Something warm trickled down Percy’s chin, soaking the fur on his neck. The smell of iron filled his nostrils, his brain feeling like jelly. But he endured.
More importantly, his concentration stretched like a rubber band – or perhaps, like a slingshot, shooting shrapnel through his skull. Staying conscious was just as hard as maintaining the exercise, but he knew he couldn’t afford to pass out. If he did, he could easily lose all his time in the chamber, dooming Leo in the process. His only option was to keep going.
Eventually, something changed. Two of the pieces snapped together, a satisfying click reverberating through his mind. At the same time, his headache eased slightly, the students’ voices blending into their images. Not only that, but the memory gained some colour, everything growing less blurry.
And that was just the beginning of a chain reaction. The fused memory pulled its remaining components with renewed vigour, a fresh wave of agony rippling through his brain.
Still, that didn’t last long. Soon, they got assimilated too, bringing clarity with them. The air mana inside Leo’s core flowed even faster, as more fragmented memories lit up in his mind, all of them associated with the same exercise, yet coming from different moments.
One of them had to be from the week after – Leo had barely improved by then, and it appeared he was still using the finger trick. The memory was missing its sound like the previous one, though it had colours this time. They swirled around like liquid blotches of paint, lacking a fixed form.
Another memory seemed to be from several months later. By now, Leo was rotating his mana as easily as breathing, incorporating the exercise into a more complex task. Percy guessed this one had to be from Pre-casting 3, so mere weeks before the boy’s death.
Restoring a memory brought more of them into focus. Almost like solving a jigsaw puzzle, except that he only had access to a few of the pieces, the rest slowly popping into existence as he branched outwards. Assuming this continued without any dead-ends, he might be able to heal his host!
‘Well, it doesn’t matter. I can handle a little pain. Besides, it’s not like I get nothing out of this.’
Concentrating on the exercise again, Percy forced the new memories to expand like before. The smaller shards were easier to fuse, while the larger lumps moved more slowly. They hurt more too, acting like cheese graters rather than shards of glass.
By now, Percy felt like somebody was making scrambled eggs inside his head. The only way to bear the pain was to dip his senses into his core, tuning everything else out. The mana rotated faster, not straying from its orbit by even an inch. Sticking closely by the walls of the core, it formed a thin ring, circling around where he imagined his finger to be. In fact…
‘I no longer need the finger!’
This was incredible! Mastering the exercise to such an extent by himself would have taken him dozens of hours. Yet, it had barely been twenty minutes since he entered the chamber.
Usually, he couldn’t just learn his hosts’ spells this easily, even if his mind was connected to theirs. This was why Micky had been forced to demonstrate Circulation for him back in the arena, and why he’d spent some time overseeing him as he practiced it by himself.
Yet, Leo’s circumstances were unique. The mere act of rebuilding the boy’s shattered mind – one brick at a time – allowed Percy to peer deeper into the memories, experiencing them more fully. Even then, he knew he owed his quick progress to the potions accelerating his thoughts and the Wiseman’s Dust opening his mind up.
‘Alright buddy. Let’s get you healed. I promise not to give up on you if you don’t.’
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Minutes became hours as Percy flipped through the pages one after the other. The exercises had started simple, though they grew more complicated towards the end of the course.
He learned to maintain the lateral rotation while pulling the mana through his channels, all the way to his palms. That would allow him to release wind blades that spun in two directions rather than one, though applying it to an actual spell was for later.
Next, he learned how to rotate the mana in parallel to the wind blades too. This way, they would spin faster, increasing their cutting power. However, this one was more complicated, as it was harder to pull this type of rotation through his channels without injuring himself.
After getting that down, he learned how to keep the rotation going in his core even after pulling some mana out, so that he could keep imposing the transformation on subsequent spells without further preparation.
Finally, he learned how to instantly flip the rotation angle between the two styles, so that he could vary his attacks.
‘And to think this is all still in Pre-casting 1…’
Getting through the whole course took a few hours. By the time he was done, he was dizzy, and his brain throbbed like crazy, forcing him to take a short break. But he wasn’t complaining.
He’d crammed weeks of practice in less than a day since he entered the chamber. Even better, dozens of new memories had taken root in Leo’s mind.
The mist in the room had grown fainter too. Between his abdomen sucking every drop of life mana, his mind absorbing all the mind mana, and the pure mana rushing into his core – Percy left nothing behind. The vents hadn’t stopped spewing more gas into the room for a second, struggling to keep up with his demands.
‘Well, nobody’s banged on the door yet, so that’s a good sign.’ he shrugged.
As soon as his headache eased a bit, he picked up the next notebook, starting the Pre-casting 2 exercises. Those were already more complicated, typically combining a few of the easier ones.
Percy had to split the mana into more portions and apply some of the other transformations on each one. Keeping two perpendicular rotations active was simple enough, but pulling them through his channels without messing them up was a lot harder.
Overall, the notebook didn’t contain as many entries as the previous one, but each of them spanned more pages, as Leo had been forced to come up with multiple tricks to master them.
Sadly, the boy had predominantly focused on honing the rotations to their limits, but he’d never touched the aspect that interested Percy the most – slowing the air mana to a halt.
‘Leo’s style isn’t very suitable for drawing runes, but that doesn’t make it useless. It’ll all benefit Micky, and I might even be able to apply some of it to my soul mana back home.’
There would be more issues to solve, of course. Not only would he have to adapt the exercises to a different affinity, but he’d have to use them with his boosting art active. Leo hadn’t been taught to do that yet – that was apparently part of Pre-casting 5. And Percy would have to take affinity fusion into consideration – as well as his shroud – before he could use it in combat.
‘It’s still immensely valuable though.’
It was something he wouldn’t have even thought of had he never ended up on Felmara, and skipping months of practice in mere days was quite a bargain.
Eventually, he was done with the second notebook, taking another short break before jumping to the last one. Unfortunately, Leo had barely written a few pages in it, as he’d never completed Pre-casting 3. Not to mention that the boy had missed many of his classes in the weeks leading to his death.
‘Nothing I can do about it, I suppose. If it’s all we have, let’s just get through it too and see where we stand.’
Percy had no way to track the time, but he estimated he’d spent less than two days to go through all the exercises. He was more than satisfied with his own progress too, but not as much with Leo’s.
Granted, his mind was in a better state than he found it in. Back then, there had barely been any traces left. Most of them had been things deeply engraved into his brain, such as his passive understanding of the local language, his knowledge of where the restroom was, or the faces of his best friends.
Now, there was a lot more there. Dozens of complete memories, each of them revolving around one of the exercises he’d practiced. In fact, some had merged, reconstructing entire lessons. And he’d even recovered a few tangentially related memories by proxy.
‘But it’s not enough… not even close…’
This was all still a mere fraction of Leo’s past. A somewhat specialized view into it too. Plus, Percy hadn’t found any traces of the boy’s will or personality.
Part of him regretted not bringing the other notebooks, though he knew he wouldn’t have had the time to go through all of them, nor would he have managed to get as much value out.
‘The diary is all I’ve got…’
It wasn’t ideal, since he’d read the whole thing before, and it hadn’t really sparked any new memories. Then again, the situation was very different right now, as he had many more tools in his arsenal to help him pull the lost memories out of the diary.