A few days earlier

  Unbeknownst to Percy, there was an ancient, wise, and arguably pretty pair of eyes watching his every move. In fact, learning how long these eyes had been observing him would likely send a chill down his spine.

  Admittedly, spying on the boy wasn’t Phoebe’s classiest move, but it couldn’t be helped. Percy was just too important to leave alone, and this was the only way to prevent any accidents from occurring – save perhaps for making her presence known and sheltering him directly, but that would inhibit his growth.

  “He’s improving faster than I expected. I really thought he would have slowed down by now…” she muttered as she watched Percy and the crow take down another group of bounty hunters.

  It had only taken the boy a couple of years to go from barely beating Acton, to handling multiple Blues by himself – and even more with help from his familiar. Phoebe had initially thought that reaching Yellow and upgrading his boosting art would have marked the end of Percy’s rapid growth, but he hadn’t stopped surprising her over the past few months.

  At this rate, he might actually get to where she wanted him by the time he reached Violet, or even Blue!

  Of course, Phoebe hadn’t always been invested in the boy’s personal strength. At first, she’d been far more interested in other aspects of his bloodline.

  She’d registered an anomaly as early as during his evaluation at the temple, though she hadn’t thought much of it at the time. She could have never imagined that a mortal’s bloodline or spell would be capable of bypassing the powerful enchantments in the assessment centres to steal her mana.

  And, well… she had been right about that. Percy had caused the incident indirectly, by bringing one of the most powerful Decrees in existence back to Remior and letting it feast upon the crimson pool.

  That said, Phoebe hadn’t pieced together the details until years later. Sadly, omniscience was an ability that not even the most powerful gods in the universe could dream of possessing. Despite being the originator of the Status, she could only read another person’s page while looking at them.

  The most logical explanation at the time had been that too many children had arrived at the temple. She’d figured that the lazy priests and priestesses working there must’ve grown impatient with the long queue, having the children undergo their affinity tests in batches.

  They weren’t supposed to do that, of course. Phoebe had explicitly told them many times that the presence of multiple evaluees could interfere with the quality of the assessments, or make the children feel uneasy. Still, this wouldn’t have been the first time the dumbest of her subordinates disobeyed her, thinking that she wouldn’t notice.

  Things like that were inevitable, since the personnel working at the temples weren’t even official members of the Root – let alone the Order. They were simply volunteers from other noble Houses that had been sent by their families to carry favour with the gods. If the Root could be considered the Order’s outer circle, the people at the temples were barely in the periphery of the organization.

  Not that it had mattered much.

  The mind mana had returned to its previous level within hours, and Phoebe had been more than happy to brush the short-lived hiccup aside, going back to her business. It wasn’t until news of the revolutionary Aurora Dew reached her ears a few years later that she’d gotten involved with Percy again.

  Learning about the culprits hiding in the Alchemists’ Guild, she’d allowed the Root to apply pressure on them, mostly to observe how they would react – to gain a better grasp on their personalities and motivations. However, she’d ordered the other gods to stay out of it, until she knew what they were dealing with.

  Scanning the Fungal Spire, she’d searched for the ones responsible, spotting Percy and his friends as they emerged from the underground tunnels, all battered and covered in wasp blood.

  As tempted as she had been to reveal herself and chastise them for their recklessness, she’d ultimately held back, opting to continue observing the mortals silently. A couple of young people with Orange and Yellow cores couldn’t have damaged the hive much anyway. They’d likely just passed through the tunnels in their desperation, barely surviving the ordeal.

  Over the following weeks, Phoebe had kept her eyes on them, trying to better understand the miraculous bloodline that had made everything possible, and to decide the best way to deal with the boy. Percy’s strength hadn’t been a factor worth considering just yet, though many other things about him had piqued her interest – outside of the elixirs.

  The fact that he’d managed to develop a functional second core had been at the top of the list. The stolen Decree would have been little more than a curiosity had it been limited to Percy, but seeing how he had successfully transferred and germinated the seed in the crow’s body had given Phoebe hope that the act could be extended to more people – something that she’d eventually confirmed.

  Beyond that, the crow was a marvel of magic in and of itself. Every lesser spring in the universe dreamt of ways to control and foster powerful beasts, to use them as disposable pawns in their expeditions. The creatures could grow much faster than sapients, and they could do so without consuming a single drop of elixir. On top of that, their lives weren’t particularly valuable, so they would make for the perfect foot soldiers to sacrifice in place of their precious Green-borns – provided that they found a way to suppress their hunger and rebellious nature.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Having White or Clear beasts wasn’t as important for greater springs, since most were too powerful to care about a few additional demigods, and no world but Sixiang had ever produced divine beasts. Even so, Remior could still very much benefit from them.

  This was why the Order had wasted so much time and resources to support House Parnassus, hoping that one of their descendants would mutate a usable version of their bloodline, though their millennia-long efforts had yet to bear any fruit. Perhaps, Percy and his crow could open another avenue for them, assuming that the bloodline could be passed on, and that his familiars showed no flaws down the line.

  Other than the Moirais’ Decree, the bird and the Aurora Dew, the only things that had stood out the first time Phoebe had laid eyes upon Percy’s Status had been Circulation and Metatron’s Decree. The former was another precious gift that she had hoped to eventually spread across Remior, while the latter had given her pause, making her realize that letting Percy roam the universe was inherently dangerous.

  Not wasting time, she’d planted a mental obstruction in his mind that would prevent him or his future clones from ever activating the Decree on Remior. To this day, the boy had yet to notice its presence – because he’d never even considered doing anything that foolish.

  It only spoke volumes to how intelligent and responsible he was. Clearly, he also understood how risky it would be to place his life in Metatron’s hands, or to give the titan access to his world. Even so, Phoebe had never regretted taking measures to stop him. Desperation could drive anyone into making all sorts of reckless decisions, and this was the one thing that she could never allow Percy to do.

  Leaving that aside, Phoebe had been more than satisfied with the boy’s conduct. Being born with a unique bloodline hadn’t been under his control, but not many people in his shoes would have used it as well. Most young nobles might have stopped after the first couple of successful clones, leveraging their gains to elevate their status in their families, indulging in a life of luxury and worthless pleasures.

  Not Percy though.

  Phoebe couldn’t have asked for a better owner for the bloodline, in fact. His ambitions compelled him to constantly aim higher, his morals tempering his decisions with kindness, patience and caution. His work ethic prevented him from wasting a single moment of his life, and his cunning allowed his clones to return with valuable gains more often than Phoebe had thought possible.

  ‘I don’t even need to step in,’ she’d realized.

  Evidently, Percy didn’t require her help or her guidance. He was doing everything she would have wanted him to do, all by himself. She merely had to sit back and document his discoveries, keeping track of those that could be useful for their world, while looking out for any hidden dangers.

  Studying Ea’s Decree – and years later, Obatala’s – had been especially useful due to their overlap with her own. Phoebe didn’t think that she’d be able to replicate the extraneous elements – the mutated eyes or the ability to lock one’s domain in its strongest state – unless Percy found a way to dig the buried potential out of his soul and grant the missing features to his clones – like he did with the second cores.

  However, the way in which the Decrees had restructured Percy’s Status was something Phoebe could learn from. The adaptability of her creation was one of its most important qualities, but also a prelude to a much more useful feature that she’d always planned to eventually incorporate into it.

  Sadly, her research in that area had hit a wall thousands of years ago. Thankfully, Percy’s bountiful harvest had already given her a lot of much-needed inspiration to resume working on her grand project – something that not just Percy, but everyone on Remior would soon benefit from.

  ‘Well… my “soon”, that is,’ she thought, scratching her head. ‘From their perspective, it’ll be quite a while before it’s ready.’

  Other than the Decrees, Percy had brought plenty of other valuables back – Phoebe had never even heard of spectral traits. Admittedly, it appeared that they could only be absorbed by soul affinity users, but they did have a couple of those in the Order – including a demigod – so the knowledge should prove useful.

  Reinforcement would also help everyone with a pure affinity – and they had a lot more of those. Or… they used to, at least – before giving most of them a petal. Either way, they would certainly receive several affinity-less Holy Children in the future.

  Many of the alchemic principles Percy had mastered would also prove handy, as would the advanced runecrafting knowledge. Phoebe had chosen not to butt in Percy’s dealings with the sentient Ring of Sacrilege or the goddess slumbering in his soul, having grown to trust the boy’s judgement after watching him for so long.

  More importantly, however, Phoebe had slowly started to appreciate how well Percy had integrated all of the disparate pieces of magical knowledge that he’d acquired into his arsenal.

  During his time in the Valley, she had fully expected him to get his ass handed to him by Acton, forcing her to jump in to save him. Revealing herself wouldn’t have been ideal, but it would have been better than letting him die.

  Yet, Percy had shocked her once again, upgrading his boosting art and reestablishing his previously demonstrated ability of fighting two grades above his own – despite the lack of a domain that should have made bridging the gap exceedingly difficult.

  Before that fight, Phoebe hadn’t expected Percy to jump grades like that until Blue. Even once he did, it wouldn’t have made that much of a difference, as his bloodline was best applied to the betterment of Remior as a whole than powering up a single Red-born.

  Or so she had thought.

  The revelation had finally made her realize that the boy held even more potential than she’d initially given him credit for. All of a sudden, Percy’s strength had become one of his most valuable assets – a talent worth cultivating. If only he could stay on this trajectory for a few more grades, he might grow strong enough to fight against gods one day, while still being a mortal, thus opening countless new doors for their world!

  Even better, Phoebe’s recent observations had only confirmed that Percy was still steadily traversing this impossible road. This was precisely why she found Deimos’s sudden intrusion so annoying.

  ‘That petty little shit!’ she cursed, seeing through the man’s true grade at a glance.

  It wasn’t a huge secret that Hermes’s youngest son had serious insecurities, but she hadn’t expected him to stoop so low as to hide his promotion from everyone for years, just to punish Percy for all the attention he was getting.

  But here they were.

  Unfortunately, Phoebe couldn’t see a way out of this mess for the boy. As strong as he was, the gap was too wide for him to escape or win – and she’d already sealed his final trump card away.

  Unless she stepped in, her golden goose was going to die today!

  Book 1 on at no extra cost, grab a copy for your shelf, or listen to the audiobook on .