‘I’m sorry you had to go through all of that,’ Percy said once he was back on his familiar’s neck.

Dealing with the three Blues hadn’t been that difficult after taking their leader out. Percy and Micky had already cleaned up the battlefield, feeding the four mana cores to the crow and looting about half a year’s worth of unbrewed Aurora Dew from the fallen mages.

Had they been luckier, they could have collected even more, but Percy hadn’t been able to locate the last amulet. Fishing out the space user’s body had been relatively easy, since the corpse had still been wrapped inside a cocoon of Percy’s mana, and the seabed wasn’t very deep this close to the shore. That said, the man had clearly dropped his spatial device during his desperate efforts to rid himself of the enchanted fabric, and locating the small artifact had proven impossible.

Either way, Percy wasn’t as concerned with their dead opponents or their possessions at the moment. He was busy examining his familiar’s injuries and lamenting the dangerous situation he had been forced to place his friend in. There were few things he hated more than asking Micky to act as a target dummy for Blues, yet he understood that they wouldn’t have won the battle without the crow’s sacrifice.

No matter the reason, the fact remained that over three-quarters of Micky’s body had been replaced by ice. Outside of a few scarce patches of flesh here and there, only the bird’s head and cores had remained completely intact, due to Micky’s deliberate efforts to protect those organs.

‘Don’t sweat it,’ the crow replied with a shrug. ‘This has always been a team effort – we’re both just doing what we can. Not making the most of my mutations would have been a waste.’

Percy wasn’t ready to let go, however. ‘This is all happening because I picked a fight with all of Remior.’

The crow shook his head. ‘No. Much of it is happening because you were forced to kill a Holy Child to save me. I’d be ungrateful to blame you for the consequences.’

‘It’s not your fault you got captured and enslaved by a psychopath,’ Percy insisted.

‘Nor is it yours. It’s fine. Really. You know how little my injuries hurt nowadays, and I’m already used to my changing body. If anything, I’m starting to appreciate how convenient it is. Even without Consumption, it doesn’t need nearly as much food as it used to, and I can’t overstate how good it feels to be able to regenerate a missing limb in mere seconds. I’m not going to claim that it’s perfect, but I’m not sure I’d even want to go back to a flesh body – no offense.’

Percy nodded, knowing that saying anything more on the topic was useless. Besides, Micky wasn’t wrong. They were a team, having long resolved themselves to doing whatever it took to accomplish their shared goals. If anything, today was a time for celebration, since they’d just overcome one of their most dangerous challenges yet.

‘What now?’ the clone asked. ‘Do we head straight for the Fungal Spire before more people come after us, pick a different route entirely, or stick with your previous plan of going through the ritual first?’

That was a great question.

Percy didn’t think that the assassins had informed anyone of their location, or others would have already jumped at the opportunity to attack them. Staying put for a few more days would be risky, but delaying the magical bath wasn’t a good idea either – it wasn’t like Percy would get a better chance in the coming months, and he needed every advantage he could get.

‘Micky, put more distance from the coast, just in case. I’ll spend the rest of the day brewing some Green healing potions. Then, we’ll stop at the first island we see, staying there for anywhere between two and four days – depending on how the ritual goes. As soon as I have the mutation, we’ll fly straight to the Guild without pausing. Anyone who tries to get in our way dies.’

In theory, they could try approaching their destination more cautiously than that, but they knew that haste was their friend. As soon as their enemies figured out where they were headed, they’d be able to set up a proper ambush. Furthermore, Nephthys’s pyramid wasn’t going to last much longer.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

‘Sounds good,’ Micky said, turning away from the landmass and picking up the pace. ‘Didn’t you want to brew some trollsfury ink too?’

‘I’ll do that on the way to the Spire. Having a couple of tattoos might help, but it’s not worth delaying our trip.’

Percy would have undergone the ritual on Micky’s back too, had it been an option. Sadly, it would be inconvenient for the crow to carry a massive tank filled with water, and they’d both be completely defenceless if somebody attacked them halfway through the bath.

Having settled on a plan, they put some distance from the continent as Percy resumed his alchemic ventures. This time, he used some of the Yellow healing potions he’d brewed earlier, along with the remaining gravity plants, trying to compress a few of the potions to Green.

To his great joy, registering the principle seemed to have made his life a lot easier. His eyes now picked up on even the faintest traces of Green mana forming inside the concoction, helping him home into the correct configuration for the pulses much faster, saving him countless ingredients and several days of trial and error.

Even better, the frequency of the pulses didn’t seem to change from one grade to the next, meaning that Percy only needed to increase the pressure he exerted on the mixture.

‘Makes sense, I suppose. I’ll probably have to change the frequency when I move to a different potion or ink. Either way, my eyes should help with that too.’

Percy did run into a different problem that he hadn’t expected, however, though he probably should have. Compressing Yellow potions to Green appeared to be the limit of his current cauldron. He was already using the enchantments at close to their maximum output, and faint cracks that he constantly had to repair kept forming on the tool during the brewing session.

In hindsight, it wasn’t all that surprising – it would have been unreasonable to expect a Yellow alchemist with a cauldron crafted out of his own mana to compress potions all the way to Violet or White. If anything, it was a miracle Percy was even able to brew Green potions with his current setup.

Thankfully, his newest potions were already of a higher grade than him, so they were bound to be quite effective on his body. Anything better would have to wait until his next promotion, or until he improved his magiscript skills again.

Micky eventually landed on a small, rocky island, this one not visible from the mainland at all. The sky was dark, which was a welcome bonus. Percy liked the idea of beginning the ritual in the middle of the night – it would make it harder for any nearby enemies to spot him, giving him until daybreak to absorb a good chunk of the ingredients’ effects into his body. Even if he got interrupted afterwards, he wouldn’t be losing everything.

Not wasting time, he had Micky craft a person-sized container out of ice mana, filling it up with seawater. The construct looked rather crude, its surfaces uneven and its walls lopsided. Then again, the fact that the near-cylindrical structure didn’t have any holes was already pretty impressive, given that it had been crafted by an oversized bird without hands or fingers.

Percy took a moment to casually carve a few concealment runes and structural integrity enchantments on it – just cause. The former might make it a little harder to spot from afar, while the latter were mostly there to prevent it from collapsing on itself. Realistically speaking, none of this would matter much if a hostile Blue flew nearby, but it was a cheap investment anyway.

‘I’ve got over three thousand Yellow potions left, and a few hundred Greens. Good enough,’ Percy thought, storing his Cloak into his spatial seal – so that it wouldn’t mess with the ritual in any way – and jumping into the cold water.

It might have been more prudent to compress the rest of the Yellow potions before starting, but he figured he’d be okay. The Green potions should last him a few hours if he kept chugging them down, while the Yellow ones wouldn’t run out before the end of the ritual.

Even if Percy was right about this being more dangerous to a human, soaking in the bath for a few hours should allow him to acquire some preliminary resistance to the cold and toxins, easing the strain on his body greatly. If not, then there wouldn’t be any point in continuing anyway, because it would mean that the inheritance was entirely useless on him and all of his efforts on Thess’kala had been for nothing.

‘If you end up turning into a snake, can I stay in Micky’s body indefinitely?’ the clone asked, mostly to lighten up the mood.

‘If that happens, I might start looking for a way to join you,’ Percy joked back.

Then, he pulled out the first set of vials from his seal, pinching the main ingredient’s cork with his thumb. Only once he leaned back on the frigid wall of the crystalline container, ensuring that he was sitting in a secure position – submerged up to his chin, with little chance of falling over and drowning – did he dare to empty the vials into the seawater.

As soon as the first foreign sensation seeped into his skin, Percy felt immensely grateful for his paranoia. This was already looking like it was going to be far more unpleasant for him than it had been for Kassorith…