Chapter 3063: Klea’s Plan

The dark avatar stayed behind for the first month, despite everything he had argued for.

Klea refused to change her decision. She had a good reason—she needed the Khaos Legion focused on other matters first.

More shadow clones than usual moved through Vorn Hollow that month, quiet and patient, gathering information from the darkness. The dark avatar assumed, reasonably enough, that Klea was preparing some kind of raid. Perhaps she was planning a direct move against Kieran, or something even more ambitious.

Instead, the orders that came back had nothing to do with the Drow.

Every shadow was instructed to investigate the Clans—the families that actually lived and held power throughout that sector.

Klea wanted to know everything: their family relations, alliances, rivalries, and internal conflicts, as well as which clans stood at the top and which struggled at the bottom. More importantly, she wanted to understand what ’gu parasites’ each clan specialized in, the unique strengths, and any weaknesses or tensions between them that could potentially be exploited.

The dark avatar quietly handled the intelligence gathering from a distance, while Klea pursued an entirely different line of investigation.

She started with the Cosmic Library, spending hours searching through scattered records concerning Oculus and the bloodlines of the Clans’ ’gu parasites’.

Once she had gathered enough, she made an unexpected trip.

The Magus Academy.

She didn’t head toward the Twin Halls, where Shinta currently taught.

Instead, she went somewhere else entirely—one of the lesser-known halls among the academy’s top hundred.

Hall 48, Mammon Hall.

Like the Twin Halls, it had long been considered an underdog.

There had even been a time when Hall 48 had come remarkably close to breaking into the academy’s top ten. That was during Emery’s own years at the academy, when the hall’s reputation had briefly begun to rise.

But afterward, its ranking had steadily declined.

Not because the hall lacked talented students or capable instructors.

The Mammon faction’s standing at the academy had collapsed because of their cultivation as a whole. After all, the Mammon bloodline was known for its innate ability to command parasitic creatures, a cultivation path that had always made other factions wary of them.

What made matters even worse was their history.

Generations ago, the Mammon faction had been a branch of the Occulus faction itself. Their rebellion had eventually severed that connection completely, ending with their surrender to the Magus Alliance. The Alliance later conducted a thorough investigation and officially confirmed that the Mammon clan remained entirely under their own control, untouched by whatever corruption had spread through the true Occulus lineage.

None of that clearance had ever really mattered to public opinion. Not with the Scourge sitting at the center of every conversation across the Magus world these days. A bloodline built around parasites, however well-documented its safety, was never going to be an easy thing for people to look past.

Klea found herself standing in Hall 48, the hall belonging to the Mammon faction.

Grand Magus Bael received her personally—a man carrying a dark, faintly unsettling presence. He was someone she’d never actually met before, despite how much they already seemed to know about each other through reputation alone.

As she walked through the hall, she couldn’t help but notice the students around her. Their cultivation was clearly unusual. Every student accepted into Mammon carried the faction’s unique bloodline inheritance.

The parasites granted their hosts power far beyond what an ordinary cultivator of the same realm could achieve. But at the same time, they had to carry the burden of the faction’s reputation.

"Thank you for letting me visit such an interesting hall." She let her usual warmth carry her words. "I’m hoping we can establish deeper cooperation going forward."

Bael said little in response, watching her with open scrutiny instead.

"Aren’t you afraid of what cooperating with us will do to your own reputation?"

Klea’s smile sharpened slightly.

"Hmm... it might... if it’s true." She tilted her head slightly. "Is your faction truly made up of traitors?"

"We are.... Just not to the Alliance."

"I see..." Klea smiled. "Then it’s no trouble at all."

Bael’s expression shifted slightly.

"What do you actually want, Master Klea?" His patience had a visible edge to it now. "Say it plainly, or don’t trouble us again."

Klea’s tone remained perfectly light.

"Nothing big, really..." She paused, then smiled. "I... I’ll soon have a student who’d like to join your hall."

"..."

The first month ended on schedule.

With the shadow clones having brought Klea enough data to work with, the dark avatar finally departed for the frontline.

The light avatar settled back in, expecting, reasonably enough, to enjoy at least some measure of peace.

Klea had other plans.

With her own preparations finally in place, she went straight to the calmer of Emery’s two halves.

"I know Emery wants to create another Undying True Clone," she said lightly, "Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he had two?"

The light avatar let out a long, tired breath.

"I wish... We did try... It’s impossible."

It wasn’t a matter of time, Grand Magus corpses, or resources. Even with two split-soul avatars as unique as he and his counterpart, the true limitation lay far deeper than any of those things.

It was a restriction imposed by Heaven itself.

Heaven simply would not allow the same soul to possess a second Undying Clone. Any clone created through the same method would fail to properly form another independent soul core.

Even producing a weaker Undying Clone at the Magus realm would be brutally difficult.

"Hard," Klea replied, her smile not wavering in the slightest. "Not impossible, though. Is it?"

She paused briefly before revealing the results of her research.

The idea was risky, but it offered a possible way around the restriction.

Instead of attempting to create another Undying Clone through the same method, they would create an entirely new mortal body and use the Gu parasite technique itself as the foundation for forming a Magus body.

"Between your mastery as an Apothecary and my own expertise in formations, I’m fairly confident we can make one."