As expected, Phoebe watched Deimos toy with Percy and the crow, effortlessly ripping them apart. Seeing the Violet preparing to finish the boy off, she knew that her time to interfere was quickly running out. Yet, just as she was about to step in to save him, the broken familiar leapt in the way of the blast, clearly intending to sacrifice everything to protect its master.
The sight made Phoebe hesitate, thinking that letting Deimos destroy the crow first might not be a terrible idea.
She didn’t want to do that, of course – she wasn’t heartless. She’d grown rather fond of Percy and Micky after observing them for so long. The bird’s willingness to give up its life to save the boy was especially moving and the thought of letting either of them suffer didn’t sit well with her.
Even so, she felt that it was better this way. She wasn’t their mother – she was the Order’s leader and Remior’s primary protector. Her duty was to their world before any of its people and the upsides of letting the crow perish greatly outweighed the downsides.
This was quite a strange dilemma, but one that she’d been contemplating for a while. In anybody else’s hands, the powerful familiar would have made for a priceless asset – the realization of the Order’s ambitions for Acton’s family over the last several thousand years.
Had someone told Phoebe that she was going to willingly allow a creature like Micky to die before her eyes one day, she would have burst out laughing. However, Percy’s unprecedented growth had greatly shifted her perspective over the years, making her value his development more than many of his other achievements – the creation of a controllable beast included.
Simply put, Micky had always been more of a liability for the boy than an asset!
Just thinking about it was crazy, but there was no denying it. On the surface, the crow had done an excellent job keeping up with Percy’s strength and aiding him in his ventures. Any outside observer could be excused for thinking that Micky’s contribution to their team was equal to Percy’s, as the bird essentially doubled the boy’s fighting strength.
Phoebe was wise enough to peer a layer deeper than most, scrutinizing the long road that had led them to the present moment.
‘The crow has been holding him back from the very start,’ she’d concluded.
Percy was probably smart enough to see it too, though his loyalty to his friend had blinded him all this time. Not only had the bird consumed enormous amounts of resources and attention to reach its current level, but its existence had also forced Percy to make numerous reckless decisions.
He’d travelled to suboptimal places to train, taken unnecessary risks for the sake of his familiar, and even picked a fight with a Holy Child. If it hadn’t been for Micky, Percy might have stayed in the Alchemists’ Guild the whole time, hidden from everyone – including Phoebe. The only reason he’d put himself out there had been the urgency to earn enough resources to support the crow.
On top of that, there was an even greater disadvantage to owning a familiar: Percy’s limited clone capacity.
For the longest time, he’d only been capable of maintaining two connections, one of which had been permanently occupied by the crow. Even after increasing his limit to six, the boy had foolishly chosen to tie up a second clone to the bird, thus leaving a third of his total capacity unavailable to this day.
That was without even considering the second familiar that he was clearly planning to create. Phoebe couldn’t help but wonder how much stronger Percy would have grown, had he focused his efforts on bettering himself over the past couple of decades.
Looking back, she had to admit that Percy hadn’t made that many outrageous mistakes in the time that she’d observed him, but the biggest ones could all be traced back to that first mistake: Micky’s creation!
That was not to say that she was opposed to the idea of familiars in general. They were certainly an important feature of Percy’s bloodline, as well as valuable assets to Remior as a whole – especially if they could be mass-produced. They could revisit the topic in the future.
Perhaps, the best time to do that would be after a few thousand years, once Percy was done picking all the low-hanging fruit waiting for him out there in the cosmos. As soon as his progress slowed down, they could have him tie up a clone or two to forge a couple of powerful companions. The creatures grew rather fast, so it wouldn’t be too late to start over.
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Now was too early, however.
Stinting his growth so early in his journey was inefficient. Phoebe was willing to bet that Percy would have been far stronger if he hadn’t missed out on hundreds of potential clones due to Micky.
‘Also, I’m sure that he can do a lot better than the bird…’
Phoebe hadn’t witnessed the familiar’s creation, but it was quite clear that Percy had simply shoved a random mortal’s soul into the first available body, without even understanding the implications. Sure, he’d taught the crow a few useful spells since then and even invested a petal to grant it a composite affinity, but none of its abilities was particularly impressive.
In many ways, what Percy was obviously planning to do with the goddess’s soul and the Starry Wasp was a hundred times more promising – now, that, was an experiment that Phoebe was interested in watching, excusing, and even wholeheartedly supporting.
Even if Percy decided that he needed more familiars in the future, she could help him pick unique souls and useful bodies to pair together. In fact, she was more than happy to let him try several times, until they stumbled upon a familiar lucky enough to awaken a rare affinity.
As for Micky…
It was painful to admit, but Percy was better off getting rid of him. Since he wasn’t going to do that by himself, Phoebe could just let Deimos do it for him.
Watching the crow’s head burst open left a bad taste in her mouth. It was cruel of her to allow this but making the tough decisions that nobody else was willing to entertain was ultimately her job.
Seeing the anguish in Percy’s expression gave her no pleasure, nor did his sheer agony as the bundle of souls slammed into his own, twisting it into an unrecognizable shape.
Watching pain distort his features only solidified Phoebe’s opinion that this had been necessary, however. It was clearly much harder for Percy to assimilate a semi-foreign soul that had remained separated from him for decades than a regular clone. Allowing Micky to survive for centuries or millennia before perishing would have only made things worse.
‘Weird… why are Micky’s cores still drawing ambient mana though?’ she wondered after seeing the crow’s mutilated body circulate the violent snowstorm with even greater vigour than when he was alive.
Truth be told, she had considered the possibility that the bird’s mutation could regrow a missing head, his weird soul and even stranger body having left that door wide open. Had that happened, she would have just forgotten about it, allowing Percy to keep the crow.
However, that ship had already sailed. The extended section of Percy’s Status had vanished and there wasn’t the slightest trace of life left in the frozen carcass.
Charging another blast, Deimos gloated about his sick accomplishment. Slowing down the sadistic Violet’s perception of time to buy Percy a few more precious seconds, Phoebe ignored Hermes’s son entirely, watching with bated breath as the seemingly ownerless cores broke out of the headless sculpture, sinking into the boy’s Cloak!
‘What the hell is happening to him?!’ Phoebe asked herself in horror, having never seen anything of the sort.
Deimos unleashed his attack at last, but she no longer cared about him. She could tell that his pathetic spell wasn’t powerful enough to pierce the raging cyclone of ethereal silk and grey mana spinning around Percy. She was far more concerned with the damage that the boy was inflicting on himself than any external threats.
Yet, it soon became clear that the chain of surprises had only just begun.
Phoebe’s eyes widened as she witnessed the unbelievable scene of a Yellow’s domain tearing a Violet’s to shreds, and the brutal beatdown that ensued. The power that Percy wielded was far higher than anything he and Micky had been capable off before their unexpected transformation.
Thankfully, the boy’s situation appeared to have stabilized, though Phoebe could tell that something major had happened. Time after time, she tried to peer into Percy’s Status – to hopefully shed some light onto his new state – only for her own Decree to ignore her!
It wasn’t until after the fight that it managed to recalibrate itself, finally responding to its creators will. Even then, the information that manifested before Phoebe’s eyes was difficult to accept.
Whether Micky – or even Percy, for that matter – had survived, she still couldn’t say with certainty. The name of the new entity didn’t match either of theirs. Either way, one thing was immediately clear: her assessment that the crow had been holding Percy back couldn’t have been more wrong.
Nobody could have predicted this – not even Percy and Micky themselves – but it seemed that they’d started walking on a path to greater heights a long time ago…
‘Perhaps I was the one who made a mistake then – not him…’ she begrudgingly admitted.
More importantly, she couldn’t help but linger on a single detail – the very piece of information that she had hoped to see in Percy’s Status one day. She hadn’t expected it to appear nearly this soon though.
‘An Extreme spell!’
This was the hallmark of a paragon – a mortal capable of slaying gods!
Of course, a true paragon needed a Clear grade too, which Percy paradoxically still lacked, even though it was generally considered to be the simplest of the two requirements to meet.
Regardless, even Phoebe’s ancient heart that had weathered countless seasons without wavering couldn’t help but skip a beat as she pondered over the implications of the boy’s achievement.
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