Chronicles of the True Wizard

With his plan in place, and no one barging in to stop Felix when he obscured himself, he headed out and followed the signs that led him to a material supply depot. There were also areas with people selling and providing materials but Felix didn’t need anything complicated so he instead headed towards the massive collection of materials the Pansophical bought and sold themselves. They were only the most common materials but they sold them just slightly above cost.

Walking down the halls, he passed by hundreds of people and the majority of them, were definitely casters. They were easily identifiable by their robes somewhat but by their familiars even more so.

There were creatures that looked like cat monkeys with wings, giant fire turtles, woodland deer spirits, a skeleton and everything in between. He would have thought the skeleton was a necromantically summoned minion too, had it not been tiny and sitting on its caster’s shoulder. Not that it definitely wasn’t, but it did seem like it was a familiar.

As impressive as some of the familiars were though, Felix didn’t envy a single one of them for an instant because it was obvious to him, Nova would eat them all in a fight.

His only requirements for the material he used was for it to be hard and strong, vibration resistant. Luckily, it wasn’t hard to find that at all and there was an abundance of simple materials. All of the basic properties and their combinations had thousands of materials that fit them perfectly. It was only when more exotic requirements came into play that materials became weird, like Demitium or Starmetal.

Due to the abundance, Felix was easily able to purchase a ton of raw material in the bottom of S grade extremely cheaply. He funneled all of it into his Kryptos Repository then followed the signs to the library.

As he walked through the halls, he moved the Kryptos Repository into his Soul Space and mentally dumped the material out then replaced it all before he arrived. As soon as he did so, Art and Nucleus began construction.

With Nucleus’ Matter Manipulation abilities it had from once being a System Chunk, it would mostly be shaping it while Art would do the inscribing. Nucleus would help because inscription took the longest time but they understood none of the plans so Mera, Arysha and Alken would guide them. The mental trio would also refine and run simulations on the plans while the Nucleus shaped the material.

In the meantime, Felix didn’t start working on the actual nodes he was connecting just yet because he could do that anywhere so he figured he might as well do it somewhere where he was simultaneously scanning his surroundings.

Walking into the library, there was no reception and no clerks waiting to grant him permission. Instead, he walked right in and was immediately disappointed. The books and information, weren’t just out and available for him to walk through. Instead, he had to mess around with a System screen to request the information he was looking for.

Finding a table he could claim as his own, Felix put in a request for everything then turned his attention inwards while that was fulfilled.

Starting with the Mana Computer growth farm, Felix harvested everything then ripped it to pieces. It was functional and had gotten to the point where 70% of the output was usable but he had reached the limit of that design. He had also massively improved his own will and Mana Control since creating it so he could do a lot better.

First, he manually created a Mana Computer using his own will to shape the Mana and almost physically laughed out loud at how easy it felt. Nearly two epochs ago it had taken him multiple nights to grow it outwards during an event, exponentially but still sluggishly. Now it was denser and more precise, each spec of mana connected in more dimensions and significantly faster, finished in a fraction of the time. He probably could have pushed everything a bit further in terms of size and precision and he tried briefly but, he was well past the point of diminishing returns so he fell back to where it felt trivial.

Using the same material from the old one, along with some extra he had bought specifically for this, Felix began constructing a farm that was over a hundred times bigger. He imbued it with the anima he had stashed away specifically for the farm then filled it with mana.

As the computers grew within, Felix created the nodes he would use in the machine Art and Nucleus were in the process of building. In essence, they were inspired by the Imitation System Cores he had collected in the world event but in reality, they were diametrically opposed.

Those Imitation cores had less dense and less strong computers that used many bits but were still discrete. His were analog, utilizing more dimensions and each computer was flawless. On top of that, he didn’t need curses or biological matter to keep them stable. They were clean and elegant and he was very happy with them.

He managed to find a few improvements as he worked on them but nothing worth revising his already finished cores for. Instead, he made sure to remember them for when he repeated the process to improve his own brain.

He had to briefly pop back into the Physical world to return and request new books every once in a while but less often than he had expected. The books were generally dense, high grade and high rarity so it took him a non negligible amount of time to scan each. He nor Grim had the time to sort through them but there were other residents of his mind in the library and they had already gone through most of them.

From the brief reports Felix had gotten, the information contained within the books was more than he had expected and hoped for but not everything he had dreamed of.

It took all of them working together a grand total of 27 days to finish both the machine, and the nodes that would be going into it. The machine was, in essence, very simple. All it really did was unbind an object from space then reattach it to another object. Those detached objects would then not take up any space themselves but, they still contributed mass, which wasn’t an issue at all.

The real hard part for Felix, was figuring out a way to make the entire system modular. He didn’t want to attach a certain number of nodes and fill up Mark’s surface area entirely, thereby making it impossible to add more later on. He had an idea of how he wanted to solve it but it only really came together during his training with Rathelius.

The plans from Nucleus and what Felix had felt when they activated the first machine were usable but he didn’t fully understand them. Simply slotting in his different nodes could have possibly worked, but he wasn’t entirely sure. He definitely wouldn’t have been able to modify it as he wanted. With Rathelius’ theory though, he was able to identify which parts of the inscription were necessary and which weren’t given his unique abilities and different cores.

He was also able to, or rather the people in his brain, design a protocol for how to connect everything together.

Mark would be physically connected to his cores and theoretically, Felix could chain the cores, connecting them to each-other to expand Mark infinitely but that would lead to signal integrity concerns and delay concerns. Instead, they decided on creating more central nodes, like Mark, that were connected to cores themselves. Then the nodes could all be attached together in a three dimensional grid, or lattice.

That also had the benefit of making the entire Mark system fault tolerant.

For the final step, Felix had Mark and Grim attach Mera, Alken and Arysha’s mind to his own brain for the time being then took Mark’s body and manually took him offline. Opening up the container, Felix separated out Mark’s soul from the Mana Computer and upgraded both independently. For the brain, he replaced it completely but preserved the old one so they could restore everything it stored later. For the soul, he simply modified it manually. He didn’t change the structure much at all but just added in Anima, compressed it and strengthened the will within.

Then, he reattached the two parts and slotted them into the machine.

Much like when they had used a similar machine on Nucleus, after consuming absurd amounts of Mana Felix had prepared, the entire thing flashed to life, then it was done. It was completely anticlimactic but after all of the testing they had done, they were pretty certain it would be, and happy it was.

The last step, was to transfer everything from the old Mana Computer Mark had used, to his new form. The process itself was easy and relatively fast, only taking a few hours, but only because they had planned for it ahead of time.

After that though, Mark would need to essentially sleep for a few days until he was fully operational. He wouldn’t really be sleeping, just calibrating and synchronizing and running diagnostic tests.

In the meantime, Felix turned his attention to all the information he had mentally scanned.

The first thing he looked for, was information on skills or even just inspiration for skills that he could slot into his profession. He was also willing to replace some general skills, if he found anything worthwhile.

One of the things Edras had complained about, was that some classes, professions and skills were locked behind being trained in them. Some of them, all you needed was knowledge of them. Felix had already looked through the available skills for Lifebinder but hadn’t found anything that stood out. Now that he had knowledge and information from what skills existed in related classes though, he had higher hopes.

He also wanted to possibly create some skills himself, based on what he found.

Going through the list again though, there was only one he really liked. All the others were things he didn’t really want or need or could have been useful but not enough to waste a skill on. He even loosened his requirements of avoiding System skills because no matter how he saw it, he wouldn’t ever rely on his profession for anything vital.

Luckily, his Profession had near perfect synergy with Necromancy skills.

Necromancy: [Restore Corpse (Special) Restore a corpse to perfect working order temporarily. Once slain, activating this skill on a corpse where at least 50% of it remains in tact, will restore the corpse to perfect condition for reanimation for a time. This time depends on how long the new soul is bound to it with a minimum of 1 minute if no soul is bound. Some levels and skills can be retained from the original creature up to a point, dependent on the strength of the bound soul. Once used on a corpse, this skill cannot be used again on the same corpse. This skill has a Mana cost that scales based on the grade, rarity and size of the corpse being restored. This skill can be upgraded.]

Restoring a corpse so it could be reused as a vessel for a soul later felt like a decent addition to his arsenal. For the time being, he was mostly focused on constructs because they were more customizable and interesting to Felix but in a pinch or very specific situations, having this sounded awesome. He also had a very specific use case in mind, but he would need to test it out elsewhere first before trying it on the Giant corpse in his Pocket Home.

There were some other skills he found that he was interested in, but only for inspiration at the moment because he was pretty sure he could create better skills. Worst case though, he would take them then try and evolve them later.

Crafter: [Duplicate Material (Rare) Duplicate some existing material. Targeting some existing material, create up to the exact amount of already existing material. This skill has a Mana cost that scales based on the grade, rarity and size of the corpse being duplicated. This skill can be upgraded.]

Necromancy: [Corpse Copy (Special) Use one corpse as a template to upgrade another. Targeting two existing corpses, upgrade one of them in accordance with the strength and abilities of the other. Not all traits are transferable and some corpses are not strong enough to hold certain traits. Once used, neither corpse can be used on either side of this spell again. This skill has a Mana cost that scales based on the grade, rarity and size of the corpse trait being copied. This skill can be upgraded.]

Necromancy: [Imbue Minion (Epic) Imbue a specific ability or skill into a minion. When raising a minion, choose one specific attribute or skill of your own and attempt to imbue a piece of it into the minion. Not all attributes and skills are transferable to all minions. Some minions are not strong enough to hold certain attributes and skills. Once used, the same corpse cannot be imbued again, if raised again. The success of this skill is highly dependent on the soul strength of the minion. This skill has a Mana cost that scales based on the grade, rarity and size of the corpse trait being copied. This skill can be upgraded.]

Nucleus, can you search the protocols and find the exact requirements for creating or unlocking the highest tier skills?

Based on the skills you’re targeting that Grim sent me, you’re going to need to create entirely custom skills for those. Usually the requirements are pretty strict. You need to be able to show the intent of what you’re trying to do, have an available slot that has a high enough compatibility for the skill, demonstrate about a Journeyman level of proficiency or understanding in the concepts going into the skill and it has to be unique.

Unique, really?

Yes. If someone else already came up with a skill, depending on the skill and rarity, either The System created specific requirements based on the progenitor or the progenitor themselves put in place their own requirements. That usually only happens with the rarest skills and I’d say these are borderline.

So they don’t have to be unique, I just have to do a similar level of what they did to get their skill?

Kind of, assuming they weren’t given the ability to disseminate the skill however they want.

At least one, maybe two of these though definitely already exist.

Yes. Unfortunately, I have no way of finding out the requirements for these.

Okay, first one is Duplicate Construct. Shouldn’t be too hard but I want to exchange Mana with The System for it to duplicate them. Any ideas?

Nucleus responded again, That’s a skill I’m pretty sure exists and I think The System created those so, I think all you have to do is declare your intent. You’ve already wrapped your brain in Anima so you probably have to blurt it out loud.

Huh, guess I’ll give it a shot and if it doesn’t work, try to upgrade and evolve one of those other skills.

He didn’t have a construct near him at the moment so Felix went back to scanning everything he could find. He started with related skills, classes and professions then moved on to Mana Forms and Constructs then finally, The Realms of Annihilation. The spells, enchantments, wards and rituals he found were a great addition to his arsenal but only sort of. While there were some that were very advanced and complex spells, even though spells weren’t classified by grade and rarity, Felix would say they were Common S grade spells.

They were powerful and complex but they used simple nodes and basic patterns. He learned some things here and there but it truly did seem like anything that was publicly available, wasn’t really worth seeking out.

The constructs on the other hand, were almost exactly the same but much more helpful. His arsenal of constructs and construct plans was severely lacking so even if they were Common, having a huge number of them was still useful for reference at the very least.

Once he had scanned everything he needed to, Felix headed for the exit. He had to pass through and drop off his ring before he was allowed in the teleportation room and heading there, they demanded to scan his Kryptos Repository.

After scanning through it, the attendant’s brow furrowed in confusion, “Where did all this material you purchased go?”

Felix shrugged as he offered his prepared lie, “Unique race. I consume metal to gain buffs.”

They looked at him for a moment and Felix was pretty sure they didn’t believe him but eventually, they shrugged, “You’re free to go.”

Felix thanked them then headed back through a portal to his dorm on Eramith. Realistically, he didn’t need to go back for a while.

I almost wish I had taken another recruitment at the same time. If I didn’t need the free time to work on my skills and spells, I definitely would have considered it.

Back in his dorm, Felix placed a Seeing Eye construct on the floor in the open section of his room then knelt down and placed a hand on it. Hovering his other palm over the floor next to it, he declared his intent, “System. I wish to duplicate this construct, without the soul, for a Mana cost through my Profession.”

Profession Skill: [Epic] Replicate Construct

[Skill][Profession]

Use one construct as a template to create another. Targeting an existing construct, up to Epic rarity, create an exact copy of the construct without any attached Anima. This skill has a Mana cost that scales based on the grade, rarity and size of the construct being duplicated. This skill can be upgraded.]**

Would you like to accept and activate this skill?

Mana Cost: 50 M

Yes

No.

Holy shit. It costs 50 million for just a Seeing Eye construct? Damn.

“Yes please.”

Felix actually had to offer the mana himself as The System could no longer just take it from within his soul and doing so, it was sucked out of thin air and under his once empty palm, a flash of light appeared.

Lifting his palms, there were now two copies of the Seeing Eye construct on the floor.

How does anyone other than me pay for that cost? Or I guess this forces them to use batteries or do it outside of combat? Whatever, easy one done. Next one…

The next one he tried was a lot easier than he expected. It took a little while of him creating souls and imbuing them with various experiences from Hollow Claw and the remembered along with desires that were as close to convictions as Felix could get. One day he wanted to be able to create convictions at will in constructs but he found he still wasn’t quite there yet, even after his time at Amatara’s.

Profession: [Imbue Creation (Ancient) Imbue a specific ability or skill into the spirit of a creation when binding. When binding a spirit to a creation, choose a Class or Profession to imbue into the creation. Only Classes and Professions up to Uncommon in rarity may be imbued. The creation’s physical form and mental capacity must be sufficient for this skill to succeed. Constructs imbued in this way have a limit of 3 skills. The success of this skill is highly dependent on the spirit strength of the minion. This skill has an Anima cost that scales based on the grade and rarity of the imbued Class or Professions. This skill can be upgraded.]

Wait… An Anima cost? WHAT? Also… this is way better than I was hoping for. I guess I can live with an Anima cost if I get to imbue actual Classes and Professions. Hopefully this next skill works out to help me deal with the cost.

Speaking of… Nucleus spoke up, apparently either often connected to his thoughts or Grim was connecting him when its expertise was relevant, You should know the basics of summoning skills before you try to obtain the skill.

I already looked through all the information I could find on them. What else is there?

A lot. Firstly, summoning is not a thing. It does not exist.

Okay, well I stand corrected. Apparently there is a lot I don’t know.

Not exactly at least. Summoning is not possible without The System… usually.

Taking a wild guess, I use a portal, right?

Yeah, usually The System obscures the portals in order to make the skills harder to decipher but, yes.

From what I could find, Summoning was rare, why do you know so much about it?

The Shadow Domain.

Felix gasped as he put things together mentally, remembering The Shadow Domain used in the Bastorus One Integration Event, Those were summons? I thought they were just shadow creations.

Nope. Shadow Spirits. Which is why I also know the exact mechanics of how the skill you want, should work. First things first, she was summoning Shadow Spirits only, but the premise of her skill is that she needs to prepare the ritual, as all summoning skills require. It’s not a real ritual though, more like System portal spells. Fake rituals that The System swaps out. What’s really happening though, is that The System uses the ritual as a target and a broadcast location.

Broadcasting a signal or something?

Sort of. It broadcasts the anima at the location of the spell into The Spirit Realm.

The what?

Spirit Realm. Where all the spirits are. The Shadow Domain lady projects the environment of her domain along with her own soul through her basic aura control and offers The Spirits a gift. If they like what she’s offering, they respond to the request and The System pulls them over.

Hold on. What the hell is The Spirit Realm?

No idea. All I know is more or less where it is. Or… That’s not true… How to send a message there? The Spirit does all the work of pulling themselves to the ritual, which acts as an anchor.

Okay so, I use a ritual and offer something. I take it summoning Spirits is different from normal summoning then because The System isn’t portaling them in? What do I offer, Anima?

Correct, Spirit summoning is a little different. As for what to offer, you could but not necessary. What they really want is an experience. You offer them a unique experience, advertise what you want them to do. The ones that want to do that, respond. At least, that seems to be what the Shadow Domain user did.

Okay, I have thousands of questions but let’s just try it and see. What’s this ritual look like?

Using Grim as the intermediary, Nucleus projected the exact ritual The Shadow Domain wielder had used and Felix replicated it without modification. He was tempted to, but considering it wasn’t a real ritual, he waited. Specifically, the inverted light attunement node, felt rather specific to Shadows, which he didn’t want.

Finally using the space in his dorm room for its intended purpose, Felix looked down at the ritual he had created with his Matter Control and spare Mana conductive material he had on hand. After inspecting it and ensuring it perfectly matched what Nucleus had provided him, Felix reached out with a tendril and imbued an offering into the anima at the center.

His initial offering, was the experience of possessing a construct body with a mind.

He was making a lot of assumptions around Spirits but ones he felt were safe. Firstly, they were Spirits and from his understanding, creatures of Anima living in a Spirit Realm. Some of the experiences he deemed unique, and even the multiverse might deem unique, weren’t necessarily unique for them.

He assumed though, that possessing a body was unique considering it was called The Spirit Realm. It also let him test out his ideal use case up front.

The body he chose, was a simple construct that was really just the combination of a few parts and pieces he had. It wasn’t something permanent and all the parts that went into it were disposable.

It took just a few seconds for Felix to get a response, something that was obvious as soon as it happened. First, he felt The System static either being pushed back in an area or recoiling. Second, he felt a huge pull on the Anima he was using to transmit his offer. Lastly, the construct body he had prepared suddenly jerked to life.

Looking down at the tiny ball with legs, Felix didn’t look at the construct but into the construct. Within it, lay a Spirit. A being of Anima and something he didn’t even really consider as possible before, a Spirit existing without a body. Nova existed and used to be a Spirit, or still was he wasn’t sure, but she had always had a body. That made sense to him, the structure of her soul was familiar and made sense to him.

The way the Spirits spirit was laid out was so completely foreign to him he couldn’t help but try and map it out.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get very far before it vigorously shook its body then began running around the room.

Though the body was weak and made of scraps, it ran fast enough that Felix had a hard time following it, especially considering how small the body he had offered it was.

Zipping around the room, the construct bound Spirit smashed itself into the walls, furniture, floor and ceiling, leaving small craters where it landed like it was a bullet ricocheting around the room.

Well… shit.

Felix tried to catch it manually but failed thrice before filling the room with a Slow Field spell. The construct didn’t even seem to notice it though and didn’t noticeably slow at all. The complete lack of effect made Felix feel a little like the Spirit was laughing at him.

Basically giving up, Felix just watched as the damage it caused was repaired too slowly for the planet to keep up. After a minute of damage to his dorm accumulating, a pillar of stone extruded itself from the ceiling and crushed the construct in the middle of the room before receding and vanishing.

After that, the damage to the room itself quickly healed over and Felix was left with a bunch of crushed metal.

Okay then… No skill though. Do I just have to do it a few more times?

Not sure. I think because your intention is to keep it general, you might have to summon a few different types.

Alright. First things first though, I’m going to modify this ritual.

Felix worked on modifying the ritual itself right up until Mark finally woke up from his calibration. It was completely anticlimactic and Mark seemed exactly the same to Felix except now, Mark could keep all the Mind City residents thinking indefinitely. No more need to rotate through them and have the others sleep.

He also immediately began working on configurations for the Attunement Crystals from the tree in Felix’s Pocket Home.

The first thing Felix worked on was upgrading his Scan Literature skill. He already knew more or less what he wanted to do, he just had to practice and iterate on the idea until it was where he wanted it.

His original goal was simply to use his Mana, Matter and Anima Senses more appropriately to scan books. Now though, he had a Mind City with thousands of souls in there. So instead, he set up a building that mapped out his surroundings using his senses and found a handful of souls that wanted to work there. Their only job was to manually sift through his senses to create accurate scans.

He hadn’t set up any form of currency to pay them with yet but for the time being, at least the original residents and their descendants were happy to work free of charge.

Once it was all in place, after testing it for a few hours, his skill upgraded.

Ding You have upgraded the General skill: [Epic] Scan Literature (Adept IV) => General: [Arcane] Arcane Scan (Journeyman IX)

Class: [Arcane Scan (Arcane) Scan the contents of any object that remains within range of your senses for a sufficient period. The time required for a scan is independent of how many objects are being scanned. This skill requires you have some way of memorizing, transcribing or storing the scan of the object. Some objects may attempt to resist being scanned. Some details, such as those in creeping ink books, auto-updating tomes, and sentient books will be lost. This skill is upgradeable.]

Huh… All the stat scaling stuff is gone. Now that I think about it… I’m kind of doing it all myself, with the help of the citizens of my Mind City but still. Do I even need to have this as a skill anymore? How does The System know I successfully upgraded i- Actually, it was watching me as I practiced so it can probably guess with a high degree of accuracy.

Felix decided to keep the skill for the time being and was just happy to be able to scan books much faster. It helped greatly with his next task, which was to scan every book he could find on every available topic, ever.

He knew that was impossible but with Grim’s help, they prioritized things a little bit.

In Felix’s research of The Realms of Annihilation, he found that the quests in the various realms often required specific domain knowledge of various topics. They were completely random and often there was a way to complete the quest without the knowledge, it was just much harder.

Ever since Mark had been upgraded, Nucleus and Art had worked together along with some of the Mental Citizens to harvest his new Mana Computer farm. It was producing minds exponentially faster than before and so the population of his Mind City was expanding rapidly.

Felix himself couldn’t store all that information in his own brain, especially not before he upgraded it but even afterwards, he doubted if he could. Mark on the other hand, had a much better shot and if he couldn’t, Felix would attach a new Central Node to Mark, effectively doubling his capacity.

Just having the knowledge wasn’t enough though, there was a huge amount of value in having experience and an intuition. For that, he would simply provide the knowledge to the citizens of his Mind City.

He wasn’t planning on forcing any of them to become specialists unless he needed to. For the time being though, it seemed many of them were happy to pick up a topic and dive into them. Not all of them stuck with the same topic start to finish but even if they didn’t become experts, having anyone to consult on everything he didn’t have the time to learn himself, would provide for an excellent starting point. Then, if he needed more specific knowledge, Mark would know where to look and could provide much more relevant information than if he didn’t have various specialists.

For all of them to gain experience though, they either had to try things for real, or they had to simulate them.

It wasn’t possible for Felix’s Mind City to simulate things he had no experience of, like Alchemy or Botany but the texts he scanned helped Mark tune his simulations. Then, when they encountered situations they were unsure of, Felix would buy basic materials and they ran tests in his Soul Space.

As these tests were performed, various materials had to be accurately represented in his Mind City and so, the projection of the planet became vastly more diverse.

They added biomes, flora, fauna, minerals and everything else they found mentioned which in turn, finally made his Mind City feel like its own world instead of a sandbox.

As they added and tuned his Mind City, Felix’s proficiency in the skill sky rocketed right up to Skilled XXII at which point it stopped.

He figured it wanted him to put intent on where to take the skill but for the time being, he just left it be.

Then, he moved on to the spell he had been trying so hard to figure out and after a few real hours spent in his Mind City talking it through and experimenting with Spell Forms, Felix ultimately decided to scrap the idea.

Casting a floating hand that he could control like his own, was just too complicated. Just shaping and moving a hand was relatively easy, giving it any usable amount of Dexterity was way more complicated and necessitated a spell form he couldn’t even fully write out or picture, let alone cast.

He didn’t scrap the idea entirely though and instead, decided to tweak the idea. There really was no reason it needed to be a spell.

So, Felix began practicing simply using his Mana Control to manipulate Mana in the shape of a hand. He had big plans for making it more complicated, which was why he defaulted to a spell in the first place, but he would figure that out once he had more practice with the hand.

After that, he turned his attention to the other spell he had been working on, the one to replace the enchantment on his cloak.

It too, had the exact same problems as Mage Hand so, Felix very quickly switched tracks from a spell, to something entirely different. He couldn’t fully put it in place just yet, but he had a workable design relatively quickly.

Then, it was back to Summoning Spirits until he managed to get the skill or Mark finished his simulations.

In a massive stroke of luck, they happened both in the same day.

Ding You have demonstrated sufficient proficiency to unlock the Profession Skill: [Summon Spirit (Ancient) Summon a Spirit from the Spirit Realm. This skill requires the creation of a binding ritual and an offer for the Spirit. The specifics of the Spirit are entirely dependent on the ritual and the offer. It is possible for this skill to fail and for no Spirit to be summoned. Use of this skill grants the user knowledge of the Spirit Realm and allows them to target specific beings through the tuning of the offer. This skill will not tune the offer or directly dictate it, instead it will provide a general sense of Spirits matching the desired target. Tuning of the offer is up to the wielder. This skill has a minor Anima cost that scales exponentially based on how long the wielder peers into the Spirit Realm.]

Oh wait… Sweet! I was totally expecting another skill that was basically useless because I could simply do all the work myself. This one I actually need the skill, at least for now. Although, The System is still involved with the summoning so maybe if I wasn’t trying to get a skill, it just wouldn’t participate?

Just a few hours later, and only half way through Felix’s total recruitment period, Mark had finally hit their efficiency thresholds.

Felix wasted no time and dove into his Pocket Home where he immediately began creating crystals. He didn’t actually need Nova for the creation because his Matter Control was good enough, at least in his Soul Space with Nucleus’ help. What mattered more was her knowledge and that, was the only reason it was even possible for them to simulate the finished products.

Later on, when they improved the efficiency further, Felix and Nova would create them together, combining her Matter Control with his Mana Control but for the time being, Mark had the exact configuration laid out so they didn’t need her.

Without her, it took them longer than Felix expected, almost an entire day to piece together the first crystal. The others were slightly faster as he grew accustomed to the process, but not by as much as he would have liked.

Once the crystal was finished materially, he then had to prepare it to handle all the Mana passing through it. Felix wasn’t sure if there was a better way but simply preparing the crystal with the exact same process as a Mana battery accomplished everything he needed. It stabilized the crystal and the Mana pathways through it making the transfer of Mana faster as well as adding a buffer within the crystal itself.

The buffer was important because it greatly simplified the new design for his Mana Core.

While Felix’s own abilities had progressed by leaps and bounds, and that was reflected in his ability to prepare a crystal to become a battery, he couldn’t help but feel like his process was lacking.

He was able to position the crystal, examine its internal structure and carefully strike it with the utmost precision and care. Compared to the last time he had prepared crystals, Felix was pretty sure he had gone from pulling out around 80% of the crystals potential to now pulling out at least 98% with the process he was using. It was a massive increase but still, the process was simple.

He know knew about Spatial Mana Attunements, had better Mana Senses and Control, was aware of deeper interactions between Matter, Anima and Mana. He knew there were at least 7 other dimensions to attunements which he didn’t even really account for at the moment. The process he used to prepare crystals to become batteries though, used none of that.

It didn’t leverage them at all and he couldn’t help but feel like there had to be a better way, or even just small improvements using his knowledge now.

He didn’t have the time to experiment on it himself but his Mind certainly did so Felix created a whole host of crystals that were nearly identical thanks to all the shards the tree produced along with his Matter Control. He put them in his Soul Space and let the residents of his mind experiment using a new building he thought up.

After his minor tangent, he went back to preparing all the new crystals for his new Mana Core, at least until they refined the process.

Once they were all complete, he sat down and got to work on tearing apart his Mana Core.

First things first, he squeezed and compressed his Mana Core down now that his will power was much stronger and in turn, his Mana Control much better. He also did away with the notion of having a solid center as he had come to learn there was no reason to impose a state on Mana. Being solid was just a matter of willing it to react in a specific way, not a product of density or overall excitement of atoms.

In fact, he reduced the entire thing back down to something resembling a gaseous state so it was easier for him to move and manipulate because the Mana effectively reacted more quickly.

As he thought about it though, he realized he was still missing something. If Mana truly was detached from space as Rathelius had told him, there should have been no reason he couldn’t infinitely compress it. In theory, he saw no reason why all his mana couldn’t occupy the exact same point, outside of space.

In reality though, he compressed his Mana with all his will and it simply refused to act like anything but matter.

In the end, after pushing past his ruminations, Felix managed to compress his Mana Core down to the size he was looking for, while simultaneously increasing its density. The end result, was a Core consisting of a completely absurd 2 billion Mana.

As insane as that was though, Felix tempered his excitement knowing that it wasn’t 2 billion usable mana. He was limited by his own Mana Control in terms of flow rate, speed and the spells he could use. There wasn’t a single spell he knew that could use even half that much Mana without exploding. The enchantment Adaline had used to create the bombs they used to kill The Giant and other wards could but they weren’t spells, and there was no way he could cast them as such.

Even that enchantment though, he couldn’t even necessarily replicate, he just had it memorized.

Taking his freshly compressed Core, Felix moved it through his soul to its new home where he hoped to make use of even a fraction of its absurd capacity.

When he had first created the Core, he had combined it with an Energy Core then embedded that within his body. Later, he moved it into his Mana Pool which was really, just a place that was outside of space but within his Soul. It wasn’t huge, but it was accessible and familiar. It was where his original Mana Pool had been after all.

Now though, he realized he had made some silly assumptions and now knowing what he knew, he had a much better idea of where he wanted his Mana Core.

Choosing one of the Anima planets within his Core Soular System, Felix pulled it out of orbit then decompressed it and formed a hollow sphere that he could fit his Mana Core within. Once they were concentric, he began compressing down the Anima from the planet, imposing specific intent into it as he rapidly spun both it and the Mana Core in opposite directions.

As they collided at speed, he forced them to integrate into one suffused entity.

He didn’t want Mana affinized to Anima, he didn’t want Anima attached to Mana. He wanted one entity and the best way he had come up with to do that over the course of a number of experiments, was to smash them together. It wasn’t perfect in process or result but it was best he had and he was pretty sure, sufficient.

Once he had a single planet instead of a ball of Mana with an Anima atmosphere, he began carefully placing all twelve of the Mana Attunement Crystals he had created into orbit around the new Mana Core. The way they orbited was completely different to the way the cursed planets orbited his core soul. These were stable and fairly close, those were fast and held at a safe distance.

He then placed the entire system itself into orbit around his Core Soul, near the outside, and tuned the orbits until they were perfect.

Finally, he began siphoning Mana from his new central Mana Core, into each of the Attunement Crystals orbiting around it.

Each one was capable of holding 50 million mana by themselves and the attunement process had an impressive 78% efficiency.

Felix’s target had been 75% but this was the first time he had formed the crystals in earnest so he and Mark agreed to only be satisfied when they reached 80% in the simulations. In reality Felix had only lost 2% efficiency from Mark’s predicted total and Nova likely would have lost less but it the end result still surpasses his target.

The entire thing was ideally, temporary, until he managed to manually attune Mana simply with his willpower fast enough that he didn’t need the crystals.

Until then, he had 12 different Attuned Mana Batteries surrounding his Mana Core and he could siphon up to 50 million Mana from each. That meant his limit for Fire Spells in a single fight using the Attuned Mana, was 50 million. He could default back to normal spells with attunement nodes but that was a last case scenario to fallback on. Using attunement nodes placed massive restrictions on his spells that he never wanted to have to deal with. Additionally, it was possible he came across something, like The Giant, where he didn’t have the total focus required to cast a high enough level spell that could channel enough Mana to even hurt it.

Pre-attuned Mana circumvented the issue but still, he hoped it was only temporary and he would one day, be able to use his real core by itself again.

In the meantime, he patiently waited and measured the time it took for each of the crystals to fully attune the Mana contained within them and found it took an incredibly disappointing 100 hours. Just over 4 days.

He wasn’t completely discouraged though because he was pretty sure that was only the time to attune from nothing.

Testing it out, it was exactly as he expected. If he only used a million Mana from an Attuned Core, it took less than a second for the refilled Mana to fully attune. If he used 5 million, it took 6 minutes, 10 million took 48. The more he used, the longer it would take for the refilled mana to become fully attuned.

He wasn’t entirely certain of the mechanism because he was realizing he didn’t really understand how attunements worked. From his understanding though, the existing attuned Mana helped by imparting its attunement on the rest of the Mana. Similarly to how it was faster and easier for him to grow Mana computers and impose intent on Anima if he had a seed. The bigger the seed, the more he could do at once.

Felix briefly tested a few spells and was ecstatic with the results. The reduced complexity alone was a massive boon and the ability to scale his spells up quickly and without worrying about node stability and efficiency felt amazing. Now, the only thing holding him back from casting truly massive spells, was his own ability to move and control the Mana.

After the spells, he spent his most time on Mage Hand.

While not technically a spell, Felix created a hand shape from solid Mana then moved it around. That was decent and provided him with Dexterity but it didn’t have any real force behind it. He couldn’t really move much weight with his Mana Control alone and it really wasn’t very fast.

That was where the Force attuned Mana came in though and he was able to use it raw, outside of spells entirely, to move and push the hand or objects around as needed.

He still needed a ton of practice and it didn’t beat simply using his actual hands for the time being, but the prospect of having hundreds of hands at once was too enticing to ignore.

He didn’t let himself practice for more than a few hours though because now that his Mana Core had been upgraded, he had a whole channel system to finish designing.

The necessary attunements for his body were weirdly complicated but he and Mark had taken that into account.

For the most part, he had focused on spells with simple attunements for his Attuned Cores because they used simpler nodes. Now that he had replaced attunement nodes for the most part though-at least in theory-with crystals and pre-attuned Mana, he could simply combine the Mana from multiple crystals to create more complicated attunements.

With only twelve crystals with basic attunements, the combinations were fairly limited but they had calculated and optimized the twelve attunements both for spells and Felix’s body.

He still wouldn’t be able to cast the most complicated spells quickly or even combine all 12 at the moment, at least not in any useful way. At 78% efficiency, he was only getting a grand total of 5% of the mana he put in out the other end and even then, he had to manually stabilize the mana to make sure the attunement from the first crystal, didn’t deteriorate.

Luckily, even for his own body, he only needed to combine at most 3 crystals which came out to a total efficiency of about 47%.

Having examined the attunements his body responded to and broken them down into their constituent parts with Mark’s help, Felix realized there were a number of common elements between them. That allowed him to have crystals attuned to Fire, Electricity and Force for spells while also having few specifically for his own body.

He already had the basics in place but now that he actually had the attunements, Felix began testing how to move the Mana in a way that minimized his required focus. He also experimented and took notes on how to change and improve the crystals in accordance with his body.

After thoroughly testing all of that and producing multiple textbooks worth of notes, Felix moved on to more thoroughly testing his spells.

For the most part, they worked exactly as he had hoped.

Drawing from the Fire Core and the Force Core, Felix manually shaped a variation of his Pocket Star and launched it across an open plain at Eramith.

The spherical vortex of Fire raced through the air, creating a rippling wake as it passed then burned right through the stone block Felix had targeted before finally sinking into the ground shortly behind it. The planet replaced the block and repaired the ground shortly afterwards and Felix tested again with a slightly different ratio of mana and a slightly different shape.

All in all, he only needed a fraction of the focus he would have needed to normally cast the spell.

Other than just figuring out how to best create spells now though, Felix also took notes on the attunements themselves. He had dedicated crystals to Fire Attunements but there was no specific Attunement for Fire. There were hundreds of basic combinations that could produce Fire and altering the ratios of each of those produced an infinite number of attunements. His goal was to find one that was both powerful and versatile, even if it required some modification.

He had started with a basic combination that was relatively stable but not very powerful. It was useful and made the most sense for a crystal core. Felix just wasn’t confident it was powerful enough.

Another option was to use a more powerful and less stable attunement then add in more Force Mana to hold his Fireballs and Pocket Stars stable.

While he was experimenting and taking notes, Nucleus and Art backed by the residents of his Mind were harvesting computers and building a new version of the same machine they had used to upgrade Mark.

This one worked under the same general principal but without cores. His hope wasn’t to create some vast modular system but just the single biggest mass of computer he could that would still fit inside his skull. Like Mark, much of the computer would be detached from space and in order for that to be stable, he had to attach it firmly to himself and his soul.

He was also finally completely removing the biological portion which meant he had to fully map and replicate his neurons onto a Mana computer. Considering just how complicated the process was, if he had to actually map them it wouldn’t have been possible.

Luckily, with a bit of experimentation, he was instead able to make essentially mold of his biological brain then use that to create a computer. It wasn’t perfect, especially not his first try, but over time they got closer to perfection until Felix, Nucleus and his Mind, couldn’t find a single functional difference.

It took them the rest of his recruitment with Edras to finalize everything, during which he also swapped out all the crystals in his core for slightly different attunements at around 82% efficiency each. The construction of the machine to replace his brain took the most time though. They had collectively built, torn apart and rebuilt the entire thing at least a couple hundred times until they were completely satisfied.

With just 5 days left in his recruitment, Felix laid down in the ritual area of his dorm and placed an exact copy of his head right next to him. It was relatively easy to grow with the manual control he had over his body but much harder to modify. That had taken forever and multiple heads to get right.

Finally though, they were all confident they had finally succeeded and initial tests were all positive. Felix had created the Mana computer himself and the machine had fit all the pieces together resulting in a head that felt heavier but was actually quite a bit lighter. Moving it around, it had less mass but it felt like he needed more Force to get it moving, like it resisted movement or there was a lot of drag.

Standing over him, were Art and Grim.

Even though he had walked around with two heads for a while, one disabled and the other functional. Even though he had replaced his Persona’s head first to be sure. Even though he was confident in the theory, that he wouldn’t die, Felix was still a little apprehensive towards having his head removed and replaced.

It wasn’t enough to stop him though and so, he nodded to Art and manually detached his own head by tearing apart the cells in his neck.

The outside world was completely lost to him as his soul began to push out of the opening he had created in his body. He held it firm and waited as even though he was technically dead, probably, his soul wasn’t damaged in the slightest.

As soon as he felt the new cells press up against his severed neck, Felix took manual control and forced the two to attach as quickly as he could. He focused on the vital sections, which were his nervous system, not his circulatory system anymore now that his brain wasn’t biological at all, then moved onto everything else.

The entire process took just a few minutes at which point Felix opened his eyes and looked around.

Everything looked normal, except of course looking into his own eyes on the severed head lying next to him, which was just weird.

Once he had his bearings though, he slapped the removed head and stuck it in his Soul Space for preservation then rose to his feet much more gracefully then he had expected.

Congratulations!

You have earned a title.

Deathless: Return from the dead without being undead.

Huh, so I guess I did end up dying. Wasn’t sure my health would actually hit 0 without my head but… good to know. Maybe it’s a special case…

Felix walked around and experimented with his body and completed tests he had prepared to ensure his judgement was sound. Everything seemed to pass and having a conversation with Grim and a number of residents of his mind who were textbook experts on the psychology and personality, Felix was satisfied that the transfer was successful.

He would still preserve his old head for a while, just in case, and there were downsides to his new brain. Mostly in that he wouldn’t be able to regrow his new head for a while. Any damage he took to his head and brain, he would likely have to manually repair for the time being. Eventually the Anima suffusing it would adjust and essentially remember and be able to recreate it, like it could the rest of his body, but that would take quite some time.

In the meantime though, he excitedly deactivated Reaper’s Instinct which he had always active in the background at this point, and checked his status screen or rather, gaped at it.

Name: Felix Kade (The True Wizard) FREE 0

Innate: Ascendant Prodigy: Mana (Wizard) STR 1,074

Class: [C - Ancient] Reaper (Lvl 1,306) DEX 2,344

Race: [C - Unique] Wanderer (Lvl 1,307) AGI 1,554

Profession: [C - Ancient] Lifebinder (Lvl 1,309) PER 1,241

Health: 17,555,850 / 17,555,850 VIT 1,755

Mana: 150,000,000 / 150,000,000 INT 4,708

Resistance: 93.87% END 1,532

That… is way more… than I was hoping for. Wait… my mana is… wrong?

Felix quickly pulled up his Racial skills and frowned at the screen.

[Mana Core (Rare) Your mana pool has been shaped to contain a mana core. Cores can have many different sizes, shapes, and effects. Your core will spin drawing mana from the ambient mana and compressing it into a liquid. Your core has the following effects: Mana: 150 Million, Passive Mana Regeneration Rate: 1 Million per hour, dependent on the density of the Aether.]

It hasn’t changed at all.

Everything you did was in your Soul Space or within your soul. I suspect The System is having a hard time tracking and evaluating everything.

Huh. Kind of like Peace’s level I guess… How does it know my Intelligence then?

Nucleus spoke up, almost always tied into Felix’s thoughts through Grim at that point, It’s calculating it based on your moving around and doing things it can observe as well as observing the head before you swapped them. It should be very accurate about that. Peace’s stats are harder because they change a lot and very often as his Soul does things. His level is based on that so the calculations and therefore his level, constantly change.

How long before that happens with me? Before it stops being able to evaluate things?

It’s already started so…

I guess it doesn’t really matter… considering I know the effects are there, just without the skill at this point.

I can supplement your status screens for you… if you’d like?

How would that work?

It would just be for you. You wouldn’t be able to show anything I change to anyone else. Maybe in the future we can figure it out but definitely not yet.

Alright, do it.

Ding You have manually modified the Racial trait: [Rare] Mana Core => [Arcane] Attuned Mana Core System

**Racial: [Attuned Mana Core System (Arcane) You have manually removed your Mana Pool and replaced it with a system of Mana Cores that orbit each-other within your soul. The main Core has a capacity of 2 Billion Mana and is orbited by 12 Attuned Cores that can each hold 50 Million mana. Pulling from the Attuned Cores, you are able to circumvent traditional spell techniques and create spells in a more streamlined fashion. This greatly decreases your cast time and reduces the required focus to cast a spell. Your Core has the following effects: Mana: 2 Billion Unattuned Mana and 600 Million Mana split equally amongst 12 different Attunements, 82% Individual Mana Attunement efficiency, Passive Mana Regeneration Rate: 1 Million per hour, dependent on the density of the Aether.]

Not Unique? Someone else has a core like this?

Arcane and Unique aren’t mutually exclusive. Also I just fed information to the part of the old System chunk that usually evaluates this stuff, this is what it spit out.

I see. Still only 1 Million per hour?

You were hard limited by the Aether density. You still are.

Yeah… that’s a problem. Not one I have time to fix at the moment. Feed it everything and see if anything else changes.

**Ding You have manually modified your race and gained the Racial Trait: [Embedded Mana Computer (Arcane) You have manually replaced your brain with a Mana Computer of your own creation. This computer is embedded where your brain was and has completely replaced it. Your mind has the following effects: +750,000 Intelligence, x3 Base Intelligence, x2 Base Perception. Your mind cannot regrow through traditional means and if injured, may require manual attention to function properly.]

Holy shit. It’s really too bad my Intelligence no longer scales my Spell Damage. Now it’s really just the perceptual time dilation of things happening within me that uses it.

It also scales your ability to process your senses and therefore, sense your surroundings. Grim pointed out.

Yeah, fair enough.

Ding You have manually replaced the General Skill: [Rare] Core Energy Infusion => General: [Arcane] Mana Infusion.

General: [Mana Infusion (Arcane) By cycling Mana of various Attunements throughout your body, you are able to completely replace the need for your body to generally store and provide energy. Having trained your body to use energy, your cells have grown accustomed to pushing their performance. Various attunements have various effects on different cells. This skill can be upgraded. The performance and stats you gain are dependent on the quantity, Attunement and quality of the circulated Mana. You may alter the current state of the buff at any time through intent. (Current maximum stat increase: 450% transient, 150% sustained)]

Oh yeah, forgot I still had- I guess still have, Core Energy Infusion. I guess my soul is just blocking the contents of my body now, huh? Does that mean no more Race Evolutions… at all?

Grim sighed, Probably not.

Doubt it. Nucleus rotated back and forth horizontally in Felix’s Soul Space.

Agh. Fine, fair enough. I guess I should have expected that. Any more?

Nope.

Alright then. Time to test my focus then with my new brain.

He spent the next two days experimenting and getting used to his new brain and found the results were so much better than he had expected. The entire time, he grew progressively more excited for Rhonan’s recruitment, where he could test it all in earnest.

Before that though, he had a promise to keep and so he headed back to the library in The Arcanum Pansophical three days before the end of the quarter and began scanning more books. It was impossible, even with all the upgrades he had gotten, to scan everything in the library but the more he scanned the easier his time in The Realms of Annihilation would be.

He was only there for a couple of hours though before Adaline approached him with a rather sour expression, “Where the hell have you been?”

“Busy. We still have three days.”

“I want to beat the rush and get out while no one is expecting… You know”

Felix snorted, “They are definitely expecting that. I don’t think there’s any time they aren’t expecting that.”

“Whatever. How do we do this?”

Felix looked her up and down, “Where do you…”

She sighed, “Let’s just go to your dorm.”

He followed her in and they sealed the room as best they could to avoid being overheard while Felix subtly messed with The System static. It wasn’t perfect but in theory, he figured it would blur things just a little.

“I have everything in a spatial storage of my creation. I will put all of them in a spatial pocket and transfer them to you.”

“I… Don’t know what that means… A subspace? A true one I assume?”

“Yes, without The System inside of it.”

Felix nodded, rather impressed she could seemingly create those at all. Even he couldn’t do that yet after training with Rathelius the Space Mage, “What do I do with the subspace?”

“It won’t be stable enough to preserve unfortunately. How much space do you have available in your Soul Space?”

Felix shrugged, “A lot.”

She frowned, unsatisfied and rather annoyed by his answer, “A number?”

“Uh… I already said a few cubic kilometers. You don’t really have more than that for me to smuggle, do you?”

She scowled then shook her head and stretched a fist towards him, “Here.”

Felix reached forwards and pushed a single finger, with a Soul Tendril within it, into her fist and as soon as he touched the Sub Space point, yanked it into his Soul Space.

She had warned him it was unstable but he wasn’t expecting it to immediately unravel as soon as he let go. Luckily, he was able to catch the couple of machines and book that popped out and arranged them into a corner.

“Huh. That was it?”

Adaline looked at him, trying to decipher his face or something, then sighed and reached her fist out again, “I didn’t entirely believe you. Here.”

He took that Sub Space too, which also immediately unraveled then nodded, “Alright. I’ll…”

She held out her fist again.

Seriously?

He continued to take Sub Spaces one by one a few dozen times until both of them stared each-other down, defiantly and incredulously. She was in disbelief he was still containing everything she had given him, that his Soul Space was really as big as he claimed, he could feel it on the Anima surrounding her. He was in disbelief she had made so many things in her time at Edras’.

He had what felt like an entire facility in his Soul Space with hundreds of giant machines, libraries of research and magical creations. He honestly couldn’t be sure she hadn’t stolen some of them but, he decided to trust her and so just let himself be impressed.

Once she was finally done handing things off to him, and staring at him incredulously, they both walked out of the dorm together and towards the exit.

Adaline walked up to the attendants first and they completed their scan relatively quickly but didn’t let her go just yet. Instead, the attendant looked at some screen neither of them could see and frowned, “Where did all this metal you bought… go?”

She looked at him with a furrowed brow, like the answer was so obvious.

She was doing a good job of hiding her soul and even though Felix’s Anima senses weren’t what Melody’s were, he was a Spirit Sage. He could tell, she had no idea how to answer him.

Felix took one step forwards and smiled as innocently and bashfully as he could, “Ah, that would be for me.”

He looked over and tapped at a screen then cocked his head, “You’re the unique race that eats metal?”

Felix saw Adaline contain a snort from the corner of his eye, “Yup. That’s me.”

The attendant slowly nodded, “This is a lot of metal.”

“Lot’s of new flavors to try.” Felix shrugged then hung his shoulders a little like he was leveling with them, “Each different metal provides me with a different effect. I’d rather keep it under wraps but… I need to consume so much to maintain the highest level of buff I can.”

They nodded a little more quickly, seemingly accepting Felix’s explanation then tilted their head back a little, “Prove it.”

Felix sighed and reached his hand forwards in a gimme motion. He had fully been expecting to have to demonstrate.

The guard looked at him for a moment but Felix just waited until they finally realized what was happening then called another attendant over to bring them some metal.

What they finally dropped into Felix’s hand was what looked like a metal loop. Almost like a weird belt buckle.

Taking it, Felix placed it beneath his teeth then approached the attendants and lifted his arms to let the attendants freely scan him. He had a whole show planned and didn’t want them to miss any of it.

First, he used his Matter Control to bite through the loop with his teeth. It wasn’t particularly high grade metal and he likely could have bitten through with force but he figured that would seem too unnatural. If he really did have a unique race that consumed metal, he would probably be able to bite into it more gracefully.

He made an entire show of crunching it up into smaller pieces between his teeth then swallowed the metal.

In his stomach, he had thought about pulling them into his Soul Space but decided that wouldn’t have been as convincing so instead, he used his Matter Control to break it down as far as he could then he carefully pulled metal dust into his veins and coated them in Mana from his new core.

Finally, he moved the metal around and the cells throughout his body slowly consumed the mana the dust carried.

Looking back at the two attendants that were there, Felix nodded slowly then flexed a little, “Strength mostly. Not a great metal for buffs though.”

The attendants looked from him to their scans to each-other a few times before they both finally shrugged, “Alright. Just to be sure though… Could we scan you more thoroughly for a Soul Space?”

Felix shrugged and Adaline looked like she wanted to explode, “Sure. No problem.”

They nodded and one of them rushed off before returning some time later with some kind of device. Felix really wasn’t worried because even The System had trouble seeing through the outside of his Soul at this point, let alone into his Core Soul, where his Soul Space now was. Worst case, they detected his Reaper’s Mantle Soul Space but he would just show them he used it to store clothes.

He tried to identify the device but being in their hands and in use, seemed to count as equipped so he got nothing more than what he got from his senses. Mana was minimal, just some basic enchantments. Matter was interesting, the material was high grade and rare. Anima though, was the most obvious and the ambient Anima swirled around the device in a complex pattern.

Felix was confident the device was casting some kind of Anima spell which made it highly likely it was a relic of some kind. Anima spells and information on them was sparse and often incorrect.

As a series of ripples echoed out of the device a moment later, Felix was expecting them and let them into his outer shell. As they passed through his second layer, they came in contact with the shell on the outside of his Core Soular System where they were reflected by a layer he had just added temporarily. A layer that borrowed from his and the remembered’s experiences to form a semblance of a Core Soul.

The ripples were reflected back to the device where it lit up and a few moments later, the attendants both released bated breaths. The one that had stopped Adaline nodded, “Sorry about that. You’re both good to go.”

Felix nodded and happily walked through the checkpoint, dropping off the ring and heading into the portal room.

After a few moments of stunned silence, Adaline rushed through and followed behind him into the room.

“You mind opening the portal? I’ve been locked out.”

Adaline nodded and a moment later, they both stepped back onto Eramith.

They headed over to a lab where Felix transferred everything back to Adaline through the use of one of her spatial storage items. He wasn’t entirely sure he could have pushed some of the larger machines out of his Soul Space, through his Soul. At least not without damaging them.

Once she finished inspecting everything, she nodded to him, “I don’t know… how you did it… thanks.”

Felix nodded, “No problem. I guess we’re done then. I’ll see you… later.”

She nodded and Felix left.

That was soooo worth it. This research is… awesome.

The residents of his Mind City were still going through everything but the preliminary report was that it was so advanced, none of them knew for sure what they were looking at. They and Felix knew enough to verify it wasn’t fake, after Mark trivially decrypted it, but they knew nothing else just yet. It was going to take a fair bit of experimentation to figure it all out.