Chronicles of the True Wizard

The last thing Felix needed to do was to figure out which piece he was destroying. He was inclined to just throw two of them in at once and be safe but Grim assured him one would be enough. Felix pushed his consciousness into his soul space and shattered the seal that he was almost certain contained the soul ring. The clear crystal that used to hold the seal opened to reveal a clear band with a ribbon of white and a thread of gold dancing around within.

[B - Ancient] Soul Devouring Ring

[Set Piece][Growth][Soul Bound][Currently Bound]

This ring is one of three parts of the Devourer Set. The set itself predates The System and nothing about it’s origin or history before The System is known.

This ring can be soul bound allowing the item to grow alongside the wielder. While equipped and bound, the ring can be used to absorb the souls of defeated enemies. These souls can then be harvested to bolster the wielder’s stats. The leftovers of harvested souls will then be absorbed by the ring to upgrade it’s abilities or be stored. Stored soul fragments can be harnessed to launch attacks directly upon a living soul.

Hidden: Further effects unlocked through growth of the currently bound user are hidden and will revert upon being unbound along with the item’s grade.

[0/2] Set Bonus: Persona.

With at least two pieces of the set bound and equipped, the wielder may use the leftovers from harvested souls to craft a persona. This persona has separate stats from the wielder that grow along with the user. With the Soul Devouring Ring, the persona will have separate stats for DEX, AGI, PER, VIT, END. The persona is effectively a separate soul wrapped around the wielder’s soul. This completely hides the wielder’s soul and can act as a form of protection when equipped. Some skills may be inaccessible while a persona is active.

[0/3] Set Bonus: Domination.

With all three pieces of the set bound and equipped, the wielder may dominate living creatures by devouring a portion of their mind, body and soul. The remaining portion, if sufficient, will leave behind a creature that that is obedient the wielder. This effect will only work when the wielder is significantly stronger than the target. Depending on how much is left behind, the target may end up being more or less capable and may not be entirely obedient.

[0/3] Set Bonus: Living Persona

With all three pieces of the set bound and equipped, the wielder may take on the form of devoured enemies. Their mind, body and soul can be nearly perfectly imitated. The persona may also be altered at will.

B grade. Shit.

Thankfully, it shouldn’t matter when you expose him to the center of a star.

Thank goodness for overkill.

So which piece are you going to destroy?

Initially I was thinking body. Intelligence matters more to me anyways.

Now?

How useful would a separate mind wrapped around my mind be?

I don’t think it would work the same way as the soul ring.

Maybe not, but I can think of plenty of great uses for a separate body wrapped around my own, not to mention a perfect disguise. Honestly, I also don’t have any interest in devouring the minds of the enemies I defeat either. If the other ring can bolster my physical stats though…

You can already do that yourself. Just modify your body manually. I also seriously doubt that’s what the Blood Ring will do. Having it increase your body’s stats seems… less plausible. I can’t even imagine how a magic item would do that, nor have I ever heard of anything remotely similar.

I guess…

Sounds like you’re already convinced.

Honestly, I don’t want to devour anything’s mind. That just sounds wrong to me on some level. You think it’s the wrong decision?

No. We can’t know until we actually read its description anyways. Maybe the effect is completely different. Not sure what the Mind one will do. I highly doubt it will increase your intelligence directly. As the diary said, it has something to do with memories.

Oh right. How does that work. Could I just watch them?

I mean yeah, it’s not like it’s going to alter your personality directly or add grey matter into your head.

Oh… gross. So then what the hell does the blood ring do?

Well the soul ring doesn’t actually harvest souls itself, right? The blood ring probably just stores blood or bodies.

That doesn’t sound very useful.

Well I imagine it doesn’t just store them. The soul ring lets you harvest the souls it contains. I imagine the blood ring lets you do something with the bodies.

Then the Mind one contains memories for processing?

Probably.

The biggest downside is that I don’t need a persona that has a separate intelligence… Wait a second, is it possible to read memories some other way?

Not trivially… it’s not impossible. It’s also going to be possible to do whatever the blood ring does as well, it’s not like it does something entirely unique and otherwise impossible. It predates the system so it doesn’t have any system fuckery, that means whatever it does do is entirely possible to replicate.

So how would one go about retrieving memories? I don’t really need it right now but I could see it being useful in the future.

Great question. Without the system I would say necromancy, temporarily bind your soul or a chunk of anima to their body then you can ask them anything you want. It’s not perfect though because you aren’t actually taking out the memories, you’re just talking to a person. You’re relying on any remnant memories around their body or in their brain. If you could transfer memories into and out of your soul it would be a lot easier? Using or abusing the system… I have no idea.

What if I upgraded my scan literature skill? Expanded it’s uses. Books and memories aren’t that far apart… conceptually they’re both a recording of information… sort of.

One of them exists physically though…

Yeah… Wait, would it be possible to consume memories then use those to say learn a language or a martial art or something like that?

Sort of. You could greatly accelerate your own learning but you would still need to work at it yourself. If you consumed both the experience stored within their soul as well as the memory of the event, you would only need a tiny fraction of the time to tailor it to yourself. The Mind piece of the set, the crown, would just store them though. It’s not like the soul ring harvests the souls it stores for you, you have to do that. With the crown, you would still need a way to absorb those memories yourself.

Also, honestly, I don’t want to be storing memories until I have a way of separating them from my own in my head.

That is an excellent call.

Ok, so we toss the crown?

Yeah.

Ok, then we’re in agreement. Should I open the blood ring seal now then?

It probably doesn’t matter, but I would wait just in case. Once it’s open, you can’t exactly close it, this is a one way decision.

Fair enough, and I’m throwing the crown into the portal while sealed?

Yes. Then hope the overkill is enough to wipe them both out at the exact same instant.

Yeah, if the seal breaks before the item is destroyed he’d wake up.

Exactly.

With everything ready, Felix pulled the blue translucent orb from his soul space that held the crown then changed his mind and put it back. He decided he would take it out and place it in the vault at the last minute.

Felix pulled out the mana he would need in the form of batteries and began moving them into the spell form surrounding the portal that would hold and delay the flow of mana for a few minutes. The mana surged through the surrounding spell form then slowly leaked into the portal spell form. It seemed to work exactly as he had hoped and by all indications, it worked perfectly.

Ironically, Felix had almost been hoping something might go wrong. Up until he had read The System message, the one for him alone, he hadn’t really internalized any of his plan. He didn’t think any of it was possible, but now it was real. Not only did The System think it was possible, it also thought it was possible for him to fail and accidentally resurrect Erolan.

All in all, the worst part about that for him would be that he failed. He wasn’t overly worried about Erolan being free again because he suspected in the grand scheme of the multiverse that he wasn’t that big of a deal. How could he be, he was only in the B grade. Felix himself was offered an evolution that would have put him in the A grade. Multiple times now Grim had also gotten answers from The Guild of Answers that referred to gods. How could a lowly B grade be anything to them.

What really mattered to Felix was not the fate of the multiverse with some crazy mass murderer on the loose, it was his own success. He had no idea if failure meant death but considering he was just barely in the D grade and he was messing with someone in the B grade along with portals and stars, he suspected as much.

As he completed his preparations, set up the portal and began pouring mana into it, his nerves grew until he could hear his heartbeat above all else. It didn’t help that there was no other noise around him to mask it, leaving his heartbeat undisturbed as it pounded his head.

The mana poured through the spell form and rushed through the inlaid materials, filling the channels and forming the beginnings of a spell. Felix stuck around and prepared himself to duck out when there was just a minute or so left. He didn’t want to cut it too close but he also wanted to be able to catch anything that might go wrong, before it became catastrophic.

As the portal spell form filled on a delay, Felix watched as much earlier than the last time he had witnessed a portal be redirected, the coordinates in the spell aggressively shifted and snapped into a new form. He made sure to pour in a few million more mana than was necessary as the portal approached completion.

Finally, he pulled out the blue orb like seal and pulled his arm back to toss it, then quickly decided against that idea. He quickly flew over to the opposite side from Erolan’s body and placed it on the rocky floor in the room. There was no doubt in his mind that the blue orb held the crown, just given the nature of the Devoured that held it along with their abilities.

As soon as he left, he knew the gravity would fail and both the orb and body would float away, he just hoped it didn’t make any difference to the spell form. Felix leapt a few meters through the entry portal and quickly cut the mana to the vault key with his mana control as soon as he passed all the way through.

Realistically, Felix had no way of knowing if any of it worked. He initially thought he could simply reidentify the soul ring but Grim pointed out that he would need to remove it from his soul space first. In the soul space, just like the seals that had been crafted from other soul spaces, the ring wouldn’t be able to unbind itself.

Felix had no intention of pulling it out though because if he pulled it out too early, Erolan could simply wake up and portal home which Felix was avoiding at all costs. Alternatively, he had the quest. He suspected it would simply mark itself as complete if he succeeded since it needed to provide him with rewards. The issue was, he didn’t know exactly how to complete it.

The quest said he had to kill Erolan and unbind the remaining Devourer set pieces, but that likely meant he would need to expose them. Ultimately, he had no good way of knowing so he simply waited and hoped for some kind of sign. To pass the time, he initially started forming mana batteries despite the low and sluggish aether around him.

He didn’t bother flying around or getting rid of his aether isolating spells, instead he just fought against them. He told himself it was to practice but it was also because he needed something to distract him and he suspected the monotonous process of forming a battery normally just wouldn’t cut it.

After a few minutes, Felix decided to open the other seal, in his soul space so he could identify the blood ring. He had avoided doing so before incase he changed his mind and to give him more flexibility but at this point it was far too late. Within his soul space, Felix barely nudged the deep red gem and it simply shattered. What was left behind was a translucent ring with a crimson ribbon dancing around the band.

[B - Ancient] Blood Devouring Ring

[Set Piece][Growth][Soul Bound][Currently Bound]

This ring is one of three parts of the Devourer Set. The set itself predates The System and nothing about it’s origin or history before The System is known.

This ring can be soul bound allowing the item to grow alongside the wielder. While equipped and bound, the ring can be used to absorb the bodies of defeated enemies. These bodies can then be harvested to bolster the wielder’s stats. The leftovers of harvested bodies will then be absorbed by the ring to upgrade it’s abilities or be stored. Stored organic matter can be transformed into usable material and be used to replenish the wielder’s body, healing and restoring them.

Hidden: Further effects unlocked through growth of the currently bound user are hidden and will revert upon being unbound along with the item’s grade.

[0/2] Set Bonus: Persona.

With at least two pieces of the set bound and equipped, the wielder may use the leftovers from harvested bodies to craft a persona. This persona has separate stats from the wielder that grow along with the user. With the Blood Devouring Ring, the persona will have separate stats for STR, AGI, VIT, END. The persona is effectively a separate body the wielder may possess while theirs is held within the ring. This completely hides the wielder’s body and can act as a form of protection when equipped. Some skills may be inaccessible while a persona is active. Should the body sustain too much damage, the wielder’s body will be forcefully ejected from the ring while the persona recovers.

[0/3] Set Bonus: Domination.

With all three pieces of the set bound and equipped, the wielder may dominate living creatures by devouring a portion of their mind, body and soul. The remaining portion, if sufficient, will leave behind a creature that that is obedient the wielder. This effect will only work when the wielder is significantly stronger than the target. Depending on how much is left behind, the target may end up being more or less capable and may not be entirely obedient.

[0/3] Set Bonus: Living Persona

With all three pieces of the set bound and equipped, the wielder may take on the form of devoured enemies. Their mind, body and soul can be nearly perfectly imitated. The persona may also be altered at will.

I thought the persona already had it’s own agility, vitality and endurance with the soul ring? I guess the soul ring only contributes a portion and this contributes more to those stats as well? I wonder what portion I lost by destroying the crown.

You don’t know that’s it’s been destroyed just yet.

Fair enough. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .