The Lone Wanderer

Had Percy been given the option, he would have preferred to buy a soul affinity-changing treasure with a single charge, as it would have obviously saved him tens of thousands of tokens.

Archibald was far from the only powerful mage in the alliance who possessed a pure affinity, but Percy wouldn’t have spent such a ridiculous amount of money just to strengthen one of his relatives if not for the element’s unique synergy with the Clone bloodline. Sadly, the notebook had come with two pages, and Percy had to pick a second lucky mage, so he ended up going with his aunt, Isolde.

Isolde was Galahad’s younger sister from the same mother, as well as the only Blue in the family who not only possessed the bloodline, but had also awakened a pure core in her abdomen. Percy wasn’t too familiar with the woman, so he’d been more than happy to follow Archibald’s suggestion.

After passing the expensive resource to his aunt and grandfather, he returned to the settlement to give them the time to clear the first set of channels for their altered core and to get accustomed to their new abilities. Technically, he could always ask the clone in Archibald’s body what his grandfather was doing, but he didn’t want to disturb them during their experimentation.

Back at his house, he couldn’t help but anxiously pace back and forth, struggling to bring himself to focus on other projects. In different circumstances, he would have been thrilled to finally pull the magical plaque out of his spatial seal to give himself a mindset, yet even that was something that Percy wasn’t in the mood for.

He wasn’t sure why he felt so strongly about this particular endeavour.

Perhaps, it had something to do with the fact that his very identity was on the line. A tiny, foolish… selfish part of him was a little sad that he was about to lose his uniqueness as the only person in the universe who could create soul clones and possess others. A much larger and more rational part, however, was quite thrilled that Remior would acquire two new ‘wanderers’.

Given Percy’s track record of placing himself in constant danger, it was probably better for his world to have a couple of backup options. He didn’t regret frequently undertaking major risks, because he understood that one couldn’t hope to attain divinity without enduring hardships and braving danger.

Still, the combination of his bloodline and affinity was a priceless asset – one that any faction in the universe would give anything to obtain, yet which only Remior had been lucky enough to produce. Should Percy get himself killed one day, it would be a colossal blow to his world.

Or it would have been – before today.

Leaving aside the preservation of his abilities, he was also quite excited about what his aunt and grandfather would soon be capable of. They didn’t have the Blessing of Permanence – not yet, anyway – but their high-graded cores would still afford them with a significant number of cords right from the start.

Isolde had a Blue and a Yellow core, which should allow her to send out four clones. Archibald had a Violet and a Green core, giving him five slots in total. Their second cores would advance again in a few years, and Zoris might be willing to further double their capacity, as he had already done for Percy.

Even with a handful of cords each, they would immediately be able to pass the Moirais’ Decree to the rest of the alliance – and, one day, to the rest of the planet – saving Percy the trouble. They should also be able to roam the universe alongside Percy, helping him bring back countless treasures – many of which might benefit him as much as his own findings had helped his family.

Needless to say, Percy didn’t sleep at all that night. Well… okay. That didn’t mean much, considering his Insomnia trait, but he was pretty sure that his excitement would have kept him awake regardless.

Rushing back to his family’s camp first thing in the morning, he asked the clone in his grandfather’s body to alert the man to his presence. Upon being allowed inside the tent, he flashed the tired Violet an expectant look.

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“I’m afraid that you may have wasted your money on us,” Archibald muttered with a shake of his head.

A pit formed in Percy’s chest. “What do you mean? You have the bloodline and the affinity – what else could you possibly be missing?”

His grandfather sighed, gesturing for him to sit. There wasn’t any furniture in the tent yet, so Percy had to sit cross-legged across from the patriarch who was doing the same. Archibald had dark bags under his eyes, and his second core was half-empty, indicating that he had spent all night working.

“Your clone has already drawn a few seals inside my life core, so he can’t return to share his memories without the constructs falling apart. Even helping me with my experiments without messing up his work was a struggle. But it’s better to show you anyway,” the Violet explained.

He loosely cupped his hands while leaving just enough space between his palms to fit an object the size of an apple. Percy carefully scanned his grandfather from head to toe with his Sage’s Pond, not missing the moment when the man activated his bloodline. The ghostly claw that always sprung out of Percy’s core to carve out a chunk of his soul didn’t appear.

Instead, a series of gentle pulses of soul mana rippled out of the patriarch’s abdomen, rhythmically bouncing off of the bumpy surface of his soul and slowly converging towards his palms.

Despite having had this affinity for less than twenty-four hours, Archibald’s efforts were far more refined than Percy’s had been as a teenager – probably due to the Violet’s centuries of experience with a different version of the bloodline, and the clone’s guidance. Of course, he was still far worse than Percy currently was, since his soul wasn’t rigid and unmoving like his flesh, nor was he very familiar with the new mana type.

Either way, Percy didn’t care about his grandfather’s clumsiness – only the purpose of his actions.

The patriarch had taught Percy this method of channelling and gathering his mana through his soul as a way to supercharge his clones, packing them full of soul mana to help them in their adventures. However, Percy’s version of the bloodline differed from the normal one, in that his clones weren’t actually created out of mana, but severed directly from his soul.

That… was not what Archibald was doing.

Bright silver flashes spilled out of the Violet’s palms, coalescing into a pulsating orb that seemed to grow slightly larger with every oscillation. It started off smaller than Archibald’s fingernails, but it reached the size of a cherry in a few seconds.

Through his in-built Soul Vision, Percy could see that the embryonic clone wasn’t actually connected to Archibald’s soul – it was an entirely new entity that had been created just moments earlier, in a manner that closely resembled the gestation of a life clone.

Percy couldn’t help but crease his forehead. “Have you tried anything else? Maybe there’s a second way to activate my bloodline that I never discovered.”

Archibald shook his head. “I’ve seen your version many times, so I went into this project knowing what to look for. I activated the bloodline over fifty times last night, but nothing even remotely similar to that ghostly claw of yours ever appeared. I even managed to manually snip a piece of my soul off with a rough soul blade, but it collapsed immediately after leaving my body. Your clone also tried to activate my bloodline once, but he wasn’t able to do any better than me. This was the only way to get it to work.”

Percy noted that the clone between his grandfather’s hands was growing relatively slowly. A Violet could create a life clone in a single day, and the soul clone looked like it would be ready several times faster than that, despite the patriarch’s second core being merely at Green. That said, the speed still couldn’t be compared to Percy, who could have a soul clone ready in seconds. That had to be the difference between cutting off an existing piece of his soul versus generating a clone from scratch.

“Okay. That’s not necessarily the end of the world,” Percy said. “Your version of the bloodline appears to work a little differently and more slowly than mine, but you can still produce soul clones, can’t you? Have you tried sending one out?”

“I have,” Archibald said, though he didn’t elaborate.

Preparing the soul clone took about an hour, which wasn’t that long in the grand scheme of things. It was faster than a life clone because Archibald didn’t have to grow the wisp to the size of a human, nor give it a skeleton or a defined structure.

Once the patriarch deemed his creation to be ready, he released it, allowing it to fly away. The clone moved at a dizzying speed, escaping the range of Percy’s senses in an instant. At least, from what little Percy had seen, the clone had appeared stable – more so than the piece of Archibald’s soul that the Violet had claimed to have tried and failed to sever. A few seconds later, the disembodied wisp entered Percy’s bubble of information again, though it was still moving way too fast, so it escaped through the opposite boundary almost immediately.

“It’s not autonomous like yours,” Archibald explained. “I have to control it manually, like my life clones, though I’m still trying to get the hang of it. If it flies too far, the connection breaks and I can’t provide it with enough soul mana to survive.”