One month earlier

Percy’s main body was busy getting used to the Carnival and absorbing the blessing, while his second clone was discussing with Nesha and Elaine about their future plans.

But none of that had anything to do with him.

He was the version of Percy who had been inside Micky’s body since before the battle, accompanying the crow through his advancement and subsequent evolution. And boy did they have things to work on…

‘First things first. Let’s try not to get stuck here in the process.’

Shifting his soul around a little, Percy wanted to make sure he wouldn’t fuse into his familiar’s body. From his previous attempt possessing Micky, he knew how risky this was. Luckily, he’d since thought of a way to prevent that from happening.

Having applied a thin layer of soul mana between his own wisp and the crow’s, he had managed to keep himself separate. It was a bit funny, actually. With his other hosts, he had to use his soul mana as a bridge to connect his own soul to theirs, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to even stay inside their bodies. Yet, when it came to his familiar, he had to use it in the exact opposite way, to fight against their natural compatibility.

But it was an effective solution. Over time, the souls still tended to approach one another, eating holes through the silver film and merging in several spots. Thus, he had to manually pry himself off every few days, and use some soul mana to repair the barrier. Luckily, it didn’t take much effort, allowing him to stay for a prolonged period of time.

‘All good.’ he spat in relief, the crow clearly echoing the sentiment.

Tearing his soul off Micky’s only took a few seconds each time, but it was rather painful for both of them. At least, it didn’t seem like they’d have to worry about that today. Turning his attention to other matters, he took a few minutes to observe the water mana feeding into Micky’s beast core through his veins.

‘I see you’re already getting better at this.’

The crow shrugged.

‘It’s the same principle as my other mutations. The only things that have changed are the body part and the affinity.’

Percy nodded.

‘Fair enough. But keep at it. Developing Regulation is always your number one priority.’

Based on how much beast mana the crow was currently generating, Percy was confident he would not only be able to deal with his hunger for the foreseeable future, but even have enough mana leftover to fight without worries. At least a few times per month, Micky should be able to go all out, using even the beast component of his boosting art without draining himself that much. It would help a lot once they left the Valley, as he fully expected them to get attacked pretty often by powerful enemies.

‘Other than that, it’s time we figure out what we can do with your ice mana.’

Fusing and breaking his affinities apart was second nature for the bird by now. But he had yet to put the new mana types to work. On top of that, Percy had a few things to teach his familiar too. Pre-casting would be most suitable for the crow, and the Dance was also something he hoped to pass on to him as soon as possible.

‘Wanna see where I’m currently at?’ Micky asked.

‘Sure.’

Not wasting a moment, Micky spread his now-massive wings wide. With a powerful flap, he took off, the gust tearing a layer of dirt off the ground. Scanning their surroundings – about as well as the drifting globules allowed him to – he flew for a couple seconds before landing in front of a medium-sized boulder a few dozen metres away.

‘Watch closely.’

Pulling some mana from his abdomen, he gathered it in the underside of his wings, before flapping them again. This time, several shards of ice shot forth, lodging themselves into the hard rock as if they were steel knives, frost spreading outward from the holes. Whether it was the sharpness of the constructs or the force behind them, it was more than enough to injure a Yellow.

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But Micky was only getting started.

Repeating his actions twice more, he fired a couple more permutations of the nascent spell. The first time, a spray of water splashed on the rock. The second, it was a gust of wind. But both attacks seemed just as cold as the daggers, each of them expanding the frost on the boulder’s surface, soon coating the object in a thin layer of ice.

Percy would have raised an eyebrow if Micky had any.

This was already quite interesting. Micky had shown him his ice mana many times before, but this was different. Besides the obvious power-up due to the crow’s higher grade and greater control, there was something else that didn’t immediately make sense.

During Micky’s previous demonstrations, he had unleashed the spray of water and the gust of wind together. Percy had thought this was inevitable, since affinity fission broke the ice mana into two components. Keeping one in his body would create an imbalance, so it was simpler to just expel them in equal measures.

This wasn’t what Micky had just done, however. Even more curiously, the wind and water attacks seemed to have retained many properties of his ice affinity, even when used individually.

‘Can you show me again?’ he asked, getting a nod back. ‘Ah, and do it more slowly.’

Micky fired the attacks again, this time focusing on duration rather than potency. Percy ignored the manifested constructs entirely, shifting his attention to his familiar’s core. He could tell that was where all the literal magic was happening. Sure enough, each of the three variants caused the ice mana to flow differently inside the organ. Percy had yet to fully understand what his familiar was doing, but he had picked up on a fascinating detail.

‘You’re not even using affinity fission! All three attacks are fuelled entirely by ice mana!’

Micky puffed up, a hint of pride seeping through their connection.

‘It’s a trick I discovered a few years ago. I don’t know if other composite affinities are like this, but for me, affinity fission was just the first step. There is a way to make my fused mana function like its components, while retaining many of its own properties.’

Percy remained silent for a while, pondering his familiar’s words. Indeed, it seemed the crow could force the ice to behave like water or air, without losing its coldness. Mastering this ability would make all of Micky’s spells both stronger and easier to execute. It could even directly upgrade one’s air and water spells. Not that the crow had many of those, but still…

‘How does this even work though?’ he wondered.

He suspected Micky’s little trick was related to pre-casting, even though he had yet to teach it to him. Had the crow stumbled upon some preliminary version of it by himself?

‘Okay, let me play with your core for a while. I want to see if I can wrap my head around what you’re doing,’ he said, eager to confirm his guess.

Over the next few hours, the two went back and forth, testing various things. Percy tried to use affinity fission and the trick Micky had shown him – with limited success. Naturally, he lacked the crow’s years of experience with the affinity, but he did have a solid grasp on affinity fusion and pre-casting, which were very related fields.

Consequently, he was quite good at peering inside his core and controlling the mana inside it. Learning to reproduce the bird’s attacks would take a while longer, but he did manage to understand what exactly was happening with Micky’s mana.

Percy identified two concepts at work, imposing a couple of conflicting behaviours on Micky’s mana at all times – even when the crow was idle. The first – which he could tell had come from the air affinity – caused the mana to move quickly and erratically, sending the core into turmoil. This was much like Leo’s mana, which he had played around with extensively inside the Wiseman’s Chamber.

The second concept had clearly come from Micky’s water affinity, resembling Elaine’s mana. It affected the substance more gently, causing it to flow in a slow and somewhat organized manner. It seemed subtle at first – almost submissive to its unruly sibling – but that wasn’t entirely accurate. It also felt much heavier, making it difficult for the flow of air mana to affect it.

Even without Micky doing anything, the flows collided against one another, slowing each other to a crawl. Percy was confident this was the reason behind the ice mana’s coldness.

Yet, whenever Micky used the other variants of the technique, he seemed to instinctively favour one of the flows over the other, forcing its behaviour to dominate. The end result was an attack still fuelled by ice mana – half water and half air – but its properties were now skewed.

‘How did you even come up with this by yourself?’ Percy probed.

The crow shrugged.

‘Splitting my mana up every time I wanted to use my Rending Tornado was annoying, so I tried to force it to work with ice mana. It was really inefficient at first, but I got better at it over the years. Then, I realized I could go the other way too.’

‘I see… Great work there, buddy. This is a good foundation to build your magic on.’

Percy hadn’t noticed it before, but the alternative variants of Micky’s ice attack were slightly inefficient. The difference was small, but the crude way in which he manipulated his mana seemed to sap away some of their strength.

If he taught him how to use pre-casting properly, they could work to fine-tune the technique some more. In addition, he could teach Micky how to incorporate all the other tricks he had learned on Felmara into his attacks – the rotation and the pressure.

‘Before long, we’ll turn you into a living, breathing… flying blizzard.’