Archibald strolled leisurely through the vast plain, tall blades of grass gently brushing against his knees. Some moisture from last night’s drizzle seeped through his clothes, though he wasn’t very bothered by it. Be it the soft embrace of nature or the fresh morning breeze, he found them more than welcome after having spent the past few years rotting in a dark cell.

  Behind him, an army of men that sported identical features to his own followed silently. Even after centuries of practice with his bloodline, controlling so many clones at once could still put a noticeable – albeit manageable – strain on his mind during a battle or some other complex task, but that didn’t apply to something as simple as having them march in unison, allowing him to focus on other things.

  A series of orderly lines branched out of his abdomen, glowing with a cyan light across his skin. With every breath he took, more pure mana rushed into his channels, trying to fill his muscles up with strength. Unfortunately, his pathways were already saturated, so the resource ended up spilling out of his pores.

  Archibald was still not used to how much weaker his second affinity was. It had been centuries since he’d last wielded Blue mana – let alone Yellow – so a resource twenty-seven times less potent than the one stored inside his first core felt pitifully weak. This gave him the illusion that he could push more inside his body than his pathways could realistically contain – a bad habit that he was still trying to grow out of.

  Even so, he couldn’t complain. His next advancement had originally been thousands of years away, yet his grandson had given him several more promotions to look forward to before then. The first should occur a couple of years from now at the latest – depending on how quickly Percy could arrange for House Avalon to receive Aurora Dew from the Guild.

  Shaking away the distracting thoughts, he concentrated on the elongated whirlpools extending outwards from his pores, dancing like elegant ribbons as they helped him draw ambient mana from his surroundings.

  Percy’s clone had previously demonstrated the complete Dance while possessing him, so Archibald had had a much easier time working on the Masterful spell. Still, he made a mistake every now and then, prompting the grey crow perched on his shoulder to correct him.

  “Try to keep the ribbons scattered evenly across your body. That way, you can draw the most ambient mana with the fewest whirlpools. Also, make sure they’re all the same size. You need to make the ones on your legs spin faster so that they grow as long as the rest.”

  The corner of Archibald’s lips twitched at the bizarre scene of his grandson advising him from his comfy seat. He wasn’t even sure which part he found the weirdest – that the boy had already grown up into a figure as imposing as the patriarch of a noble House? That he had somehow turned into an entity with multiple bodies? Or that Percy felt at ease having his dignified grandfather carry him home like this?

  Well… the last one couldn’t be helped. The elemental wasn’t that heavy in his current form, nor did his cold touch bother Archibald too much. If it allowed Percy to focus on that Internal Magiscript spell of his, he was more than happy to do his part.

  Fighting hard to suppress a smile, Archibald focused on applying his grandson’s tips to his boosting art. The sooner he registered the upgrade, the sooner he could start working on the life version – which would help their family a lot more in the short term.

  Thinking about all the things that Percy had done for their House already filled Archibald with pride.

  And guilt.

  ‘To think that I wouldn’t even give him elixirs for years…’

  Archibald knew why he’d made the choices that he had, but that didn’t make them sting any less. Had he known what he did now, he would have ignored the insignificant strain on their family’s finances, the opinions of their relatives, and any other meaningless concerns, supporting Percy wholeheartedly from the start. That way, his grandson could have reached Orange and tapped into his bloodline half a decade sooner.

  He sighed, knowing better than most people how pointless regrets were. Thankfully, things had turned out well in the end. There was no telling what would have happened had they followed a different path.

  Early in the afternoon, Archibald spotted River Glein in the distance, indicating that they had reached the Camelot province at last. He took a slight left turn, heading toward the side that used to belong to House Tantalus.

  “Hmm? Aren’t we going home first?” Percy asked, clearly noticing the detour.

  “We are,” Archibald said, not bothering to elaborate.

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  His grandson nodded, probably catching his implied meaning.

  The entire province had originally been their home, and they’d fought hard to recover their lands from their sadistic rivals, only for their neighbours to swoop in like vultures to steal it again the moment they sensed weakness.

  It was time to pay those opportunistic bastards a visit.

  Of the two towns in the eastern side of the province, Greyquarry town was the one that Percy had never been to. It was conveniently the one closest to the northern border too, so Archibald figured that they might as well start there.

  Nearing the small settlement, he saw scouts wearing House Yeepas’s – a medium-sized family from the Sentin province – colours running to the town to report his arrival.

  Archibald chuckled. He hadn’t expected his army of clones to go unnoticed – especially in broad daylight – but he didn’t really care. He and Percy were individually powerful enough to handle several Blues at once if they proved dumb enough to attack.

  Outside the town’s gate, he found a group of nobles waiting for him. They were led by a pair of Blues: a young-looking man with a crooked nose and sharp features and an elderly woman that resembled him slightly. They were dressed in elegant silken robes woven out of a midnight-blue fabric, the insignias sewn on the left side of their chests sporting a slightly lighter blue colour and depicting a bird of prey.

  Archibald recognized them, having interacted with the emissaries of the neighbouring family many times during his centuries-long tenure as the patriarch of House Avalon. The woman, Galida, was one of the oldest Orange-borns he’d ever met, having advised multiple leaders of her own family for over a thousand years in total. The man by her side was her talented nephew, Aronos. He was a Yellow-born who had caught up to her grade about a hundred and forty years ago.

  Behind them stood four Greens and thirteen Yellows that Archibald was less familiar with. It was honestly a rather sizeable force for such a small House to deploy to a single town, but he wasn’t very surprised. House Yeepas wasn’t the only one competing for a chunk of the Camelot province, so they couldn’t afford to show weakness to their rivals.

  Strictly speaking, if all the involved families cooperated, they could still overpower House Avalon, even with its recent gains. Thankfully, a direct conflict wasn’t the only thing that they had to consider. They were probably wary of retaliation from either him or his grandson – who could both definitely cause serious damage to a noble House on their own if they survived the war.

  More importantly, every noble on Remior had to be mindful of Percy’s current status as the undisputed lord of the Fungal Spire. It was naturally better to get in his good graces than risk pissing him off.

  “Lord Avalon,” Galida greeted with a deep bow, her subordinates following along. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  Archibald smiled faintly. The experienced woman had spoken in the most honeyed tone she could muster, but she’d still failed to hide the traces of bitterness bubbling up through the cracks in her expression.

  As for her subordinates, they had an even tougher time masking their thoughts. A wave of tension had rippled through the group upon his arrival, the nobles sweating profusely as they shifted uncomfortably in their spots.

  It wasn’t that strange that they would feel pressure when facing a potentially hostile Violet like Archibald, but he knew that it wasn’t him they were most concerned about in this case.

  The weaker mages tossed the crow on his shoulder uncertain glances, and he was sure that they must’ve scanned it with their Mana Senses too. While his grandson’s abilities weren’t fully understood across Remior yet, most nobles knew enough to recognize the significance of Archibald’s arrival with the bird – certainly the ones that had dealings with their family.

  “Thank you for taking such good care of our town in my absence. We’ll take it from here,” he replied with a nonchalant nod, ignoring their unease.

  Sighing, the woman gestured at her subordinates to step aside, opening a path for Archibald and his minions to enter the town. However, she didn’t leave immediately, instead opting to follow him inside by herself.

  He wasn’t worried that she was up to anything nefarious. If anything, she’d only placed herself in danger by walking between him and his army of clones. Even if she hadn’t realized the danger that the crow posed, she definitely knew that attempting to sneak attack Archibald would be ill-advised.

  “These are all the materials we’ve extracted from the mines and quarries in this area ever since we took over,” she hurriedly said, gesturing at countless minerals that had been neatly arranged into several piles as tall as hills in the town square. “This includes interest and even compensation for our unjustified aggression, sent by our patriarch,” she added, pointing at a couple of piles with materials that shouldn’t be available in the Camelot province.

  Archibald was dumbfounded.

  He’d expected that their rivals would offer up the stolen territory with minimal resistance – it was the only sensible outcome, after all – but he hadn’t predicted that they would do so in such a meek manner.

  Seemingly oblivious to his thoughts, Galida continued. “We haven’t coordinated with the other families, but from what we know, you can expect a similar reception everywhere else.”

  Collecting himself, Archibald nodded. Next, he listened to the woman give him a detailed overview of the resources harvested from the region in the past few years. Technically, House Avalon had much of this information documented since they used to own the whole province in the past, but a lot had changed in recent centuries, so he didn’t mind the refresher.

  Much like her subordinates, the noblewoman tossed the bird fleeting glances as she spoke, though she always averted her gaze just as quickly. Archibald even caught her swallowing hard at times, the poor Blue practically shaking in her boots. No matter what, she never so much as dared to even acknowledge Percy’s presence or speak to him directly, however.

  It wasn’t until after the mages of House Yeepas left that Percy spoke. “Well, that was weird. If they’re so scared of you, why the hell did they try to steal our land in the first place?”

  Archibald didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. “I don’t think it’s me they’re afraid of…”

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