Henry headed back to his forges leaving Felix to work and Felix headed over to the bin of scraps that Henry had previously pointed out then dragged it over to an empty table. He experimented with enchanting the steel and tuned the ratios of elasticity, flexibility and hardness. About halfway through his testing, Henry got curious and came over to help test the plates by smacking them with a hammer and offering scrap weapons as well.

Felix found the ideal ratio to be about 5 to 2 to 2 for elasticity, flexibility and harness. He had the elasticity much lower and was happy with it initially, but then he started adding another enchantment, force distribution. With all the enchantments together, a higher ratio for elasticity was more suitable.

Felix experimented with other enchantments but didn't find anything else he was happy with so he did one final test on the most pristine scrap he could find. Henry approved of the enchantment so he got to work on the armor itself.

It took Felix almost 12 hours to completely enchant the suit of armor. He didn't face any major issues and was very happy with the result. He even added an even glow on the front of the armor, where the logo would go, that would light up when the armor was struck. He left that as a surprise and didn't even tell Henry about it. When it was done, Henry inspected the armor and seemed very pleased with the result, likely due to it's new rarity.

[E - Special] Armor of Protection

A suit of plate armor designed to be as flexible as possible while still offering complete protection. The suit is enchanted to be more durable, lighter and distribute the force of blows evenly.

"I'll get the painter down here tomorrow morning and have it delivered in the afternoon. Once the painter is done, the Tri-Peak Armor of Protection will definitely be an eye catcher."

"Does the logo change the item's name?"

"Yup. A couple of people have had it done recently and it's picking up in popularity. Seems like people have decided to tie themselves to the city for better or for worse."

Henry asked Felix if he wanted to enchant anything else but Felix said he didn't have much time. He did offer to enchant a weapon or two if Henry sent them up to the tower but otherwise he had some things to take care of. Felix found it slightly odd that Henry didn't ask about the French dictionary floating around him but didn't think much of it. He headed back up the tower to continue with his spell work. Before he started, Grim floated in front of him.

"That was nice of you, but wasn't it kind of a waste of time? Did you just really need the money?" Grim's pages read.

"Nah, I definitely don't need the money. I wanted some amount of real world experience with enchanting. Before this all I had was the dungeon and some practice equipment. I'd read some books about techniques and tips but maybe I just needed affirmation that the enchantments would actually be useful."

"Fair enough."

"I also learned that planning for enchantments ahead of time with the materials, instead of using the best material then enchanting it is definitely the way to go. He used an unideal metal for armor but enchantments essentially mitigated it's flaws entirely and made it something Special."

"You don't need to highlight them to me, there is no way I'm gonna miss word play."

"Hey, you disguised yourself as a French dictionary again right? I'm wondering why he didn't comment on you at all."

"Nope, I just made myself kind of invisible. Same way your mask does. I can be seen, but people just don't notice and don't remember unless they try really hard. Figured it would be really weird to take a book into a forge."

"Can I do that too?"

"Probably, it's something you do with your soul, not a spell. It's also possible to make an invisibility spell that redirects light, but it's much harder. What you can do instead is influence their experience of seeing you. Essentially when someone looks at you, your souls communicate. They read each-other involuntarily. You can basically make it so that when they read your soul, you forcefully tell them to forget and look away. It only really works on people much weaker than you who have no training with their souls at all. If he really cared, Henry probably could have just forced the issue and focused on me."

"What else can soul magic do?"

"It's not really magic, though I guess it technically counts. There's a weird undefined line between mana magic and soul magic where certain things are way easier with one over the other. Invisibility is hard, making people not think about you is relatively easy. Changing memories is essentially impossible with normal magic and very possible with soul magic, though no easily. Entire illusory spaces are possible with both, but easier with soul magic as the target's brain will fill in gaps more readily, also bending light on that scale is ridiculous. For something like that though, you probably want to combine the two."

"Well I guess soul cultivation is moving up on my priority list."

Alright, time to figure out a good firework spell.

Now that Felix had more nodes and more background on spells, a firework spell was trivial. He simply created a two stage spell, one that launched a projectile into the air then a time delay so the projectile would explode in light. That just made colored balls though, what he really wanted, was a firework that drew something in the sky. He decided to ask Grim for help and together they crafted a spell that Felix was very happy with. It was absurdly complex and inefficient, but it would be pretty. He wanted to test it at the intended size, but it was likely that someone would see it and he didn't want to spoil the surprise. Grim assured him it should work though, so that fueled his confidence somewhat.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

With the remainder of his time, Felix wanted to figure out how to make better mana batteries. He wanted to experiment with spells more, but he was worried the bosses health would be so great he would still run out of mana despite his core. Unfortunately, referencing his blueprint, he didn't have the materials to craft a true mana battery. He would need some kind of crystal as well as a bunch of other things he didn't have. He did have another idea though, he could just make single use batteries. If he solidified a bunch of mana, he could later consume it quickly to replenish his core and pool.

He spent the next few days until the celebration doing just that, solidifying as much mana as he could into softball sized crystals. He had a dozen of them even after feeding one to Grim as a backup incase his rechargeable battery mana pool ran out. That should allow for him to replenish almost his entire mana pool a dozen times over, not to mention passive and active regeneration using ambient mana.

The day of the festival came and Felix, wearing his disguise, perused the food, drink and wares of the different shops in the city. The festival was still ramping up as it was planned to really kick off later that day, but the city was still packed with people, many of which were tourists from other forts. The shops all offered their normal goods as well as some particular item they were hoping would become a tradition. Some were weird and others were a little tacky but Felix had a good time browsing and sampling some of them nonetheless. He also ended up shuffling his flasks drink in preparation for the occasion and settled on a warm spiced cider that was a little minty and a little spicy.

As the sun fell through the sky, the celebrations swelled with more people around, more food consumed and a lot more noise. Felix decided to go and see if Noah or Amelia needed help with logistics and was surprised to find them heading up the stairs to his tower on his map. He rushed over to meet them and managed to catch up with them before they reached his door. He removed his mask and approached, "Looking for me I take it?"

"Oh, were you just in the city?"

"Yeah, figured I'd just walk around and see the different traditions people are trying to start."

Amelia cringed, "Yeah… They've been pretty silly from what I've seen."

Felix nodded.

"Any chance we could watch the fireworks from the top of your tower? The city has been a little much lately and well…" Noah asked tentatively.

"He's hiding from all the people asking him for things." Amelia finished.

Noah sighed, "People keep asking the most mundane things, ‘Can I have live music?' Yes of course, ‘Can I have live combat?' Yes, not in the street, not with real weapons."

Thank god they don't come asking me these things.

"Yeah sure thing, I'll have to head up there once the sun sets for a few minutes to ‘make an appearance', but otherwise it's all yours." Felix responded.

"Ooh, what do you have planned?" Amelia asked.

"You'll have to wait and see."

They all headed up into the tower together, Amelia and Noah to the roof while Felix settled into the Lounge in front of a fireplace.

"Hey Grim, tomorrow I'm gonna head out to fight the world bosses. I think I'll probably head to the griffin first, any advice?"

"Honestly, I still know very little about your entire universe. I'm piecing together what a ‘world boss' is from the definitions but realistically I have no idea how strong they are and I'm only somewhat sure of how strong you are. Relative to each-other, I have no idea. Do you have a backup plan or way to escape if things do go sideways?"

"I have an escape rod thing, break it and get away essentially. Should be enough."

"If you say so."

"Guess I'll have to feed you more books then. Can you learn from my memories if we bonded?"

"Almost definitely, unless your thoughts are encrypted."

"You can do that?"

"Yeah, but it's really annoying and not worth it."

"The more I think about it, the worse it gets."

"Yeah, it's one of those things that sounds cool at first, but has about a thousand issues preventing it from ever working well and limited benefits."

"So who or what are you, Grim?"

"I sort of can't tell much more than what I've said unless we soul-bond. It will make slightly more or a lot less sense, depending on how you look at it, once you know."

"How cryptic."

Felix and Grim discussed Felix's plan for taking on the griffin for the next few hours before Felix had to head to the roof. He found Noah and Amelia sitting on a sofa one of them had brought in their inventories. The fireworks were just starting to kick off with some interesting displays. No one had quite figured out how to make fireworks again the way they were on earth so most of the attempts were a little odd. There was everything from essentially grenades thrown into the sky to just pure light shows with attempted laser beams. Mostly they were funny and Felix was glad he didn't have to deal with any of the safety concerns.

Once they started to die down, Felix walked up to the edge of the roof and cast a few simple firework spells which were simply lights that split into balls. They were much closer to traditional fireworks than any of the attempts from the city. After a few dozen, he prepped the big one. Felix prepared three spells, two normal fireworks in a mix of blue and white and a single spell in the middle that was one of the most complicated spells he had ever cast. Once it was done he cast the two spells to the side then the middle one a few seconds later.

Blue and white lights showered the sky above Tri-Peak before the last firework, the one that had cost Felix the majority of his mana pool, blasted through the center. The spell drew out the logo of Tri-Peak valley in the correct colors out of balls of light. There were three peaks out of white light with a tower on the middle one and a book resting in the valley with purple accents. It wasn't perfect, but it was very good and easily recognizable. It was also massive in comparison to all of the other fireworks on display that night.

The spell had required a combination of many shape nodes to create the logo as well as a ton of force to fire off the lights. It was only so big, because there were so many components to fit into the spell form. Felix was satisfied with the display and Amelia and Noah seemed transfixed. He left them alone just after firing it off and watching to make sure it was successful.

"Thanks for your help with that one Grim. That spell was annoying as hell."

"Of course. There are much more efficient ways of achieving the same effect, but not with the nodes you know."

"I take it you aren't allowed to show me new ones then?"

"Unfortunately not."

"Oh well."

Felix headed outside onto the side of the mountain his tower was attached to and began actively refilling his mana pool. Once he was done, he climbed over the rest of the mountain and headed east towards the forest. It didn't take him long until the griffin's territory was in sight but he decided to wait until sun up to engage. In the meantime he created some blades out of solid mana and stored them in his inventory then experimented with using them on the trees around him. He didn't have quite enough time to make another mana battery but he figured he shouldn't need it.

By the time the sun had risen in the sky, the weather had changed. It was an overcast day, the sky blanketed with a thin grey cloud cover that provided a slight drizzle. Despite the dour weather, Felix was excited and ready to fight. He had spent some time theorizing how the Griffin might fight and talked through it with Grim, who knew about Griffins. Turns out Griffins varied greatly, with some utilizing magic and others entirely physical attacks.

Felix left the forest and headed south, directly into the Griffins territory. The ground was a combination of light beach sand with grass growing through it. There was no other vegetation in sight, with the only thing marking the landscape being small hills. Atop one of the hills lay the Griffin. . . . . .