Time passed by.
Percival's Skeleton Soldiers now held brooms, hammers and other tools they had scavenged from the neighboring buildings, and they diligently worked on the houses.
They fixed broken hinges, mended the broken bed, cleared the cobwebs and swept the dust.
Percival, a benefactor of free labor, sat outside on the small porch of the fragile house, gazing up into the dark sky as many thoughts crowded his mind.
Foremost among these thoughts was the problem of merging his Classes.
For the most part, Percival understood the theory.
Every Awakener had a mana core, the metaphysical heart of their Class that manifested instantly upon awakening.
It was the wellspring where mana was stored, growing in capacity the higher one leveled.
The problem was, Percival had two.
The Swordsman Class core, which had followed him from the previous timeline, and the Necromancer Class core, his newer one still far from its full potential.
A double awakening had never happened before, so Percival had no scrolls or tomes to consult for guidance. None that he knew of, at least.
He tried to recall how he had done it back then.
How had he used Skills from both Classes so seamlessly?
He couldn't have merged the cores so rapidly, only to lose control moments later.
It didn't seem possible. Yet, the more he thought, merging the mana cores remained the only feasible method to wield both Classes' powers in fast combat.
Anything else—like trying to draw from both at once—was like drinking from two taps at once.
A man only had one mouth.
This meant there could be only one tap.
So, Percival had to meld both taps into one, and alas, he could drink.
There was only one he could do something like this.
This time, it didn't involve Gate Worlds, or completing quests, or any form of fighting.
This could only be done by meditation.
It was a tedious thing. No one particularly enjoyed doing it.
Hence meditation was a generally ignored practice. For those patient enough to persevere, it had its benefits.
It greatly honed one's Intelligence, Constitution, and attunement to mana.
For Percival, it was also the only way to merge his mana cores.
Since the core could only be interacted with through meditation, if Percival wanted to combine them, he had to expel his impatience and dislike for this dull method of leveling up.
This was a delicate internal surgery he deeply required.
A hum of acceptance rumbled from his throat and he lowered himself to the floor, sitting cross-legged with his palms resting on his knees.
His long river of dark hair fell down his shoulders and back, and as his eyes closed softly, Percival drew a deep, resonant breath.
Meditation was an act commonly taught by Nuns and Diviners, with claims that they were techniques passed down to them by the primordial gods themselves.
Such claims were met with skepticism, of course, but when people discovered they could truly interact with their magical cores, the practice gained popularity.
Even though after many years it dwindled.
Still, the effectiveness of the technique was undeniable, as Percival soon testified to.
The moments his eyes shut close after the deep breath, he was met with an instant darkness.
This darkness represented the meditation zone, a canvas that allowed for the creativity of the mind.
Percival used his mind's eye to conjure the visualization.
There were many ways to visualize the mana core—or in Percival's case, mana cores. However, visualizing them as simple glowing stones of magic would not suffice.
Meditation required a level of creativity, of poeticism.
To interact with the cores, Percival had to visualize them as something interactable while maintaining the essence of what they were.
Having done this before in the former timeline, under the banners of Elderis Stone Academy when he trained as the Hero, he knew exactly what to do.
For him, his mana cores were two rivers.
They were parallel to each other, flowing down their channels to the depth of the surrounding darkness, where Percival's imagination reached its necessary end.
They weren't ordinary looking rivers of course.
The river for the Swordsman Class mana core had a color of moonlight, sparkling waves of silverlight flowing steadily down a channel to fuel his Swordsman Skills.
The other river, that of his Necromancer stream core, was an ethereal blue, a deep, placid river of soul-stuff moving with glacial patience.
The first step was a success.
Now, to make both rivers one.
Rivers couldn't be pulled together through brute force.
Percival learnt this the hard way.
He visualized grabbing both rivers in metaphysical hands, trying to wrench them into a single channel.
When that failed—as it was both a physical and metaphysical impossibility—he attempted the next approach.
He eroded a connecting channel between the two rivers.
He did this at a point where their elevation and flow allowed water to move from one to the other.
With the separation gone, the rivers collided together, silver waves mixing with blue currents.
But the result was disastrous.
Percival had never felt pain so sharp.
It stung him straight in the heart, like a slap on the face from an angry mother, a sharp reprimand for such a wrong action.
A violent explosion of conflicting energies burst in his chest, and the pain of it all jolted him back to awareness.
Percival gasped, his head dropping low, hair spilling onto the floor as his head pounded.
One of his Skeletons, carrying a piece of wood, paused and tilted its skull toward his wheezing.
He stopped, took a deep breath and sat upright.
The Skeleton resumed its work.
'I don't understand,' he thought. 'I did it, didn't I?'
Perhaps he did, but it was ultimately impossible.
The two energies were fundamentally opposed; they weren't supposed to coexist, not in the magic system of this world.
No two Classes were.
Percival was confused.
He disliked it. This feeling of confusion, especially after he had been so certain.
The hidden quest. It had rewarded him for blending both Classes in combat, so surely mixing his cores had to be possible.
Otherwise, how had he used both so swiftly before?
The silence of Withercrook answered him.
He could hear the rhythmic noise of his Skeletons hammering nails and sweeping floors.
It was satisfying in some way.
It helped him think.
So Percival thought. Harder.
He thought about the two rivers.
How had he done it? How else could one access two rivers?
His quiet eyes suddenly widened.
A bridge!
So that was how he had done it.
He had created a bridge. A conduit that drew power from either side at will and funneled it into a single, unified output.
Percival focused again to quickly test this theory.
This time, he ignored the rivers. Instead, he poured his will into the space between them, visualizing a single shimmering arch.
This arch of pure intent was Percival's siphon.
It connected the river of silver to the river of blue flames. Swordsman Class core to Necromancer Class core.
The siphon grew another limb, one that extended from the center to the depths of Percival's mind.
It would draw power from either river, and channel it down the middle limb, mana flowing to fuel whatever Skill he intended to use.
Percival opened his eyes.
No pain. No backlash. No slap on the face.
He rose to his feet and drew out his sword.
He held the blade by his side, then sliced sideways, activating ⸢Bladewave⸥ and immediately overlapping with ⸢Soulfire⸥.
The sword unleashed the deadly arc of energy as usual, but it was not silver. It was the blue flames of [Soulfire].
It sliced an innocent lone tree, the sound of crashing wood echoing in the silence of Percival's astonishment.
"It… worked."
Percy would have jumped and high-fived one of his Skeletons. At that moment, he really felt like Percy.
He was that happy.
For good measure, he tried the Skills again. This time however, the arc was silver. Only [Bladewave] activated.
Percival wasn't worried. He understood the problem now.
The same thing happened back when he first killed the Crownless King.
The bridge. It was only temporary.
A construct of the mind couldn't sustain the mana flow from both pools beyond a single attack.
Even with this problem, Percival still felt victorious.
He had proven it was possible.
He knew now how to summon Skills from both Classes at will and at the same time.
All he needed now was to build a more permanent bridge.