Seven years had passed since Phoebe helped Percy and Micky segregate their minds.

Remior had remained relatively calm, though everyone understood that peace was temporary. Percy was slowly building his strength up, and he was sure that Machaon was doing the same as they both quietly prepared for their eventual clash.

Several interesting things had happened during the past decade, but those were for Percy’s main body to worry about. The clone’s job was to focus on his own adventures, much like so many of his predecessors had done before him.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to make an exception just this once? We could settle for a lesser spring or something,’ Micky suggested, his irritated voice echoing through their shared consciousness.

As a side-effect of the mindset that the titaness had helped them create, all of Percy’s clones now carried their own personal copy of Micky’s mind by default. That was only to be expected, since Percy and his fellow aspect still shared a single soul.

Even though it was only Percy’s body that possessed the bloodline, his clones were equipped with an exact replica of his mindscape and, by extension, its other occupant.

That said, Percy had still been surprised the first time one of his clones had heard his friend’s voice while navigating through the plane of souls. However, he’d ultimately been more excited than annoyed to finally have company in his adventures.

Sadly, the presence of a second mind hadn’t proven very useful. At the very least, it hadn’t increased his cognitive abilities, as the sum of Percy’s and Micky’s mental capacity was still exactly the same as the Lone Wanderer’s had been after their fusion and before their separation. The clones could merge their minds whenever they wanted – just like the originals – though they generally preferred remaining separate and having each other to talk to.

Well… that was the case on most days, though Micky could admittedly get a little annoying every now and then.

‘We’ve gone over this a million times,’ Percy said, having the urge to roll his eyes. ‘You know that it’s our job to look for a greater spring since we have an empowered cord.’

After years of practice, he and Micky had grown better at maintaining a second instance of Soul Resonance effortlessly, which meant that two of their clones were now always connected to the main bodies.

That had led Percy to separate the clones into two groups. The one without access to the original was tasked with visiting less promising worlds, such as barren planets and lesser springs. As long as he spotted anything even remotely interesting, he stopped to check it out.

Those trips hadn’t yielded anything particularly valuable so far, but they had allowed Percy and Micky to grow more accustomed to various rare and composite affinities, experience all sorts of strange bodies to provide Micky with inspiration for shapeshifting, practice many of their soul-related abilities such as Soul Stitching and Parasitic Connection, study the ins and outs of Ludwick’s Compass, and simply learn more about the types of alien worlds that populated the wider universe.

Most of those throwaway adventures tended to only last for a couple of days at most, meaning that Percy never had to wait too long if he suddenly needed one of his cords to pass the Moirais’ Decree to somebody or check up on Sol’s signals.

Meanwhile, the clones with the empowered connections were supposed to stay away for several months at a time, ignoring most low-level destinations until they spotted a greater spring – or at least something else that was truly unusual.

There were two reasons why Percy had made this decision.

Firstly, he could communicate with the clones that had empowered connections at a moment’s notice if there was an emergency on Remior, so he felt at ease having them stay away on longer missions.

Secondly, Soul Resonance gave the clones more options, since they could always borrow mana from the main body or request reinforcements if they found something valuable that they needed help extracting. Thus, it simply made more sense for them to focus on greater springs.

Sadly, Percy and Micky hadn’t found any of those either.

While they hadn’t lazed around for even a moment, Percy had to admit that the past seven years had been among the least productive for his clones. Perhaps that was only to be expected, since he was a lot stronger than he used to be, which had only raised his standards for what he considered valuable.

However, their subpar results had inevitably generated some friction between him and his friend.

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‘I know…’ Micky groaned. ‘Yet, it’s been what? Eight? Nine months since the last time we returned home? I’m bored out of my mind here!’

Percy sighed internally. ‘I get that, but we knew that it was going to be like this from the start. Greater springs are rare. If you don’t think you can take this anymore, we can always fuse our minds again.’

‘That’s not going to make me any less bored, is it?’ Micky complained. ‘Forget it. I’ll shut up for another week or two, but I want to go back to Remior if we don’t find anything by then. Catching up with the main bodies’ memories will probably refresh us enough to make the experience more tolerable for the next clone.’

‘Alright,’

Percy begrudgingly agreed as he resumed scanning the sea of souls for a suitable host. ‘But help me look, will you? We still haven’t found anything to strengthen Kassorith for the tournament.’

Their Mimicry trait and Micky’s shapeshifting skills weren’t very useful for the Thess’kalan, and their main bodies had prioritized Internal Magiscript over everything else during the past few years. Attaining their artificial advancement was the single most important thing if they wanted to beat Machaon and increase their remaining lifespan.

The good news was that they’d made a ton of progress on that front, to the point that their goal was practically within reach already. In fact, the originals had informed the clone that they were about to upgrade the spell pretty soon.

Sadly, that also meant that they were running out of time to prepare for the interstellar competition. Percy did have an idea that he wanted to try before returning to the Vault, so it wasn’t like he was entirely out of options, but it wouldn’t hurt if one of the clones stumbled upon something useful.

Micky mentally nodded, joining Percy in his endeavour.

To his credit, the Huehuan didn’t speak a word of complaint during the next month – over twice as long as he had previously requested. Unfortunately, they had still not found anything, so Percy fully expected his friend to start pestering him again any time now.

However, when Micky did speak again, he sounded a lot more enthusiastic than before. ‘Percy! Do you see that cluster of souls over there?!’

‘Hmm? What about them?’ Percy asked, sharing his friend’s senses. ‘This looks like a barren world.’

Barren worlds – at least as defined by Mrs. Lia on Felmara – weren’t necessarily planets without life. Just those without a means of advancement. That said, the one that Micky had just spotted was a step below even that, as it didn’t seem to have any sapient souls. Only beasts.

‘I know… but look carefully,’ Micky insisted. ‘Isn’t that a demigod?’

Percy couldn’t help but crease his non-existent forehead. That was honestly a good catch. Souls at the Clear grade didn’t stand out nearly as much as actual gods, so they were fairly easy to miss when scanning a planet.

This was why Percy had failed to spot the four Whites on Robari, though a demigod’s soul was admittedly a little brighter than that. Even so, he was sure that his friend would have missed the creature if not for the planet’s relatively smaller size. Joining Micky, he scanned the place more carefully, eventually finding another two demigods located a fair distance away from one another.

‘Strange,’ he muttered as he contemplated the implications of their discovery.

These were beasts at the Clear grade. Percy had never seen any of those before. Well, technically, he hadn’t met any sapient demigods besides Ludwick’s projection either – and the deceased Saint hadn’t even been a real person – so this was quite a novelty no matter how he thought about it.

Still, Percy had met many White and Violet mages, but he had only ever seen a single Violet beast: the Starry Queen – which spoke volumes as to how rare these creatures were.

His familiar’s mother had only managed to grow to that level by leveraging the unique environment of the Fungal Spire which gathered several massive channels of ambient mana from across Remior. Even then, the hive only had enough mana to support a single Violet creature at a time – or at least it used to, before Percy’s interference.

Admittedly, the Fungal Spire also contained over a million Blue wasps and several times more Greens and Yellows. If all of that mana had been redirected towards a single creature, it could potentially survive at White or even Clear. However, a single Starry Empress would probably have a tough time collecting all the ambient mana scattered across the enormous hive, so the eusocial structure of her species was likely a necessity.

Percy knew that it was theoretically possible for quasi-divine beasts to emerge naturally. While only the denizens of Sixiang had ever overcome the final step of mastering a concept of their affinity and forging their internal worlds, reaching the peak of the Colour realm was probably more common than that.

Even so, he could hardly fathom how much mana such creatures would need to survive.

‘They probably have to eat… like… a continent’s worth of food every month or so,’ Micky – the resident expert on the topic – guessed.

‘Indeed,’ Percy agreed. ‘And to think that there are three of them on a planet this small. I’m surprised that they haven’t driven everything to extinction yet.’

Tossing the strange world another look, Percy failed to spot any other creatures above Green. It appeared that the three overlords had basically monopolized all the mana on their world, preventing anything else from even approaching their grade.

Percy still had no idea what had allowed the planet to develop in this manner, but he assumed that the quasi-divine beasts survived by somehow herding and devouring scores of the smaller ones. Regardless of how they managed that, one thing was certain.

He wanted to see this place for himself.

‘I suppose that you got your wish in the end. This is interesting enough to forget about greater springs for now,’ he told his friend, a spectral chuckle ringing inside their soul. ‘Shall we?’

‘It’s your turn to pick a host,’ Micky replied.

Scanning their options for a couple of minutes, Percy eventually spotted a Green beast in a relatively salvageable condition. It was far enough from the three overlords that he didn’t think they would end up devoured immediately, but close enough to one of them that it shouldn’t take too long to travel there.

Happy with his choice, he checked with Micky one final time before diving right in.

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