The Lone Wanderer

Crafting a bandage for Enki hadn’t been too difficult. The concealment rune didn’t have any special requirement – it worked with pretty much any material that contained some mana.

Visiting the town’s marketplace, they only had to beg a few hunters and gatherers for some scraps of mana-rich ingredients, until they collected enough fibres for Percy to do his thing. Between his Weaving trait and his growing skill with runecrafting, sewing the enchantment on a long piece of parchment was a piece of cake. Though it did mean Enki would have to pull his skirt a few inches higher to keep the bandage hidden.

‘I look ridiculous.’

‘Yeah, well. Suck it up. You have a second core now.’ Percy rolled his eyes.

‘Does that mean I can finally use it?’

‘Sure – as soon as you open up your channels. So just focus on that for the next couple of weeks, and leave me alone to study. I’ll need to concentrate if you want Ea’s Gift too.’

Returning to the orphanage, Percy rummaged through the kitchen for whatever tools he could salvage. Naturally, he couldn’t afford a proper alchemy kit, so he’d have to make do with common cooking utensils.

Being underwater and everything, the local alchemists couldn’t use a regular cauldron to heat up the ingredients, as everything would just float away. Consequently, they typically used an airtight container, made of a transparent glass-like material so that they could still observe the reaction happening within.

‘Sadly, there’s nothing like that here…’ Percy smiled bitterly.