Chapter 774 – Command (2)

Percy sighed. Evolving his newest spell twice more was going to take a lot of time. He could probably register Advanced Soul Control within a few years if he practiced near the Spectral Broodmother, but the step after that was guaranteed to take centuries at the earliest, even with multiple clones working under the myriapede’s influence.

Suffice to say, the benefits didn’t justify such an investment at the moment, and even if he were to talk himself into doing it, he would never manage to grant spectral traits to his allies in time to affect the trajectory of the war.

‘Giving everyone the Moirais’ Decree and the other abilities has been a huge pain,’ Percy thought. ‘I suppose I’ve already done enough for the alliance to stand a decent chance against Machaon and the other patriarchs without further tampering.’

‘You could try again once you register the Masterful version of the spell,’ Zoris suggested. ‘You’ll still have to comprehend the complete concept before you can integrate the affinity into your internal world, but it might not be necessary for turning spectral fiends into traits. That said, it’s probably unwise to place your hopes on such a remote possibility.’

Percy nodded. At least, he had confirmed that granting spectral traits to non-soul users was possible. In many ways, this discovery was as significant as his ability to pass the Moirais’ Decree to others.

While a second mana core was undoubtedly more valuable than a spectral trait, Percy’s people wouldn’t be the first in the universe to obtain additional mana cores. It would take hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years for Remior to grow as large and powerful as the Moirai or the Void Hand merely by imitating them.

The ability to combine random traits and mana types couldn’t be overstated, as there were over ten thousand possible combinations. Each could potentially open the door to an entirely new field of magic, and that was before adding unique bloodlines into the equation.

Considering the wide assortment of techniques that Percy had invented in the past few decades with only a handful of traits and roughly as many affinities, it was hard to imagine what else might be possible with enough time and millions of people working together.

Granted, the peak factions could also produce individuals with a spectral trait and a random affinity, but it was much harder for them, as the mage in question would also need a soul core. Those emerged at a rate of less than one in a thousand people. Despite the steep requirement, the Moirai had undoubtedly produced plenty of such individuals over countless millennia.

Percy would greatly accelerate his world’s development by eventually giving each of his people both a spectral trait and a pair of mana cores, allowing them to produce and explore all the possible combinations with only a fraction of the population. The only issue was that he would have to figure out a way to automate both processes at some point, lest he wasted his days working on each person individually.

In any case, there was no sense in worrying or daydreaming about the distant future.

Percy’s shocking discovery wasn’t very relevant in the short term. Funnily enough, it also had little to do with his new trait. While he had begun his latest round of experimentation with the goal of finding applications for Command, his ability to grant spectral traits to other people seemed to only depend on his bloodline and nascent conceptual manipulation.

‘It doesn’t look like there’s much we can accomplish with the fiends,’ Micky concluded. ‘Let’s explore the other facet of the trait. It should help with the war.’

Percy didn’t have to be told twice – or even once, for that matter. He was already on the same page as his friend.

Contacting his familiar, he asked her to accompany him out of the settlement and bring several wasps of various grades with her. He specifically requested over a dozen Drones, Workers, Soldiers, and Knights, as there were certain things that he needed to test, though he decided not to disturb the much busier and more valuable Blue bugs.

Percy and the small swarm flew outside the Guild’s walls, reaching his family’s camp in a couple of minutes. Not satisfied with just the Starry Wasps, he contacted the clone that he had placed inside his grandfather’s body, asking Archibald to send him a few human mages as well.

It had been months since the Spectral Broodmother had given Percy the Command trait, so both the clone and the main body had had a lot of time to consider possible applications and interesting experiments.

Over the following three days, Percy and his subordinates conducted test after test, methodically exploring the nature of his trait. He was obviously more careful with the humans, though he wasn’t above ordering the bugs to spar against one another under his supervision.

As early as when he had first possessed the Blue mantis on Melodia, Percy had learned that the Command trait allowed its users to consolidate their awareness of their subordinates into a series of glowing dots that would hover at the edge of their vision.

Through his experiments, Percy understood that the information contained within the dots was a lot more detailed than he had initially expected. Their locations were already useful enough, but that was merely the start.

The dots shone with different colours and varying intensities depending on the individuals they represented. Starry Knights and Green mages, for example, glowed in a green light by default, while Starry Soldiers and Yellow-cored humans appeared as yellow dots. There was obviously a strong correlation between their colour and grade, but the connection wasn’t absolute.

Percy quickly realized that the colour was more of a representation of his subordinates’ overall “competence”, and that it could easily change even for the same individuals if he reframed the way he looked at them.

If he wished to categorize them by fighting strength instead of their pure grade, people like Nesha, Elaine, or Nephthys – who were more than capable of fighting above their level – would change colour accordingly.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Interestingly, “competence” wasn’t limited to combat or raw power either.

Percy tried splitting his subordinates into two groups, taking control of one while handing the other to Micky, and having their people compete in various other contests – from running and flying, to cooking and singing.

When a subordinate was completely incapable of performing a certain task – such as when Percy asked the humans to secrete nectar like the wasps – their dots vanished entirely, indicating that they didn’t even exist in the corresponding “battlefield”.

For most non-magical tasks that the subordinates were technically capable of performing, their dots tended to take on hues between brown and orange. After enough tests, Percy concluded that brown indicated a task that one could theoretically participate but was otherwise completely incompetent in, red corresponded to the average person’s skill, and orange suggested that a subordinate was exceptionally gifted in a certain field.

Percy guessed that yellow or higher colours would require a supernatural level of skill or talent, which would usually be granted by something like a spectral trait or a specialized bloodline.

There weren’t many people on Remior who had absorbed a spectral fiend, but Percy was able to confirm his hypothesis by observing Micky, whose dot actually manifested in a deep blue colour when the topic of tailoring came up – likely thanks to the Weaving trait.

Percy was initially perplexed by that, though not necessarily because of the Huehuan’s impressive skill in handling fabrics. He simply struggled to understand why the Command trait was treating his friend as another “subordinate”, when Percy considered Micky as his “equal”.

That was when the Huehuan mentioned that he could also see a dot representing Percy, putting the latter’s doubts to rest. Apparently, the trait’s definition of a “subordinate” was far looser than they’d initially imagined.

After further experimentation, Percy realized that this was closely related to the other feature that differentiated the dots: their brightness.

While a dot’s colour represented the subordinate’s “competence”, its brightness appeared to indicate their overall level of “cooperation”, though this was a rather complicated metric that could be broken down further into other factors like “loyalty”, “willingness”, “communication”, and “comprehension”.

Figuring out the specifics took another two days, but Percy eventually felt like he understood the trait well enough.

As it turned out, any creature that was even remotely capable of following his orders – even if it was a random person who didn’t know Percy very well but could be convinced to work for him under payment, threat, or sheer persuasion – would appear in his vision as a faint dot. Those who were more loyal to him – or at least more likely to obey him, for whatever reason – would produce brighter dots.

The intensity of the dots was also affected by how easily he could convey his instructions to them.

In theory, he could force any Starry Wasp to do his bidding by going through his familiar, but that gave the creatures dimmer dots, precisely because he had to relay his instructions through a middlebug instead of transmitting them directly.

The Starry Knights actually produced slightly brighter dots than their weaker cousins, due to their higher intelligence. The elephant-sized bugs were capable of recognizing Percy after regular exposure and could even be convinced by the Ruby Princess to follow his commands directly via gestures.

Interestingly, the dots’ intensity could also change depending on the task, much like the colour. For example, if Percy even considered ordering the wasps to kill Nephthys, or his relatives to throw rotten tomatoes in Archibald’s face, the corresponding dots vanished entirely, indicating that his subordinates could never be coerced into performing those actions.

Of course, the Command trait wasn’t omniscient.

It merely allowed Percy to categorize and keep track of information that he was already aware of. If he wished to send a subordinate on a stealth mission without knowing that they possessed an invisibility bloodline, the dot would show a much lower “competence” level than it was supposed to.

Likewise, if he tried to yell out a command without knowing that its recipient was deaf, he might perceive a bright dot when it should have been completely invisible, as there was zero chance of his instruction being understood.

In both scenarios, the dots would correct themselves when Percy received more accurate information about his subordinates.

The most valuable aspect of the Command trait was that it was entirely automatic and subconscious. Percy never had to exert any effort to retain the information – the dots would simply adjust themselves to match his most up-to-date understanding and intentions about his subordinates.

As long as Percy’s subordinates remained within the range of his Sage’s Pond, there was never any danger of mixing them up. Even if he stopped following their precise movements for several hours, his mind would always keep track of their situation if it was fed with the right sensory inputs, allowing him to instantly recall their names, appearances, and skillsets.

He was even aware of the most effective way to convey his instructions at any given time and for any given task. For the wasps, that usually involved sending a concise message to Nephthys. For the humans, it was often better to split them up into smaller teams, assign them specific roles and even establish a proper chain of command before the start of an operation.

At some point, Percy even played around with the idea of a long reconnaissance mission that would involve hundreds of people working undercover for several years. He wasn’t really planning to send anyone on such a mission, but he wanted to see what feedback his trait would give him.

When he did that, the thought of inventing a coded language and spending several weeks teaching it to his subordinates came to mind. It was something that he might have come up with by himself, but he was quite shocked that his trait could help him arrive at such elaborate decisions on the spot.

Prompted by his curiosity, Percy proceeded to modify the parameters of this hypothetical mission in his head, studying how his instincts would change if he reduced the mission’s duration, the amount of preparation time that would be available, or the specific people that he would deploy.

About a week after he had first begun his experiments, Percy decided that he’d had enough. Thanking his subordinates for their assistance, he allowed them to return to their jobs. He even put in a good word with his grandfather for his relatives, allowing the patriarch to reward them for their service in whatever way he saw fit.

‘The trait is more impressive than I thought,’ Micky said once they were alone. ‘I admit that I didn’t have high expectations, but its scope is simply ridiculous.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Percy replied. ‘Don’t forget that this one came from an Elemental Source – not your average fiend.’

If nothing else, it would help them win the current war, though Percy was more excited about what it would mean for the future. He wasn’t very worried about the Great Houses, as he felt that he could probably defeat them even without the trait, but he wasn’t naïve enough to think that this would be the last war he would ever be involved in.

Percy intended to do everything in his power to keep Remior peaceful and prosperous after cleaning up its trash, but he knew that other factions were bound to attack at some point – hopefully later rather than sooner.

And he was going to be ready for them.

‘So, what’s next on our schedule?’ Micky asked. ‘The clone on Tenefyre is still hogging up all of my spiritual blood, so I could help you with alchemy if you want.’

‘Sounds good,’ Percy said with a nod.

Before his clone’s return from Melodia, he’d made a lot of progress with the demi-human ingredients and the upcoming ritual. In fact, he was only a couple of steps away from his ambitious attempt to upgrade his physique.

Speaking of that, the latest bundle of memories might have answered some of their doubts about the weird demi-human that had guided them in the canyon.