Chapter 686: – Phoebe’s Decree

The Lone Wanderer

Every past upgrade of Phoebe’s Decree had brought about significant changes, allowing Percy’s Status to track new types of abilities or handle notifications in novel ways. He had expected nothing less from its latest evolution, though he had still underestimated the sheer extent of this overhaul.

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The Lone Wanderer

Aspects [2/4]:

• [Percival]
• [Mictlantecuhtli]

Mana cores [4/6]:

• [Mana core 1P – Green – Soul]
• [Mana core 2P – Yellow – Pure]
• [Mana core 1M – Green – Beast]
• [Mana core 2M – Yellow – Ice]

Domain:

• [Dead Winter – Empowered]

Bloodlines [1/2]:

• [Clone] – Create a copy of yourself. Effect varies by affinity.

Blessing [1/4]:

• [Blessing of Permanence] –Enhance the durability of your soul.

Mutations:

• [Saint’s Eye] –Draws from the cumulative knowledge listed in the Status to enhance one’s senses, 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.
• [Ruby Bones] – Reinforces one’s bones.
• [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.

• [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.
• [Mimicry] – Boosts one’s awareness of their physical appearance, as well as their ability to maintain or modify it.

Mindsets [<1%]:

• [Ludwick’s Compass] – Set mental checkpoints anywhere in the world. Instinctively track their location as you move away.
• [Shimmering Constellations] – Group your senses and memories into separate identities. This artificial segregation can be freely bypassed.

Spells:

• [Spectral Art: Parasitic Connection – Refined]
• [Hybrid Art: Chameleon’s Skin – Refined]
• [Spectral Art: Cauldron of a Myriad Screams – Masterful]
• [Spectral Art: Adaptive Arsenal – Masterful]
• [Spectral Art: Cradle of the Savage Gods – Masterful]
• [Wild Art: Sage’s Pond – 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.
• [Consolidation] – Infuse multiple similar ingredients into a concoction while eliminating the redundant alchemic steps.

Mental-type Decrees [4/5]:

• [Phoebe’s Decree – Reserved] – Grants access to your Status. If the mental-type limit is exceeded, an attempt will be made to consolidate existing and new Decrees such that they occupy fewer slots. Additional functionality will be added in the future. This Decree cannot be discarded.
• [Ea’s Decree – Ea’s Gift] – Grants the Saint’s Eye. This Decree can be discarded at will.
• [Obatala’s Decree – Obatala’s Approval] – Allows you to effortlessly hold and deploy your domain in its strongest state. This Decree can be discarded at will.
• [Ningirima’s Decree – Ningirima’s Mercy] – Grants resistance to demonic infestations. This Decree can be discarded at will.

Active-type Decrees [2/3]:

• [Metatron’s Decree] – Open a one-way portal to the Vault of Magic at will. This Decree can be discarded at will.
• [Kerfyl’s Decree] – Establish a spectral contract between two willing parties. Infringing upon its terms will result in the destruction of one’s soul. This Decree can be discarded at will.

Core-type Decrees [2/2]:

• [Moirais’ Decree] – Grants the seed of a second mana core to your aspects, familiars, clones, and hosts. Life and/or mind mana may be required to germinate the seed. The acquired affinity cannot be controlled.
• [Void Decree] – Can be activated to grant a third mana core to any of your aspects. Seventy-three mana cores and eighty percent of the corresponding aspect’s remaining lifespan will be consumed. The acquired affinity will be restricted to the consumed elements.

Bloodline-type Decrees:

• [Iapetus’ Decree] – Grants a bloodline.

Free-type Decrees:

• [Penitent’s Decree] – Allows one to shed small pieces of their soul to infuse into their bloodstream, producing spiritual blood.

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There was a lot to unpack, and Percy wasn’t sure where to begin. Deciding to ignore the new sections for now, he focused on the way some of the old information was presented.

Most notably, his Status had added numbers in many section headings, in a clear attempt to quantify Percy’s capacity in the corresponding categories. He would use the word “attempt” to describe what Phoebe’s Decree had done, because he had no idea how absolute these limits were.

Did it say that he and Micky currently possessed “four out of six cores” because it was biologically impossible for them to acquire more than three each? Or was this simply the maximum number that their Status knew that they could obtain with their current means?

‘Judging from the fact that it says “one out of four blessings” even though we know we can get more than four cores, I’m guessing that the limits aren’t set in stone,’ Micky – who was also studying the new information alongside him – said.

Percy nodded to indicate his agreement. As far as he could tell, the listed caps merely suggested the next major barrier in each category that would make it difficult to keep growing.

Acquiring more aspects should give the Lone Wanderer more cores, and promoting Percy’s grade would raise the number of cords – and thus clones and aspects – that he could produce.

Of course, some limits seemed much harder than others – if not downright impossible – to overcome. For instance, Percy’s Status had created a brand-new core-type Decree category, seemingly for the express purpose of telling him that he had just hit some kind of upper cap. As for how solid that one was… he doubted that anyone in the universe would be able to tell him.

‘I guess that free-type Decrees are only classified as such until somebody discovers some limitation,’ he reasoned.

Perhaps, the first mental- and bloodline-type Decrees in existence had also been considered free-type Decrees, until more titans started casting and trying to stack them together. After making a mess of their mortals, they had probably realized the need to establish the corresponding categories and warn against acquiring more than what was safe.

Deciding to focus on his own situation rather than the conventions of the peak factions, Percy wasn’t sure that he ever wanted to fill up the aspect section completely. It appeared to be limited by his current number of cords, and the assumption that each new aspect would permanently consume two of them.

However, turning all of his cords into aspects would be ill-advised, as it would prevent him from roaming the cosmos or doing other interesting things with his clones. He figured that he would always want to keep a few slots free. The bloodline section was also likely destined to remain incomplete. The extra space was there to indicate that Micky didn’t have one. Sadly, Percy had never heard of a way for a person to acquire a bloodline after being born.

It was worth noting that the new information was much more meaningful than a mere stylistic preference.

Percy was elated to see that his Status had correctly quantified his current capacity for spectral traits, as this would help him a lot in the future. While he wasn’t able to absorb another fiend just yet, he hoped that Phoebe’s Decree would let him know whether or not his capacity increased the next time he acquired an aspect, saving him a trip to the Vault.

The same applied to his mindsets.

Percy was momentarily surprised that they were handled differently from everything else, though it made sense given what he knew about them. Rather than a fixed number of mindsets, each person had a limited mental capacity.

Each mindset would occupy a different fraction of that space, depending on what it did. Much like every expert had told him and Micky, their current mindsets were among the cheapest ones, barely consuming any of their capacity.

‘All the more reason to get some useful mindsets soon,’ the Huehuan reminded him.

‘It’s on our long to-do list as always,’ Percy replied with a shrug. ‘You know I can’t promise more than that.’

It wasn’t strange that the spell, domain, and alchemic principles sections were unlimited, though Percy hadn’t expected his Status to give him a free pass to stack as many mutations onto his body as he wanted.

Granted, he had already confirmed that a creature could sustain upwards of eight distinct mutations without issue, but he had also learned that mutations could start merging once their effects overlapped, so he had thought that they would occupy some sort of limited, shared space.

Maybe the situation was simply too complicated for his Status to slap a number on it, though it didn’t necessarily mean that no limit existed whatsoever.

The biggest change in the page was arguably the complete overhaul in the way it organized Percy’s Decrees. Evidently, he had acquired enough of them and learned enough about them for his Status to start sorting them by type.

‘There goes our plan to assimilate an infinite number of mental-type Decrees,’ Micky pointed out with a spectral groan. ‘What a bummer.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Percy corrected his friend. ‘If you look closely, it says that it will try to fit more than five.’

He had no idea how likely his Status was to succeed in that situation, nor whether all the involved Decrees would survive the process intact, but he guessed that Phoebe’s Decree would still upgrade itself even if it couldn’t retain the auxiliary abilities.

Even if he were to discard Ea’s Gift, Obatala’s Approval, and Ningirima’s Mercy right this instant, Percy didn’t think that his Status would revert back to its original version. He would merely lose the ability to consolidate and expand his senses, lock his domain in its strongest state, or resist the corruption – none of which he would ever even consider ditching.

‘Maybe if it consumes enough Decrees, its limit for auxiliary abilities will also go up, or it’ll get better at merging them,’ he speculated, albeit without any way of testing his hypothesis in the short-term.

On the topic of discarding things, Percy was shocked to learn that he could get rid of almost any of his mental- and active-type Decrees. This was something that had previously been exclusive to Kerfyl’s.

‘I suppose that my Status has taught itself how to extend that feature to the rest,’ Percy reasoned with a grin, deciding to give Phoebe a huge bear hug the next time he caught her stalking him.

For a second, he wondered whether this was the mysterious feature that the titaness had promised him, though the entry in his Status made it clear that Phoebe’s project was something else entirely, and that it was still ongoing. It had even gone as far as to reserve a slot for that purpose.

It was admittedly a bit cheeky of her Decree to make itself the only mental- or active- type that couldn’t be removed, though Percy would be a fool to complain about that after all the additional slots it had granted him, as well as the flexibility in utilizing them.

Another thing that stood out was how his bloodline-type list didn’t have a fixed capacity. The limit probably had more to do with how much risk a person was willing to stomach by stacking too many of these dangerous Decrees together than any innate restriction of the divine spells themselves.

Funnily enough, there was only one entry left in the free-type section after everything else got moved: the Penitent’s Decree. Percy didn’t expect that one to ever get its own list, mostly because he struggled to imagine what such a category would be called or what else might go inside it.

The upgraded Status had also confirmed that Nephthys would be able to use the Void Decree if she ever became an aspect – something that Percy was starting to look forward to.

‘What do you think has changed about our mutation?’ Micky asked. ‘The description is identical.’

Percy smiled. ‘Let’s find out.’