Chronicles of the True Wizard

Knock Knock Knock

“Felix! Felix! Felix!”

Felix sighed from the center of his dorm room then he stood, walked over and opened the door.

He recognized the voice and already knew who was on the other side so he greeted them even before the door fully opened, “Melody, Melody, Melod-”

She didn’t even fully hear him out before shoving past him into his room and spinning on her heels in excitement, “You’re never gonna believe it but, I think I might control the universe. You remember a couple days ago at the party, I was talking about The Tournament of the Abyss? How I was complaining about how much fun it would have been if it hadn’t been on hiatus?”

Felix cocked a brow, “By control the universe, you talked to Rhonan or got your dad to convince him into bringing it back?”

“What? No, I just mean I was just complaining about it and now it’s back! Wait, why’d you say Rhonan? Did someone already tell you?” She looked around at his empty room, “I could have sworn you wouldn’t have talked to anyone else about gossip but, I guess it is a big dea-”

Whoops.

“No, sorry. I just assumed.”

“Oh.” She frowned at him for a moment then shook her head quickly and brushed past his slip up, “Well anyways, yeah so The Tournament is back. Also, remember we were talking last epoch about rumors?”

He nodded along.

“Right well, turns out, Rhonan was injured.” She paused for dramatic effect but clearly, Felix wasn’t reacting the way she was hoping he would.

“Was?”

“Right, yeah. Not anymore. So apparently, he was infected by a curse deep in his soul. Hunger, actually but somehow, he kicked it.”

“How’d he do that? Sounds like that would more or less amount to a death sentence.”

She nodded, “That’s what everyone is wondering. Some say, he has access to some Exotic or Ancient Relic. Others claim he made a deal with the Primordials.”

“The Primordials have that kind of power?”

She scoffed, “Nope. It’s just a stupid rumor.”

Felix nodded, “Well, that’s good then.”

“Right…” She frowned a little, “How did you know… about the tournament? I mean that Rhonan is the one bringing it back?”

Because that’s what I’d do if I wanted to get the gods to start paying more attention to and working with this generation. It also gives him an event where he can advertise to the rebels and everyone else in the multiverse that the rumors mean nothing and that he’s as strong as ever.

“I don’t know, just figured Rhonan was the one who organized it considering he’s the battle god and all that.”

She nodded in understanding, “Normally, no. It’s more of a collective effort but this time, he pushed for it to happen now and he’s whipping everyone else into shape to make sure it gets done.”

“That’s… good, I guess.”

“Great for us. The signups aren’t open- I mean, the tournament hasn’t even been announced yet… I only know about it because…” She looked around then leaned in, “Let’s just say I shouldn’t, but I do.” She looked at him conspiratorially and Felix just snorted.

He took a deep breath, half sighing, “So what’s this tournament involve?”

“Oh tons, you’ll be hearing about it a lot over the next few days. It’s more than just a single event but… well, there’s a main event. That’s what I’ll sign us up for. You, me, Peace and Adaline.”

“I see. I take it you gave them the same respect your giving me by asking for permission?”

She waved him off, “Oh shut up. You’ll love it, just trust me.”

“Uh huh.” Felix shook his head lightly before changing the subject, “Did you manage to make anything with those first few crystals we made?”

“Nah. It’s only been a couple days. I spent the last day working with my bakers just to see if we could get anything useful out of them but they were still just setting things up when I left. Speaking of, what’d you need all those credits for the other day?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see.”

She frowned but didn’t push him on it.

He nodded, “Anything else I should know?”

She shrugged, “Not that I can think of. They’ll announce The Tournament tomorrow probably, in Group Combat.” Suddenly she squinted her eyes and leaned in, “You did sign up for Group Combat this term, right?”

Felix was about to answer but she clearly didn’t believe whatever he was going to say because she leapt backwards and snatched his schedule from the table in front of the couch.

Reading through it she quickly nodded then leapt back to her feet, “What… Did you sign up for every class at the school?”

“Of course not. I believe there was a class about microbiologies and brewing alcohol to affect gods. I didn’t take that.”

She looked at him with an appropriately you-know-what-I-meant look, “How did they let you…” She quickly scanned through the list, “sign up for 86 classes?”

Felix shrugged, “I don’t know. No one stopped me.”

“Right but, you can’t be interested in all of these? There are 12 history classes here alone. Do you even like history?”

He shook his head, “Not really at all, no.”

“So then, why? Also, how are you planning on attending all of these? You realize each class will take at least a day, right?”

Felix grinned, “That’s the trick… I’m not.”

She just stared at him while he met her gaze.

“Anyways, you seen Peace recently?”

“I…” She stared at him blankly for a few seconds before shaking her head to clear it, “No. I haven’t. What do yo-”

“Sorry, I gotta go now. I’ve got a lot to do before the 13 different classes I have scheduled tomorrow.” Felix shrugged and offered her an apologetic look then stepped to the left, through what looked like a hole in reality, the moment it appeared.

On the other end, Felix arrived right in the middle of Ked’s lab which hadn’t changed much for the most part except for the fact that there were now hundreds of constructs zipping around and working.

Last epoch, when Felix had arrived and left, the workshop had been relatively void of functioning constructs. For the most part, constructs in the lab were worked on and tested but then sent elsewhere for use. There were some constructs that helped out in the lab, but not many. At least, not nearly as many as Felix and his Mind were utilizing to put everything together.

The day before, He had sent Rewdan into Telviras to Chiseled Free, the Body Broker Thezan had recommend that Aros had liked.

Realistically, he only needed a handful of corpses but they ended up buying over 400 by request. For these corpses, they actually went with slightly more expensive, higher grade bodies. They weren’t entirely necessary, in most classes, but some of them were physically demanding classes that would require higher grade bodies.

At that point, he started to wonder if a lack of high grade eyes and other senses would hinder the non-physical classes and-considering he was using Melody’s wallet to fund everything-he splurged and settled on C grade Special corpses for everything.

Art, Eni, Rewdan and Nova had already worked together to make some of the basic modifications they had planned and the upgrades they could. Unfortunately, they couldn’t do everything and they needed Felix and his Mana Control and Anima Control to fully finalize and validate them for final possession. Not to mention, he was the one that had to actually put the souls in the bodies.

In reality, they weren’t really souls. What they were actually embedding into the bodies were essentially soul puppets that could be controlled from his mind. Then, the residents of his Mind City would simply have to head over to the respective building and take control of their avatar.

In essence, Felix really felt like he was creating a reverse video-game where the video game characters controlled people in the real world, not that his Mind Residents were any less real or NPC like at all. The whole idea just struck him as a little odd when he had first come up with it way back at the start of his recruitment.

He hadn’t known then exactly which classes his Mind Residents would have interest in so, he decided to request everything he wanted knowledge from then all the other basic courses. Then, though it was a bit rude, he would simply drop any classes he didn’t have Mind Residents to fill in for. Luckily, that wasn’t an issue. With nearly a hundred thousand residents of his Mind City, he ended up not only having interested parties for every class, but he actually had more than one in many cases.

His own interests seemed to influence the population and therefore the three Spell Theory courses along with Mana Systems Design, and all the other Spell, Ritual, Ward and Enchanting classes were by far the most popular. After that though, were the more mundane courses like Cooking, Baking, Botany and History.

Somewhere in the middle were the combat classes of Somatic Martial Arts, influenced by Felix’s memories of Peace fighting, and Crafting courses.

The least popular was Stealth, interestingly enough. Though that still meant he had two mind residents interested.

They didn’t specialize the corpses as much as Felix would have liked given their time constraints but they did what they could. For example the attendants of Stealth class wouldn’t have the most Dextrous and Agile bodies possible but, they would be generic Rhunar, Elf, Frostmyre, Human or Drakene with a suitable class.

At least, whatever class they wanted.

All the Mind Residents who would be attending classes had spent time in his mental library, in the public section, going through all the Class and Professions they had knowledge of. They had all picked a few options, some that were Uncommon or Common, then a few higher rarities just in case Felix managed to upgrade the skill.

Which brought him to his first task, using a few test corpses to see if he couldn’t manually push his skill.

Worst case, he could kill the first Residents and bind the same Mind Resident to a brand new corpse with a new puppet soul if he upgraded it halfway through.

In theory it wouldn’t be a problem because he knew exactly how to upgrade the skill. In essence, the skill was imbuing knowledge and experience from his own Body and Soul into the creation. So all he had to do, was specifically offer and push the necessary knowledge and experience into the Soul upon binding it.

He wasn’t entirely certain how it would all work with puppet souls so, they all agreed it made more sense for him to use dummies to try and upgrade his skill first.

They wouldn’t be entirely wasted but would likely end up as nothing more than helpers for Rewdan and the other’s in the lab.

Starting with knowledge and experience of his own, Felix took a simple Frostmyre body and crafted one of the most basic Souls he could. Then, he carefully copied over all the experience he had that they deemed applicable to enchanting. He didn’t aspire for Mana Engineer because he thought that Profession might require his absurd Mana Control but instead, just a higher rarity version of Enchanter, Arcane Enchanter or Arcane Tinkerer.

He started by focusing on Arcane Enchanter directly, the D grade Special Profession he had been offered, and made sure the necessary knowledge was also embedded within the Mana Computer brain they implanted. The process itself wasn’t difficult at all. The issue was knowing what the construct needed to know and have for The System to qualify it.

At first, he went with his best guess. That didn’t work at all though and he was left with Uncommon Enchanter.

Then, he tried again, this time imbuing everything with the intention of killing the construct as soon as it was awake. Having all his knowledge and experience was too dangerous after all.

Ding You have upgraded the Profession skill: [Special] Imbue Creation (Journeyman XXI) => Profession: [Epic] Imbue Creation (Journeyman I)

Profession: [Imbue Creation (Epic) 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. Classes and Professions that are Common, Uncommon or Rare may be freely imbued. The creation’s physical form and mental capacity must be sufficient for this skill to succeed. A Class or Profession of Special or higher rarity may be imbued if you imbue the necessary experience and knowledge for the construct to qualify for the Class or Profession. Constructs imbued in this way have a limit of 5 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.]

With his hand still on the corpse, Felix used his already prepped tendrils to reach inside of it and harvest its Soul immediately. Then, he used his Replicate Construct skill and waited for it to complete as he read through the skill.

Okay, that works for me. Total skills they can have up to 5 is nice. Looks like we’re going to have to test and create packets of Experience and Knowledge for specific classes. Mark, Grim can you guys put together a bunch of test packets for me to try?

Affirmative.

Yup, no problem. I’ll get the mental experts to put together knowledge packets as well for classes you don’t have experience or knowledge of yourself.

Perfect. If this all goes well, we should end up with packets for every Class and Profession that anyone wants.

Looking back down at the newly replicated corpse, Felix started with the next test, removing knowledge and experience they didn’t think necessary until it stopped working. By cutting the knowledge and experience in half each time, they were able to find the optimal packet relatively quickly.

From there, they moved on to the other corpses.

All Felix had to do was cast Mold Corpse to replace missing limbs or other matter, because having Nova do the same thing, would have been far too taxing, then imbue a Puppet Soul.

They started with a class packet they already knew worked but nothing happened at first.

They expected this though and so began the experimentation to find how tightly the avatar needed to be bound to his mind for it to count as its own soul. They had to add some connections but the biggest difference maker was actually having the Mind Resident controlling the Puppet Soul when he used the skill.

He wasn’t sure if they were tricking The System into not knowing there wasn’t an actual Soul in the body but he doubted it. Felix’s and his Mind Resident’s best guess was that they were satisfying some preset condition in The System around granting Classes and Professions.

Overall though, everything else went as smoothly as it could have. It definitely helped that Grim and his Mind Residents along with The Nucleus and Grim had planned and tested everything they could before hand. Even going so far as planning out the amount of Mana and Anima Felix would have to spend.

The majority of the cost went to Replicate Construct which allowed him to double the number of corpses they had started with.

In the end, after losing a few testing bodies, they ended up with 772 Mind Residents puppeteering bodies in the real world.

That meant there were an average of just over 9 attendants to each of the 85 classes they would be attending.

Heading back out of the lab, Felix let the procession of newly resurrected corpses out first to congregate outside so they could clean up the lab. As soon as the last of the Residents left, someone who had clearly been waiting to get in stepped through the door.

“Uh… Felix… Good to see you… What?” Ked looked back through the door at all the Residents outside.

“Hey Ked. I hope its okay I let myself in and started working while you were gone.”

He nodded, “That’s not a problem. Who are they?”

“Those are the residents of my brain puppeteering bodies.” Felix turned and led Ked over to Rewdan, Eni, Art and the Residents that would be staying with them, “You remember Art?”

Ked nodded.

“This is Rewdan, he’s a Spirit from The Spirit Realm I summoned and offered a corpse to. This is Eni. Technically Rewdan’s apprentice or student or something like that. Also a Spirit. They’re both in Spirit Contracts with me so it isn’t possible for them to go crazy and attack you or anything.”

Ked nodded slowly, “They’re what?”

Felix didn’t bother repeating himself because he knew Ked had heard him.

Instead, Rewdan stepped forwards, “I’m Rewdan. It is a pleasure to meet you Professor Ked. I was told you own this lab and will be allowing us to utilize it for the epoch?”

Ked nodded, “That’s… sure… I think?”

“Then I am grateful. I suspect we will be working alongside each-other, if not potentially together?”

He nodded, “Maybe… So… You’re a Spirit?”

“I am.”

“How did you… get here?”

Rewdan thumbed over in Felix’s direction, “He has a skill to summon us.”

Ked nodded slowly and looked over at Felix, “You do now… do you?”

Felix nodded, “Got it during the recruitment.”

“I see…” Ked looked back towards the door that remained open and at the Residents just outside of it then snickered, “Let me guess, you’re going to send them to classes in your stead?”

Felix nodded, “That’s the idea.”

“With that many…”

“I’m registered for 86 classes currently.”

He chuckled again, “Well, good luck with that. You aren’t the first one to have tried something like this you know.”

He nodded, “Necromancer?”

“Yup.”

“How’d it go for them?”

Ked shrugged, “Professors got really mad at them and refused to teach minions.”

“I see…”

“On the other hand…” Ked smirked, “There have been quite a few students in the past who have had familiars attend lectures for them so…”

Felix, recognizing what Ked was doing, nodded, “I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.”

“Anyways, I take it you won’t be skipping the class we arranged specifically to mentor you, right?” He leaned in accusatorily.

Felix shrugged, “I’ll attend about as much as I did last term, if not more. I just won’t be alone.”

He nodded, “I figured you’d have Art with you no matter what. I guess more aren’t really a problem, assuming they aren’t getting in our or the Adepts way.”

Felix nodded, “They won’t.”

“Good. In that case, do you have any specific ideas on what you want to get done this term?”

“Lots.”

He chuckled, “I mean. In the class. Sal and I have decided we’ll be working alongside you this term to create something. We’ve got some ideas but ideally it is something we’re all interested in and it’s reasonably challenging.”

Felix nodded, “What did you have in mind?”

Ked guiltily rubbed the back of his neck, “Sal doesn’t think it’s possible but I was hoping we could work towards the ultimate goal of any Construct maker or Animancer… A System recognized being.”

“What does that mean? Just a Class?”

He shook his head, “There are Skills to imbue Classes and Professions. They’re rare but… they exist. No, I mean being recognized such that the construct makes their own Class choice.”

Felix nodded, “Gotcha. Did that last term, in the event.”

Ked’s eyes bugged out, “You what? Who? Which one?” He began looking around rapidly.

“Zero. No idea where they are now. They stepped through a portal with no defined exit so… somewhere random I think?”

“I…” He shook his head, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. They bonded with a Sentient Cursed Demonic Sword and chose a Class.”

“Okay then…” He didn’t seem entirely convinced but he also wasn’t completely dismissing what Felix was saying, “In that case… Maybe we should strive for something… more?” He scratched his head a little then looked at Felix, “That was a long shot from me. You have any ideas?”

“What about making a Construct Factory.”

“That’s been done before but… Whatever you’re thinking is probably more complicated and vastly more interesting than what I’m thinking.”

“In essence, I want a Construct that is a Construct Factory. Plus, we have it do everything. Brains, Souls, the whole deal.”

“So the factory itself is… a Construct?”

Felix nodded, “The idea is that I could send it a design or a specific desire for a Construct then, it could build it from scratch. No templates or predefined output.”

“Uh…” Ked smiled as he squinted and thought through the idea, “Is that… possible?”

Felix shrugged, “I think so. Pretty sure I have all the hard parts more or less figured out. Or at least, I’ve proven they can be done.”

“In that case… I guess I’ll bring it up with Sal. I suspect you’re going to have to offer some proof of concepts to convince her, at least showing the whole automated Brain and Soul bit.”

Felix nodded, “I’ll get to work on that. Now though, I have a bunch of Minions to organize.”

Ked laughed and nodded then stepped aside to give Felix room to walk to the door.

Using an Aether Tunnel, he moved all his Residents to the center of campus and most of them split off to head towards their respective classes.

16 of them remained though and headed with Felix to Group Combat.

They arrived in the class a little early and Felix had the Residents stand at the back, just in case, as he took his regular seat.

Standing directly behind him, was what looked to be an elf child. A girl of just 10 or so epochs old, judging from old earth human standards. She leaned forwards, right at Felix’s ear height, and whispered loud enough that no one would not hear her, “This is so exciting.”

Felix looked back slightly, “How’d you know I would be able to get you a Mythic Class?”

She giggled, “Just a feeling.”

He cocked a brow incredulously, “I doubt that. You managed to get it on the first try and Grim tells me the packet you created was the most efficient by far.”

She smiled wide, “That’s cause the packet I gave you to imbue was basically empty.”

He thought back but hadn’t been paying much attention so the memory was a little hard to locate. Before he even found it, she explained, “I was pretty sure I had all the necessary knowledge and experience already so all I had to do, was puppet the body.”

“How did you think you had all the necessary knowledge and experience?”

“It’s simple.” She smirked, “I watched every one of your memories leading up to when you were offered it.”

Felix turned in his chair, “You what? I thought some of those memories were restricted?”

She smiled guiltily, “Yeah… I may or may not have convinced some Librarians who owed me a favor to… Show me some things…”

“And you’re openly telling me this after I tested on and killed dozens of constructs because they knew too much?”

She shrugged, “I get to watch a lot of what you do as the foremost expert on most things arcane. Those constructs weren’t puppets. I am literally in your head. My knowing too much isn’t really a risk… if you think about it.”

He cocked a brow at her audacity, “You seem very confident in your assessment and predictions of my actions.”

She looked at him like he was being ridiculous and knew it, “I’m literally in your head right now. I can see all your emotions. I sometimes see your thoughts directly. Plus, do you really think no one knew what I was up to?”

Felix smirked a little, “I don’t pay attention to everything going on inside my head, that would be ridiculous.”

“I don’t mean you I mean Grim. I’d bet my puppet he gave the Librarians permission to show me the memories.”

Grim?

I did.

Felix sighed, “Well, use them wisely I guess. Oh, an-”

Don’t bother. If she even tries to reveal anything sensitive, Mark can shut down her brain before the thought occurs.

Good.

She smiled knowingly and he just shook his head.

“Who’s this?” A nearly bald man in black robes who was inexplicably, slightly transparent, hopped over Felix’s head into the seat next to him.

“Hi! I’m Mera.” The little girl waved.

Peace nodded, “She come out of your head?”

Felix sighed, “Something like that.”

“If she’s going to be participating in this class, you should probably consider getting them weapons and equipment.”

“Yeah… Working on it. Outfitting them all would cost me way too much so, I’m hoping the ones in smithing classes and such can work with Nova to make equipment from scratch.”

Peace snickered, “Can’t wait to see how the professors react.”

Felix shrugged just as Melody came barreling into the classroom just ahead of the Professors themselves, Haris and Auren.

She leapt over Peace’s head and landed in the seat next to him a lot faster than necessary considering the normal pace the Professors were walking at.

She immediately spun to Peace and nodded, “Do you know?”

Peace nodded, “About the Tournament?”

She nodded quickly then spun her head towards the line of people standing behind her, only just noticing them for the first time, “Who… are these people?” She squinted a little and through Melody’s rather unique talents, managed to come to a conclusion all on her own, “Are these… from your head?”

Felix nodded.

Her smile grew in a mischievous way as she giggled and excitedly shuffled in her seat.

Finally reaching the front of the class, the two professors spun around to face the students. Auren immediately noticed and looked at the Residents standing behind Felix but Haris just nodded and went into his prepared speech, “Welcome back students. I trust you all spent your breaks productively. At least, I hope you did given that this epoch, things are going to work a little differently. Normally in second year, we create groups for the first half of the epoch and you choose them for the second. Then, we send you out on adventures. Sometimes from the Adventurer’s Guild, sometimes from request.”

A number of students in the class just nodded along, not convinced that whatever was changing would matter to them. They clearly already knew what to expect. Not everyone looked bored though.

Melody and Fyrden specifically, along with a number of Residents-all of whom were inside Felix’s head and already knew-looked on with brimming anticipation.

Haris continued, “Anyways, this epoch, things are going to be quite different. I’m sure many of you will be ecstatic to he-” For the first time since she had raced into the class room, Haris seemed to finally notice Melody, despite her constant shifting and fidgeting in her seat. He sighed deeply, “So apparently, Melody can read minds now because I know her father doesn’t know and it looks like she knows…”

He looked over at Fyrden as the rest of the class began perking up, finally engaged in what the professor was saying, “And she told her brother?” He shook his head, “I literally learned about this like-” He looked over at Auren who held up 5 then 3 fingers.

“15 minutes ago, how the-” He suddenly realized there were a number of people he didn’t recognize standing behind her and fell back a step, “Who in the… Who are you people?”

“Hi! I’m Mer-”

Felix stood and interrupted Mera, “These are constructs of mine. They asked if they could join the class and I couldn’t really find any rules against it so…”

Haris stared at Felix with a completely dumbfounded look for a few seconds then shook his head, “You what?”

“Uh, excuse me.” One of the students near the front stood in their seat, “You were saying something about class being different this epoch?”

Haris looked over at them, angry for a moment that they were interrupting him then he snapped out of it and sighed, “Right. Deal with that later. Uh… Well, I guess th-”

“The Tournament of the Abyss is back.” Melody blurted out, cutting off the fumbling professor.

Suddenly just about every single student in the class either spun in their seat or leapt out of it in a few cases as they burst into loud chattering and exclamations.

Haris sighed loudly then spent over a minute calming the class down, “Alright. Enough. Yes, thanks. Tournament is back. Cal made sure it happened this epoch, otherwise it wouldn’t be happening on such short notice. We will be running normal classes for those that do not participate or are eliminated. Which means, if you’re interested, The Abyss Event can count as your Group Combat class this epoch.”

The class immediately erupted into conversation, not only because of what Haris had said, but because they saw it as their chance to finally speak.

Haris wasn’t done though and after trying for a few seconds to calm them down again, Auren took a step forwards and released an Crushing Aura that, to Felix, was rivaled only by Aro Zaki.

That shut them up almost immediately and Haris nodded in thanks to Auren then continued, “As I was saying, this epoch things will be different in addition to the tournament. You will, of course, be able to choose your team as you please. Teams of no more than 5 are permitted to enter into The Abyss. As some of you know, The Abyss is not just a tournament for this school. It is a tournament open to anyone. There will be specific events outside of The Abyss that will be limited to qualifiers or students but The Abyss itself, is open to anyone.”

He quickly continued to make sure there was no room for the class to speak up again, “This means you are allowed to select team members from outside the school.”

The class began murmuring but didn’t erupt like before so Haris was able to easily talk over them and continue, “We will be grading you though so…”

He sighed, “Not that any of you care about your grades anymore…” After a few moments of silence from Haris, trying to figure out if he had anything else to say, he finally sighed and shooed at the students with his hands, “The Gates will appear next dekad. Go. We’re done for today.”

The students in the class excitedly leapt out of their seats as they immediately began gossiping about everything Haris had just said.

As they passed, and Felix waited for the class to empty, he heard quite a few odd rumors now that he was paying attention to them for the first time ever.

“…I heard he decided not to die and, that was that.”

“That’s stupid and you know it.”

“I mean… it is Rhonan we’re talking about.”

“My creds are on an exotic artifact.”

“It was The System, obviously. He’s way too important to just die.”

“You can’t be serious. There’s no way any of it is true. I bet the whole thing is made up to scare Edras and the dissenters. No one recovers from that let alone lives as long as he’s claiming he did.”

“It’s not him claiming these things.”

“You know what I mean. His… entourage or whatever.”

“His possy.”

“Did you just call The Archons his possy?”

Felix decided he had heard enough and tuned out the rest of the idiocy as the students filtered out of the class. The only other thing he looked for, were Zeraxes and Romar both of which were curiously absent. He had wanted to identify them, just to see but it seemed that would have to wait.

Haris followed behind the stream of students heading up and out of the class and stopped next to Felix’s seat once they had and sighed, “Normally… I’d say you can fuck right off with your minions.”

“They aren’t minions. I’m not a Necromancer. Technically speaking.”

Haris waved him off, “Whatever, I don’t care. Point is it’s not my decision… this epoch. Not really anyways. I can’t stop them from signing up for The Abyss. I can refuse to teach them shit though so.” He shrugged.

“No problem.” Felix nodded, “Thought class would be more involved this epoch.”

He shrugged, “No point. No body would attend. In second epoch, most students stop caring about their grades in general and start focusing on their future. Usually, the God’s that recruited them make them listen.” He yawned, “This epoch though, with The Abyss happening, everyone’ll be trying to push as far as they can and no one’s going to be wasting their time in class.”

“I see. How does this tournament work exactly? You said there were events and The Abyss?”

Haris nodded, “I don’t care about the events. Just The Abyss for this class. Why don’t you ask Melody” He glared at her, “Since she seems to be more in the know than I am anyways.”

He sighed one final time then walked out of the room, Auren having already left, leaving Felix, Peace, Melody and The Residents behind.

Leaning forwards, Felix turned to Melody, “So, from what I gather this is a tournament with a bunch of events but all of them are kind of side shows or added on to the main event. What is The Abyss?”

She scooted forwards in her chair to the point where she was barely on it anymore and leaned forwards in excitement, “Okay so… No one knows.”

Felix winced a little, “What?”

“Like… We know… What happens in there, there’s a very specific formula and structure for everyone that’s gone in there. We can even watch the people inside.”

He nodded, “But no one knows what it actually is.”

She nodded, “Exactly.”

Mera lifted herself up on the backrest of Felix’s chair and leaned forwards, “What’s inside?”

Melody looked over at her and her face immediately fell into a combination of confusion and amusement, “You’re one of Felix’s… brain people?”

She nodded.

Melody then looked down the line of 16 Mind Residents and frowned, “Why are you all just standing around-” She gestured at the rest of the class full of empty seats, “-take a seat.”

Mera squealed excitedly then hopped over Felix’s chair, landing and sitting on the backrest of the one in front of him. A few of the other Residents jumped over chairs but some walked around normally to sit around in the seats. A few of them didn’t bother though and remained standing though, they didn’t look like they wanted to be standing there at all.

Felix turned to them, “You can watch this memory back later or ask the others. If you want to leave and do something else…”

They looked at each-other, some more timid than others, then nodded and left the room.

Melody looked back at Felix and the Residents that were now awkwardly turned around in their seats and she frowned, “Actually…”

Hopping out of her seat, Melody jumped over the back of her chair and walked around towards the front of the room. Taking the position of the Professor, she nodded to them, “Okay so, The Abyss. Basically, there are a bunch of… entrances. They look like metal doorways. No one knows how many there are and they only appear when The Abyss is open. Some appear in the same spot, some in the same general area and some just randomly appear all over the place.”

One of the Residents raised their hand, “I take it we have access to a permanent door?”

She nodded, “There’s one on Eramith, The Planet.”

Another one of the Residents leaned forwards and half stood in a eureka kind of moment, “Wait wait wait. If a bunch of them appear at random… and most of the multiverse is in the D grade… Like that ocean planet…”

Melody nodded then finished the thought for them, “The happenings inside The Abyss will be projected to everyone outside. You will see a number of random people wandering in, unsure what they’re doing. Some races we’ve never seen before.”

“How much of the multiverse is known by the core society of Telviras, Rhonan, Archons, Rebels and so on?”

“Good question. Also, a hard question. Not all the planets in the purview of the Gods, especially the big three, even know about Telviras or the other Gods. It all depends on how they were integrated or if they just… grew without being found. Every once in a while some random B grade appears thinking they’re the strongest person to have ever graced the universe because they grew up on one of these planets. Sometimes it ends poorly but most of the time, they get recruited because they usually have weird Classes, Races, Professions and Skills.”

Mera leaned forwards, pushing herself up and out of her chair in excitement, her feet dangling in the air, “Okay but in The Abyss. What’s it like?”

Melody giggled a little, “Okay, so. You enter either solo or with a group. If you enter with more than 5 people, you will be randomly split up into groups of 5 or less.”

“Woah, wait. If some randoms that don’t know any of this walk in with an army or somethin-”

Melody nodded quickly, “Yes. You will see on the projections, people walking in then suddenly looking around like they expected to have more people with them. Especially at the start, on the first few floors. The Projections can’t show everything so, they focus on the most exciting events. Us super people who are stronger than most B and even some A grades blasting through a floor in a second, is not interesting.”

One of the Residents nodded, “So we’ll end up seeing a lot of brave souls, ignorant minds and unlucky bodies who just wandered in. Unbeknownst to them, the fate held beyond the door.”

She sighed, “Yeah. It’s… a bit depressing.” She shrugged, “Nothing we can really do about it though.”

Mera leaned forwards a little more, completely impatient in her excitement and building anticipation, “So floors, what are floors?”

Felix on the other hand, was quite content just sitting back and letting his Residents ask every question he could think of, and many he hadn’t. Even if they asked a few he really didn’t care much about.

“Okay so, a floor is essentially just a massive horde of beasts. Each floor has slightly harder beasts than the last and as you descend, they also get… weirder. More… monster like. And older.”

“That’s it? We just slaughter massive hordes of enemies?” One of the Residents sounded rather excited by the prospect.

“Mostly.” Melody stepped back to the large board behind her and began writing stuff out, “So, each floor is harder than the last. First things first, you don’t actually have to kill everything on a floor to move on. At first, you just have to find the exit. Once you go deeper though, you’ll have to find a key and the exit. Then there will be multiple keys then a number of areas you have to capture and hold and so on. The basic structure is, kill shit and find the exit to the next floor.”

“How complicated do the doors get?”

Before Melody could answer the Resident’s question, another spoke up, “Wait! Is there an end?”

Melody smirked and pointed at the first Resident, “No one knows and precisely because-” She pointed at the other, “No one knows.”

She began drawing out a diagram on the board, “In the past, everyone has left before the end. It gets… a little too hard even for the elites. Especially because you can only enter the first time, if you’re level 2500 or lower.”

“The Realms of Annihilation are limited to 2000, right?”

She nodded.

The Resident continued, following up from their last question, “Does that mean we should be in the B grade to enter?”

She shook her head quickly, “The first few floors will start at the bottom of the D grade.”

A few of the Residents sat back in relief as Melody turned to her diagram on the board that looked like a curved funnel then split that into a layers, “The floors are structured in one of three ways, first you start on a small floor and each one gets progressively bigger.” She ran her finger up the diagram.

“The other, you start big and they get smaller.” She ran her finger down the diagram.

“Lastly, they’re all the same or close enough that it doesn’t matter.” She turned back to her audience, “These come in groups of 5 though, at first. They’ll shift to 10 then 15 later on. You know it’s a group though because each floor within a group will look and behave very similarly. The beasts then monsters on the floors will be the same, but slightly stronger. The architecture, landscape, biome, weather will all typically be similar. Sometimes one of them will change a bit but… Well, you’ll see. It doesn’t really matter right now.”

“What does matter is that at the end of a group, before moving on to the next group, there is almost always a… final challenge kind of thing. Sometimes it’s a big boss based on the beasts and monsters on the previous floors. Actually, the majority of the time it’s a boss. Not always though. Once you beat it, two doors appear. One, leads to the next floor. The other, leads back outside.”

“So you can’t leave until you beat a group?”

She nodded, “Exactly. Once you do leave though, you aren’t quitting. You can simply go back through the entrance and continue on beating another group.”

“What if you go back in without the party you started with?”

“Once you enter the first time, that’s your party for the rest of it. You can’t switch out members. But, if you go in by yourself and beat a group of floors solo, the rest of your group doesn’t have to beat those floors. They are considered beaten or completed for the party as a whole.”

Felix spoke up for the first time since Melody started her lecture, “I take it Zeraxes, Romar and many of the others who could beat a D grade floor in their sleep will do that?”

She nodded, “They’ll probably rotate through their members. No point wasting everyone’s time.”

Mera raised her hand, really playing into the fact that she even looked like a child in school, “How long does it normally take to beat a group?”

“Depends. At first, it won’t take too long for us but later on, it will vary a lot. Sometimes the late C grade early B grade floors will take a couple hours. Sometimes they will each take dekads. Especially if the keys are hard to find or whatever else unlocks the door is annoying.”

Felix waited a few minutes while some of the Residents asked their final few questions before asking his one final question for the moment, “You mentioned people walking in and not knowing about the party limit of 5. Dungeons have all had a screen asking if I wanted to enter with some stipulations on them.” She smiled a little noticing where he was going, “The Abyss isn’t a System thing at all, is it?”

She shook her head, “Probably not. Again, no one really knows what it is but… maybe some of the Primordials… I’m sure some of them were around when it… probably The World Tree but, it isn’t very talkative and…” She shook her head, “Anyways, no one knows but most people agree with you. The System can still affect what’s inside but it gets… glitchy? on the later floors.”

“How?”

“Nothing too bad just delayed levels and kill notifications. Skills seem to work fine as far as anyone has ever gotten. Some items just… stop working but no one really knows why. Zeraxes Divine Bolt will definitely be fine but some other items like batteries and stuff with them start to wig out. Basically, don’t worry too much about someone getting carried by their items. We’re also kind of at the point where even giving a crazy item to someone won’t make them invincible. They’ll help but, you need to be pretty strong yourself anyways. Well, except maybe an Echo but…”

“A Primordial Echo? How strong are they? If you gave one to a D grade, would they get as far as we will?”

She tilted her head back and forth a few times as she thought it through, “Maybe. There are really not very many though and I haven’t even seen one myself except… maybe Arthur… I think… maybe they’d get that far… I don’t know how hard they are to wield though… rumor has it they put huge requirements on the user.”

“Wait-” Felix got to his feet in shock, “Did you say Arthur?”

She nodded, “It’s just a rumor but… There’s an Echo many people know about, Axe of the Crimson River or Crimson Tide… no one really knows. Most rumors say it’s a greataxe. Lots of people thought Rhonan had and wielded it but… he personally shut those rumors down. Some think it’s in his vault, again, no one really knows anything. Recently, some people have started claiming Arthur might have it. With his whole blood thing and Great Axe.”

Felix sat back down, “I see.”

Melody looked across the room, “Is there anything else?”

No one else spoke up so she nodded and stepped off the front stage. As she did, Mera leapt out of her seat and ran to the front where she pulled Melody’s head lower and whispered into her ear.

Felix didn’t bother listening not out of respect, but out of indifference as he turned to Peace, “There’s something I want to ask you.”

He nodded, “Shoot.”

“Soul Reap. I know I can change it myself but is there anything particularly… standout in it’s upgrade path?”

Peace’s eyes rolled upwards in thought, “I don’t… think so. I don’t know everything about the Class because we don’t use The System but… I think it’s just Reaping Souls from a distance. I don’t remember anything else.”

Felix nodded, “My ring can already do that and I’m pretty sure I can do what the skill does myself. So, if I drop the skill for Reaper’s Presence?”

“The Aura skill I told you about? Yeah, that seems like a reasonable idea.”

“Okay. Is there anything else I should look for in the Class?”

“There’s a dedicated stealth skill that can make you nearly invisible… There’s a Telekinesis like skill… There’s a skill to imbue and make weapons… There’s a defensive skill that honestly sounds similar to the new soul shit you created in Amatara’s… There’s a flight ability… One that empowers you when you kill for a short time at the cost of the Soul you would have harvested…”

“Okay so, sounds like nothing better than the skills I have now. I could probably swap out Reaper’s Bond at this point though, right?”

He nodded, “More than likely Nova doesn’t need the skill anymore. As you’ve figured out, the entire Class is designed to teach you to do things and provide…”

“Training wheels?”

“What?”

“Nevermind. Thanks.”

Peace nodded, “Sure thing.”

Felix stood and looked over where Melody was now surrounded by a number of Residents and they were all chatting about something. Seeing as he didn’t seem to be needed for anything, Felix left and headed back over to Ked’s lab through an Aether Tunnel.

Inside, he found Ked and Rewdan deep in conversation while Art, Eni and Nova were working according to the plan, making basic equipment for his combat Residents.

Eventually, they wanted to make equipment for everyone. Robes and enchanted, high quality clothes for the non combat classes but for the time being, they focused on the Residents in combat classes.

They took requests, if the Residents wanted a specific material or weapon or equipment but didn’t spend more than few hours on everything. Later on, they would slowly swap out the basic equipment for better, more specialized equipment when they had time but it was a process.

Looking at the table next to them, there was already some basic equipment finished. They had simple shapes and used high quality materials with basic enchantments. Nothing exotic or arcane like Demitium or Spatial Enchantments.

Ignoring Rewdan and Ked on the other side of the lab, Felix joined the group in creating the equipment. Once they were done with that, they could all move on to the next part of their plan, constructs and the factory.

As they worked though, Felix got messages every few minutes from Mark about some of the Residents not needing equipment. He wasn’t complaining about the shrinking work but, he was also a little confused until he realized all the Residents that were removed from the list, were in class and had been talking to Melody.

Once Mera was removed from the list, he was pretty certain some of his Residents had talked Melody into a shopping trip, not that she would have needed much convincing.

As a whole, Felix’s schedule was very open, despite having 86 classes on his class list. In reality, there were only three classes he was planning on attending. Now that Group Combat was basically cancelled, or accounted for by The Abyss, he only had two classes to attend. Advanced Animancy, Constructs & Elementals wasn’t really a scheduled class though and just something where he would head to Ked’s lab and do some work when he had time.

The only scheduled class he had was a mentorship with Fin in Mana Control on the 4th and 9th of every dekad. He wasn’t entirely sure how long a scheduled time would last now that The Abyss was a thing but it didn’t matter much. Felix’s goal had been to learn as much as he could this term while also having as much free time outside of class as he could.

In theory, an impossible situation, for anyone except Felix. He didn’t have clones or simulacrums or anything, but he could split his mind up and be in multiple places in once, in a sense.

He also knew there would be some professors he would have to convince to teach his Residents but overall, he was quite satisfied with everything.

They finished up working on the equipment relatively quickly. It wasn’t hard in general when Nova was creating the equipment entirely. Full breastplates, swords, bows and every component they needed, shaped and forged in minutes. Then, Felix and Art had put together simple stencils for the basic enchantments and all they had to do, was imprint them onto each piece.

After that, they moved on to creating more engineering constructs that could help them with the factory they were trying to create. Things like forge constructs for when Nova wasn’t around and even mining constructs to shrink their costs in the long run.

They would still be buying some things and using Nova for others but they still intended on automating and streamlining as much as they could.

Rewdan and Ked joined in at that point and helped with the constructs.

Apparently they had been in a heated discussion over the plans for their epoch long project, the factory, and their viability.

Ked was more conservative and wasn’t entirely aware of Mark and everything else Felix had going on while Rewdan kept claiming the impossible, not just with relation to Felix’s capabilities. He kept mentioning things he knew were possible from his experience as a Spirit and from the last time he walked the material realm.

The Professor was also skeptical of the Souls Felix was putting into the constructs at first, overall not happy about the puppet souls but he was quickly convinced of how effective they were as their workforce grew.

They spent a couple days putting in place the basics and prototyping various aspects of their designs at which point Felix had to head to his Mana Control Mentorship and Ked had another student to mentor. Sal still hadn’t shown up but apparently all her mentorships outside of Felix’s rather unique one, were scheduled for the first four days of the dekad. Whereas, Ked’s were on the first, fourth, sixth and 10th.

Felix used an Aether Tunnel to head directly to the center of campus, not bothering with more specific coordinates because of how much more work they were to maintain when compared to TFP coordinates. As soon as he appeared though, he saw a red haired rocket of a woman racing towards him.

He stepped to the side to avoid having to catch her but she anticipated that and redirected herself immediately to barrel directly into him. Noticing that, Felix braced himself at the last moment and managed to catch her without falling, even though his feet slid back a dozen meters through the soft earth of the grassy campus field.

“Woah. You are way stronger than… What is your Strength?” Melody showed no signs of wanting to right herself out of his arms.

“Just over 7 and a half million.”

She immediately recoiled, jumping out of his arms, “Oh my System what are you you monster person.”

He just cocked a brow at her.

“No. Seriously that’s almost as high as my highest stat and we’re basically the same level.”

[C] Melody (Lvl 1892)

“Right but, you don’t really need stats to fight and be dangerous.”

She fully stood now and struck a pose, flicking her hair back, “You aren’t wrong. It’s my ravishing good looks and irresistible charm that make me lethal.”

He snorted, “Uh huh. Did you have a particular reason for barreling into me at full speed?”

“I wanted to see if you could catch me. I didn’t actually expect you to.”

“Right, I mean did you ha-”

“OH! Yeah, so.” She walked alongside him as he headed towards Fin’s class and attached office, “About the events other than The Abyss. Have you thought about which ones you’re going to participate in?”

Felix shook his head at the stupid question, “I don’t even know what the events are. I have no intention of participating in them though. I take it the reward is mostly glory?”

She half shrugged, “No, there’s also the potential of sponsorships and… getting recruited by… Gods and companies.”

“Right so, no chance.”

She sighed, “Oh come on.” She excitedly skipped forwards a couple steps, “There’s a Caster’s Duel, you know.”

“That’s probably the one I’m least likely to enter.”

She frowned suddenly, “What? Why not?”

“Is it limited to B grades?”

She nodded.

“I’d win. Trivially.”

She opened her mouth to retort but Felix kept going, “The rules of a Caster’s Duel are basically designed for me to win.”

“I mean… You’re not wrong but, it could also get our team a good sponsorship and considering we all wear robes, and half of us use Mage equipment, it would be a great sponsorship to have.”

“It would also draw a lot of attention. Not interested.”

“Even though it was unofficial, you beat my brother. I mean, he wasn’t a pro or anything but he was being scouted for pro teams. I mean, still is but…”

Felix nodded, “Yup. Thought Caster’s Duel would be more interesting, got a slicer and some books out of it. I’m satisfied.”

She grumbled and groaned a little, “Fine. Whatever. I told Ayred you’d say no. He told me to try convincing you anyways. He’s been really getting into it lately. Both watching the professional scene and picking up wands and stuff.”

Felix nodded slightly then switched tracks a bit, to satisfy his curiosity, “Do you think you could convince me if you had to?”

“If I said I needed you to, would you do it?”

“Probably.” I guess that kind of answers my question…

“There you go.” In a tone devoid of teasing, Melody leaned in a little, “Because you care about me or because you feel like you owe me?”

Felix thought about it for a few steps, “I don’t know.”

She nodded, “Anyways… Ooohh! What about Battle of the Auras?”

Felix hesitated a step and looked over at her, “Is that what I think it is? Duels or everyone in a ring and last one standing?”

“The latter.”

“Auras can be strong enough to knock someone out? Either way, no. Same reason. I might not be able to put them down with my Aura, but I don’t need to eat, drink or sleep so…”

“Oh really, you’re that confident? Also, you use your Aura to protect yourself from this Relic, not knock other people out and it’s more about how taxing resisting one is.”

“Hmm.” Actually… maybe. The attention might be a problem but a relic sounds interesting.

“Okay, well… there are some sports and some spell competitio-”

Felix sighed, “Not interested.”

She pouted at him with wide eyes, somewhat getting in the way of him walking but he just walked through her a few times, more than strong and heavy enough to do so.

“Seriously? You aren’t going to participate in anything?”

He shrugged, “I’ll enter The Abyss. That sounds interesting. Seeing who is actually stronger is not interesting to me. I want to learn things and get stronger. Proving that strength is boring. Especially in a fight- Are they System protected?”

She shook her head.

“-That isn’t to the death.”

“UUUUGGGH! You are so annooyyiinng.”

“Uh huh. A straight duel wouldn’t be too bad but… It’s not worth the time and effort when I could be focusing on The Abyss, The Realms and everything else I want to do this term.”

She nodded, “Alright. Fine. That seems fair enough. Any thoughts on when you’ll go hit The Realms?”

“As late as I can probably. Hard limit is level 1999, right?”

She skipped along beside him, despite where he was going, “Yeah. We’re not that far off now.”

“Are you going to try too?”

She shrugged, “I’ll enter probably. Not going to push myself very far but… seems like it could be fun.”

He nodded, “I take it we’ll go together then?”

“Like a date?” She stared him down with a mischievous little grin.

“Sure.”

Her eyes widened, “Ha! Don’t tease me like that. You know I’m sensitive and fragile. I can’t handle th-”

He sped up a few steps and turned the corner into the outer hallway of the building that held his classes.

She skipped and ran to catch back up and was about to either chastise him or continue when she stopped, seeing who was approaching them.

“There you are. I’ve been looking for you.” Fyrden walked towards them from the front.

He was looking mostly at Melody but he politely met Felix’s gaze and acknowledged his presence as well.

Melody groaned, “No.”

Fyrden ran his hand through his long, dirty blonde hair, “Oh come on Melody, we’re family.”

“So? Does that somehow give you the right to have me on your team?”

He squirmed a little, “Well… no I just think… we’d do a lot better… with you on… my team…”

Felix didn’t show his reaction but his opinion of Fyrden was drastically falling from what he assumed was classism. Not that he had much of an opinion about him at all.

Melody stepped forwards with a challenging demeanor, “What, you don’t think Felix will be as strong? You think just cause he isn’t hitched to a God or the spawn of one, he can’t compete?”

Fyrden sighed and stood a little taller, “Melody stop teasing. Everyone here is here for a reason” He turned to look at Felix and looked like he was being genuine, “born of a God or not.” He turned back to Melody, his face shifting towards disgust just a little, “You know I believe that, why even say something like that?

She backed off completely and shrugged, “Cause Felix thought you were being classist.”

He sighed and turned to Felix, “You beat Tan in a Caster’s Duel. I didn’t think you were any lesser before, I definitely don’t think that afterwards. Unlike some of my siblings, I trust Melody’s judgement. A lot. I promise, I want her on my team because she’s she’s great at what she doe- the best even, and she’s family and…” He turned to look at Melody again, “I want to fight with my big sis.”

Felix nodded, really just wanting to get to class, “You can have her.” He lightly pushed her on the shoulder towards Fyrden, “She’s all yours.”

Melody gasped in shock and feigned offense, “You would just throw me away so quickly? Toss me out like yesterday’s garbage? After all we’ve been through? After I dedicated my life to you?” She tried to hang off his shoulder like she were actually pleading, “After I let you do all those… nasty things to me? You’d just leave me? I acquiesced to your every perverted fantasy because you convinced me it was true love eternal and here I sit, all alone. Oh the despair. I’ve been used like a cheap whore. How wi-”

Felix was already walking away and with his his speed, easily managed to outpace her and close the door to Fin’s classroom behind him as she yelled out down the hall after him.

Felix sighed then walked down to Fin’s office and knocked.

“Come in.”

Opening the door, Felix saw Fin laying the middle of the air-appropriately-like a cat, staring at a spell on the board that he was clearly trying to cast. It wasn’t a complicated spell, around 15 levels, but he was only barely managing to make it relatively clean. Felix wasn’t even sure if he could have cast it as it appeared.

Fin dropped the spell as Felix approached and stood up, still floating in the air as if there were solid ground beneath him, “How were your recruitments?”

“Productive.”

“Excellent.” Fin nodded then walked down a set of invisible steps towards his desk, “To be honest, I was not certain you would accept my offer of mentorship on your available class list. Is there anything in specific you wish for us to work towards?”

Felix shook his head, “Not really. There are a few things I’d like to improve with respect to my Mana Control though. Firstly, I’m using crystals to Attune Mana to ultimately simplify my spells.”

“How long does it take you to manually Attune Mana?”

“Not quite 15 minutes like during my exam. I can attune that much in less than a minute now but any worthwhile amount, takes an hour or more depending how much.”

“What else?”

“I’d like my Mana Control to become more second nature. I’ve started playing around with something I’ve been calling Mage Hand, which is really just a hand formed from Mana.”

He smirked, “Something literally only you could do. Maybe Khidell but, he would never be quite as proficient as he is with his real hands. I suspect you’ve gotten close?”

“I have.” Felix nodded, “I can move a number of them too but it takes effort in a way my hands don’t.”

“Anything else?”

“Mana Skin is a defensive shell of Mana I’ve been using. Works somewhat well but it could definitely be better. Lastly, I need a better way to regenerate Mana.”

Fin nodded thoughtfully, “What have you tried so far?”

“Not much. I’ve been pretty focused on other things. Back in my integration days though, I created something I called a Mana Engine. It basically amounted to a pump that simply collected Mana. That was pretty good but I can definitely do better now.”

“What’s your effective Mana Control Range now? Any big increases?”

Felix snorted a little, “Yes.”

Fin smirked, “Okay. First things first, lets take some measurements.”

Felix nodded and they quickly ran through the same measurements they had started his first epoch at Eramith with, and used to evaluate him for his exam.

Throughout the entire test, Fin was floored by how far he needed to go with Felix’s new range, how much more Mana he could control at once, the precision with which he could control it, the force, the speed and how much faster his cast time was.

Mana Control Range 16m 40m 217m

Mana Control Limit 11,327,921 42,012,368 7.2 B

Mana Control Precision 1E-5 2.1E-8 8.5E-12

Mana Control Speed 14.1 m/s 53.4 m/s 647 m/s

Mana Control Force 8 N 135 N 4875 N

Spell Construction (Lvl 20) 0.9 s 0.4 s 0.027 s

Looking back over the results in his office, Fin just stood there staring at them for a while, “I… how?”

“I spent a recruitment at Amatara’s strengthening my Soul and thereby, will power. That was most of the increase. As in, almost all of it.”

Fin shook his head, “Your answer is logical if I take it at face value but… how did you strengthen your soul so rapidly?”

“Curses. I became a Spirit Sage, if that means anything to you. Do you know about my Class?”

He nodded, “I am awar- or rather, I have suspicions and am… confident in them.”

Felix nodded, “Sure so, I got my hands on a bunch of Anima basically. I spent Amatara’s recruitment climbing and integrating more Anima into my Soul.”

“I… still didn’t think this was possible so… quickly.”

Felix shrugged.

Another minute of reading through the numbers later, Fin nodded, “First, let’s talk about Mana Regeneration because I think it will be the easiest. Manual Attunements will just take time training. Mage Hand as well.”

“Okay. My current regeneration seems to be completely limited to about a million per hour. It goes above that with a high Aether density but, those are pretty rare and it doesn’t go up by much.”

“You’ve essentially hit the limit of how much you can draw in one place. It’s the Mana Fluidity that’s largely limiting you.”

Felix nodded, “I’ve never heard that term but I’ve noticed the Aether being more or less fluid in some places.”

He cocked a brow, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised… It is… rare to actually notice it. We know it exists experimentally. This is besides the point. Do you know why this limit seems to exist in most places, even where the Mana is more fluid?”

He shook his head, “Not really. I noticed improvements in high density and high fluidity places… I guess I never quite realized that the increase in density was not proportional to the increase in my regeneration rate but now that you mention it…”

“Essentially, there seems to be some kind of limit or breaking point where Mana ceases to exert pressure on itself. Or at least, that’s what we thought for a long time. Through some more extreme experiments carried out by Khidell over the last few centuries, the consensus has largely shifted that it is not a breaking point but rather, the pressure Mana exerts upon itself is a curve that sharply drops off around this point you’ve reached.”

“You’re saying that even if the Aether is more fluid or much higher density, my Mana regeneration won’t increase proportionally because there is a limit to how much and how quickly the void of Mana I create gets replenished?”

He nodded.

“So even with my Mana Control range now being much higher, I can take in more Mana right away but any large increases I see will be largely because of the increased surface area of my Mana Control range?”

“Yes. In essence. Even then, it will not be proportional to the increase in surface area.”

“So… what’s the solution?”

He smirked, “Multiple Mana collection points is the only real solution anyone has proposed. Matter Fission is another option but… not exactly viable for many reasons.”

Felix leaned in a little, “By fission you mean taking Matter and breaking it down into Energy then breaking that down into Mana?”

“Yes.”

“And by not viable you mean… violent?”

“The reaction being violent is the least of the issues. The most important one is the how. How do you break down Energy into Mana. It is theoretically possible and some have done it but only accidentally. Never has anyone done it consistently or made it reproducible.”

“I see. So I’m going to have to stick Mana Engines all over the place like satellites then siphon from them if I want higher Mana regeneration.”

“Yes. Most people actually solve this with Credits. They buy batteries and siphon from them when they rest. Although, a batter would simply multiply the size of your pool, wouldn’t it?”

Felix nodded, “I can just pull right out of them for the most part.”

“Given the absurd size of your Mana Pool however, you have surpassed the point where you can just use batteries. Batteries simply begin breaking down around 100 million Mana. You could start collecting batteries and simply having a hoard of them, while not possible for anyone else, even for you it is less than ideal.”

“I’d rather not have to resort to that.”

“Have you considered storing Mana in an extra-dimensional space?”

“I have. The biggest issue with that is separation of space. For a long time I wondered by the Mana Engine in my Pocket Home just kept running. I thought it would eventually run out of Mana. I spent some of my recruitment on how space works and I know understand, it isn’t really possible to contain Mana spatially.”

He nodded, “Not for any extended period, no. It must be bound to something or actively held.”

“If I manually focus on my Mana Regeneration, I can increase it multiple times over… if there’s a limit, how does that work?”

“In essence, Mana reacts to observers. Not really but, imagine it this way, when you are actively pulling on Mana, Mana other than that which you are puling on, is attracted to the pull.”

“It’s like… it wants to be bound to something?”

“Yes. It does seem that way.”

“At the same time though, the Mana Battery limit is a limit of how much can be bound to an object right?”

“Yes.”

“So it wants to be bound… but will also fight being bound… once bound?”

“Creating batteries of that caliber is hard enough that no one has been able to thoroughly test this, that I am aware of.”

“If I can supply batteries for this, would you be willing to participate in the research to figure this out?”

Fin cocked a brow, “I am aware of your friendship with the daughter of Kjarne and The Child of the Reaper… Credits alone will not solve the issue of these batteries being too scarce. Even if we had every single one of them in the multiverse, we wouldn’t have enough.”

Felix nodded, “No problem. We’ll make them.”

Fin looked at him blankly.

“Just to be clear, I’m pretty sure the solution to bigger batteries is Anima with enough will power. What I don’t know is how to use this weird property of Mana to create more efficient Mana Engines. Is basic Animancy enough? Do we need to dive into Anima Spells?”

Fin nodded slowly, “I… Even if you have the Remnant of a Primordial lying around, you need some kind of material, ideally with a crystalline structure, that is both flawless and stable enough to sustain the binding.”

“Have I introduced you to my familiar yet?”

Knock Knock Knock

Both Fin and Felix turned to the door and Fin went to open it but Felix already knew who was on the other side due to his various senses.

“I’m looking for Felix Kade? His schedule says he should be here?”

Fin nodded and opened the door wider for Kairune and the Professor standing behind him.

Kairune spotted Felix and walked over to him, the seething Professor following behind him along with one of his Residents.

“Felix.” Kairune nodded once, “This is Quinefremore, Professor of Culinary Arts and the Science of Tas-”

“IS THIS A JOKE!” The enraged Professor, a nearly 8 foot tall man with a white-from-flour braided beard and tied back black hair trembled as he shoved forwards, stopped by Kairune’s shoulder.

Felix met his bulging-eye-gaze, “I take it you’re not happy about teaching a Resident?”

“YOU THINK I WOULD BE HAPPY ABOUT TEACHING A MINION?”

Felix calmly pushed back, “Thoross is not a minion. He just didn’t have a body until now.”

“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR NECROMANTIC DELUSIONS. I’M NOT TEACHING A MINION ABOUT TASTE.”

Felix sighed and Kairune raised a hand to stop the Professor’s tirade, “I can’t help but agree. You cannot send minions to take classes for you.” Kairune looked over at Fin, “When you vouched for him taking as many classes as he signed up for, you assured me nothing like this would happen.”

Felix mentally took note of the fact that Fin had vouched for him then began playing through the conversation he and his entire Mind had already planned through, “My apologies. Just so I’m clear because I did check the rules ahead of time, what is it that is required for someone to attend a class here?”

“THAT THEY’RE A STUDENT YOU MORON.”

Kairune winced as Felix nodded, “I see. I believe there was a stipulation to this, something about familiars attending classes, if I am not mistaken?”

The raging baker snapped his head down toward Kairune as he nodded in confirmation.

“In that case, there must be something else? Some other specific requirement?”

Kairune sighed, “That provision is specifically for the case where a student cannot attend a class.”

“As you can see,” Felix gestured towards Fin who smiled in bemusement and waved, “I currently have my mentorship with Professor Fin scheduled meaning, I am unable to attend Culinary Arts and the Science of Taste. I have sent Thoross in my place.”

The culinary professor opened his mouth but Kairune lifted a hand to stop him, “That applies to individual classes. You cannot have one attend every one of your clas-”

“Actually, Chancellor,” Fin stepped forwards on the air so he was head height with Felix and Kairune, “I believe it was 5102 cycles ago that we had Zyrek attend-”

Kairune’s face contorted even further in anger as Fin continued, “If you recall, they were already a Lich at the time of their second epoch and I believe they had multiple bodies attending classes while their phylactery remained in their dorm room.”

Kairune closed his eyes and took a breath as Quinefremore seethed and looked from Kairune to Fin in complete disbelief.

Finally Kairune nodded, “Are you then claiming that Felix here is in control of Thoross? That Thoross is simply an extension of Felix himself?”

Felix nodded, “That is… mostly true.”

“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS. THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SOUL.”

Felix nodded again, “That is also true.”

Kairune’s anger was replaced entirely by confusion, “Explain.”

Felix pointed at Thoros, “His brain and Soul are contained within my soul. He is simply controlling the body.”

“SO THEN HE IS HIS OWN PERSON.”

“In a way. Considering he utilizes my Brain and my Soul to function though, it’s debatable.”

Fin slightly raised his hand, “I believe there was also a situation where two brother’s inhabited the same bod-”

Kairune lifted a hand to stop Fin then turned to Felix, “Can you prove this?”

Felix turned to Fin, “How much trust can I put in Kairune?”

Fin nodded immediately, “Kairune is bound by many thoroughly tested contracts to maintain the secrets of his students.”

Felix nodded then offered both Kairune and Fin one of his hands.

Fin placed his paw on Felix’s hand immediately but Kairune hesitated a moment before taking the hand.

As soon as he had physical contact with the both of them, Felix pulled them into the center of his Mind City directly.

With outstretched arms, Felix smiled to the two of them, “Welcome to Arkade.”