Holding his ground inside a hostile body wasn’t the only ability Percy wanted to master before looking for a Blue host. Ideally, he also wanted to learn how to hide his blessing, to avoid having to answer any difficult questions about its origin.
Of course, soul affinities were rare to begin with. Even on a greater spring, most of the younger and weaker mortals might have never seen one. Blues were typically much older and enjoyed an elevated status, however, so Percy couldn’t count on their inability to tell that something about his mana was amiss.
Naturally, finding a Ring of Sacrilege wasn’t the only – nor even the most common – explanation for a mortal with a blessing. That said, he’d rather not have to lie to everyone he met about being the son of a god. He had no way of knowing how they might react to such a peculiar claim. Some might grow more guarded toward him, while others might ask him follow-up questions that would inevitably expose him. No matter how he thought about it, it was just better to keep this knowledge to himself.
Finally, there was Metatron.
Unfortunately, the titan was already aware that Percy didn’t have any divine parents, so the lie wouldn’t even work on him. In fact, he was the very person who had introduced him to the idea of acquired blessings in the first place. Naturally, Percy couldn’t afford to return to the Vault without first learning how to suppress his blessing.
Not that he planned to go back to the artificial world anytime soon. He had already purchased all the runes he would need to upgrade his armour, and he was busy with a dozen other things at the moment. Then again, opening a portal to the Vault was essentially his only way out of an impossible situation – as his trip to Felmara had already proven. He didn’t want to lose access to that option entirely, just because he hadn’t bothered to prepare for it.
Luckily, the solution was relatively straightforward – Zoris had already taught him how to work on it.
Doing so while in another’s body was trickier, because he only had his limited stash of fused mana to draw from – some of which he had already spent while healing his host. It would have been much easier to try this with his main body, taking advantage of the practically limitless supply of soul mana.
‘It can’t be helped. The original has a ton of other things to worry about. It’s best to have the clones pitch in with whatever they can…’
Grabbing a sliver of grey from his stash, Percy tried to alter its properties – to revert it to its original nature. For several minutes – perhaps even hours – nothing happened. But he didn’t let that get to him, continuing to scan his surroundings for gravity ingredients as he worked on the blessing. He hadn’t really expected this to work on the first try anyway.
The idea behind this trick was simple enough, but it didn’t mean it was going to be easy.
According to Zoris, mortals were inherently ill-equipped to handle concepts. They could wield them – much like a barbarian could swing an axe around – but that didn’t mean they could truly comprehend them in any deep way. After all, understanding a concept was the hallmark of divinity.
As for those below that threshold, they could barely tap into the concepts they’d been lucky enough to be born with, or those they had otherwise acquired – be they the ones tied to their original affinity, ones they had obtained later in life like Micky, or their blessings.
To make things worse, some concepts were even harder to grasp than others. For example, Gabe’s blessing of heat was a lot simpler for anybody to wrap their minds around, as it was part of everyone’s daily life. Of course, mortals would still find it impossible to comprehend it in a deep way, or to infuse it in their mana without the corresponding blessing, but its owners didn’t have as difficult a time muting its effects.
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Sadly, Percy’s blessing fell on the opposite end of the spectrum. After all, he hadn’t even heard of the concept of permanence until just over a year ago. Soul affinities were already relatively obscure to begin with, let alone an even more exotic variant.
The good news was that he didn’t needto fully understand his concept to do what he wanted. Merely suppressing it – preventing its effects from seeping into his mana – was apparently among the most basic forms of concept manipulation, much like affinity fusion and affinity fission that he was already familiar with.
Recalling the former god’s explanation, Percy tried to figure out what he was doing wrong.
According to Zoris, these three techniques had one thing in common. They relied on the relationship between two or more concepts, using each as a focus point to move closer or farther away from.
When it came to affinity fusion, one had to move from the two source elements toward a third. With affinity fission, it was the opposite. Concept suppression, on the other hand, relied on a similar yet different dynamic, as it played on the relationship between the parent concept – like fire or soul – and a derivative one – such as heat or permanence. It basically involved temporarily undoing all the changes that had occurred during the acquisition of the blessing.
‘Actually, I should have an advantage there…’
Somebody like Gabe, who had been born with his blessing, had never actually experienced the default state of his element. Meanwhile, Percy had spent most of his life wielding regular soul mana, so it was a lot easier for him to differentiate the properties that had originated from the blessing from those that predated it. Approaching the task with renewed confidence, Percy attempted to cleanse his mana from the blessing’s influence once more.
Hours passed, and then days, without much progress.
Even worse, Percy’s beast hosts didn’t have Micky’s second core, nor his mutations. Consequently, they were all slaves to the same bottomless hunger that plagued every beast in the universe. Suffice to say, Percy had been forced to take several detours to appease his host, which greatly inhibited his ability to search for the gravity ingredients he needed.
It wasn’t until about a week later that he achieved any semblance of a positive result. He hadn’t found many candidate plants to bring back – only a handful of different types that he didn’t think stood much of a chance of possessing the right affinity.
But his efforts to suppress the blessing did do something.
Borrowing a pair of legs from the beetle – the creature had plenty of limbs anyway – Percy was playing with his last sliver of fused mana when it happened. The grey colour brightened by a couple shades, the substance feeling slightly lighter for a moment. Of course, the change didn’t last long, but this was promising.
‘It’s just one step of several though…’ he reminded himself, not wanting to get carried away by the first hint of success. The rightful source is NoveI[F]ire.net
Obviously, he would need to scale this up massively, until he could fully rob his mana of its new properties. Not only that, but he had to learn how to do it passively, to his entire stash, and for an extended period of time.
Finally, his blessing came with its own set of challenges. It wouldn’t be enough for him to mask the nature of his mana, because the concept had already affected his soul as well. Somebody like Metatron might still pick up on that if he was careless.
Luckily, Zoris had mentioned that he could suppress the changes to his wisps in a similar manner. It would be even harder, of course, and he’d also have to be more careful with it. If he went too far, his clones would lose their ability to support multiple spectral traits, which would have catastrophic consequences. Percy had to achieve a delicate balance between hiding away all the superficial changes to his mana and soul and retaining some of their most important functions.
Mentally sighing, he withdrew his clone from the beetle’s body, knowing that he wouldn’t get anything else done here. Having exhausted his mana and worn the creature’s patience thin, he was better off trying his luck elsewhere. Of course, he could have tried to forcefully possess the beast too, getting some practice with that, but he figured the poor thing had helped him enough already.
Speeding back to Remior through the infinite realm of darkness, he couldn’t help but lament how busy the following months would be. On top of having so many things for his main body to work on, his clones had somehow gotten their hands full with all sorts of side-projects of their own.
They had to search for gravity ingredients, master the forceful possession technique, learn to suppress the blessing, and, of course, continue his eternal search for lesser and greater springs.
‘But it’s good to be this busy, isn’t it?’ he thought, nodding with determination.
With five clones, a mountain of Wiseman’s Murmurs stored inside his main body’s head, and the Insomnia trait eliminating the need for sleep, anything less than this would have been a waste of his potential.