Chapter 174: Gauntlet
Percy’s efforts to use his mana defensively dated as far back as his first month in the Alchemists’ Guild, when he developed his Glove spell.
That said, the flimsy layer of cyan mana had never been particularly impressive. Back then, he hadn’t even known about Reinforcement. Not to mention, his second core had still been at Red. Consequently, the Crude spell was arguably the least impressive entry in Percy’s Status to this very day.
‘I suppose it’s time to do something about it.’ he grinned.
Of course, there were plenty of obstacles standing between him and his vision for the new spell. For one, he had to navigate around the contradictory requirements that any piece of defensive gear had. Namely, it had to be strong enough to resist an enemy’s attack, while at the same time being flexible enough to not inhibit its wearer’s movements. The good news was that Percy had already taken this into consideration back in the day, learning how to properly distribute the mana around the spell for this exact reason.
Gathering some mana from his abdomen, he instinctively allowed it to wrap around his hand, forming the construct. Having used the spell countless times, it no longer even required much thought to summon it, though it had admittedly been a while since he last needed it.
In any case, he flexed his fingers a little as he closely examined the construct, reminding himself how he had designed the thinner layer of cyan to coat his joints, allowing them to bend more easily. At the same time, he’d made the rest of the structure thicker, thus offering better protection.
‘Sadly, adding Reinforcement will only complicate things…’ he grimaced.
Obviously, if he wanted the spell to survive a Green’s attack, using the stronger variant of his pure mana was a no-brainer. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t work for the joints, as it would make them way too rigid, regardless of how thin he made it. And he couldn’t even make it too thin, as he’d recently found out the hard way. Suffice to say, the only solution would be to use both his soft and hard mana, and to ensure the spell transitioned seamlessly between the two.
‘If only I had managed to get the threads to work, this wouldn’t be a problem.’