Three seals were suspended in the air between Metatron and Cassiel, dozens of new runes forming and attaching themselves to the intricate enchantments every second.

  The titan was constructing the spatial devices much faster than the previous time, though Percy didn’t think that Metatron was doing this to cheat him. He must have simply noticed how far he had climbed in the magiscript challenge and judged that he was proficient enough in the art to follow his moves.

  Sure enough, Percy just about managed to keep up with the divine pentapus, studying all three of the emerging seals and making sure that he at least understood the purpose of every rune.

  More importantly, he paid extra attention to two specific types that he was quite interested in. Metatron had used amplification runes in the previous seal too – albeit a different variant than the ones Percy had just purchased. That said, Percy had still been very much a novice in the art before, so he hadn’t been able to learn too much about them. This time, he knew a lot more, finding a lot of inspiration as he watched the titan weave them into his enchantments.

  Finally, the sealing runes were the most valuable ones by far. While they were the key to solidifying one’s mana, they couldn’t accomplish that by themselves. The pentapus had combined them with self-repairs and structural integrity enchantments – not unlike the ones that Percy had incorporated into his own equipment.

  ‘I see. So, I’ll need books on both the sealing runes and this enchantment to replicate this…’ he realized. Thankfully, he was already familiar with most of the other runes.

  Thinking about it some more, he couldn’t help but wonder whether he could start including sealing runes in his constructs to strengthen them further. His magical silk was comprised of several components – some soft and flexible, others hard and durable. The former were made mostly out of regular phantom mana, and he didn’t want to alter their properties too much. The latter, on the other hand, contained a lot of grey powder and could probably be made even tougher with the right enchantments.

  ‘No harm in looking into this as well, but it’s a lower priority…’

  Spinning the silk inside his cores was out of the question, so he’d have to rely solely on the seals for his artificial advancement. Reaching Green and Blue would also boost his fighting strength several times more than a few incremental improvements in his equipment – among other benefits. He’d rather focus on that.

  Oblivious to his thoughts, the titan pushed the seals toward him as soon as he was done, the black disks seeping into Cassiel’s body. Percy’s wisp was too small to fit all three – on top of his previous one – so he merged a couple into a slightly bigger seal, storing the last inside his host’s soul for now. Thankfully, the constructs were easy to move around, so he could pass one to his other clones later.

  ‘Amazing. Once I merge all of them into one, the internal storage will be forty metres across!’ Percy thought, struggling to contain his excitement.

  At that size, it was practically a not-so-small warehouse. Obviously, it would still have to be divided among his clones most of the time, but even at “only” ten metres across, each piece would be able to store enough food to feed a small village for months!

  With that kind of storage capacity and Ludwick’s Compass – which he very much hoped would work with regular planets – at his disposal, he would have so many more options in his future travels.

  “Done,” Metatron said, breaking him out of his thoughts. “I’ve subtracted the credits and bonus reward from your balance already. If this is everything, I’d like to go back to my research now. You’ve been hogging too much of my time lately.”

  “Hey, it’s not my fault you keep monitoring me,” Percy protested with an eyeroll. “Don’t even deny it. You always know exactly how many waves I’ve completed, how many credits I’ve earned, and even what books I’ve tried to buy from the system.”

  “Can you blame me?” the titan asked back with a scoff. “You keep finding ways to break everything or asking about topics that no mortal has any business knowing.”

  Percy couldn’t deny the god’s accusations. What he could do, however, was to grab this fleeting opportunity to sneakily ask the titan about something else that he wanted from him.

  “Speaking of obscure topics, I was wondering whether I can study those sealing runes of yours. They’re pretty handy, though I don’t think I’ve seen them mentioned in the index. Don’t tell me the Vault’s residents don’t need them either?”

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  Metatron studied his expression carefully, perhaps suspecting that he was up to something. Percy had to resist the urge to swallow hard under the titan’s scrutinizing gaze, appearing as casual about this as he could manage. Thankfully, the titan eventually decided to just answer.

  “Quite the opposite. The ability to craft magical artifacts without needing any special materials is universally coveted. Even many greater springs don’t know this technique. You can’t buy it with credits, but you can purchase it with a Green bonus reward or higher. I have to keep some of my most valuable resources difficult to earn, to motivate my people to push themselves harder in the challenges,” he explained.

  On the outside, Percy nodded lightly, once again trying to appear as relaxed as possible.

  ‘This is great news!’ he actually thought.

  It would have been more convenient if he could have bought the books with his current means, but he’d wanted to attempt the Green challenges anyway. He only needed to get to the sixth wave in one of them to qualify for the information he wanted.

  ‘Let’s not rush to do that though,’ he decided. ‘Better to stay in Cassiel’s body for a while longer and buy a bunch of other things first, otherwise he’ll realize how eager I am…’

  Percy knew that he was probably being too cautious. There were a billion other potential applications for sealing enchantments that didn’t involve drawing permanent runes inside his cores or inducing an artificial advancement. Even if he made it clear how important the information was to him, he doubted that the titan would see through his true intentions.

  That said, Metatron already knew a lot about Percy’s abilities. If he showed up in the Vault with his soul at a higher grade than it was supposed to be, the titan might suspect something. The fewer clues he revealed, the better.

  Oblivious to Percy’s thoughts, the titan reiterated that he wanted to talk to him about the Void Hand later, before kicking him and his host out of the training cube. Sighing, Percy didn’t even bother complaining about the god’s rudeness this time, used to it by now. At least, Metatron had given him a lot of valuable things lately, and he hadn’t even priced them too outrageously.

  Percy decided to head toward the residential area, to try meeting his friends again before working on the tenth wave of the Yellow magiscript challenge. At the same time, he made a mental tally of his gains from the trip so far, and his remaining balance.

  ‘I should have about fifteen thousand credits and nine bonus rewards left, though most of them are Red or Orange. The other clones have already started reading the books – including the new anti-infestation ones – I’ve confirmed that I can absorb a fourth trait, and I even got the new storage devices from Metatron…’

  There were only a few items left on his agenda. He still needed to browse the database for other interesting things later. He also wanted to spend a few weeks attempting challenges and honing his magiscript skills before moving on to the Green clone. However, there was something else that he could look into immediately.

  ‘Let’s see the true extent of Metatron’s alchemic prowess…’

  In the past, Percy had mostly written the artificial world’s alchemy off, and for good reason. Judging from the way they treated their Yellow-borns – allowing even the talented ones like Gabe to die in the challenges – it was clear that the Vault wasn’t a true greater spring. That ruled out knowledge of the cyan powder or the bonding principle.

  The fact that they didn’t even have an “alchemy” challenge was further evidence that it wasn’t a subject they focused on. Percy was sure that they had some pretty skilled alchemists here, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to produce and cure sizian meat for their mortals, but he’d still doubted that there was much for him to learn.

  The artificial world was simply too small and ill-suited for growing magical plants, so it was already shocking that they could even cultivate the bare minimum that they needed to cleanse their cores. According to Gabe, this was precisely why Metatron had imported sizians – an efficient source of stable beast mana that could also be consumed for nutrition, allowing him to save space.

  Potions and tattoos were entirely out of the question. There was a good chance that the Vault’s alchemists still knew of the extraction principle due to how simple it was, but certainly not restructuring or compression.

  Finally, Percy wouldn’t be surprised if Metatron had fully automated their brewing processes, so they wouldn’t have a need for the scaling principle either – assuming that it was even possible to reproduce it without the Atlantean mutation.

  That was all to say that Percy wasn’t expecting too much. In the past, he’d still tried to inquire about the Vault’s alchemy, though he’d come up empty handed. Granted, he hadn’t spent much time planning out his queries to the system, so it was possible that he had simply failed to navigate through the available information properly. On top of that, he hadn’t had that many spare credits before this trip, so he’d always chosen to spend them primarily on magiscript – the field where the Vault actually excelled.

  Well, today he had the money to spend for once, and he was much better at getting what he wanted out of the Vault’s system, so he was going to settle the question once and for all.

  “Cube. I want you to make me a list of every alchemic principle known to the Vault of Magic. User ID: WANDERER.”

  “Authorization granted. Evaluating request…”

  The system remained silent for a while. Percy guessed that it was searching through all the available books and resources for any mentions of alchemic principles, slowly compiling the list. Tempering his expectations, he prepared himself to be disappointed, only for the soulless voice’s next few words to challenge some of his assumptions.

  “Evaluation complete. Database contains information on the ‘extraction’, ‘pacification’, ‘redirection’, ‘deattunement’, ‘scaling’ and ‘consolidation’ principles.”

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