The clone exhaled in relief as Micky flipped over the Blue’s corpse, pecking out his core – and a large chunk of his crumbling soul with it.
The man’s high-speed regeneration had been annoying to deal with, but overpowering him had only been a matter of ti. After all, the mage had probably been in his current grade for years, his strength having long plateaued. His weaker affinity certainly hadn’t done him any favours either.
Micky, on the other hand, was still in a state of rapid growth. With two fairly recent promotions, just as many new mutations, and multiple upgraded spells, he had yet to exhaust his potential. Not to ntion that he had a second mind in his body helping him improve even faster.
The good news was that their opponents hadn’t been from Fel’s House this ti, making them safe to eat. And there was no way the crow could pass on such a nourishing al. The Blues had chosen to co after their heads of their own volition, so Percy didn’t feel particularly guilty over their grim fates.
That said, the taste of human flesh inside his beak was quite disturbing. Doing his best to filter it out, he shifted his attention to his main body. It looked like he was about to finish his own opponent off. The colossal visage of so ferocious animal appeared around the sphere of stone and willpower, chewing through it one layer at a ti.
‘I suppose he’s figured out whatever he was working on.’
The clone obviously didn’t need to guess, as he could easily access his main body’s thoughts if he wanted. He was only ignorant of his counterpart’s efforts because he’d been busy focusing on his own fight. Letting his mind blend with the original’s, he soon had his answer: the Second Parade – another technique built atop his boosting art. This one elevated his offensive power to a frightening level.
Micky was already done with his al – the first one, anyway. It was rather unsettling how quickly the familiar could devour an adult human, but Percy ignored that, concentrating on sothing else.
A wave of potent soul mana spilled out of the crow’s stomach, perating his fra. Breaking down the souls he devoured always gave him more juice than a core of the sa grade could contain, and this was the first ti Micky and Percy got themselves so Blue-grade soul mana to play with. The last people the bird had eaten had been Acton and his group, but all the spare mana had gone towards his evolution at the ti.
‘It’s such a pity the main body can’t circulate it.’
The problem was that the Carnival relied on the constant absorption of ambient mana from his surroundings. This ant that the boosting art was ultimately capped by the grade of its owner’s core. At the rate Percy exhausted and replenished his reserves, the extra mana would barely last him for a few attacks. It could still make for a decent trump card in the future, of course – they could take advantage of one of their fallen opponents to unleash a stronger attack against another. Alternatively, Percy could bestow the Blue mana to his clones, though there were issues with that too.
Sadly, his wisps would struggle to contain the potent energy, as they weren’t nearly as robust as his main body. Equipping them with mana that wasn’t suitable for their grade and having them carry it around for weeks would be a recipe for disaster. A difference of a single grade might still be okay – Percy had actually done it before, when he escaped from lodia filled up on Sol’s mana. Still, he’d only held the superior resource for a short ti. Giving Blue mana to his Yellow wisps was a bit much.
Thankfully, it didn’t look like that would be necessary today.
Percy didn’t need any help to deal with the earth mage, and he didn’t have an open clone slot either. That was not to say that the Blue mana would go to waste, however – the clone had another use for it.
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‘I should hurry up… The main body is about to hand us another snack…’
Drawing a hefty amount of ice mana from Micky’s abdon, Percy manifested a snowball in their right talon. One thing that sucked about his familiar’s body was that it didn’t have proper hands, which made it difficult to work on anything delicate. But he knew he shouldn’t complain – his friend had it worse, since he was permanently stuck here. In so ways, losing his mories might have been a rcy.
‘It would be nice if I could find a way to improve his quality of life…’
It didn’t have to be a spell to grow hands on a beast’s body. They were living in a universe full of possibilities and obscure magical secrets. Surely, there was a solution out there.
‘All in due ti. Micky’s already co a long way since his rebirth,’ Percy reminded himself.
The crow could already communicate like a regular person, wield magic the old-fashioned way, and didn’t even suffer from his bestial hunger nearly as much as he used to. There was still so distance to being able to live in a society, but they were certainly on the right track.
In any case, this wasn’t the ti to be worrying about that.
Shaking the distracting thoughts out of his head, Percy’s attention returned to the task at hand. Gathering so of the dense mana perating their souls, he pushed it into the snowball. He closely mirrored the construct’s shape, going as far as to trace the faint contours on the object’s surface.
‘Are you trying to fuse them again?’ Micky suddenly asked, causing him to ss up and crush the soft snowball by mistake. ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by novel·fıre·net
Percy clicked their beak in irritation.
‘Yes. Let focus for a couple minutes. We don’t get as many chances to work on this.’
Granted, Percy didn’t have to use Blue mana. It made his life harder, since it was two grades higher than the ice mana. The Orange and Yellow beasts they ate every few days were arguably more suitable for the task.
The main body’s mana was also a perfect match, and they even had an infinite supply, in theory. In practice, the original was swamped with half a dozen other projects, so the clone preferred not to disturb him. That was why he only played around with affinity fusion when they ate sothing.
Pulling more mana out, he resud his work.
There were a couple more complications besides the grade mismatch. Unlike the relatively simple pure mana that he was used to fusing with soul mana, ice was a composite affinity. It was based on two other elents, each with its own quirks. Even though Percy had grown proficient with all of Micky’s mana types over the past few months, he still wasn’t as skilled with them as he was with his own.
But it wasn’t all bad.
While his proficiency with ice mana could use so work, his skill with soul mana had reached a high level over the years. Even better, fusing his own mana was a routine task by now – sothing he did passively while using the latest version of his boosting art.
This was quite relevant, because Percy was planning to follow a similar approach – he would have his soul mana “possess” the ice mana, by phasing the forr into the latter, having it closely follow its movents and slowly adopt its properties. It had worked for his pure mana, giving him the option of turning it invisible and immaterial at will, so he saw no reason it wouldn’t apply here.
Maybe it wasn’t the best, nor the easiest way to fuse the two mana types. Perhaps, he could study a better thod if he ever got the chance to step in a Moirai library, but affinity fusion was nebulous and open-ended. As far as he could tell, there were often multiple ways to combine two mana types. And he was confident he was on a viable path.
‘If this works, I’ll be able to send ice mana to my main body through the cord!’
Percy repeated his actions for a while, trying to stick the two mana types together. He copied the sa exercises he had used in the Alchemists’ Guild, transforming the snowball into all sorts of geotrical shapes – from cubes and pyramids to cylinders and cones – having the soul mana track its transitions.
Unless he was horribly mistaken about this, it would only be a matter of ti before he succeeded.
Half an hour later, he took a short break for Micky to consu the second corpse. They didn’t get as much mana from it, because the woman’s soul had already degraded a lot by the ti they made space for it. The heavy injuries his main body had inflicted on her hadn’t helped. At least, her core was still in a decent enough condition.
Diving back to work, the clone exhausted the rest of the stash. The original hadn’t remained idle either, cleaning up the battlefield and tallying their spoils. By the ti the trio had taken off again, the clone had obtained so tangible results to report. Hidden in the very depths of the snowball, Percy found a pinch of snow that sported a slightly different colour. It glinted in a silver light but felt otherwise identical.
At least, until he willed it to turn invisible…
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