“I’m listening,” Kassorith said, the curiosity in his soul matching Percy’s.

“Do you still have any of my sect’s ingredients that you haven’t used?” the woman asked. “I’ll bet mine against yours. Anything you have, as many as you have – both the primary and the secondaries. One for one, winner takes all.”

Kassorith creased his brow, though he didn’t rush to answer. He’d already used his own ingredients, so they only had Percy’s. Naturally, it was up to the latter to decide whether to gamble his hard-won prizes away. The announcer and the crowd didn’t press them for a decision either. If anything, the spectators only grew more excited, appearing as invested in the wager as the participants. This was exactly the kind of drama that they craved.

But Percy didn’t care about anyone’s opinion except for his own – it was his precious ritual on the line. On one hand, accepting the wager would be reckless and arguably unnecessary. He’d already won both the bath ingredients and the life-extending leaf – his main reasons for signing up to the tournament in the first place – so he didn’t care about the final two rounds as much. Even if he lost to the woman – something that was quite possible – it wouldn’t really affect his gains from the trip. Viewed that way, refusing was a no brainer.

Then again… the ritual might not work as well on his human body as it had on Kassorith’s. A second helping might fix that. Even if the additional bath proved unnecessary, Percy wouldn’t say no to a smaller boost, or to the possibility of gifting the ingredients to somebody else. At the end of the day, it all came down to how confident he felt about beating her.

“Why are you gambling for ingredients anyway? Can’t you just request more from your sect?” Kassorith asked, clearly buying time for Percy to make his mind up.

The woman shrugged. “I did ask – obviously. It’s no secret that my fighting style depends heavily on my physical strength, but my elders still refused to give me another set, since I don’t have the right bloodline to preserve the lineage. They told me to try and win as many as I can from this year’s tournament, like everyone else.”

“Whether you accept is naturally up to you,” the announcer interjected, his booming voice cutting through the arena. “However, I should remind you that wagers like these are a sanctioned tradition of the tournament. Should you agree, I will personally ensure that both sides honour the result.”

Kassorith swallowed hard. Externally, he nodded at the gold-trimmed elder, though he sounded more worried inwardly as he addressed Percy. ‘I’m not going to tell you what to do with your own stuff, but can you please not run away if you lose the bet? I’ll be the one in trouble.’

‘Who do you take me for?’ Percy shot back, offended.

Truth be told, the thought had crossed his mind, if only because his back-stabbing host had it coming. But the woman hadn’t done anything to deserve being cheated, so Percy was going to uphold his word. Still, it was a good thing he had the option of fleeing. It would prevent Kassorith from screwing him over.

“I accept,” he said at last, taking control of his host’s mouth. “I’ll wager a complete set of ingredients,” he clarified, his borrowed heart clenching as the words left his lips. He wasn’t certain he would win, but he’d overcome worse odds in the past. Besides, he wasn’t planning to return to Thess’kala anytime soon, so this would probably be his only chance to secure additional ingredients. And he hadn’t made it this far by letting precious opportunities slip through his fingers.

“Very well,” the announcer acknowledged, before turning to the crowd. “The first semi-final will be fought between Jethsethi of the Ancestral Lineage Sect and Kassorith of the Broken Fang Sect. In addition, each side has wagered one vial of Greater Thess’kalan Heartblood, one vial of Abyssal Moss and one Conflux of a Thousand Toxins. Let the battle begin!”

The stands roared with boiling anticipation, as Percy rushed to draw as much mana as he could before his opponent’s bloodline took hold. He barely managed to summon a blob of liquid metal in his hand when a suffocating feeling gripped his host’s core, choking the flow to a halt. It felt like wax forced through narrow pipes, each drop demanding extreme effort.

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‘I’ll focus on protecting our body with my domain and forcing more mana out,’

Kassorith said. ‘Do with it what you will.’

Percy nodded internally, stacking his own domain on top of his host’s, wrapping it around their flesh and the metal in their hand. Normally, mages could use their domains in all sorts of ways to complement their magic, but spreading their willpower thin didn’t make sense in a simple melee like this.

The woman seemed to agree – at least Percy hadn’t felt her domain anywhere near him. Not wasting time, she pressed her thumb and index finger through her upper lip and into the base of her fangs, causing her scaled cheeks to puff up. Then, she spat a mouthful of purple liquid onto both hands, the venom dripping from her long, sharpened nails. The droplets hissed where they landed – Percy knew that the Thess’kalans’ venom wasn’t corrosive, but it did evaporate rapidly when exposed to air. An acrid stench filled the space, sharp enough to sting Kassorith’s nostrils and tighten his throat.

The woman must’ve managed to draw some mana out too, judging from the increased concentration sitting in her head. The substance wasn’t visible through anything but Mana Sense yet, but Percy was already aware of the female disciple’s affinity. He was also confident she’d gathered even more mana than him and Kassorith – an impressive feat, considering that her bloodline had probably affected her a fraction of a second sooner.

She pounced toward Percy, who’d barely managed to shape the fluid in his hand into a steel dagger. The weapon would give him some extra reach – though not as much as he would have liked – along with more piercing power. However, he’d probably have to extract more mana before it had a real impact on the battle.

‘Scary,’ he thought as the woman’s gaping maw snapped right where his throat had been, her clawed hands missing the scales on his host’s chest by mere millimetres.

Percy had fought many Thess’kalans over the course of the tournament, but never from this close, nor while being in full control of Kassorith’s body. Seeing his opponent’s mouth stretch wide enough to swallow a person whole, her eyes burning with cold ferocity, and the unnatural way in which she slithered across the tiled floor, he felt he was fighting a woman-shaped snake more than a mage.

The scrape of her claws against the stone released a deeply unsettling screech that set Percy on edge. Cautiously moving back, he tried to give himself space, brandishing his hastily forged dagger more as a deterrent than a genuine weapon. He first had to adapt to the woman’s speed before he even considered attacking.

The female disciple knew how to capitalize on her advantage, however. Right when Percy thought that the threat of his steel blade had brought the woman’s lunge to a halt, she surprised him by pressing on, allowing the dagger to stab right into her throat! Percy felt some resistance as the metallic tip met the hardened scales. Still, the weapon sank into her flesh easily enough. Warm blood gushed forth like a fountain, wetting Kassorith’s fingers.

Percy didn’t feel happy about his apparent victory, knowing full well what his opponent was capable of. Sure enough, a spark of amusement lit up in the dying woman’s eyes, her fatally-wounded body soon growing transparent. In less than a second, she faded away completely, as did the injured flesh holding Percy’s dagger in place, and the sticky liquid dirtying his hands. At the same time, he felt two series of deep lacerations burning on his host’s body – one by Kassorith’s waist, the other below his armpit. As for the woman who had injured him, she stood a few metres away, licking the blood off her fingers, before spitting more venom onto her claws.

‘When? I didn’t even realize that I was affected,’ Percy thought with a groan.

He’d expected this to happen at some point, of course, having watched her previous battle. As powerful a combination as her physique and bloodline were, she wouldn’t have made it this far into the tournament without her mind affinity. Unlike Percy’s illusions on Remior that he tended to fashion out of mana for everyone to see, the woman’s illusions only existed in his own head.

From the crowd’s perspective, Percy looked like he’d lost his mind – there shouldn’t be anything on the arena besides the two contestants. To him, the illusions were far harder to see through. They tricked all the senses – mundane and magical. Up until the last second, Percy had felt he was stabbing a real person, complete with a Blue core shining brightly in her chest, body heat spreading outward from her blood vessels, the thick stench of iron spilling forth from the wound, and even a soft pulse sending its rhythmic beats through the knife.

Percy had no idea whether his main body’s eyes would have seen through the falsehood – perhaps the woman would have struggled to trick his Soul Vision without understanding it. Either way, Percy didn’t have access to his favourite mutation at the moment, so he was entirely at his opponent’s mercy.

His only solace was the fact that the female disciple couldn’t do this very often. Each short-lived illusion appeared to consume a ton of mana. Gathering the limited resource under the influence of her bloodline was as difficult for her as it was for him. In fact, he was confident her move just now had exhausted everything she’d accumulated since the start of the battle.

Unfortunately, the damage was already done…