Micky had several questions, not the least of which being “how did a barren world without elixirs ever produce demigods?” He wasn’t in a rush to voice them, however. First, he and his host had to take a few precautions to raise their odds of surviving the upcoming trek.

  After giving Marnok a brief explanation about himself and the second core, Micky began emptying ridiculous amounts of healing potions and mushrooms into their stomach, allowing the gluttonous vortex in their abdomen to absorb the mana.

  ‘Man, repairing the Decree has never been easier,’ he thought.

  In the past, his clones had mostly relied on unprocessed mushrooms rather than finished potions. The problem with the former was that they contained more than just raw life mana, which meant that they left traces behind after getting drained.

  Micky couldn’t just dump a hundred thousand mushrooms inside a person’s stomach at once and expect them to digest the fungi in a reasonable timeframe. The best alternative would be to summon a pile outside the body, draining them a few at a time. That came with its own issues, however – namely the fact that the other sailors would inevitably question where the mountain of mushrooms had come from.

  Thankfully, things had recently changed a little.

  Micky’s main bodies were currently brewing hundreds of doses of healing potion per hour back on Remior, leisurely honing their alchemic skills. Thanks to his larger cauldron, improved yield and the endless supply of dead wasps that the Starry Queen was more than happy to give him, he could convert enormous volumes of fungi into potions in a relatively short amount of time.

  It wasn’t like he had a better use for them either. Repairing a person’s second core through potions alone would still amount to a couple of weeks of nonstop brewing, so Micky was hesitant to rely solely on them, which was why he was using a mixture of mushrooms and potions. The moment the fungi got drained, he stored the empty husks back into his seal, to hide them from the others and make room in Marnok’s stomach for more.

  Even better, he had more space than ever before, since his main bodies were down to just three cords. That meant that he would only ever need a maximum of four spatial seals, so he’d never have to divide the artifact more than twice. By skipping the bottom denomination entirely, he could ensure that every clone had eight times the capacity.

  ‘Hmmm… in hindsight, maybe I should start equipping the clones with more stuff than just food, mushrooms, potions and a scythe…’ he thought, challenging his earlier assumption. Alas, that was more of a suggestion to his future self – it wouldn’t help him much right now.

  A few minutes later, the second core was finally done accepting mana. Micky instructed his host to start clearing channels for it. The sooner they got it into working condition, the sooner it would start helping them. If there was one thing that Micky loved about barren worlds, it was the fact that his hosts had never advanced before meeting him, making their second cores just as powerful as their first ones, giving him the most value for his efforts.

  Micky didn’t slack while his host was busy with the new organ, focusing on a different task. He turned his attention to their first core, resuming the project that he had failed to complete atop the ship.

  This time, he didn’t bother drawing any air mana to his hands, trying to shape it into a concealment rune while still inside his host’s sternum. Maintaining the enchantment like this would inevitably be much harder, but they would only need a single, much smaller rune to mask their mana signature, and they wouldn’t have to worry about the ocean’s currents – or anything else in their environment – disturbing the enchantment.

  ‘Come on… just stay still for a second!’ he groaned internally, though he struggled to force the unruly resource into shape even with the Scribing trait’s help.

  The idea of drawing the rune inside his core hadn’t come out of thin air. Micky – or rather, Percy – had envisioned the potential of combining pre-casting with magiscript since he first learned about it on Felmara. Of course, he’d always known that it would be extremely difficult. In fact, he doubted that even the most skilled Felmarans had ever succeeded.

  Then again, Micky had several unique advantages that Leo’s people had lacked, giving him hope. Even so, this was a project that he had put aside for the longest time, until he met the prerequisites to properly attempt it. Over the years, he had grown increasingly proficient with both arts, and his Scribing trait was the final nail in the coffin that should allow him to embark on this difficult journey.

  ‘It’s going to be a while before I’m any good at it, but I need to give it a shot if I ever want to turn my boosting art into a permanent promotion…’

  At the very least, Micky didn’t see any way of upgrading his spell that didn’t involve drawing lots of runes inside his body. Whether he could make enough progress with this ambitious project in time to benefit Marnok remained to be seen, but they would certainly get attacked by several more beasts in the coming days, so having a way to hide their presence wouldn’t hurt.

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  As the two men worked hard on their respective tasks, Micky spared some attention to resume their previous conversation, still curious about this world.

  ‘So, Marnok? You said that this place was called Robari? Is that the name of your country or the whole planet? Also, would you mind explaining what you meant by “demigods” earlier? I didn’t spot any souls above Yellow while looking for a body.’

  The sailor shrugged before replying. ‘Robari is ‘ar world. We used to ‘ave not just demigods, but even full-fledged gods too, a long, long time ago. Of course, none of us folks alive today was around to see that, but the evidence is pretty darn clear.’

  Micky couldn’t help but frown. So, this place was actually a former lesser spring. In many ways, that sounded like an even crueller fate than being born on a barren world without any knowledge of the wider cosmos or the possibilities that lay beyond the bottom grades. After all, it always hurt more to lose something precious than to have never possessed it.

  ‘What caused this?’ he asked.

  ‘Nobody knows exactly,’ Marnok replied with a sigh. ‘The details were lost to time, but ‘ar gods were killin’ one ‘nother for some reason. A bunch of ‘em fell as others escaped Robari with their tails tucked between their legs. The worst was that they ruined ‘ar only source of beast mana, leavin’ us stuck at ‘ar birth grades. Though it ain’t all gloom ‘n doom.’

  ‘How so?’ Micky asked, struggling to see a silver lining.

  ‘Well, there is some beast mana left. Rather than lettin’ it hang out in the open for ‘nyone to grab, ‘ar Saints decided to brew it into a solid shape to make it last longer. They buried piles upon piles of priceless coins with ‘em – Fools’ Amber we call ‘em – hidin’ it for future Green-borns to find.’

  Micky let out a soft whistle, thinking that the demigods’ plan was rather smart. After failing to attain divinity themselves, they chose to do everything they could to raise Robari’s odds of producing new gods later. Had they not hidden the coins, the Yellow-borns and Orange-borns would have split them among themselves, maybe advancing once or twice and living a couple of centuries longer, at the cost of wasting their world’s last traces of beast mana.

  By gathering the coins up and stashing them away in hidden locations, they made it more likely for the Holy Children to find and collect enough of them to reach the Clear grade.

  ‘How can they ensure that a Green-born finds the buried treasure and not anybody else though?’ Micky asked.

  Assuming that the coins were as effective as Remior’s elixirs, even the Green-borns would need several thousand years’ worth to advance four times, and there had to be lots of Yellow-borns around hunting for the lost treasure.

  ‘Well, there ain’t ‘ny way to be sure. But they probably knew that the new Green-borns would hold all the power after the higher grades died out. They’d also live longer than ‘nyone else, thus ‘aving more time to amass ‘nough Amber and expand their advantage. And that’s exactly what ended up happenin’.’

  ‘So, your world is currently ruled by a bunch of powerful Green-borns?’

  ‘Pretty much. Only four of ‘em are currently at White, splittin’ the seas among ‘emselves. Each lets a couple subordinates reach Blue, but not Violet – it would cost too much Amber and threaten their rule. The four navies are constantly fightin’ over the few tombs that ‘aven’t been found yet, racing toward the Clear grade.’

  ‘I see…’ Micky muttered.

  He didn’t recall spotting any Whites or Blues while scanning the planet. Hell, he hadn’t seen any Greens either, even though he knew there had to have been some Green-borns around. Unlike gods, powerful mortal souls didn’t stand out as much, so it was easier to miss a bunch of them scattered in a population of hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

  ‘Do you think any of them will make it?’ he asked.

  ‘Hard to say. Two are supposedly close, including ‘ar own Commodore Vent-Noir. Of course, there ‘ave been other Whites in the past, but none of ‘em made it to the end. Not even when the Fools’ Amber was more abundant than it is now.’

  Micky nodded internally. What his host had left unsaid was that even if one of the Whites somehow made it to the Clear grade, there wasn’t any guarantee that they’d be able to attain divinity. Only a tiny fraction of demigods ever did, so this world was probably screwed regardless.

  But he didn’t see any point in talking about that. Instead, he homed into something else that Marnok had mentioned. ‘Commodore Vent-Noir? Isn’t that the same surname as you? Are you two related by any chance?’

  Marnok guffawed, garnering weird looks from the other sailors sitting nearby. He didn’t seem very bothered by it, merely waving their curious gazes away apologetically before responding. ‘Don’t I wish? Ya think I’d be puttin’ me hide on the line for some ol’ Saint’s treasure if I’d been the boss’s nephew? ‘Tis just how we do things on Robari. We all carry the name of one of the four fleets, to signal who owns us.’

  ‘Why does he send you to collect the Amber in his stead? Isn’t he worried that you’ll keep it to yourselves?’ Micky asked, finding that difficult to believe. A Yellow-born like Marnok was never going to make it very far, but even reaching Green would make a huge difference in his life.

  ‘They trust that most people ain’t dumb enough to double-cross ‘em. Where would we even hide if we stole from ‘em Commodores? All the oceans belong to ‘em anyway. We wouldn’t even get a chance to use ‘em coins before they found us.’

  ‘Is Robari all ocean and islands? No large landmass?’ Micky asked.

  ‘Pretty much. Well, the islands the Commodores live on are bigger than the rest, but not by much. ‘nyway, the Saints did a good job hiding their burial places, so we’re still findin’ more to this day. But it’s slowin’ down. I doubt there’s many left.’

  Micky nodded once more, satisfied with his host’s explanation. Part of him was starting to get a little excited about the Saint’s tomb. He didn’t personally need any Fools’ Amber, of course, since he doubted that it was any better than the nectar he now had a near-infinite amount of, but he had no idea what else the demigod might have buried with him.

  ‘Even if there’s nothing, I can still make some progress with pre-casting, so the trip won’t be a complete waste,’ he reminded himself.

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