Chronicles of the True Wizard

Once everyone had arrived and taken seats, Aldahn stood up and addressed everyone, “Alright, commission is a large weapon, ideally a great-sword. Desired effects are the basic, swing harder be sharper but with a twist. The client wants to be able to record a series of movements and then play them back.”

“How many recordings?” Ezaldor asked.

“Just the one.” Aldahn looked over at Fralyna, “Fralyna, you just finished the armor, want to take this one?”

She nodded with a wide smile, “Sure thing boss.”

Aldahn nodded, “Alright. Need a minute or do you have a basic design in mind?”

“I got it.” She stood up and replaced Aldahn in front of the board then began to draw out a series of enchantments.

The basic part of the enchantment, the swing harder and be sharper part was so common she just wrote it out and no one had any notes on it. They moved immediately to the more complicated part, the recording and playback portion.

She drew out some enchantments that would be able to produce a large amount of force in all directions and wired them all towards the pommel. Everyone except Felix provided notes or had questions and over the course of a few hours, they fine tuned the enchantments until they were perfect.

They ended up with force enchantments across the entire blade so there wasn’t any leverage concerns along with a ton of measurement nodes. All of those were run with channels into the pommel. The battery that would be used for playback was going to be set in the cross guard. The meeting was clearly dying down after the third hour as the comments and questions become fewer and far between.

Felix finally saw it as a good time for him to ask some questions that had eating at him, “What’s going into the pommel? Is it just a mana computer?”

“Noooo. Mana computer that size would be way too expensive.” Inorim shook his head.

“Soul gem.” Ezaldor stated.

“A what?” Felix just stared.

“You’ve been to the library, right?” Fralyna offered.

Felix nodded, “Yeah.”

She smiled, “Ever been into the memory section?”

He shook his head, “No, not yet.”

She tilted her head to the side with the same wide smile, “You know about mana batteries right?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugged, “Same thing just with souls. Great for storing memories. In this case, recording and playing something back is just a memory, isn’t it?”

“I guess?”

“I assume the client’s budget is… fucking huge?” Fralyna addressed Aldahn.

He just nodded.

“Yeah, soul gem it is then.” Fralyna smiled.

“Looks like that’s it then. Fralyna, you mind if Felix here shadows you for this one?”

She smiled and nodded, “Sounds good to me. I can get him to actually do stuff for me, right?”

Aldahn nodded, “Course, it’s your responsibility if it doesn’t turn out though.”

She just shrugged and smiled, “He’s a smart kid.” Then she winked at him.

Aldahn just shook his head and headed back to his office. The others in the room, other than Fralyna and Felix headed down to the workshop or left Inscripticae entirely.

Felix looked up at her, “Do you actually need me to do anything then or…”

Fralyna smiled, “Yup. Well, no I don’t need you to do anything but, if you’re gonna assist me then I’m gonna take full advantage of you.”

Felix just looked at her.

“I’ll go get the sword itself commissioned from a smith I know. Can you go buy a battery and a soul gem?”

Felix shrugged, “Uh, I guess? What are the specs we need and how much do I pay for them?”

“I’ll write it down for you. You can get some credits from Aldahn. For the mana battery, spend 100k C and for the soul gem 25 B. As long as they satisfy the requirements, get whatever the best deal you can for that much.”

“Uhm, alright.”

Fralyna wrote out the basic requirements for each of the gems. For the mana battery, it had to be at least B grade Rare and very fast transfer speed. For the soul gem, the requirements were D grade, 50k or better with control capabilities. Felix had no idea what the number for the soul gem signified but he figured he would find out soon enough.

He headed down to Aldahn’s office and, after making sure Felix had specifications for the gems, Aldahn transferred him the funds. Felix thought it was odd how easily he gave him money until he realized Aldahn could probably just find and kill him fairly easily. Not that he was planning on running off with the funds, but the thought of what recourse the shop would have had did cross his mind.

He started with the soul gem because those were the most interesting to him and headed to the library so he could filter down the stores more thoroughly. While his map had basic filtering capabilities, the library had much more in depth filtering. Specifically, he was looking for satisfaction, reliability ratings as well as how long the shops had been running for.

He got a librarian to help him and sorted through the shops in the city until he found a few he liked. He had that sub list sorted by distance from Inscripticae then memorized them. He did the same thing with the mana battery shops then headed out.

Walking into the first soul gem store on the list, Felix found exactly what he was expecting and yet, was still completely amazed. Inside, the store was a massive array of shelves that all held multicolored gems of various shapes, sizes and grades. Felix walked down the aisles and saw gems priced from as low as a few thousand D grade credits to a handful of gems that cost thousands of B grade credits locked away in the back.

“Can I help you find something?” A tall four armed elf suddenly appeared behind Felix, who he was almost certain wasn’t there a second ago.

“Uh sure, I’m looking for a D grade gem, 50k or better with control capabilities?”

“Of course, follow me.” The man led him three aisles down then a hundred gems deep before he stopped and tilted his head towards the shelf next to him.

“These gems fit your criteria. All the gems in this aisle have control capabilities and they’re sorted by grade and capability score. These are around 50 thousand. Just come find me if you need anything else.” The man nodded then walked off.

Capability score?

Felix looked through the gems and ended up walking down a little further into the aisle than he expected until he found one that cost 25 B. It was D grade with a 64k capability score. He reached forwards to pick the gem up off the shelf but his hand hit a solid wall he couldn’t see. Suddenly, the same man as before appeared behind him.

“You would like to purchase that one?”

Felix nodded a little guiltily after realizing it probably looked like he was trying to steal it, “Yes please.”

“Excellent.”

The man created a screen in front of Felix and he accepted the transaction then the gem disappeared from the shelf and appeared in Felix’s hand. He wrapped it into a pocket of his robes then nodded to the man and took his leave. He thought about putting it in his soul space, like he was with everything else but realized he probably shouldn’t do that considering what had happened to other soul based things in there.

Instead, he placed it into the Kryptos Repository once he had left the building, an item he hadn’t really found a great use for just yet. He made sure to memorize the rune pattern he had used then flew off to the mana battery shop.

The mana battery shop was completely different from the soul gem shop. The soul gem store was a vast, open store with filled shelves everywhere that were perfectly organized. This store, had shelves that seemed to contain a wide range of things. The shelves themselves and the space between them was a little cramped and they all led towards the back of the store where there was a long desk and a ton of room behind it.

Behind the desk there was a larger human man with a huge mess of hair on his head and face. He stood in front of what seemed like either one or two massive machines that looked to Felix like they belonged in a factory of some sort.

“Ya lookin fer somein specific?”

Felix waited until he finished chewing whatever he was eating then realized it was a wad of gum or something of a similar functionality.

“Need a mana battery minimum of B grade Rare, very fast transfer speed. Or better yet, whatever I can get for 100 thousand C.”

“Can do. Any preference on color or size?”

“What do you mean?”

“These’re the gems I have’n hand that’ll werk.” He said pointing to a shelf with a couple of gems on it.

“No preference… I guess as small as possible?”

“Sure. This yellow’n then.” He said as he picked up a bright yellow gem from the shelf. Felix saw a transaction screen appear in front of him and he paid the man then watched in fascination as he placed the gem into the machine behind him. Felix felt, and saw thanks to his Reaper’s Sense skill, the gem being prepared for use in a battery.

Where he had adapted a spell he had been given in the tutorial, this machine replicated the same end result with a completely different process. Felix watched as it measured the gem, finding it’s flaws and weaknesses by carefully running waves of mana through it. Then it shifted and began to rapidly berate the gem with mana and Felix struggled to follow as it darted around it in all dimensions. Instead of an arm moving around the gem physically, the gem was placed in a dome that had various nozzles placed all over it.

Felix focused in on different sections and did his best to follow it. He found that in some areas, the machine used less pressure and intensity when it pushed mana into the gem. In others, it used more. At first he thought it was because it was working around the gems natural flaws but that wasn’t the case because the areas it was gentler on, changed. He continued to watch and feel it until he finally came to the conclusion that it was counteracting the internal vibrations by creating opposite vibrations to cancel out the others. Exactly how it was doing so, he had no idea.

When it was done, it performed multiple passes of pushing mana into and out of the gem using progressively more mana until it was completely draining and filling the gem with every pass. It then waited a few minutes, repeated then made a cute little chime.

The man reached in and pulled out the gem then spent a few moments choosing the right housing from a drawer. He placed the housing into a press and placed the gem inside then pressed it closed with a lever. Taking the battery out, he handed it to Felix.

“There ya’go. Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Actually, how much are batteries? And what are their capacity breakpoints?”

“Here.” The man reached under the counter and retrieved a metal plate with a table engraved onto it and colored in by some unknown means.

Felix looked over the chart and saw that the battery he had made would be worth about 100k D with the right housing. Everything in the C grade or below with a fast speed or less was relatively cheap. Everything above that just got exponentially more expensive.

“Can I get 5 very fast C grade Special batteries?”

He shrugged, “Sure. You want’em all the same?”

“Doesn’t matter. Any chance you could make them self charging too?”

“Yeah… but, it’s gonner be slow.”

“How slow?”

“A few dekads for a full charge, maybe?”

“Okay, scratch that. Just the batteries then please.”

“Lemme see if I’ve enough gems in stock.”

The man walked through a door into a back room and Felix patiently waited. These batteries would each hold at least a million mana and Very Fast meant it would take him about a second to pull all of it out. There was also instant speed where he wouldn’t ever have to limit the rate he transferred mana because the gem was so far over spec, but those were a hundred times more expensive.

Looking at his own battery, he was realizing it wasn’t ideal for what he had intended it be used for. To fully drain his Very Slow battery, it would take over ten minutes according to the chart, which was completely unusable in combat. With the higher speed gems though, he could realistically drain them in combat.

It’s capacity was still impressive though so he planned on placing it inside his tower as a buffer just in case. Judging from the chart in front of him, the batteries would cost him about a third of his total wealth but that was easily worth it in his mind. In total, he was buying access to 5 million mana that he could pull on within a second, if he did so in parallel.

The man walked back out of the back room, “Alright, I can do it but it’s gonna cost you. I can give’ya slight discount, for buying so many but no’much. It’ll bringin’it back down to the standard price.”

That set of sentences was completely useless.

A screen appeared in front of Felix so he could confirm the transaction and he accepted, transferring the man 500 thousand D grade credits.

“Alright, this is gonna take a bit so feel free to leave and come back if you’d like.”

“I’d like to watch if that’s alright.”

“Sure… It’d be faster if I still had both machines running but this stupid machine is broken.” The man said as he patted the machine on the right. “The techs are all backed up though so it won’t be fixed for at least a term’r two. Stupid thing is probably gonna cost me an arm and a leg too.”

Felix suddenly perked up, “Can I take a look at it?”

The man just frowned in confusion, “Kid, you’re D grade and this thing costs more creds than you will ever see in your entire life.”

“I won’t touch it at all, just run it and I’ll watch. I’ll even buy the battery it makes from you.”

“Fine, just don’t complain if you get a bunk battery, ya hear?”

Whether or not he could actually fix it, Felix was fascinated to watch a broken machine work, in the hopes that he would get more insight into their function and see what a ‘bunk’ battery was. It would cost him a decent number of credits in the worst case scenario but he was more than willing to give it a shot anyways.

The man placed one of the other gems onto the broken machine and activated it. Not only could Felix sense what the machine was doing, but he could compare the two of them as both machines whirred away side by side. The gems themselves weren’t identical but the process was close enough that he could see the differences. At first, he had no idea what was wrong with it but as the process continued and he focused in on the machine, he realized that the machine on the right, had gaps in it.

Where the machine on the left would rapidly fire a wave of mana at the gem, the machine on the right fired a wave but it was like there was a big rock in the way. A chunk of the wave was just missing at one point in the dome.

“Can you stop the one on the right?”

The man looked at him for a few seconds then shrugged and hit a button which opened up the dome and he retrieved the gem from inside. With the dome open, Felix could see exactly which nozzle was failing because he could see residue mana leaking out from all the others.

“It’s that one right there.” Felix pointed.

“The nozzle?”

“Sure, that one in specific.” Felix created a Light spell that produced a very thin beam, almost like a laser and pointed it at the one he was talking about.

“I have a couple spares, let me see…” The man bent over and looked under the counter for a minute then popped back up with a small box in his hand.

“If yer right kid, I’ll replace your bunk battery with a new one and give you a 10% discount for the rest of your life.”

“What if I’m wrong?”

The man shrugged, “Nothing, it costs me nothing to try replacing it. I guess you get a bunk battery?”

He then carefully removed the nozzle in question, using a special tool to twist it off then replaced it with the new one.

“Why do you have spares and the tool if you can’t tell which one is failing?”

“Usually, they don’t fail like’is. Most o’the time they just go pop. Then ya’just have the leftovers and some debris ye’need t’remove.”

“How often does that happen?”

“Often enough that I have spares.”

“Ok, fair enough. How did you know it was broken?”

“Gems were goin pop.”

He reached over and pulled a gem out from under the counter then placed it in the machine and started it. The machine on the left finished first and the man replaced it with a new gem while he pressed the completed one into a housing and handed it to Felix.

[C - Special] Mana Battery (1,000,000/1,000,000)

[Normal][Very Fast]

A battery containing mana.

Felix inspected the battery and though it wasn’t as impressive as the one he had gotten for Inscripticae, this one was his. He stowed it away in his soul space, mostly to make sure it wouldn’t explode or anything and sighed in relief when it seemed fine. He stowed the one for the shop in his bracelet anyways just to be safe.

A half hour later, the machine on the right finished and the man poked and prodded the finished gem with a few tools before he looked up at Felix with a wide grin.

“I’m Menan by the way.”

“Felix.”

“Well Felix, you have a lifetime 10% discount here at Over Capacity. You just saved me a lot o’money and a lot o’time.”

“Glad to hear it. That mean the other batteries will be done twice as fast?”

“Yes sir, let me stick’em in now.”

A couple hours or so later, Felix walked out of the shop a very happy customer. He knew he would be back in the future, whether or not he would be buying gems or inspecting the machines some more.

For the time being though, he had everything he needed so he headed back to Inscripticae and found Fralyna standing at an empty work table. He pulled the soul gem and battery out of the Kryptos Repository then placed them on the desk in front of her.

She quickly examined the two then nodded, “Not bad kid. You did a little worse than I thought for that price on the soul gem, where’d you buy it?”

“Spirit Fused Gems.”

She nodded knowingly, “Ah, that makes sense.”

“Is that not a good place to shop?”

“It’s fine, you end up paying a lot for their reliability is all.”

“How is that… a bad thing?”

“A low reliability soul gem has about a 1% chance of failing after a thousand epochs. A high reliability soul gem has about a 1% chance of failing after a hundred thousand epochs.”

“Oh, that’s a decent dif-”

“Of continuous use.”

“Oh…”

“It’s alright, it’s a learning experience. I wouldn’t have sent you if it was vital to the project, no offense.”

“None taken.”

“The battery though, not bad. This battery is decent.”

“I ended up fixing his machine for him and he gave me a 10% discount for life.”

Fralyna just looked at him for upwards of a minute, “What?”

“I… got a-”

“No I heard you. How’d you fix his machine?”

“I just pointed at the broken nozzle.” Felix shrugged.

She just looked at him for a minute or so with a cocked brow then shook her head, “Kid you might be luckiest little… What shop?”

“Over Capacity.”

“Huh, I know Menan, good guy.”

“Seems nice enough.”

“Well, I guess we’re sending you to get all our batteries from now on.”

Felix just shrugged, “Sure.”

More chances to inspect that machine. Hopefully I can replicate the process myself soon enough.

“The sword itself is gonna take some time. Have you used the material index from the store room yet?”

“No but I have it memorized.”

She smirked, “Alright hotshot. The sword is made from an alloy that consists mostly of Asakantine, Ruclian and Satrium at a ratio of 5 to 4 to 1. What are it’s hardness, elastic and strength ratios?”

Felix flipped through the book in his head then performed some simple math, “92, 10, 78. Assuming normal forging temperatures?”

She just stared at him for a few seconds, “Alright, I have no idea. Can you go get the material index so I can verify that?”

“Oh, sure.” Felix hurried off to the store room and retrieved the book in question then handed it to Fralyna. She flipped through it’s pages a few times then nodded, “92, 10, 78. Alright kid. Good stuff. Now, I’ve already done it but it’s good practice, adjust the design from the meeting for those numbers.”

Felix nodded then walked over to another empty worktable and pulled on the roll of paper from the side. He picked up a normal quill that seemed to be enchanted to leave color on the page then traced out the enchantment with the numbers filled in. All he had to do was alter the size or mana flow to the different nodes based on whether or not it needed more hardness, strength or elasticity. It was a fairly menial task but it was the first time Felix had ever done it so he was more than happy to.

“A little crude.” Fralyna said looking over his modifications a short time later, “You’re better off limiting the flow of mana like this…” She said as she pulled her drawing out from under the table.

Other than just the modifications, her drawing was a lot cleaner than Felix’s, even though he had essentially traced it. For the modifications, she used the more elegant looking solution of altering the channel thicknesses all the way from the source instead of the node size. In Felix’s mind, it was possible for those channels to be forced and the nodes to be overloaded, whereas a smaller node didn’t have that issue.

Apparently though, just shrinking nodes alone had issues like failure rate and loss of precision that weren’t worth it for something like this. For a sword, if the material properties were inconsistent along the blade, it would have a high chance of breaking when it hit something due to internal stress from an inconsistent enchantment.

Fralyna didn’t have anything else for him to do until the sword was done so he chose an empty work table and started assembling simple calculators using mana computers. Though Aldahn and Ezaldor had both already looked over his design for the final mana computer, he still wanted to have more experience with actually creating them ahead of time. The multiplication and division calculators were simple enough and only took him a half hour in total.

It got a little more complicated when he made tiny computers to perform basic tasks like output the total mass of every object within a certain radius but eventually he figured that out too. He also had it point small laser lights at each of them and at that point, he figured he was ready. The final computer for his gravity spell he was planning on engraving onto a small slab of Starmetal but Aldahn saw and stopped him.

“Starmetal is super useful for making a random tool you need on the job, terrible for enchantments though.”

“Why?”

“Very low conductance and very high interference.”

Felix frowned, “Huh, I haven’t had issues with it so far.”

“What have you used it for?”

“Portals mostly.”

“With an inlay material?”

Most of the time…

“Yeah.”

“Alright thank The System, that makes more sense. Don’t do that. You’re very likely to kill yourself doing that.”

“Why didn’t it kill me already then?”

“System intervention, I don’t know. Just grab a random sheet of metal from the store room, anything is better than Starmetal.”

“Okay, will do. Thanks.”

Aldahn nodded and Felix retrieved a sheet of some unknown metal from the storeroom. He set it down on the table and Aldahn walked him through the different tools to draw out the enchantment, engrave it into the plate then inlay a high conductance material into it. The coolest part to Felix was when Aldahn showed him how to inlay.

There was essentially a large vat hanging from the ceiling on rails that he pulled over. Felix poured some inlay material into it and activated it’s enchantment which melted it’s contents. The vat then fed the melted inlay through a long tube that terminated in a very pen like tip. Felix simply pulled the tip along the engraving and by pressing down on the small button, molten inlay material poured out.

He was surprised he didn’t burn himself the entire time but he did screw up and have to cut back excess many times. The entire process was far more elegant than Felix’s rendition with a Starmetal vat that he held up with Force spells and poured directly into a mold. This allowed a much higher level of precision and was far more elegant, which Felix appreciated.

The design of the computer itself had already been approved by Aldahn so Felix wasn’t worried about inlaying it, the rest though, he tested. He simply attached the rest of the system as raw spell forms to the computer and used his own mana to activate it. It took him a few tries and many curious glances from the others in the shop trying to figure out why they suddenly weighed more until he got it right but eventually, he was pretty sure he had it working exactly as intended. He inlayed the rest of the spell onto the sheet then put away all the tools he had used.

He dragged the sheet with him into the store room then pulled it into his Pocket Home and set it up in the basement. He wired the entire spell form up to the mana engine and immediately felt himself pulled to the ground. The gravity was a little lighter than Trenus and noticeably lighter than Telviras but that was totally fine with Felix. He didn’t need the gravity to be intense or anything. It was also trivial to increase it but he left it for now.

He then wired up the mana battery he had made back on Trenus and had it function as a buffer for the mana engine itself so nothing was drawing directly from it. In theory it might prevent any issues in the future if he pulled on the mana very quickly or there was a sudden drop in the ambient because he cast a big spell or something. He would still be limited by the transfer speed of the battery but he didn’t see himself exceeding that anytime soon.

Ding You have gained 14 levels in [D - Arcane] Mana Engineer (233 => 247)

14 for that and none for the light? I guess this uses a mana computer and the light wasn’t that difficult. Oh well, levels are levels.

He walked back out of the tower and easily lifted the Demitium chunk up in the air, confirming the spell was working as intended then he replaced Nova’s bed on the ground and left his Pocket Home. He exited the store room and saw Aldahn just looking at him from across the workshop. Felix walked over to him.

Aldahn crossed his arms, “You have a pocket dimension or something, don’t you?”

Felix sighed, “How’d you know? Gravity or randomly disappearing in the store room?”

“Both actually. Also it’s somewhat common for escapees.”

“How many escapees have you met?”

Aldahn shook his head, “Just you. I’ve only heard about others. Most of them become powerful and famous so you hear about them when they happen.”

“Gross.”

“Hah! I hear ya kid. Just try not to become too powerful and you’ll be fine.”

“I’ll try.” Felix said noncommittally. “Oh, separate question, is 100 D an hour for use of a course and 500 D an hour for direct tutelage a good price?”

“Depends, what for?”

Felix shrugged, “A martial art kind of?”

“Then it’s a little low.”

“It’s not usually meant for combat.”

“Then it’s a little high, not much but a little. Not a complete rip off if you really need it. That’s assuming it’s not a Rare or higher skill, then it would be too good to be true. Honestly, I’m assuming it probably isn’t a skill at all at that price.”

Felix shrugged, “No idea.”

Aldahn nodded, “Doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it.”

Felix nodded, “Alright, thanks.”

“Sure thing. By the way, I came looking for you in the store room and didn’t find you, but I was looking for you because there’s someone at the front asking for you.”

“There’s someone looking for me?”

“Yup. Feel free to take one of the empty meeting rooms, where we started the interview, if you need.”

“Thanks…”

Felix walked over to the front and walked behind the counter so he could greet his completely unexpected visitor. Standing in the lobby was a tall looking man with a race Felix had never seen before. His skin was a dull grey color that leaned much closer to white than black but otherwise had no color in it whatsoever. He had angular tattoos that accentuated his face shape and his irises were almost as black as his pupils, only because of Felix’s high perception could he see his iris’. On top of it all, the part that seemed to differentiate him the most from humans, or elves considering his ears were slightly pointed, was his hair.

A top his head, instead of hair, he had what looked like inky black smoke that stayed relatively stable with only slight movement. It resembled a spiky, if a little messy, hairstyle that suited him but definitely drew the eye. Accentuating the entire look and contrasting the dark tones of his body, he wore a set of completely white leather armor that looked to be about as high quality as Felix had ever seen. The armor wasn’t quite pristine, but it wasn’t dirty. It had a few scratches here and there and some minor signs of wear around the edges.

Lastly, the man was tall, standing almost 7 feet according to Felix’s estimate and Felix could tell, even through the armor, that he probably had the most athletic build he had ever seen. Judging just from his body shape and what was visible alone, the man was covered in tight muscles that seemed to strike a balance between being sleek and mobile and strong at the same time.

[C] Thezan (Lvl ?)

Felix just frowned and looked at the man, “Uh… Hello?”

“You Felix Kade?”

Felix nodded, “I am.”

“Perfect. I’ve got a contract and I need someone with arcane aptitudes.”

Felix frowned as he reconfirmed Thezan’s grade, “Why me specifically?”

Thezan nodded with respect for Felix’s to the point attitude, “A couple reasons, we had someone that fit that role a little while ago but they ran off, had a kid and quit the life. We don’t have time to build trust with someone new but you’re only in the D grade so we aren’t too worried about you stabbing us in the back. Also, your proficiency in ‘mana?’ is the highest proficiency I’ve ever seen in something so general.”

Felix couldn’t really argue with any of that so he just shrugged, “Fair enough. You aren’t worried about me holding you back too much?”

“Not in this case. We’re already a lot stronger than necessary for the job. Your registration with the guild also says you can handle yourself against high D grade creatures, that true?”

Felix shrugged, “I believe it to be.”

Thezan looked at Felix for almost a minute then nodded, “Hmmmm. You do seem capable in a fight, you definitely aren’t falling behind at least. You also believe what you’re saying so, there may be some truth to it…”

Felix looked at him with a frown then he continued, “It’s a skill. Maybe I’ll tell you about it one day. Anyway, wanna hear about the job?”

“Yes I do.” Felix cocked his head to the side, towards the client meeting rooms next to him. “First door.” Then he walked back behind the counter and entered the first room. He got there a few seconds before Thezan so he quickly looked through some setting screens. Felix opened the screen for his own identification, something he had been meaning to do for a while now, and set it to show his grade and name. Thezan walked in a few moments later and took the seat opposite Felix.

“The job is simple but… they often start that way. Rumor has it an old, very much dead, empire from a few dozen integrations ago created a super weapon. We were contracted to search the ruins and track it down with funding for as many expeditions as it takes.”

“You need someone with magical aptitudes just in case?”

“The super weapon itself is suspected to be some sort of spell or enchanted construct because the empire was well known for their magics. We suspect their castle, where we’re headed first, is covered in magical traps, enchantments, spells and so on. We need you to help deal with them. Don’t worry about detecting the traps too much, we can do that. We might need you to disable traps, magical defenses, provide insight if you can, that kind of thing.”

Felix nodded, “Alright, I’m interested.”

“Good. Couple of things you should know. The party is currently me and three others, plus you that’ll be 5. We split everything evenly, after any expenses. Loot is split evenly but I am king, if there’s an argument on the job, I settle it and that’s that. You are welcome to argue with me afterwards but do not ever deviate from my orders or argue with me on the job itself, got it?”

Felix shrugged, “Sure. I assume within reason.”

“You seem like a smart kid, yes listen to everything if you can. If the situation drastically changes and I’m not there… you get it?”

“Yup. No problems with that.”

Thezan nodded and crossed his arms, “Anything else?”

Felix leaned forwards in his seat, “Yes. What was the empire called? I want to go look them up at the library.”

“The Usorium empire. Good luck though, there isn’t much known about them in general.”

“Anything else I should know?”

Thezan leaned back in his chair, “I’d like you to meet the party at the guild if you can, just stop by some time later today. We’ll head out tonight.”

“Okay I will let my boss know then go do some research and buy supplies. How long are you expecting this job to last?”

Thezan’s eyes rolled upwards a bit as he thought through his answer, “This expedition, probably 3 days at most. If you come by a little earlier, we can grab supplies together. Those are expenses so anything you need we can buy with the client’s money.”

“Okay, perfect. How will I find you in the guild?”

“Just ask for the Shade’s Wrath’s room. Stupid name, don’t ask.” Thezan sighed.

“Okay, I’ll see you in a few hours then.”

Thezan nodded to him, causing his shadow hair to lightly sway, then he rose and exited the room.

Felix headed straight to Aldahn’s office and knocked.

“Come in.”

Felix just leaned his head into the office, “I-”

Aldahn didn’t even look up, “You need a few days to go on an adventure.”

“Yeah sort of, three days at most.”

Aldah shrugged, “No problem. You might miss out on the rest of the sword but maybe not… smiths are annoyingly slow.”

“I can just shadow another job when I come back?”

“Yeah totally. No worries. Just don’t get yourself killed out there, I saw his grade…”

Felix nodded and chuckled, “They like me because they aren’t worried about me stabbing them in the back.”

“Hah! That’s a stupid reason… Have you told them?”

Felix sighed, “That I’m an integrated? No.”

Aldahn nodded in understanding, “You should. It won’t be a bad thing, I promise. It is good to know though so they don’t expect things from you that they shouldn’t. It will help them protect you.”

“You’re right. I’ll tell them.”

Aldahn waved him off, “Stay safe, don’t die.”

“Thanks.”

Before leaving, Felix chose an empty client meeting room in the shop and retrieved Nova from his Pocket Home. He carefully placed them in his robes then flew off to the library. He immediately headed into the general section and called over a librarian. Together they filtered down the innumerable books in the library to a list of just a few thousand containing mentions of the Usorium Empire. From that list, Felix filtered out all the books that only mentioned the name itself a single time outside of a sentence because there were many that contained lists of empires.

The rest of the books numbered just under a thousand or so and Felix had the librarian retrieve each and every one of them for him. It didn’t take nearly as long as he had expected because apparently all librarians had ridiculous mobility skills from their professions that only applied within the library. Felix scanned all of the books and together, he and Grim sifted through all the information. The vast majority of them just contained rumors and hearsay which were valuable in their own right but not what Felix was looking for.

In total, there were just three books that claimed to have any factual information. None of them mentioned anything about it’s location, not even a star system. Any information about when it existed was imprecise and all he got was a range of a couple integrations. The only information they did know for certain was that their magic was their greatest strength. Where other kingdoms had unique classes, training regimens, armies, smithing techniques or something else, the Usorium empire had magic.

They employed the use of enchantments, unique spells, rituals, wards, and contraptions to rise to power and fell their foes. All accounts described the empire itself as a wonderous and magical place. Not only did they use magic to wage war and defend themselves, but they used magic in every aspect of their daily lives, more than anywhere else in the multiverse. They had mundane enchanted brooms to sweep for them, the roads were enchanted so people moved faster, the entire city was protected from the weather.

None of these things were impressive now but back when the empire had been rising to power, they were completely novel.

The empire was somewhat closed off and secretive but the weirdest part of all, was that all of a sudden they vanished. Somehow, the empire was thriving one day and completely gone the next. Most suspect it was the super weapon they were rumored to have built but no one knows for certain. A lot of the other books held wild rumors as to what happened but Felix and Grim completely ignored them, mostly because they were a little too ridiculous.

Using his Soul Garden to sort through the information, it had only taken Felix and Grim a couple real world hours so not much time had passed at all. Felix really liked the idea of having experienced adventurers tell him what supplies he needed, and pay for them so he headed straight for the guild.

Walking right up to the front desk, he was greeted by a Minotaur.

“Felix Kade. What can we do for you?”

Does everyone know my name or just… it’s cause I’m registered now, never mind.

“Looking for Shade’s Wrath, I hear they have a room?”

“Yes. They’ve been expecting you. Head over to desk number 137 and they’ll take you.”

“Thanks.”

Felix walked to the desk the minotaur had indicated and met a tiny woman, just a couple feet tall, with pointed ears and glasses.

“Felix Kade?”

“That’s me.”

“Follow me.”

She hopped over the desk then led him over to a small room that Felix realized far later than he would have liked to admit, was an elevator. They ascended to some unknown floor without the small woman pressing, or even doing anything, then the door just opened. She led him to a door and then just walked away.

Felix knocked and looked around and what looked like a very fancy hotel floor. The floor was marble and the walls were smooth stone. The doors were evenly spaced a few meters apart and all that was missing in Felix’s mind was an ice machine.

The door opened after a few seconds revealing Thezan.

“Oh, that was fast.”

Felix nodded, “You were right, not much information on them.”

“How much did you go through?”

“Every book that mentioned them by name outside of a list in the general section of the library.”

Thezan frowned, “That’s… more than we went through… Come in.”

Thezan stepped aside revealing a room that looked nothing like a hotel room. It instead, looked like the inside of a massive house. Thezan led him through a lobby area and around a corner into a living room. On the couch there was a human woman with dirty blonde hair reading some book. Beyond the couch, there was what appeared to be an entire alchemy lab where a man just over 2 feet tall was concocting something.

“This is Rathos.” Thezan said pointing to the woman, “And that is Elric.” He said pointing to the small man in the alchemy lab.

Felix looked around the room, “You said there were 4 of you?”

Thezan nodded, “Yeah, Aros is out right now. I think he’s buying ingredients.”

“You made it in time for the feast.” The woman said without looking away from her book.

“There’s something I should probably tell you before we commit to all this, shouldn’t be a deal breaker but who knows.” Felix looked towards Thezan but saw Rathos’ eyebrow raise along with the side of her lip.

Felix sighed, “I’m an integrated… escapee? of the 256th”

“Bullshit. It’s too early for that.” Rathos immediately said, still without looking away from her book.

“I have the title to prove it.” Felix equipped his Exile title then waited for them to identify him.

Rathos finally looked up from her book and smirked, “Kid, you’re not an escapee. You’re an exile.”

“The hell is that?” Felix heard Elric call out from the alchemy lab.

Rathos smirked, “It’s like an escapee except he didn’t choose to leave, he was kicked out.”

“What’s the difference?” Thezan asked.

“Well, an escapee usually outgrows the integration, becomes too strong to get much out of it. Exile’s are so strong, they’re a danger to everyone else in the integration. Basically no one else stood a chance, even collectively of stopping him. If he wanted to, Felix here could have completely dominated his integration and done whatever he wanted. Or simply wiped them all out without much difficulty.” Rathos smiled wide, almost creepily.

“I guess that does make me feel better about the whole low-level-D-grade-claiming-he-can-take-on-high-D-grade-enemies thing” Thezan shrugged.

Elric called out from the back, “Wait, so integrated, you know just about nothing about… the multiverse then?”

“Nothing more than I’ve already learned.” Felix shrugged.

“Uh huh. Cheeky. Are you gonna be able to disable magical traps and wards then?” Thezan looked at him, clearly less sure of his choice in Felix.

“I think so.” Felix shrugged again.

Thezan frowned, “Wait, how do you have an Expert proficiency then?”

Felix shrugged, “I opened some mana control skill cubes for them.”

“Hey kid, come here.” Elric called out.

Felix walked around the couch and over to the alchemist, careful to not get too close, wary of the fumes.

Elric pointed just below one of the flasks. “I dropped some acid on the burner enchantment here. Can you fix it?”

Felix looked at the enchantment and saw a small chunk of it missing. His eyes darted to the flasks around it to look for a template enchantment but he realized all the other enchantments at the table were located under the table, for a good reason. For some reason, this one enchantment had been drawn on top of the table, completely separated from the others despite the fact that there was an enchantment directly below it already.

Felix quickly realized it was a test and decided to be a little cheeky. He pulled out his quill and carefully filled in the rest of the enchantment, fighting his low grade quill the entire way.

He wasn’t using any inlay and the surface was uneven from the acid that had been intentionally spilt on it but even then, his fix should last a few dekads at best, Felix suspected. He lifted his hand and backed away then smiled at Elric. Elric walked over and activated a switch which flooded the enchantment with mana and produced a cute little flame that shifted colors every few seconds, cycling through the rainbow.

“Hah! Alright alright kid, not bad.” Elric waved him off and Felix walked back over to the sitting area and took a seat opposite Rathos.

Felix looked over at Thezan, “You said we could buy supplies together?”

“Right, if you’re an integrated this is even more important. Yeah, we’ll buy some potions, elixirs, ropes… What are you by the way?”

Felix frowned, “What… do you mean?”

“Class.”

“Oh, caster… derivative.”

“Okay, perfect. I’m a melee fighter so is Aros, who you haven’t met yet. Rathos is a rogue but really likes throwing daggers so she bounces in and out of close range. Elric is an archer and our alchemist. He makes us some potions but mostly poisons and acids for his arrows. I’ll be honest, not sure what supplies you might need as a caster specifically. We’ll ask Luther though.”

Felix nodded, “Luther?”

“Proprietor of the shop we frequent. He gives us a discount in exchange for first dibs on anything we need to sell. It’s where we get most of our general supplies. We’ll head to an alchemist for potions specifically but just about anything else, he’s got it.”

Potions are fine but what I really need are more bodies to store in my ring. I can theoretically heal myself using it’s contents but it doesn’t contain any human cells right now… or wanderer cells I guess.

Well I only know one wanderer.

Shit, I’m gonna have to cut off my arms aren’t I?

If you want to use that feature, you probably are.

I guess it’s good for me to know if I can actually regrow my limbs.

Felix looked up at Thezan with a slightly guilty expression, “Semi unrelated, not necessary for this mission but figure you’d be the best person to ask… where can I buy corpses?”

Thezan crossed his arms, “Like animal corpses?”

“Yeah. Magical creatures, things like that.”

Thezan shrugged, “Body broker. Chiseled Free is a good one Aros likes. If you ask him after the job he’d probably go with you.”

“Thanks, I’ll look for it.”

Thezan nodded, “Let’s just wait for Aros then we can go to Luther’s.”

“Isn’t he just gonna be cooking when he gets back?” Rathos countered.

Thezan shrugged, “Yeah, probably. I’ll make him come with us though, he’ll have time to cook afterwards.”

Rathos giggled, “You know how he hates being rushed.”

Thezan sighed, “I’ll push back our departure if he needs it.”

“Damn right you will.” Felix turned towards the new voice and saw a massive looking man. He was somewhere close to 8 feet tall, much taller than Felix and tall enough that it was hard to judge. Everyone about him though looked like he was just a man but bigger. He was wide and bound in massive muscles, entirely focused on strength at the cost of mobility, unlike Thezan. Other than that and his wide, flat and boxy facial features, he looked human and wore a simple shirt and pants.

“Oh, you’re back.” Thezan turned to greet Rathos.

“I should have time to go to Luther’s with you guys. Just don’t spend too long gossiping.” Aros rolled his eyes.

“You can always leave early.” Thezan countered.

“Yeah yeah, this the kid?” Aros waved him off.

Thezan looked at Felix, “Yup.”

“He’s an exile by the way.” Rathos chimed in.

Aros frowned, “I can see that. Not sure what it means but…”

Felix realized he had forgotten about his title then quickly unequipped it.

“Integrated, 256th.” Elric called out.

“This early?” Aros cocked a brow.

“He was kicked out for being too coooool.” Rathos said with a smirk.

Aros nodded slowly, “I see. Well, glad we snatched him up then.”

“Me too.” Rathos said with another creepy smile.

Thezan waved them all over, “Alright, lets head to Luther’s.”

Felix followed them to a different door than he had entered from and onto a large balcony. A break in the railing made room for them all to climb onto what looked like a large open car. There was a windshield but no roof, 4 rows of benches and no seatbelts anywhere. Thezan hopped into the front where Felix assumed he would be steering from but had no idea how as he saw no controls whatsoever. The others were behind him so Felix just hopped into the second row from the back and Aros sat next to him, much to Rathos’ annoyance.

Once they were all in the vehicle, it shot off faster than Felix usually flew and possibly faster than he had ever flown. He saw them quickly rise up to the blue flyway height then dart off in a specific direction. They didn’t use the portal spires but Felix realized they weren’t necessary, the vehicle was very fast and their destination not far. Something about the enchantments also surrounded and protected them as they flew so the speed didn’t affect them at all. Even the sound of the wind rushing by was almost completely silent.

Felix spent the entire ride examining the vehicle with his mana senses and growing increasingly fascinated by it’s design. It was precise, powerful and efficient all at once. It had countless redundancies and enchantments with effects he couldn’t even identify. There were some that kept them stable and other’s that just made them move. He knew some of it was protecting them from the wind and silencing the roar of the wind but he didn’t have the time or experience to figure out which part.

They arrived at a shop called The Sleeping Genie in just over ten minutes and they all hopped out, leaving the vehicle floating next to the shop. As soon as the vehicle was stopped, Felix felt the batteries refilling themselves with mana. Thezan opened the door to the shop and walked in first, followed shortly after by the rest of his party and Felix.

“Thezan, Elric, Rathos, Aros,” The shop keep said each name with a slightly different tone and far more excitement than Felix would ever want someone to have when saying his own name, “It’s been far too long. I take it you have another job and you’ve come for supplies?”

Thezan nodded, “That we have Luther.”

Luther was, as far as Felix could tell, a giant toad. There was nothing particularly different or unique about him as compared to any other toad Felix had seen other than that he was huge, he talked and he wore opulent robes. Felix had no idea how he moved about the shop and retrieved the normal sized magic items, but he figured he was about to find out.

Around him, the shop was completely organized such that anything was easily found at first glance, even though his products were often abstract and arcane in nature. Felix saw all kinds of things he couldn’t identify without using the identify skill lining the walls. There were ropes that moved themselves, small vehicles, vases, scrolls, gems, weapons, armor, jewelry and a thousand other knick-knacks.

“You brought a newcomer with you… a weird one at that.” Luther’s massive eyes squinted though his pupils were so big it was hard to confirm he was looking at Felix.

Rathos smirked, “How so?”

Luther croaked out with a smirk, “You know I’m not one to divulge another’s secrets… but let’s just say he’s got some rather unique magical items, a race and class that are likely hidden and a very rare profession. Plus his familiar is adorable but… a weird and somewhat concerning choice nonetheless.”

You just… not one to divulge another’s secrets my ass. You just couldn’t get anymore than that when you identified me.

Rathos looked at him with another creepy smile and he just ignored her. Luckily, Thezan brushed off the massive breach of privacy and moved on, “He’s a caster derivative and an enchanter, we have no idea what supplies to buy for that, any suggestions?”

“That depends. Some good choices would be spell scrolls, quills, spell tablets, small consumable batteries, mana sensitive parchment, mana potions, materials for your spells if you need them, an embedded wand… aside from the regular.”

“Any of that sound useful to you Felix?” Thezan turned to him.

“Actually… blank scrolls, the ones I have are low grade, a better general purpose quill, what are spell tablets?”

“Like scrolls, less flimsy but less portable.”

“Okay scratch the scrolls, actually… how much more are the tablets?”

“About the same.”

“Tablets then, no scrolls, general purpose quill at least D grade, what’s an embedded wand?”

“Wand with a spell in it.”

“Nah, that’s okay.”

Luther nodded his massive toad head, “What spells do you want on the tablets?”

“Wait, I thought you meant blank tablets?”

“Oh, I have those too… I guess enchanter makes sense… you’re a little low level… and grade… to be inscribing spells but, alright.”

“What spell tablets do you have?”

“Don’t go thinking you can just read the spells off them. They’re embedded inside them.”

“Can you show me the spell’s effects?”

“Sure, I have a back room where you can test’em. Not scrolls though since those are mostly single use. Here’s a list.”

A list floated over from behind the counter and Felix looked through it. A lot of the spells Felix could guess at what they did but a good number of them he had no idea. Either way, he fully planned on testing each and every one of them so he could memorize their spell forms. Luther was surprised when Felix asked to test and see all of them but didn’t refuse. He gave Felix directions to the back room where he found the tablets he had asked for already there, piled neatly in the corner.

The room was just a large empty room where every surface other than the door seemed to be lined in some kind of stone or cement. Felix went through the spells one by one and pushed mana into them, mapping out the spell forms using his mana senses as he went. He couldn’t help but smile as he discovered all kinds of nodes and spell patterns he had never seen before.

There were walls of force, walls of fire, flame throwers, shock traps, wind barriers, alarms, slow fields, flash bomb traps, anti gravity fields, mana walls and simple bombs. There were also more complicated spell like grease puddles which just lifted everything a few millimeters off the ground to remove friction and force traps that launched everything around it in a random direction. Overall, Felix probably could have come up with any of them himself, none of them were revolutionary or employed any novel techniques, they did however have new nodes.

Most of them were shaping nodes but there were detection nodes as well and some stabilizing rings that were new to Felix. He was going to have to run some tests to figure out what their advantages and disadvantages were but he was just satisfied for now having learned them at all.

Felix exited the room a short time later and informed Luther than all he needed was blank tablets, much to his dismay. Felix ended up buying 200 of them using the party funds. At first Thezan was hesitant but when he saw how cheap the blank C grade tablets were at just a few thousand standard D credits per, he gladly bought them. They also bought Felix a general purpose quill that he made sure worked on the tablets. It was a simple quill that was really only a quill in name and function because it looked like a pen. They even splurged for an Uncommon C grade quill, mostly because it only cost them a couple thousand D.

Felix assured them all, multiple times, that he didn’t need any mana potions, consumable batteries or mana sensitive parchment, which could sometimes show enchantments through walls. They also bought a wide range of other random supplies like bottles of fresh air, ropes, spikes, caltrops, ball bearings, daggers and a set of warm cloaks for the party. Some of the others made purchases of their own but they were all done by the time Felix had left the back testing room so he didn’t get to see what they bought.

They all thanked Luther and Thezan paid him for everything they had bought then they got back in the flying vehicle and zipped off to another store. They arrived after a short 5 minute or so flight at a shop called Bloodstone Alchemy. Felix followed the rest of the party inside and saw what appeared to be a combination between an alchemists shop and a green house, all wrapped up into a single store. Obviously the plants being grown were intended as ingredients for alchemy but Felix still hadn’t been expecting it.

Instead of shelves with bottles of potions, poisons and elixirs, the shop had rows and rows of multi-tiered planters. Each one had their own enchantments acting as a light source, some brighter than others and some emitting unnatural colors.

They were all enclosed and through his mana senses, Felix could tell they were both temperature and humidity controlled. He had trouble identifying the humidity control enchantments at first, but through process of elimination he eventually figured them out. He memorized the pressure and humidity measurement nodes that worked in tandem to determine when to pump humidity in and out of the enclosed space, just in case.

As a party, they walked all the way to the back where the entire back section of the shop was a massive alchemical work station. There were desks set up in a large circle each holding a different vial, burner, alembic, lute, crucible or network of tubes. In the middle of the desks stood a Drakene with scales that varied wildly in color. There were splotches of white, red, blue, green, yellow and every other Felix thought possible for a Drakene’s scales. None of them were glowing or anything but they did cover almost the entire rainbow.

Thezan walked over and leaned on the empty desk facing the front, “Hey Zufaris. We’re looking for supplies.”

She nodded, “The usssual?”

“Yup. Make it for 5, last one is a human derivative.”

“Anythhhing for you thisss time Elric?”

Elric shook his head as he crossed his arms, “Nah, I still haven’t run out of the last batch of materials you sold me. We aren’t actually expecting to run into anything anyways.”

“Fair enoughhh. What about the newww comer?”

Felix walked up to the table next to Thezan, “I’ll be honest, I’ve never been to an alchemists shop before. What do you have?”

She chuckled a little, “I don’t ssstock anything. I sssimply make what isss requesssted of me.”

“Can you give me an idea of things you could make?”

“I can make potionsss to replenishhh your health, energy or mana. Health being by far my mossst popular ware. I can also make elixirsss to temporarily increassse your… abilitiesss. If you ssso need them I can alssso make poisssonsss of various ssstrengthsss.”

“How much?”

“For whichhh?”

Felix shrugged, “All of them.”

“Uh… Dependsss on the ssstrength.”

“I’d like one of every kind of elixir you can make. Any strength is fine but if you have multiple recipes for the same stat, I’ll take one of each of them. All poisons you can make and potions for health and energy, same as the elixirs, I’ll take all the recipes you have.”

“Uh… kid, I think that’sss a lot more than you realizzze. I believe that would be about a few thousssand productsss. Neither you nor I have the time for that. I think I know what you’re getting at though. I take it your looking for different effectsss, right? As long as an elixir works using a different princcciple you want to try it? You’re trying to see if it will work with your race?”

No, I want to replicate their effects without anything external at all.

“Yeah, pretty much. How much would it cost for the smallest size of every different effect… so to speak? Cheapest version of each I guess. Oh and could you label them so I know which ones to come back for?”

“Yesss of courssse. Let’sss sssee here…”

“Wait kid, you want all that and you aren’t even interested in mana potions at all?” Thezan asked.

Felix shook his head, “Nah, don’t need em. I would be surprised if they did anything for me given all the skills I have dedicated to mana regeneration.”

“I… see.” Thezan frowned in confusion as he physically backed off a little bit to give Felix and the alchemist room.

“I have one for dexssterity, 3 for ssstrength and 2 for the other… attributesss. I have 1 instant health recipe and 1 instant energy potion. A few regeneration recccipessss for each and though the resssult is the same, the effectsss are slightly… exssspanded. Asss for poisssonsss, I have a lot of those. Sssmallessst amount and cheapessst recccipe…”

“Give me the best version of the regeneration potions then, with the expanded effects. Oh and strongest poisons please.”

“Just give him the ones I can’t do. I’ll give’ya batch of everything I can make kid.” Elric added in.

“Underssstood… That’ll come out to 38,920 D grade creditsss. Letsss sssay 35 thousssand for sssuch a big purchassse?”

That’s not nearly as much as I thought.

I mean everything you asked for was a consumable with a temporary effect.

I guess…

“Uh kid, we aren’t paying for that…” Thezan said.

“I know.”

“Thisss puchassse will take sssome time to make.”

“Can you have it ready in a few days? I can come pick it up after the job.” Felix offered.

“That would be accssseptable.”

“Perfect.”

Thezan leaned in a little, “We do need my order before the job, as soon as possible actually.”

“Of courssse. I’ll have it ready in a few. Feel free to wander around, sssmell the rosssesss.”

They all split up and wandered through the shop, Elric following Felix.

“What the hell do you need poisons for kid? Aren’t you a caster?”

“I am. I’m gonna eat them.”

Elric just looked at Felix, waiting for him to admit he was kidding but Felix was completely serious.

“So you’re trying to build a tolerance? It takes more than one dose of a poison you know…”

“Usually.”

Not if I can just manually force my cells to remember how to fight the poisons, keep the antibodies and so on.

“How much do you need of each poison?”

“Just a small vial, ideally enough to kill me.”

“Uh… alright I can… get you a vial of everything I have. Any chance I could… watch you eat them?”

Felix shrugged, “Sure.”

“I also have some new poisons I’m not sure about, would you be willing to test them out?”

“Yeah, I’d love to.”

Elric’s eyes widened with glee, “Excellent.”

Felix walked around and occasionally glanced back towards the Drakene alchemist who was in the process of concocting at least a dozen different things at once. She darted between everything on the tables around her, often not even looking as she poured, transferred, heated and mixed things.

He didn’t watch her the entire time though and he spent some time smelling the roses, as had been suggested to him. Some of the plants in the shop were either not sealed away in containers and or instead had vents that opened to the air around them. Felix walked through and smelled them, at first just because it was something to do but after the first few, he was completely hooked.

They weren’t drug like or addictive but the sensation of smelling something that he had never even imagined before was exhilarating. Not every plant had a new smell to him, but about half of them did. Some just had weird combinations of smells he was unfamiliar with, others had smells he never expected to come from plants like chemical smells.

By the time Felix circled around the entire shop, the alchemist finished with her work and packaged everything into a neat little package wrapped in cloth and string. Thezan took the goods and made them vanish right before Felix’s eyes then they headed back to the vehicle and flew back to the guild. They flew right up to the balcony outside the room they had left from though Felix had no idea how Thezan knew which balcony was the right one. There were thousands at the right height and they all looked the same to him. He assumed it was his map but it was still impressive in Felix’s mind, finding the right one.

They walked back into the room and Rathos plopped herself back down on the couch, exactly where she had been before they left. Aros disappeared into another room so he could start cooking and Elric excitedly dragged Felix into the alchemy room. Felix didn’t get to see where Thezan disappeared to as he was too focused on trying to keep up with Elric.

Elric looked at Felix, his face evidently filled with excitement, “Do you need anything before we do this?”

“No, I just need to meditate.”

Elric nodded, “How long between the poisons?”

Felix shrugged, “Depends on the poison, usually a few minutes sometimes up to 10 or so.”

“Perfect.”

Elric dragged a stool into the middle of the room and sat Felix on it then darted around to different desks where he retrieved various vials and started the alchemical process on some new concoctions. He ran over to Felix and handed him the first vial then backed up a step and stared at him with an intensity that made Felix a little wary of what he was about to drink.

I did not intend to do this right before the job but I guess we have at least 6 hours until the feast anyways. It shouldn’t take me that long to recover.

Felix took the vial from Elric and downed it right as Thezan walked into the room.

Thezan grasped Elric’s tiny shoulder, “Wait Elric, which one did you give him?”

“That necrosis one I had been fiddling with.”

Thezan’s face immediately filled with a combination of shock and rage, “WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU DO THAT!?”

Elric stumbled back a step, “I mean, he said he could handle it…”

“That poison is meant to help us take out PEAK C grade creatures and he’s a CASTER, how much health do you think he actually has?”

Felix cut in to try and help Elric out, “I currently have over 72 thousand.”

“SEE!?”

Felix realized it was a mistake to cut in at all as Elric paled and looked at Felix.

Thezan gritted his teeth, “You could have at least STARTED with something a little less potent, don’t ya think?”

Felix ignored the rest of their argument, closed his eyes and meditated as he started to feel the poison seeping into his cells. The instant it hit a cell, the cell just keeled over and died. Then, the poison would use the remnants of the cell to feed itself and continue on to it’s neighbor. This made the necrosis spread much faster as it worked. Currently, there was poison ripping through his mouth and throat all the way down to his stomach where his stomach acid was helping to dilute it, but not by much.

The first thing Felix did was try to slow the poison but he quickly realized he had no good way of doing that because he had no idea what it was actually doing. He calmed himself down with a deep breath then focused in on the cells right as they were attacked. At first he thought the poison was killing the cells and so he tried to have them defend themselves but they weren’t doing anything. At that point he realized it wasn’t killing the cells at all, it was activating the mechanism all cells had called apoptosis, tricking them into killing themselves.

The function basically determined if the cell was no longer necessary or if it was damaged and malfunctioning in which case it would die off and get replaced. In this case, the poison seemed to be tricking his cells somehow into making them die off even though they were both healthy and necessary. The most logical way the poison should work is that it attacked the cells until they were damaged enough to die off but no matter where Felix looked, the poison wasn’t damaging his cells at all. Instead, it seemed to somehow be tricking them into thinking they weren’t necessary anymore.

Felix had messed with the core functions of his cells before, rearranging and even making new ones but in all of those cases, he used a template and just fit the pieces together. In this case, he had to reconstruct or correct a piece that already existed, with no template on hand. The first thing he did was to force all the cells touching the poison to keep themselves alive, even if they thought they should be dying. It wasn’t a solution because he had essentially given himself pseudo-cancer, but for the time being, it stopped the spread of the poison.

Now that he had more time to deal with it, Felix chose specific cells and started overriding them in different ways then freeing them from his manual hold. He watched them die off one by one, some living but being permanently flawed others still falling prey to the poison’s tricks. He started to run out of ideas to test so he reconfigured some of his cells around the poison to perfectly match Erolan’s, a once much higher grade creature, to see how they handled it.

Instead of being tricked at all, the poison never had a chance to do anything to them as the cells simply digested it, turning it into energy. Felix looked through Erolan’s cells for the answer, trying to figure out why they weren’t tricked but he realized, it had nothing to do with not being tricked. His cells simply attacked and digested anything foreign and with the poison, it was destroyed before it ever had a chance to do anything.

He was keen on the idea of replicating that effect with his own cells but that only stopped certain poisons. His cells weren’t generally as strong as Erolan’s and in the future, if he had to deal with stronger poisons, they might take too long for his cells to break down. He saved that modification for after he figured out how to keep his cells alive. He also figured he should probably make his cells more resilient in general so it was harder for poisons to penetrate them. That still didn’t solve the problem at hand though.

What he wanted was to avoid having his cells get tricked at all. Unfortunately he had no idea how to make his cells actually smarter. He knew there was a nucleus which was something like the brain of the cell but in this case, having paid close attention to the poison, he knew it was two enzymes that were getting tricked. Somehow, he had to make his entire cell as a whole smarter. The only thing he could think of to do though was to infuse them with energy, mana or anima. He tested them in order, starting with energy.

No matter how he infused them, they didn’t seem to become any smarter. They worked faster and got a little stronger but they were still tricked without fail. Infusing them with mana, of every different attunement and energy level didn’t make them any less likely to be tricked but it did have other interesting effects. It was hard to tell on an individual level per cell but it seemed like mana of different attunements would alter them slightly differently, but almost negligibly so. He filed away that knowledge and the experiments he would need to explore it for later. The last thing he tried was infusing his cells with anima, which did seem to work somewhat.

At first he infused them with ambient anima but that resulted in cells that started to feel like they had separated themselves from his body. He quickly corrected his mistake though and instead, infused them with some of his own soul matter, compressed from the outer most layer. As soon as he did so, he knew this was the right solution. His ability to tell what was happening within the cell itself along with his control over them suddenly felt orders of magnitude more precise. He was able to give them basic commands like ‘don’t get tricked’ and they seemed to listen when he let the poison loose once again. Not only that, but it seemed to make them significantly stronger, without any physical modifications.

Unfortunately, in order to extend this effect to the rest of his body it was going to take him a few days of forging a new layer onto his soul that suffused his entire body. For now, he was happy that he had found a solution at all and simply set his cells to digest the poison, completely eliminating it from his system. He didn’t make all his cells strong enough to digest poison or resilient enough to prevent it from ever entering inside them, he saved those for when he had more time to do so.

For now though, if he was inflicted by poisons in the future, he could simply morph the cells around the poison and deal with it. He also wanted to let the next poisons affect his unaltered, base cells so he could find new problems and new solutions. He didn’t want either of those other two changes to cause him to miss out on another important modifications he otherwise would have found.

With that in mind, Felix reverted all his cells, exited his meditation and looked up at Elric, ready to drink down his next concoction, “What else you got?”

“You’re done?” Elric said incredulously causing Thezan to turn to him and visually inspect him.

Felix nodded, “Yup.”

Thezan leaned in with a concerned expression, “How much health do you have left?”

Felix quickly checked his status screen, “Uhm… all of it.”

Elric looked hurt, “What? It just… didn’t affect you?”

Felix shook his head, “I think my meditation just restored everything I had lost.”

Thezan frowned, “How much energy are you down then?”

“Oh, none. I have skills though to restore my energy…”

“See, he’s fine.” Elric said with a guilty smile turning to Thezan.

“Kid, share your health and energy with me.” Thezan said very seriously.

Felix shrugged and did so causing Thezan’s face to contort in confusion.

“Huh…”

“Can I… give him more?” Elric asked apprehensively.

Thezan shrugged, “I guess… He’s in tip top shape it seems… Alright, Kid, just make sure you stay that way for the actual job.”

Felix nodded once, “Of course. I might need a bathe after this but otherwise, I should be full or close to full health and energy.”

“There’s a bath upstairs you can use.” Thezan gestured his head up the stairs.

“Thanks.”

Thezan nodded then walked into the sitting room and sat down on the couch opposite Rathos, facing Elric and Felix. He, not so subtly, watched them from the corner of his eye while pretending to be occupied by something else.

Elric leaned in as he examined Felix visually, “Before I give you another, how did you deal with that one so quickly?”

Felix frowned, “How long did it take me?”

“Just over 5 minutes maybe?”

“Huh, thought it was longer than that… The poison was basically tricking my cells into committing apoptosis. I gave myself cancer, then found a way to deal with the poison. I got rid of the cancer but now I have a way to deal with that kind of poison in the future.”

“Cancer? It tricks the cells into committing apoptosis?”

“Yeah.”

Elric looked confused, “When you say trick…”

“It was overriding the mechanism.”

“Not damaging the cells themselves?”

Felix shook his head, “Nope, not at all. Then it eats the dead cell and expands.”

Elric looked at Felix for a few seconds, clearly lost in thought, then quickly turned around and started scribbling something into a notebook of some sort.

“You got another for me while you think?”

“Oh, good call… Here, try this one.” Elric handed him another vial and Felix downed it.

They repeated this process of Felix consuming Elric’s poisons then explaining their effects to him as best he could for a few hours. It seemed that Elric tested poisons on himself as well, with his high resistance, but he couldn’t tell what was happening at a cellular level like Felix could without extensive investigation. He had microscopes and other equipment to do it, he said Felix was much faster though so he excitedly rushed through the poisons to try and get Felix to try them all. By the end, he had even given Felix multiple of the same poisons with slight modifications so he could determine which was the most effective and why.

Thezan’s gaze had calmed down after an hour or so but he never left his seat across the next room. When they were done, Felix got Elric to point him to the bath room and followed his directions up the stairs and to the right. Aros called out from the kitchen and asked him to leave the water in the tub which he was happy to do. He passed by a few bedrooms until he finally found a massive bathroom containing a bath that was easily big enough for 20 people. He filled it with water from a faucet, which he was pretty sure functioned using a System fuckery portal, then heated it up using an enchantment on the tub itself.

He used the soap that was already in the bathroom and marveled at how it seemed to use some sort of bacteria that ate dead skin and dirt. It smelled like nothing to Felix which was odd but it did leave him feeling very clean. Just before he left, he tested something he had just thought of and cooled the water down until it was just above freezing. He knew that cold showers had health benefits back on earth but now, he could essentially see his individual cells and how it affected them. Unfortunately, it seemed like either due to his upgraded race or body in general, his cells, organs, blood flow and muscles were completely unaffected as if the cold water didn’t even exist.

He shrugged and left the bath after heating it back up, leaving the water as he had been asked then opened the door and found Aros standing there, leaning against the wall.

“You done in there?”

“Yup.”

“Excellent. I’d like to get washed up before the feast and I didn’t want to come in because you humans tend to be… squeamish, with nudity.”

Felix shrugged, “I wouldn’t have cared but I appreciate the consideration nonetheless.”

“Of course.” Aros walked into the bathroom, stripped and hopped into the tub. He had either forgotten to or had intentionally not closed the door.

Felix headed back down and once Aros was done washing, they all sat down around a massive dinner table that left a few meters between each of them. Aros carried in plates of food from the kitchen that seemed to never end filling the entire surface of the table. Felix looked around and saw far more food than he thought they would be able to eat and he could identify just about none of it.

They ate and talked about the mission though most of the conversation centered around Thezan telling Felix what to do in specific situations. None of it was new or surprising to Felix though, things like having a meeting point in case they got separated, asking one of them before he did anything, preferably Thezan, and letting them protect him if he got injured. He listened regardless because it was polite and he hoped it would quell some of Thezan’s evident anxiety at bringing someone new and under-leveled along with them.

While the conversation was slightly monotonous, the food more than made up for it in Felix’s eyes. Not only did he discover a plethora of new tastes, textures and combinations, but the food had other effects. As he ate, Felix started to notice the food act weirdly once it was inside his stomach. Instead of simply digesting and breaking down into energy, like most food did, this food had other effects.

Some bites seemed to suffuse his muscles making them slightly stronger and other bites increased his vitality and agility. None of it was a major effect, providing just a few percent here and there but it was more than nothing. Some of it was incredibly difficult to digest but Felix realized that was by design. It was intended to slowly release energy into his system over the next day or so as his digestive system slowly broke it down. It was completely unnecessary for Felix, who’s cells consumed mana to restore his energy, but it was an interesting effect and highly valuable to the others, Felix assumed.

Surprisingly, they completely finished the food on the table, all of it having simply disappeared somewhat evenly amongst them.

Thezan was the first to stand, “Alright, I want to be through the portal in 15 minutes. That means collect all your things and be standing at the door in 5.”

They all nodded and spread out, leaving the table covered in dishes. Felix simply walked over to the door and stood on the balcony since he had everything he needed on him. Nova seemed to have woken up from their nap because they peeked their head out of his robes for the first time and sent Felix waves of confusion as they looked out over the city.

Stay close Nova, this one’s gonna be dangerous even for me.

Nova meowed at him.

Sure, I’ll let you know if it’s safe and there’s something for you to eat.

“Is that a tra- matter sprite?” Felix heard Thezan from behind him.

“Matter Spirit now, yeah.”

“Your familiar? It’s… cursed?”

“Yes and yes.”

“You are a weird kid. Be careful with that.”

“I am.” Felix said as a response to both of his statements.

Thezan nodded and hopped into the front seat of the vehicle. Nova disappeared into Felix’s robes again and Felix hopped into the back seat. The rest of the party joined them over the next few minutes and they shot off to the teleportation hub where Felix had first landed in Telviras. From the outside, the building looked like a massive portal spire with portals almost entirely covering the outside surface of the building. Each one seemed to lead to a different place. Felix saw deserts, oceans, mountains, lava, jungles, and a good number of fantastical environments he couldn’t come up with a name for.

Instead of heading into any of them, Thezan flew the vehicle right up to a balcony then hopped out and walked through a door, into the building. The rest of the party, including Felix, followed him and they walked through a couple hallways ending up in a room that looked very similar to the one Felix had first arrived in. Thezan had a brief conversation with the human in the room then they manipulated some device and suddenly a portal opened in the middle of the room. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .