Chapter 822 – A choice made (Patreon)

Columns of wasps shot toward the enemy patriarchs from every direction, trying to cut off their escape routes. Unfortunately, the White-cored mages were agile enough to slip through gaps in the formation or powerful enough to blast a path through the bugs and retreat toward the human forces on the ground.

While each patriarch possessed strength on par with that of a demigod, they would tire long before they could put a dent in the giant swarm by themselves, so they understood the importance of relying on their army. However, merely fleeing from the hurried encirclement hadn’t been difficult.

Clicking his tongue, Percy worked alongside Nephthys – who was hiding somewhere in the depths of the formation alongside her proxies – to direct the swarm above the enemy army and release a rain of acid from their stingers. He felt his familiar falter as the airborne platoons briefly resembled the dark clouds that had destroyed her planet. Memories of black rain and a drowned world pulsed through their connection, but the reincarnated deity’s hesitation didn’t last.

The nobles were the aggressors in this battle, while Percy and his wasps were only defending themselves – however viciously.

Purple liquid pooled across the battlefield, eating into the dirt as hissing plumes of acrid vapour rose upwards wherever the corrosive droplets landed. The enemy mages shielded their bodies with mana or willpower, but not everyone reacted quickly enough, and the Commanders’ acid was too thick and potent for the unlucky Greens standing beneath it to block.

Screams filled the battlefield as hundreds of mages melted into pulp, causing the survivors’ faces to twist with shock. Percy registered every cry before forcing himself to continue issuing orders.

The Great Houses had obviously marched on the Fungal Spire expecting some resistance from the wasps, but they clearly hadn’t imagined the bugs attacking in such a coordinated manner.

Unfortunately for them, Percy was only getting started.

Having emptied his minions’ acid glands, he willed the creatures to dive at his enemies with their own bodies. The amorphous clouds split into over a thousand black- and ruby-coloured columns and plummeted toward the nobles like a chitinous meteor shower.

The humans seemed to have finally regained their composure, as the strongest among them had the presence of mind to take to the air. Those who couldn’t fly clear of the wasps’ paths sought out rare patches of solid ground and banded together to defend them as best as they could.

The entire mountain shook as rivers of magical creatures splashed against the ground, lodging their stingers into mana, dirt, and flesh.

Thousands of mages and tens of thousands of insects died from the initial clash, after which the entire battlefield devolved into complete chaos.

Percy felt his attention being pulled in countless directions as wasps and humans began fighting in just as many isolated conflicts. Despite his extensive training with Nephthys, he couldn’t control the actions of every single bug, but he could at least order various groups to retreat from losing battles, capitalize on the fights they were winning, or switch to more fitting opponents.

All one hundred of Micky’s sentries were scattered across the battlefield, hidden in the carapaces of Nephthys’ proxies and using their sensory domains to gather information from across the entire region and guide Percy’s next moves.

Vast volumes of data entered his mind every single second. The collective cognitive power of his mental pockets – almost equal to that of a thousand people – processed the information into instructions, which were fed into the indigo constellations to be turned into actions.

The rigorous system that Percy and his friends had developed over the past decade wasn’t perfect, but it was certainly a colossal improvement over letting the wasps fight by themselves.

Battles unfolded very differently across grades.

The Blue and Violet humans were far nimbler and outnumbered by narrower margins, so they had an easier time evading and harassing the Starry Commanders from afar. However, their spells also struggled to penetrate their targets’ enormous exoskeletons, allowing the stronger wasps to keep chasing the humans as their weaker cousins merely annoyed and inhibited the nobles.

The situation was reversed on the ground.

The land-bound Green mages had a tougher time dodging or hitting the smaller wasps. The Starry Soldiers and Knights outnumbered the weaker humans forty and one hundred-something to one, leaving them nowhere to run. That said, the nobles had an easier time clipping the wings of the smaller bugs and knocking them out of the sky with their spells.

With every passing second, over a dozen humans were impaled by stingers of various sizes or were torn in half by the creatures’ mandibles, yet several times as many wasps splattered against the dirt or splashed into the corrosive marsh of their own creation, never to emerge again.

Percy’s swarm was far larger than Machaon’s army, but the creatures were still at a severe disadvantage against the nobles.

The humans all wielded the complete Dance, while the wasps could only use Circulation with their first cores. The Starry Commanders, which were more intelligent and had been granted the Moirais’ Decree decades earlier, could use the Dance with their second cores, but those cores were several grades weaker than the ones in their thoraces and not supported by the right mutations for efficient conversion. Most Starry Knights couldn’t even use Circulation with their new cores yet, while the Soldiers didn’t possess any additional cores in the first place.

The swarm still managed to come out ahead at the lower levels.

About half an hour after the start of the battle, a quarter of the humans were dead while only a fifth of the wasps had joined them. On the surface, it looked like Percy would eventually win the war if he could stomach the heavy losses on both sides. At the very least, he wouldn’t have to worry about running out of dream mana or the hive exhausting its nectar reserves.

Upon closer inspection, things were far gloomier.

Only fifty Violets and none of the White-cored patriarchs had fallen, which was less than five percent of the nobles’ strongest combatants, since the swarm had nothing but numbers to throw at them. Even if Percy asked his human allies to join the battle, they would only be able to occupy another fifty Violets – a hundred at most – while at least half of the enemy patriarchs were practically guaranteed to outlast the swarm.

‘This won’t do…’ Percy thought with a sigh. ‘Even if we somehow win, the casualties will be too great at this rate.’

While his enemies were the ones who had invaded, he would rather not kill more people than he had to, feeling no triumph in the death of random Green mages that had simply been misled by their foolish elders.

Percy would have much preferred to decapitate the enemy army and force the rest to surrender early on in the conflict. He had actually spent most of the battle directing the brunt of his power toward the Violets and Whites, which only made his pitiful results even more discouraging.

The wasps’ deaths were more problematic than those of the misguided nobles.

Twenty percent fewer bugs meant twenty percent less nectar for decades to come, and that long-lasting deficiency would only grow as the war progressed. Whichever royal wasp ended up in charge of the hive could rebuild the population given enough time, but Remior would experience severe elixir shortages until then.

The Great Houses seemed more than willing to let commoners or the weakest members of their families suffer the consequences if it allowed them to reclaim the Fungal Spire.

Percy guessed that Phoebe was watching the battle and would intervene if he were about to die or the swarm was damaged beyond a certain threshold, but he had no idea how much the titaness was willing to sacrifice in order to catalyse his growth.

There was only one way to guarantee victory while minimizing the losses on both sides. While Percy and Nephthys had developed specialized mindsets and spent hundreds of hours learning how to cooperate as effectively as they could, there were still certain flaws in their spell that they had never managed to patch.

The Ruby Queen didn’t possess the Command trait, nor the full extent of Percy’s mental resources. Meanwhile, Percy wasn’t nearly as skilled with the mind affinity as a former deity of that element, nor as deeply connected to her mutations, Amenthei subjects, and wasp soldiers.

The good news was that he knew exactly how to fix all of that.

Sending one of his mental pockets into his mindscape, he found himself floating alongside the colourful constellations that represented his various mindsets. The battle remained present in the rest of his consciousness – every scream and sudden absence in the swarm reminding him that he couldn’t linger.

Micky appeared right next to him in his Huehuan form and was soon joined by a third projection located a few hundred metres ahead, blurred and indistinct. At first, the newcomer looked like a wasp that was nearly seventy metres long from the tips of her ten-pronged crown to her stinger, the indigo glow of her magical jewel digging into the rest of her ruby carapace through a series of swirling roots.

However, she only remained in that form for a couple of seconds before shrinking and assuming an entirely different shape.

In her Amenthei body, Nephthys was slightly taller and considerably more slender than Percy. Her features were almost human, though her smooth, egg-shaped head was slightly too large, its high forehead occupying nearly a third of her face. A thin, winding crown traced her brow, supporting the translucent veil that softened the deep-red eyes beneath it. Her flawless skin was unusually pale, contrasting sharply with the vibrant red of her flowing gown. Four long digits extended from each delicate hand, while golden sandals peeked out beneath the swaying hem, matching the intricate patterns on her dress.

Even as she floated closer to Percy and Micky, the reincarnated goddess remained blurry and transparent, as did the stars of the nascent constellation that was trying to appear inside the mindscape.

When she reached Percy and his fellow aspect, she extended her left hand in invitation.

Percy tried to press his own right palm against his familiar’s, though he found himself blocked by a thin, invisible wall – the final layer preventing their souls from melding.

He knew that he could easily pierce it if he wanted. In fact, he’d known deep down that he had been able to do so for some time. While he and Micky had only fused by accident following the latter’s near-death at Deimos’ hands, Percy understood his bloodline far better now. The twin cords enriched by Dream Harmony that linked him to his familiar were far superior to the connections he had once shared with the Huehuan. Percy could allow his clone to merge with Nephthys whenever he wanted, before letting his spells take care of the rest.

The only thing holding him back had been himself. There would be no going back if he did this, so he had to be sure that he and his friends wanted it.

He glanced at Micky, who nodded back with a smile tugging at the corners of his beak. Nephthys was smiling too, though she didn’t pressure him. She waited patiently for him to make up his mind.

Percy examined the reincarnated deity carefully, taking in her graceful form that he hadn’t seen in a while, and making note of the resolute glint within her eyes.

Nephthys… was a good person.

It felt like a silly and even obvious little fact to acknowledge after all this time, but she had long proven herself a responsible leader, a humble deity, a caring mother, a patient teacher, and one of the kindest souls Percy had ever encountered.

She’d sacrificed everything to protect her people and their legacy. Even after finding herself in a new body on a foreign planet, she’d worked tirelessly to contribute to her new home and assist Percy however she could. The only thing she’d ever asked of him had been to give her subjects hope. Even that reasonable request was something she’d allowed Percy to fulfill on his own terms.

“Are you sure?” he asked her. “We can look for another way to win this war, and to separate you from me. You’ve already attained divinity once, so you can certainly do it again even without my help.”

A tinge of melancholy seeped into the goddess’ smile. “The Concept realm is overrated, Percy. Even with that power at my fingertips, I was too weak to save my people… or even myself. Let’s aim higher this time. Let’s do it together.”

He nodded, no longer wavering. If Nephthys didn’t deserve a spot in this starry sky, nobody did.

Her projection grew clearer as the ruby-coloured constellation of a giant wasp appeared next to the grey human and pale crow. Percy felt her warmth finally penetrate the rapidly thinning film that barely prevented their hands from touching.

Until it didn’t.