The Lone Wanderer

Based on the powerful domain shaking the entire battlefield, Archibald estimated that his grandson was now stronger than him or Machaon.

The image of the Red-born boy who had once spent every waking moment honing his spectral daggers and learning to safely activate his bloodline by his grandfather’s side overlapped with the tall, cloaked figure that hundreds of hopeful and fearful eyes were currently looking at.

Archibald almost teared up, though he didn’t dare to relax.

Lord Asclepius couldn’t have predicted Percy’s latest powerup, but there was a reason that he had waited for nearly a decade before invading, and they were about to find out what it was.

A confident smirk was still plastered over the enemy patriarch’s lips right until he began breathing rapidly and deeply. Horrified, Archibald watched his opponent push his core beyond its limit, knowing full well what it meant.

‘That explains why Machaon was so cautious earlier…’

The plasma mage had kept his reserves close to full. The only spell that had consumed slightly more mana had been the massive blast that he had just shot at Percy, and he’d already recovered.

A couple of seconds later, three sets of glowing lines lit up across the White’s body. The indigo bolts of electricity and reddish-orange flames were familiar enough, but it was Archibald’s first time seeing the pattern for the plasma affinity. Bright purple curves decorated Machaon’s skin, intersecting with the other colours in several spots.

With the activation of Circulation, the enemy patriarch’s domain grew significantly stronger, pushing back against Percy’s. A spherical zone nearly two kilometres wide formed around Machaon, silencing the eerie symphony that permeated the forest and causing the trees within it to burst into flames even more intense than the previous ones.

A bitter smile crept onto Archibald’s face.

This development wasn’t all that surprising, really. He and Percy had speculated that their enemy’s secret weapon had most likely been their own boosting art, stolen and repurposed against them.

If anything, they should be glad that Machaon had lacked a proper teacher. Having to piece together the scarce accounts of the spell from the bounty hunters and adapting it to his own affinities was the only reason it had taken the experienced patriarch so long.

‘This confirms that the Divine Root has allied with him. They were the ones who placed the bounty on Percy and provided a good chunk of the Blues chasing him,’ Archibald thought, reminding himself to keep an eye out for enemy reinforcements.

Machaon’s significant powerup only marked the start of House Avalon’s problems. Emboldened by their leader, the Violets fighting against Archibald’s subordinates activated their own versions of Circulation.

Three of them did, at least, though the mage injured by Galahad and one of the Violets fighting against Elaine hadn’t had the luxury of keeping their reserves close to full. Now that the cat was out of the bag, it wouldn’t be long before their teammates bought them enough time to prepare.

Archibald scanned the smaller battles happening on the ground with bated breath, afraid that the enemy Blues and Greens had also been taught Circulation. Fortunately, those fights continued as they were. Machaon had probably rushed here as soon as the last of his generals had mastered the technique, clearly having judged that waiting for the rest of his army to join them wouldn’t be worth the delay.

“Grandpa…” a strange voice: or rather, multiple voices: spoke in unison. Percy’s and Micky’s were the main, as well as the calmest ones, but a chorus of spectres cried shrilly alongside them, resonating with the powerful domain. “Help the others. We’ll handle him.”

Archibald nodded. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice. Circulation had only boosted the Violets’ strength by a relatively modest half a grade, but that was more than enough to shift the tide of the war the wrong way.

Gathering up the hundred-and-fifty-or-so clones that Machaon hadn’t already burnt to a crisp, Archibald sent them to reinforce his Blues, choosing to trust his grandson. Despite having his hands full with keeping his relatives from getting butchered, he maintained a sliver of attention on the cataclysmic battle that was about to determine their family’s: and possibly the entire planet’s: fate.

Without warning, a violent shockwave shook the space between Machaon and Percy, followed by several others. The two combatants had yet to move a centimetre, but their first contest had already begun.

It was one of pure willpower.

The colossal domains were no longer merely pushing against one another. They actively lashed out, like two invisible giants engaged in a brutal fistfight. Whenever their knuckles met, they created bolts of electricity that flailed around randomly. There weren’t many trees still standing near Machaon, so the lightning that hit the ground merely carved deep trenches in dirt and ash, sending waves of soot rippling out to the rest of the forest.

Nobody seemed to gain the upper hand during this early clash. Or perhaps, Percy and Lord Asclepius were simply probing each other. That only lasted until Archibald’s grandson did something that caused Machaon to leap aside, then up, before dodging many additional times in seemingly random directions.

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Archibald couldn’t see what the young man had hurled at his opponent, as even Mana Sense came up empty. Machaon had probably only noticed the perfectly-concealed attacks the moment they cut into his domain, evading them by the skin of his teeth. His movements grew more erratic by the second as the number of constructs trying to rip his soul to shreds presumably increased.

Eventually, Lord Asclepius appeared to grow tired of the constant harassment.

An ocean of plasma mana spilled out of his pores, mixing with his shrinking domain to form a condensed purple star about as large as a house, bathing the entire forest in its ominous light like a second sun.

It looked almost identical to the blast that he had fired at Percy, though he kept this one around his body, incinerating and shattering the incoming projectiles. It was only when the enchantments on the constructs failed that Archibald finally managed to sense them: a flock of hundreds of scythes: most of them now broken down into tiny pieces.

Machaon wasn’t satisfied merely by protecting himself. After all, he had spent the past decade plotting to kill Percy, and his target was floating right before him.

Lifting his palms toward the cloaked figure, he fired multiple smaller blasts. “Smaller” was obviously a relative term, as each was larger than a carriage and packed enough power to disintegrate their family’s mansion ten times over. The size of the projectiles allowed them to fly even faster than the massive comet from earlier, and Machaon was shooting them by the dozens.

Percy was forced to move for the first time this battle.

Thunderous shockwaves boomed beneath his feet as he zigged and zagged in three dimensions. Given the strength of his domain, he could have easily used it to fly in a smooth and consistent manner like every Violet did: and like his opponent had just done mere moments earlier.

Instead, he seemed to prefer focusing his strength on brief, carefully controlled jumps that made it look like he was teleporting around the battlefield and leaving afterimages behind.

Shockingly, these afterimages quickly proved to be more than optical illusions. Rather than vanishing immediately, they persisted, beginning to move on their own. A growing army of phantoms slowly formed, each looking identical to its creator!

At first, it had looked like Machaon had placed Archibald’s grandson on the backfoot. His deadly composite affinity and boosting art allowed him to unleash a lot of destruction without putting a dent on his reserves.

A few hundred spells later, he was surrounded by so many scythe-wielding ghosts that hitting the real Percy became a statistical improbability. The constructs no longer bothered to dodge his attacks, welcoming the losses in their ranks as they danced outside his barrier, searching for an opening.

They didn’t find one.

Despite their absurd numbers, they failed to penetrate the thick layer of plasma immolating anything that approached Machaon. They kept trying and getting crushed, leaving only tattered strips of grey silk and broken weapon fragments in their wake. The debris was pushed out of the purple sun, forming clouds of dirt that revolved around the two combatants.

Clearly realizing that nobody would land a hit at this rate, Machaon tried to break the stalemate. Flying upwards, he didn’t stop until he was floating at least a kilometre above Percy, at which point he simply resumed shooting bolts of plasma at him.

The patriarch’s action appeared almost pointless at first, though the meaning behind it revealed itself when Percy tried to avoid the projectiles.

He could dodge them as easily as before, or he could simply allow them to consume a couple of his phantoms as they continued unimpeded. The problem was that, due to Machaon’s new angle, the blasts were now headed toward the forest. Unless the young man blocked them, he risked letting his relatives suffer unimaginable losses.

‘Does that bastard not care about his own troops? And what if he kills somebody with our bloodline by mistake?!’ Archibald asked himself with a grimace.

Maybe Lord Asclepius was simply that confident in his awareness of the other battles and his aim, or perhaps he was betting on Percy’s willingness to inconvenience himself for the sake of his family.

Archibald considered asking those among his subordinates who didn’t possess the Clone bloodline to stick close to those who did, or to their opponents, but the mere thought of treating his family as a bunch of shields left a poor taste in his mouth.

Either way, Machaon’s gamble paid off.

Instead of avoiding the projectiles, Percy sent his phantoms flying directly toward them. It took dozens to completely block a single blast, causing his army to shrink rapidly.

In theory, Percy should be able to regenerate a small number of constructs faster than Machaon’s blasts, because the ghostly figures directly absorbed ambient mana to grow and animate themselves.

However, Lord Asclepius still surpassed Percy and Micky by multiple grades, so the two of them had only managed to expand their troops to their current numbers after several minutes of accumulation. At this rate, they would run out in less than a minute, leaving them without distractions or the tools to nullify Machaon’s magic.

Archibald scrambled his brain to think of a solution for his grandson. The simplest course of action would be to fly higher as well, to prevent the enemy patriarch from shooting at both the phantoms and the ground. Unfortunately, Machaon was unlikely to abandon a winning strategy, so he would probably keep firing at the forest regardless, forcing Percy to continue sending his constructs to their doom.

Apparently, the young man didn’t need his grandpa to fight his battle for him, however, clearly having some ideas of his own. With seemingly no intention of returning to the previous stalemate, Percy called upon the ocean of debris that his failed attacks had produced. Rivers of magical silk, as well as a hail of grey ice and weapon fragments flew toward him, forming a growing cyclone around his body.

The pieces of discarded magic expanded and latched onto his robes, sucking vast volumes of ambient mana at a frightening rate. A blink later, two enormous wings stretched outwards, scattering the spiralling gusts and revealing a crow that utterly dwarfed the one that the young man had ridden into battle.

It looked even less natural, its plumage woven out of countless patches of silk frozen together. Fuelled by four mana cores and even more variants of the Dance, the size of the monstrosity far exceeded the limit of the Green or Blue grades. With a wingspan of nearly a hundred metres, it was about as large as a White beast: according to Archibald’s estimates, at least, though he had never actually encountered such a thing.

Opening its beak wide, the monstrous bird let out an earth-rending screech that could hardly be likened to a cawing crow, revealing many rows of crescent-shaped blades within its cavernous maw.

Archibald’s heart skipped a beat, as he almost forgot for a second that the abomination was on his side. Swallowing hard, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of pity for the enemy patriarch who looked like a grain of rice before its hungry eyes.

A/N: Chapter 694: The horrific power of Circulation