Chronicles of the True Wizard

Chapter 210 - Book 12

Before opening a portal back to his dorm, Felix made sure to have Nova switch forms back to something less problematic. It took her a fraction of a second to return to a small black kitten, a noticeable improvement from the few seconds it used to take her. Her form wasn't exactly as it used to be though as even as a kitten, Nova still had a blue hand print with streaks of what looked like lightning trailing out of it.

The hand print wouldn't be recognizable to anyone but Felix because in her smaller form with fur that wasn't stationary, it was distorted and looked more like a morphed circle. She happily hopped back up into Felix's robes and they finally stepped back into his dorm.

Okay, two things I want to do before heading back into the event. First, my items.

Felix focused on the screen that he had pointedly ignored in the presence of Tekragoraxius and accepted the items. Instead of appearing in his Soul Space, the items instead appeared before him. There was no fancy box or anything rather, a bundle of books wrapped in dark cloth dropped to the floor in front of him.

Felix reached down and unraveled the package. The cloth was, as expected, the cloak but, it wasn't what Felix had expected. It wasn't sheer black or torn and frayed at the bottom. It was actually more of a steely blue with gold filigree forming a floral pattern on the inside and seemed like a normal, ankle length hooded cloak with a high collar.

[? - Ancient] The Reaper's Favourite Cloak

Personal Note: With a couple of simple but incredibly useful abilities all wrapped up in a cloak with timeless style, this remains my personal favourite cloak to this day; despite the fact that I haven't worn it in a long time.

Passive Abilities:

Weather Phasing: No matter the conditions outside the cloak, the inside will always keep you at a comfortable temperature.

Forgotten: Blend in with the crowd and be forgotten. All who notice you will pay you no mind and soon forget you entirely so long as you do nothing too memorable.

Guarding: Though nothing particularly strong or powerful, slow, weak, uninfused attacks may be completely ineffective.

Huh.

The closer Felix looked, examining the cloak for himself, the more he realized it was rather odd. The cloak itself gave off some kind of feeling of deeper meaning that he pinpointed as being based in anima but otherwise couldn't get anything out of. It also used mana but, not in any way he was familiar with. Even with his absurd mana control and senses, he couldn't really tell what was going on other than the fact that he detected some mana at all.

This cloak… is not from System era times, is it? Maybe even a different universe. That identification definitely wasn't written by The System I'm used to. It also doesn't have a grade but is that because The System can't grade it or won't? I think… I'm not going to feed this to Reaper's Mantle right now at least. It's too unique and not only can I not replicate it, I don't even understand it.

Considering just how little he understood about it, Felix decided he would put it in the Kryptos Repository instead of his Soul Space. Reaching down towards the band, he chose an open rune at random and as soon as he did, even before touching the band, it spun into place.

Oh shit, soul bound means it grows. Oh man, even more upgrades.

Spinning the rest of the bands into place-now mentally which was significantly faster-the opening was actually projected in front of his hand instead of within the band. All he had to do was reach forwards and push the cloak inside.

Felix knew, even before touching any of them, none of the books in front of him were encoded or written in creeping ink or anything. He had already scanned them all into his library without issue. Reaching for the one on the top, the Personal Re

Wait, all you need to do to get access is to kill someone? Isn't this kind of bloodthirsty? Event Trove.

Scrolling through the items in the Trove, Felix's eyes went wide. Not only were there all kinds of natural treasures, metals, materials and other goods Felix expected but there was also research, constructs, schematics, skill manuals, class manuals and more. There were even a few of the System Cores for sale.

Some of the items cost millions of points but considering he had almost tripled his Inventory Points already, he definitely had hope.

This is kind of ideal for building Arthur's reputation. As long as I don't kill people in my real body, no one will know.

Felix quickly confirmed that was the case by checking his own identification in his Persona and in his real body. Seeing his level, he frowned. He hadn't gained any levels from killing the two Forge participants and his real level was what he expected. His Persona though, seemed to display 1849 as his level.

I guess it's based on stats or something? That's why the guy was asking how I was in the event.

He considered for a few moments then decided to equip a title on his Persona too. He thought about equipping Warlord but he didn't want to show off a title that had to do with commanding an army. Instead, he equipped Titan Killer: Legendary.

Unfortunately, Felix didn't see many other participants for a while. He managed to hit 8 other dungeons before heading back for Group Combat, one of the few classes he wasn't currently willing to skip.

Group Combat was much harder now that they were in the third class. He and Peace were still amongst the strongest through their stats alone but suddenly, it was like they had broken through some invisible threshold. It had been fairly easy to stand out as team players in the lower classes, the third class though was completely different.

Everyone in the class from what Felix could tell were very good at working with a team. They formulated plans, listened, worked together and found synergies between members.

While they hadn't stood out as exceptional and didn't get moved into the 2nd class yet, Felix and Peace also hadn't been at the bottom thankfully.

Hopping back into the event Felix continued his search for undiscovered dungeons. He flew from dungeon to dungeon ignoring other participants unless they attacked him. He didn't want to just kill everyone and paint a target on his back so he made sure he was ruthless but reasonable, only fighting back and killing when he was attacked first.

It wasn't until a few dekads later when he finally found another core though.

The rest of the dungeon had been relatively basic and he hadn't expected anything particularly interesting inside. It was actually a puzzle dungeon with no real monsters in sight but it wasn't a research lab or anything, instead it was a house in the side of a cliff.

At first, the puzzles were fairly easy and mostly involved basic enchantment theory. Even non enchanters would have been able to solve it. A few puzzles in though, things shifted in a weird direction.

The puzzles started veering into things Felix had never thought of before. It started to split enchantments and pit them against each-other, like a cage fighting match. It wasn't the effects that were fighting either, it asked him which enchantment would prevail when the enchantments fought for the same mana source.

After that, the enchantments were split in half and connected together creating a complete mess. Then he was asked which would win again. It was complete nonsense but Felix simulated the spell anyways and provided an answer.

The puzzles only got weirder from there and Felix actually found himself arguing out loud with the puzzles themselves. They were getting completely ridiculous and there was no way anyone other than him in this event could have solved them.

He got so sick of it that he ended up smashing his fist into the table and dispelling all the mana from the tests.

What is wrong with this stupid dungeon and why do I feel the burning desire to fight it?

As soon as he realized what was happening, Felix took a breath and manually calmed his soul. Once he had his soul blocking everything out, he was able to see clearly again and he looked at the table he had been completing the puzzles on.

It was more like a pillar rising out of the ground a meter or so into the air and looking at it, Felix realized it could probably be opened. He looked around the house and eventually found a small disc that acted as the key. Opening the pillar, he found another core.

[C - Cursed] Imitation System Core

A Core created to try and build an Imitation System. The core contains a large chunk of a mana computer bound with a cursed soul that uses biological matter for added stability.

I really need to be more on guard around these things. Maybe I shouldn't revert from Arthur anymore and just use the Soul Cloak to defend myself.

Soul Cloak was the defensive ability on the Soul Devouring ring and protected against soul attacks. Until now, Felix hadn't seen it as particularly useful for him at all but considering how subtle and annoying the cores were, he was starting to reconsider.

The issue was that while they didn't necessarily hurt him, they influenced his actions and were so subtle he often didn't notice them at all.

Felix also got a few packets of research from the dungeon as a reward for being the first which he scanned then stowed in his inventory. He popped back out of the dungeon and continued on to the next dungeon.

As much as he wanted to build up a reputation, there just weren't enough people around for him to do so. He prioritized the dungeons over everything for the time being which meant he wasn't hanging around the more heavily populated areas.

He already knew about the Archon's fortress in the mountains and was fairly certain Edras had something similar in the direction of the druids he had stolen from. There were other alliances and compounds but none were as big or prominent as those two.

The Rakyt city had also managed to stay relatively untouched with-as far as he knew-Felix being the only one allowed inside. He really wanted to go back and build more trust with them so he could get his hands on all the information that had gone into their massive mana weapons. They were still early in the event though and it was more efficient to target dungeons.

Having spoken with Melody, it seemed as though no one else had been able to identify the cores yet but they knew the quest was a big one. Surprising Felix somewhat, the event hadn't gotten much more brutal since the Global Quest announcement. He wasn't at the top of the leaderboard anymore but he was still in 4th place.

The tension though, was palpable. Even outside of the event, Felix caught some students fighting with each-other before the planet ended up holding them back. It really was only a matter of time before something gave.

After just a few dekads of dungeon hunting and classes, he had finally harvested enough computer from his growth farms to completely back up his memories. He had quite a bit more than he needed too as he had manually worked on them during his evolution and improved the efficiency quite a bit. He still needed to relocate the farms to a controlled environment though with more room but, that was relatively low on the priority list for him.

Not only was he able to surpass his goal for Mark by over 50% but he also increased the size of his own computer in his mind. He didn't touch it too much because he didn't want to just make it massive but he did expand it into the fourth dimension by another 40%. Even with that increase, his Intelligence remained his lowest stat as most of the increase was directly siphoned into increasing his focus limit.

Using Grim as a pseudo Spell Book was still useful as even with 65 spell levels worth of focus, Felix found himself running out fairly often. Spells in general just got too complex and he was still limited to simple 2d spells that had either fractal channels or advanced combination nodes. He couldn't really manage more than a single spell with both so he was still looking for other ways of casting more advanced spells.

Doing anything else to increase his spells at the moment was a waste in Felix's mind so he headed back out into the event instead.

Flying out just past the most recent dungeon he had completed, not one with a core, Felix flew into a massive mountain range. The range was massive not only in that it stretched far in either direction but also in the mountains themselves. Judging by the angle of the mountains at the base, Felix was pretty sure he could see just a small fraction of them below the clouds.

He had to fly over them to continue so he pierced the cloud cover and gawked at the kilometers worth of mountain that rose up above them. Based on the height alone, it would have taken forever for him to fly over the mountains without Erevos so Felix decided to switch back from his Persona.

After some portal trickery to obscure the connection between him and his Persona, Felix summoned Erevos and cleared the first mountain 10 times faster than he could have alone. Once he passed the peak, Felix followed the curvature of the mountain down the other side into a valley so he could pick up any quests underground.

Smashing through the clouds and dragging a satisfying trail behind him, Felix immediately caught sight of something that he couldn't resist stopping for.

Dismissing Erevos, Felix softened his landing from a few dozen meters away to make sure he wasn't disturbing the scene before him then walked forwards to get a better look. A few of the others watching acknowledged his presence with a nod, a welcoming smile or a hand sign. They formed a loose circle though there weren't enough people to actually complete a ring.

In the center of the crowd, confined to a ring painted on the ground a hundred meters in diameter, was Peace facing off against three robed participants. They weren't fighting though, not at the moment. Peace was standing perfectly still and looking at each of the other three one by one all of which were also standing still.

Something was definitely happening though, Felix could feel it. Ripples or more accurately dense waves of intent were being released from the three of them. Felix caught glimpses of fights intermingled with a number of other random experiences such as one of feeding a small blue bird.

He had no idea what was happening but it was fun to watch nonetheless. After almost 10 minutes of just staring at each-other, the three robed figured stepped up and engaged Peace.

They all fought as martial artists, Peace holding off perfectly coordinates strikes and grabs almost with ease. It was clear to Felix that the three were incredibly skilled, possibly even masters of martial arts. Peace though, was still on a completely different level. Where they looked like they had mastered martial arts, Peace made it looked like martial arts were originally invented by observing him.

At first he was dancing and flowing through the fight, twisting and contorting his body like a snake. The next moment he was solid and stationary, an unbreakable and immovable wall. Then he was a strike of lightning, fast, flashy and overwhelming.

He switched from form to form effortlessly depending on what was necessary, sometimes his legs and torso following completely different philosophies.

Overall, Felix could barely catch a tenth of the fight as it was far too fast for him to follow and he wasn't consistent with Reaper's Perception yet. Even when he did manage to awaken the skill, for the brief few moments it activated, he had trouble following.

Ding You have become more proficient with the Class skill: [Legendary] Reaper's Sense (Novice V => Novice VI)

The entire fight was over in less than a minute, the three opponents each bowing out one by one. As they walked out of the circle though, they looked tired but none of them were particularly hurt. It was evident to Felix that they were essentially sparring.

Peace spotted Felix as soon as the fight was over and waved at him. He hopped over in a flash of ridiculous movement, his hands clasped behind his back like a child, "Hey Felix! Whatcha doing here?"

"I was just flying over looking for dungeons. Are you guys sparring?"

One of the robed individuals smiled and tilted their head, "In a way."

Felix snickered, "Why here though? Isn't it kind of dangerous?"

Another one of the robed individuals, one of the ones who had just fought smirked, "Where else?"

Felix shrugged, "I don't know, meet up in some city or something?"

Peace shook his head, "These are the disciples of Amatara. All of them are located in her star system. While I could visit… this is easier."

"So what, you guys are like monks?"

One of them shrugged, "Sure."

"Only kind of." Peace shook his head and smiled, "More aptly, they're soul cultivators. They all master their own martial art because it helps with soul cultivation and scales very well with a capable soul."

Felix frowned, "What does that mean exactly?"

"They cultivate their souls." Peace smirked knowingly.

"Right but they still have classes and races and all that, right?"

A bald man nodded excitedly, "I only have a profession. I'm a baker."

Peace nodded, "You can give up your class in exchange for stats alone if you want. That's sort of how beasts work. They don't have skills or classes but they get way more stats."

Felix nodded knowingly, "I guess stats scale very well with martial arts too since you aren't really relying on skills much."

Peace shrugged, "You could find skills that are useful and great, this was Amatara's path though and most of them follow it."

Felix nodded in understanding, "Well I guess I'll leave you all to it then."

One of the other robed individuals-a ponytailed woman-stood and stretched, "Would you like to try sparring?"

Felix resisted the urge to scoff and instead nodded politely, "Oh, I'm pretty bad at martial arts."

They shrugged, "That's only half of the duel."

Felix looked to Peace who just smirked and tilted his head towards the ring.

Felix sighed and walked into it, the woman standing across from him.

He looked over to Peace for guidance and he stepped forwards next to Felix, "The first part of what we're doing is trading experiences. For us martial artists, we send a wave of intent of our opening move. They respond with a fight they've won that they deem was similar to my move. They're showing they can counter it."

Felix frowned, "I felt other things too though when you sparred."

Peace smirked, "We sometimes try to throw each-other off by switching things up. I send out feeding a bird, they respond with a pet they've had in the past."

"I don't understand. What the hell are the rules to this? How do you win?"

Peace chuckled, "For us, the goal is to figure out how to play the fight. If it were a real fight and we were evenly matched, this would be how we would try to gain an advantage over each-other. The goal would be to figure out how to play the fight, or if you should instead just run."

Felix dipped his head slightly, "Kind of like beasts sizing each-other up and listening to their instincts?"

"Yes, precisely. Being soul cultivators though, we can manipulate each-other's instincts. We can show off fake strength to either scare off an opponent-"

Felix nodded quickly, "Or bait them into fighting, got it. So this is based on that?"

"Yes. This evolved into a different kind of sparring. Instead of that mind game, we duel with our experiences. I show a fight where I fought someone strong. They respond with an experience that has something related in any way at all, maybe it's baking a hard recipe. Whatever they choose, you must continue in the same vein and respond with a superior experience."

Felix shook his head as he was even more confused than before, "So what the hell was the bird?"

Peace cocked his head slightly with a smile, "It was a duel of compassion."

"Oh. Okay, I think I get it… in theory. How do you know when someone's won?"

"For us, it's whenever the person responding switches to a different, unrelated experience. For you, for now, you'll both just say you surrender out loud."

Felix nodded, "Okay let's just… try and see I guess."

The woman across from him nodded and started with a simple sparring match. The experience was loaded with all kinds of things. There was a sense of accomplishment from training her martial arts and a sense of comfort in practicing them. There was hardship and frustration from fighting the opponent who seemed to be an even match to her. There was pride, pain, fear, desire to win and conflict.

Felix chose the one that he thought he had the most experience with, conflict. He might have been able to win with his conviction through the desire to win or even the desire not to lose which was present but he didn't know that for sure. It was possible their desire was greater even if he had the conviction because that didn't necessarily make his desire any stronger. He also wasn't sure how best to respond down that avenue.

Choosing the experience of fighting the griffin world boss, Felix tried to push out the experience in a wave like she did. It took him a few minutes of trying along with guidance from Peace and the others but eventually he managed a weak ripple. It was nothing like the shock wave Peace and the others were capable of but it conveyed the message.

She smiled and responded with a fight between her and her daughter. While the fight itself was less impressive, the sense of conflict was greater. Her daughter, while young, was completely determined to finally win and so she threw everything she had into it. The sense of conflict from the fight itself along with within her daughter and even within her as she wanted her daughter to win and succeed but she couldn't let her win. It all compounded and Felix knew hers was greater yet.

The only thing that came to mind after that was the war between his city in the integration and the invaders. The experience technically wasn't his but he had access to it through Grim and so, he projected it.

She nodded then responded with a fight she had observed. It was a weird sensation as it spanned hundreds of epochs but he still got the picture. It was the final fight, the culmination, between two territorial beasts that had fought each-other for hundreds of epochs. Finally, they had decided to fight against each-other to the end.

They continued to essentially volley experiences, going from the Lich to the Kraken until Felix had basically run out of everything he was ready to offer. He stood there wracking his soul for an experience when Peace tapped on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, "Give her something fighting The Endless Hunger. Not Telviras though."

Felix looked at him like he was insane but Peace just nodded.

On the one hand, Felix trusted Peace to an extent but he really didn't want to reveal that capability of his. Picking very carefully, he found an experience of him fighting it for control of mana from a large distance, early on in his training against it, not daring to dive into him actually touching it. He was more willing to lose the sparring match than reveal that. Also Peace had said fight, not touch so Felix wasn't even sure he knew about that at all.

Sending out the experience as a ripple, her eyes went wide, "You win. You've mastered a minor peak already? So young…"

Felix turned to Peace, "What's a peak?"

Peace just winked at him, "Curses."

Turning to the rest of the crowd, many of them were wide eyed, some smirked and others were smiling and nodding. None of them seemed threatened, they were all impressed in a way. Some were disappointed in themselves that they hadn't, others were simply happy for him.

Felix turned to the woman he had sparred against, "What does it mean to master a minor peak?"

She walked along with him out of the ring, "One of the planets under Amatara's purview holds a mountain range. Each mountain in the range is kilometers apart to keep them isolated and each one has a path. Along the path there are curses embedded into pillars. As you climb, the curses grow in strength. Reaching the top is to master the curse and be unaffected by it. To be able to stand a meter from it and reject its influence entirely."

Felix nodded, "You said minor?"

She nodded, "Hunger is technically a subset of another curse. I have yet to even climb an inferior peak, the tertiary ones."

"Hunger is a subset of what?"

She looked at him with almost a reverent expression, "The curse of the future, Desire."

So there are more?

One of the others in the crowd stepped forwards, "Would you be interested in further pursuing other peaks and soul cultivation in general?"

Felix turned to them and bowed his head slightly, "Yes. Very much so."

They nodded with a smile, "Excellent. I will speak with my master."

After that, Felix continued to spar a few times, losing every single time to various people. It turned out, being young was a severely limiting factor in a duel of experiences. Experiences from novels he'd read, movies and shows he'd watched helped a lot but they were no more than stop gaps for the early salvo.

An hour or so passed at which point Felix had decided he'd wasted enough time and left the ring. Before he could leave though, he was stopped by a robed man with perfectly spherical haircut, "You seek dungeons, yes?"

Felix nodded, "Ancient Ruin dungeons ideally."

They nodded, "We will share our quest lists with you. We all came from different directions and met here so we passed by quite a few."

Felix's eyes went wide, "That would be awesome, thank you."

The man nodded, "In return, Peace has mentioned you befriended the integrateds of this event, could you bring us to their city?"

"I can bring you to the city but they don't let many people inside."

He shook his head, "That is more than enough. We will speak with them ourselves."

Felix looked to Peace for confirmation but he just nodded indicating his instincts were right and he could trust them. Felix nodded to the man, "Alright, I can do that."

The man smiled then shared his map and quest list. Everyone else there proceeded to do the same and suddenly, Felix had a massive area revealed with hundreds of dungeon quests all around him.

He was almost salivating as he opened a portal just a few kilometers outside of the Rakyt city. They all stepped through one by one including Peace and left the mountain valley. Felix stepped through behind them because he decided the least he could do was make an introduction.

Bringing Peace alone with him, because Felix could only really vouch for him, Felix approached the city. Guards stopped them and made them wait while Arysha was retrieved and they met just outside the walls.

"Felix. You return with guest."

Felix nodded, "This is Peace. He's a… friend of mine. I won't try and convince you to let him in or anything but I figured the least I could do was make an introduction as he and the group behind me just did me a huge favor."

She nodded, "I see. You trust this Peace?"

Felix shrugged, "As much as I trust anyone right now."

"We will speak with the Peace."

"Perfect… Actually, quick question before I go, why can't The System translate your language perfectly?"

Arysha shook her head, "Words are sacred. We shared one to show trust."

Peace nodded, "You have System translation off and are learning System common yourselves?"

"Yes. It is as The Peace says."

Felix nodded, "I see. Thank you for sharing a word with me then."

"Our trust in Felix will be with Peace and this group as well. We are in need of opening up to others more now. We start with Peace."

"Alright well, I'm off to hit the dungeons. Have fun."

Peace nodded and turned back to Arysha as Felix flew away from the city. He once again spotted the fiend a short way outside of the city but they were alone this time, sitting in the sand and watching. He ignored them once again and portalled back to the valley.

With Amatara's disciple's maps and quest lists, Felix was able to clear more dungeons in a few days than he had in dekads of being in the event. The best part was that most of the map around the valley seemed to be pretty distant from the most populated area so he was the first to clear many of them.

Zeraxes trick with the waves was incredibly helpful as Felix started to abstract it outwards. In puzzle dungeons, he skipped puzzles so he could get right to the last three, just enough to give him context. If he skipped right to the last one, he found it difficult to figure out what was going on. The puzzle itself was doable he was just often missing the necessary information from the previous puzzles.

He found the best approach was to do the first couple then skip to the last three.

The combat dungeons were easy with his new found increase in focus limit. Using Grim let him get to level 100 spells which meant he occasionally weaved in some much more capable spells but even with his personal limit of 65, he could clear everything efficiently. He still couldn't quite cast anything like Chain Lightning which required a complex form to retarget and split. His storms though, were more targeted and organized, his spells could bend in the air and his fire was hotter with much more advanced nodes.

Since he was pretty far from civilization, Felix didn't bother with his Persona and only encountered a single other participant, a friendly who was mining.

Though it wasn't nearly as much as he had gained in the previous grades he was still happy with the 77 levels he had gained in his class putting him at level 1,084 in [C - Ancient] Reaper. The puzzle dungeons though were doing wonders for his profession as they focused largely on enchantments and constructs so he managed to gain 118 putting him at level 1126 and bringing his Intelligence out of the gutter. It still wasn't his highest stat, but it also wasn't his lowest anymore.

He and Peace had also managed to move up to the second group combat class though just barely. They had both been able to feel a beast coming ahead of time and sprung into action. Their team had already captured the objective so Peace engaged the beast and held it off while Felix used spells to slow it down and push them along faster.

Felix and Peace then worked together to disengage the beast and they were moved into the 2nd class as a result.

In Solo Combat, Felix had started climbing upwards very quickly. They were still just dueling each-other but multiple times a class he was switched out with another student and put up against a harder opponent. It would take him a few duels to really get the hang of things with each one but after that, he won easily every time.

His stats helped a lot but more than that, he was crafting new spells all the time. Rarely did he design anything completely new in a fight but he came up with new solutions for everything he faced. Often that just meant he was piecing together components from a couple spells to accomplish something but it still made a huge difference. He was already confident that even without his evolution, he actually had a chance against the Ashound if he fought it again.

After that fight specifically, he had designed spells to counter everything it had done. He now knew spells that applied a lingering cold effect to a creature, a spell that specifically reduced friction very efficiently. He had also designed wind spells to specifically keep something scattered and away from him such as ash or spores.

Soul Manipulation got a lot better as they switched topics somewhat to strengthening their own and manipulating other's souls. The defensive aspect of the course wasn't useless, he was using it to create construct souls after all but for him, it wasn't what he was looking for.

The event seemed to have somewhat calmed down along with the fights outside of the event having ceased completely which, was actually more ominous than reassuring.

None of that mattered for the moment as Felix memorized his location and hunted down his own familiar. It was the 20th dekad and Felix and Nova had an event to attend.

He had been initially somewhat excited to attend because of the exclusivity alone but now, Felix was dreading it. Felix had finally figured out how to make the constructs he wanted and had almost finished them. All he had to do, was put the finishing touches on and they would be complete. He couldn't do that though, not until after the party.

Nova had been off on her own ever since they both evolved but through his soul bond and the steady stream of completed material collection quests, he knew she was thriving.

He found her stuck in the middle of a mountain she had made a good attempt at hollowing out. Felix had never seen her defecate but there was no way she could hold infinite matter within herself and as he walked inside, he realized the thick layer of dust was likely her excretion. It made it nearly impossible to see anything and Felix both encased his own head and started venting the area as soon as he arrived.

His head air sphere spell had been drastically upgraded with the use of just a few more spell levels that he was now willing to dedicate to it. It had a solid barrier, was harder to penetrate and was far sleeker around his neck and in the way it followed his head around.

Walking through, he eventually found Nova with her head seemingly stuck in the wall, hanging there completely asleep. Felix poked her and she popped out, meowing at him.

"We have a party to get to. Come on."

She meowed again, disappointed she couldn't stay then hopped into Felix's robes.

Felix opened the portal back to his dorm right there and stepped through, heading straight for the portal room where he met Melody. Once there, they both headed through and used the teleportation hub to get right to Caesuriax's willow. They didn't have time to waste having Felix fly them there in Erevos, as fun as it would have been to do so.

Slightly worried about Nova, Felix stowed her in his Soul Space then followed Melody inside. Approaching the willow, she bowed to Caesuriax and offered him a simple, plain looking scarf.

[E - Common] Blue Scarf

Clothing designed to protect the neck from harsh weather conditions.

Felix looked at the item curiously but just a few seconds later, a group of vines gently shifted as a gentle breeze blew through the area. The vines fluttered over the scarf and wrapped themselves around, causing it to vanish. A few moments passed and the wind blew through once more causing the vines to pass in front of their faces revealing two boxes, one in front of each of them.

The boxes were about a meter by half a meter but only a few inches thick. Felix followed Melody in stepping forwards and kneeling in front of his box then carefully opening it up. The box itself seemed to be nothing special, just plain looking wood that wasn't even finished. Inside the box however, the clothing before him was anything but plain.

Inside Felix's box was a steely blue scaled hide with strategically located stripes of charcoal colored scales. Picking it up out of the box, he found that was just the outer coat which was collared and would hang down to his calves. There was also a pair of pants and a shirt that would go underneath it and a pair of shoes though made from a different leather, without scales.

[SS - Common] Arkinikamed's Hide

A cloak made from the scales of Arkinikamed, the great prophet of the Ralken Drakene tribes during the 5th Integration.

Felix carefully folded it back up once he had seen everything and placed it back in the box to transport it. He had many questions like why he would be wearing Drakene hide to a Drakene event but he didn't pose any of them now. Instead, he tried his best to mimic Melody's reverence in carrying the box and bowing to Caesuriax before taking their leave.

Only once they were outside did he turn to her, "Traditional Drakene garb is literally their hides?"

Melody nodded, "Of course. Using the hides of great Drakene heroes to protect others is the greatest honor one can bestow, at least according to most Drakene's culture. Anyways, who are you going to be wearing?"

Felix shrugged, "Arkinikamed, a prophet from the 5th integration. You?"

Melody smirked, "Nelarathiax. Yeah… Don't ask me who either of them are, I have no idea. I'm sure they'll be impressed though."

"I hope so. Is it safe to stow this thing somewhere?"

Melody winced, "Let's maybe just… not… just in case."

"Okay… it's kind of inconvenient, can I stick it in my Pocket Home for now at least?"

"Oh." Melody's eyes lit up, "Yeah, that would be fine. Stick mine in there too, will you?"

Felix nodded and opened the Pocket Home against the wall and walked inside. Melody followed him and Felix released Nova, no longer worried about her trying to eat the ancient time Willow.

He carefully placed the box on the ground, Melody dropping hers next to his then she walked over to the tree in the middle of the space.

"What's this?"

Felix shrugged, "I don't really know."

Walking over and inspecting the tree himself, it was now actually a tree. The trunk wasn't huge but it had surpassed Felix's forearm in width and was almost the same thickness as his thigh.

I guess it needed more mana to grow.

Melody looked at him and cocked her head, "Where'd you get it and why are you soul bound to it?"

"Found it in an event actually. As for the soul bound thing, I don't know, thought it might be a good idea."

She frowned then crouched down and picked up a small crystal shard that was only a few hairs thick but was a few inches long now. It quickly snapped from the weight of itself being cantilevered over her finger but she held what was left with a frown, "Is the tree… creating these?"

Felix shrugged, "Seems like it. They were smaller before too, mostly just sand like."

"Huh. You know, if these were cleaner, you could sell them for a lot of creds."

Felix dropped to one knee to look more closely at the pile of crystals, "Wait, what? Why?"

She chuckled and carefully handed one to him. Felix, surprising himself even that he hadn't even tried to identify them with his new skill yet, finally did so.

[E - Rare] Attunement Crystal

A crystal that imbues a specific attunement into mana that passes through it.

Felix looked at the crystal with wide eyes then immediately pushed some mana through it. The crystal lightly glowed and Felix pulled the mana back out the other side, finding it did in fact have an attunement now.

As far as he knew the attunement was complete nonsense, it was like static or white noise in the form of an attunement but at the same time, Felix thought it was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen.

Up to this point, Felix was pretty happy with having the tree simply be a weird decoration because he just wasn't convinced it was useful yet. At some point in the future, he figured he would find a use for it. He thought a few times about asking someone what it did but just never really got around to it.

Now that he knew though, it actually solved a problem he had been thinking about for the last 15 dekads or so. It was going to require a lot of work, multiple machines and many spells to make anything usable from it, but it was incredibly promising. He would still have to wait for the tree to grow but considering its current growth rate, upgrading the mana engine suddenly jumped pretty high up on his todo list.

Just to be certain, he turned to Melody, "I didn't even know these existed. Can I buy these for specific attunements?"

"Sort of. The reason attunement crystals aren't used in many applications is that they always have some amount of noise in them. That means you need to clean the mana output from the crystals, the advantage is that they scale almost perfectly and have no issue with the amount of mana pushed through them. Unlike nodes which fall apart outside of specific ranges and have flow rate limitations."

"So really clean crystals are super expensive then?"

Melody nodded fervently, "More expensive than even I can pay for. If you found one that was Epic or higher with a base attunement and say… less than 5% noise, my dad would have trouble paying for it."

Felix nodded seriously as his mind began to race with possibilities, "I se-"

Spinning around and running towards the tower, Melody yelled out over her shoulder, "So this is your house?"

Felix sighed and yelled back, though it was completely unnecessary and both of them knew it, "Yeah"

He gave Melody the grand tour from the basement to the roof, Nova excitedly flying along, catching onto Melody's jubilant mood.

Having seen everything, Melody sat on the parapet of the roof and looked outwards over the small island. After a few minutes of her simply looking out, Melody shook her head, "You created this thing, Mana Engine? In the Integration?"

Felix nodded, "Yeah. I haven't touched it in a while but I figure now I could do a much better job. Imbue it with a soul and all that."

She shrugged, "I mean, I'd hope so. The rate it gathers mana isn't very impressive at all, Erevos is way faster for example. The fact that you made it from solid mana is kind of… silly though."

He shrugged, "It was the easiest to work with and I didn't have access to a forge or anything. Plus, I have no idea how to push metal freely into the fourth dimension."

"You mean into the aether? I don't know why that would be any harder but also, I don't know that much about mana theory so…"

He nodded, "We have a few hours left until the party and I can portal us back to the teleportation hub so, you got anything else you need to do in Telviras?"

She shook her head and chewed on her lip thoughtfully. Felix shrugged and began designing things in his head. They sat like that for a few minutes-hours of designing in Felix's Soul Garden-before Melody swung her leg over the parapet to turn to him, "If I sign a Soul Contract or a System Contract- or both, will you tell me everything?"

Felix just looked at her with a frown. He was only mildly annoyed his design work was interrupted because half of his focus was still working on it.

She sighed, "I can tell you're holding things back. I can feel it every time you avoid something or lie."

He shrugged, "I got a lot of secrets that I don't know… how others would react."

"I get that… I do, that's why I'll agree to whatever terms you want."

Felix shook his head, "Why?"

"I just… I don't know, I think you'd get it if you felt everything the way I do it's just… I feel it. It sucks. I already told you why I approached you but since then… you aren't just some fresh integrated who knows nothing. I mean, that's exactly what you are but… A Child of the Reaper is personally training you. You were invited to Ascension Day, the first of any race other than Drakene based races ever… I think. Your Soul Garden is… beautiful and completely unbelievable at the same time. Your mana pool… There are just too many things happening. Despite all of that, you're still… enjoying everything and aren't caught up in yourself or politics or… ya…"

Felix sighed, "Not now. One day, maybe in a few terms. I'll… think about it. Does that go two ways though, you'll tell me anything I want to know?"

She rolled her eyes, "I'm not a loner and a recluse like you. I'd tell you pretty much anything now anyways."

He cocked his head, "There aren't any secrets you have to keep? Family secrets or anything like that?"

She shrugged, "There are secrets my dad would like me to keep, doesn't mean I will." She winked at him.

Felix sighed, "Alright, I'll think about it."

She nodded, "Thanks. In the meantime-" Her usual playful smile returned, "I think it's time I taught you some things."

Felix looked at her with a confused expression and she smirked, "No not that, as much as you might want that. Not Soul Manipulation either, it's time you moved up a rank in Group Combat."

"Uh, okay. How?"

"It's actually really simple. All you have to do, is learn some support spells."

Felix frowned, "I know some. I use them."

She shook her head, "I'll give you a list of the ones you need. Being a true support is very rare. You can also fight so if you just show you can fill that role too, you'll get moved up instantly."

Felix nodded slowly, "I'd rather not leave Peace behind though."

She snickered, "You haven't noticed? He's holding himself back in every class you share to make sure he's at the same level as you."

"Oh. Actually… that… makes a lot of sense."

She shook her head, "You are so oblivious some times."

He shrugged, "It's just people. Most of them are really…."

Melody nodded, "Dumb. Yeah. You trained yourself not to pay attention to them, I know."

They spent a few hours with Melody giving Felix a very clear cut set of rules to follow in Group Combat. The spells she was having him make were fairly simple too and he was able to create them with his spare focus while he listened.

After that, they both relaxed in his Soul Garden, Melody reading and Felix doing the most relaxing thing he knew how to do, working. Mainly he worked on some of the new designs he had recently thought of.

Once the time had come, they both quickly got dressed in their new outfits. Felix's was perfectly sized and incredibly comfortable, something he had come to expect from everything remotely magical in the multiverse at this point.

Looking over, Melody wore a long, sleek dress with no arms and a tight neckline. It furled out just a little around her calves and had a long slit up one leg. It was definitely more human than anything he had ever seen a Drakene wear but he figured that was likely the point. Her dress was also clearly made from a Drakene's hide with black scales at the top that slowly graduated to a vibrant red at the bottom.

She took out some item and waved it over her head and face which made her hair into a fancy style. Felix just shook his head and sighed walking towards the exit but Melody grabbed his arm and stopped him, "Hold on. Take this." In her other hand there was a pair of earrings.

The earrings were simple studs that would have barely been visible in his ears.

[D - Rare] Earrings of Style

A set of earrings that will apply a specific set of simple cosmetic modifications to the wearer. These earrings are incapable of altering face shape or drastically altering skin tone. They can however apply a specific hair style and other simple effects.

Felix sighed and equipped them, "Can we go now?"

She nodded, "Yeah, let's."

Nova pranced along between them and stayed as a kitten as per Felix's insistence.

They stepped from one portal to another in a row finally ending up exactly where they had to be. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .