They presided over one of the most important locations on the planet and they had the same grade as his grandfather – the most powerful person he had ever laid eyes upon for a good chunk of his life. If that hadn’t been enough, all of them were venerated alchemy masters, standing at the top of an esoteric field that Percy had spent so much time and effort to become proficient in.
Sadly, the past few days had greatly tarnished their image in his head. It had nothing to do with the fact that he had surpassed them in both strength and brewing yield, but rather about learning how they’d been duped by Machaon, failing at their most important responsibility of guarding the hive. The way they’d treated Percy during their meeting hadn’t exactly helped their case either.
He sighed. ‘Maybe I should cut them some slack… anyone could have found themselves in their shoes…’
The leader of House Asclepius was a figure even older and more powerful than them, deeply embedded in the political fabric of their entire world. On top of that, he had clearly spent a lot of time brewing his sinister plan – it wasn’t that strange that he’d managed to outsmart the elders.
As for their apprehension towards Percy… well, he could certainly see how his reputation didn’t make things easier. Of course, it wasn’t his fault either that Deimos and his superiors had been slandering him for years, but he should probably give the elders a chance to get to know him better before judging them too harshly.
‘That short guy is a real piece of work though,’ he thought as he recalled Ostanes’s stubbornness.
Thankfully, Eleazar had been the one to volunteer to take him to the prisoners, sparing him from having to deal with the hostile elder for a while. That said, Orin’s supposed mentor didn’t seem to be in the mood for chitchat either – Percy had given everyone plenty to think about, after all.
Shrugging, he contacted his new familiar. ‘Nephthys, everything okay?’
‘Good… back in hive,’ the reincarnated goddess promptly replied, causing him to exhale in relief.
After his little demonstration, he’d asked the wasps to return to their underground home. He no longer needed to lord them over the settlement – his message was already loud and clear. Besides, the Princess had to resume her accelerated feeding spree to reach the next grade as soon as possible.
The good news was that Percy no longer needed to use his translation device. It had only been a couple of days since his new familiar had emerged from her cocoon, but she’d already grown used to non-verbal communication. Even better, she’d started working on Remior’s language too, making noticeable progress every time Percy spoke to her.
It was a little scary how effective her mutation was. Or maybe this was just the inevitable result of a two-hundred-thousand-year-old mind goddess restarting her life.
‘I should teach her Hibernation and Circulation later. I bet she’ll have them both down in a day…’
The stronger versions of the spells would require a second affinity – which she wouldn’t have for a while. In theory, Percy could send her lots of phantom mana to consume through her Soul Predator mutation if he wanted, but things weren’t dire enough to warrant such drastic measures.
He was planning to help the other bugs too – their Queen included. It was a necessary step towards improving the hive’s efficiency and boosting their nectar and royal jelly production.
The problem was that he couldn’t exactly give second cores to tens of millions of wasps, and the bugs below Green were way too dumb to master any spells, forcing him to carefully consider his approach.
‘Maybe I’ll just pass the Decree to the Blue ones.’
They only made up a tiny fraction of the insects, but they probably consumed a disproportionally large amount of mana. Unlike sapients whose bodies only grew three times stronger with each promotion, beasts experienced much more drastic improvements, since their magic was fully concentrated on their bodies. This was one of the main reasons why they found it so difficult to keep up with their hunger.
Even the Blue wasps probably numbered in the hundreds of thousands, so giving each of them a second core would take a while, yet this would be much more manageable. Percy should be able to pass them the Decree in just a few months. The Queen would need to sacrifice millions of her weaker offspring to produce enough green mushrooms, but that was ultimately a small price to pay.
‘Hopefully, that’ll be enough to make a tangible difference.’
Then, there was the Queen herself.
Percy hadn’t given her a new core yet, for two main reasons. First, the organ would inevitably start at Orange, meaning that it would be a long time before it had any noticeable impact on her physique. Waiting for that hadn’t been an option before the familiar’s creation.
Secondly, Percy had never possessed a Violet host, and the Queen had been too weak and too important to risk it earlier for so little gain. With the Symphony at hand, he probably had more than enough soul mana at his disposal, but he wouldn’t mind having a powerful life user by his side as well, just in case.
Luckily, he was about to meet one.
Pushing any thoughts about his plans for the magical hive aside, he focused on something else. He allowed his willpower to unfold, watching an ocean of ink spill out of his body, blending with his surroundings. This instantly turned his vision pitch black – but only in the channel corresponding to willpower. He could still see mana, souls, heat and regular colours just fine.
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Moulding the substance into various shapes, he marvelled once again at how potent it was, and how much control he could exert over it. Even a Blue’s domain was rather easy to manipulate, let alone a Violet’s.
Granted, Percy wasn’t a true Violet, despite possessing the strength of one. He hadn’t been able to wield his own willpower for long either, but he still had some prior experience with the domains of his clones. Being able to directly perceive it only made his job easier.
‘It’s just as powerful as I thought, and I can use it without fully activating the Symphony,’ he noted, mentally replaying his short-lived scuffle with the elders.
It wasn’t his first time experimenting with his domain after fusing with Micky – he’d played around with it extensively over the past couple of weeks – but this had been his first opportunity to push himself to his limits and study the domain properly.
He was more than satisfied with the results.
He’d long hypothesized that it wouldn’t have lost a shred of power even after separating from Micky. Obatala’s Approval was supposed to permanently lock one’s domain in its strongest state, and it clearly worked exactly as advertised.
That said, domains weren’t the end all be all. Percy would still need to have his bodies completely join forces if he wanted to fight at full strength, but that was too taxing to use often, so it was nice to have a cheaper alternative.
Before the fusion, Percy and Micky had each been able to handle a couple of Blues by themselves. With the domain’s help, they should be able to handle four or even five at once without teaming up. If they worked together, they might even be able to beat a weak Violet – one weaker than Deimos – without having to resort to their Extreme spell.
On the flipside, the domain was shared between them. If one of them drew too much, the other would be left with nothing. They couldn’t just split up and expect to fight five Blues each at the same time. Dividing their willpower would inevitably weaken it.
‘I wonder why it even got so powerful. This shouldn’t have happened until at least one of our cores reached Blue…’
Percy pulled his Status up again, his eyes lingering on the domain section.
___
Domain:
- [Dead Winter – Empowered]
___
By now, he had experienced enough domains to have an idea of how his twice-evolved Decree tended to classify them. The first phrase represented the flavour of the domain – not too dissimilar to a spell’s name.
Greens who could barely wield their willpower would only manifest a “Pulse”. Blues who could deploy a proper domain but not infuse any special attributes into it would instead develop a “Field”. That had been the case with Kassorith, and Percy was willing to bet that the same would have applied to Elaine, had he obtained Obatala’s Approval before possessing her.
His own domain was a special case, apparently carrying the same name as his Extreme spell.
The second part of the text was more important, however. It seemed to indicate the strength of a domain, in a manner more analogous to a spell’s tier. For Greens who had yet to awaken any semblance of a domain – or those even weaker – it would only say “Dormant”. Marnok was a recent example of that, as was Percy before the fusion.
Those like Duwa or the clone in Micky’s body who had cheated themselves to an early domain, would get a “Nascent” one – they could wield their willpower in battle, but it wouldn’t be too powerful.
Regular Blues like Kassorith who had not manifested their willpower before advancing would simply acquire an “Awakened” domain.
Finally, those who had unlocked a Nascent domain before Blue would get it upgraded to “Empowered” upon advancing – the very goal of Obatala’s Approval. Granted, Percy only had a single, unorthodox datapoint to consider – himself – but he felt that his guess made sense.
‘That still doesn’t explain why I got mine so early though…’ He frowned.
Even though he and Micky had fused with the clone who had manifested an early domain, they shouldn’t have acquired an Empowered one before reaching Blue. Yet, that had clearly happened.
Then again, what they had experienced while fighting Deimos was obviously a rather unprecedented transformation. They had a grand total of three minds, one Green and three Yellow cores, all boosted by one flavour or another of the Dance, working in perfect sync.
Going back to Duwa’s analogy, the Lone Wanderer hadn’t merely opened the metallic gate slightly in preparation for a future promotion – he had violently ripped it out of its hinges, chewed it up into tiny pieces and spat out the scraps!
‘Hmmm… maybe there are more invisible thresholds that even Obatala isn’t aware of,’ Percy reasoned.
Normally, mages only obtained their domains at Blue – that was the end of the story for the vast majority of people in the universe. The titan had discovered a way to achieve a preliminary awakening ahead of time, designing his Decree to fully take advantage of that. If Percy was right – and he clearly was – then it was possible to achieve even a complete awakening with enough effort.
Either way, this was phenomenal news. Not only did he have an Empowered domain sooner than anyone else, it should continue to grow stronger whenever one of their cores advanced! Between both bodies, they still had nineteen promotions to go through! That was before taking any future aspects into account!
Maybe they’d hit diminishing returns at some point, but he could hardly fathom how powerful their domain would grow by the time they were ready to forge their internal world.
‘I’ll need to figure out how the Moirai do it. Hopefully it’s possible to just fuse all of our cores and concepts into a single domain…’
Making a mental note to look into that in the future, he focused back on the present moment. Eleazar had brought him to a poorly maintained building, down a staircase that led to a barely illuminated dungeon.
Percy saw cobwebs everywhere, each footstep leaving a centimetre-deep impression into the dusty floor. Allowing his domain to unfold once again, he promptly examined all the prison cells on both sides of the corridor, searching for any sign of life. Most of them were empty – save for the occasional scurrying rat – which honestly made sense. Clearly, the Alchemists’ Guild rarely had a reason to imprison anyone.
It wasn’t until about halfway through the corridor that he finally spotted somebody. Percy scanned that person carefully with his willpower, trying to identify them. Was it a bit rude to use his domain this intrusively? Probably, but who could blame him for indulging in his new toy?
Judging from the prisoner’s build and the strength of his own willpower resisting Percy’s, he already had a pretty good idea about who the man was. Percy quickened his steps, eager to finally see his grandfather for the first time in years – decades, from his perspective!
His smile and his feet froze before he even reached Archibald’s cell, however – an instinctual reaction after noticing a tiny detail that he hadn’t expected.
To his horror, Percy realized that the man who had protected their family for as long as he could remember – the same one who had spent months helping him repair his second core and master Circulation – was gone!
The scarred figure sitting in chains on the cold, dirty floor was somebody else now – a mere shadow of his former self. Percy didn’t even know what to call him anymore, any words he tried to muster dying in his throat.
Baldy… was no longer bald!
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