Chapter 842 – Remior’s golden century – Life Institute (Patreon)

“It’s called the Life Institute – not a beauty clinic,” Archibald insisted. “You should know, considering that creating the organization was your idea.”

“Sure, but aren’t cosmetic surgeries your most popular services?” Percy cheekily asked, eliciting a round of smiles and chuckles from his friends and relatives.

Archibald had invited everyone to stay for dinner after fixing Owain’s fist – or rather… after examining his grandson’s hand and confirming what Elaine had been telling her brother all evening.

The family was dining at the base of the second-generation sapling, in a fenced-off space between two giant roots. There were no windows or ceiling, since the soft glow of the magical wood provided more than enough illumination, and the tree’s vast canopy shielded its roots from the rain.

Percy had admittedly stolen the idea of crafting his grandfather’s furniture using the sapling’s broken branches from Ishkuria. It made sense, since the material was more durable than any mundane wood and helped with the comprehension of life concepts almost as much as the tree itself. Nesha’s Woodcarving trait had proven surprisingly convenient for the job, even though the planks resembled sheets of jade more than anything organic.

The omnipresent light and harmonious song of the forest made Percy feel like he was having a picnic in the middle of the day rather than a late dinner.

“You know damn well that healing and cosmetic operations are just the services available to the general public. Most of our time is spent researching mutations,” Archibald reminded him with a snort. “Besides, what do you think our most requested operation is? It’s removing people’s red teeth and fingernails!”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, actually,” Elaine chimed in, sounding slightly annoyed with her grandfather. “We can’t keep funding so many elective procedures. You’ll have to either complete the serum, cover the cost of the operations out of the Institute’s budget, or ask people to start paying for the treatment.”

Percy could use the Mimicry trait to prevent the ruby powder from bonding to his hosts’ teeth and nails if they consumed it while they were being possessed, but he didn’t have the time to give everyone a second free possession.

Children received the Moirais’ Decree not long after awakening their first core, while the Ruby Bones mutation was an optional reward that only a fraction of the population claimed when they were much older. Percy could tweak the mutation’s bonding mechanism if the same people claimed a spectral trait, but they would still need to get their teeth removed and regrown by a healer.

Archibald’s team had figured out how to manually unbind the powder from unwanted body parts without Percy’s help, yet it still involved removing and regrowing the patient’s teeth. They’d also been working on a serum that could be administered along with the powder to prevent the hassle entirely, though it still hadn’t been approved by the regulatory agencies.

Archibald sighed. “I wish we could just give everyone the Twin Heartbeat Physique and stop tinkering with a weaker mutation.”

Percy, who was sitting next to his grandfather, patted the man’s shoulder consolingly. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. The people of the Ancestral Lineage Sect have possessed their bloodline for a very long time, and still haven’t managed to bypass the rituals. We’re not going to succeed overnight without any samples.”

Although he enjoyed teasing his grandfather, Percy had been the one who had asked Archibald to create and manage the Life Institute, with its primary goal being to share Percy’s powerful lineage with the rest of humanity.

It would be very difficult for anyone without Percy’s skillset to retrace the dangerous steps he had taken to acquire and combine his mutations, but others might not need to copy his exact method. Percy and his grandfather had hypothesized that the former’s blood could be used as a secondary ingredient to catalyse the perfected transformation, skipping all the experimentation and discarded physical traits.

The problem was that they would still need to use a vial of Greater Thess’kalan Heartblood as the main ingredient of the ritual, even if they were right. It was a reagent produced by the strange bloodline that allowed the demigods of the Ancestral Lineage Sect to preserve and refine their lineage over countless generations, while the secondary ingredients merely guided the reaction.

Percy obviously lacked the bloodline, so his blood couldn’t possibly induce the ritual by itself. Even if his children were lucky enough to inherit a watered-down version of his physique, it would decline with every passing generation before being lost entirely.

“Speaking of which, I’ve brought you more research material from Thess’kala and a bunch of other places,” Percy said, stretching his arm behind his chair and depositing a stack of papers, books, and enchanted slabs on the dirt. “I’ll send you a virtual copy as well. I don’t know how much any of this will help, but don’t beat yourself up if it takes a while to make progress.”

Percy had located Thess’kala during his cosmic survey – along with many of the Void Hand’s weaker member-factions – so he could return to Kassorith’s home planet at will.

Stealing more vials of Heartblood from the sect shouldn’t be too difficult, though Percy didn’t want to do that. The resource was extremely precious, as every single dose required a demigod’s sacrifice. The members of the sect had painstakingly refined their lineage over a very long time, and typically reserved the Heartblood for their disciples and descendants.

The few sets of ritual ingredients that had been donated to the regional tournament had been a rare exception, and Percy would feel bad taking even more doses of the valuable reagents without permission. While his interactions with Kassorith and Syrreneth hadn’t been particularly pleasant, he didn’t want to let a couple of bad apples affect how he treated an entire race of people.

Besides, even if he were to confirm his theory, relying on a resource as scarce as the Heartblood would prevent him from spreading his physique to the rest of Remior.

Consequently, he had limited himself to “borrowing” research material from Thess’kala and other civilizations that were studying mutations for sapients. He knew that it would probably be a very long time before Archibald’s department produced any tangible results, but Percy had faith in his grandfather and the advantages that he had given to their people.

Thanks to the numerous alchemical principles and extremely potent runecrafting language Percy had collected from various places, Remior’s Alchemy and Magiscript Departments were relatively advanced. Archibald could ask Orin or Nesha for help, on top of having access to lots of skilled subordinates.

House Avalon had always possessed a respectable number of life affinity users, but many powerful mages from across the continent had also flocked to the Camelot province to join the Life Institute after the war. The fact that it was largely operated by Percy’s family had played an important role, but most of the newcomers had also wanted to practice their magic under the influence of the second-generation sapling, where they could refill their cores and improve their spells much faster than normal, and contribute their talents to the betterment of their world.

Other noble families had shrunk or even disappeared entirely over the past century, since their members had seen no point in restricting themselves to their former territories or holding on to their waning authority when there were countless new opportunities sprouting all over the continent.

House Avalon was among the few Houses that had grown instead. Some of its members had left, but almost everyone with the Clone bloodline had remained in the Camelot province, and many outsiders had sought to marry into the family to tie themselves to Percy in whatever way they could.

The family’s mansion had survived the war, since Machaon’s army had apparently not seen any point in destroying the abandoned building. Percy and Nesha had helped his relatives renovate and upgrade the mansion numerous times over the years. They’d been more conservative with the changes than they had been with their own home in Bogside City, since they wanted to preserve the familiar property that Percy’s relatives had occupied for centuries. Still, they’d done their best to improve everyone’s quality of life as much as possible.

Despite their upgraded home, many members of Percy’s family preferred to live and work next to the second-generation sapling in the nearby Whistling Woods, with Archibald being chief among them.

Outside of his research, Archibald had encouraged relatives with the Clone bloodline to procreate, in the hopes of reproducing Percy’s strain or developing new bloodlines.

Percy’s slightly older cousin, Tristan, had married Floria of House Talos – the daughter of patriarch Fyn – and had a son with the Giant Clone bloodline.

Giant Clone could be considered a direct upgrade of Gigantification, as it allowed its user to enlarge both their own body and that of a flesh puppet. Much like the original strain, the user could double their height at Red or grow up to eight times taller at White, which was a much more modest size increase than what beasts experienced with their promotions.

Still, retaining that ability while also granting it to a clone was nothing to scoff at. Just the fact that the new strain had come bundled with the life affinity had been reason enough for Fyn to celebrate.

On the flip side, Giant Clone was arguably a step down from the original Clone bloodline, as the number of flesh puppets its owner could produce didn’t seem to scale with their grade at all. Fyn’s grandson would be stuck with a single minion until the day he died, and everyone had agreed that commanding an army of hundreds of regular-sized clones was generally more useful.

Even so, the allied patriarch had been beyond happy to mix his bloodline with the Avalons’, and Archibald had agreed to let the boy inherit Floria’s surname, to thank House Talos for their loyalty during the war.

***

It was way past midnight when the small group of Avalons and friends decided to call it a night. Percy had honestly enjoyed the evening a lot more than he had expected, yet all good things had to end at some point.

Percy didn’t need to sleep, but the others sadly did. He could have offered to briefly possess each of them to refresh their minds with the Insomnia trait, but that would just cause them to feel tired at an inconvenient time the following day, and they all had busy schedules. Archibald and Elaine’s parents lived nearby, but Elaine and her brother would have to borrow Bogside City’s teleportation platform to return to their respective cities.

Just as the group were saying their farewells and preparing to scatter, a figure slowly descended from the sapling’s canopy. The powerful mage briefly acknowledged them with a slight nod as he landed a few steps away from Archibald, but spared them little attention beyond that. He walked to a preservation cabinet fashioned out of jade wood and grabbed a piece of bread.

Percy’s relatives watched the man somewhat awkwardly. His abrupt entrance hadn’t surprised them, because everyone knew that the powerful mage spent every waking moment meditating atop the magical tree. His aloof behaviour wasn’t exactly new either, as he had remained just as distant towards them for decades.

Still, Percy had yet to grow used to how closely the man resembled Archibald. He had the same shaved scalp reflecting the sapling’s gentle light, the same stern features as Percy’s grandfather, and even the same dark eyebrows and grey irises that many of their relatives shared.

When they’d first met, Percy had mistaken him for one of his grandfather’s clones – at least until he noticed the White core in the man’s sternum and the lack of a second core in his abdomen. A century later, the man had already become a two-cored demigod thanks to Percy’s help.

He was a Green-born from the Divine Order.

He was also Arthur – Archibald’s first-born son, and Percy’s strongest uncle.