Reading his spell list, Percy couldn’t help but crack a smile, some pride welling up in his chest as he took a moment to absorb the recent changes.

___

Spells:

• [Wild Art: Alchemist’s Intuition – Crude]
• [Secret Art: Soul Harmony – Refined]
• [Spectral Art: Parasitic Connection – Refined]
• [Secret Art: Soul-crushing Needle – Masterful]
• [Spectral Art: Cauldron of a Thousand Whispers – Masterful]
• [Spectral Art: Instantaneous Formation – Masterful]
• [Spectral Art: Phantomwoven Cloak – Masterful]
• [Wild Art: Carnival of the Savage Gods – Masterful]
• [Hybrid Art: Core Bestowal – Masterful]

___

The clone’s whistle echoed through Percy’s mind. ‘Whoa. People will lose their shit if they see this.’

The original nodded, not disagreeing with that assessment. Percy’s spell list was relatively compact right now – at least compared to other times – but the sheer number of Masterful spells he had accumulated was ridiculous. He had six, with two being of a far higher quality than the rest. It was worth remembering that Masterful spells were typically meant for Violets, Whites and demigods – not Greens or Blues.

Certainly not Yellows.

It was an easy thing for Percy to forget, perhaps, considering how often he’d been registering or upgrading them lately. The casual frequency of it almost dulled the weight of his accomplishments, even though a part of him understood how absurd that was. Then again, more than half of his newest entries were heavily reliant on his spectral traits and magiscript – and for good reason.

Percy’s fight against the axe wielder had already proven that the Vault’s runes were potent enough to compete against a damn blessing.That was true even when he hastily applied them in the heat of battle, let alone when he took his sweet time carefully preparing them. Even more importantly, the scope of Percy’s enchantments was far broader than a blessing’s – Metatron’s magical language could be harnessed for countless distinct tasks, hence all of Percy’s opportunities to diversify his arsenal.

In many ways, Percy obtaining the Scribing trait was like a tiger gaining wings. It had allowed all the hard work he’d put into studying runecrafting over the years to finally blossom at once, elevating the art to the same position as the Carnival in his fighting style.

‘I find it funnier that he no longer has any regular spells in there,’ Micky said, joining the conversation with a mental chuckle.

Right. Percy hadn’t even noticed, but all the entries in the list were either Secret, Spectral, Wild or Hybrid Arts. He didn’t recall this ever having been the case before, though it was perhaps inevitable that his bloodline, traits or mutation would have found their way into every corner of his magic at some point.

Currently, the only spell that involved both a spectral trait and his bloodline was his Core Bestowal. He couldn’t help but wonder if a fusion of a Wild Art and a Secret Art or a Spectral Art would also be classified as a Hybrid Art. What if it involved all three? Could he fuse all his spells together one day?

‘Well, whatever… It’s not like I can impress our enemies to death by reading them my Status. Getting stronger is a better use of our time than ruminating over spells,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘Back to work. Both of you.’

He could practically feel his companions roll their non-existent or non-rollable eyes through the cords, though they heeded his instructions regardless, resuming work on Micky’s boosting art.

The crow was travelling west, flying toward the mainland faster than most Blues were capable of – even when they rushed. More impressive still, was the fact that Micky had sustained this speed for multiple days already, with no signs of getting tired. A fortunate side-effect of his strong body and rapidly improving spell.

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Percy followed his own advice too, ignoring the relentless torrents of wind gluing dark strands to his face, or his new hood fluttering behind his neck, commencing his next task. Even the violent flaps of the oversized crow’s wings that might have distracted him a year or two ago were nothing more than a welcome rhythm by now, lulling him into a productive trance.

His hands brushed across the surface of his new cauldron, short-lived bursts of phantom mana injecting power into the enchantments. Percy carefully maintained as uniform a pressure and temperature as he could inside the construct, his mutated eyes remaining glued to the alchemical reactions happening within. Whenever a lump was about to form, he tweaked the nearest inputs to dissolve it, trying to preserve as much of the brew as possible.

Every few minutes, he removed the lid, a whiff of minty aroma barely passing by his nose before getting dragged dozens of metres behind the bird by the strong current. The fleeting freshness was oddly grounding, a reminder that there was still something gentle in the middle of all this intensity. Dipping his index finger into the green liquid in the cauldron, Percy stored it directly into the empty vials in his spatial seal to save time.

‘Less than a thirty percent yield,’ he estimated with a heavy sigh.

He owed his subpar performance partly to the fact that he’d grown a bit rusty after prioritizing magiscript over alchemy for months, and partly due to how unfamiliar the new tool felt. The Masterful-tier construct was bound to help him a lot down the line, but learning to use the exhaustive assortment of enchantments properly would take some practice.

Perhaps, it would have been more prudent to use his old cauldron for a few days – until he registered the new principle at least. However, Percy didn’t care that much about wasting his green mushrooms or healing potions. Even as he consumed them ten times faster due to the increased capacity of his new cauldron, it would take several days before he put a dent in his sizeable stash. Besides, this was the fastest way to not only shake the rust off, but also to grow accustomed to his new tool.

‘As soon as my yield passes sixty percent, I’ll throw in the gravity ingredients and try to compress the potions…’ he decided.

Sixty percent was still a couple of points lower than what he was normally capable of with this type of brew, but time was scarcer and far more precious than a few extra drops of potion at the moment. Especially since he had several things he needed to do before they reached shore.

Ideally, he wanted to register the principle and upgrade enough of his healing potions to safely undergo the ritual while they were still away from civilization. Each bath would take him two full days and nights, and there was a good chance he’d need to consume both sets of ingredients to get the mutation he needed. Suffice to say, he’d rather not do that in a populated area where enemies might interrupt him and waste his limited resources.

Tossing a fresh batch of ingredients into the cauldron, Percy closed the lid once more, beginning another session.

To him, his current efforts felt rushed and wasteful, but he understood that any other alchemist on Remior would be left with their mouths agape if they saw him. Percy began each attempt with forty portions of green mushrooms, ending up with twelve hundred drops – or twelve doses – of healing potions roughly six minutes later.

Even the most experienced elders in the Guild could only preserve a little over half of their nectar when brewing elixirs, or just over eighty percent of the ingredients when brewing potions, and their cauldrons only had a tenth of Percy’s capacity. In other words, even Percy’s currently inefficient output eclipsed theirs by over three times!

‘If the situation with my bounty ever gets resolved, I can try teaching them a bunch of new tricks, though I don’t think it’ll be possible for them to use the scaling principle without the eyes…’ he thought. That said, elevating his world’s alchemic standard was at the bottom of his long list of priorities right now.

Hour after hour, Percy continued to brew potions, slowly pushing his yield back to normal. He already had more Orange healing potions than he’d realistically be able to drink in a long time, but that was okay, because they were the very ingredients he would be using later, as he attempted to register the new principle.

By the following morning, his yield crossed the fifty percent mark, and by nightfall, it reached just over sixty percent.

‘Good enough. Let’s hop onto the next phase.’

Percy had no idea how close they were to the continent, having lost track of their exact position months ago. Suffice to say, he didn’t recognize the geography here either – the scarce islands and sharp rocks occasionally jutting through the water’s surface looked no different than elsewhere. Still, he guessed they couldn’t possibly be too far, given how fast Micky was flying.

Taking a few deep breaths to relax his tired mind, he added more finished healing potions to the cauldron, raising the level of the liquid to the halfway point, before filling the rest with some of the herbs he’d procured with Nesha and Duwa’s help.

It was time to commence his first attempt at compressing a potion to a higher grade!

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