Chronicles of the True Wizard

Felix woke up a number of hours later feeling completely refreshed and rejuvenated, something he was realizing he hadn’t felt in a long time. As great as he felt though, it was really annoying him that he still had to sleep at all. He liked sleeping, it was comfortable and calming and he always felt better afterwards.

What annoyed him was that he was pretty sure he shouldn’t have to sleep so, the fact that he still seemed to at least be benefitting from it was frustrating. He decided to add ‘figuring out sleep’ to his todo list then hopped out of his tower and fell to the ground.

As he walked towards the exit, Nova hopped over and joined him, having finally finished with her nap. She hopped up towards him and Felix immediately noticed her base form had shifted. She still mostly looked like a cat but now instead of just being a black cat, she had both red and white scales all over her body. They were mostly concentrated around her sides, neck and head but they were very noticeable against her otherwise black fur.

I mean… I guess there’s no reason anyone should be able to recognize them as dragon scales, right?

Grim shrugged mentally, Yeah, could just be Drakene or Drakeling scales.

Also, I don’t want to be the one to tell her she can’t do it. Especially not after seeing all those memories of her hunting with Endycor and feeling how attached to them she was.

Well, you should also figure out what to do with your scales too.

Yeah. I think I want to replace my Persona’s pants. I keep fearing they’re gonna burn up and now that I integrated phoenix cells into it, that concern is getting way more real.

Huh, I totally thought you would integrate them into your cloak.

I thought about that too. Maybe I can do both. First I need to figure out how valuable or dangerous having them really is.

He had thought about integrating them into his or his Persona’s body but all he had were scales, none of the tissue or cells that grew or supported them of any kind. He just didn’t see any way to grow them himself just from looking at the scales, at least not in any way that wasn’t messy. Even if he did grow the scales, they were only a small part of the entire system. They alone wouldn’t grant him fire protection, just light slashing and piercing protection like any other scales would.

Nova crawled around and perched herself on Felix’s shoulder and he walked back out of his Pocket Home into the storage closet. Walking back into the workshop, Felix headed straight for Aldahn’s office.

Felix knocked and Aldahn beckoned him in.

“So how’d it go with the Ravens?”

Felix shrugged, “Not great for the job but also pretty good for me.”

“Well, silver linings I guess. Is that your familiar?” Aldahn gestured towards Nova.

“Yeah, this is Nova.”

“A cursed matter spirit. You definitely fit the stories I’ve heard of escapees at least.”

Felix smirked, “Strong with lots of potential but young and stupid to the ways of the world. Doing risky things to try and keep up the same pace they started with?”

“Yup. Don’t forget, very high regard for their own abilities which constantly teeters the line between arrogance and confidence.”

Felix chuckled, “Fair enough. How often does it work out?”

Aldahn snorted, “Let’s just say I’ve heard stories of escapees but I don’t know of any that are gods, demi-gods or any that are even still alive. I know none of their names, except of course, Felix.”

Felix shrugged, “I think I’m unique enough that I’ll be fine. That’s besides the point though, I’ve been meaning to ask you, my charm has gotten kind of redundant now and I figure I should probably get a new one.”

Aldahn shrugged, “Yeah, that’s pretty much how they work.”

Felix frowned, “What do you mean?”

“They get redundant, if you’re lucky.”

Felix just looked at him with confusion before Aldahn elaborated, “The whole point of a charm or trinket is to give you an ability you wouldn’t normally have in order to influence your evolutions. They didn’t use to exist at all until… well not sure but they didn’t exist at some point. People felt stuck in their path and found it hard to branch out so, charms and trinkets were born.”

“So I need to figure out where I want my class, race or profession to be and find a charm tailored to that?”

Aldahn shrugged, “Sure. It’s not a huge deal to not to have one at all. It’ll make you weaker now but they don’t exist past D grade anyway. At that point your path is mostly set so they wouldn’t do much.”

Felix nodded, “So I need to decide if I want my class, race or profession to change directions first.”

Aldahn nodded, “They’ll change a little bit naturally depending on how you use them and what you focus on anyways. Charms and trinkets are more about larger more drastic changes.”

“So… could I go find a System Fuckery charm and just have it until I hit C grade then?”

Aldahn nodded, “Sure, just make sure to get a relatively cheap one if it isn’t important to your evolutions. Oh also make sure it’s at least somewhat related to your current path otherwise you might get forced into a path you don’t want.”

Felix nodded, “Ok next question, what are some of the most famous mana computers and could I use one to store information?”

Aldahn nodded, “Sure. The big one they use for registration in the city stores things… kind of, not really. Famous ones? You should check at the library but the one that comes to mind is more of a myth really. Supposedly Kryptos made one at some point that’s the size of a planet.”

Felix frowned, “What the hell does Kryptos use that one for?”

Aldahn shrugged, “It’s a rumor, likely a myth. All I’ve ever heard about it is that it may exist. Just ask a librarian, they’ll find you whatever you want to know.”

“Alright fair enough… Actually, I don’t pay taxes as far as I’ve seen, are they just hidden?”

Aldahn shook his head, “Nope, no taxation.”

“So, how come there are officers and librarians then? Do they just work for free?”

“Nope. They’re paid a livable amount but a lot of them do it specifically to level professions.”

Felix frowned, “Where is the money coming from to pay them?”

“First, I pay rent for a space in this building with a price that fluctuates based on demand. All of that goes to the city, who owns every building and rents them out. That isn’t quite enough to cover everything though so the rest is covered by donations.”

Felix frowned, “Wouldn’t that be a lot of money to run a city like this?”

Aldahn nodded, “Sure.”

“So the city makes that much in donations?”

Aldahn shrugged, “A lot of the donors are gods. The biggest donor by… I think maybe 50-70% of cost of running the city actually, last I checked, came from Rhonan. Then any god, demigod or just any company that does business here has a vested interest in keeping it running so they donate as well. That’s a lot of people and organizations.”

Felix’s eyes widened and he shook his head a little to try and clear it, “I’m sorry, what? Rhonan donates that much? I thought the city was neutral to all religions wars and so on?”

Aldahn nodded, “Yeah. They’re just donations.”

Felix looked at Aldahn incredulously, “Sure but if he’s paying the majority of the bill, even if he doesn’t request anything, the city would still be biased towards him, no? And what, he just donates out of the goodness of his heart? You really don’t think he’s counting on that bias in case he needed it in the future?”

Aldahn shrugged, “I don’t know. I’ve never had the chance to ask him, let me know if you do though.” Aldahn smiled and winked at Felix.

“Sorry, you’re right. Just surprising is all.”

Aldahn nodded, “When I first moved here I actually went down the same train of thought you did. The thing that convinced me is that this city has been around for a very long time. Rhonan has been keeping it afloat for almost just as long and as far as I could tell, it has never been an issue. There haven’t even been decisions that I could personally flag as sketchy or biased.”

Felix nodded, “Alright, guess I can’t really criticize it then. Who runs the city by the way?”

“It’s a council of elected officials. Thing is people live so long that once you elect someone good…”

“They basically hold the position almost forever?”

“Yup. They work mostly behind the scenes. A lot of the important big laws got decided so long ago that eventually people realized they were fighting over such minor decisions, everyone just kind of lost interest.”

Felix frowned, “How long ago was that?”

Aldahn shrugged, “I don’t know it was way before my time but it was one of the reasons I moved here. I haven’t heard anything about elections or had issues since I moved so, seems like I made the right choice.”

Felix chuckled, “Fair enough. Unrelated note, what’s up with item tags when I identify things?”

Aldahn snapped his fingers, “Damn it, I should have thought of that. It’s a great example of the whole System deteriorating thing. It used to be that tags were only on the most complicated items, tags like soul bound, growth stuff like that. Gradually tags started to appear on more things until eventually, we are where we are now and we have tags on things that really don’t need them. The worst part too, is that they’re inconsistent.”

Felix cringed, “Yeah they didn’t seem…”

“Most of us just ignore them most of the time. I don’t need to see a ‘Weapon’ tag on a long sword. I guess the flip side is an ornamental sword not having the tag would be fine but… it’s not like they couldn’t be used as a weapon. Also there are some weird cases where it’s useful like if you enchanted a defensive enchantment into a sword for some reason then didn’t sharpen it, it wouldn’t have the weapon tag. But again, you could still hit someone with it. Nothing is stopping you.”

Felix sighed, “This is just…”

“Frustrating?”

“Yeah. I just wanna know why. What the hell is happening that something like happens. I mean, it’s The System. How is it getting things like this so… wrong?”

“Great question. If you manage to figure it out, let me know”

Felix nodded, “Alright thanks… I’m gonna head to the library then.”

Aldahn waved him off, “Have fun.”

Felix quickly darted over to the library then had a librarian retrieve him a huge stack of books. Initially he wanted to have them lead him to the books so he could just scan them but they immediately pointed out it was far faster for them to retrieve the books. Felix just slowed them down within the library where they moved ridiculously quickly. Apparently there were also teleportation points throughout but they were only usable by librarians.

Rather than portals that anyone could walk through, instead these transported just the individual who touched them. Felix asked how they worked but he immediately lost interest when the answer he got was that they worked through The System which governed much of the library.

He managed to find a bit more on the mana computer planet rumor but not much and nothing that was verified in any way. He did however find more about the kind of mana computers he was interested in. Some people had made processors like there had been on earth, capable and diverse processors that could be programmed to compute complex things. The issue was that they were incredibly unstable or massive.

The useful part to Felix though was the theory behind them. He scanned the books and read through them in his Soul Garden, paying special attention to how the transistors worked, how they were made, how they were connected, how the analog signals changed things and so on.

He also managed to answer his question about sleep and it was rather simple. When any living creature slept, their body did some work to flush out their brain and recover and so on but also, their souls processed all the experiences they had had throughout the waking hours. Considering he was completely aware of his body at this point, Felix was pretty sure his soul was the only part left doing anything when he slept.

Some soul cultivators had pushed their souls to process at all times resulting in them not needing to sleep at all, or if their bodies weren’t up for it, meditating within their souls while they slept. The process was actually simple enough that Felix implemented it right on the spot, completely removing his need to sleep which was in his opinion, a waste of time.

He also found multiple legends and even a couple memories of some other integration escapees, though no exiles. His impression from all of them though was that they were like children with cannons. Not that he thought he was much different. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find any records that indicated any of them were prolific or even alive currently.

Some had disappeared when they joined certain factions and others had died but all of them, had very shortly after escaping, become very famous. It seemed like the momentum from their integrations often resulted in them leveling so quickly that they reached the B grade in record time. He did not find any that had surpassed the A grade and become gods or even demigods though.

This accelerated leveling pace resulted in many being sponsored by companies or individuals so they could claim some part in their meteoric rise. Considering the weird interaction he had had with Krinitor’s parents, he was started to put the pieces together. He definitely didn’t mind getting things for free but at the same time, he really didn’t want to go parading his title around.

He decided he would keep his status hidden, like an ace in his sleeve and if he really needed something but couldn’t afford it, he now knew how valuable that card was.

After that Felix flew off to buy himself a charm.

He used his map to filter down the available stores until he found one that suited him and had someone show him their selection. There were so many in the store and yet so few that interested him. He did enjoy shopping without worrying about System Fuckery for once though.

Though it still annoyed him, the fact that he would be tossing it anyways as soon as he evolved meant he cared a lot less.

The biggest limiting factor for him though was that his race was locked in and he had no intention of evolving his class in any other direction. In fact, he was happy to just take Reaper as his class in the C grade and beyond. The legendary skills were only going to become more valuable over time.

That left him with charms to influence his profession and any that were just generally useful. He found a number of charms that offered skills in combat, some that were defensive, others that were offensive.

Some just made swords swing faster, others gave shields. Some healed the wearer others allowed them to launch elemental attacks. Ironically the one that Felix kept looking back at though was a very simple one. It simply allowed him to slot in mana batteries and they would naturally extend his mana pool. Dead simple and if he bought massive batteries, very useful.

He hesitated mostly because it wasn’t like he was running out of mana just yet. He got low occasionally but had never actually hit 0. On top of that, his mana pool had recently grown a huge amount because he had suffused his body with a layer of his soul.

Wait… why is my mana pool still tied to my intelligence?

Grim offered no answers so Felix decided to just add it to his todo list. He ended up buying the charm that extended his mana pool just because it was very cheap.

[D - Epic] Mana Pool Extending Trinket

[Charm][Trinket]

A trinket with up to 5 slots to hold mana batteries. The sum of all mana batteries inserted into the charm will be added to the wearer’s mana pool. If faster access batteries are available, they will function as buffers for the other batteries.

Once the wearer’s mana pool is full, the batteries will fill with any excess regeneration. The batteries will be drawn from to restore the wearer’s mana pool as quickly as they can be safely drawn from.

It cost him a laughable 50,000 D largely because he would also need to spend money on batteries to slot in. Luckily for him, he already had them on hand. He equipped it and slotted them in then hung the small disc from his neck with string because he still hadn’t found a usable amulet yet. He was starting to seriously consider making his own equipment though, for everything he was still missing.

He decided to wait till he attended Eramith though because he wasn’t lacking in power or abilities yet and he was hoping to take classes on enchanting.

Once he had paid Krinitor he also fully planned on going back to the battery shop and spending more money on those. He also wanted to try his hand at making batteries himself again but he didn’t have high hopes for beating the machine’s efficiency any time soon.

Felix then spent some time with Mihto which mostly involved getting used to using more spells in the course. They had only added a couple spells but all the combinations and building the instinct took a lot of time. He spent the entirety of the day time there and pushed Mihto to show him as much as possible so he could build the instinct on his own time.

Checking in with Aldahn again, there just weren’t any jobs for him to work on so he started working on some of his own projects. First and foremost, he wanted to experiment with mana computers. He first tasked himself with making a very simple mana computer based on the same principles as the complex computers he had read about.

Most of what he had read were research papers and reports on research projects. They were often overly complicated and wordy but in turn, were very easy to reproduce with their, almost, step by step instructions.

Once he had a small working prototype, Felix started to experiment first with storing any amount of information. Much like semiconductors and flash storage though, it was very complicated and took a lot of work for a very minor result. It did however function mostly as expected. Unfortunately things got a little distorted which hurt the precision and therefore capacity of the computer as storage system, but it worked. His goal though, was to improve that over time.

He also made sure to take some time every day to try and make everything Mihto was teaching him more instinctual using his Soul Garden.

Once he had finished with his initial experiments, Felix started to shrink the computer down as much as he could using his mana control. He experimented with swapping out the components of the computer with solid mana constructs and so on but things got too complicated too quickly for him to make sure it all stayed together.

He switched gears and skipped to the next step of his experimentation at that point and started to use the extra anima he had lying in his Soul Space from the Grelmites to suffuse the computer. He had gotten the idea from Grim theorizing about The System and wanted to see if he could do something similar to either replace or just augment his own brain.

Almost immediately, he saw the computer become very stable to the point where he could crank the precision up as high as everything else could handle. It was a huge step for him but he decided to move on to other projects at that point because he was distracting himself with too many ideas for them along the way.

He quickly spent another day with Mihto to add some new spells and combinations to his repertoire then started work on another project.

This time, he resolved himself to set aside time every day to train. He would spend 12 hours in his Soul Garden running the endless obstacle course he created. This only amounted to about 15 minutes of real time so after that, he would spend an hour and 45 minutes practicing his mana control and the number of spells he could craft.

For spell formation speed, he was already juggling balls of mana in the air while he thought and worked on enchantments or other projects. He decided to switch tracks now and instead he would just create and destroy spell forms in the air around him. He would be limited to simple ones that were very familiar to him for now but they would still help.

He also decided to start adding in some different kinds of exercises into his routines. Creating spell formations worked but they weren’t working fast enough for him so, he decided to switch it up.

Using a small chunk of inlay material with minimal weight, Felix surrounded it in mana then simply lifted it up and down again. He was doing literal curls with his mana control. He found a weight that strained him and pushed it out as far as he could to stretch his range as well. He did that for a half hour then he tried to write things out with a quill that he held with mana alone at the edge of his range for another half hour. Lastly he simply created as many spells as he could at once, then destroyed them.

After checking in with Aldahn and making sure he didn’t have anything for him, Felix then took 2 hours out of every day to train.

Aldahn was apologetic at first but Felix didn’t mind because it gave him time to work on everything else he had been missing out on considering how involved and time consuming the jobs were.

Felix didn’t dare practice his mana control out in the open so he would then headed into his Pocket Home to train for 2 hours.

He ended up having to buy random materials and corpses to keep Nova occupied but she seemed happy enough every time he offered one to her so he didn’t worry about it too much.

As for the project, Felix first experimented with and finished his next iteration of his Mage Armor. he realized he had been overcomplicating the whole thing and rather than interlocking plates and actual armor, he created a simple shell that blocked things from entering inside. The biggest upside to it though was the fact that it wasn’t just a sphere. He had enough shaping nodes to create a rough silhouette.

The massive reduction in shaping nodes simplified the spell tremendously and left him room to have it move with his body. Previously, each plate of his Mage Armor had moved itself based on the nearest point to his body.

Now, he had the entire shell actually morph around his body thanks to some nodes Aldahn had show him when he asked about it. They weren’t perfect though so it wasn’t quite skin tight. For something like that he either needed new nodes or a fairly large mana computer constantly computing the shell’s displacement.

With the Mana Shell spell done for now, until he inevitably iterated on it once he actually used it, Felix spent another day with Mihto to refresh himself then started work on his cloak enchantment.

He had already done some experimentation and had ultimately decided that it was best suited for a cloak, especially once he had seen the one Krinitor had designed for him with sleeves.

The general idea was an enchantment that reacted to incoming attacks and defended against them in a few different ways based on their nature. Some attacks he would try to stop outright with solid barriers and force. Others he would try to redirect and for things like heat or lightning, he would try to shield them with cold or ground them respectively.

He wasn’t sure if all of that was possible but he would figure it out. He also wanted the entire thing to be a modular enchantment. In theory, he wanted to create a grid of either hexagons or triangles that all fit together to form an impenetrable sheet of defense.

Felix obviously knew it would never be impenetrable and he still wasn’t sure whether or not triangles or hexagons were better. Triangles would be smaller and more precise but he wasn’t sure he could fit the entirety of the enchantment into a small little triangle. The sharp corners were also pretty restrictive and he really hated the idea of wasted space.

In terms of modularity, his ultimate goal was an enchantment where each of the grid tiles were completely independent of each-other. He could then add as many tiles as he wanted wherever he wanted. The two biggest challenges he had to overcome with that were fitting everything into tiny tiles and having channels flow through the tiles so everything was equally supplied with mana.

He had already decided he would just power it with his own mana pool so it would have to accept mana from anywhere and be able to then distribute it throughout the array.

Also, the way enchantments worked, he wasn’t worried about individual tiles being weaker than an array of them. That was just dependent on the efficiency curve which he could tune.

He didn’t delve into making nodes himself yet because he wanted to have a problem they solved first and just more experience enchanting in general. He didn’t want to rely on them all the time but rather be a tool he had access to. He did however consider them and kept them in the back of his mind while he planned out the enchantment.

He started out with making an enchantment that did what he wanted with a large scale. He drew it out on a simple sheet of metal and once he had something functional, he started to shrink it. Inevitably, he encountered issues as he shrunk it down and had to go back and change the design.

He continued to iterate and change for a few dekads, while keeping up his training regimen, until Aldahn finally had a job he could shadow. It was something he had no experience with so Aldahn had him shadowing Ezaldor instead of being reverse shadowed.

The job was to make a ring that would both let someone launch themselves when they jumped, and help them survive the landing from one. It was a simple enchantment, one Felix could have finished in a matter of minutes, if he were enchanting boots. A ring though, was small and hands move a lot and are often very far from where they need to be making it a lot harder than it sounded.

Felix quickly learned why Ezaldor was lead on this particular project though.

Ezaldor stood hunched over a small scrap of metal they had cut to the exact size of the band but had left unwrapped, “The issue with small enchantments is, ironically, not power but precision. It is very easy to find or shrink a node then just pump ridiculous amounts of mana through it. Unfortunately, things at that scale fall apart very quickly. Even the smallest deviation in input mana, measurements and so on will multiply and amplify themselves until they result in…”

Felix waited as Ezaldor focused on a particularly small node. He often trailed off but always finished his sentence, it just took a few minutes usually. Only once had it taken an entire hour.

“…the enchantment falling apart or injuring the user. This is also why jewelry can become prohibitively expensive for even seemingly mundane and simple enchantments.”

Felix followed along with Ezaldor, mirroring his actions to the best of his ability on another flat strip of metal as he spoke.

“Most find jewelry enchanting…”

Felix carefully replicated Ezaldor’s work over the last minute or so. He was initially worried about falling behind but that proved not to be an issue as Ezaldor was meticulous and took ample time to ensure everything was perfect. Considering Felix was simply mirroring his work, it didn’t take Felix nearly as long as it had Ezaldor because the majority of the validation process had already been done.

“…bothersome. They avoid doing it entirely. However, I am not one of those enchanters, rather I enjoy the precision it requires.”

In a rare turn of events, Ezaldor looked up from the ring, “Which is why I am impressed you are so patient with the process. When Aldahn told me he had seen you working on trying to miniaturize enchantments and that he thought you could learn a lot from this contract, I honestly didn’t think you would be up to the task.”

Felix shrugged, “I don’t mind it at all. It’s just another challenge. The monotony is… I do a lot of very monotonous things, I have no qualms with this process.”

Ezaldor smiled his expression full of respect, “I can see that now. You will make a fine enchanter yet.”

Felix smiled, “Hope so.”

From that point on, Ezaldor started to allow Felix more access to the work itself. He involved him in the process, asking him questions about the next step and why certain decisions had been made. He took on more of a teaching role than he ever had.

By the time they completed the ring, Ezaldor had allowed Felix to personally inscribe the final iteration of the design onto a practice sheet then he copied that onto the final ring itself.

Felix followed along again mostly because enchanting the ring itself was more difficult due to it actually being a ring rather than a flat strip of metal they had been practicing on. The enchantments were so fine though, that they were essentially only ever working on a tiny portion of the ring at once such that the curvature was minimal.

Once they completed the ring, Ezaldor placed the ring in one of the meeting rooms then walked back over to Felix, “I was wondering if you might show me the enchantment you had been working on that inspired Aldahn to have you shadow this job?”

Felix quickly wiped the incredulity off his face and nodded, “Sure.”

He pulled out his latest sheet of metal that was covered in various iteration of his enchantment and placed it on the table.

Ezaldor walked over and picked up the sheet then used the various tools at the table to examine the enchantment. Felix was too embarrassed to admit he hadn’t learned how to use those tools yet so he simply observed and picked up what he could. Rather, he wasn’t embarrassed but more fearful of the outcome were he to reveal that fact at this point.

“Ah, this is an independent interlocking defensive enchantment?”

Felix nodded, he had never heard that name before but it sounded like an apt description of what he was aiming for.

“What inspired you to create such a thing?” Ezaldor addressed Felix as he continued to look over the sheet of metal, not bothering to look up at him.

Felix shrugged instinctively even though he was pretty sure Ezaldor couldn’t actually see him, “I had made a Mage Armor spell but it had issues. It was far too complicated and the plates were prone to breaking.”

Ezaldor nodded, “Yes that is the inspiration for making a defensive enchantment, but why an independent interlocking enchantment?”

“No particular reason, I’ve never even heard that name before. I just thought it would be a good idea.”

“I see. These enchantments very often teeter the line between spells and enchantments though not always. They are much more common in wards where the shape and dimensions of the object you are working with are not known. It is then very easy to simply paint the enchantment onto a wall at a later date.”

Felix nodded, “Makes sense.”

“They are also very simple to maintain as repairing or replacing individual tiles is much easier than an entire enchantment. Unfortunately they are complicated to design as you have no doubt learned and they have another issue, they are not particularly efficient.”

Felix frowned, “How much less efficient.”

Ezaldor shrugged, “Depends on the complexity of the enchantment but anywhere from 50% more mana to 200% more for very high level and complex enchantments.”

Well, luckily I have mana to spare.

Ezaldor continued, “This is largely due to the fact that the enchantments cannot necessarily communicate with each-other. Taking this enchantment as an example, if it were blocking an arrow, a single node would react and output just enough mana to stop it, ideally.”

Felix groaned as he realized the problem, “Oh shit.”

Ezaldor nodded, “Exactly. If a boulder is thrown at you or a maul swung in your direction, each node would then calculate the force required to stop the maul and output that amount. This results in…”

Felix sighed, “Hundreds of times more mana expended than necessary.”

Ezaldor nodded.

“So when you said 50% to 200%…”

Ezaldor shrugged, “An out of character approximation.”

Felix sighed, “How do you get around that?”

Ezaldor chuckled, “Either a massive mana computer, which would be difficult to carry around with you assuming this ended up on your cloak or robes, I assume?”

Felix nodded, “That was the intention.”

Ezaldor shrugged, “Beyond that I don’t know of an elegant solution. I can however, help you miniaturize this. What is the intended scale of each tile?”

They worked together for almost a day with Ezaldor helping Felix along and guiding his hand so to speak. At the end of the day Ezaldor bid Felix farewell so he could go home and sleep while Felix continued to apply Ezaldor’s wisdom and iterate on his enchantment.

Although his plan was to have a mana computer in his head, a massive one, exactly the kind Ezaldor had mentioned, Felix didn’t want to have his brain hooked up to his spells. He was hoping there was another solution and luckily, he had a vague idea of something that just might work. He wasn’t going to look into it until much later anyways because he still had plenty of work to do on the enchantment itself though.

He spent a dekad or so working on the cloak, trying to finalize the tiles themselves, thinking through all the possible attacks he would need it to defend against and how best to counter them. Felix simplified it and combined defenses where it made the most sense but kept all his previous iterations around so he could test them against each-other.

He set up the enchantments on metal sheets with parchment behind them then fired off spells and arrows so he could compare how effectively they defended.

Every day, he kept up his routine of training and he even started to train while he worked on his cloak enchantment. He made sure his training was as subtle as possible so, he didn’t float quills or perform curls with his mana control but, he did practice with his matter senses constantly. He also shifted away from juggling mana passively as something to fiddle with and instead, he returned to forming and destroying spell formations to improve his casting speed.

As he did so, he modified the spells slightly. His goal was to leverage his unique abilities as much as possible by being capable of modifying spells in combat to suit the situation. He was only modifying tiny things like the effective range or ratio between certain nodes but it strained him nonetheless, especially because he wasn’t focusing on them directly and he was rushing the formation.

After having spent the past few dekads on personal projects, Felix had gotten very accustomed to the workshop that was largely empty most of the time. A few enchanters passed through every once in a while working on a contract but they slept most nights and often had to wait for a smith, jeweler or tailor. While they waited they usually spent time with their family, friends or other job leaving the workshop empty most of the time.

Especially at night, the workshop was completely empty save for Felix, which was when he tended to run his experiments of launching spells at a wall so as not to disturb anyone.

This particular night, Felix wasn’t launching spells but rather tinkering with engineering his own nodes. He had finally started looking into the book they had picked up and was sorely disappointed. The nodes the book described were designed to output minute amounts of mana meaning they weren’t useful in any real enchantment or spell. He was trying to change that but not having much luck.

“Oi! Felix, you still here?” Aldahn called out from his office.

“I am?”

“Come here and bring your things.”

Felix looked up from the desk he was working at and shook his head in astonishment, he was never disturbed at night. Felix dropped what he was doing and walked over to Aldahn’s office, bringing nothing with him because he had no idea what Aldahn was referring to.

He saw Aldahn carefully reaching into some long and thin drawers on the side of his office, drawers that would often be used to hold large drawings or maps.

“What things?”

Aldahn looked up as he carefully pulled out a massive sheet of metal, “Enchantment analyzing tools.”

Felix frowned because he knew Aldahn knew he didn’t need them but he complied anyways, hurrying back over to the desk and grabbing some.

Aldahn carried the sheet of metal into the workshop and placed it down on the large table in the corner then Felix walked over next to him.

Aldahn yawned then addressed Felix as he scrutinized the metal plate, “Remember when I said I’d show you the next time I inspect the spatial enchantments?”

Felix nodded in understanding, finally realizing what was happening.

“This is the copy I made of the enchantment shortly after it was inscribed into the walls of a new building. Now I go around the whole shop and inspect the enchantment to make sure it’s all functional. No flaws, breaks, excessive turbulence anything like that.”

“Have you ever found any of those?”

Aldahn nodded, “A few times I’ve corrected breaks.”

Felix frowned, “I thought you said you didn’t need to inspect it?”

Aldahn shrugged, “I don’t. As I said, I don’t know of anyone else who does it. This enchantment is so fault tolerant and robust. There are countless redundancies so even thousands of flaws wouldn’t significantly hinder it. Every building in the city has these enchantments and they will far outlast me.”

“So why bother inspecting them at all then? Just anxiety?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Something about the thought of this entire workshop being compressed into a tiny block one day keeps me up at night. So sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I verify it.”

Felix nodded, “So do you have any idea how it works? You must understand some of it if you’ve fixed it before?”

Aldahn chuckled, “Nope, not a clue. It’s one of the most fascinating enchantments I have ever seen and I have no idea if it’s The System’s doing or an actual enchantment. Though, that’s not entirely true. Remember I said it was gifted to the city?”

Felix nodded.

“Kryptos gifted it to the cit- or rather Rhonan gifted it to the city and he got it from Kryptos. So it’s definitely a real enchantment, it just… I have a hard time wrapping my head around it being a real enchantment and not just… how’d you put it, System Fuckery?”

Felix snorted, “Yeah.”

Aldahn gestured towards the wall with his head, “Alright, we gonna do this?”

Felix nodded.

“Don’t touch the enchantment but if you notice anything off, point it out to me.”

Aldahn picked up the metal sheet and placed it vertically on a cart. He rolled the cart up to the wall and began comparing the enchantment as it was to the enchantment on the sheet.

Felix took a minute to examine the sheet and then almost 15 minutes to fully memorize it. The enchantment on the sheet was so fine, he had to run his eyes across it in a grid to fully grasp everything. He then had it fit together in his mind and started comparing it to the enchantment on the walls using the enchantment analysis tools.

He didn’t like using the tools because he could tell most of them were System Fuckery but he understood he probably shouldn’t be using his normal method in this case so he relented. The enchantment was impressive but Felix didn’t have any clue what any of it was doing. He had no frame of reference and couldn’t identify a single component, node or channel at all.

All he was doing was comparing it to a memory he had but if he had seen this anywhere else, he would have assumed it was an intricate wallpaper. He had no way to know how impressive it was because it was simply too far outside his realm of understanding. Spotting the difference between two images though, that he could do fairly easily.

He ramped up his passive training behind his back because the task was so tedious, he needed something to fiddle with. He found a few spots on the wall where there were breaks, tiny sections where the inlay had cracked and he pointed them out to Aldahn.

Aldahn looked over at the spot Felix indicated. After a few moments, he shook his head and chuckled, “Your memory skill is something else. If I had room, I would seriously consider picking up a similar skill.”

Aldahn carefully touched up the section of the wall with a quill Felix had never seen before.

“To be honest, I thought you were just pretending at first when you were looking at the wall. I kind of forgot about your memory.”

Felix chuckled and shrugged, “It comes in handy.”

Aldahn went back to his section of the wall and continued scrutinizing the enchantment.

A couple minutes later, “So, how’s the personal project coming along?”

Felix thought about it for a few moments, “It’s… coming.”

Aldahn chuckled, “That rough?”

Felix sighed, “It feels like there are just an endless stream of problems. I can’t say I’m not learning anything and honestly, I love problem solving. It’s just annoying to feel like I’m not making much progress.”

Aldahn squinted at one particular section of the wall, “What is the enchantment?”

“Reactive Defense Cloak enchantment. Ezaldor said it was an independent interlocking enchantment?”

“Force or just Mana Shields?”

“Both and more.”

He chuckled, “Depending on the attack?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s… definitely ambitious. Wanna show me after we finish up with this?”

Felix frowned, “Don’t you have to sleep after this?”

Aldahn chuckled, “Don’t you?”

“No.” Felix stated.

For the rest of the night they scrutinized the entirety of the exterior wall in the shop. They didn’t find anything major or anything that really mattered at all but it made Aldahn feel better. Felix also found it interesting because he tried to push every one of his senses to get any kind of understanding about what was happening with the enchantment. He got nowhere but it gave him something to do and kept him engaged.

Once they finished, Aldahn carefully replaced the metal sheet in the drawer in his office and walked over to desk Felix had been working at. Felix walked him through his different iterations and the decisions he had made as well as demonstrated his testing methodology.

Aldahn politely listened the entire time until Felix was done at which point he pulled out a new sheet of metal and inscribed a completely new enchantment onto it. After that, he inscribed another 5 next to it.

“These are my initial designs after hearing what you’ve already tried. Wanna test them?”

They went ahead and tested then iterated on those, Felix bouncing ideas off Aldahn a few of which seemed to be novel to him, though Felix wasn’t sure if that was an act or not. They worked together for a few days straight at which point Aldahn excused himself to finally sleep.

Felix however, continued working at the enchantment and started creating small grids on the test material so he could examine at the enchantment as a whole.

When Aldahn woke up a day later, he rejoined Felix and they continued testing the grids. Felix still hadn’t figured out how to properly supply them all with mana but Aldahn had a very simple solution that made Felix feel stupid.

“This is going on a cloak, right?”

Felix nodded.

“Well, a cloak is three dimensional right? Just have the channels that supply mana underneath the tiles.”

Felix frowned, “So like a power-plane or ground-plane on a circuit board? Huh… that’s so… simple.”

Aldahn frowned, “A what?”

Felix shook his head, “Never mind.”

Aldahn helped Felix out for a few hours at a time over the next dekad until finally, Felix had gotten to the point where he could finally miniaturize the entire enchantment.

Aldahn pulled an old piece of cloth from the storage room along with a training dummy that he rolled into the center of the workshop and a crossbow. He then pushed all the desks aside to create a large open area they could use to attack the dummy.

Felix inscribed the enchantment into the cloth then they draped it over the dummy and backed up.

They started with Felix who fired off a barrage of spells covering every different element and type of attack he could think of. Once he was done he looked at Aldahn for him to start attacking but he was just staring at Felix incredulously.

“You’re a fucking monster, kid.”

Felix shrugged and Aldahn sighed then he fired off a few shots with the crossbow. He also took a bolt and manually stabbed it at the dummy.

They then evaluated the enchantment and tuned it a little before repeating the process. Once they had it blocking everything they threw at it perfectly, Felix sighed and finally hit it with a few times with a large chunk of metal until it ran out of mana and failed.

Felix turned to Aldahn, “Ezaldor mentioned it would waste mana on blocking large blunt objects. I don’t want to strap a massive mana computer to my back but I was thinking, could I just suffuse it with some anima?”

Aldahn frowned, “That would work. You would need a massive soul gem.”

Felix shrugged, “Well at least I know what the next step is.”

And hopefully I have enough anima left over from the Grelmites.

He spent a few more days tuning the enchantment until he decided it was complete and finally inscribed it onto The Reaper’s Mantle. He simply activated the skill and set it to a simple cloak he had bought then pulled it off and started enchanting it.

It didn’t take him long at all because the enchantment was a very repetitive pattern by design. Once he had drawn out the enchantment for about a hundred tiles, he became much faster and the next thousand, were very fast by comparison.

All that was left at that point was a final test.

Felix pulled the finished cloak over to the dummy that was still set up from when Aldahn had moved the worktable and draped it over the shoulders. He also turned the dummy around so he had a nice large testing surface. Finally, he manually recharged the battery embedded in the dummy so it could replicate a sapiosentient mana source.

Looking around, there was no one in the workshop so Felix didn’t have to worry about disturbing anyone. He started with, arguably, his signature spell, a simple Lightning Bolt overpowered by a factor of 5. Easily strong enough to kill most creatures he had ever faced and he was pretty sure it was far more than enough to kill him, given a direct hit.

In an instant the Lightning Bolt arced out of his hand and into the ground right in front of the cloak and he couldn’t help but smile. It was arguably unnecessary to specifically counter lightning attacks because they were so rare and the defense was completely specialized, but it made Felix happy to see it working nonetheless. The cloak detected the ionized path a Lightning Bolt spell made which was much less than instantaneous then simply grounded the spell, rerouting the path into the ground.

He moved on to more legitimate tests at that point starting with Fire. Ironically, Fire by itself was very easy to deal with because it was so light it could simply be pushed away. Fire paired with a stream of force to hold it in place however, was much deadlier.

Tiny beads of glowing orange and red raced towards the dummy and created tiny but concentrated explosions of Fire and Force but the cloak handled them perfectly. It both neutralized the incoming Force with it’s own output as well as erecting a grid of small hexagons in the area to handle any of the excess Fire and resultant Heat.

Force and Cold spells it handled in similar ways, leaving just physical attacks.

Felix morphed his Starmetal staff into a longsword and started swinging it into the dummy with all his strength. Not once did it penetrate the field of force slowing it down or the grid of hexagons behind. Felix added in a little force of his own to simulate the swing of someone a lot stronger than he was and although he had to recharge the Dummy’s battery, the cloak reacted perfectly.

As Felix prepared to start stabbing the dummy, he suddenly realized there were two men standing behind him. Both Aldahn and Thezan were admiring the cloak but Aldahn had helped Felix work on it and had already seen it in action. Thezan on the other hand was much more impressed seeing it for the first time.

Once Felix noticed them, Thezan walked over and gestured towards the dummy with his swords. Felix quickly darted over and filled the dummy’s batteries then backed up and nodded to Thezan.

He smiled wildly then lashed out at the dummy with what Felix could only assume was his full strength. He didn’t seem to be using skills at the start but that quickly changed when every one of his sword swings simply bounced off the cloak’s protection.

Shadow covered Thezan’s blade as his swords whipped around far faster than Felix could follow. Bursts of shadow exploded out of the Dummy as the strikes were repelled one after the other creating a mess of darkness around the pair.

After a few moments though, the darkness subsided and Thezan wore a guilty look as his sword lay embedded into the dummy’s side. Aldahn chuckled and reassured Thezan while Felix approached to investigate what had gone wrong.

He sighed in relief when he realized it was simply the battery that had been completely drained. It was worrying considering the battery had a few million mana and Thezan had blown through that in a matter of seconds but, those seconds were completely unimpeded. Were Felix wearing the cloak, he would be trying to run away and create distance, making himself harder to hit. He just hoped that would make enough of a difference.

Felix recharged the battery and turned the Dummy around then shrugged, “Ran out of mana.”

Thezan sighed in relief then nodded in appreciation, “That cloak is super impressive.” He turned to Aldahn, “Any way we could fit something like that into my ensemble?”

Aldahn shook his head, “Not likely. You don’t have nearly enough mana to power that and you don’t really need it from what I’ve heard anyways.”

Thezan dropped his shoulders, “Yeah, I guess. I know for a fact Elric would like one of those though. I’ll make sure to send him over after our job’s done.”

Felix frowned, “I thought you were letting the gods deal with it themselves?”

Thezan shrugged, “That was the plan. We aren’t doing anything more directly just a side thing. Unfortunately it’s too dangerous to bring you along.”

Felix nodded, “I understand. You come all the way here just to tell me I couldn’t go or you also needed some enchanting?”

Thezan smiled, “I also came to drop off your cut from the last part of the job.”

Felix accepted the transfer of 200k B once again, “I thought you were gonna leave it with the guild?”

Thezan nodded, “I was.”

Felix nodded and tried to hide his disappointment, “Well good luck with the job then.”

Thezan smirked, “You know how Elric and Aros were paid for the last bit of the contract even though they didn’t participate?”

Felix shrugged, “Sure.”

“The client agreed you should be compensated for this part too. So expect some free money at the guild or, probably Elric will drop it off. He hasn’t quite finished his next batch of deadly concoctions yet though and tried to get me to delay the job for it.”

Felix chuckled, “Well thanks, I won’t say no to free money.”

Thezan shrugged, “Yeah, me neither. We’re all going to have to meet Dogran to debrief after this one though.”

Felix frowned, “Is that normal?”

Thezan and Aldahn shook their heads.

“Nope. It’s not like it never happens, but the client specifically requested it this time.” Thezan looked towards Aldahn.

“Yeah I think I only ever had to a few times in my career. Although it was never with the whole team.” Aldahn shrugged.

“Gods.” Thezan shrugged, “Hey Felix, any chance you could open me a portal to the teleportation hub?”

Felix chuckled, “Sure.”

He pulled out his mold and filled it with mana then Thezan chuckled as he stepped through, “Thanks, appreciate it.”

Felix closed the portal and picked up the mold then saw Aldahn looking at him with a confused expression.

Felix looked at him, “What?”

“That portal spell is… I’ve never seen it before but I can tell you it’s way more complicated than any I’ve ever seen.”

Felix shrugged, “Yeah that makes sense. I copied it from a world event in a city from an early integration.”

Aldahn nodded, “That makes sense. You might want to go find yourself a newer and likely safer one.”

Felix sighed, “Yeah. I already copied one from someone else, just haven’t gotten around to testing it yet. Anyways, I’m heading out, I take it you don’t have any jobs for me right now anyways?”

Aldahn shook his head, “Nope. Have fun. There won’t be anything for a little while anyways, everyone is busy right now.”

Felix was happy he had a little time to himself and headed over to Mihto’s where he ended up spending the entire day working through as many of the spells as he could. He then meditated in the parking garage below the building and made as much of it as he could instinctual. The next day he rejoined Mihto who evaluated his progress and adjusted accordingly.

He had ended up spending a dekad there because he was finally close to having added all the spells in Mihto’s regimen. At the end of the dekad, all that was left was the next stage of training, combat. He didn’t delve into that just yet though.

Felix knew he was going to have to go on a mission to level up his class soon. While working on the cloak, the ring with Ezaldor, examining the spatial enchants then the cloak again with Aldahn, Felix had gradually felt like he was becoming a more experienced enchanter. His levels mirrored that feeling and he had hit level 567 in his profession, surpassing his class by over a hundred levels.

Felix didn’t want his class and profession to differ too much in level though and he knew he would be working on more enchantments soon so he figured he had some free time now to catch his class level up.

Before heading to the Adventurer’s guild, Felix headed back to Inscripticae because it had been a dekad and as soon as he opened the door, he saw Aldahn standing in the lobby.

“Oh, Hey Felix… Any chance you would be willing to take on some solo clients?”

Felix stopped in his tracks, “Uh… sure.”

Aldahn nodded, “Perfect. These aren’t super high priority but on top of individual clients, we get requests all the time for low priority, mundane work. I sort through them and sometimes we complete them when things are slow or someone is bored. I figure you’re probably ready to take some of them on.”

Felix nodded, “Sure thing.”

Aldahn led Felix over to his office where he pointed to drawer. Felix walked over and opened it revealing an immaculately organized set of tickets. Felix picked up the one on the far left, the most mundane and read that some client was looking for gloves that were essentially oven mitts. They only had to handle up to a couple hundred degrees and the budget was just a couple hundred D.

On the other end was enchanting work on an existing set of plate armor to make it more durable and protective with an enchantment powered by energy. The budget was a few thousand C.

Felix looked back at Aldahn, “How long have these been here?”

Aldahn shrugged, “They’re low priority which gets them a discount but it means it could take us an Epoch to complete them. I do a lot of them here in my office but I figure you have enough experience now that you could handle some yourself.”

Felix nodded, “For things like the plate armor here, where is the armor?”

Aldahn walked out of his office and across the hall then opened one of the meeting room doors, one Felix had never been in before. The meeting room didn’t have a table or chairs and was actually two adjacent rooms connected together. It was also completely full of random pieces of equipment and gear.

Felix looked over at Aldahn, “Is it always this full?”

Aldahn guiltily scratched his head, “I may have fallen behind a little. I got distracted with some personal matters and while doing some housekeeping earlier today, I realized how behind I was.”

Felix shrugged, “I guess I’ll just start with the left side and work my way up then?”

Aldahn nodded, “Sure. Just if you have free time, this is always here. Most of the other enchanters opt not to do any and it’s not a big deal if we don’t. It’s just… nice.”

“I definitely don’t mind the experience.”

“Good. I’ll look over and approve the finished products. You can leave them in my office or the design room depending on how big it is.”

Felix nodded, “Sure thing.”

Aldahn walked out of the store, the first time Felix had ever seen him leave then Felix walked into his office and started sifting through the drawer. Instead of picking just one of them up, Felix picked up a handful from the far left side. He read through them and swapped a few out then dashed out of the building and flew off towards some general stores to stock up on materials.

He made sure he had a set of jobs where he could buy everything he needed from just a few stores to minimize the time he had to waste acquiring materials. The time wasn’t entirely a waste though because he planned and design all the enchantments for the 5 tickets he had grabbed by the time he had reached Over Capacity.

He walked in and Menan’s face instantly lit up, “Ah, if it ain’t the kid that saved me a whol’ot o’ time’n creds. What can I do fer’ya?”

Felix winced a little, “I need a few low grade batteries. A couple D grade Commons and some E grade Epics.”

Menan snorted, “Instant?”

Felix shrugged, “Might as well.”

Menan shrugged, “I still got some shards lyin round from’en the machine’as broke and the gems were poppin.”

Felix nodded, “Perfect.”

He waited a couple minutes for Menan to turn the gems into complete batteries then paid the man a pitiful 45k E. He felt bad getting such low grade gems but the projects he was working on didn’t need anything more. He even tripled his estimates then rounded up on the capacity table for the gems.

With all the materials he needed in hand, he darted back over to Inscripticae and started planning the enchantments for some of the other tickets he remembered from the drawer.

It took him half a day in the workshop to finish the 5 tickets at which point he stuck them in the design room and spent two hours training. Once he was done with that, he picked up another stack of tickets and spent every waking minute running through them. He had to optimize a little and plan out his shopping trips around daylight hours but other than that, he was breezing through the enchantments.

He also made sure to see Mihto once a dekad where he started working on using the skills in combat. For a completely pacifist mindset that meant Mihto having the course launch arrows at him while he darted and dodged around.

Over the next few Dekads the jobs on the tickets got exponentially more time consuming and almost equally more complicated, though it was hard to tell. They were all still very easy for Felix, most of them trivial. He was learning though and he made a few mistakes but considering the cost of the items, they weren’t costly mistakes and it was easy for him to simply restart.

He was also continually impressed by Mihto’s course. Forming a course out of what looked like colored sand was impressive, even more impressive was how it could simulate combat. It wasn’t even a close representation of real combat but, it moved quickly enough that Felix had to work at dodging and avoiding projectiles and blades.

Were he using his energy buffs, it would have been easier certainly but the challenge was the point. He did realize he was going to have to practice with his energy buff though because although his instincts were good, his reaction time wasn’t really being tested at all. On Mihto’s course, he was essentially watching it all in slow motion and deciding what he wanted his body to do, or at least that’s what it felt like without his energy buff. It also didn’t help that his mind and eyes moved far faster than his body did.

As Felix completed jobs, the drawer continued to fill. It was never-ending how many jobs the shop got and made Felix start to wonder how many Aldahn usually turned down. Even if he was gaining experience and even if he finished hundreds of contracts, they had still made less than the profit from a single higher end client.

Considering how unprofitable it was, Felix started to wonder why Aldahn took the jobs at all. He didn’t get a chance to ask though by the time he decided he was going to head to the Adventurer’s Guild. He couldn’t find Aldahn anywhere but he had shrunk the contents of the drawer down to just a few dozen and he was starting to get antsy.

He had gained a single level in his profession from working on all the tickets but considering he had spent a term completing them nonstop, he was starting to feel like they weren’t worth it.

Felix headed over to the Adventurer’s guild and started sorting through the jobs that were available. He wanted something challenging enough to give him levels but not flashy enough that he had to hide behind his Persona. He also wanted it to be relatively short, nothing that would take him more than a dekad.

He ended up settling on a simple monster eradication. Or rather, more like a siege on the monsters of the area. The job was simple, there was a small mining outpost on a vibrant and life filled planet that was mostly covered in deep jungle and mountains. The outpost was being sieged by an army of the planet’s wildlife. Much like Orselle back on Trenus except here, apparently the army was coordinated so, they likely weren’t just running in fear.

The outpost had been hiring adventurers to protect and guard them because they didn’t expect it to last this long or for the monsters to be quite so smart. Now, they had realized it was unfeasible to pay the guards forever especially since the level they needed for their guards just kept rising.

The outpost had decided to just pay someone up front to deal with the issue permanently. The expected pay didn’t exactly match the job description which is why Felix assumed it was still open. The legions of creatures attacking the outpost apparently ranged from the mid D grade all the way up to peak D grade.

Ideally, a team of peak D grades or even brand new C grades would handle the job but the pay was just 100k D which was arguably terrible. Felix didn’t give a shit about the pay though because the job had both a huge variety of creatures meaning his soul harvesting would grant him plenty of stats. The other reason he was particularly interested is that the creatures were unusually intelligent.

Although they were mostly animals of the jungle and mountains, they attacked the outpost’s supply lines, tried to cut them off. They harassed the miners and stole their product. The outpost had resorted to portals but they were expensive and drained the outpost’s resources little by little. They were somehow attacking the outpost both strategically and tactically, not something that animals typically did.

Felix was hoping for some kind of lead on enhancing his mind because his current idea was sketchy at best. As far as he could tell, this job was perfect for him. There had already been three teams who took the job then vanished and he could see their profiles in the description.

Two of them were slightly lower level than he was on average, the other was much higher at just over 800. It didn’t worry him but the result of that was that the job was now more of an open bounty to deal with the issue than a contract. Unfortunately that meant others could show up or already be there.

Felix recorded the anchor for the outpost then headed shopping quickly for supplies. He then headed back to Inscripticae to complete some simple preparations. Finally, he retrieved Nova from his Pocket Home then flew over to the teleportation hub where he had them open a portal for him. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .