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The Lone Wanderer
Aspects:
- [Percival]
- [Mictlantecuhtli]
Mana cores:
- [Mana core 1P – Yellow – Soul]
- [Mana core 2P – Yellow – Pure]
- [Mana core 1M – Green – Beast]
- [Mana core 2M – Yellow – Ice]
Domain:
- [Dead Winter – Empowered]
Bloodline:
- [Clone] – Create a copy of yourself. Effect varies by affinity.
Blessing:
- [Blessing of Permanence] – Enhance the durability of your soul.
Mutations:
- [Sovereign’s Eye] – Draws from the cumulative knowledge listed in the Status to enhance one’s vision, allowing them to discern details previously unseen.
- [Greater Thess’kalan Physique] – Greatly enhances one’s physical strength and the toughness of their body. Greatly enhances one’s resistance to high or low temperatures and sharpens their thermal sense. Greatly enhances one’s resistance to toxins.
- [Dead Winter Elemental] – Uses ice mana to regenerate, shapeshift and sustain one’s body. Allows every part of one’s body to interact with souls.
Spectral traits:
- [Weaving] – Boosts one’s proclivity in manipulating one-dimensional structures.
- [Insomnia] – Eliminates the need for sleep.
- [Scribing] – Boosts one’s proclivity in expressing meaning onto any written medium.
Spells:
- [Wild Art: Alchemist’s Intuition – Crude]
- [Spectral Art: Parasitic Connection – Refined]
- [Spectral Art: Cauldron of a Thousand Whispers – Masterful]
- [Spectral Art: Instantaneous Formation – Masterful]
- [Hybrid Art: Core Bestowal – Masterful]
- [Ultimate Art: Symphony of a Dead Winter – Extreme]
Alchemic principles:
- [Extraction] – Separate and condense an ingredient’s essence.
- [Pacification] – Delay an ingredient’s activation rate.
- [Redirection] – Adjust an ingredient’s effect.
- [Deattunement] – Prevent multiple conflicting ingredients from reacting with one another.
- [Bonding] – Enrich an ingredient with crystallized pure mana.
- [Restructuring] – Alter an ingredient's phase.
- [Scaling] – Brew a greater volume of ingredients at once.
- [Compression] – Elevate an ingredient to the next grade.
Decrees:
- [Phoebe’s Decree] – Grants access to your Status.
- [Iapetus’s Decree] – Grants a bloodline.
- [Moirais’ Decree] – Grants a second mana core.
- [Metatron’s Decree] – Open a one-way portal to the Vault of Magic at will.
- [Ea’s Decree (Modified)] – Augments and enhances your Status. Grants the Sovereign’s Eye.
- [Obatala’s Decree (Modified)] – Augments and enhances your Status. Allows you to effortlessly deploy your domain in its strongest state.
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The human body creased its brow as soon as its gaze landed on the first line.
‘The Lone Wanderer? Is that what we’re called now?’
Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that their Status no longer deemed it fit to refer to them as “Percival Avalon” or “Mictlantecuhtli”, as neither of those names was very accurate anymore. Even so, it felt a bit intrusive of Phoebe’s Decree to pick a new name for them.
Then again, they had to admit that this monicker was rather fitting. They’d always been a “Wanderer” after all – that was their defining feature, and the main source of their abilities. As for the other part… that, they felt more inclined to protest, as being called out as a loner wasn’t the most pleasant thing. Still, it wasn’t that inaccurate either, considering how their souls had fused into one, or how averse Percy had generally been to socializing. They really might end up as a “Lone Wanderer” if they kept hanging out with nobody but their familiars, and those all eventually fused with them.
Which brought another issue to question.
‘How will the Status even handle Nephthys? And do we still want to turn her into a familiar at this point?’ they couldn’t help but wonder.
They imagined that placing her in a wasp egg wouldn’t turn her into one of those new aspects directly – just a regular familiar. After all, Percy and Micky had gone through so many hoops to end up in this situation. It might not even be possible for another familiar to merge so deeply with them without the right combination of affinities or mutations.
But there were still several things they didn’t know. Would their Status create a new list of familiars to place the former goddess in? Or would it just treat her the same way it had treated the crow in the past, giving her an extension of their own Status that she couldn’t even access by herself?
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Either way, they weren’t sure they wanted to risk inviting another person to occupy such a permanent spot in their soul. That was not to say that they regretted what had happened to them, but there was a huge difference between Percy and Micky – who had considered each other more than brothers for decades – merging like this, and them doing so with a complete stranger. Turning Nephthys into a regular familiar was already a huge deal, let alone something even more intimate and downright irreversible…
‘Well, we did promise to help her and her people. It would be shitty of us to let them die out of selfishness. Besides, we’ll probably have plenty of time to vet her properly and ask her opinion before doing anything crazier.’
Pushing the questions about aspects and familiars to the back of their mind for now, they moved on to the mana cores. All four of the organs were grouped up, though their Status had weirdly chosen to stick their initials next to the numbers, listing them as 1P, 2P, 1M and 2M – instead of just numbering them one to four.
This was clearly intentional, and actually made a lot of sense if they thought about it.
The situation with their new cores was different from the ones granted by the Moirais’ Decree. While they could wield all four of them at once, each only provided its passive benefits to the corresponding body. At the very least, they hadn’t noticed any increase in their physical strength or lifespans.
The last part was especially disappointing, in fact.
They didn’t look forward to watching one of their bodies die of old age before the other. Then again, the plan had always been for both of them to attain divinity anyway, so they would have done their best to prevent that from happening regardless. Even if they failed and one of their bodies died in the end, both of their souls would hopefully survive in the other, so it wasn’t all gloom and doom.
Next, there were the changes to their domain.
There was a lot to consider, and it was clear that their domain had played a decisive role in their victory against Deimos. They’d already had a somewhat clear idea of how Obatala’s Approval tended to affect various bodies across different grades, and they had a few guesses as to what exactly had happened to them during the fight.
Even so, studying their domain wasn’t a priority right now. They’d rather focus on understanding their bodies first, before moving on to other pressing things.
That inevitably brought them to the next three sections: their bloodline, their mutations, and their spectral traits – which should probably be considered together. As they had previously surmised, the first two only appeared to affect their original bodies, though the Status had listed them together, not bothering to mark them like the cores.
The human body was the only one that could stir the bloodline, though both souls would inevitably be part of their future clones, since there was no separating them at this point.
‘Hmm… does that mean that our capacity has increased?’ they wondered.
Two souls should mean more cords, right? Especially since Micky had been at Green, bringing a stronger soul into the mix. If it worked as they hoped, they might even be able to use the extra cords to create more familiars and aspects, thus gaining even more cords in the process!
Their hearts couldn’t help but skip a couple of beats as they realized how easily that could be abused into giving them an infinite army of aspects, familiars and clones!
Searching inward, they tried to feel how many connections they still had available. In the past, they hadn’t been able to tell. Percy had needed to blindly create clones until he passed that limit, growing dizzy and losing control of his body. However, he’d slowly developed a sense for his capacity over the past couple of years – an inevitable consequence of juggling so many connections daily.
Their expressions sagged as soon as it became clear that they could only create four more clones – the same as right before their fusion. Evidently, not only had Micky’s soul not added to their capacity, they hadn’t even recovered the cord used up by the clone in the bird’s body.
‘It isn’t very surprising though… it was probably consumed to facilitate our evolution,’ they reasoned.
It would certainly explain how their cord had been able to widen so much, how their soul had grown to this extent, and how their mental capacity had kept up with the other changes.
‘So much for infinite clones…’
They sighed, lamenting the lost opportunity. Clearly, only the part of their soul originating from Percy had contributed to their capacity, so they’d have to wait over a century for more cords. They didn’t know why exactly that was, but the most logical explanation was that it had something to do with the way the soul affinity interacted with the bloodline in the human body.
Maybe that was for the best though. Had it been otherwise, they would have failed to resist the temptation of merging with a thousand others, slowly losing themselves in the process.
‘What about the spectral traits then? Can we absorb another fiend now?’
The fiends had nothing to do with the Clone bloodline, so there was a chance that both souls would affect their capacity. At the very least, they could tell that their traits worked with both bodies, unlike the bloodline that could only be activated by one of them.
The fact that the crow’s plumage had turned grey was further proof that the blessing of permanence now stretched to their entire soul – not just the part inside the human body – the Soul Predator mutation being the likely culprit for manifesting that colour onto the feathers.
‘Let’s wait until we get the ring back before trying anything stupid,’ they decided.
They had no clue how to test their capacity for traits by themselves, and it was too risky to attempt absorbing a fiend before being sure. Of course, Zoris probably wouldn’t be able to answer that question either, but he might be able to help them check.
Focusing on their mutations again, they noted that two of them had remained unchanged. Or rather, the entries had, though the colour of their Sovereign’s Eye had shifted again during the transformation. The change appeared to be purely cosmetic, but it was one they welcomed, as the grey hue resembled Percy’s original eyes more closely. It would put other humans at ease and allow them to stand out less in a crowd.
As for their Greater Thess’kalan Physique – it hadn’t changed in any way, but that didn’t mean that it hadn’t played a decisive role in the previous battle. In fact, it was probably one of the main reasons they’d even managed to survive the transformation.
If it hadn’t been for the increased toughness of their body and their elevated resistance to cold temperatures, they might have really died from their own spell – just like that bastard, Deimos, had told them.
Finally, there was the elephant-sized beast in the cavern – the new mutation.
‘Dead Winter Elemental, huh?’
This one was obviously the only mutation affecting the crow’s body. Be it through its description or just simple deduction, it was clear that it represented the fusion of the bird’s previous four mutations.
It had inherited all their individual benefits and likely strengthened each of them further. Not only did it allow the crow to regenerate from almost any injury and sustain its beast core like before, it was apparently capable of a bunch of additional things now.
‘What does it mean by “shapeshift”?’
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