Vast frozen plains stretched as far as the eye could see, jagged protrusions jutting out like icy fangs every mile or two. Nothing here was all that new to Percy – he'd traversed numerous frigid wastelands in the past – but he wasn't used to associating such vistas with his own world.

This was Remior's north pole.

It was common knowledge that the singular supercontinent humanity called home stretched to cover both of the planet's poles, though he wasn't sure whether there was rock beneath the glaciers, or just more ice.

Either way, it hadn't been his intention for him and Micky to travel this far north. They had originally planned to stick to the wildlands between here and civilization, taking the time to hone their spells as they hunted down the occasional beast unlucky enough to cross their path.

Sadly, their pursuers had been even more forceful than expected. Most of the groups searching for them were too powerful for Percy and Micky to fight, meaning that they had to spend a lot of time avoiding them. They could still outrun most Blues on Remior, so they didn't really have to worry about any lone team cornering them, but things hadn't gone as smoothly ever since their enemies started coordinating with one another.

The smaller Houses weren't interested in working together, as most of them wanted the bounties to themselves. The Great Houses, on the other hand, had let go of their pride at some point, probably realizing that they'd have to make some concessions if they wanted to succeed.

Advancing in unison, they had methodically pushed Percy and Micky farther and farther north, eventually forcing them all the way out here. And there was nowhere else to go, unless they decided to forgo the safety of having land underneath them, or they started risking their lives against the tougher groups.

'It doesn't matter. We were planning to do that anyway. If those bastards think we're at the end of our rope, they've got another thing coming…'

Not that flying over the ocean would be a horrible choice. There wasn't any large landmass on the other side of Remior, but there were plenty of tiny, uninhabited islands. Percy and Micky might be able to ditch their pursuers there, and maybe even grab a snack or two.

Based on the relatively minor damage the red pyramid inside Percy's soul had sustained so far, they should still have over a year left before they were forced to infiltrate the Spire. By then, they could grow a lot stronger, and it might even be worth going around the planet to invade from the south, to give themselves the element of surprise.

'It's something to consider. I could definitely use some peace and quiet when it's time to upgrade my armour.'

Percy had grown a lot faster at spinning the silk, but he would still need several days to prepare enough length. He'd need even more time to weave it into proper, enchanted clothing, and he'd rather not get distracted while doing it. Until the self-repair runes were in place the material would degrade rapidly. But that was a problem for later – Nesha's clone wasn't even back yet. For now, they had bigger fish to fry.

The frigid gales howling over the north pole would have been deadly to a Red – and quite unpleasant for even an Orange. To Percy, they barely registered as a gentle, summer breeze. He didn't just have his two Yellow cores or Micky's memories of Huehue's dark side to thank for that either.

It was hard to care about a relatively mild source of external cold, in the face of three networks full of volatile ice mana wreaking havoc inside his own body. Shivering, he helped the clone saturate every centimetre of his new channels with the soul-freezing ice the latter had prepared. In its corporeal state, the resource wasn't supposed to interact directly with his soul, yet Percy could swear that its insidious influence had somehow seeped through.

'Probably a good thing… if it's bothering me this much after working with it for so many months, my opponents are not going to have a good time…'

The clone had done most of the work on this project, figuring out how to fuse each of the three permutations of the ice, and using them to clear and temper the main body's channels. However, the last step would go a lot more smoothly if both of them participated, which was why Percy had taken a break from everything else.

The idea behind it was simple.

Between the two of them – three actually, including Micky – they had all the tools they needed to prepare and equip themselves with their latest weapon. Yet, there was one hurdle that they still had to overcome.

Supply.

With the Carnival active, Percy tended to saturate his whole body with his original fused mana. This was okay in most circumstances, since it was simply more efficient – a compact resource that he could fuel all his spells and runes out of, capable of anything his individual affinities could do.

In this situation, that wouldn't cut it.

The clone didn't want Percy's fused mana. He needed plain old soul mana – to fuse into the ice. The pure component would do nothing but get in the way. In theory, Percy could keep a portion of his mana unfused, to send to his companions. However, doing that would tip the delicate balance of power in his own body, leaving him with an equal amount of unfused pure mana that would just go to waste. Luckily, he already had the perfect solution for that.

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His old Soul Conversion spell.

This was a spell Percy hadn't used in a long time. For the last decade or so, it had been gathering proverbial dust in some corner of his Status, having fulfilled its original purpose, and never found a new one.

Percy had first registered it as the Crude Self-bestowal spell, after studying the Vault's books on mana conversion. At the time, he had needed to get his hands on as much soul mana as possible, in order to attract his first spectral fiend to Remior.

He had found himself in pretty much the same position as today, having a lot of spare pure mana and nothing to do with it. Unwilling to let it go to waste, he had resolved himself to convert – at least some of it – to soul mana, bolstering his stash during the operation.

After practicing for months in Bogside town, and getting a better feel for the natures of his affinities in the depths of the Grisly Bog, Percy had slowly but steadily raised his conversion efficiency, eventually upgrading the spell to the Refined tier.

Sadly, he'd only used it once more since then.

When his familiar was on the verge of starvation, Percy had demonstrated the spell to Micky, teaching him how to convert his own air mana into beast mana. It had formed the foundation of the crow's Regulation and, later, Consumption – the bird's first Masterful spell and current iteration of his boosting art that he almost always kept active.

As for Percy, he just hadn't found any applications for it. While fighting, he was better off combining his mana types and working exclusively with the result. Situations where he needed one affinity more than the other simply didn't occur that often.

And yet, here they were.

'I'm ready if you are,' the clone said, getting a nod back.

They'd tried this before, but today they'd decided to go for the final push, to register the upgrade they knew was coming.

The original began the process by activating his boosting art. Strictly speaking, the Carnival wasn't a requirement for the new spell to work, but the whole point was to figure out how to effectively manage all those disparate flows of mana, without impacting Percy's ability to fight.

A few breaths later, Percy's body was full of his original fused mana.

As a side note, he had finally decided to give the resource a proper name. It hadn't been an issue before, since he hadn't had as many different mana types to juggle, but things were starting to get quite confusing. "Teal mana" was no longer a suitable name ever since the blessing had altered its colour, and "fused mana" wouldn't work either now that Percy had access to so many distinct flavours of affinity fusion.

Taking a page from his own Status, Percy had named it the phantom affinity – or phantom mana, interchangeably. He knew it wasn't a true affinity because it couldn't form its own cores or channels, nor could it be found in nature. This was the main reason he had even resisted naming it for so long.

Alas, such was life.

Percy discarded all the soul-freezing ice inside his body, making space in his new channels for a refill. Holding his cores back a little, he prevented them from fusing all the pure and soul mana into phantom mana, leaving traces of the original resources to swirl around his body.

Gathering the soul mana to his chest, he pushed it through the cord, but didn't stop there. He moved all the spare pure mana to his sternum, injecting it in his first core. Next, he used the organ to alter the resource's properties, converting part of it into a brand-new source of soul mana.

As early as when he and the clone had started working on this, he had noticed some positive side-effects of his boosting art. Teaching himself how to circulate phantom mana through both cores had improved the organs' ability to handle the foreign concepts, inadvertently raising Percy's conversion efficiency – despite the fact that he hadn't used the corresponding spell in over a decade.

Converting the cyan mana into its grey counterpart, Percy estimated that he had retained about a third of its volume, surpassing his previous best by a narrow margin.

'Good enough,' he thought, sending an additional trickle to the clone.

At the same time, a chilling sensation spread through him as a new flow entered his body via the second cord. There was barely any space in his soul channels, so he instantly moved the new resources into the other pathways he had emptied out earlier, turning them corporeal.

For a while, neither he nor the clone did anything else, trying to iron out all the kinks in the process. Namely, they concentrated on keeping their boosting arts at close to full power, while going through the motions to restock their reserves of soul-freezing ice as quickly as possible.

'Ten minutes,' Percy spat as soon as they were done, not feeling very happy about it. It wasn't a long time while idle, but it was an eternity in combat.

'Again?' the clone asked.

Percy responded by draining his channels and beginning the process anew.

'Eight minutes,' he said the following morning, having repeated the experiment dozens of times overnight.

As much as he wanted to keep going, he had already held the Carnival active for too long. Percy had grown a lot better with it over the past year, but he still couldn't maintain it perpetually.

Taking some rations out of his seal, he took a short break. He waited for Micky to kill and eat an Orange beast too – some kind of oversized polar bear. Still tired, he spent a couple of hours brewing some Aurora Dew – not the most relaxing activity, admittedly, but one that tired him in a different way. Only after he and his familiar had drunk their morning doses did he resume his efforts until noon.

When it was time to drink their second set of elixirs for the day, they still needed about eight minutes to replenish their stash, having not made as much progress. It wasn't until late in the following morning that they reached the next milestone, bringing the number down to seven minutes.

Percy's Status had remained silent.

Three days later, they hit the six-minute mark. Having grown a little more accustomed to the task, Percy could even imagine himself fighting while keeping the intricate exchange going. Though he'd still have to offload some of the effort to the clone if the battle got very heated.

Not satisfied, they kept going.

Another week passed, their daily gains having slowed down to a crawl. Percy understood by now that they weren't going to get much better than this. He could only spare a little bit of space in his channels, after all. The conversion rate inside his first core had already plateaued, and the clone's ability to fuse the mana and send it back was also about as efficient as it was going to be.

But Percy liked round numbers, so he pressed on until they reached a benchmark he could actually stomach.

Just after the end of the second week, it finally happened.

"Five minutes!" he, his clone and Micky cried out in unison, having shaved the last few pesky seconds off.

And Percy's Status rejoiced alongside them.

[Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Soul Conversion – Refined -> Secret Art: Mana Bargain – Refined!]

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