Micky’s goal was simple, if somewhat ambitious.

  He wanted to use Ludwick’s Compass to keep track of Robari’s location as he returned to Remior, so that he could revisit the place at will. Not that he had any intention of stepping foot on the infected world anytime soon, but his success would affect a lot more than his ability to help Marnok.

  It would forever change the way he approached his future trips!

  Up until now, he had been rather limited in where he was able to go. He had some control over what host he possessed and what type of worlds he targeted, but he couldn’t aim at specific places or revisit old destinations.

  The only exceptions were worlds that he had special means to find again – the Vault using Metatron’s Decree, Melodia through Sol’s trait, and Huehue or Felmara due to his connection. Perhaps, he’d be able to find Amenthes too with Nephthys’s help, but that was about it.

  Yet, if this worked, every single planet he visited from now on would be on the table!

  ‘The problem is that the mindset was never intended to be used this way,’ he reminded himself, tempering his expectations.

  Ludwick’s Compass was just the most convenient method to pass down the tombs’ locations. It relied on one’s physical senses to keep track of the marks, and it had only been designed with the scope of a single planet in mind.

  The distance between worlds was countless times vaster. On top of that, the soul plane had its own rules, and the clones’ senses were entirely different from those of a physical entity.

  The good news was that space and time, while distorted, still operated under some logic inside the soul plane. Proximity in the real world didn’t map to objects there exactly, but it certainly played a role. This was how he had been able to reach Felmara while aiming for Huehue, after all.

  In many ways, this place was analogous to his soul channels. While they constantly shifted inside his body, they were still connected to one another and to his core in a consistent manner.

  ‘Hopefully it makes enough sense for the Compass to work...’ he thought.

  Even if this was the case, whether his wisp would be able to collect and feed the mindset with enough subconscious information to keep track of the marks remained to be seen.

  Shrugging, Micky finally left the sailor’s body, allowing the cord to yank him away from Robari. At the same time, he willed the twenty amber pyres in his mind to intensify and his senses to expand outwards as far as he could reach.

  The marks shrank and merged into a single, tiny dot almost immediately. The planet’s dimensions were negligible when compared to the speed by which Micky was currently travelling.

  The flame waned and twisted, Ludwick’s Compass clearly struggling to retain its location. Even so, Micky refused to let it go out. Filtering out every unrelated thought, he focused exclusively on the mark and anything else that might help him create a permanent map to his friend’s world.

  He also tried to get a better feel for the path that he was traversing.

  The cord appeared to pull him in a straight line as always, though he could tell due to the way the amber dot was jumping around that that wasn’t entirely accurate. Space itself seemed to twist as he plummeted through it, exhibiting the same noodle-like behaviour as his mana channels.

  Gritting his non-existent teeth, Micky scrambled to make sense of his surroundings, to hopefully aid the Compass in its task. He had no idea if his efforts could make a difference – the Saint had said that this was subconscious – but surely understanding this place better could only be a good thing, right?

  The trip felt longer than usual, probably due to how much he was straining himself, though he at least had something to keep him occupied.

  Eventually, he slammed into his main body, commencing the familiar process of assimilation. As his memories blended with the original’s, and those of the other clones that had already returned, it became clear that this clone had been the only one who had completely butchered the spirit of their “vacation”.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  His main bodies had spent the past couple of weeks leisurely brewing healing potions. Even the other clones had taken things easy, picking a couple of weaker hosts and enjoying their mundane lives while savouring the local cuisine at their destinations.

  ‘Hey, it’s not my fault that everything went to shit from the very first moment!’ he protested as his mind melded rapidly with the others. ‘At least I’ve brought a couple of cool things back, unlike the rest of you slackers!’

  Opening his eyes, Percy found himself sitting across from… well, himself, a still warm cauldron standing between him and Micky. His head didn’t hurt at all – the clones had been a lot easier to absorb since the fusion.

  ‘Internal Runecrafting… good,’ he thought as he went over the newcomer’s gains, a subtle smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

  He’d been planning to start working on that exact project soon. Evidently, one of his clones had already beaten him to the punch, even making some respectable progress on the spell. Once he developed it a little more, it would be time to return to the Vault and purchase whatever else he might need for the artificial advancement.

  Opening his Status, he made sure that both the spell and the mindset were listed properly, before shifting his attention outwards. Searching for the mark, he soon found a tiny amber dot glinting somewhere on the cave’s ceiling, clearly pointing toward some faraway location.

  ‘Hmmm… it’s still there,’ he thought, creasing his brow.

  That could only be a good thing, but it wasn’t the end of the story. Just because the mindset had managed to retain the mark, it didn’t mean that the information was correct. He could easily check by sending another clone to Robari, of course, but he’d rather not take that risk.

  Even returning to Remior had technically been a gamble. Unlike a regular infestation, the Cardinal Devil might have the means to infect and follow him back here without him knowing.

  The safest options would have been to either self-destruct and lose all of his memories of Marnok and Robari, the progress he had made with the new spell and the mindset – and even a quarter of his spatial seal – or forcibly take his host to the Vault against his will and ask Metatron to check them.

  In the end, he’d chosen not to do anything too drastic. He hadn’t been on the planet that long anyway, and he didn’t think that the Devil was constantly monitoring every single mortal.

  ‘Oh well… let’s hope I haven’t just doomed Remior.’

  He sighed. As for figuring out whether the mark was valid… he could test that in the Vault later. It would be a lot easier to play with the mindset if he had an alternative means of getting there. Also, he’d need to send multiple clones to the artificial world anyway, since he was planning to complete challenges across different grades to collect credits and bonus rewards.

  Sadly, even if Ludwick’s Compass did what he wanted, it would only allow him to return to his future destinations. There was no mark on Atlantis or Gallimus, so visiting some of his old friends was still out of the question.

  ‘One step at a time. Yesterday, even this was impossible. A few years ago, I only had one clone and no way to communicate with him or bring physical objects back. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?’

  Leaving his bloodline aside for now, his gaze returned to the cauldron. The clone’s arrival had caused him to ruin the latest batch, but it didn’t really matter. He’d already brewed an enormous quantity of Orange healing potions over the past few weeks, the Queen having helped him grow as many green mushrooms as he wanted.

  While he hadn’t expended nearly as much effort as his most recent clone, he did have some positive results of his own to boast of. After taking the time to properly consolidate his gains from the past year, his brewing yield had finally had the chance to climb to its new limit:

  Seventy-five percent!

  Of course, one’s yield was highly dependent on the number of alchemic steps involved. Percy estimated that his current performance would translate to an eighty-two percent yield when brewing simple potions inside a standard cauldron, though some losses were only to be expected when mass producing them like this.

  Performing some mental calculations, he wanted to estimate what this would mean when brewing regular elixirs. That was the most important metric to consider, since it was the benchmark that the Alchemists’ Guild used to evaluate one’s skill.

  ‘Fifty-seven!’ he thought, raising an eyebrow. He had to do a double-take to ensure that he hadn’t made a mistake. ‘Isn’t this better than the elders?’

  If his memory served him – which it most certainly did, after the fusion – Orin had once told him that the highest yield in the Guild was just fifty-six percent. That was a point shy of Percy’s!

  Granted, he had cheated extensively to reach this level, only doing so due to a mutation, a Wild Art, four alchemic principles that nobody on Remior but him was even aware of, and a special cauldron. Meanwhile, the elders had achieved their own brewing yields through centuries of persistent practice.

  ‘Well, it’s not a competition.’ He shook his head. ‘Boosting our yield just means fewer wasted ingredients.’

  Ideally, he should strive to help everyone improve as much as possible, as that would only benefit their world. Others would likely get better if he taught them whatever principles were applicable to them, and he would also inevitably keep improving with time, albeit slowly.

  ‘I wonder how high my yield will be when I’m their age…’

  Was it even possible to reach a one hundred percent yield? Probably not.

  Shaking the pointless thoughts out of his head, Percy stood up, storing the cauldron away. Although he could resume brewing if he wanted, he’d been meaning to take a break for a while now. Nephthys had shown signs that she was approaching some major turning point.

  It was finally time to see what all their efforts amounted to.

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