As soon as they reached an agreement, Duwa started moving.
It didn’t take Percy long to understand how the child had ended up brushing with death. The environment on Gallimus was quite harsh. The scorching heat and the crushing gravity were already difficult to endure, but that was merely the beginning.
Each individual bush didn’t offer much resistance, but trudging through hundreds of them slowly chipped away at his host’s stamina. Whenever the loose ground under their feet gave way, sending them tumbling down the hills, the brittle plants failed to cushion their fall in the slightest. The awkward landings didn’t hurt too badly, but each blunder set them back by several minutes, often forcing them to climb a hill twice or thrice.
As a native – and a Green – Duwa was probably better equipped to handle the arduous journey than most, but every little thing still sapped away some of his strength, building up his frustration and his fatigue.
‘It’s reckless to ask so much of a child…’ Percy thought, but kept that to himself.
He understood why they did it, of course. While he didn’t doubt that many of their Green-borns died during the harsh training, the few that made it to the higher grades were probably much more likely to attain godhood. Percy wouldn’t be surprised if they made for stronger – and nobler – deities too.
But he did struggle to understand how their parents were okay with this. Duwa wasn’t an orphan – he had a father waiting for him at home – yet the man had clearly sent the child to his doom, and with no supervision to boot.
According to Duwa, the current year was divided into seventeen seasons, further split into a total of six hundred and eighty-three days. Ten of these seasons had elapsed since the Green-born set out on his quest. He had been travelling for over four hundred days, though he had only delayed his advancement by about three hundred – close to a year on Remior. It was ultimately just a drop in the bucket given his grade, but still a long time for the equivalent of an eleven-year old boy, bracing the wilderness by himself.
Percy also confirmed that this place was indeed a lesser – not a greater – spring. They had elixirs about as effective as the ones on Remior, having relatively developed branches of alchemy and runecrafting. Sadly, Duwa wasn’t well-versed in either field, so Percy didn’t know if they had discovered any alchemic principles he could master.
He sighed.
‘It might be nice to visit this place again in the future, but the priority is getting the Decree.’
At the end of the day, alchemic principles were easier to learn – or even invent – while Decrees were both rarer and infinitely more valuable.
Obatala wasn’t Gallimus’s only titan, nor even their first one. He was, however, the only one whose Decree affected the general population in such a direct manner, which was why Duwa’s people regarded him so highly.
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Gallimus wasn’t isolated from the rest of the cosmos like Amenthes, but they didn’t have particularly strong ties to any other world like Atlantis or Felmara either. Based on what Percy had been able to gather, Duwa’s people were strong enough to defend themselves should any other lesser spring invade, but didn’t possess anything valuable enough to entice any of their stronger rivals to take their chances.
This meant that Gallimus was relatively peaceful – which was great news, because they already had their hands full with internal matters. Dealing with the catastrophic whims of their planet’s orbit was a challenge in and of itself. In fact, Percy was convinced that this was the main reason Duwa’s people seemed so united and kind toward one another.
One thing that Percy hadn’t asked about just yet, were the details of his host’s training. Curious as he was, he had tiptoed around the topic, not wanting to remind the poor kid of his rumbling stomach or his dwindling stamina. He wasn’t in a rush anyway. After all, he’d only been here for a couple of days, while Duwa had been working on this for over a year. He didn’t think they would be meeting the requirements anytime soon, so he’d tried to figure them out by himself.
It wasn’t until their third day together that he finally decided to be direct and ask his host about their purpose. The boy had been travelling in seemingly random directions and hadn’t made any attempts to procure more food before they starved to death. They hadn’t covered that much ground, as the constant climbing and rolling down the hills had slowed them down massively. Their surroundings hadn’t changed all that much either – they’d been traversing the same bumpy sheet of dried bushes throughout.
Just when Percy was contemplating the best way to breach the topic, Duwa paused, picking something from the ground. It was a tiny bug, crawling on a broken branch by the boy’s feet. Pinched between the child’s fingers, the centipede-like creature squirmed, trying to break free. Percy barely got a chance to examine it – it was no longer than his host’s thumb, encased in a glossy, black carapace – when the kid tossed the unfortunate insect into his mouth, chewing through the hard chitin loudly.
Percy was just as creeped out by the act itself, as he was taken aback by its suddenness. Still, he didn’t complain, feeling about as famished as his host by now. Sadly for them both, there was barely any meat on the small animal, scarce, salty morsels of flesh lost under the tasteless gravel of the fragmented exoskeleton.
‘There should be more of them nearby,’
the boy said, consoling himself more than his guest.Not wasting time, Duwa had already leaned forward, searching through the bushes for another snack.
‘Or, you know… we could just eat some of the food from my spatial seal…’ Percy suggested – and not for the first time.
He didn’t have that much on him, since most of his space was taken by the green mushrooms, but he’d definitely brought enough to last them a few weeks if they used it sparingly. If only his stubborn host hadn’t refused his offer whenever he’d brought it up…
The boy insisted that accepting external help would go against the spirit of the trial. Percy had been tempted to point out that, technically, Duwa had already died – and would have stayed dead – if not for his “external help”. In the end, he chose to keep his mouth shut, however, realizing the kid was crazy enough to potentially kill himself out of shame if he said anything.
To Duwa’s great joy – and Percy’s mild contentment – they found a second centipede a few minutes later, and a third one not long after. Stuffing his face full of the modest snacks, the boy seemed to enjoy his first meal in days a lot more than Percy did. Only when he had his fill did he take off again, heading straight toward what Percy assumed was the source of the creatures.
‘Duwa, mind telling me what we’re trying to accomplish here? You’ve been travelling at random, without much of a plan. I doubt you’re going anywhere specific, so am I right to assume this is some kind of hunting trip? Are we looking for a particular beast to kill?’
‘Not exactly. Though fighting against beasts is one of the best ways to make progress. That’s why I’m currently looking for the stronger centipedes,’ Duwa said. ‘Look, I’ll explain everything later. It’ll make more sense after you watch me fight.’
Percy nodded, guessing that the beasts were just a means to an end – they probably amounted to little more than practice dummies to help his host perfect some kind of obscure spell or technique. Though, that didn’t really explain why the kid had to spend a year roaming in the wild. Couldn’t his people just bring him some opponents to fight?
By the time the first of the two suns set, Duwa located some higher-graded centipedes. The Red ones were as thin and flat as his palm, though only half as wide. They were long enough to reach from the tips of his fingers all the way to his elbow.
Meanwhile, the Orange ones had a similar shape, but they were longer than Duwa was tall. Their smooth shells looked very different from those of the mundane variants they had eaten earlier, however. Shimmering in a pale light, they appeared to be made of diamonds more than chitin, making Percy shudder at the mere thought of munching on them. At the same time, they possessed even more limbs than their weaker kin, their countless needle-like legs rhythmically stabbing through dirt and rock as the bugs sped toward the Green-born.
Duwa evaded the charging creatures with ease, pinning them and crushing them under the balls of his feet with some well-executed stomps, whittling their numbers down rapidly. Thankfully, he didn’t try to eat any of them this time, probably realizing he’d only be cracking his teeth on their shells.
Percy and his host advanced even more slowly than before, the centipedes growing stronger and more numerous with every hill they traversed. It wasn’t until both crimson suns emerged from the horizon once again that they finally stumbled upon what Percy assumed were their targets.
They had to be, given the boy’s elation at the sight.
Duwa took on a fighting stance, as he glared at the three Yellow centipedes, as wide as the boy himself, but over twice as long as the child was tall. The creatures noticed them too.
They surrounded the kid, cautiously closing in as their crooked mandibles clicked and clacked repeatedly, their sharp tips dripping with venom.