While Henry was forging the plates, Felix inscribed spells onto thin metal discs so Henry could swap out the spells in his cannon once it was finished. He gave Henry a quick run down of how it should work and handed him the discs along with a couple batteries as backups. From this point on, Henry shouldn't need Felix to finish the cannon, all he had to do was finish forging it. He had decided to use Soul-Steel mostly because it was the rarest material he had which was unfortunately very difficult to work with and was why it was taking him so long.

"What happened to your rock?" Henry asked as he walked Felix to the door.

"My what?"

"The one that took a bite out of my cannon."

"Oh my familiar?" Felix opened one of the folds of his robe to reveal a black kitten that appeared to be fast asleep. "They're just napping."

"Your rock turned into a cat?"

"Uh… yeah sort of."

"Well now I just feel bad. I'm a lower level than your cat."

"Don't feel too bad, so am I."

Henry gave Felix a befuddled look as he walked out of the forge and into the city. Felix still had to wait half a day or so until he could teleport home so he wandered around the city and talked to Grim in the mean time.

So what's up with Soul-Steel?

Soul materials, usually metals are materials that can gain an affinity. I should have thought of it earlier, I don't know why I missed it. Usually, they are really hard to work with if you aren't infusing it with your soul. It's super popular for tons of stuff, you just need to find the right material. This one is good for armor or weapons but there are others that are naturally liquid or some that are super conductive as examples.

So what happens if I infuse it with my soul?

Depends on the material but usually you can morph into any shape you want at will.

Wait really? So forging it was a huge waste of time?

Yeah, sort of. The reason I didn't have you tell Henry all this is that it takes a long time to infuse it and typically you don't want your smith to do it. Once it's been infused, it takes a while to revert so someone else can infuse it. It would also take him years of building soul strength and getting used to manipulating it.

So can I do that with my staff now?

You can. It's gonna take a while for a full affinity but you should be able to get it to a usable point fairly quickly. Also don't expect to be morphing it mid combat, it won't be that fast. You should be able to morph it into a sword or something given enough time before a battle though.

That also sounds super useful for breaking into vaults. I could morph it into a crowbar or something like that. How long does it take to infuse?

It would probably take you a couple weeks if you did only that every day.

Alright so I should be able to get it done before the world event then.

Yeah, shouldn't be an issue. Anything else you need to get done in preparation?

I should probably sell my E grade equipment before it becomes worthless. I'll also figure out a good blow torch spell. Can't think of anything else. Anything you can think of?

Not really. You're about as prepared as you can be. Hard to prepare when you know so little.

Felix walked over the bridge into the commerce district and found a couple of magic shops where he got his old equipment identified and appraised. He walked into three shops and they all gave him the same price so he just sold everything to the third one. Luckily the demand for E grade equipment had only increased as people were currently making their final push to D grade. They handed him 10 million E grade credits and Felix even swapped out his cloak for one that caught his eye. It was unenchanted but it was made of a dark navy dyed D grade cotton that felt more like wool to Felix. It was thick and heavy and it was big enough to completely cover up with a hood that could entirely obscure his face. It was everything a cloak should be.

He walked into a few restaurants and ordered enough food to feed himself for a few months, if he had actually needed to eat. He wanted to experiment a little bit with how his body processed food though so he figured he might as well enjoy the food as well. He made sure to taste test the food ahead of time and ended up rerolling his flask to something that reminded him of a Lemonade. It was sweet with the taste of lemons and oranges but it was almost as though the sugar had been removed as the flavors were subtle, reminding Felix of a cold brew tea. Felix didn't have anything else he wanted to do so he flew over to the City Hall building and checked on the mana engine he had created in the basement.

He found it exactly as he had left it, though Noah must have been using the mana as it was relatively empty. Felix ascended back to the ground floor and sat on the floor against one of the side walls. He took out his staff and laid it across his lap then closed his eyes and followed Grim's directions to affinize the staff to his soul. The process was relatively simple and just involved reached out with his soul into the staff and essentially cycling it. The easiest way to do that with the staff was to push some of his soul out of his right hand and into one end of the staff then out the other and back into his left hand. It didn't matter that he was only cycling through the middle meter or so as long as he moved his hands every time he did this to get close to even coverage. He had to cycle to ensure the soul in the staff didn't get stale and separate itself from his soul, then it would have no effect.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He wasn't sure how long he had been meditating but he had quickly gotten comfortable enough to where he could do other things while he affinized the staff. He had mostly spent his time practicing creating spell forms, making sure to dissipate them without actually casting them. He had been pretty happy with his casting speed up to now, with Lightning Bolt and Fire Ball being his main spells and taking just under a second to cast, but he knew he could do better. He was also practicing to try and increase the number of spells he could cast at once. Looking back at Fire Bolt and Mana Bolt, he could cast those in about 2 tenths of a second each and could just manage 6 of either of them at once. Unfortunately those spells weren't very useful anymore so he focused back on the more complicated spells. Eventually his meditation was interrupted by someone standing in front of him and tapping him lightly on the shoulder.

"You awake?" Noah asked.

"Yes, sorry."

"I would have waited but I have a lot of shit to do and you tend to disappear for months at a time."

"What's up?" Felix asked as he stood and walked over to the main table in the chamber and sat down across from Noah.

"First thing, thank you for the… thing in the basement. It's been super helpful replacing the harder to obtain materials with just mana."

"I'm glad it helped."

"It did. Seriously, thank you. As for the World Event, are you going to travel with Atalus?"

"What do you mean?"

"Uh… What's your plan when we get there?"

"Planning on just playing it by ear. See if I can find anything particularly useful or interesting, otherwise just explore I guess."

"Talking with the others at the council meeting, it seems like people are planning to mostly travel in groups representing each city. Some people are going to do their own thing but for the most part it seems like people want to be a part of a group."

"Doesn't it make more sense for the cities to all just work together?"

"Yeah, it does. Most of the cities are planning on working together. If there are multiple objectives though, like in the tutorial, we are planning on splitting up into groups. Each city tries to do one thing."

"What if there are more or less than 8 objectives?"

"It's just a starting point. If someone needs help, we can double up or if someone finished early they can get two of them done."

"Why do you think there will be objectives at all?"

"There may not be, but if it's just a city to explore, we're probably going to try and split the city into 8 or 9 chunks to minimize fighting."

"I see. I'll probably just do my own thing then. Are people going to get mad at me if I show up in their chunk?"

"No no, don't worry about it. It's not that strict. This is more about having some kind of plan ahead of time. There are lots of people doing their own thing too, I believe Jack and Martin are going to team up, Han is doing his own thing, Amani and Jackie too. Thing is some of us don't have the skill set required to break into a vault so we bring people who can and the fighters protect them, then they split the loot. It's a lot easier to coordinate these groups ahead of time and since the cities are so far apart, they tend to be 5 people from the same city."

"Gotcha. I guess let me know if you need anything from me, otherwise I'll probably be doing my own thing."

"Glad you mentioned that, can we come up with a signal so we can call you if we need to?"

"Sure I guess. What did you have in mind?"

"I was thinking just a flare or something like that."

"What if I'm underground or just in a building though? I might not see it."

"Good point. Got any ideas?"

"The only way I know how to communicate over long distances is a soul bond, no offence but I don't want to soul bond with you."

"Yeah I'd rather not do that either. I was hoping for something where anyone from Atalus could call for you."

Not sure I want anyone from Atalus calling on me… Long range communication though…

"Yeah, I really need to find some kind of spell for that."

Got any ideas Grim?

Long distance communication is hard. I suspect most people solve it with system fuckery, as you like to call it.

"I guess go with a flare and hope that I see it… Actually, do you have some of these flares made already?"

"Uh, yeah I have a few, why?"

"Can you fire one so I can show my cat?"

"I guess… Why?"

"If I can't see it, hopefully Nova does. I'll tell Nova to go running in that direction if it sees it."

"Can you teleport to it?"

"No, that would be awesome though."

"You can communicate with Nova though, right? So you'll come running if it finds us in a dire situation?"

"I mean, I can… Let's just say it won't be necessary. Just don't be afraid if they don't look like a cat when they shows up."

"I'll be sure to identify them beforehand."

"That won't tell you if it's a familiar or a monster though, it just tells you what you see."

"I have names on. I'll just see Nova."

"Wait, what?"

"You didn't know? You can change the Identify skill to show names too. Even if people look different, as long as they aren't trying to hide, you can see their name."

"That is… convenient. I'll have to change that."

Felix reached into his robes and picked Nova up handing them to Noah as they walked out of the building. Felix nudged Nova to wake them up and told them to remember Noah as best they could. Noah held the cat and pet their head which they appeared to greatly enjoy as they rolled around and snuggled in his arms. Once they were far enough from the building, Noah pulled a flare out of his inventory and loaded it into a tiny cannon, firing it straight up into the air. Felix told Nova to watch the flare and that if they ever saw the flare in the sky, they should run to it.

He also did his best to communicate to Nova that it should protect any humans as best it could unless they attacked, then it should try and run. He was worried some pour soul was going to attack Nova in it's metal panther form thinking it was a monster and didn't want them to die because of it. In that situation, Nova could survive taking the hit and should just run away. There was the off chance that the enemies in the city were humans, but Felix figured that was very unlikely considering how long the city had been abandoned.

Felix checked the time and noticed it was well past the time he was waiting for to teleport home again so he bid Noah farewell.

"Wait! Aren't you bringing Nova with you?" Noah said as he held out the cat to Felix.

Felix quickly asked Nova if it wanted to return to the tower yet and it seemed to want to stay and hang out in the city, "Nope. It doesn't want to. Don't worry about it, you don't need to protect or watch it at all. It'll be fine."

Felix told Nova not to fight or harm anyone in the city. It sent back all the different foods it smelled in the city and wanted to try causing Felix to chuckle.

"Alright, have fun. I'll come grab them before the world event."

"Uh, do I need to feed it?"

"What? No, don't worry about it. It might take a bite out of a building or something but just make a tab if it does. It's not likely but on the off chance it does I'll fully pay for the damages."

"Wait… What?"

Felix waved to Noah and teleported back to his tower. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .