The sentries followed the Violet out of the house first thing in the morning. Thankfully, Percy’s Sage’s Pond extended much farther than the Tenefyrian’s domain, so it wasn’t difficult for the minions to keep the black sphere of willpower within sight without getting spotted.
The only issue was that the Violet could pass through other domains without a care in the world, while Percy’s sentries had to avoid them at all costs. If they didn’t, the unwelcome attention would force the constructs to decelerate and act like real animals. At least the Tenefyrian was much slower than the sentries and was mostly flying in a straight line, making it somewhat hard to lose them. Percy had also deployed multiple minions on this mission, to ensure that he never lost track of his target.
The trip proved surprisingly short and uneventful. Percy had expected the Violet to use a teleportation platform or fly to some distant region, yet was shocked to see the Tenefyrian stop next to the nearby volcano less than three minutes after heading out. Flying toward the spot where the artificial dome met the rocky mountainside, the ice mage entered through a person-sized opening just above the closest river of liquid metal, disappearing into the enormous structure.
‘Do we follow?’ Micky asked.
Percy was tempted to do just that but ultimately shook the snail’s not-exactly-head.
Their target was far from the only powerful mage in the area. After a few seconds of observation, they spotted a White with an ice affinity exiting the volcano through a different hole, followed by other Violets and Whites coming and going seemingly every couple of minutes.
Evading the natives’ domains was much easier inside the town than it would be within the volcano’s relatively narrow caldera. Furthermore, the interior of the mountain was way too hot for animals to survive, so pretending that the sentries were just a bunch of random pests wouldn’t be an option if they got caught.
‘No point in risking it. Now that we understand what the underground ocean is, we can enter from a different volcano. Tenefyre is full of them. Hell, our sentries can just phase through the ground,’ Percy explained.
Perhaps, the name of their destination should have clued them in sooner – and… well… Percy had harboured his suspicions all along. However, he had expected the underground ocean to be constrained to a much smaller region, possibly in some isolated corner of the planet.
Evidently, that wasn’t the case.
Unless he and Micky had just happened to possess a host located conveniently close to their objective, the underground ocean likely encompassed the entire planet – it was literally Tenefyre’s mantle, and could be accessed from anywhere!
‘I can see that being the case, but what if the droplets are only scattered near the towns?’ Micky asked again after hearing his friend’s reasoning.
‘That sounds unlikely,’ Percy argued. ‘It looks like any ice user can enter the ocean. I suppose that one needs to be at least a Violet to protect themselves from the magma for a prolonged period of time, but that’s still a lot of people. Especially if the Tenefyrian deities regularly buy lots of water and air affinity-granting treasures from the Sapphire Pavillion – which I suspect that they do.’
‘So what?’ Micky asked, clearly failing to see the point.
‘If the droplets were limited to the vicinity of the towns, the Violets and Whites would have found them in no time. It would make more sense to spread them out and force the ice mages to compete against one another and work hard for their prize,’ Percy said.
Whoever had come up with the idea of using the entire planet as a training ground was clearly a genius. Ice users were naturally equipped to survive in the harsh environment beneath their world’s crust, as they could hold the magma at bay with their domains and mana, cool their bodies down with their affinity, and generate as much drinking water or breathable air as they might need through affinity fission.
Even without investing into expensive infrastructure or intricate enchantments, the Tenefyrian gods had created the perfect challenge to train, identify, and reward their most promising mortals.
And Percy had every intention of partaking in the excitement.
Over the following twenty minutes, he recalled all of his sentries to the snail. He didn’t need to stay near the town or gather any more intel from the natives in the short-term, so he might as well try to access the underground ocean from a more remote location.
He still kept one of the constructs next to his host’s body for his own safety, but had the rest phase through the ground. He spotted the first signs of magma about three kilometres deep, which was actually remarkably close to the surface. Clearly, Tenefyre had a thinner crust than the average planet, which might or might not be related to the presence of so many volcanoes.
Percy had his minions continue downwards for another kilometre or two, until their surroundings transitioned from a mixture of solids and liquids to pure magma. The magical droplets he was after were encased within spherical geodes, and he figured that it would be easier to tell the objects apart from their environment if there weren’t any unrelated solids floating alongside them.
Admittedly, Percy was still operating under several unconfirmed assumptions.
It was possible that the underground ocean was more localized after all, and that the ice users he had seen earlier had used a teleportation enchantment from inside the volcano, or had followed a very specific path to their destination. Maybe the town he had visited was special, and it truly had been just a coincidence that he’d possessed a creature so close to the only volcano on the planet that one could access the hunting grounds from. Perhaps, the geodes were only scattered in certain areas, or at a certain depth. And there were a million other things that Percy might have misunderstood.
That said, he felt that the easiest way to settle his doubts would be to search for the first geode. As long as he and Micky found even a single droplet, they would confirm their guesses. Afterwards, they could take their sweet time discussing how to scale up their operation to collect the remaining fifteen hundred and ninety-nine portions of divine mana that they would need to grant the Huehuan his blessing.
Thus, they commenced their search.
The sea of magma was hot enough to instantly melt and evaporate the sentries the moment they turned corporeal. Luckily, they didn’t necessarily have to do that just to scout the scorching ocean out, but not interacting with the physical plane came at a cost. Many of the constructs’ senses grew weaker, and their dense, opaque surroundings certainly didn’t help much either.
The range of the sensory domains shrank to a few metres, but at least the sentries could still phase through the magma as if it wasn’t even there, sweeping through vast distances in practically no time – in theory, at least.
In practice, Percy had to limit the speed of his minions. He was afraid that one of them would eventually stumble upon a roaming ice mage, and there would be no way to explain their presence at such an inhospitable place. There weren’t as many people here as there had been near the town but, if Percy was right about the droplets being scattered everywhere, it only made sense that some Violets and Whites would search the region beneath the snail’s hiding spot sooner or later.
Due to the smaller range of the sensory domains, Percy had to move his constructs at a more manageable pace, so that he would have enough time to react if he spotted a wall of willpower heading their way.
‘It doesn’t help that the droplets are so hard to see,’ Micky complained about six hours into the search.
Percy sighed through their connection, echoing his friend’s sentiment. The augmented mana didn’t contain a shred of willpower or spirituality, while regular sight and heat vision were severely impaired so long as the sentries remained incorporeal.
The only sense that might yield some results was Mana Sense. Even that wasn’t as helpful as Percy would have liked, because they were searching for droplets of Clear mana. The grade itself took its name from the fact that the corresponding mana was difficult to perceive for anyone who wasn’t at least a demigod.
Fortunately, Percy had come in contact with mana of that grade enough times to feel reasonably confident in detecting it. The droplets would barely register as faint distortions, and only from up close, but that should be more than enough to make the geodes stand out amidst the chaotic ocean of scorching sludge.
Two days into the search, Percy and Micky had yet to find any, despite branching out for hundreds of kilometres in every direction and even nearly colliding with roaming ice users a couple of times.
The good news was that the presence of other mages had confirmed that the sentries were looking at the right place. Still, the Violet that they had spied on earlier had collected multiple geodes in a single day, suggesting that Percy and Micky were doing something wrong.
‘Maybe we should dive deeper?’ Percy suggested.
‘The heat and pressure will be even higher,’ Micky pointed out. ‘I suppose that it doesn’t really make a difference while the sentries are intangible, but extracting the geodes will be much harder if we find any.’
‘I know, but that’s exactly why I feel like the gods would have scattered more droplets over there. It would allow the most skilled mortals to collect enough mana for the blessing much faster, while the weaker ones would have to struggle for decades and hope they get lucky.’