It had taken two days and some spare change for Victor to go through his Azoth Stone Dissolution, and the symptoms he suffered were markedly similar to Zef’s. His symptoms were understandably a fair bit milder, since he hadn’t spent the better part of his life as a professional soldier.

The boy’s greatest trial thus far had, indeed, nothing to do with cultivation, but his prolific exploits with Oasis City’s female population. One of his partners’ brothers took the redhead’s involvement with his sister to be an insult to her honor and, filled with righteous indignation, demanded holmgang. Panicking, Victor accepted and found himself faced with a furious mountain of a man who dual-wielded a giant one-handed saber and a long-bladed, short-handled axe. His magic was entirely focused on ancestor-summoning, continuously chanting the strikes of his ancestors and manifesting ghostly, short-lived mirrors of these strikes. Effectively, each of his swings was followed by a delayed echo, turning his offensive into a near-unweatherable storm for the young wizard. He forced Victor to his limits even with his recent gain of strength from the breakthrough, inflicting several wounds upon him and cracking his chestplate down the middle while he tried to get his bearings.

Once Vic did get his bearings, however, he managed to find gaps in his opponent’s tactics; his repertoire was limited, and his constant chanting diverted focus from physical action, meaning that his strikes were telegraphed enough for Victor to read.

Mud Slick to trip him. Bramble Growth to bind his sword to the ground after a downward swing. Strength of Earth to give Victor the steadiness to outright block a strike or two. Flame Weapon to shroud Oculus’ blade; a thrust into the enemy’s right side resulted in a wound full of bone shrapnel that burned with Boneflame even after he withdrew the spear.

Three Devil’s Teeth set loose into the enemy’s ribcage, accompanied by a Wind Gust to knock him off balance and cause his grip on his blade to slip.

A bestial scream of refusal: “JOAKIM! VICTOR!”

It was her. Ingjerd; the woman whose brother he was fighting at this very moment, demanding that they both stop this foolishness at once. Neither had a choice, as she handily overpowered them both, screaming at her brother for “doing this again” and insisting that “at this rate I shall never find a husband”.

Despite the breach of the honor system which had just transpired, nothing came of it in the end. His and Joakim’s brief quarrel had caused enough of a commotion that Zel had heard of it by the time she emerged from the baths, laughing at the situation and amusedly suggesting that he be more careful from now on. Victor agreed. He decided to refocus on finishing Midnight Wolf’s redesign and working towards the Despot of Self breakthrough.

He worked through the night, testing again and again, reveling in just how much work he could do without feeling his soul strain, how little need for sleep he felt, how much clearer his mind was. The fear of failure no longer weighed him down.

Two hours - that was how long he had slept, and it was enough, though he knew he couldn’t do this every day. Even Zelsys couldn’t, after all. In the morning, she came to alert him that she would be going to Ingvald’s and then straight to the Bjorn baths.

“Hold on, hold on - let me show you something,” he insisted, and Zel humored the young man. He retrieved a small Ignis gem from his Tablet, a mote of blackness swirling in its angular crimson-orange shape. He immediately spoke to assuage the very concern that came to her mind: “Don’t worry, it’s just a Quartz one, not solid Ignis.”

In that same breath, he stood and took the large belt, slotting the gem into the slot in its center before enclosing it with a frontal jaw-like aperture and fastening the spine-belt around his waist. He took one of the bone keys and slotted it into a slot on the belt’s right-hand side, turning it with an invocation: “Sinistra Manica, Test Ignition.”

The aperture opened, as did the entirety of it, subtly expanding as monochrome flame erupted from its many openings. Victor guided a tendril of the flame towards one particular, centipede-like construct, which came to life and rather forcefully flew to his left arm, its many segments snapping shut in sequence like ribs. It had a partial glove, only covering the back of the hand and fingers; even this seemed to be painfully tight, though.

The joy and pride in his face as he looked to Zelsys for approval was only matched by his surprise that it had actually worked.

“Last time it embedded itself in the wall over there!” he said, pointing with a bone-armored finger to two rows of parallel holes in the wood, right above his bed.

“...You already figured out the belt part?”

“Not really, no,” he gave a guilty grin. “The design I have in mind will need a near-finished armor to even test, for now I’m just using it as a housing for the ignition catalyst. Sinistra Manica, Purge.”

The construct let go, falling from Vic’s arm and crawling back into its former place much like a centipede would.

“I don’t like the centipede design,” she admitted.

Vic nodded agreement: “Me either, too Pateirian. I’ll have to figure out something with fewer moving parts regardless.”

“Did you make a separate servitor for that? It didn’t give off the same sort of presence as Midnight Wolf.”

“Of course, using Midnight Wolf for testing would’ve been asking for disaster. I named this one Gamma, after the dog I based it on… My memory of the dog, I mean. I needed a servitor that would only do exactly what I command it to; I only remember Gamma obeying exactly to the word, so it was perfect.”

“Good. How are the trackers taking?”

“I’m almost done already. Since the breakthrough it’s been much easier to do… Honestly, everything. No wonder the Emperor tried to ensure post-Three Kings Era cultivators wouldn’t be able to dissolve their Azoth Stones.”

“Then you’re just fine to take the Ingvald-Bjorn route with me,” she grinned. She could see the redhead doing math in his head to try and estimate whether he felt like he could run that distance.