Percy was back in the space between worlds, searching for a body to possess.
The original was busy with alchemy and the demi-human ingredients, while Micky had begun practicing with his sentries again. The rest of the clones were also preoccupied with other tasks. Nephthys and the wisp possessing her had resumed mastering their elemental affinities, the one accompanying Sol was still training near the Spectral Broodmother, and the remaining pair were trying to promote Archibald and Galahad’s second cores.
Thankfully, Percy had managed to free up the final cord after telling the allied families to stop sending so many mages to the Fungal Spire. He’d already granted new cores to their Blues and Violets, but the Houses that hadn’t sent their Greens yet would have to gather them up in larger batches and send them some other time.
The fact that Percy wasn’t using his fifth cord to disseminate the Moirais’ Decree anymore didn’t mean that he had no other uses for it on Remior. Technically, there were countless people that he would have loved to grant the Cradle to, but he’d already dealt with the most important ones.
Strengthening the Ruby Empress and the patriarchs of the allied families would be good for the coalition, but Percy wasn’t close enough to those people to justify spending several months working on their cores.
On the other hand, there were those he cared strongly about – like Nesha or Orin – but whose personal strength wasn’t high enough to make a significant difference in the war. Percy still wanted to give them artificial advancements at some point, yet that could wait until he had more free time, available cords, less pressure on his shoulders, or simply a much faster way to prepare the seals.
Right now, he felt that it was better for everyone if he invested the opportunities afforded by his bloodline into his personal growth. There were too many destinations that he wanted to visit, with even more cropping up near the top of his list seemingly every few months.
‘I’m looking forward to having several clones to deploy away from Remior again,’ he thought. The only clone he wasn’t planning to touch would be the one possessing his familiar, as her strength was practically an extension of his own. Furthermore, training under the influence of her mutation happened to be among the most efficient uses of his cords.
‘That sounds like something for your main body to worry about,’ Micky said. ‘Let’s focus on our own job.’
‘Right,’ Percy concurred.
At least they weren’t going in blind this time. Communicating with the clone through the empowered cord, the original was trying to guide them toward the direction where the needle of one of their karmic compasses was pointing.
As for which one they’d picked?
Well… Percy had decided to ignore the lesser spring that used to control the Elemental Source of the sound affinity for now. He hadn’t even mastered acid magic yet, so learning to wield an even more inconvenient element wasn’t going to help him much in the short term. He’d also decided to temporarily skip the faction that focused on alchemy, since raising his strength was more urgent.
That only left the two greater springs.
Among Percy’s ongoing projects, the most important ones were extending his lifespan so that he could finally activate the Void Decree, and commissioning the Focus that he had paid an arm and a leg for – if not a head as well. Mithril was the only place in the universe where he could accomplish the second objective, as well as his best shot toward the first, since the wise gnomes were ranked more highly than the other faction.
Sadly, his trip to the gnome’s planet came with certain issues.
Percy had no idea whether he would need to visit with his main body to receive his prize, not did he possess the means to do that if it proved necessary. Since he didn’t expect himself and Nesha to build their spaceship anytime soon, his only option would be to ask one of Remior’s deities to escort him – if they dared.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. Either way, he should probably possess a random critter and scout out the planet before doing anything else. Once he had a better understanding of what the acquisition process involved – and what other resources the gnomes had – he would decide the best way to proceed.
In light of that realization, he had decided to get the other greater spring out of the way first. If the rival faction who had auctioned the compass off hadn’t lied, Percy’s targets should possess a Ring of Sacrilege of the ice affinity, on top of the remote possibility of a better means of advancement.
The information was obviously unconfirmed, but Percy at least knew what the artifacts looked like, and how to use them. He didn’t want to downright steal the ring, nor could he bring Micky’s main body with him, yet there were other ways to grant his friend the blessing.
If he were to possess a native with an ice affinity – who would be more likely to get their hands on the object in the first place – Percy might be able to channel soul mana through the cord, attach it to the augmented ice mana, and send the resource back to Remior for the Huehuan to feed into his core.
It was admittedly a bit of a long shot, as well as terribly inefficient, but that was fine. Even if the process took several years, it was ultimately a small price to pay to acquire a blessing. Besides, the other three clones would be done with their respective tasks soon, so Percy would only be delaying his trip to Mithril by a few months at most.
‘Well? Am I going the right way?’ he asked through the cord after the original had remained silent for a bit too long.
‘Go slightly to your left,’ the main body replied. ‘No – my left!’
The clone would have rolled his eyes if he had any. ‘You do realize that I can’t tell up from down?’
‘Duh. Just reverse what you’ve just done, and then add another fifteen percent to that angle,’ the original insisted.
They’d admittedly grown a bit rusty since the last time they’d had to navigate like this, but they managed to realign the clone’s flight with the needle after some back and forth. The biggest problem with using a karmic compass from afar was that it would tell Percy which way to go, but not how far down that route he would have to travel.
It was the same issue that they had run into while trying to return to Huehue. The solution was to simply wait until the clone stumbled upon a cluster of souls that matched what he knew about his destination. The good news was that a greater spring should be fairly easy to tell apart from lesser springs and barren worlds, so Percy could just keep ignoring every undeveloped planet in his path until he found a bigger one.
That could lead to a problem if a second greater spring or extremely advanced lesser spring happened to coincide within the same straight line leading away from Remior. Considering how vast the universe was, and how scarce such worlds were, the possibility sounded rather remote.
If anything, Percy would gladly welcome that outcome, as it would mean discovering the location of another greater spring for free, and he could always resume the search for his original destination later.
‘Yeah… fat chance of us being that lucky.’
Either way, a few worlds appeared within the clone’s range sooner rather than later, though most were either too misaligned with his path or too undeveloped to be the place the compass was pointing towards. It wasn’t until the fifteenth or twentieth planet that the quantity and quality of clustered souls rose sharply.
‘Do you think that this might be the one?’ Micky asked.
‘Probably,’ Percy replied with a mental shrug.
It wasn’t exactly in front of them, but the small deviation could easily be attributed to a mistake during their flight – or just soul plane shenanigans. The planet wasn’t as developed as the founding worlds of the Void Hand either, but it was definitely more advanced than the average lesser spring. If Percy had to compare it to his past destinations, he’d say that it was somewhere between Thess’kala and Gallimus. The former wasn’t even ranked that highly among greater springs, while the latter had only recently turned into one, so this faction had to be near the bottom of the list.
‘Small or not, they must have some advanced means of core-cleansing or life-extension, otherwise they wouldn’t have developed as much as they have,’ the Huehuan said.
‘Let’s just hope it’s not the cyan powder again, though I’m not going to hold my breath,’ Percy replied.
‘We don’t breathe,’ Micky reminded him.
Percy ignored his friend, scanning the natives’ souls for a suitable host.
There were at least twenty thousand Violets – which had become Percy’s favourite grade to possess at some point – and he even spotted a handful that were injured enough to attract his wisp. Perhaps taking over one of them would be the quickest way to get to the ring, but he decided to be more careful this time.
After learning about karmic tracking, he didn’t want to rush his interactions with greater springs more than necessary. Luckily, Kassorith had defected to the Vault after Percy’s trip to Thess’kala, and Percy had placed a strict spectral contract on Zurvanai after the tournament, but things might not always go his way. He was willing to interact and even grant new cores to the natives if the situation called for it, but there was no reason to immediately jump to that option now that he had alternatives.
‘A beast then?’ Micky asked after listening to his reasoning.
‘I think so,’ Percy said. ‘We’ll study the natives a bit, try to pinpoint the ring, and then approach a powerful ice user with a proper plan if it can’t be avoided.’
‘How about that one?’ the Huehuan asked again, steering Percy’s senses toward a certain Orange creature.
There were plenty of Yellows and Greens around, but spying on the sapients with such bulky bodies would be harder. Percy would rather leave the scouting to the sentries again, so he didn’t mind picking a smaller host that could hide inside a tree trunk or something. Evidently, his friend was on the same page and had also picked a host that appeared to be located close to a denser sub-cluster of sapient souls.
With both in agreement, Percy focused on the creature, allowing the spectral attraction to do the rest.