possessed a mana core and one of Percy’s wisps.
‘Our Sage’s Pond is several times smaller than usual and lacks a few of the standard types of information,’ he noted. ‘I suppose that the sentries will be doing most of the scouting anyway.’
‘Is this thing some sort of slug?’ Micky asked with genuine interest. ‘I’m not sure we’ve ever possessed anything like it. And what’s with the boulder crushing our lower body?’
Percy tried to crawl away from the object, only to quickly discover that it was attached to his host’s membranous skin. Luckily, it didn’t feel too heavy or uncomfortable, so they’d just have to get used to it. Realizing that the creature was closer to some sort of snail than a slug, Percy relied on his host’s instincts to figure out how to retreat into its shell – mostly out of curiosity than necessity.
‘How does it even hunt, though?’ Micky wondered again. ‘Aren’t snails supposed to be too slow to capture prey?’
The mundane ones they had on Remior ate grass and leaves, but almost every Orange beast in the universe was an obligate carnivore, since the affinity forced its owners to constantly hunt weaker creatures. The only exceptions were those that lived in extremely mana-rich environments and had evolved to take advantage of them, such as the Starry Wasps or the floating cats.
‘If we’re lucky, it might have a way to produce and store its own stable beast mana, though I think that it’s more likely to be an ambush predator or capable of moving around rapidly by rolling on its shell,’ Percy speculated. ‘Either way, we weren’t planning to rely on our host’s abilities much.’
Still unable to locate the creature’s stomach, Percy decided to dump a few drops of nectar in front of its “face” and loosen his hold over its body to let it consume the meal by itself. Observing the snail for a few seconds, he watched it crawl onto the tiny puddle, absorb the liquid directly into its slimy flesh, and start slowly digesting the substance throughout its body.
‘Convenient,’ Micky said. ‘But I’m not sure I ever want to watch our host eat another animal.’
The imagery caused Percy to shudder, prompting him to distract himself with more productive thoughts. They needed to hide from predators and start scouting their surroundings. Both tasks would become a hundred times easier with a handful of magical sentries by their side.
Reaching out to his main body, Percy requested some spiritual blood, though he specified that he had to be drip-fed the frigid liquid this time, as the snail’s soul wasn’t even remotely as robust as Sol’s.
Percy and Micky tried to navigate the dense foliage in search of a good hiding spot while waiting. Unfortunately, their poor vision and unfamiliarity with the area hindered them severely until they accumulated enough spiritual blood for their first fist-sized minion.
‘Much better,’ Percy said with an internal smile as his sensory domain unfolded around him, replacing the inferior bubble of information that he could access via his host’s senses.
Finding a couple of unoccupied caves or hollowed trunks proved laughably easy when he could scan everything for several kilometres, though he wasn’t in a rush to crawl to the nearest hiding spot. Percy had already pinpointed every beast in the area large enough to pose a threat. Most were too far away, and he could easily avoid the rest – or even slaughter them in an instant with his own phantom mana if they got close.
He took his sweet time choosing the cosiest and most spacious den before crawling towards it at a leisurely pace. It was a wide and deep gap between a pair of massive boulders that were located about half a kilometre away. During the short trip, he paid closer attention to his host and surroundings, trying to understand what sort of place this was.
Now that he had access to regular sight again, Percy noticed that the snail’s soft body had a bright orange colour, while its shell was smooth, silver, and carried an unmistakeable metallic sheen. Considering its manageable weight, the shell clearly wasn’t made of heavier materials like iron or titanium, but probably an alloy of lighter metals like tin or aluminium. What Percy had yet to figure out was whether the creature harvested those materials from its prey, or directly from the environment.
The next thing that stood out was that the other beasts in the vicinity had certain similarities to his host, despite looking entirely alien to somebody from Remior. For example, there was a creature that resembled a cross between a tortoise and a snail. It seemed even bulkier and slower than Percy’s host, its shell sporting the blood-red colour of iron and covered in sharp spikes.
The slimy tortoise wasn’t really a reptile, as similar slimy flesh protruded from the eight openings in its fortress-like shell, revealing just as many appendages: six legs, a short tail, and a head adorned with four beady eyes. Unlike the snail, the gooey parts of the tortoise’s body had a deep magenta colour and ended in hard pads made of the same material as its shell. Percy guessed that these isolated pieces of metal served as hooves to protect the creature’s limbs as it walked, or lids to seal its shell when retracted.
In the opposite direction, he spotted a much larger, faster, and springier creature that he would describe as a hybrid between a spider, a slug, and an octopus. Its pink flesh didn’t possess a single centralized shell like the other creatures, but its seven tentacle-like legs ended in sharp metallic tips. The spider’s blades were pitch-black, as long as a man’s forearm, and pierced deep into the ground with every step the creature took, leaving no question as to their lethality.
‘Interesting. I guess most creatures on this planet have descended from snail-like ancestors – and haven’t quite shed the corresponding traits,’ Percy concluded. ‘I wonder whether the people living here are the same. It’s definitely not something we see every day.’
Other than the appearance of the local wildlife, Percy had learned a couple of things about the specific region they were in. The tall, vine-covered trees and dense undergrowth indicated that it was some sort of tropical jungle, though it was unclear whether this was a common setting on this planet or just an isolated region.
Surrounding his host were three enormous volcanoes. Each was located between ten and fifteen kilometres away, placing them well outside the range of Percy’s Sage’s Pond, so he could only scan them with his sentry’s regular sight. He didn’t think that he had just happened to land between the planet’s only three volcanoes, so he figured that they were probably a common sight on this world.
This was why he was shocked that the sky was clear, without even a single cloud nor the slightest trace of smoke. Percy only guessed that the mountains were volcanoes due to the giant, semi-spherical domes covering their peaks – almost like corks meant to seal a bunch of oversized bottles.
The colossal lids were clearly artificial – smooth, metallic, and covered in intricate enchantments. The inhabitants of the greater spring had probably placed them on the volcanoes to prevent them from erupting or polluting the environment.
The volcanoes clearly weren’t dormant, and plugging their openings with a few giant pieces of metal wouldn’t have been enough to seal them. Percy noticed that each mountainside was lined with several viscous rivers of different materials flowing down through carefully carved paths.
‘Ingenious,’ he mentally exclaimed, feeling the urge to whistle.
Instead of trying to stop the volcanoes from erupting entirely, the locals allowed them to spew their contents out in a controlled manner. The enchanted lids filtered out the toxic fumes and separated the materials, allowing them to flow down and presumably solidify at the base of the mountains. The natives likely patrolled the volcanoes regularly to collect the accumulated resources.
With a single invention, these people had managed to prevent all sorts of natural disasters while also giving themselves a practically limitless source of free materials. Then again, Percy wouldn’t have expected anything less from a greater spring.
‘It’s a pity you don’t have many volcanoes on Remior, or we could have tried to steal their trick,’ Micky lamented.
‘Yeah…’ Percy agreed with a mental sigh. They did have a couple of volcanoes on his home world, but only one was active. It was also much smaller than these and hadn’t erupted in millennia.
Regardless, he was more interested in the thick ambient mana that he had noticed the moment he had tapped into the snail’s senses. It was likely caused by an infrastructure-type Decree, once again reinforcing the idea that this particular variant was among the most common in the universe.
‘Do you want to try and study the Decree as well?’ Micky asked after noticing him revel in the dense mana for a couple of seconds too long. ‘This type is probably cast by titans with the pure affinity, so the knowledge might be useful to you.’
Percy shook their host’s front end. ‘I can’t pinpoint the source of the extra mana. It seems to come from every direction, meaning that it’s likely some sort of global effect. Even if we could find a specific structure, I don’t think we’re quite ready to understand how a Decree works. I’d rather look for the nearest city and start researching the natives.’
‘Fair enough. Do we just scatter our sentries in every direction and wait for them to stumble on civilization?’ Micky asked as they safely settled the snail inside its new home.
‘Sort of,’ Percy replied with a mental shrug. ‘It’s better to disguise the constructs as critters from this planet, otherwise people may notice that something is off. I suggest we spend a couple of hours studying the local wildlife before doing anything else.’
After receiving his friend’s agreement, Percy took a moment to leave a mark on the planet and recall its name. If he wasn’t mistaken – and he shouldn’t be, due to his eidetic memory – the Attendant presiding over the auction had referred to this world as Tenefyre.