Chapter 772 – Return from Melodia

Percy was starting to get annoyed with his clones. He wasn’t sure whether it was the empowered cords, the admittedly convenient sentries, or the spectral contracts that had emboldened the bastards, but they’d been stirring all sorts of trouble for him lately.

He hadn’t even dealt with the consequences of sharing the secret of the cyan powder with so many factions during the auction, yet his clones had kept creating new messes wherever he sent them.

The one on Melodia had kept demanding sentries and cords – as if the main body had no other use for them – only to nearly get himself and Sol devoured by the Spectral Broodmother. Not long after that, the one on Tenefyre had monopolized all of Micky’s spiritual blood for the foreseeable future.

‘And why are you complaining?’ the Huehuan snapped after listening to his rambling. ‘I’m the one who has to keep shedding pieces of my soul and attaching it to the mana.’

Percy rolled his eyes. ‘And who has to constantly channel the trickle of soul-freezing ice through the cord? At least you’re basically on vacation until the clone is done with the droplets, and you’ll get free progress with your spell and a blessing when he’s back. Meanwhile, I have to soldier through the discomfort while inventing new potions.’

‘Well… it’s your clone,’ Micky argued. ‘Sounds to me like you have only yourself to blame.’

Percy snorted. ‘Need I remind you that every rogue Percy out there has an equally unhinged Micky egging him on?’

The Huehuan mentally shrugged, not bothering to respond.

At least, Percy couldn’t argue with his clones’ results. They might have hogged more attention and resources than he would have liked, but he was looking forward to getting his hands on their hauls.

Snatching the blessing from Tenefyre had proven both easier and harder than expected. Spending months harvesting magical droplets from an underground sea of magma without getting spotted by the locals was a bit of an inconvenience, but still better than having to directly negotiate with the natives or sneak into a deity’s palace to grab aRing of Sacrilege.

As for the other clone… well, he was already on the way back. This was the main reason why Percy had taken a break from his alchemical ventures today. He was sitting atop the roof of his residence, eagerly watching the vibrating cord linking him to the wisp.

A few minutes later, a grey glint appeared in the night sky, carving a narrow trail through the swarm of colourful motes as it slammed into Percy’s chest. He’d intentionally stayed outdoors to retrieve this clone, because he was carrying an object that couldn’t phase through physical surfaces. Before the wisp was even done fusing into his soul, Percy collected the unassuming ring that his Cloak had blocked.

He wore it around his left ring finger and sent a sliver of phantom mana into the artifact to exchange a brief greeting with Zoris. Percy ensured that the disembodied deity was fine and left it at that. It had technically been years since he and the former god had last chatted in person, but Zoris had spent the past few months accompanying his clone, so there wasn’t much more that needed to be said. The new memories were already flooding Percy’s mind, filling in the blanks.

‘Interesting.’ Percy couldn’t help but crease his forehead as his counterpart’s conversations with Zoris and the Spectral Broodmother answered questions that he’d never even thought to ask – all the while birthing a million new ones.

Ignoring most of the high-level information about qi and the factions of old – which weren’t too relevant to him at the moment – Percy focused on what the pair of elder beings had shared about the Celestial realm. Some of his doubts about the mysterious demi-human that had guided him in the canyon, as well as his speculation about humanity’s common ancestor with the creatures, might be related to that.

He shook his head. ‘Let’s take it one topic at a time. I should start by dealing with the clone’s tangible gains before bothering with wild theories about living planets.’

Opening his Status, Percy focused on the spell section.

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Spells:

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‘There it is! Another Basic Control spell registered,’ he thought as the corners of his lips curled up.

Percy had mastered Basic Soul Control several times faster than the other three, even beating Nephthys’ pace despite lacking her mutation or experience as a former deity. Elemental Sources clearly weren’t a joke.

This spell was admittedly only a prelude to the one that would eventually allow Percy to integrate his affinity into his internal world, but that didn’t make it useless. It might not be as flashy as some of the others on the list, but it would passively increase the potency and efficiency of his soul magic.

Percy had grown more in tune with the properties of his affinity, so he should be able to convert it to and from other elements with fewer losses, slightly boost the range and number of spectral constructs that he could wield in battle, raise the lethality of his attacks, stitch his hosts’ souls faster, and perhaps even peer slightly further into the future while scanning an enemy’s intentions via Soul Vision. Each individual improvement would be small, but the spell’s scope was more than broad enough to justify its Refined classification.

After fully absorbing the clone’s memories, Percy understood that his counterpart had been tempted to stay on Melodia a few years longer, to master the Advanced form of the spell as well. Doing so under the blissful influence of the Elemental Source should be much faster than it would be for the other clone to upgrade the acid version or its components under the familiar’s guidance.

However, the clone had decided that this was enough for now. It was better to bring the weaker version of the spell back to Remior and ensure that all the other Percys would start experiencing its subtle benefits immediately. In the future, it might be worth sending multiple clones to Melodia, to work together toward upgrading the spell.

‘It’s not too urgent,’ he reminded himself.

The overall boost to his abilities from these spells was nice – especially for his main affinity – but the spell’s primary benefit was that it would eventually pave the way to divinity, and his current grade was too low to be worrying about that.

The beast tide was practically over on Melodia, and Percy had given Sol’s people everything they would need to expand their territory and accelerate their development. He figured that he should probably give them some time to conquer the rest of their continent and digest their gains before doing anything else.

Percy still needed to find them a source of stable beast mana, though that wasn’t something that he could rush either. Not only had he not found something suitable yet, even transporting it to the planet would be a challenge once he did.

He couldn’t store anything with a soul inside his spatial seals, making it impossible to bring beasts with him. Even the semi-inert eggs that Percy had fashioned his familiars out of had possessed fading slivers of spirituality for his own wisps to latch onto. Percy could store away meat or completely dead eggs, but those things would never produce nectar, nor hatch.

Plants were the only exceptions, as Percy had managed to successfully cultivate herbs that he’d carried through his seals. He wasn’t sure whether the enchantments had allowed the ingredients in due to their souls being sufficiently weaker or different from those of animals, or whether Metatron had gone out of his way to incorporate certain loopholes into the seals, to make it easier for Percy to harvest valuable reagents.

Either way, Percy had never heard of beast-affinity plants, so he doubted that he would be able to bring Sol a viable source of beast mana as he was. He’d either need a spaceship, a god’s help, or some other kind of interstellar transportation. The first option was still decades away at the earliest, while the second wasn’t even allowed by his deal with the Spectral Broodmother, as guiding a deity to Melodia would kill him.

Maybe the myriapede would be willing to loosen the clauses of their contract once it got to know Percy better and after the latter grew strong enough to protect the planet, but that might take even longer than building the spaceship. If he couldn’t bring stable beast mana from outside, he would have to figure out how to artificially produce it, or hope that Sol’s people found something hiding in their ocean.

‘They’ll have to survive without it for a while, I suppose,’ he thought with a sigh.

Sol and Doh had enough resources to become double-Violets in the near future. That should allow them to live for tens of thousands of years, so even wasting a couple of millennia would barely put a dent on their remaining lifespan.

Even Latt had received enough Aurora Dew to reach Green – in fact, he was the only Melodian besides the Green-borns that Percy had insisted on granting elixirs to during this trip – so the man should be able to live for well over a thousand years. If Percy spent too long looking for a solution, his friend’s future prospects would admittedly be affected, but there wasn’t much that could be done about it.

It might be callous of Percy to admit, but he didn’t care too much about the other Melodians – at least not on a personal basis. He wanted to help them survive and advance their civilization, and he would get them their beast mana as soon as he could, but he didn’t feel like he owed each and every one of them an extended lifespan. Besides, not revealing the location of their planet to an outside deity was also for their own protection.

Furthermore, there were plenty of other people that required Percy’s help far more urgently – such as Marnok, who was basically stranded on a dying planet, the Amenthei, who were currently trapped inside his familiar’s gem, and the enslaved Huehuans, who Percy and Micky still itched to do something about.

Compared to all of those people suffering on a daily basis, Percy wasn’t overly concerned that a bunch of strangers might die peacefully of old age a few thousand years from now.

‘I’ll help them when I can. All of them,’ he decided.

Moving past the new spell and his dealings with the Melodians, Percy considered the most unexpected benefit to come out of this trip: he had a brand-new spectral trait to play with.