On the next floor, there were small sofas and armchairs as well as animal pelt rugs placed around the room. Sitting in front of an unlit fireplace were Amelia and Noah who were chatting, laughing and sharing a canteen between themselves. Felix removed his disguise and approached their chairs stamping his feet somewhat on the way just to make his presence known.
Noah noticed Felix's steps first and turned causing Amelia to realize he had walked in.
"Come, sit with us. We've been waiting for you." Noah said in a playfully dire tone.
Amelia giggled and Felix sat on an arm chair across from them.
"Oh hey, you learning French too? There was some guy here earlier that was reading the same dictionary as you. He let me in to deliver the furniture, I assumed he was your butler or something?"
"What did he look like?" Noah asked with a smirk.
"Uh well, he was… uh male with… hair… I can't remember?" Amelia said perplexed.
Noah gestured towards Felix with his thumb, "He's got a mask that changes his level and makes him ‘uninteresting' and as a side effect hard to remember. I didn't figure that last part out until I went looking for him and tried to remember what his current disguise was."
"That was you!? You could have said something you know?" Amelia admonished Felix.
Felix shrugged, "Yeah I could have. I was on my out though so… I just didn't bother."
Amelia quickly glanced at Noah, "It's fine, just tell me next time. This time I got to hang out with Noah since it seems you owe us both some money."
"We talked about it and we are okay with the city pa-" Noah started.
"Oh, sorry about that. How much do I owe you each?" Felix stood and walked over to Amelia and offered his hand to her.
"100k for the furniture and the crew so far, I'll let you know the rest when it's done." She said as she grasped Felix' hand. He transferred her 100k credits then stepped to the left and offered his hand to Noah.
"50k for the professor's apartment. Why did you buy that guy a house anyway?" Felix gladly payed then answered with a shrug and a smile, "Seemed like he could use it."
"Well, I think I could use a mansion if you're still feeling generous?" Noah teased.
"Don't you both make enough credits to buy multiple? or to build one yourself in her case?"
"I mean… Presents are just kind of nice, you know?" Noah pouted.
"Sure, maybe I'll drop down your chimney and place one under your tree tonight."
"Oh, speaking of holidays, the tutorial began just before the start of May which means it's going to be around July 4th for me, July 1st for her and there are too many other nationalities to track. We are going to host a holiday when there are 40 days left. We haven't decided the name, just that there will be fireworks. The restaurants are all bringing food, whichever one is the most popular will become the traditional food for the day as well. We are spreading the word around now just internally to crafters and merchants, but we haven't decided a name yet." Noah explained.
"We thought about Tri-Peak day but we wanted it to be more open to anyone. Any ideas?" Amelia chimed in.
"Earth independence day? No that's actually wrong, Multiversal Birthday? Integration day? That would be the start of the tutorial though. We could just call it Earth day? That's a thing though isn't it?" Felix brainstormed.
"We should do integration day. I always forget you missed the whole explanation, but the universe is being integrated while we are in the tutorial." Noah responded.
"Oh I guess it makes sense it's not a snap of the fingers kind of thing."
"Integration day it is. You should figure out some way to participate, people will want to see you at least be a part of it somehow." Noah instructed.
"Just make your presence known and that should be enough." Amelia tried to comfort him.
"Alright, we'll head out. Oh and Henry says to go see him in a week or so." Noah said as he stood from the sofa.
"I'll be back with more furniture soon." Amelia said as she stood.
The two of them walked towards the stairs together, Noah stumbling once and Amelia catching him.
Didn't realize alcohol still worked once we evolved.
Grim floated in front of Felix with a question on it's page,
"May I drop the disguise now? Also I'm gonna need you to carry me or put me down somewhere, I'm running low on mana."
"Yeah, you can drop the disguise." Felix wrote as he picked Grim up with his other hand.
He headed up stairs and found that the other floors were empty except that in his room, a second bed had been placed across from his. It was made of a dark treated wood and was a simple design with no decorations at all. It had it's own mattress, duvet and pillow. The sheet and pillow were white and the duvet was blue, the same shade of blue that accented the city's logo.
Oh man, I can't test it cause I'm not gonna sleep for another day and a half. I'll just hold off entirely so I don't end up teasing myself.
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"Hey Grim, what do you know about mana cores and mana channels?"
"They exist, some creatures have them some don't. Some need them, most don't. Not much else. What specifically are you looking for?"
"I want to create a mana core for myself with mana channels and everything. I was also thinking about an energy core and having them possibly connected."
"I mean, it's probably possible. Thing is if you don't have one yet, it's unlikely you'd be able to use one. It would also probably shrink your mana pool, unless you used both a normal pool and a core but then the gain would be marginal."
"Really? My rough mental math puts a tennis ball sized core as being at least 3.5 times the size of my pool now."
"What's a tennis ball?"
"A ball I can comfortably hold in my hand, slightly smaller than my fist. Here, I'll make a ball of mana, you can see that right?"
"Yup."
Felix created a ball of normal mana above Grim the size of a tennis ball, or Felix's best guess as it had been a while.
"Isn't that smaller than your pool is now?" Grim wrote.
"Yeah but if it's a liquid, it'll be much denser."
"Where are you gonna get liquid mana?"
"I'll make it."
"Hold on, could you place the cube I came in on top of my page? I won't eat it I promise."
Felix carefully placed the cube on Grim, making sure it didn't sink into it and sat on the page. After almost 10 minutes Grim wrote, "You can take it back now."
Felix picked up the cube then Grim wrote, "I don't want to push you too hard, but what will it take for you to soul-bond with me?"
"Honestly, I just don't understand it that well. Our souls become bonded, what does that mean?"
"We can communicate with each-other at a minimum. Depending how strong the bond is, we can share experiences which means knowledge and memories. We will roughly know where the other is at all times, almost all. It can do more, but the bond would have to grow to get to that point."
"None of that sounds too bad but how do I know it won't also let you consume my soul or something?"
"You don't I guess. We could try and find you a familiar so you can bond to it first with that skill or naturally."
"I've been looking but honestly, all the creatures in here are boring."
"I suspect you won't find anything you consider interesting in the tutorial then."
"There is this griffin world boss I've had my eye on."
"Don't bother. Sounds like you probably want to kill it anyways for the rewards. As cool as a griffin is, it's not the best familiar. Tends to plateau in usefulness later on. I've got a couple creatures in mind that would be perfect, but I'm not sure if they will exist on earth."
"Alright. You're right though, I do want to kill it. Just thought it would be cool to ride it and fly around."
"Just fly yourself? You should pretty easily be able to fly with some simple spell work."
"Probably, I've thought about it and it's on my todo list, but mana core and channels are higher up for now."
"Alright fair enough. Where will your core go? Usually they remain in the physical realm, and if yours is a liquid it will almost have to be."
"Good question. I guess I have to make room between some organs for it, huh. Not sure I want to do surgery on myself though. Suddenly I am much less inclined to do this at all."
"If your anatomy is similar to the humans I've known in the past, you can probably safely remove bladder and intestines. Possibly also a kidney."
"Probably? I'm not removing organs like that."
"They probably aren't all used anyways. You don't use the bathroom at all right?"
"Right. How can I know for sure though?"
"Cut yourself open or, I'm not trying to push this on you I swear, I could tell you if we were soul bound. It's also possible you could try and feel out the organs, it'll probably take a while to be certain though."
"Damn."
"Actually, I've never heard of anyone doing this but I've got an idea. How much liquid mana do you have?"
Felix pulled out his canteen that he had shot off the top of his tower filled with liquid mana. "This much, can you see this?"
"Oh man. Ok you can drink some of it then track it with your mana sense and with a little manipulation, also scan the inside of your body. Just be careful not to punch a whole in your gut or anything. Though most of that should regenerate."
Felix sat down and drank a sip of liquid mana from the canteen. He held it in his mouth as he closed the canteen and stowed it in his inventory. He made sure he could sense the liquid then swallowed it. He followed it through his body as it traveled as expected, into his stomach. He moved it around as gently as he could to feel out the inside of his body. Some of it was slowly absorbed through his stomach and made it's way into his bloodstream where it remained. That wasn't what he was curious about right now though so he turned his attention back to the mana in his stomach.
He knew some basic biology and understood that it should be possible for it to pass into his intestines, as solid food did so, he gently pushed it against the bottom of his stomach but found no opening like he expected. Instead the mana was simply passed right through his stomach lining. Where he expected intestines though, he found nothing. It wasn't just an empty pocket of air, but he moved the mana around and found tissue that he couldn't even feel.
When he was moving the mana around in his stomach, he could feel it and was aware of it pushing against him. He was aware of and could feel all of his other organs, that he could identify too. He could feel his veins, heart, lungs, muscles, tendons, skin and other parts he couldn't identify. He could effectively look through them and pay attention to what they were feeling.
Where his intestines should have been though, there was simply nothing. He couldn't feel the tissue at all, like it was entirely detached from his nervous system. Felix took the small sip of mana and simply nestled it in some dead tissue and left it there as he came to consciousness.
"You were right, it's all just dead."
"It's honestly rather odd you had them in the first place. I was piecing together what it all did from the dictionaries, but I don't think I've ever seen those organs in a human before. Typically they have other organs in that space or just a bigger stomach and lungs."
"Wait, really? How do I get nutrients from food?"
"Your stomach. It completely obliterates food and everything is just absorbed through that. I take it that wasn't the case before?"
"Not before my evolution it wasn't."
"Seems overly complicated. This is much simpler."
"I don't think it was possible for my stomach to ‘obliterate' food before. I guess it's just stronger now?"
"I mean don't eat a rock, but it seems like it."
"What would happen then?"
"You'd probably be forced to throw it back up."
"Alright, moving on. It seems I can simply drink mana or pull it into existence right in there, so that issue is solved. Now I need to design the whole thing and figure out how the channels will attach to it. I know it likely won't do anything, but I'd like them to run everywhere."
"You could just copy your circulatory system, it seems to do a pretty good job."
"Yeah I thought about that. How do I create veins though? I was thinking about making tubes of solid mana, but then I wouldn't be able to move and long solid objects in my body seems like a bad idea."
"Great question, I have no idea. You could run your mana through your veins alongside your blood. Just direct mana into your heart and have it suffuse your blood. Then you could do the same with an energy core. The biggest advantage to this right now is that your mana pool will be bigger, the channels are kind of just a hope and a dream at this point, right?"
"That's true. I don't want to be pulling energy from my veins and screwing with my blood flow though."
"I don't think it would have any effect. Your blood and energy shouldn't really be touching, it's kind of like the energy is using the blood as a medium to flow through. If you pull the energy or mana out of your blood, your channels should quickly try and even themselves out and fill the gaps. While your mana will be a liquid, it's not actually a liquid and it travels between and exists within your blood. They sort of only barely touch. You can test it out, just flood your bloodstream with energy and then use it or pull the mana you have in your blood out." . . . . .