Oh shit, so I need to find one soon.
Yeah, luckily it's pretty easy to find… trap… make one. It's not as weird as it sounds, I promise. All you have to do is hunt down cool materials and natural treasures then pile them up. Matter sprites will either come running or be created on the spot.
Why doesn't everyone bond to these things? Telekinesis is awesome.
I'm making a couple of gambles here, but most people wouldn't have combat usable telekinesis, like stopping an arrow, until B grade at least. Until then, it's essentially useless to most people. It also eats valuable resources at a ridiculously fast pace. Growing a matter sprite's strength isn't worth it for most people. You however, are just integrating in a resource rich world. You can just have it eat everything you can't otherwise use. Also most people value the durability and agility from other familiars far more than telekinesis. Last but not least, Matter Sprites can sometimes pick up weird abilities if they eat really weird stuff, and sometimes those can translate to you.
Like what?
The one I heard about ate a black hole and gained a little bit of gravity control.
A black hole?
Yeah that sprite was a few billion years old I think. No one was bonded to it, it just kind of roamed around like a natural disaster. Also ate a wormhole and could make portals.
How do you know it can pass that kind of thing on then? And wouldn't it be super weak if it did?
Yes and also no. There have been less interesting minor abilities like controlling temperature that have been inherited. Normally they would be weak, but the amount that's passed on depends on two things. The strength of the host, in this case how strong the ability is in the sprite, and the strength of the recipient. It is possible for you to develop a power, that you inherited from a soul-bond, past where the bond has it. It's super rare, but it has happened and seems to depend on the strength of the bond. The longer the bond exists, the more the seed will integrate with your soul.
Alright, so if I find some kind of crazy material and I can't use it for a weapon or something, I can feed it to my familiar and potentially get a super power. Needless to say I'm sold, who needs speed or durability anyways?
Well, your stats are high for now so it's less important, but you'll need to make sure they keep up as you keep leveling.
I mean, I would have tried my best to do that anyways. I'm hoping my evolution will help with that.
I'm really curious what that is and how it works because it's one of the only things, that I've encountered so far, that doesn't have a parallel in my universe.
Really? That's odd.
Last thing. There is a… darker way of making a sprite. You can make a sprite from the soul of someone who had a soul space that died. This results in it being stronger and sometimes being able to cast spells if the person who died could. Most people will think that's how yours was created and we're gonna use that to our advantage.
Uh… I'm already worried about people hunting me down for being an evil overlord and now I'm going to play into it?
Not exactly. You kind of have to, to avoid people trying to capture and experiment on you or consume your soul. What we can say, is that you had a soul-bound brother in arms that died and through some miracle became a sprite. It's weak, but it's not impossible. Most importantly, it's a more likely story than you being such a monster your sprite turned into a super hero.
Alright, I can live with that. So soul space first?
If you can, yeah. You haven't gotten past the first step right? What point did you choose?
I just went with the center.
You probably won't be able to start it in your core soul, you want to start it somewhere outside of that but not too far away or it won't be stable. Once you've created it and it's stable though, you can move it into your core soul to make it really stable. Once you've moved it inside, you can start to feed it mana until it grows to the limit.
How do I know when it's at the limit?
You need to start it first, but you won't be able to expand it anymore, it'll just leak any mana you put into it.
Felix sat down and meditated. He chose a point just below his navel that should be outside of his core soul. He focused on the point and slowly stretched outwards, away from the point in all directions. Slowly, a vacuum was created at the point and Felix filled it with mana as it grew. Once it was about the size of a marble, he began to squeeze it as much as he could. The mana started to return to the Aether, but he held it back and made sure it didn't. He kept squeezing for a few hours not sure he was getting anywhere when suddenly, it popped and disappeared.
Did I do it?
Not sure, try to access it. It's a marble sized ball of mana that's in a pocket dimension connected to your soul. Unfortunately, feeling it is just intuition so you're going to have to just figure it out.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Felix focused on the same point and tried to sense mana of any kind but just couldn't seem to find it. He searched and scoured his soul but it was nowhere to be found. He tried a variety of things to try and find it but ultimately, it was somewhat of an accident that he found it.
Felix spent hours focusing and paying attention to his soul, after which, he decided to take a different approach and just relax. This was a different form of meditation than the one he focused on, instead of focusing on something and eliminating distractions, he simply relaxed and ignored. Doing so, his soul relaxed enough for mana to start leaking out of the soul space he had created. As soon as he felt that, he focused in on it and followed the trail backwards. He spent a few minutes just focusing on the difference between his soul space and reality and managed to make it somewhat intuitive. It wasn't nearly second nature, but he knew he could find it again when he closed it.
Felix tightened his soul then found the point. Focusing on it once again, he slowly moved it right into his core soul. Once it was in there, it should be impossible for it to open back up again, no matter how relaxed he was. The final step, was to figure out how to move things in and out of it. Luckily, that step was trivial now that Felix could feel his soul space, he simply touched an object and willed it inside. The first thing he moved was just mana because Grim said it was safer than an object. With an object, it was possible for the soul space or your soul to tear if it was too big. With mana, it would simply leak out.
Felix continued to grow his soul space for a few hours making it almost half a meter across. It was just big enough to stick Grim into which meant it was big enough for now. He wanted to spend more time growing his soul space, and he would, but it took a long time and right now and he had other things he wanted to get done. Expanding his soul space would have to go on the back burner for now.
So how do I find natural treasures and rare materials to attract the sprite?
Anything that's somewhat rare will work and finding that is simple, just look for strong monsters. They tend to congregate around treasures and materials in the hopes that they can use them to get stronger.
Oh, well that's easy enough.
Felix descended to the lab floor and quickly inscribed the spell forms he relied on onto the bottom of his new leather boots. He also quickly threw on some durability enchantments to keep them from falling apart too quickly. When he was done, the spell form for flying was on his heels and the spell form for jumping away quickly was on the balls of his feet. He had realized it was slightly more intuitive for him to reverse them. Initially he was worried the instant force of jump would be problematic but he found that wasn't an issue at all. Now all he had to do was push mana into them rather than waste spell slots. Though he still missed his boots that had been destroyed, he had to admit inscribing the spells directly on the boots instead of strapped to the bottom was much cleaner.
The last thing he had to do before heading out, was get used to his new skills. Combat wasn't just a skill he obtained and used. What it did was that it would teach him how to fight when he activated it. He had chosen the skill because it encompassed all weapon types and fighting styles below rare rarity. That meant he could pick up a sword or a staff and it could teach him how to fight with it. It could also teach him some basic martial arts if he wanted it to. It did not however, teach him to mastery, it simply taught him some of the basics like footwork and what not to do.
Mana Sight on the other hand, was different. He had already noticed the ambient mana leaving a slight tinge over everything, but he had quickly filtered it out. The real advantage to this skill, and why he got it, was that it used your mana senses as a base. His mana senses were really good, so he saw even the faintest traces of mana. The other reason he got it was that when he cast spells, he could see spell forms in the air, which he thought looked really cool. When he first cast a spell and visually inspected it, it was even cooler than he had hoped. The mana's color even represented it's attunement just like he had imagined. He wasn't sure if there would actually be any value to the skill, but he did want to spend a little time getting used to it so it didn't throw him off in the middle of combat and potentially get him killed.
Once he was done, he ascended to the top and flew out, away from the volcano and into the forest. How it should work, according to Grim, was that some strong alpha creature would find a natural treasure and prowl around it, guard it, until it knew what to do with it. Increasingly weaker enemies would stand watch and wait around the alpha to either swoop in if it died, or to guard it and gain favor. So if he found the enemy's strength increasing towards a particular direction, that was where he should head. Fortuitously, that's probably what he would have done anyways.
Felix descended into the jungle and saw it up close for the first time. Similar to the massive trees from the tutorial, and the ones even larger than that in the forest north of Atalus, these trees were larger than any Felix has seen on earth. They weren't as big as the ones in the tutorial, but there was a much greater variety here than in both of the other forests. The trees here ranged from saplings to towers with most trees falling right around the middle. There was also a huge variety of other vegetation with flowers, ferns and moss spread out across every available surface. In the tutorial, almost all the trees were a similar size which he was now realizing was a little unnatural.
Felix's first encounter with a jungle creature was a fairly normal sized snake that tried to sneak up on him from behind. Luckily, he was able to hear it slithering and managed to block it's strike with the Mana Shield inscription he had strapped to his back. The snake ended up stunning itself on the shield and Felix finished it off with a lightning bolt before it could recover.
Ding You have slain an [E - Common] Snake (Lvl 61)
It's just a snake? Not like an anaconda or something?
I actually have a theory about that that I posted to the guild for confirmation. I think it identifies it based on what you know, because you wouldn't be able to differentiate snake species, you just see snake. If you knew it was an anaconda, it would say so. That seems likely, what I don't know is where the line between what you do and don't know is. You don't know a rarity or level, the system supplies those, so some information you don't know is added. What happens if you are certain it's an anaconda, but you're wrong? Will it identify as a snake, or an anaconda?
You are just having a blast trying to figure all this stuff out, aren't you?
Don't tell me you don't find this stuff fascinating too. Plus this information could save your life at some point.
Yeah, I do and you aren't wrong. I'm glad you can figure it out and inform me though, instead of having to post it to the guild myself.
As Felix ventured further into the jungle, the vegetation began to hinder his travel so he pulled out the long sword he had enchanted for the Kraken. He activated the enchantment causing the sword to glow bright red as it heated up. He ran through the thicket paying attention to his Combat skill telling him how to step and how to swing. The plants he cut through were much thicker and denser than he would have expected plants to be, at least back on earth. Luckily, his sword melted right though them, though it did consume a fair chunk of mana in exchange. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .