Chronicles of the True Wizard

Felix only looked through the portal for a moment before he stepped through but he saw what appeared to be a large open field filled with green and blue grass. Stepping through and getting a better look, the grass was almost striped like an animal. There were large waves of deep blue grass that transitioned into a pale green and back again and, upon closer inspection, Felix wasn’t even sure it was grass at all.

Before Felix could get a closer look though, he turned around, towards the bustling sounds around him and found a dispersed crowd gathered around a large building behind them. The building was a simple grey box with nothing more than a door. It wasn’t very big and had nothing decorating it on the outside from what Felix could see.

Checking the time, he knew he still had to wait for a bit before the event started so he started stretching. He hadn’t used his Persona in a while and though it was controlled as seamlessly as his own body, he wasn’t quite as familiar with it. Felix started out by stretching and finding the limits of his range of motion.

Seeing what he was doing, Nova took a big bite out of the field then rolled over and started rubbing her back in the grass while she chewed on the grass. Felix quickly realized they were eating the grass with their teeth to try and hide the fact that they were a sprite. He sent a quick sense of gratitude over their bond then went back to stretching.

Once he felt more comfortable, Felix switched over to the first steps of the Dragon Dance. He was going to drop the skill soon but it’s steps were still the best and most structured movements he knew to test his body. Once he ran through them once, he started tuning his mobility spells.

Though he didn’t have his armor with inscriptions in his boots, he had been practicing and found he could cast about 15 Fire Bolts if he really stretched himself, and was standing perfectly still. He considered those to be essentially the base level of spell so he was at 15 total spell levels. At some point, he would formalize his categorizations but for now, he figured it would be enough.

The mobility spells he used were somewhere between really complicated first level spells and very simple second level spells. He could cast about 10 of them at once and, if they were all the same, he could stretch himself to 12.

The new versions of his Fire Balls, Lightning Bolts and other main combat spells, were around a level 3 in complexity from his estimates. Just forming the spell form in the air around him, without entirely dedicating his focus to them, he managed to cast 3 of them while forming mobility spells at the same time.

He was totally happy with that and though he could have cast another combat spell if he were in his own body with the inscribed Kraken leather armor, his health pool would also be dramatically lower. He was more than happy to make that trade considering his Persona also gave him a disguise so he wouldn’t be noticed if he crushed this event.

He was already worried about his work with Shade’s Wrath leading to unwanted attention so he was happy to do anything he could to minimize his presence in Telviras.

Felix found he had to tune the mobility spells a little as his Persona was a fair bit heavier than he was but, the change was minimal. In the past he had simply grown spells to make them use more mana, physically increasing the spell’s size. While this worked fine, it didn’t scale well if he ever had to make a spell a hundred times stronger.

Reading some of the enchanting manuals in Inscripticae, he knew there was a better way. Instead of increasing the physical size of the node, he would simply construct the spell form with the correct amount of mana. Instead of pushing mana into a form, he would simply use the entirety of the spell’s mana to form the spell.

He had essentially done this back in the tutorial when he had created the Gust spell form with liquid mana. Liquid mana took too much time to create for him to use it liberally, but he didn’t need it. It would require some testing, but for now he was hoping he wouldn’t have to scale his spells at all because he had just revamped them with nodes that were more efficient with more mana.

A few people glanced over as Felix vaulted around the open field and tested his spells but not many. It wasn’t a terribly odd sight and looking around, Felix saw some people sparring, others sharpening their weapons, some changing equipment all amongst an equal spread of loners and conversationalists.

Felix’s actions made it difficult for anyone to come up and talk to him, which was a huge upside in his mind, not that there was much time to do so. Felix also spotted a couple dozen other people appear through portals while he waited.

Everyone within the field he inspected was around level 500 or below which was actually rather surprising to Felix. He wasn’t the lowest level he spotted in the field, but he was pretty close to it. He had expected some individuals to have much higher levels, just looking for an easy job. Either way, it would make it easier for him if they were competing so he wasn’t complaining.

Just about everyone in the field was staring at the lone building so Felix joined them and looked towards it as the time approached.

Exactly on time, a short male Frostmyre with long slicked back hair that was streaked equal parts brown and white walked out of the building before them. He had familiar dark blue Frostmyre tattoos on his arms and chest but nothing else was visible to Felix as he wore a long, navy colored sleeveless robe that was open in the front.

[B] Orav Jaldnir (Lvl 2486)

The short Frostmyre man walked up a few steps then spoke loud enough for everyone in the field to hear.

“Thank you all for accepting my contract. My name is Orav Jaldnir. You may call me researcher Orav, Professor Orav or just Orav. I teach and perform research at Tularth University mainly focused on mana. My current avenues of research are on magical beasts and their anatomy.”

“For those of you that are not aware, this planet is one of just a few that have been identified with a special property. At some point in the evolutionary cycle of the fauna on this planet, mana cores and channels appeared in the genome. This mutation proliferated as the fauna evolved. Whether or not those with the mutation drove everything else to extinction or the very base form of life on this planet started with it, is unknown.”

“What is known, is that every documented creature on this planet has evolved to have some degree of mana channels or cores within their body. I intend on researching these specific mutations. A few hundred epochs ago the university purchased the research rights to this planet and we began feeding the population so they would multiply.”

“Now it is time to harvest. Fear not, this planet has had its population artificially increased over the last hundred epochs through the use of aphrodisiacs and fertility boosters in their food. That being said, please do avoid destroying too much of the environment. Avoid forest fires and the like.”

They spent a hundred epochs preparing the planet for this research?

I guess when you live for thousands of years.

Still. What a waste of time.

Grim chuckled, Yeah.

“Your job is to collect the corpses of as many creatures on this planet as you can. If you feel confident in your ability to harvest them, you may extract their cores or mana organs yourself. However, all corpses, cores, and organs are to be brought here where they will be assessed. You will gain a number of points determined by the evaluation of what you turn in.”

“You may exchange those points for credits at any time. However, as an additional incentive, the 3 individuals who achieve the most points by the end will be rewarded with additional items from my personal collection. You may review the leaderboard at any time you are within the evaluation room behind me, it will appear as a System screen, simply summon it.”

“Damaged cores, organs or corpses will result in a lower point value. Typically, higher rarity creatures will result in more points. The value of the creatures you turn in will also decrease as my research supply grows. If you all turn in the same creatures, the last of you will be sorely disappointed with how many points you are awarded.”

“This event will last for 5 days or 120 hours starting from now. That is all, you may begin. I will be in the evaluation chamber if anyone has any remaining questions.”

All around Felix, people started darting off. Most of them just ran or leapt into the distance but a couple of them flew, a few of them had vehicles and some of them pulled out items that opened portals.

Felix flew off in the direction he had seen the least people heading, towards a large mountain range just a few kilometers away. Felix had let Nova run off on their own and was willing to sacrifice the corpses they found. He figured he would find enough himself to make a decent showing. It would also increased the danger and his own experience gained.

The first thing he noticed as he looked around was how much worse his stats were in his Persona. He knew they would get better as he absorbed more creatures but right now, he immediately noticed the drop.

His flying speed hadn’t actually decreased because that was all based on his spells which were largely unaffected, but his comfort level with his normal flying speed had suffered dramatically. He couldn’t see as far and his senses in general were having trouble keeping up with his usual speed. On top of that, he felt like his head was filled with cotton or like there was a fog he was fighting through.

His intelligence shouldn’t have been affected though so he slowed himself down and examined his body. His Persona’s head was essentially empty, there was a brain connected to his body but as far as he could tell, it was being sent all the commands to control his body from his real brain.

It didn’t take him long to realize his energy cycling wasn’t working with his persona. He quickly set up the same cycling he had with his normal body but found it wasn’t as efficient with his Persona, so his stats still suffered. His normal body was also sealed inside the ring so it wasn’t really functioning the same way so, his real brain wasn’t having energy cycled into it.

He figured he would figure it out at some point but since his spell damage had stopped scaling with Intelligence long ago, he figured it wouldn’t affect him too much.

He was a little surprised he hadn’t noticed all this earlier, when he had been flying through the city but he realized then, he was flying with the crowd and just following the motions. He wasn’t focusing and trying to spot anything. He also hadn’t really noticed it at the end of the tutorial when he fought but he decided that was likely because he was distracted by all the other differences his Persona body had. They were all paths he’d flown before and he was a little distracted at the time.

Felix quickly dismissed his musings and focused on flying faster so he could find creatures to slay as soon as possible. He flew over the blue and green field and finally spotted some movement at the foot of the mountain range.

Just a short distance up the mountain, on the gravel slope, Felix spotted what looked to be a small group of bipedal chicken-goats with large unicorn horns.

[D - Common] Bilnar (Lvl 204)

Felix watched them as he approached from the air and they seemed to be hunting. The Bilnar’s would sniff along the ground for a little bit then back up a couple steps, charge forwards and bury their horns into the ground. Then, they pulled their horns free and buried their snouts in the hole they had created to presumably eat whatever it was they had killed.

Felix flew directly over them then lowered himself until he was just a short distance above them and dropped to the ground. He pulled Eretheas out of his soul space as he fell and swung it down at one of the Bilnar’s who’s snout was currently buried in the ground.

The axe struck close enough to where Felix had intended that it managed to, with a little help from a Force spell at just the right moment, completely sever it’s head.

Felix’s feet landed on the gravel which, in combination with the fall, caused him a small amount of damage. The other Bilnar’s, upon seeing Felix’s Persona land, scattered and ran off in every direction.

Felix didn’t bother chasing them down or trying to hit them with spells instead, he activated his soul ring and absorbed the soul of the one he had killed. Then, he reached down and stowed it’s body and head in his soul space.

Ding You have slain a [D - Common] Bilnar (Lvl 204)

He didn’t see anything nearby so he had Grim keep watch while he quickly examined the Bilnar’s body.

As Orav had suggested all creatures on this planet had, the Bilnar’s had small mana cores they kept in their forehead that seemed to be connected to their horn. The horn itself was some kind of natural spell node that produced Force, from what Felix could tell. He pushed mana through it manually and found the mana’s attunement shifted as it passed through the horn.

It was a good find but not particularly useful to him so he dropped the body out of his soul space and absorbed it into the blood ring. He kept the head in his soul space so he could hand it in for points later on.

Felix flew along the foot of the mountain and dropped on top of a few more Bilnars as he found them but after killing 20 of them, he realized they were too widely spread to be efficient. He also didn’t overly care about their horns as he had no intention of integrating their horns into either of his bodies.

Ding You have slain 19 [D - Common] Bilnar (Lvl 201-213)

Instead, he switched course and continued ascending the mountain until he came across a group of large, rather aggressive bird like creatures. They had large arced wings and strong legs along with a long feathered tail that they swung back and forth as they flew to switch directions. They were also large enough for Felix’s Persona to have ridden them, or for them to be able to eat him in a few large bites.

[D - Common] Alcalu (Lvl 231)

As soon as Felix was within a short distance of them, they spotted and swarmed him. At first they just circled, but then they started to dive down to try and spear him with their beaks. As they circled and dove, Felix noticed the wind getting stronger as well, never to the point of being detrimental to the fight, but strong enough that he felt it on his Persona’s skin. Felix dodged the first few dives before he started to actually fight back.

It would have been impossible for his shades to stay in range of them as they flew around so Felix decided to add some spells to his Persona’s fighting style. Felix waited for one to dive low then swung Eretheas down from over his right shoulder, the blade trailing a stream of fire behind it.

He had timed the strike well but not well enough to be deadly so the blade scraped along it’s stomach but the fire scorched it’s entire underside. It tried to fly back up into the air but ended up crashing into the stone of the mountain just a hundred meters behind Felix.

Before he could go and finish it off, the swarm above him shrieked and attacked, this time all at once.

Suddenly, there were 11 mount sized birds all diving down at him from every different side, just slightly staggered to get in each-other’s way. Felix waited for the first one to be just a few meters away then unleashed the spell he had been preparing as he spun himself and the axe around.

The axe trailed liquid fire behind him and with the help of just a little force, the fire spread out into a large circular wall of fire around him. The fire nor the axe could stop all of them though so Felix also cast a series of Mana Shields around himself, just to be safe.

He couldn’t really see anything that happened other than the handful of large birds that smacked into his Mana Shields and collapsed.

As the Alcalu bodies piled around him, Felix became sort of trapped and couldn’t really move so he waited for the wall of fire he had created to die down then looked around him.

He had managed to kill about half of them, the ones that he had hit with the axe directly. The rest were singed and trying to hop away as their wings seemed to have suffered the most. Looking around, for some reason their wings were the most charred.

Felix pounced on the nearest one that was trying to run and struck it with Eretheas, no spells necessary. He repeated the process, leaping into the air and bringing the axe down on all of the remaining creatures until they were all dead.

Ding You have slain 11 [D - Common] Alcalu (Lvl 228-236)

Ding You have gained a level in [D -Legendary] Reaper (221 => 222)

He picked up the corpse that was the least damaged and stuck it in his soul space. He had to fight the urge to eat them as he salivated from the thought of cooked bird meat all around him. He had no idea what was going on with that, he hadn’t felt actual hunger in forever but he would deal with it later.

First, he activated his soul ring to absorb all the souls around him then he examined the Alcalu’s body and found, once again, a small mana core located right between it’s shoulder blades. The core seemed to supply the bones in their wings with mana which gradually attuned it to wind and force mana, likely to help with their flying.

He didn’t spot mana cores, channels or anything like that anywhere else though so Felix was free to eat.

Running over to the other bodies, Felix essentially hacked them up with Eretheas, being careful to preserve the wings and mana core. Even still, he ended up with a lot of meat, though a lot of it he had to eat off the bone. He made sure it was thoroughly cooked and devoured three whole birds before he felt comfortable enough to figure out what the hell was happening.

He sat down and felt at this mana and energy core then followed its connection to his body and immediately realized what was wrong. He quickly fixed the issue by connecting his Persona’s body directly to his mana and energy cores as well then observed as his body was flooded with energy and mana.

Unfortunately, it seemed as though his Persona’s cells didn’t turn mana into energy as quickly as his own body did, though he had no idea why. In fact, it was so slow that he would essentially be forced to eat fairly often.

It was an annoying set back that he hoped he could figure out soon but at the moment, he simply carved up the other birds and stored their cooked meat in his soul space. He harvested the remainder of the bodies with his blood ring and, having left one completely in tact, he found that he was losing out on a small chunk of stats by eating their breasts and legs.

He stored their wings and back, containing their cores, and continued his way up the mountain. Instead of flying, Felix spent some time adjusting Mihto’s teachings about activating the right muscles and orienting his joints properly as he ran and leapt up the mountain. They were completely applicable but the motions were slightly different in his Persona’s body.

He spotted a few more Alcalus but they were too far off for them to see him or him to bother chasing them. He only found a single other group of Alcalus that were close enough to fight. It only took him a few minutes this time to kill and pile up their corpses so he could chop them up.

Once he had killed them all, Felix reached out to grab the first corpse to harvest it but as his hand lowered towards it, the entire pile vanished. His head shot up to look around and he barely spotted a blur disappearing behind a large boulder.

[D] Merric (Lvl 382)

Did that fucker just…

Grim shared in Felix’s frustration, Damn.

Felix audibly sighed, I guess I should have expected someone to do something like that. Just have to be more careful in the future.

Felix made his way to the top of the mountain range without running into anything else of note and looked beyond it into a series of mountains and expansive valleys. Some had small streams within them which he hoped meant there would be creatures around.

He chose the nearest body of water and leapt down the mountain side towards it.

The stream within the valley was surrounded by a field of light blue grass and vibrant scattered wild flowers. There weren’t any trees he could see but the grass itself was easily tall enough for something to be hiding within.

He hopped down towards it but caught himself before passing through the grass and instead flew over it. He flew along the edge of the stream at first and was about to veer further away from it when he heard a splashing sound that caused him to turn his head.

He watched the water carefully and after a couple minutes, he spotted a purple and black striped maw splash out of the water for just a moment.

Felix dropped himself to the marshy edge of the water and peered down into it. The creature was impossible for him to spot until he shined a Light spell into the water.

It looked like a chunky salamander to Felix though it was hard to see even with the light as it’s body melded with the muck and algae on the bottom of the slow moving stream.

[D - Rare] Vatorum (Lvl 259)

Felix avoided the water but had other means of killing the creature. He summoned one shade below the water in front of it and one behind it. It took a few minutes but he finally managed to kill and dredge it’s corpse out of the stream. He looked around constantly but there was no sign of Merric anywhere. He quickly absorbed it’s soul into his soul ring then turned his attention to the corpse itself. He made sure to keep a hand on it at all times just in case.

Ding You have slain a [D - Rare] Vatorum (Lvl 259)

Ding You have gained a level in [D -Legendary] Reaper (222 => 224)

It’s body was so big that it was hard and slow to move into his soul space, he had tried but it just felt like he was stretching himself too far. Instead, he examined it manually by running mana through it and seeing what happened. He found the core and node in it’s head and throat respectively. The node seemed to produce some kind of sound though it wasn’t audible to Felix with the amount of mana he sent through it.

Felix messily extracted the core and node then absorbed the rest of it’s body into his blood ring. He looked around some more but didn’t spot any others so he moved on. He really wanted to find some creatures that were more tightly packed, ideally in a herd. Those would be the most efficient for collecting points.

Not that that was his main reason for being here anyways, he was here to find usable mana cores and channels. The points were a side benefit but still, it was a competition and Felix had no intention of not at least trying.

He ventured away from the stream and further into the plains as he ran through some simple designs for more spells he could use in his Persona.

Felix was using his Persona as a disguise and he wanted it to seem like a completely different person. That meant they would have to have their own class, profession and so on. He didn’t have a separate class for his Persona but, his spell casting was completely unhindered. What he could do was to create, or more accurately simulate, his own class.

He planned on figuring out a series of 15 skills that he could simulate with spells in his Persona. That way, if someone was paying really close attention, it wouldn’t be too obvious that his Persona wasn’t a real person.

He had a number of ideas for spells he could use and as he flew over the field, he practiced and tuned the spell forms without actually casting them. The general idea was that his Persona would revolve around Eretheas. That way it might confuse people whether or not his fighting style came from the axe’s abilities or his own skills.

He also wanted to avoid using spells that were too similar to his own spells, which is why he wasn’t using his new Mage Armor just yet.

Flying over the field, Felix followed the valley that wove through a few mountains before opening up into a much larger plain. The grass was evidently shorter as Felix spotted a large herd of grazing animals.

He wasn’t sure if they were bulls, bison, sheep or horses from a distance. As he approached though, he realized why he had been confused. Their bodies looked like muscular horses but their heads were more like a Bison’s. Adding to all the confusion, their horns were thick and curled around the sides of their heads coming to points in front of them.

[D - Uncommon] Hirdaffa (Lvl 271)

As Felix approached from the air, he got another feeling, similar to the one he had had in the cave with the Scav coin. This time, it was like a feeling of past pain. It felt like he had experienced incredible pain in his past and something was dredging it up, except he didn’t remember experiencing anything like this.

He focused on it but it was so faint, he couldn’t tell where it was coming from at all. All he managed to figure out was that he was pretty sure it wasn’t his own memory of pain that he was feeling. It was more like a constant whisper carried by the wind, a faint symphony of pained cries. Felix trivially brushed aside the feeling because of how faint it was as he flew over the grazing herd.

Felix once again dropped down from the sky into a group of them and this time, he tested out a new spell he had been screwing around with while flying.

Felix’s massive Persona body landed just as he swung Eretheas down over his head and into the ground. Though he didn’t strike anything directly, he used the axe to drag down a spell that ionized the air along it’s arc. Smashing the axe down, the air in a large radius was ionized around it. Felix used a mana shield dome to keep himself safe then finally, he cast an overloaded spark that instantly spread out in every direction.

Some of the Hirdaffas directly around him were hit by the sparks but none of them died. They bleated and started running away, luckily as a herd instead of scattering. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like Felix had done much actual damage.

He scrapped that spell for now, sending it back to the drawing board, and switched over to a different spell he had wanted to try.

Felix shot himself forwards until he was in range of the herd then rapidly swung his axe through the air in the herd’s direction. His swing, along with the Force spell he had attached to the axe, caused a barrage of what looked like air blades to race towards the herd.

The blades themselves were difficult to see but their effects were not. It was as though gashes had spontaneously opened up on random Hirdaffas within the herd. Blood trailed behind them as the injured bleated and slowed, falling away from the pack.

Once isolated, the injured Hirdaffas finally showed off their mana organs. One of the injured who’s back leg was bleeding turned towards Felix then lit itself on fire. It charged at him creating a large trail of fire behind it.

Felix jumped out of the way rather easily because of their initial distance but was immediately gashed along his stomach by the charge of a different Hirdaffa with a gash on it’s side. That one had charged so quickly, he barely had enough time to try and dodge it. It was not however, on fire at all.

The last of the injured Hirdaffas charged at Felix after it’s eyes started glowing and it’s horns sparking. This one was just as slow as the first one had been but it started from much closer so Felix actually jumped up to avoid it.

He forced himself back to the ground with a simple Force spell then leapt towards the Lightning Hirdaffa because it was the closest.

This time, he struck down with Eretheas and buried the blade into the Hirdaffa’s shoulder at the same time as he cast a Lightning spell from as high up as he could. The Lightning Bolt only came down from a few meters in the air, but it still looked like he had called down a Lightning Bolt from the clouds above onto the Hirdaffa.

It’s body stiffened before it crumpled to it’s side and skidded across the grass. Felix quickly hopped over and stowed the corpse before turning to leap at the Fire Hirdaffa. Before his feet left the ground though, he immediately changed course to avoid the rest of the herd that had apparently looped back around.

The flaming and speedy Hirdaffas rejoined the herd and Felix flew over to collect the first body before it could be trampled.

It took Felix about an hour to completely cull the herd, mostly because they each seemed to have different abilities. Some even combined two or more abilities but often they were significantly weaker than their single ability counterparts.

Ding You have slain 62 [D - Uncommon] Hirdaffa (Lvl 268-281)

Ding You have gained 31 levels in [D -Legendary] Reaper (224 => 255)

They displayed the full range too, some created tremors in the earth, others lit themselves up to the point that they could blind anything looking at them. Though the effects varied wildly across the herd, examining their bodies, he found a lot of common organs.

They all had mana cores around their sternums and common channels throughout their bodies. The differences lay in which channels and organs were active. As Felix tore through the various corpses, he found multiple organs in each body that were simply dead or disabled somehow.

He had no idea if they would be worth any points but he stored as many as he could. To make it easier on himself, he simply dragged the corpses into his Pocket Home which he opened on the side of a tree. Unfortunately, that meant he couldn’t absorb the bodies just yet. He did make sure to absorb their souls though.

After culling the entirety of the first herd and safely storing their bodies, Felix flew out over the field to try and find another. It didn’t take him long to find the next herd or the one after that. The next 5 herds were a little harder to come by but he was still more than happy with his overall killing efficiency.

He had his kill and level notifications disabled until he was done hunting down the herds and got a summary notification at the end.

Ding You have slain 847 [D - Uncommon] Hirdaffa (Lvl 268-281)

Ding You have gained 31 levels in [D -Legendary] Reaper (255 => 278)

He stopped gaining levels around the fifth herd he had culled and he suspected it had something to do with the fact that he had exceeded their levels.

He had ended up killing off 16 herds in total so he had just over 900 corpses piled in his Pocket Home to hand in. The last few had been so far apart and took so long for him to find that he decided he would head back and hand in what he had already.

When he arrived back at the lonely building he had arrived in front of a few hours later, he had to wait in line behind two others before he could hand in his own haul. Luckily, it didn’t take long at all and Felix was surprised with how efficient they were.

He didn’t get to see the evaluation himself but he did see the two in front of him step into the building then back out just a few minutes later. Considering how many beasts he had slain, he was expecting the evaluations to take much longer.

When it was his turn, Felix stepped forwards and into the grey block of a building which unsurprisingly, was much bigger on the inside than it appeared to be on the outside.

Inside, the building housed essentially a warehouse. There were an array of tables in front of Felix and behind those, the vast majority of the building was filled with mostly empty shelves. Some of the shelves held metal crates but they weren’t many.

Felix approached the desk directly before him where Orav was standing and placed the corpses he had stored in his soul space on to the desk. As soon as he placed one down, Orav handed it off to someone else who took the Bilnar head over to an adjacent desk to examine. Felix made sure to keep a corpse or two from each species for himself just so he had something to reference in the future.

Once Felix had gone through everything he wanted to in his soul space, he walked over to a nearby wall and touched his Pocket Home to it then walked in and started hauling out corpses. He felt a lot more comfortable showing it off now that he had seen multiple people on this job use items to open portals. He also now knew that spatial storage items were common and he was in his Persona’s body. If someone hunted him down for the item, they would be looking for someone that essentially didn’t exist.

After the first two corpses, Orav walked up to Felix’s portal, looked inside then turned to Felix.

“Would it be alright if I had some of my assistants walk in to accelerate the process of retrieving the corpses?”

Felix shrugged then gruffly gave his assent with a grunt and a nod. For now, that was how he decided to play off his Persona’s personality.

Orav nodded then waved a dozen assistants over who each walked in and retrieved corpses in an orderly fashion. With them retrieving the corpses, it only took a minute for his Pocket Home to be empty at which point he deactivated the entrance.

The last assistant, before carrying the corpse back over to his desk, whispered something in Orav’s ear causing him to simply nod.

Orav turned to Felix while the assistants examined the corpses, “Pardon, my assistant couldn’t help but notice the rather large Demitium chunk you have stored in your portable home. Is there any chance you would be willing to part with it? I can pay slightly over the fair market rate?”

Felix shook his head, “It’s not mine to sell.”

Orav nodded, “I understand. It’s just become so rare lately that getting your hands on it has become… troublesome. Any chance there’s more where you got yours?”

Felix shook his head again, “One time System reward.”

The short Frostmyre man nodded, “Ah, that makes a good deal of sense.”

Orav seemed to completely accept that explanation but Felix kept it in the back of his mind that Orav had showed interest, just in case.

Orav walked Felix back over to the middle desk and assured him it would take just a few minutes.

While he waited, Felix pulled up the leaderboard and quickly scrolled through. It seemed to him as though only about three quarters of the participants had any points meaning the rest hadn’t handed anything in yet.

In first place, he saw a familiar name, Merric. He held a massive lead of almost 8 times over the person in second place. They had a whopping 10.7 million points already and other than Merric, the points seemed to almost linearly decrease down to 0 where just under a quarter of the participants apparently hadn’t handed anything in yet.

Fucking thief.

As promised, it only took Orav’s assistants a couple minutes to fully evaluate Felix’s haul. He checked the leaderboard again and frowned when he had to scroll all the way down to 106th place to find his Persona’s name, Arthur. He had gotten a grand total of 364,333 points.

Considering just how many he had brought in, he had been expecting to be somewhere in the top 10% at least. He had no idea how all these people were killing more efficiently than he had considering he could fly quickly and had nearly endless stamina.

He asked Orav for a full breakdown which he provided along with some advice, “Try to avoid fire or lightning. Fire tends to destroy corpses, lightning tends to destroy mana channels. Cuts only decrease the grade a minimal amount because we can still follow the channels. Large scale destruction like this decreases it much more.”

Despite Orav’s advice, the vast majority of Felix’s points had come from the Hirdaffas both due to their quantity but also the relatively good condition their corpses were in. Felix nodded to Orav then walked out of the evaluation building.

Walking back out of the evaluation building, Felix saw a half dozen people waiting to enter. Only one was in line though, the other five were standing in a small group and seemed to be handing corpses to one individual. Felix watched them for almost a minute at which point the individual walked over to stand in line.

Son of a bitch. They’re pooling their points to try and get the special rewards.

Grim chuckled in Felix’s mind, I mean, you can’t fault them.

I guess not. Maybe that’s why almost a quarter of the participants haven’t handed anything in yet. How many participants are doing this?

I wouldn’t be too worried. If they feel the need to do that, they probably aren’t very confident in their individual ability to compete anyways.

Yeah I guess. There’s also Merric who’s just stealing corpses. Feels kind of gross that they’re in the lead right now.

It is what it is.

Yeah, we’ll see what happens as things even out over time. In the meantime, I need to find somewhere with more things I can kill. Ideally with high rarity, high density creatures.

Felix looked in the direction he had just come back from and decided he would continue searching there. He had initially chosen that direction because the least people were heading there so he hoped that meant it would still be the least contested hunting ground.

He flew back over the mountain range and the now much emptier fields and continued onwards. The fields stretched out a bit further to each side but it didn’t take long for him to spot a different biome creeping up over the horizon.

In the distance he first saw ripples of heat in the air followed by a small cliff. That cliff fell just a few meters where there was a massive sea of dark orange sand. Floating atop the sandy dunes, Felix spotted specs of green that he realized, as he approached, were some kind of massive lily pads.

Once he was close enough to identify the plants, he also realized the dunes within the sea of sand before him actually moved. Rather than the signature unmoving dunes that he had come to expect from a desert, the dunes in this desert shifted and moved as if very slow waves on an ocean.

Felix floated over to just a half kilometer away and noted that the tide was calm at the moment, though he had no idea if that was always the case or not.

He quickly prepared some spells to keep himself cool then flew out to the first lily pad and tested it out by poking it with spells and corpses until he was certain it wouldn’t try to eat him.

Felix carefully landed on top of the large green plant and looked out into the distance. Behind him, he saw the green and blue field he had flown over with mountains peaking just over the horizon to the left and right. In front of him lay an endless sea of dark orange sand and green lily pads.

Felix kneeled down at the edge of the lily pad, which was surprisingly stable no matter where he stepped, and ran his fingers through the sand.

It was hot as hell but otherwise, felt exactly like sand except for the fact that it was a little too easy for him to run his hand through it. Instead of desert sand, it felt more like a viscous liquid. Felix flew up and over the sand in the hopes that he would find a jungle or other fauna rich biome.

As he flew over the desert though, something glinting in the sand caught his eye. Felix quickly dropped to just above the sand so he could get a better look and found what seemed to be a small chunk of some kind of scaled creature. He couldn’t really figure out anything else about it because the piece was so small but the fact that it existed at all was curious.

He decided to spend a little while investigating the desert because the scales meant it was less fauna empty than he had thought it was. At first he used Force spells to dig large cavities in the sand but he found nothing. He had been expecting to at least uncover some sand fish of some kind but there was simply nothing.

He flew back into the air and continued flying over the desert. After another half hour of flying, he spotted another glint, this one was half of a head and looked to be some kind of weird fish. It was mangled so it was hard to tell what it was but there was one specific feature that had Felix very curious.

On the mangled head, there was an eye. His assumption had been that these were sand fish but if they were, they wouldn’t use eyes at all. He confirmed to the best of his knowledge that the eye actually did process light and not vibrations by examining it’s structure. Felix found a lily pad nearby so he could land then looked down at the ever shifting desert.

I guess there’s… water? Beneath…? the sand…

Before he started experimenting with diving in, Felix improved upon a different spell he had used a while back. If he wanted to try and explore the sand sea, he needed a way to breathe, even if he could hold his breath for over an hour at least. His solution for that in the past was to use a sphere of solid mana containing air to create a tank. Now, Felix had enough nodes that he could exclude his neck from a spell meaning, he could create a literal bubble of air using wind and force nodes.

He used force nodes to isolate the bubble and keep the sand out and the wind nodes to actually create and replenish the air. He had been pretty sure before that there was something off about the wind node he had found in the tutorial. Comparing it to other nodes in the reference books Aldahn had leant him, it resembled a force node more than any of the air nodes.

The air nodes in the reference text were some of the most complex nodes Felix had ever seen, and for a good reason. They seemed to actually be creating air from mana. There were hundreds of nodes for different gases, air compositions and densities along with different efficiencies for each.

There was no math in the reference books themselves, but Felix was able to examine the nodes using his Identify Arcane Component skill. With some slight modifications to some other nodes he used for measurement, Felix could fill a sphere of solid mana with air and measure it’s change in weight.

Ding You have become more proficient with the Profession skill: [Arcane] Identify Arcane Component (Initiate IV => Initiate V)

Once he had manually calculated and measured it once, the skill now listed the output rate for all the other nodes he identified that produced matter. It was costly to produce enough air for him to breath, almost 15,000 mana per breath. On the other hand, he didn’t need to breath very often so he was pretty sure he could sustain the mana cost, at least for a while.

He tested the spell by attaching it to his hand and submerging that into the sand to be sure it wouldn’t collapse or leak then designed some backup spells. If he got hit or distracted, Felix wanted to be able to erect a new bubble in an instant. He used a different air node that produced air much faster but less efficiently so he could instantly fill the bubble in that situation.

After some thorough testing that involved submerging his head for extended periods of time, collapsing and reconstructing the bubble as well as sending it as deep as he could, Felix felt comfortable with his spell. He still had no way to see but he was hoping his ability to fly along with gravity would be enough for him to orient himself and escape if necessary. He also planned on going straight down and so long as he traveled along the stem of the lily pad he would have a safe path to return to the surface.

With all his preparations complete, Felix sat on the edge of the lily pad with this feet in the sand and rose to a standing position. He fell into the sand faster than he had expected but still much slower than with water. It took him a few seconds to be completely submerged under the effects of gravity alone.

He was pretty sure the sand should have been denser than he was and act more like a solid but for whatever reason, that wasn’t the case.

Before he fell too far below the surface, Felix held himself just below the lily pad then ran his hand along it as he drifted over to it’s stem. Once he found it, he latched onto the thick green appendage and propelled himself downwards.

He was worried he might encounter some kind of sand fish or worm that would be able to see him without him seeing them but he was confident he would be able to protect himself or escape either way.

He did spend the time while he descended thinking about alternate ways of seeing so in situations like exactly this one, he wasn’t completely blind. He didn’t manage to come up with anything promising in the few seconds it took him to break through the bottom though.

Felix had no idea what to expect but falling out of the sand and through the air was not it. He was still holding onto the stem of the lily pad so he latched onto it before he could actually fall any significant distance.

Instead of water, the air was filled with some kind of thick pink gas. Looking down, Felix saw a vast ecosystem that looked a little bit like it belonged underwater.

There were creatures that looked like fish except they were wide and flat with their side fins shaped like wings. They flew through the gas everywhere and reflected the light that emanated from each of the lily pad stems scattered throughout the area.

The bottom was over a kilometer below him but as far as Felix could see in any direction, it was covered in a massive twisting coral reef that was covered in odd looking vegetation. There were also creatures of all kinds wandering the reef, many of which seemed to ignore gravity completely as they scurried along the side or bottom of a coral branch.

It was a multicolored maze covered in a constant pink tinge and filled to the brim with life of all kinds. Felix couldn’t help but be reminded of a series of young girls toys or a princess movie with the pink tinge and fantastical colors.

Looking around and identifying various creatures, Felix didn’t spot anything particularly threatening to him so he tentatively let go of the stem. He was ready to slow his fall immediately but found he didn’t have to at all. His buoyancy within the gas was enough that a fall wasn’t really a threat to him at all.

As Felix fell to the ground, he saw off in the distance a large four legged creature with joints that were revered from what he expected, walk over to a specific spot and press itself into the coral. Every step it had taken caused a massive rumble that Felix had easily heard, despite the slight distortion caused by the sound passing through his air bubble. Due to it’s apparent massive weight, Felix hadn’t expected it to then launch itself off the ground and snatch one of the shiny flying fish in it’s maw.

It managed to get the whole fish into it’s mouth but it’s chewing was messy and it actually lost two small pieces of the fish that floated up and away. Other flying creatures swooped in and caught those pieces before they reached the sand above though.

Felix landed on a large twisting branch of coral and was immediately spotted by a wide array of creatures. Most of them scurried off but a few of them stuck around. Only one of them attacked him though while the others just watched.

Felix dove to the side of a gout of flame that suddenly appeared before him. He landed and turned, seeing a hard carapace and a hundred crab like legs winding around the coral.

[D - Rare] Ignaribus (Lvl 262)

The flames themselves weren’t hard to avoid but the centipede like creature had already scurried through another hole in the coral before Felix had a chance to hit back.

He waited for a little bit but saw no sign of it returning so he decided to move on. Felix hopped down the coral so he could reach a flat area instead of standing on the side of a twisting column.

Felix jumped but completely forgot that his buoyancy made gravity feel weaker so he ended up jumping much farther than he had intended. As he glided through the thick pink mist around him, one of the four legged creatures that he had seen jump earlier lumbered it’s way below him.

[D - Rare] Yaboleg (Lvl 291)

Ah shit.

Felix prepared a couple of Force spells to move himself along with one to swing the axe. He also prepared a Lightning Bolt that he attached to the axe head.

The Yaboleg found a suitable spot on the coral just in front of Felix’s arc and lowered itself to the ground for just a moment before it launched itself through the air.

Felix waited until it was in range then activated all of the spells he had prepared at once.

The creature’s toothy maw stretched wide to accommodate Felix’s large Persona body but only got a meter away from it’s prey. Felix’s body stopped moving forwards and shot downwards as the axe swung down into the mouth and trailed little arcs of lightning all around the blade through the air.

The Yaboleg was faster than Felix had expected and managed to snap it’s jaws around Felix’s shin before his axe came down onto it. It’s jaws immediately ripped through his flesh but was stopped by his bones. His axe swing spun his body around but only barely grazed the creature.

Felix and the Yaboleg flipped and started spinning from the momentum of his swing as they fell through the air. The Lightning arced through the creature but that just caused it’s muscles to seize.

Felix could feel blood pouring out of his leg and drenching the creature but he had already dulled the pain instinctively so it wouldn’t distract him. He found his sense of pain wasn’t quite as dulled as it was in his actual body, but it was enough for him to stay focused.

They fell through the air as Felix prepared a few Force spells to orient them. He channeled and adjusted the mana in each to make it so the Yaboleg was under him then smashed them into the ground with another spell.

The Yaboleg kicked and squirmed to try and reorient itself on top but it’s limbs found no purchase. It never released or even lightened the force of it’s bite though.

They slammed into the ground and Felix felt his legs reverberate right before he tumbled to the ground with the creature as he had no way to find stability as he landed.

Now that they were wrestling with each-other on the ground, it was much easier for Felix to tell that the creature was only a little bigger than his Persona’s body. It looked had a flat mouth that was clamped down on his leg along with a big tail. Between those two was just a small hard body.

If it weren’t for the four massive legs that reached outwards like a spider’s, it’s body would be a quarter of Felix’s size at best.

Felix summoned a shade behind the creature as they tumbled and swung as quickly as he could. They both rolled meaning so did the shade so the strike missed anything vital but the blade still sunk into it’s back leg.

As Felix rolled back over, he saw his health plummeting and also saw the fish that flew above them circling overhead.

Those fish like creatures had only really flown by themselves, as far as Felix had seen. Scattered and traveling for long periods in specific directions. Now, Felix watched them swarm together like a school of fish as they surrounded a cloud of red that slowly permeated the pink gas above.

Felix realized he only had as long as it took the fish to follow his blood trail. He turned his attention to the Yaboleg and reached forwards with his left hand. He placed it into it’s mouth then prepared a new and improved Flamethrower.

He already knew the pink gas wasn’t flammable as he was almost hit by a gout of flame earlier, so he was confident he wasn’t about to kill himself. He knew it would more than likely cook the end of his leg but that was a sacrifice he was willing to make considering the Blood Ring’s healing capabilities.

He pointed the spell as far away from his own leg as he could while still keeping it in its gullet then pumped mana into it.

He immediately felt his skin charring despite his dulled pain but luckily, the Yaboleg seemed to be faring much worse. The flames, rather than being pushed back out of it’s mouth as Felix had expected, actually vented out along the sides of it’s body. It seemed to have had some kind of gills or similar organ that were slowly shriveling as it’s body blackened around them.

Ding You have slain a [D - Rare] Yaboleg (Lvl 291)

Felix kept pouring the heat in until he saw the notification he had been waiting for then wrenched it’s jaw open. Its jaw surprisingly provided far more resistance than he had expected from a corpse and even forced him to use a Force spell.

He quickly activated both his rings instead of keeping the corpse because it helped him partially restore his leg and there was a chance he could integrate parts of it’s body.

Felix looked up and saw the swarm of flying fish spiraling downwards as they tracked his faint blood trail. He didn’t feel like he was in the best condition to fight them at the moment so he ignored them and leapt further into the coral reef with one leg.

His other leg was charred to the point where it stopped bleeding then the internals were mostly restored by his use of the blood ring. The skin was still charred and mostly black but it was holding on, somehow.

Felix caught himself at the top of his arc with Force spells and started flying so he didn’t have to land on his leg. His only goal at the moment was to make distance and he avoided flying too high so the Yabolegs didn’t jump at him.

He had thought about killing and collecting the corpses of the flying fish swarm but he wasn’t sure how to do so while preserving their corpses and didn’t know how strong they were. He also now knew exactly how to attract another swarm, with a big pool of blood, so he simply decided to prepare himself so he could collect them in the future.

Once his leg was fully restored, he would start experimenting on the fish until he could attract and capture entire swarms efficiently.

Felix had instinctively continued heading in the same direction, away from the evaluation building. The further he flew though, the more the weird instinctual feeling of pain he had felt back in the field, grew. The same sensation he had felt earlier, it was ever present as he traveled but it was so faint he had easily ignored and even forgotten about it.

Suddenly though, it had started to grow. The feeling went from the faintest of whispers on the wind to audible but distant screams. The feeling also grew more nuanced as Felix felt something along the lines of a migraine. He wasn’t experiencing it himself, but he could feel the experience of it saturating the anima.

Felix continued to push the sensation away even though he was now able to tell that he was moving towards it. He couldn’t pinpoint even its exact direction but he could sort of tell that forwards would lead him closer. He didn’t want to go investigate it just yet because he still hadn’t fully explored the pink gaseous sea though. He figured he should be able to find a number of creatures he could dissect and integrate into his own body here as well as collect plenty of points for the competition.

What he really needed was to sit down and manually work at his body, though he wasn’t sure how that would work on his Persona. The blood ring could restore him but, he had to absorb more bodies for it to do so, he had already expended its meager reserves.

Once he deemed himself far enough from the commotion he had just been a part of, Felix started looking for a place to rest. There was no cover in the pink sea above him and he had no intention of resting in the middle of the desert so, he looked downwards, into the expanse of winding coral.

It wasn’t hard for him to find a small alcove in the coral that was just too small to be a cave but still large enough for him to sit within. He covered the entrance in a sustained mana shield that had been upgraded from his new knowledge of enchantment nodes.

He made it so that the spell would never pull on his mana hard enough to injure him through the use of limiters and buffers. With the only exit covered, Felix sat down and closed his eyes. While he was certain some creatures down here would burrow through the coral, he didn’t worry about it because there wasn’t much he could do except react. He had Grim focusing his senses outwards just in case.

Felix’s consciousness flowed through his body but he found that the bodily control granted by his race, didn’t seem to extend to his Persona. He could use the blood ring to modify and control the body when it was within the ring itself but otherwise, he was severely limited.

He couldn’t even assess the damage to his body from an internal perspective so he was stuck with the vague number that represented his health.

Before he went out and killed something just to restore the meager health he had lost and potentially cause a commotion, Felix had work to do.

He adjusted the Mana Shield spell he had created to make it opaque then deactivated his Persona. Back in his real body, he shifted his consciousness into the soul ring and started manually sifting through the soul matter he had absorbed.

Felix had already deactivated the automatic harvesting earlier so he got a chance to look through them himself. He had no real adjustments to make to the harvesting process just yet, but he was looking for something new.

His new soul layer had already been started, the one that he planned on suffusing his body with, but now he had more than enough soul matter to grow it substantially. He harvested what he could from the souls and added them to his own so he gained raw stats but made sure to preserve all the excess.

He took the excess and wiped it clean of experiences, intent and anything else leftover from their previous hosts then compressed them in pieces. Each and every piece he carefully fused to and incorporated into the third layer of his Persona’s soul.

As he fashioned the third layer, Felix spent a little while observing the second layer he was building over and realized it wasn’t exactly acting as he had intended it. Instead of just being a protective film over his own soul, it was actually contributing in large part to controlling his Persona’s body. It acted like a second layer did for a normal being with a normal soul.

He realized he wasn’t sure it made much sense that the bodies didn’t share a second layer. If they did, his harvesting would be twice as efficient, theoretically.

Couldn’t I have the souls share my soul’s second layer?

You could, but it would defeat the purpose of having a Persona at all. You would appear, from every soul detection method, like the exact same person.

I thought the core soul was… the person?

Yeah but like I said, no one can really interfere with a living being’s core soul.

You can’t even read it?

Not really.

So if someone used highly trained soul senses on my Persona, they would see this second layer and that’s it?

Yes.

Huh… In that case, I should probably expand his layer manually.

I’ll be honest I’m not that well versed in souls but, if I had to guess, you’re probably leaving a lot of stats on the table right now by not doing so.

Well shit.

I didn’t realize it until you just mentioned it either.

Felix didn’t have enough soul matter at the moment to correct his mistake, even if he compressed all the ambient anima he could along with his soul’s third layer, he would only negligibly increase its size. He was quickly realizing that was the real advantage to harvesting souls, not stealing stats, but the fact that living creatures were by far the densest packing of anima anywhere.

The third layer he had been working on still wasn’t complete, it was only about half the size he needed it to be to completely suffuse his Persona’s body, but he had made a lot of progress.

After that, he adjusted his Persona’s body and modified it. He minimized the cells of the world bosses because he was quickly realizing they weren’t efficient at all. He had only included a small portion of them in the body for testing purposes but they resulted in massive energy costs with little benefit.

The world boss’ bodies were massive so the cells were able to work together but at the same time, they were all E grade except for the Kraken. The Kraken seemed to have just been so massive, that it relied on it’s size over everything else. He also only really had the heart and samples of it’s treated skin so he couldn’t do much with its cells.

The creatures that were rare or above had cells that were far more useful to Felix than the World Bosses had. They were more tuned to his size and efficiency requirements.

The one thing he kept was modifications to his bones that he had made by morphing the bone cells of some of the world bosses. The rest, he left to sit in small stores within the blood ring. If he ever needed them in future they would be there, but for now they simply sat.

He was then able to manually break down some excess cells to restore his Persona’s leg though it was a patch job at best. He still needed to hunt something down and absorb them to fully restore it.

Next, he started dissecting and examining the body of the Yaboleg. He quickly found it’s core located between it’s jaw and underbelly. Felix found it rather entertaining that the blood ring seemed to be confused by the mana core and instead of breaking it down into a ball like it did with other bodies, it simply floated through the space.

Felix grabbed the mana core and examined it but found that it was essentially just a ball of gaseous mana held together within some kind of organ.

He traced the organ’s connections into it’s legs and found that most of it’s legs consisted of bone and tissue that worked together to channel that mana. He quickly confirmed his assumption that they used force attuned mana by running mana through the legs then tried to incorporate the system into his Persona’s legs.

Felix tried a few times before ultimately giving up because it just didn’t make sense. The organs were too big and would interfere with his body’s standard functions like walking. He really needed something more efficient.

Ideally, he had mana channels then used his Persona’s half finished third layer to reattune the mana as needed. It wasn’t something he could test just yet but it was something for him to look forward to and work towards.

Felix returned his consciousness to his real body then started experimenting with spells. He wanted to nail down a solid set of spells he could use in his Persona so that it had a believable set of skills. He had already messed around with a few but he was not liking the idea of just winging the rest of it.

He ended up spending most of his time tuning his Fire and Lightning spells so they seemed more like reproducible skills then he designed something defensive. He didn’t want to use Mana Shields or Mage Armor so instead, he created what was essentially a Force Shield. The nature of Force made it so that the shield would either repel an attack or slow it down. He also made the shield conditional so it would resist attacks with as much force as it deemed necessary.

In theory, with the shield active, attacks would be slowed to a halt before they reached his body, so long as he had enough mana to resist them.

Felix reactivated his Persona and dropped the opaque Mana Shield then walked out onto the coral. Instead of moving upwards into the open sea, Felix instead decided to continue searching through the winding coral. He was pretty sure it would be easier for him to attack and defend in a confined space with spells that could fill the entirety of a nook or cranny. It was also harder for anything he fought to dodge, but that went both ways.

He walked across the coral and returned his sense of pain to normal finding his leg, while damaged, was no longer in pain at all.

Wait, what did I just do? I don’t have my racial control over my body with my Persona… what am I doing when I dull pain in this body?

Felix waited for a few moments but Grim didn’t bother answering.

It’s my soul right? I’m tuning out the experience of pain?

Grim finally deigned to respond, Yup. Same way you filtered out Nova’s emotions.

Gotcha.

Having been reminded of his familiar, Felix briefly tuned into Nova’s stream of emotions and found they seemed to be happy. He tuned their stream of emotions back out just so he didn’t feel everything they felt. He would still feel it if they were in danger, not that he could do much about that at the moment considering how far away they felt from their soul bond. It still made him feel better so he let that through.

Felix wasn’t expecting much within the coral, maybe a few creatures and some small caves but as he walked, the branching tunnels just kept going. They grew narrower until Felix had to crouch but quickly widened after that. Felix continued to follow the paths that veered downwards in the hopes that he found the bottom.

Instead of sand or rocks like he expected though, Felix hopped down a coral tunnel and flew off to the side through an exit. The coral just suddenly stopped like it had been cut open.

Felix slowed himself down before he flew too far into what appeared to be almost an entire other layer to the biome. It wasn’t quite large enough for that but it looked like a massive cavern.

The cavern floor was made up of jagged rocks and stone that looked cracked and broken all over. It reminded Felix of dried clay with its geometric patterns. Growing out of the ground there were pillars of coral that held the network he had just left aloft and between those, pools of multicolored liquids and vegetation. Random bits of the vegetation provided the entire area with very dim and varied light.

Felix descended slowly to try and keep himself from drawing too much attention but had to quickly dodge a geyser that exploded beneath him.

Once he was clear of it, Felix turned around and saw a stream of thick pink gas pouring out of the ground for a few moments before dissipating. He suddenly felt a weird sense of deja-vu from when he fought the alchemist Devoured camp.

Lowering himself to the ground Felix avoided any of the other geysers as he landed upon a solid outcropping of stone. As he descended, he noticed the weird whispered screaming that the ambient anima carried with it grew, but only just slightly. He suppressed the sensation for now but resolved himself to investigate it soon.

Looking around, Felix got a better look at the ground beneath the coral. The pools of multicolored liquids were shallow enough that vegetation grew out of them, but only them. There was no vegetation anywhere else making it look like a dead biome with individual oases scattered around.

Each oasis was slightly different. One of them was a tiny forest with an array of trees growing out of it’s pond. Another was dominated by a single trunk that rose up from the center of its pond and held a large canopy aloft over the pond. Some had no trees at all and instead vines grew out of the pond, reaching out across the ground.

Wherever the pillars of coral touched the pools of liquid, crystal growths appeared that were the same color as the liquid. This pattern of ponds with vegetation, coral pillars and the rare crystal growth stretched out as far as he could see in any direction.

Oddly to Felix, the pink gas seemed to mostly be sucked up through the coral and into the area above making it much clearer in the under-coral. He suspected that had to do with the presence of an even thicker, colorless gas considering how buoyant he still was so he maintained the air bubble spell.

Felix didn’t immediately sense any creatures nearby but he cast and maintained a Force Shield nonetheless. He had already learned his lesson from the first vault in the world event and he did not want to have to remove a crossbow bolt from his abdomen again.

Walking over to the nearest pool, one with tall algae like plants growing out of it, Felix reached down and touched the pool with the tip of his finger. When he didn’t feel any kind of pain or other effect after a few minutes, despite his lack of fine grained senses in his Persona body, he scooped up a larger amount of it.

Just looking at the liquid, he could feel the mana saturating it. The liquid he was looking at was a light green color but he couldn’t quite identify the suffused mana’s attunement. To him it seemed almost like a combination of multiple attunements but he knew it wasn’t just that. Only because he had just been messing around with gas, or more generally, matter producing nodes, he knew that multiple overlapping attunements of different strengths indicated something more complex.

In his mind, attunements were still frequencies though he was ready to drop the analogy as soon as it fell apart. In this case though, it helped him tremendously in wrapping his mind around it all. The only thing he couldn’t quite figure out was why specific combinations of frequencies produced waves that created matter.

Sensing the mana within the liquid, Felix realized it wasn’t as dense as pure liquid mana like he created, especially when it was on the brink of becoming a solid, but it was much denser than gaseous mana. He was mildly disappointed he hadn’t found a cool way to have more and denser mana but either way, it was interesting enough for him to try and collect it.

Either he would find a use for it himself or it was possible he could hand it in for points instead of a core. Felix didn’t have much in the way of liquid storage containers but he had an idea of what to do anyways.

Opening his Pocket home against a coral pillar, Felix walked inside and started digging by first softening the ground then ripping chunks free with explosive Force spells. He dug out a series of pools that he kept just over a meter apart and circled around the tower in the center. Luckily, the ground was largely made of large solid stone so the liquid wouldn’t seep into the ground.

After that, Felix pulled out some Starmetal and formed it into a long tube that he bent once. With a simple Force spell inside of the tube, the liquid started to pump from the pool in the underground cavern, into his Pocket Home.

The pool was only a few inches deep so there wasn’t much liquid for him to pump out, but it still took him a little while. As the liquid drained from the pool, the algae slowly fell to the ground like ribbons falling in slow motion. Felix cut a chunk off of one to examine it but other than being slimy, there didn’t seem to be much to it. It had more mana than a normal plant would but it didn’t seem to do anything with that mana.

Felix left the algae and moved his makeshift pump over to a different pool filled with vines that twisted and knotted themselves together but only seemed to grow upwards. None of them passed through the threshold of the pool below them.

The liquid in the pool that the vines grew out of was a dark ruddy color. As Felix drained this pool, the vines stretched themselves upwards and tightened into a solid pillar, removing all the space between themselves.

There was once again, nothing of note at the bottom of the pool so Felix moved onto the next.

The liquid and plant for the next pool was wholly uninteresting but this one intersected with a coral pillar and formed a crystal growth that traveled a number of meters upwards.

Felix examined the crystals but as far as he could tell, they were just some kind of quartz. The crystal itself was incredibly low quality and brittle. With just a modicum of force applied to the crystals, they crumbled into a number of shards.

He collected some of them just in case but he didn’t see any value in them at the moment.

He continued draining pools as he moved, some of which had repeated attunements but he still kept them all separate just in case he had missed something. Surprisingly, he didn’t see much in terms of fauna in the under-coral at least for the first few hours while he drained pools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .