The Lone Wanderer

Checking up on his familiar, Percy waited fifteen minutes: or around five hours from the crow’s perspective: for him to start hunting again with Acton.

Strictly speaking, Micky’s help would only be indispensable when it was Elaine’s turn to receive her core. Percy was confident he could heal Nesha on his own. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have some extra mana on the side, just in case.

Rolling up a strip of cloth, he handed it over to her, asking her to bite down on it.

“You realise this will hurt a lot, right?” Percy asked, getting a nod back.

Next, he activated Synchronization, gathering some soul mana to his fingers. Employing utmost caution, he proceeded to surgically inflict lots of minor incisions on Nesha’s soul.

Every time he cut her, she shuddered, the colour draining from both her face and her clenched fists. He could tell she wanted to scream as tears streamed down her face, though, to her credit, she never asked him to stop, nor did she make a peep.

Percy himself wasn’t having a great time. He’d never hated his bloodline as much as he did right now, knowing full well how much agony his girlfriend was currently under. He wished he could take her place. Not that the soul injuries didn’t hurt him, but he’d grown used to them over the years. Meanwhile, Nesha had never experienced them before.

Alas, he also understood that great power often came hand in hand with equally great sacrifices. And she was the one who’d asked for this, fully aware of the price she’d have to pay. The best he could do was to keep his hands steady, and to get this over with as soon as possible.

A few minutes later, he was done. Nesha had already stopped reacting to his actions, her eyes now dazed and barely responsive. Still, her injuries weren’t severe enough to fully lower her soul’s resistance quite yet. Percy had been careful not to overdo it. If everything went according to plan, her state should continue to deteriorate while he prepared his clone, leaving her open to being possessed by the time he was ready.

Sitting in front of her, he pushed his boosting art to the very limit, asking Micky to start munching on something. At the same time, he pulled a part of his soul out, pumping it full of mana using his family’s technique.

Preparing the clone took less time than ever before, thanks to both their combined efforts and his own insistence on putting an end to Nesha’s suffering.

‘Should I pass her a part of my storage seal too?’ he wondered.

Giving her and Elaine an eighth of the seal each wouldn’t set him back too much. Then again, it wouldn’t benefit them much either, as the internal space would barely exceed that of their spatial amulets. Still, the seals were more convenient to use. Not to mention much harder for their enemies to detect.

But he shook his head a moment later, realizing it was probably a bad idea.

Neither of them had soul mana, nor the ability to sense their own soul. Chances are, they wouldn’t even be able to access the seal, making it completely useless for them. Plus, he’d have to injure and possess them again to take it back later.

Satisfied with the size of the thrumming orb in front of his stomach, he activated his bloodline, watching as the ghostly hand dove into the clone, severing it from the rest of his soul. Even Percy had to grit his teeth during this part, as it hurt far more than anything else he’d done.

Regardless, the bloodline did its job, the clone soon shooting into Nesha’s body like a teal comet. He stretched and spilled into the cracks in her soul, filling them up.

‘Now, for the last step.’

The clone had been equipped with more than enough mana to stitch her wounds up by himself. Still, Percy pitched in with his main body, sending more mana through the cord, to accelerate the process. A lot of it got wasted, yet he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered to him was healing Nesha as quickly as possible, efficiency be damned.

Taking advantage of the flood of soul mana, the clone put the Weaving trait to good use. Drawing one preservation rune after the other, he patched all the injuries up, starting from the most severe ones.

Only when he saw the final wound get stitched shut did Percy let out a tired breath, a wave of relief washing over him.

He was about to check up on Nesha, to ensure that everything was alright, when something unexpected happened.

[Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Spectral Art: Soul Stitching: Refined -> Hybrid Art: Core Bestowal: Masterful!]

He creased his brow upon reading the notification, the Status’s words raising multiple questions.

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The most obvious ones had to do with the classification of the spell. After all the effort he’d put into upgrading his other spells, getting an upgrade to Masterful so easily felt cheap. Not that injuring, possessing and healing somebody was a trivial matter, but it certainly hadn’t taken him as much time and effort as his armour or his cauldron: and only the former had even qualified for this tier.

Then again, Percy’s perspective was probably skewed.

The Moirais’ Decree was one of the most valuable Decrees in the universe: the greatest treasure of a peak faction, standing tall even among the rest of the greater springs. A mortal passing this Decree over to another mortal wasn’t a small feat by any stretch of the imagination. It was something that had only become possible for Percy through a series of unbelievable coincidences.

In fact, this was probably why his Status had called this a “Hybrid Art”. Percy guessed this was what happened when one of his spells involved both his bloodline and his spectral trait. Maybe it would have been the same if he’d thrown his mutation into the mix too.

Though there was one more question swirling in his mind.

‘Why now?’

This wasn’t the first time he’d granted somebody a second core. Not by a long shot. He’d done it to half a dozen individuals in the Vault alone, and that wasn’t even all of them. Shouldn’t his Status have recognized the spell years ago? If not when he healed Gabe: since he hadn’t done that by himself: then certainly in Enki’s case.

Strictly speaking, what he’d just done for Nesha was functionally identical to what he’d done for the kid. Sure, he’d grown a bit better at stitching soul injuries, and his familiar had provided him with more mana, but none of it seemed like a big deal.

‘Is it because it wasn’t on purpose before?’

In hindsight, Percy had never created a clone with the goal of giving somebody the Moirais’ Decree. He’d possessed his past hosts for various reasons, ranging from his search for knowledge to his infiltration missions, and even healed a bunch of them out of kindness or necessity. As for their second cores, they’d all received them mostly by accident.

Of course, Percy had long known he was capable of passing the Decree along on purpose, but he’d never attempted to do that directly until tonight. This was the first time he’d activated his bloodline with the explicit goal of giving somebody a second core.

Still, it was quite bizarre for his Status to decide whether to register such a high-level spell based on such a flimsy reason.

‘Or maybe it isn’t…’

Could something brought about through sheer happenstance ever be described as a spell? Wasn’t the caster’s intent ultimately a key part of the equation?

Regardless, it didn’t matter.

Shaking the pointless thoughts out of his head, Percy grabbed Nesha’s wrist, checking her pulse. Next, he summoned his Status. Ignoring his own information, he gazed at his girlfriend, pulling up her own.

___

Nesha Veritas (Percival’s clone)

Mana cores:

[Mana core 1 – Yellow – Space][Mana core 2 – Seed – ???]Bloodline:

[Truthseeker]: Sense when somebody is lying.Spectral trait:

[Weaving]: Boosts one’s proclivity in manipulating one-dimensional structures.Spells:

[Secret Art: Soul Resonance: Refined][Soul Harvester: Refined][Reinforcement: Refined][Spiritforged Cauldron: Refined][Spectral Art: Phantomscale Regalia: Masterful]Alchemic principles:

[Extraction]: Separate and condense an ingredient’s essence.[Pacification] – Delay an ingredient’s activation rate.[Redirection] – Adjust an ingredient’s effect.[Deattunement] – Prevent multiple conflicting ingredients from reacting with one another.[Bonding] – Enrich an ingredient with crystallized pure mana.[Restructuring]: Alter an ingredient's phase.Decrees:

[Phoebe’s Decree]: Grants access to your Status.[Iapetus’s Decree]: Grants a bloodline.[Moirais’ Decree (Incomplete)] – Grants the seed of a second mana core. Requires potent life mana to germinate.[Metatron’s Decree]: Open a one-way portal to the Vault of Magic at will.[Ea’s Decree (Modified)] – Augments and enhances your Status.___

As usual, his clone’s Status didn’t list Nesha’s spell: only the abilities Percy could use while staying in her body. Other than that, there wasn’t anything unexpected there, besides the confirmation that he had successfully passed her the Decree. Then again, his own spell upgrade had been proof enough of that.

‘Don’t worry… she’s alright.’ the clone’s voice suddenly rang through the cord.

‘The injuries?’ Percy asked, still somewhat nervous. Logically, he knew nothing had gone wrong, but he couldn’t help being a little irrational.

‘All handled. I’m talking to her right now. She’ll be back to her feet in a couple of minutes. We’ll drain the mushrooms on the top floors. Start storing the ones here.’

Percy reluctantly nodded, choosing to let the clone handle the situation. Technically, the clone’s work was already done, so he could leave Nesha’s body immediately if he wanted. Still, they’d rather repair the Decree completely while he was still there, as they didn’t know if she’d need mind mana for that once he was gone.

Getting up, Percy walked to the nearest mushroom. Luckily, he didn’t need to reach down to pick it. He could deposit it directly into his seal as long as he touched it with his boot, making his job a great deal easier.

It didn’t take long for Nesha to get up too, just like the clone had said. She still looked a little shaken, but she gave Percy a reassuring nod, before heading upstairs.

It wouldn’t be long before the sun rose, so they had to clean up the whole warehouse by then. That was when Elaine’s shift would end, and Martina would be coming here with the new guard as well as the workers responsible for planting the next batch of mushrooms. Needless to say, Percy and Nesha would rather not be seen by all those people if they could avoid it.

Thinking of Elaine, Percy couldn’t help but grimace.

Giving Nesha her new core had been a dreadful experience, and he wasn’t looking forward to doing it again for his cousin a few days from now.