A day after Percy’s return to the Guild, he finished granting new cores to the first batch of allied mages. He expected many more waves of nobles to arrive at the Fungal Spire looking for him in the coming months, but he would hopefully have at least a couple of days of downtime to work on his own projects before the commotion ramped up.
More than once, he’d considered flying to Twilight City or sending Micky to check up on Nesha, since he was quite worried about her. However, he knew that the ambush on her family’s murderers had roughly coincided with the battle in the Whistling Woods. Whatever the outcome, he would have been too late to change it.
Besides, his girlfriend was no longer the lazy and powerless person who had followed him to Bogside town. He trusted that she knew what she was doing, and she’d asked them to let her handle this one on her own.
Sighing, he turned his attention to the other pair of people who had been pestering him for days. ‘Just let me eat this Honey Roll first. It’s the only thing I’ve had since yesterday,’ he pleaded through the cord.
The clone possessing his familiar stopped bothering him, clearly well aware of how sacred Freddy’s masterpieces were. Unfortunately, the person sitting on the sofa across from Percy didn’t seem to care.
“I think we should help them now, otherwise we’re just holding their training back,” Micky suggested.
The corner of Percy’s lips twitched at the betrayal, but he knew that his friend was right. Biting the rest of the warm pastry softly, he held it between his teeth as he used his willpower to keep the dripping honey from staining his couch. Borrowing some soul-freezing liquid from his fellow aspect, he turned it corporeal to wash his hands, before storing the sticky water in a corner of his spatial seal meant for garbage. He’d get rid of it later.
Once he was clean, he gestured for Micky to follow him to a newly-built room in his house where a long but narrow shaft connected it to a cave deep below the surface. Nephthys had ordered her subjects to dig out this tunnel a few months ago, to make it easier for him to travel between the world of the humans and that of the Starry Wasps.
‘Sadly, it also enables me to socialize even less than usual, but I can’t have everything,’ he thought with a shrug as he jumped into the colourful hole.
By the time he reached the bottom, Percy had finished gulping down the rest of his breakfast. Redirecting his domain to his feet, he softened his landing. Micky caught up, perching on his shoulder in the form of a regular-sized crow.
‘I’m on my way to you,’ Percy told the clone and Nephthys through both cords. ‘Care to fill me in on your recent progress?’
The response was prompt and enthusiastic. ‘I’ve finally registered Basic Water Control. I thought I should wait until I’m done with the other two spells before bringing them back to you, which will only take a few weeks. Nephthys and I have also discussed the possibility of adding another type of training into our routine, though we need to figure out what you can actually do with our mana first.’
Percy nodded. The clone possessing Nephthys – or one of the clone’s predecessors, to be exact – had managed to attach soul mana to acid and lightning a few years back. Even better, he had used a trickle of the fused mana to clear and temper the main body’s corresponding channels.
While the original had been too busy with the artificial advancements to work on anything else, the clone had been more than capable of handling everything by himself. Percy’s cords came in four different flavours, with Nephthys and the clone linked to the main body in the second most powerful way.
Regular clones and familiars could only communicate or share mana within a limited range. “Limited” was a relative term, since it easily encompassed entire planets – and possibly even solar systems – but the clones tended to lose contact if they travelled to a world too distant.
Soul Resonance allowed Percy and his clones or familiars to actively empower a cord, widening it and massively expanding its range.
Then there was Soul Harmony, which Percy could only use with a clone possessing one of his familiars. It allowed them to empower both cords at the same time, twisting them into an even wider, two-way connection. By introducing a looping flow of mana around the cords, they could keep them in their empowered state effortlessly.
The only connection even stronger was the one that Percy’s main body shared with Micky. After their fusion, their single soul could freely shift between their two bodies, allowing them to transfer even their spatial seals back and forth.
Despite not being the most powerful variant, the two-way cord was strong enough for a clone to reach to the main body and control it in limited ways, or vice versa. Percy had taken advantage of this ability over a decade ago, when another clone had saved him the trouble of clearing and tempering his water, air, and ice channels.
The process of fusing soul mana with Nephthys’ affinities had also been relatively simple. The clone had used the same approach that had worked for the other elements: overlapping the resources and having his soul mana track the shape and movement of the other affinity until it stuck.
The one thing that they hadn’t had the chance to test, had been the main body’s ability to wield soul-melting acid and soul-zapping lightning. Even the small trickles of mana that the clone had used to clear Percy’s channels had been quite painful, so the clone hadn’t wanted to distract the original at such a critical juncture with anything more ambitious.
‘Okay. Brew me some then, and let me play with it for a few minutes,’ the main body said upon reaching the others.
He transferred some soul mana to the clone and a different resource entered his soul through the other cord a few seconds later, causing him to wince. His counterpart had only sent about a twentieth of his capacity, but that was already enough to cause Percy’s soul to bubble and froth, his channels melting into one another and twisting the whole network into an unrecognizable state.
‘Fuck, stop!’ he yelled through the connection, forcefully blocking the rest of the mana from entering his soul while expelling what the clone had already transmitted. A crisp sound reached his ears as the frozen bird landed next to his boot, writhing in agony.
Examining his mangled soul, Percy was suddenly quite glad that he hadn’t allowed even a drop of soul-melting acid into his core. Even if the adaptation runes inside the seals could protect the enchantments from the corrosive resource, the organ itself might have suffered serious damage.
Carving out the injured parts of his soul and regrowing it took several hours. Percy wasn’t as keen to keep experimenting with the deadly mana types, but he knew that it had to be done.
‘Go slower this time. Start with the same amount you used to temper my channels, and we’ll build up from that,’ he said.
Following his instructions, the clone sent a much more manageable volume of soul-melting acid this time. It was still quite painful, but didn’t corrode his soul faster than the regular soul mana coursing through his channels could mend it.
‘This is far more bearable, but useless in a fight.’
Percy’s opponents were Whites, so a trickle of Green mana wouldn’t help much. Even if he could pour his familiar’s entire reserves into a single attack, it was unlikely to put a scratch on the defences of someone like Machaon.
The second problem was that his soul channels were already saturated with soul mana, so he couldn’t even fit much soul-melting acid or soul-zapping lightning in their incorporeal states.
For this to work, he would need to phase the elements into the physical plane and store them within the empty acid and lightning channels that the clone had cleared. Bracing himself for yet another form of pain, Percy gathered the fused mana into his hand, moving it to a different mana network and willing it into existence.
His body didn’t fare much better than his soul.
His hand instantly swelled, throbbing painfully as black veins spread through purplish skin. Grey acid mixed with blood spilled out of his pores, tearing through his flesh and forming a stinky, viscous puddle of sludge on the ground.
Thankfully, physical pain was much easier to tolerate than spectral, so Percy managed to maintain his composure, studying his damaged limb like a seasoned scholar. Once he felt that he had seen enough, he got rid of the fused mana once more, emptying a few vials of Blue healing ink into his body and letting it work in tandem with his spiritual blood to restore his hand to normal.
‘Yeah… this isn’t going to work,’ he concluded with a frown.
The acid mana was of the same grade as his body, yet it didn’t look like he could handle even a relatively small amount, let alone a quantity capable of threatening a Seventh Circle mage.
If it hadn’t been for his Blessing of Permanence raising the durability of his soul, and Greater Thess’kalan Physique strengthening his body while elevating its resistance to toxins, he strongly suspected that he would have already melted into a puddle of goo.
‘Maybe it’s because Nephthys’ Acidic Gland mutation has increased the potency of her venom beyond a regular Green’s,’ the clone suggested. ‘Do you want us to try removing its effect from our mana?’
‘There’s no point,’ Percy replied, mentally shaking his head. ‘I’m a lot stronger relative to my grade than I was when I experimented with Micky’s soul-freezing ice. We’d need to make the venom as powerful as possible to matter, and I clearly can’t handle anything close to that.’
‘What if I were to use it?’ Micky offered. Having recovered from his previous shock, he was sitting in a corner of the vast cavern in his Huehuan form, observing the experiments. ‘My soul is as fragile as yours, but my body is tougher and more disposable.’
Percy rubbed his stubble, considering it for several seconds before sighing in defeat. ‘I suppose there is no harm in having every possible mana network cleared and tempered in each of our bodies, but it won’t be convenient for you to use the soul-melting acid either, since the clone and Nephthys aren’t directly connected to you. We’ll still have to channel the mana through me, which will burn both sides of our soul before we turn it corporeal. And that’s assuming that the clone is even capable of reaching into your body – which is two bodies removed from his own – otherwise we’ll have to be the ones putting in the effort during a fight.’
In theory, having access to an additional source of mana would be nice. If they’d had that during the previous battle, they could have killed Machaon before the other patriarchs saved him. However, it appeared too impractical as things stood.
Not wanting to give up so easily, Percy asked his clone to try soul-zapping lightning next. He was able to handle it a little better than the acid, but not well enough to safely handle more than a tenth of his familiar’s reserves at once.
‘So, what now?’ Nephthys asked, sounding quite disappointed. ‘Is there nothing I can do to bolster your strength besides producing royal jelly and helping you comprehend a couple of concepts?’
Percy chuckled. ‘It’s not like those are small things. Besides, you’ve also given me an army of millions of wasps. But if you’re talking about your acid mana specifically, I’m sure we’ll figure it out in due time. We always do.’
Percy’s mutation had clearly helped him handle the new affinities much better than he should have been able to, so the most obvious solution would be to strengthen his physique further, somehow.
He still had a complete set of Thess’kalan ritual ingredients in his seal, having bought them from Metatron – who had obtained them from Kassorith. The problem was that undergoing the Ancestral Lineage Sect’s ritual bath multiple times yielded diminishing returns and was less effective on non-Thess’kalans to begin with. Percy had already used two sets of ingredients, so he would be lucky if the third strengthened his physique by more than a single percentage point.
He'd purchased and held on to the ingredients mainly to study them, in the hopes that he could unearth the dormant potential within his own human blood. Like all sapients in the universe, his people had descended from beasts, meaning that their distant ancestors had also possessed stronger bodies before shedding them in favour of intelligence and elemental cores.
Unfortunately, Percy still had no idea where to even begin searching for answers.
‘Keep building your strength for now,’ he said. ‘Have you tried storing soul-melting acid within your venom gland?’
The reincarnated goddess sent a mental nod back. ‘It works, just like we suspected.’
In addition to increasing the potency of her acid mana, the corresponding mutation allowed Nephthys to use her second core and venom sac interchangeably. Much like the relationship between her beast core and jelly gland, it increased her effective capacity far beyond normal.
Due to her Soul Predator mutation allowing her soul to interact with her body more strongly, Percy had hoped that her extra capacity would extend to the spectral variant of her mana. The Ruby Princess could store the deadly resource in her second core, the three sets of mana channels branching out of that, the external flows enveloping her body, her soul channels, and her venom gland – meaning that her total capacity greatly exceeded even a Blue’s.
‘That’s great,’ Percy said, before shifting his attention to the clone. ‘As soon as you register the other Basic Control spells, spend a few months promoting her second core. With both the Cradle and the mutation at her disposal, she’ll definitely have enough mana to produce a peak- Sixth Circle attack, if not higher. She’ll at least be able to defend herself if someone goes after her directly. And don’t worry about strengthening my body enough to handle the acid – I’ll deal with that sooner or later.’