(Book 3 Complete!) The Lone Wanderer: A World-hopping LitRPG Adventure

Nesha continued carving symbols into the construct's shoulder, the pseudo-enchantment gradually taking shape.

Each rune had a circular design, but the final pattern looked anything but round – thanks to the intricate ways she'd connected them. Some runes were nested inside others, forming concentric circles. Others had been fused side by side. A few even overlapped partially, with Nesha cleverly exploiting shared features to create a more compact arrangement.

By the time she finished, the pseudo-enchantment resembled a clover – roughly the size of her palm. They'd made sure it could just barely wrap around the shaft of Percy's scythes. It contained five distinct enchantments, each broken down further into multiple runes.

The first was the self-repair enchantment she'd started with, incorporating control, adaptation, memory, and growth runes.

The second was another big one – the structural reinforcement enchantment that they had studied from the most recent batch of books. It included two runes Percy had already been familiar with – the hardness and force absorptions runes that he'd been drawing on his armour for years – alongside the new integrity runes meant to unify and enhance their effects. Like the self-repairs, they'd also added control and adaptation runes to ensure it could accept foreign mana and be toggled on or off independently.

In fact, they'd done the same with the remaining three enchantments – which would have otherwise only consisted of a single rune each: preservation, concealment and lightness runes – classic staples of many magical items.

Percy and Nesha were proud of the monstrous pseudo-enchantment they'd spent months developing, knowing it would serve them well in the future. Percy intended to incorporate it directly into his armour, and even Nesha was considering designing something similar for her own use after he was gone.

Everything they'd included so far was universally applicable, so it could easily form the core of all their enchanted objects in the future. That said, they both understood they'd have to add more specialized components for certain applications.

For example, Percy would need to include sharpness runes for his scythes – naturally paired with their own adaptation and control runes. When it came to his cauldron, things got a lot more complicated, since he'd have to add heat, pressure and rotation runes as well as several more controls. He wasn't very thrilled about having to accomplish all of that by himself though…

'I'll worry about that later. At least, the new trait will help.'

'You know,' Nesha said as soon as she was done, wiping sweat off her brow. 'I still can't believe your main body got himself a runecrafting trait after we spent a year practicing without it…'

'Tell me about it…' Percy concurred. 'I'd wanna slap him too, if he wasn't me.'

Well… it could have been worse. Had Percy absorbed the Symbolon right after parting ways with Nesha, he would have still lacked a way to get the trait to her, and they would have spent the whole year frustrated about it.

Besides, he wasn't sure he would have been willing to trade Insomnia for Scribing. While he had yet to see how potent his new trait was, the previous one had also helped them plenty. Either way, they knew they hadn't wasted their time. Nesha would have needed to learn everything without the trait anyway, and the extra challenge had only pushed them to improve further.

Taking over Nesha's body, Percy stretched their fingers before replicating his girlfriend's actions. He began drawing a copy of the pseudo-enchantment next to the original. The second clover-shaped formation was mirrored, slightly rotated and shifted by a few centimetres. It was meant to be fused to the first one in several places and this was the optimal layout they'd discovered so far. It would allow them to pack the clovers as tightly as possible – hopefully fitting hundreds of them across the construct when all was said and done.

The clover was their unit cell – the building block of a much larger enchantment.

Some of the most sophisticated enchantments in existence – such as the one engraved on the gargantuan cube that contained the artificial world – were composed of trillions upon trillions of runes, if not more. No single person could hope to draw or even comprehend all those enchantments at once. Not even someone as powerful and talented as Metatron – the very titan who had invented magiscript.

The only way to handle something of that scale was to break it down into smaller, more easily digestible components.

Each unit cell could be as complex as the one engraving it could handle. Somebody like Metatron could probably fit thousands or even tens of thousands of runes into a single unit cell. In fact, that was exactly what the titan had done when he created Percy's storage seal.

Percy didn't know if that had been the titan's limit, but he did know one thing – Metatron hadn't used actual magiscript while crafting the artifact. The whole seal – advanced as it was – was nothing more than a single unit cell. Percy hadn't been able to tell at the time, but he had learned a lot more about the topic after reading the books.

Another thing he'd come to realize was that Metatron had designed the seal in such a way that it could easily be upgraded in the future, by simply linking it with an identical copy. Currently, its internal space was limited to a single cube ten metres across, and it could only be split in half up to three times – for a total of eight smaller seals as large as crates.

Fusing it with a second seal would double the cube's dimensions, or equivalently, allow it to be divided into up to sixteen of the smallest ones. Adding another two seals would double it further and so on.

'The bastard wants me to keep begging for more…'

Percy had to suppress a bitter chuckle. Back when he first obtained his seal, he'd thought he'd never run out of storage space again. The problem was that he'd been forced to split it into its smallest denominations to equip all of his clones, which was quite inefficient with regards to its volume.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Perhaps, the ancient god had expected Percy's clone capacity to increase. With a single move, the old fox had not only given Percy a reason to keep earning credits, but also given himself a way to monitor Percy's limits.

Shaking his head, Percy concentrated on the task at hand. His dealings with the titan weren't a priority right now.

In any case, linking multiple unit cells into a grid was a way for Percy to cheat his way to a much larger pseudo-enchantment. The end result would be a lot more potent than if he simply included the same number of clovers separated from one another, as joining them together would not only amplify their effects but also allow them to permeate each other more seamlessly.

If Percy hadn't horribly misunderstood the underlying theory, this would improve his armour in several ways.

The blind spots in his concealment runes should finally disappear, allowing him to completely hide his constructs from anyone below Blue. This would also eliminate the weak spots previously found in the gaps between the hardness and absorption runes, offering better protection. Finally, it should speed up the regeneration provided by the self-repair enchantments.

Obviously, there were still limits he couldn't overcome.

Doubling the number of runes or joining them better wouldn't double their potency. Runes were like whispers in the universe's ears, asking it to lax its rules slightly in certain ways. Having twice as many mouths whispering at the same time might affect the world's willingness to comply, but there were diminishing returns.

Still, this was good.

Between the new runes and enchantments, how much better Percy and Nesha had gotten at drawing them, and their ability to combine them, he was feeling confident he could have meaningfully upgraded his armour even without taking the silk into account.

Now, they just had to register that pesky spell upgrade that had eluded them for weeks.

A few minutes later, he was done, a second clover tightly joined with the first. Passing the reins to Nesha, he watched her draw the third one, before taking over for the fourth. Like that, they took turns adding more unit cells to the grid, slowly covering the statue's body in runes.

Every now and then, one of them made a mistake, forcing them to rely on the previously drawn self-repairs to erase the new symbols. They didn't let that get to them, however, being used to the process by now.

As soon as the last rays of sunlight seeping through the gaps in the curtains disappeared, they took a longer break for dinner. Nesha had decided to pause her information-gathering for the rest of the week, so they dove back to the project almost immediately after.

By the following night, they had engraved the construct's right arm and much of its chest with clovers.

Two days later, the grid had expanded to the rest of its torso, head and second arm.

It wasn't until the fifth afternoon that Percy managed to draw the final rune on the statue's left foot, plugging the last hole in the network. They didn't even get a chance to examine the enchantment to make sure the unit cell was functional when Percy's Status spoke.

[Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Intricate Runic Grid – Refined -> Superior Runic Grid – Refined!]

Seeing the notification, his borrowed lips curled up.

'Did you also…?' he asked.

'Mhmm,' Nesha replied with a nod.

This was a spell they'd registered several months ago, and one that they had upgraded together every step of the way. They could both use it separately, of course – otherwise their Status might have not recognized their achievement – though each of them would need a lot more time to draw all the clovers by themselves.

The original spell – Fine Runic Grid – had been a Crude one. At the time, the unit cell had only contained a single enchantment involving a measly five runes – a huge victory at the time, but not that big a deal in hindsight. In addition to their smaller scope, the first iteration of the enchantments had been even bulkier than today's clovers – Percy and Nesha had only been capable of fitting a fraction of them onto the same surface. Even worse, the resulting pattern had been flawed – riddled with gaps and mismatched connections.

Yet, Phoebe's Decree had still surprised them by registering their prototype as a proper spell.

Percy hadn't expected that, because his Status had never bothered to acknowledge his enchantments on their own before. Granted, many of his spells included runes, but the enchantments had always been part of something bigger – never the focal point of the spell. Evidently, that had only been a testament to Percy's previous lack of skill. Even in its imperfect state, the Fine Runic Grid had clearly packed enough punch to be recognized as a Crude spell, irrespective of what it had been drawn on.

After doubling the number of enchantments and runes, shrinking the unit cell further, and improving the quality of the grid, he and Nesha had elevated the spell to Refined. Though they hadn't stopped at that, knowing that there had still been room for improvement.

And today's notification had just proven them right.

'I suppose this is goodbye then…' Nesha said once they caught their breath.

'I suppose it is.' Percy sighed. 'Are you sure you'll be okay by yourself?'

'I've been by myself for months you know… Even if somebody had recognized me, there's only so much you could've done to help.'

She wasn't wrong. Percy could have informed his main body, though it wasn't like he and Micky could have broken into the city to rescue her. Hell, they'd been driven out of the damn continent. Not to mention returning to such a crowded location – watched by the Root and governed by over a hundred Blues.

Still, knowing how she was doing had given him peace of mind.

He wouldn't have that, moving forward.

Percy was also worried about Elaine, of course – especially after losing contact with her – but this was different. His cousin was a Blue and had their family to watch over her. Sure, House Avalon was in hot water too, but it was something.

Nesha had nobody but him.

'Be careful,' he said, steeling his resolve.

Only once she nodded did he start retracting his wisp from her injuries.

Leaving a host had never been as bittersweet. Over the past year, there had been several times when he'd wished he'd had a physical body to embrace her. Even so, he'd thoroughly enjoyed being by her side. Even ignoring their magical achievements, he was more than happy to bring these memories back to his main body.

Right as the cord was about to yank him away, Percy paused for a moment to examine the contents of his seal. Once he confirmed for the hundredth time that all the secondary ingredients the original had commissioned were there – including those sweet gravity plants that he'd been waiting for – he finally left his girlfriend's body behind.

His thoughts blended with another's the following instant.

Memories of close battles, numerous spell upgrades, and countless adventures on distant worlds flashed through his mind. They almost buried his time in Twilight City beneath a mountain of other experiences.

But he didn't let them.

Percy clung to their shared laughs and the feeling of his girlfriend's lips parting into a smile, his heart already thrumming with longing. Opening his eyes, he found himself on Micky's back – exactly where he'd been the previous second – but also not. The clone's return had caused him to mess up the strand of silk he'd been working with, yet he didn't much care. He could spin more later.

Feeling the cool breeze licking his face, he couldn't help but compare it to the acrid stench of piss and excrement seeping into Nesha's room, or the stale city air that they'd been breathing for months. Strictly speaking, this was an upgrade – yet Percy couldn't help but focus on what was missing. Clenching his fists, he made a silent promise to himself…

'I'll reach out as soon as I can.'