“Congratulations! Wave 2 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”
Percy grinned. He’d never worried about failing the early waves, though he was still quite pleased with how quickly he had completed this one.
‘Just under an hour – for a challenge with a time limit of over thirteen!’
“Awarded credits: 600. Current balance: 889.”
Originally, he’d planned to take a break after each wave to relax his mind and give Cassiel a chance to exercise, but it would be better to just get the first few over with.
Thinking of something, he didn’t rush to jump into the next one, instead spending some time to complete a couple under Cassiel’s name. The boy had never delved into magiscript before, so Percy might as well give him a helping hand.
In the past, it hadn’t been as important to do this for his hosts. He hadn’t even cleared that many waves with their bodies, so all of them had grown capable enough to catch up and surpass his previous efforts by themselves.
However, Cassiel was never going to climb as high as Percy was planning to during this trip – certainly not in the few months he had left before reaching Green – so these would be lost credits if Percy didn’t help the boy claim them. Once he’d brought his host to his own level, he logged into the system with his own name again.
“Cube, is it possible to count the waves for both of us from now on, so that we don’t have to clear them twice?”
“Evaluating request…”
“Evaluation complete. Challenges may only be undertaken by a single user at a time.”
“But there’s already two of us in here,” he replied, placing his hand on the floor and letting it scan his soul. “User IDs: 004528131799 and WANDERER.”
The silver runes kept spinning around his hand longer than usual before flashing red.
“Error. Multiple users have been detected inside the challenge cube. Unable to commence challenge until one user evacuates.”
“Where’s the second user? There’s only one person here,” Percy replied with a shrug.
The cube remained silent for a while before flipping out again. This time, it wasn’t just the runes under Cassiel’s hand shifting colour, but all the runes around the room.
“Critical error. Only one user is present inside the challenge cube. User is registered under multiple user IDs. Unable to proceed.”
Percy could swear he heard a soft sigh echoing through the metallic chamber, causing his lips to curl up. The enchantments returned to their usual colours a moment later, as if nothing had happened.
“Cube, we want to resume the ‘magiscript’ challenge. Yellow level. User ID: 004528131799 and WANDERER,” he said, trying to bully the system into compliance once more.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it sang a slightly different tune this time.
“Authorization granted. Restarting ‘magiscript’ challenge, Yellow level. Users have already cleared wave 2. Do you wish to resume at wave 3?”
“Do it,” he said with a grin. He should probably tell the other clones to do the same later, in case they didn’t think of it by themselves.
“Choice confirmed. Wave begins in 18 rits.”
Reading the instructions, he compared it to the previous wave.
‘Draw any sixty enchantments 7500 times in total, in under 50000 rits, with at least a 95% success rate. Each individual enchantment has to be drawn at least 100 times. At least thirty different enchantments have to contain multiple runes.’
‘Hmmm… fifty percent more enchantments, but only twenty-five percent more time to draw them.’
“Wave begins in 12 rits.”
To somebody who had barely cleared the second wave, this seemingly minor step up in difficulty would have likely proven insurmountable, but it was still far below Percy’s current capabilities.
“Wave begins in 6 rits.”
Gathering mana in his fingers, he pressed their tips against the smooth surface of the podium, grinning as he watched the cyan lines seep into the enchanted screen with ease. The pure affinity might suck when it came to the combat challenges, but it was by far his favourite for magiscript.
“Wave begins. May your challenge be successful!”
***
“Congratulations! Wave 3 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”
“Awarded credits: 900. Current balance: 1789.”
“Awarded credits: 900. Current balance: 1800.”
The second balance was naturally Cassiel’s. The boy had obviously run out of money before Percy met him, having spent the last of his credits buying sizian meat. Thankfully, his account was already looking a lot better. Percy didn’t pause, already beginning the next wave.
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***
‘Draw any eighty enchantments 8000 times in total, in under 60000 rits, with at least a 95% success rate. Each individual enchantment has to be drawn 100 times and contain multiple runes.’
***
“Congratulations! Wave 4 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”
“Awarded credits: 1200. Current balance: 2989.”
“Awarded credits: 1200. Current balance: 3000.”
***
‘Draw any 100 enchantments 10000 times in total, in under 60000 rits, with at least a 95% success rate. Each individual enchantment has to be drawn 100 times and contain multiple runes.’
***
“Congratulations! Wave 5 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”
“Awarded credits: 1500. Current balance: 4489.”
“Awarded credits: 1500. Current balance: 4500.”
***
‘Draw any 200 enchantments 20000 times in total, in under 60000 rits, with at least a 95% success rate. Each individual enchantment has to be drawn 100 times and contain multiple runes.’
***
“Congratulations! Wave 6 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”
“Awarded credits: 1800. Current balance: 6289.”
“Awarded credits: 1800. Current balance: 6300.”
“Wave 6 is a special milestone. Bonus reward is available. Please voice your request. NOTE: Bonus reward is limited to the Yellow grade.”
There it was. His first bonus reward since his time with Gabe. Though he wasn’t in a rush to claim it.
“Can I make my mind up later?”
“Evaluating request…”
“Evaluation complete. Bonus rewards can be claimed at any time. User ‘Percy’ has 1 bonus reward pending. User ‘Cassiel’ has 1 bonus reward pending.’
Percy exhaled in relief. This time, the challenges had actually pushed him a little. Waves four to six had clearly been on a whole other level compared to the ones before. Simple runes had no longer been allowed at all, the cube accepting only composite enchantments. Their number had also grown rather steeply.
‘Hmmm… it doesn’t look like the time limit will ever go beyond sixty thousand rits though,’ he realized, having spotted a pattern.
Frankly, that made sense. That was already about twenty hours, so anything more would be too unreasonable.
Percy had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, he was happy that the challenges wouldn’t grow any longer, as they were mind-numbingly boring. The shorter they were, the better for his sanity. On the other, he felt a little bummed out after being cheated out of one of his major advantages.
Thanks to his Insomnia trait, a long duration was less of an issue to him than other people, so it was objectively bad for him that the challenges would focus more on testing his skill than his endurance from now on. That said, he understood why they’d been designed this way.
Starting to feel a little tired, he decided to take his first break. Tomorrow’s waves would likely push him closer to his limits…
***
‘Draw any 1000 enchantments 100000 times in total, in under 60000 rits, with at least a 95% success rate. Each individual enchantment has to be drawn 100 times and contain at least five runes.’
***
“Congratulations! Wave 7 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”
“Awarded credits: 2100. Current balance: 8389.”
“Awarded credits: 2100. Current balance: 8400.”
***
‘Draw any 1000 enchantments 100000 times in total, in under 40000 rits, with at least a 95% success rate. Each individual enchantment has to be drawn 100 times and contain at least five runes.’
***
“Congratulations! Wave 8 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”
“Awarded credits: 2400. Current balance: 10789.”
“Awarded credits: 2400. Current balance: 10800.”
***
‘Draw any 1000 enchantments 100000 times in total, in under 20000 rits, with at least a 95% success rate. Each individual enchantment has to be drawn 100 times and contain at least five runes.’
***
“Congratulations! Wave 9 has been cleared! Calculating rewards…”
“Awarded credits: 2700. Current balance: 13489.”
“Awarded credits: 2700. Current balance: 13500.”
Percy plopped down weakly, his host’s chest heaving up and down.
In a strange twist, the latest batch of challenges had started scaling in a new way. The number of required enchantments had remained fixed at a hundred thousand, though each wave had forced him to draw them under a stricter time limit.
By the ninth wave, Percy had had to draw five unit cells per second for seven hours straight, each containing a minimum of five runes!
‘Man… this is brutal. I would have probably failed this one without the trait,’ he realized.
It made sense. Percy had deduced during his past visits that the first wave of each level was somewhere between the third and fourth of the previous level in difficulty. If this trend continued, it meant that each grade was offset by about three waves.
In other words, the wave that Percy had just completed was almost on par with the first wave of the Violet grade!
‘Is there any point continuing?’ he wondered.
He’d probably have more credits than he’d know what to do with, once all of his clones were done, and he doubted he’d clear the twelfth wave of the Yellow level to reach the next bonus reward.
Starting the challenge, he peeked at its instructions before aborting it.
‘Draw any 500 enchantments 5000 times in total, in under 1000 rits, with at least a 95% success rate. Each individual enchantment has to be drawn 10 times and contain at least thirty runes.’
Percy couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. The requirements were indeed much steeper. He still had to draw five enchantments per second to finish in time, but the complexity of the unit cells had jumped massively.
Before, he’d only been required to include five runes, so he’d just drawn otherwise simple enchantments with lots of control runes. This time, he would have to draw some genuinely profound unit cells with thirty runes each.
Technically, some of his equipment involved even more complex enchantments than that, so this wasn’t entirely out of the question, but Percy had never drawn them this fast.
‘Coming up with five hundred variants that I can draw fast enough is also going to be tricky. I’ll need to spend a lot of time planning them out and practicing before I even attempt it…’ he thought with a frown.
He still wanted to try at some point.
Even if he cleared it, he’d never get through the eleventh or twelfth waves during this trip, but it would be great magiscript training. He’d need to improve a lot before he could complete his artificial advancement, so he might as well have his clones push themselves as much as possible before returning.
The good news was that the challenge had stopped caring about endurance entirely. A thousand rits was nothing – barely twenty minutes. He could try the wave as many times as he wanted, and he was even allowed to botch a good twenty-five unit cells on each attempt.
‘Fine. No harm in giving it a shot after I’m done with everything else. Let’s focus on the combat challenges for now.’
Those scaled differently, so he didn’t expect to get nearly this far with any of his clones, but the sixth waves should all be within reach. Once everyone was done amassing credits, he’d go on a massive shopping spree, buying the others their books and figuring out what to do with the bonus rewards.
Checking his balance again, his borrowed heart couldn’t help but skip a beat.
‘Over thirteen thousand credits already!’
He’d been too preoccupied to notice earlier, but he’d already reached a five-digit balance for the first time under his own name. And he’d only attempted one type of challenge with a single one of his clones so far. If he kept going like this, he would vastly exceed his previous target for the trip!
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