Chronicles of the True Wizard

The last recruitment he had scheduled was the one he was the most excited for, at least at the moment.

Earlier on, he was more excited for the others because those were the recruitments he was planning on making the most progress in. Now that he had done that, accomplished just about everything he had hoped to, his priorities had shifted. He still had some things to work out, but Rhonan’s was where he would put all of his progress, to the test.

On the day of, Felix walked and flew towards the portal room and joined the single biggest collection of students from Eramith he had ever seen. Luckily, all of them were heading to the same place and the portal was just left open so they all simply walked through. He wasn’t so excited that he needed to be right there when it opened, but rather he genuinely believed every minute counted.

Walking along at a steady pace, the line moved through the building until finally Felix caught sight of the room itself and a few people standing outside of it. One of which, was Melody.

She saw him about the same time he saw her and she smiled then skipped over to join him in the line. No one really minded her cutting in either because of who she was or because of how fast the line was moving.

“Hey. You changed your hair. I kind of liked the reddish orange mess.”

Oh whoops. Forgot to regrow that.

“Changed my head actually. Just forgot, I’ll regrow it.”

She cocked her head and stared at him for a moment then snorted, “How have your recruitments been so far?”

“Great, actually. Better than I expected in many ways.”

She nodded, “You look… or rather feel different.”

Felix smirked, “Wait till you feel Peace.”

She smirked but didn’t ask, figuring she would find out eventually anyways, “Got any specific goals in mind for this one?”

“Yes and no. I have a couple things to finish up but, mostly just want to get used to everything that changed.”

“Makes sense.”

The line was moving quickly and their conversation was cut short as they walked through the portal themselves and into the biggest building Felix had ever seen, from inside or out.

Looking around him, the ground floor they arrived on was massive and stretched out in every direction, as if the tile floors were a natural phenomena that formed a vast field. Off to the sides, near the walls, there were multiple halls that stretched out, some of them with signs, others with no labels at all. These halls existed all around the building on every floor Felix could see.

Tilting his head back, Felix couldn’t actually make out the ceiling, however far it was. All along the edge of the non-ground floors, as far as he could see, were railings and on the lower ones he could just make out even more openings. Likely each leading to their own winding hall with rooms contained along them.

His rough math put the number of floors, multiplied by the number of halls on each and finally rooms in each hall in building in the low billions but he was almost certain that couldn’t be true so he waited to see if there was something he was missing.

The entire building looked oddly modern from the inside too with lots of natural light, open space and clean lines forming the architecture.

Once he was done examining his surroundings, Felix finally noticed Melody smirking at him but he just ignored her. Unlike her, he hadn’t actually seen anything like this before. He was still relatively new to the multiverse after all.

She didn’t get a chance to tease him directly though as they were approached by a humanoid female with long white hair and simple clothes. All in all, rather unassuming.

[A - Exotic] Sword Sage: Ameryl (Lvl 3892)

Sword Sage? Sword is a pretty general category. Not sure how she can be the Sage of Swords unless… is it just a title? Like Somatic Sage and Spirit Sage for Peace and I respectively?

Felix nudged Melody with his Matter Control which confused her greatly, “Is she actually a Sage or is that just a title?”

“It’s a title and she’s a Sage. Gods have claims over certain titles. Rhonan has most of the combat ones, Edras a bunch of the Academic and some Mage like ones, Radleus has all the merchant ones, Sha’alin has all the thief ones and so on.”

“That makes sense. What’s she the Sage of then?”

Melody smirked, “Sword Fighting.”

“That’s… super general also… this is something I’ve been wondering for a while now, wouldn’t that be a pretty low rarity skill? Once you get to Sage tier in a skill, you’re likely to also have a high level and you’ve probably upgraded and specialized your skill along the way, right?”

“It depends. Ameryl doesn’t have Sword Fighting as a skill but her class is based entirely around Sword Fighting and she has enough derivative skills of Sword Fighting that are all at Sage proficiency, that they get grouped up. You also don’t need to have a skill, to have all the knowledge and understanding of that skill.”

“What about Mana Manipulation for example?”

“That’s a good exception. There aren’t really many derivatives or evolutions of that skill, at least there’s only one that I know of. Instead, everyone has the skill but gets different benefits out of it. If you practice and hone your Mana Manipulation speed, the skill will decrease your Cast Time more than anything else. If you focus on Mana Manipulation quantity, power. Control, stability.”

“So then to get to Sage in a skill like that…”

She nodded, “You’d have to re-generalize afterwards. Which is why it was so impressive that Khidell had reached Sage proficiency at all. That along with the skill being notoriously painful to train.”

Felix nodded in acknowledgement, “So then…” He thumbed in Ameryl’s direction, “She’s like… super impressive then?”

Melody smirked, “Oh yeah. She’s super famous. Ridiculously bonkers strong too. Like, definitely high Demi-God tier in terms of raw combat ability.”

“Demi-God… Just to be sure…”

She nodded, “Just means S grade or above. At that point the whole level grade thing breaks down and kind of falls apart. You know how Peace is an exception to the level thing? At that point normal levels and grades are the exception and sentients like Peace are the norm.”

“So then to become a god, you just need to be S grade and open an afterlife?”

“Yeah. Pretty much. It’s a lot harder than it sounds but, in essence, yes.”

As the last of their group filed in from the portal behind them, Felix looked back to see how many others there were and saw thousands of similar portals and groups behind him. Each of them had an elite of some kind to greet and guide them from A grades and Sages to Demi-Gods.

“Welcome to Osgard.” Ameryl addressed the group, gathering their attention rather quickly.

“You’re the group from Eramith and you all have Epic recruitments. What that means is, you’ll have a little more time on everything, but not as much as you’d want. First things first, anywhere you can go, you’re allowed to go. Yes, that includes getting into locked rooms without the key. I was told to warn you though, it probably isn’t a good idea anyways. Some doors are locked for a reason.”

“As for everything else, the only restrictions are on how much time you have on the Class and Profession leveling worlds.” She sighed a little through her nose, “You’ll all get 1 hour of access every day to a C grade Beast Breeding or Resource Collection world of your choice. You will have unlimited time however, with instructors for sparring, labs and workshops at all times. Use your time wisely.”

Felix leaned over and whispered to Melody, “That doesn’t seem like a lot.”

“It’s a lot. Finding C grade monsters to fight is pretty annoying as is. B and A grade are nearly impossible. So, Gods basically take planets in their domains and terraform them with added Mana so they can breed high grade creatures. Issue is, how long would it take you to clear a medium sized planet if it were covered in monsters?”

“What’s medium sized?”

“Eramith sized.”

“If it were actually covered and the Mana Density was high, 1,000 epochs?”

“Okay. Creatures that strong can’t be packed in very tight so lets just say one per square kilometer.”

“50 epochs or so.”

“Okay. We need to keep at least half of them alive for them to repopulate the planet.”

“So 25 epochs.”

“And it would take about 25 epochs to repopulate that half of the planet.”

Felix sighed, “So it would literally need to be an entire planet, with people feeding and breeding and managing the creatures to not kill each-other, just so I alone could kill things constantly.”

Melody nodded, “Yup. So if you have…” She turned and looked around at all the people still streaming in from portals all over, “A few billion looking to farm levels…”

“You’d need a few billion planets, enough mana to cover them and keep them dense and enough people to manage and maintain the herds of creatures on each. Which means they need to be strong and skilled enough to trivially deal with the beasts themselves.”

She shrugged, “Yeah so, not a trivial thing. 1 hour is pretty generous at least compared to other recruitments. Also that’s only really possible for the C grade, don’t even think about B or even A grade. That is when it becomes a real issue. The Tournament of the Abyss filled that hole for the lucky ones but… yeah, that’s not a thing anymore.”

Felix nodded in understanding then turned back to their guide and the crowd he had been mindlessly following while he and Melody spoke. Quickly replaying everything they had gone over in his mind, she had just walked them around to some of the more popular facilities and explained how to find what they were looking for. He didn’t pay much attention to any of it though and figured he would take a look later, if Melody didn’t drag him around herself, which he was expecting.

“Down this hall you’ll mostly find restaurants. As I said before, they aren’t organized at all and some of the portals aren’t even indexed anymore. These Forgotten Portals were added so long ago, everyone’s just forgotten about them.”

Felix immediately noticed a few of his classmates perk up at the idea of finding some forgotten portal that held treasures or resources ripe for the picking.

All he could think about was how stupid that was and how the entire facility seemed like a logistical nightmare.

Ameryl looked around, seemingly confused for a moment then shrugged, “Can’t think of anything else. Any questions?”

A few of the students in their class asked about or hit on her, which Felix pointedly ignored. Others asked about how many of the portals in the building were forgotten and her answer was even more fuel for his logistical nightmare, “No idea. People often find portals that are seemingly forgotten then tell no one about them and come back time and time again to profit off them. Like their own personal planet. This is your recruitment so this is the first time for many of you but Osgard is completely open. You can visit even without a recruitment, you just won’t have access to trainers or dedicated leveling planets.”

Melody looked eager to run off so Felix stepped away and just followed her, “How do they control how much time you use on the Beast and Resource planets? If a bunch of the portals are unknown and you can go anywhere you want, do they just have guards in front of the Resource and Beast planet portals?”

She chuckled in anticipation of Felix’s reaction, “Honor system.”

The disgust on his face was even better than she was expecting, “How does that make any sense?”

“If someone is abusing anything, you can report them. Some Elites that can tell if you’re lying will come by and ask you point blank or a stealthy one will follow you. If they confirm the claim, the offender is banned for life and the person who reported them along with the elite that confirmed the claim, get to split a reward.”

“That seems… trivially abusable.”

“A lot of this place would be. It only works here though and is a lot less fragile that it seems. Everyone keeps the people below them in check. If an elite were abusing the system, some Demi-God would ban them. If a Demi-God is caught abusing the system, some God would. If they are caught abusing the system, they have to answer to Rhonan.”

“So even if I can successfully lie to even you, some stealthy elite would just follow me and I’d get kicked out?”

“Yeah, more or less. It’s also not super precise. No one is going to kick you out if you’re in there for an hour and ten minutes. As long as you make a best effort.”

She dragged him into a restaurant and picked out a table then ordered for them in a matter of seconds, definitely having been there before. Once she had, she looked back over at Felix and smiled, “The first time I ever came here, I remember some guy getting carried out of a beast portal by some Demi-God. They had been in there for a week but not because they were abusing anything. They overestimated themselves and ended up hiding in a cave, the beasts just outside trapping them. The Demi-God dragged them to a healer and they were fine. No punishment.”

“That’s…”

She shrugged, “Judging intent isn’t too hard in most cases, for most people. Then there are wild cards like you and Peace. You could probably get away with it but… I wouldn’t risk it.”

“Fair enough.”

“So.” She leaned forward a little, “Tell me about your recruitments.”

“They were fine. I climbed a bunch of mountains, met a God, upgraded a bunch of skills, Peace almost died but, then he didn’t. He fought a God. I learned super secret magic. I made some machines. I made some spells. I read some books. I got some new skills. Moved some stuff around. Swapped out my head. Smuggled some research.” He shrugged, “Now we’re here.”

Melody looked at him for a moment, expression blank, before her lips finally curled up into a smirk, “Well. Sounds like you had a productive few terms. What are your plans now that you’re here?”

“Levels. Spells. Constructs. Iron out my skills.”

She shrugged, “Seems simple enough.”

“What about you. How are the bakeries?”

She smiled like she didn’t expect him to have remembered or cared, “Actually really well, thank you. We’re still trying to nail down a set menu and process but I’m already making money which… is more than I expected for a bakery to be honest. Speaking of process though… how are your Mana Attunement crystals coming along?”

Felix shrugged, “We’ve gotten them to just over 90% efficiency which mostly just means 90% the correct attunement and 10% noise.”

Her eyes widened, “90% is way better than before.”

He nodded, “Yeah. I’ll swap out the ones I’m using as my efficiency goes up but for now, I accomplished what I needed to with them.”

“In that case, you have time to do me a favor.”

He squinted, “Depends the favor.”

She leaned in a little further, “The only reason my bakeries are at all profitable, is that my pastries aren’t just sweet treats. They also… provide buffs.”

Felix nodded, “That… makes a lot of sense.”

“I’m still experimenting with the best process. The best buffs are Anima infused pastries. They stack with all buffs from spells and potions but they’re nearly impossible to make. I and a few people who owed me favors had to all work together to create one batch.”

“You want to look into using Mana to create buffs in pastries and want some crystals to make the process fast and efficient.”

She nodded, “Yup, exactly.”

“If you give me a sample of the Attunement, I can start the process of calculating the best configurations…” Felix stopped himself and sighed, “You don’t know what attunement you want, do you?”

She smiled, “Not a clue.”

“We can… work on it. What about imbuing Anima with specific convictions into the ingredients themselves?”

“It’s theoretically possible but… I think I would literally need Amatara just to manage the crops.”

I wonder if I could do it… or create a construct to… in the future. I can’t even create convictions at will myself just yet.

“I see.”

Their food arrived and they each scarfed down a small pile of meat, Felix regrowing his hair with the incoming matter, then Melody paid and led him out of the room and up through the center of the building.

They flew up to one of the higher floors as Felix tried to figure out how anyone that couldn’t fly moved through the building.

Maybe they jump? Not everyone is physically focused though… There must be portals on the lower floors that lead up.

Following Melody down the walkway, down a specific hall, he stood behind her mostly zoned out as she opened a door and led him into a simple bedroom with a single large bed.

She spun around and smiled at him, just the slightest hint of a smirk on her lips, “What do you think?”

“Seems nice. This your room?”

“Our room. While we’re here at least.”

Felix looked over at the bed then back at her, “One bed? Is that supposed to be an offer?”

She shimmied her shoulders a little, “Well I-”

“Seems more like pleading to me.”

Her jaw dropped in a combination of mock offense and real shock.

“Either way, no.”

She laughed, “You don’t even sleep anyways. Why would we bother with another room at all? Also you have a Pocket Home.”

Melody walked over to the right side of the room and rested her palm against a closed door, “I figured you wouldn’t mind sharing a room, considering I’m paying for it.” As she finished speaking, she pushed the door open to reveal a massive workshop.

It was only about half the size of Ked’s warehouse sized workshop on Eramith but that was still far bigger than he realistically needed.

The tools and tables in the room though, looked brand new and more advanced than Ked’s, most of which were homemade. Both would be functional but these looked precise in a way Ked’s didn’t.

Peering into the room, after gaping at the workshop itself for a moment, Felix realized there was no other door inside the room. Considering how thoughtful it was for Melody to have rented the room for him, he decided to tease her back a little, “This looks amazing. Thank you. Just one thing though… There’s no other entrance to that room. What if I’m coming and going and you happen to be changing in your room?”

“Now that would be a tragedy, wouldn’t it?” She winked, “I guess we’ll have to find out.”

He snorted then took a step back towards the exit, “Leveling time. I don’t want to lose my hour.”

“Oh. I’m coming with you.”

Felix winced at the exponential loss of experience, “Uh…”

She slapped his shoulder as she passed him, “It’ll be worth it. I promise. Give me one day. You can always just ditch me tomorrow.”

Fair enough.

She led him through the building and and into a portal onto what looked to be a barren planet of grayish stone and sand. With the accompanying lack of breathable air, Felix definitely felt a little like he was on the moon. A feeling only dispelled by the nearly flat and distant horizon indicating how massive the planet was.

He didn’t say anything about the apparent barrenness of the planet because he trusted Melody, at least enough to give her the benefit of the doubt, as he followed her.

She had already activated an item to give herself breathable air and Felix did the same with a spell as he followed her through the air, a hundred meters over the surface.

As she flew, Melody’s body turned so she was sitting on an invisible chair as she withdrew the same instrument Felix had seen her use a few times already. As soon as she pulled it out this time though, Felix could tell it was not a normal instrument. No doubt due to his increases in Anima Senses and general Soul strengthening, that instrument was one of the only items Felix had ever seen that made him immediately wary.

The complexity alone was life like along the strength of will embedded in the anima-no, the soul within the instrument, surpassed The System sub chunk he had fought. Concentrated strength of will wasn’t the sub-chunk’s strong suit by any means but still, it was impressive nonetheless. Put up head to head, he was pretty sure the entirety of the sub-System pitted against the instrument would win, but only because that was akin to a million soldiers fighting just one. The complexity though, was more than what came out of just being a core soul. It was like it was the soul from a more advanced being.

Even all that, was just what Felix could sense though and he was certain he was still missing a lot.

Instead of tapping her fingers against the instrument, Melody actually plucked it a couple of times which released two subsequent shock-waves of Anima that smacked up against Felix’s outer soul layer.

A few moments of silence passed before Felix heard a rumbling noise coming from the ground. Looking down, he saw hundreds of alien creatures explode out of the ground.

[C - Epic] Kora-ka-gorak (Lvl 1908)

Each one was long and looked like the cross between a serpent, a bug and a scorpion. They had exoskeletons and giant bone spikes as their front limbs along with a mouth that was simply open, no jaw or other apparent method of closing it visible.

Dropping down just a little, Felix began simultaneously pulling from multiple of his Attuned Cores and forming the Mana into blades, bombs and javelins.

He decided he would have to get an actual number later by casting a traditional spell with nodes, but for the time being he laughed aloud as his focus had seemingly sky rocketed. His rough estimate was that it was at least 10 times what it had been.

Realizing how much it had increased, inspired him to test out his other Mana related abilities and while Mana control speed and power were nice, the range was what he found immediately exciting.

Reaching outwards and casting spells at his maximum range, Felix found he could cast spells nearly two hundred meters away from himself. Considering how many spells he could cast with his increased focus and Attuned Cores, Felix felt like a walking war machine.

Lowering himself towards the ground so he could reach outwards further in every direction, Felix cast explosions and blades all around him as he swept along the surface of the planet obliterating the bugs that were crawling up to the surface.

Melody continued to play but only plucked a string or two every couple of kilometers, just enough that Felix never ran out of bugs to kill.

She was right. It was worth it to bring her along.

By the end of the hour, Grim had to break Felix out of the trance brought on by the immense fun he was having experimenting with spells and abilities and Felix found he had gained 10 levels in his class.

Ding You have slain 5182 [C - Epic] Kora-ka-gorak (Lvl 1847-1982)

Ding You have gained 10 levels in [C - Ancient] Reaper

Even though Melody had said they weren’t strict, the two of them left the planet just a few minutes short of their hour at which point the two of them split off. Melody went off to find something for her bakeries while Felix, went to retrieve his familiar.

They agreed to meet back in the room to go shopping together afterwards.

Although she was sad to leave her new friends, both of which were now in the C grade, Nova was also happy to rejoin Felix.

He arrived back in the workshop a little sooner than Melody and began taking inventory of the workshop until she arrived.

Once she did, Nova hopped onto her shoulder and began excitedly meowing through the tale of her own recruitments. Felix wasn’t entirely certain Melody couldn’t understand her but he was also pretty sure Nova knew what to keep secret. She was smarter than she seemed.

Though the portals and halls containing them weren’t organized on a whole, they weren’t entirely random either. There were some halls that held entirely or almost entirely shops. Others that held mostly restaurants.

The hall they walked through was a collection of storefronts throughout the planets and sectors Rhonan controlled that had portals in Osgard. Surprisingly to Felix, not all of them were particularly impressive. It seemed as though the requirements to have a portal here weren’t as stringent as he would have expected.

Melody was a fantastic guide though and knew which shops to avoid as he was mostly interested in bulk material suppliers.

While a store like Nela’s was useful for specific materials and having them pre-shaped, they didn’t carry bulk materials or really anything but material for very specific use cases. For Felix, he really only needed generic material that he could use to make constructs at the moment. Anything more specialized and he could get Nova to transmute and form it for him.

In the future he decided he would have to get samples of all the materials he could find from shops like Nela’s for Nova.

In the meantime, even though he was relying on Melody’s seemingly bottomless wallet, Felix just looked for whatever was decently strong and cheap, with lots of stock.

Transporting it all back to the workshop Melody had rented him, Felix unloaded the materials along with Art while Melody read in his Soul Space, connected by a Soul Tendril. Felix and Art communicated through Mark along with Grim and a few experts in the field of constructs, at least with respect to everyone else in his Mind City, to figure out which constructs they would focus on and how many they could make. The biggest limiting factor though, was Anima.

He had gotten a solid influx from the burrowing bug things they had just killed but even if he just used Spirits-which he still hadn’t figured out how to control-as the souls, he needed Anima to fuel his skills. Specifically Imbue Creation because at this point, he didn’t see any point in not doing so with each and every construct he created. He also needed some to peer into the Spirit Realm, though he was hoping that wasn’t much.

Luckily, he should have a daily supply of at least some Anima from the hour they spent hunting every day.

He only spent a few hours working with Art and they tried to optimize everything so they could minimize Art’s reliance on him. Felix did however, offer to imbue Art with an Enchanter Profession, now that he was outside of Felix’s Soul Space but he refused.

Apparently he had heard about Zero from Grim and was hoping to achieve something similar for themself.

As they worked, Felix also gradually got better at using his Mage Hand ability. It was no where near a real hand and it would be a long time before it ever was, but it was still incredibly useful to have another hand to hold things. He could then use one hand to move his quill and two to hold the object he was enchanting steady.

At the same time, Nova transmuted some specific materials that they expected to need ahead of time so she could join Felix once he was done.

The plan for the majority of the rest of the day, was to train.

Apparently Melody had already set something up for the two of them before the recruitment had even started. She had also invited Adaline, who had apparently, declined.

The trio headed through the building and into another portal which led into a short hallway then into some kind of large open training room. The room looked to be made of something like concrete and was a few kilometers long and wide and about a kilometer tall. Considering how massive it was, Felix was pretty certain it was spatially expanded but if it was, the enchantments doing so weren’t anywhere near them.

The only thing in the room, was a person.

[S - Ancient] Tam (Lvl 5824)

Level 5824 but still only S? I guess Melody did mention everything breaks down at that point anyways.

She looked like a normal sized woman with blonde hair and a rather skimpy outfit that looked like a Sorcerer’s robes with as much fabric as possible removed. Felix didn’t judge her at all, not just because he didn’t care in the slightest what people wore, and not because her body was carefully crafted to her idea perfection over the course of her evolutions. It was hard to judge her for her lack of clothes because she was hot.

Looking at her from the portal, a half kilometer away, Felix could see the heat ripples in the air around her. Like she was in the process of constantly cooking the air itself.

As they approached she smiled wide and waved as the effect disappeared, likely due to her manual intervention.

Melody rushed over and jumped into a hug as soon as it wasn’t dangerous to do so and Tam easily caught her.

“Melody! It’s been a while.”

Tam released her and Melody hopped back a step onto the ground, “How have you been?”

Tam shrugged, “Same old, same old. You? How’s the bakery going?”

“Bakeries now.” Melody puffed up her chest a little teasingly, “They’re going well. Thanks for agreeing to do this by the way.”

“Of course. You know dad’s always up in my business about politics and stuff so this should get him off my back plus… it’ll be fun. Right?” She said as she glanced over at Felix.

Melody grinned, “I promise, you won’t be disappointed.”

I’m not sure what she’s expecting of me… either of them… they do know I’m still just a lowly C grade… right?

“He looks… interesting…” Tam’s eyes shifted over to Nova sitting proudly on Melody’s shoulder, “What’s with the Daemon though?”

“This is Nova.” Melody gestured back and to the side, towards Felix, with her head, “His familiar.”

Tam’s eyes immediately squinted then, her entire face drew up into a wide smile, “I think you might be right. Introductions first though.” She leaned over past Melody to look right at Felix behind her and waved to him, “Hi. I’m Tam.”

Felix nodded, “Felix.”

Melody turned to the side and looked back at Felix, “Tam is Romar’s sister.”

Felix’s jaw opened a little instinctively before he closed it, “I see.”

I wonder how she feels about Romar being the next in line for the… throne? Crown? Diety-dom?

“Nice to finally meet you.” She smiled, “Melody talks about you a lot you know.”

She talks that often… to a Demi-God? Guess it tracks, given her lineage.

Felix shrugged, “I didn’t even know you existed before this. Kind of assumed Romar was the eldest.”

She didn’t seem offended at all, “Nah. I gave up on becoming a God when I picked my first class. What really cemented it though, was when I refused to evolve into a star. I mean… who wants to be a giant ball of fire? The logistics alone of not being able to interact with anyone outside of your family without burning them…” She shivered, “Not for me.”

Melody smirked a little, “Instead, she decided to become a Spirit.”

Tam looked at Melody in mock shock and offense, “Don’t go giving away all my secrets. A girl’s gotta keep some things to herself to stay mysterious.” She looked back over at Felix, “Technically, I was a Fire Elemental and now I’m a kind of Fire Celestial so… still a Spirit. Upside being, I can touch people-” She accentuated her point by groping Melody, “Without hurting them.”

Felix nodded, “So similar path to Nova then?”

She looked over at Nova and shrugged, “Similar. Daemon is higher than Elemental. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was offered Celestial maybe not in B grade but in A grade definitely.” She winced a little, “Little hard though because that one isn’t totally up to The System. Spirits and The System-” She brought the splayed tips of her fingers together, pointedly not intertwining them, “-don’t really like each-other much.”

Huh.

“Alright.” Tam looked at all three of them in turn, “First things first. I need more information so I don’t accidentally kill you guys.” She looked at Melody directly, “You I mostly know, any major changes recently I need to know about?”

Melody shook her head, “Nothing noteworthy.”

“Alright and no using that thing on me, right?”

Melody laughed once, “I’m never using that thing on anyone.”

Tam nodded in understanding then turned to Felix, “What about you and your familiar? Race, Defenses, Vitality, Endurance.”

Felix looked at Nova and thought about it for a moment then turned to Tam, “Familiar first. Nova is a Primal Matter Daemon.” He shared her status screen with Tam which was significantly different from Felix’s.

Name: Nova Power 2,949

Race: [C - Ancient] Primal Matter Daemon (Lvl 1,946) Defense 2,948

Health: 29,486,000 / 29,486,000 Mental 2,903

Mana: 12,000,000 / 12,000,000

Tam looked at it for a moment, squinted, then leaned into the invisible screen, “What are these stats?”

“That’s without her using my Class Skills.”

She glared at him.

“Reaper’s skills. Buffs all stats.”

She looked at him like she was trying to figure out if he was serious or not, “Your familiar is… too strong. I take it their Mental stats are so high because yours are high?”

Felix shrugged, “Intelligence is my highest stat.”

She nodded slowly, “Right…”

“As for me. My race is Unique and heavily modified. My Endurance and Vitality are 4.6 and 5.2 million respectively with my Reaper’s Skills active, which they always are. As for defenses, those are mostly Soul Defenses at the moment. I can cast a number of barriers but I prefer to just dodge if I can.”

Her jaw hung just a little for a moment before she shook her head, “What? Why are your defensive stats so high? Aren’t you a Caster or something?” Tam looked at Melody for confirmation who was happily smiling wide, enjoying her reactions.

Melody nodded.

“They aren’t that high. It’s mostly because modifying my body to be more resilient is much easier than modifying anything else. There are also a lot of beasts that have high defensive stats so learning from them helps a lot.” Felix looked at Melody, “The Giant helped a lot too.”

She nodded and her smile widened a little in anticipation.

“The what?” Tam looked at Melody then grasped her by the shoulders and vigorously shook her, “You fought a Giant?”

“We-e-e-e k-i-i-i-ll-ed o-o-o-ne.” Melody responded.

“Okay…” Tam pressed her fingertips to her forehead, and almost under her breath, “If my brother’s stats weren’t equally as absurd…”

She looked up at Felix, “I need more information here. Can you handle a mature concept?”

Now it was Felix’s turn, “A what?”

“A concept?”

Tam swiped the back of her hand across her forward, “Phew. So you aren’t invincible. It’s a little hard to explain but… You know about curses right?”

Felix nodded, completely enraptured by the direction of her explanation.

“You know convictions?”

He nodded again.

“Concepts are like the third pillar of Anima.” Tam lifted her palm in front of her and produced a flame. As far as Felix could tell, it was a perfectly normal flame in every sense. He probably could have put his hand in without being harmed.

“I’ll explain in terms of Fire for… obvious reasons. A Concept is like… the fundamental experience of a thing. In the case of Fire, it’s the totality of the experience of Fire. I know that sounds weird and necessarily confusing but that’s only because we’re sentients. We experience emotions like happiness and sadness. Anima is experience. It’s consciousness and it exists everywhere. That means, in this flame-” She stretched her hand out a little more, “-there is Anima. That Anima is or has an experience.”

Felix nodded, “Alright, all that makes sense. What’s the point though? What does it matter?”

She smirked a little, “If I just pump this flame full of Anima, it wouldn’t really do anything. If I bound Anima to the flame, it would become one with the existing Anima and learn some of the experience of a flame but, it would also dilute it. If I bound Anima with a Conviction, it would overtake the existing Anima and influence the flame. For example, though it’s a stupid conviction, take destruction for example.”

The flame in her hand shifted from orange, yellow and white to almost entirely white with a black outline, much like the trails from Felix’s Reaper skills when he moved quickly or with a lot of strength.

“This is somewhat useful but not ideal. This flame is no longer fire. It’s been distorted and though its destructive power might be higher, it lost a lot in that process. This makes it unstable and realistically, not as useful as you might imagine.”

The flame shifted again, this time growing grayer and Felix suddenly felt and aura of Oblivion. It was cursed, or at least, on its way there. The curse itself wasn’t very strong or mature to the point where Felix thought it was wrong to properly call it a curse.

“If I bind a curse-or even the echo of a curse-to this flame, it completely consumes the flame. It doesn’t just distort it.” She made the flame vanish then replaced it with a new flame, this time she imbued it with the curse of Desire, again severely weakened. This time, the shape of the flame itself was gone and instead, she was left with a rippling ball of hot air with quickly dissipating heat.

“So Curses are one end, they completely consume and transform in a way where the initial state is completely lost. Convictions alter in a way where some of the initial state is left at the end but it not all of it. Concepts are the initial state, sort of. Applying a Concept to a flame, the Concept of fire-” She replaced the ball of air with a new flame.

At first, the flame looked perfectly normal. Just like all the previous flames had. Then, it fell apart.

The flame itself flickered and distorted itself weirdly, like it was trying to contort to fit some abstract container.

“-it won’t work. You’re essentially trying to apply a new initial state to something that already has one. So instead, you create the flame with the concept or, you unbind the anima and replace it. The former is harder but way stronger.”

This time, instead of a normal flame appearing above her palm, she created what looked physically, like a normal flame. It wasn’t.

The instant it appeared, Felix felt it. The flame had an aura, like a curse but completely different.

The aura made it feel like the flame itself was the true source of all fire. The original. The very first flame to have ever existed. Eternally burning. It was the hottest flame. The brightest flame. It flickered and shifted perfectly. It rivaled stars. It could burn stars. It could burn anything.

Even just looking at it, Felix felt like he was being burned. The air around it looked like it was burning. The flame looked bright, too bright. Although he could separate what he was seeing from what he was feeling mentally, and he knew it was all an illusion, it still affected his perception in the moment.

Tam closed her hand and the flame vanished, “That is a flame created with a Concept from the get go. It’s resistant to change and that makes it pretty strong. Water and suffocation aren’t enough to put it out and it burns.”

“So you put a Concept up against a curse or a conviction. What happens?”

She shrugged, “That depends. Which is the strongest, the most mature? For the most part, Curses win. That’s not because Curses are stronger than Convictions or Concepts though. That’s because mature Curses spread really easily and are oddly common here so, we end up dealing with curses that have been growing since before our universe was born. In the Spirit Realm, Concepts are more prevalent, have matured a lot with the higher tier Spirits and sometimes win. I’m sure there’s somewhere out there where Convictions win, but I’ve never been there.”

“So why would one ever use a Concept in an attack if you could just use a Curse instead?”

“Well, other than the fact that a mature Curse would consume a planet at minimum before stopping, and that imbuing a curse into an attack would require you control the curse and subdue it, and that the curse would consume your attack just as much as your target making it relatively easy to avoid… you wouldn’t.”

“I take it that’s not the point of them?”

“Not really.” She shrugged, “But that’s not really the point of… anything? Well, Anima in general. Doesn’t make it useless though.”

Felix nodded, “I take it for an Elemental, this comes easy?”

She nodded, “Relatively. It’s one of the biggest power spikes for Elementals. Spirits less so because they tend to be less focused. For example I don’t think a Concept of Matter exists or if it does, it wouldn’t do much. Matter is too broad and so the fundamental experience of Matter would either have to be pared down to the basest components of Matter and do nothing, or include everything and be too broad to do anything worthwhile.”

“Speaking of, I don’t know that I’ve ever really encountered an Elemental. Seen a couple in passing as familiars but in general, are Sprites and Elementals just really rare?”

Melody giggled and Tam shrugged, “System does not mix well with Spirits and Elementals. Or-” She scratched her head, “-would it be the other way around?”

“In what way?”

“Just that the way The System functions, is like a natural repellent to most Spirits and Elementals. Only really strong ones can survive long after their inception and rarely do they stick around at that point.”

“Huh.”

I assume she means System static? I wonder if it bothers Nova…

Felix nodded once and met Tam’s gaze, “Okay so, to answer your question, I probably wouldn’t fare well against a Concept.”

She giggled, “I figured.”

“I’d like you to hit me with one anyways.”

She cocked a brow, “Oh? Quite confident, aren’t we?”

“I’d like to know how I fare against them now, in case I ever encounter a concept in a more lethal situation.”

“Okay. Let’s give it a shot.”

Felix backed up a few steps then held out his arm next to him.

She looked at him and nodded once their eyes met then she cast what looked like simultaneously like a simple Fire Bolt and a literal star compressed down to the size of one. He was pretty sure it was just a Fire Bolt but the feeling it gave off when created with a simple Concept was ridiculous.

The bolt hit his arm except, not really. It just flew right through like it was nothing.

Despite being just a couple inches in diameter, it also completely severed his arm and turned all his flesh within half a meter into ash.

Even though the Concept was Anima based, the attack didn’t significantly injure his Soul. He could feel it had some element of Soul Damage to it but it wasn’t significant and wasn’t enough to overcome his Soul Defenses. With the Concept though, the Fire itself eclipsed any Fire Spell Felix had ever cast or seen, even her brother’s. It felt hotter and deadlier than the planet core he had drained in the World Event.

She literally only cast a Fire Bolt. Considering how cheap those are, this is like the ultimate tool for spell efficiency… I wonder if I could create the Concept of specific Mana Attunements and embed them into my Attuned Cores…

As Felix’s arm regrew, Melody and Tam looking a little more concerned than he felt necessary, he walked back over to them, “How do I create a Concept?”

Tam stared at his arm with a worried expression for a few more seconds before answering, “You don’t. Not really. It’s more accurate to say you discover a Concept, not create it. Or uncover it? Both. Definitely not create one though.”

“Oh, actually that makes sense. I understand. Anything else I should know about them? Is there a rule of thumb or something on how complex something can be before a Concept doesn’t really do anything?”

She shook her head, “No. It’s more of a feel thing. It will take a long time. Romar is a prodigy and absurdly lucky. Don’t expect to figure anything out in less than a few thousand years and that’s only if you’re equally as lucky and even more of a prodigy.”

Felix cocked his head slightly and she continued.

“Romar’s got our entire family to help him. He was pushed along by all of us who have been working with the Concept of Fire for millions of years. Even then, he picked it up faster than anyone except me. He hasn’t mastered it yet but… he’s closer than most.”

Okay but… I just need someone to help me then… this is all experiential anyways so harvesting a soul and reading its experiences should work just fine. Plus, she just told me the perfect place to do that, where Concepts are strong enough to overcome curses.

“I see. Alright, let’s spar then I’d like to ask you more about The Spirit Realm after if that’s alright?”

She shrugged, “I don’t mind. You don’t have to ask everything all at once. I already agreed to spar with you guys on and off for the rest of the term.”

Felix looked over at Melody who nodded, “I found a few elites who I was friends with or owed me favors and we’ll just rotate between them when they have time.”

An involuntary smile crept onto Felix’s face, “Awesome.”

The sparring went jut as Felix hoped it would. Tam basically just wiped the floor with the two of them fairly trivially.

Her most basic spells punched holes right through his barriers, were nearly too fast for him to dodge and he was forced to stop and regenerate missing chunks of his body constantly.

Considering how much she was holding back, meant Felix had plenty to learn from her. He had already begun to learn in their first spar where she used only simple spells, like Fire Bolts that chased him around instead of firing in a line. She didn’t make the spell form any more complicated than it needed to be though, she simply attached a touch of Anima to it. The spell wasn’t even close to sapient or sentient but could perform more complex actions than a base spell made of Mana alone without complex spell forms.

He had already been considering doing that and knew it was possible, but he was beginning to realize how to do it. He saw how she did it and learned from that. Picked up on small tricks he would have otherwise had to test and realize for himself. For example, she added dormant Force Mana to her Fire Bolts for the Anima to use to move the spell. The Anima didn’t just want to follow him, it held within it the experience of moving a spell using mana. Almost like an instinct cast but not quite strong enough to be an actual spell. Just enough to shift the course of the spell.

Although Felix was a little disappointed he wasn’t going to see any of Tam’s best spells, he still had plenty of time left in the recruitment.

He also wasn’t sure how Melody would fare in a real spar but as it turned out, she did better than Felix most of the time. She not only seemed to be very proficient with a sword, but she also switched between the sword and her instrument in a fast and elegant way. Often using the sword to try and launch an attack then switching back to her instrument to blow away a Fire Bolt with a golden wave of Anima.

She actually ended up attacking in the fight, which Felix didn’t. Although, Tam did seem to be launching attacks towards Felix a little more frequently than Melody.

Nova participated a bit, running around and dodging but Felix could tell even from the other side of the massive facility, Tam dramatically weakened her spells for Nova so, it was more like playing than sparring.

Afterwards, they all went to dinner which was fine in Felix’s eyes, nothing remarkable.

Tam mostly ended up asking Melody about her bakeries and catching up on gossip because she had been in the Spirit Realm a lot recently.

From there, they all headed back to the room Melody had rented where Melody fell onto the bed and Tam sat on the edge of it, “So, what did you want to know about The Spirit Realm?”

Felix stood in the middle of the room and faced her, “Everything. First of all, how do I manage Spirits?”

She cocked her head, “How do you mean?”

“In my last recruitment, I spent some time unlocking new profession skills. One of those is Summon Spirit.” Felix shared the skill description with her.

She looked at it, her eyes squinting as she read through it until finally she glared at him accusatorially, “What is your Profession exactly?”

Felix just brushed the question aside, “It’s Ancient. Mostly construct stuff.”

Tam recognized he was avoiding the question and it looked like she was going to press him for a moment then she shook her head and sighed, “Okay. I take it you used this?”

He nodded, “On a simple construct body. It didn’t go well.”

She chuckled a little, “Yeah. That makes sense. Okay so the basics, Spirits are kind of like souls without bodies, most of the time. They often act like children because the Anima in their souls are more active and they seek new experiences constantly. Mostly, their souls are just structured differently from material sentients. They don’t have a Core Soul or more accurately, their soul is their Core Soul, it’s all one thing.”

Oh holy shit. Peace is a spirit now.

“What happens if they do bind to a body?”

She shrugged, “Nothing special. Highly depends on how they’re bound to the body and how synergistic it is. A Fire Elemental with a Mana Core and a body of Fire gets to do a lot of cool shit. A high tier Celestial in a body with low compatibility would be a D grade at most, in terms of physical stats. At that point though, they would make up for it in Spirit attacks and defense. I became a Spirit, a Celestial, and already had my body so, I brought it along with me and have a very high compatibility.”

“Okay, back to Spirits. How do I control one if I summon them?”

She smirked a little, “Let’s say your skill read summon human. How would you control them?”

He sighed, “Whoops. I was making some weird assumptions there. I offer them something they want.”

Tam tilted her head a little, “That will get them here but often times, you can’t just command them to do something or give them another gift because running around with a body is like, the ultimate gift already.”

“How would you do it?”

“I can just command them mostly.” She shrugged, “Perks of being a Celestial.” She gestured towards Nova with her chin, “Nova could to. Daemon is pretty high on the general hierarchy. At least, her presence would make them sit long enough to hear you out.”

“This hierarchy, how does The Spirit Realm work? What’s it like?”

“For the most part, it’s like a bunch of empty space. Just like this material universe except, less empty and more of it is empty. The parts that are empty aren’t just empty. The emptiness is a sparse sea of Anima. There are cities though, sort of. Those are places with high Anima density and it would be more accurate to call them a Dream or an Illusion.”

“A constructed memory?” Melody offered from the bed, somewhat surprisingly because Felix was somewhat sure she had been asleep.

Tam nodded, “Yeah. Just like that.”

“You said there were cities there?”

“Sort of. Spirit Realms are kind of a per universe thing. The one attached to this universe has one major city then a bunch of minor outposts.” She sighed a little wearily, “It used to be more lively but ever since the advent of The System, it’s been slowly declining.”

“Why?”

She shrugged, “I haven’t been around long enough to know but, I’ve heard the Anima, the emptiness and everything else, used to be less empty and the emptiness, less expansive. It used to be denser and fuller. Lively.”

Interesting…

“You were there until somewhat recently. How do you get there?”

She winced, “It’s… a little complicated.”

“Try me.”

Tam sighed, “Basically… The Spirit Realm is outside of Space and Time… sort of.”

“Oh. That’s simple enough. You just disentangle your matter from Space Time and I take it move into the Ambient Anima then?”

She looked at him with a thoughtful expression, “Uh… yeah, I guess? Don’t just do that though. To safely go there and come back, without losing time and everything, you need an anchor. Basically you place an anchor in reality then dive into the Anima. While time doesn’t pass there, not really, time here goes on. When you want to come back, you use the anchor.”

Felix winced, “I get it. Without the anchor, you’d have a hard time coming back to the time where all of this is. I’ll ask just to make sure, but it is not possible to time travel like that, right?”

She shook her head, “No. Time travel doesn’t actually make sense outside of novels and fantasies.”

That’s what I thought. I guess the cylinder analogy holds up pretty well here. The Spirit Realm is within the cylinder. If you tried to go into the past, you wouldn’t find the past, you’d see nothing or something but nothing you knew. All matter I know exists in this time. I need to be able to come back to the time when the matter exists, even if that’s changing and moving over time.

Felix offered an analogy to confirm, “Like boats moving through a river, I leave the boat and spend time ashore. Even if there are other boats ahead or behind, I don’t want to go back to them. When I’m done, I want my boat.”

She nodded, “Yes, actually exactly like that. You can either put a beacon in the boat for you to find or tie yourself to it with a rope. The rope method is pretty limiting though.”

Or calculate its final location but… that would be risky.

“A beacon would also be risky though, right? What if someone destroyed it.”

“Yeah, that is a risk. I put mine with my family so I wasn’t really worried.”

I definitely want to visit that city at some point for sure.

“How do you find the city in an entire universe of Anima?”

“A lot easier than you’d think. There’s really only one of them and space doesn’t really exist, remember? You can kind of just will yourself there.”

“Oh. Actually that makes… sense. Okay last thing then I’ll let you go, can I summon a Spirit with you here?”

She nodded quickly, “Yes definitely. I was actually hoping to see your skill in action.”

Felix raised a finger for her to wait and quickly set out the ritual on the floor. At the same time, he had Art put the finishing touches on a construct body in the lab.

Once the ritual was set up, Felix walked back into the workshop and carried the construct body out next to the ritual. The body itself was one large sphere for the bottom half of the body, a humanoid torso and three smaller orbs, identical in size, for the head and arms.

He infused the pieces with Mana and attached them together then used it along with a simple feeling encoded in Anima to broadcast a message into the Spirit Realm which he now knew, was just the Ambient Anima.

The feeling was simple, just something along the lines of construct engineering.

He wasn’t expecting much because it wasn’t a very complex feeling and likely not overly attractive to Spirits but to his surprise, he got a response almost immediately.

This time, Felix had advertised the body but he didn’t offer it up immediately. Instead, the Spirit appeared right in the middle of the ritual circle and Felix could see it, only because his Anima senses were encoded into his vision.

It looked very much like a cloud of Anima in every sense and he was pretty sure that’s exactly what it was. The only large differentiating factors between it and the rest of the ambient Anima was that it was denser, held almost entirely common experiences, and loosely formed a shape that stayed together.

The shape was something akin to a candle flame but about the size of Felix’s hand.

Though it didn’t have a distinct face or even defined shape, Felix could immediately tell where it was looking and read its expressions as soon as it appeared. It didn’t even have anything to do with his Anima Senses being strong at all and more to do with the fact that he was vaguely familiar with reading people using them. The Spirit seemed to constantly be broadcasting everything so it was very trivial to follow.

Felix’s assumption was that in the Spirit Realm and with other Spirits, the way the Spirit broadcast itself essentially took the place of facial expressions and diversity.

Though it was more subtle, Felix also got a general vibe of who the Spirit was. He didn’t get much but he seriously wondered what Melody and Tam were getting from it.

Melody didn’t seem to react much, sitting up a little in the bed but Tam stood and had already completely suppressed her presence through the ambient Anima slightly before the Spirit appeared. Melody in general didn’t advertise much but it was more than enough for the Spirit to notice her.

A few moments after it appeared, after a moment of solidifying and adjusting, it looked from Felix to Melody to Nova, apparently not seeing Tam at all.

It didn’t spend much time on Melody or Felix but Nova, it stared at Nova and didn’t look away once it had.

“How do I talk to this thing?” Felix looked at Melody and Tam.

“Same way you talk to Nova, I suspect.” Tam nodded at the Spirit indicating he should give it a shot.

Felix nodded and took a step forward then broadcast his message into the Anima, “Welcome to the Material World, Spirit. I wish to make a deal with you.”

The Spirit finally pulled its gaze from Nova and looked at Felix with a fair bit of contempt and derision, “Who are you? You sent the signal? I was promised making and engineering and a body.”

“I did. Last time I gave out a body for free, it didn’t work out so well. Now, I want to make a contract.”

The Spirit lit up at that notion, “A contract? Like a… Spirit contract?”

Felix knew a Spirit contract was just a soul contract, not anything Spirit Realm specific, “Yes.”

They emanated a feeling of deep satisfaction, like Felix had fallen right into its trap. It wasn’t a feeling Felix would have advertised in their position but he wasn’t sure if they were just terrible at containing themselves or if it was just a difference in the way Humans and Spirits expressed themselves, “Terms?”

“I provide you a body, brain, materials, knowledge, a workshop and you build things with and for me. You don’t break things or hurt anyone without my permission. You can leave but not with the body I provided. You listen to my or anyone else I deem to be in command’s orders.”

The Spirit made it seem like it was making a hard decision but it was obvious to Felix it was going to accept. For whatever reason, the Spirit felt like it was absolutely getting the better side of the deal here. Felix was pretty sure he had an idea as to why and the Spirit was in for a rude awakening if he was right.

It briefly looked over at Nova, trying to gauge something but Nova was so disinterested, it changed its mind and looked back at Felix.

“Hmm… Your terms are… steep but, the experience of making things and learning is what I live for so, how can I refuse. I accept.” The Spirit offered Felix a contract which essentially amounted to a false conviction that would be placed on their souls.

It was exactly how Soul contracts worked and made it so they were nearly infallible. Neither party could do anything with the intent to break the contract. The downside though, was that if one party had a stronger soul than the other, they could essentially distort the convictions and bully the other party, or even trivially break it. The contract worked by essentially having the Soul of each party, restrict the other.

Felix accepted the contract which put a temporary binding between their Souls and immediately felt a burst of will power from the Spirit. It was like it was trying to take control in the contract and latch onto his soul. He didn’t stop it manually and simply let it past his second layer while simultaneously reaching out himself.

He didn’t want to kill the Spirit or completely crush it, just put it in its place so, he completely surrounded its soul and squeezed hard but just for a brief moment.

The Spirit immediately yelped-which was more like a burst of shock and pain in the Anima around it-and its reaching into his Soul vanished. Felix released it just a moment later and the Spirit immediately recoiled, physically moving away and shrinking itself down.

“Wha-”

It was about that moment when Tam finally let her presence be known, echoing herself out into the ambient Anima. It wasn’t particularly loud or surprisingly strong at all. It was nothing like Aro Zaki or Amatara. It was like a slight ripple at most.

The Spirit felt it and immediately turned towards her. Its form shrunk down even further and Felix’s interpretation was that it was paling as it released a confused jumble. Almost like it couldn’t actually find the words.

“I- Yo- Why- What is going on!”

“You just made a deal with my friend over here.” Tam smiled as he leaned her head in towards the Spirit, frightening it further.

“I didn’t- I- Your Fiery Eminence, I-” The Spirit dropped down like it was bowing.

“Do you need me to bind you to the body or can you handle that?” Felix cut in, wanting to get a move on.

“I- DON’T. I can bind myself.” The Spirit rushed over to the body Felix pointed at and dove into it.

It took a few minutes before it finally adjusted itself to its new body and started moving but that amounted to little more than convulsions.

“What is this body and how am I supposed to make anything with this?”

Felix sighed and walked the Spirit through how it was supposed to move around and interact with things. The main orb mostly had spells for movement on it and contained the Fore Attuned Mana battery to power the entire thing. The torso contained the Mana computer brain and was mostly designed to contain and protect it. The three smaller orbs though, were covered in spell forms.

The spells were based on Felix’s experimentation and attempts to create Mage Hand. None of them would allow the Spirit to create a hand but they would allow it to hold and move things, interact with the world. They were also capable of channeling a lot of Force Mana but, only gradually.

They were designed to be precise and strong, not fast. That meant they would be useless in combat but still had the necessary Force to clamp something down.

For anything it couldn’t quite do itself, it would be working with him and Art anyways so Felix wasn’t worried.

The Spirit got less and less frustrated as time went on and the constant aura of annoyance and frustration it was emitting from feeling like it had been tricked, wore away.

It also helped that the Spirit really did seem to love magic and engineering which helped push it through the frustration of learning to use the odd body Felix had designed.

Once it was moving around not quite with precision but less like a toddler, the Spirit’s annoyance had been largely replaced with curiosity, “So… What are The Luminary Celestial and a Daemon doing here and what are you…” The Spirit looked at Felix. It didn’t really use names but the feeling it emanated for each was fairly easily decipherable.

Tam got up from the edge of the bed where she had been sitting, keeping watch and petting and very happy Nova in her lap, “I told you. These are my friends.”

Felix nodded towards Nova with his chin, “The Daemon is my familiar. I’m a… was a human?”

“I know of humans. You are not one.”

Felix shrugged.

“And…” The Spirit looked over at Nova, “That’s your familiar?”

“Yup. Was a Sprite then a Spirit, now a Daemon, according to The System. If you need custom materials or weird shapes, she’ll transmute something for us.”

The Spirit noticeably winced into the Anima when Felix mentioned The System, glanced over at Tam then nodded, “You want me to make things and you said you would provide materials?”

It seemed like it wanted out of the deal but wasn’t willing to cross anyone in the room. Felix ignored that for now, nodded and walked over to the workshop door. He opened it and the Spirit emanated genuine shock as it slowly wheeled forwards.

Felix walked in ahead of it and gestured towards Art with his hand, “This is Art. Listen to him if he tells you to do something. You’ll be working together.”

The Spirit rolled in and looked around, carefully picked up a few things and looked around, in shock both by the contents of the room and the fact that the room existed. It was clearly its first time in the material world and the idea of a door segmenting spaces was completely foreign to it, as was the idea of not projecting its every thought into its surroundings apparently.

“Oh, by the way. I guess you don’t really have a name, do you Spirit?”

The Spirit looked at him and emanated confusion as Tam chimed in from the other room, “Spirits don’t need or use names. You just refer to someone by emanating a feeling of who they are.”

Felix sighed, “That’s great and all but, it’s a little inconvenient here where people use language to communicate. How about we just call you Eni.”

Oh god. Why didn’t I interrupt you… Grim groaned in Felix’s mind accompanied by the giggling of multiple Mental Constructs.

What? It’s not that bad… is it?

No. Honestly, it might be the least bad one you’ve come up with but I am in your brain. You just took the word Engineer and cut it up.

Alright fine. From now on, you can name everything yourself.

Felix left Art and some of his Mental Constructs to manage Eni while he went off to work on everything else he had to do.