Felix continued his pattern of working out in the morning followed by practicing his Dragon Dance Steps. He upped both of those to 3 hours each and observed marked improvements in both. For working out, he was gaining approximately the same stats as before but now he wasn't reaching the limit of his equipment now that he was using his staff and plates. Before the integration, he would have to follow a plan that would strain his muscles appropriately with rest time in between designed by a professional. Now, he could manually force his muscles to repair themselves at the cost of more energy so he could theoretically just sit there and perform the same exercise at his limit forever. He also didn't need to worry about diet since his body was converting mana to energy, entirely skipping the need for food and watching his macros and calories.

With the Dragon Dance, he now knew all of the steps and he was working on making his body comfortable with them as well as committing the actual motions to memory. He also needed to make them faster, much faster. He still felt like he was practicing yoga or like he was doing a meditative dance. Before using it in combat, he wanted to feel like the stances and steps were fast enough to at least do damage or avoid an attack. Ideally he got to the point where he could perform the steps as fast as his body would allow, but he was still a long way from using it in combat let alone his ideal goal.

For the remainder of each day he spent 12 hours affinizing the staff to his soul which he actually completed much earlier than he was expecting, in just a couple of days. After that he switched over to affinizing individual ingots in his inventory. By the end of the month, he had affinized 74 ingots and placed them separated from the rest of the ingots in his inventory. The remaining 6 hours each day were spent creating a blowtorch spell which was much harder than it sounded.

Felix mentally knew the highest melting point of any material on earth, before the integration, was around 4000 Celsius which meant now it could be even higher. Unfortunately, that temperature was hard to work with, even if he could produce it. He started with a simple channeled fire node then added a heat node and a force node to keep everything contained. He spent some time tuning the ratios of each node until it was perfect then slowly increased the temperature. As he did, he needed to move the spell away from himself as it grew increasingly hot, and it was a good thing he did as tiny explosions began erupting around the flame.

He eventually realized it was moisture so he created a shell of solid mana then removed the moisture from it and tested inside of that. That ended up helping a ton as the mana shield acted as an insulator and didn't care about temperature at all, it was completely unaffected. He tested his spell on random stones he found outside and Soul-Steal ingots. He managed to melt both but had to tune his mana shell to get a good seal as the expanding air kept pushing it away.

Once that was done, a week or so into the month, Felix spent his time creating as many mana batteries as he could which ended up being about 120. Overall, he had almost 200 single use batteries with about 250k mana in each. He was planning on giving 30 to Nova and he gave 10 to Grim, just in case. When there were just a few hours left before the world event, Felix teleported to Atalus and found a large crowd of people outside of the city council building. He flew over them and walked into the building to find Noah, Benjamin, Will, Alan and Amelia all sitting around the table.

Everyone but Amelia was decked out in equipment and looked ready for battle. Benjamin wore a familiar set of plate armor, the one Felix had enchanted for Henry back in the tutorial along with an impressive looking axe. Will and Alan both wore dark brown leathers with Alan's being a little more thorough in it's defense and Will's being less restrictive. They were all D grade and looked human, but Felix didn't bother checking and only saw their names now that he had changed that setting on identify. Nova was sleeping on the table while Amelia rubbed their belly.

Felix walked up to the table and a few of them nodded to him but otherwise continued their conversation. He walked up to Benjamin, who wasn't currently talking to anyone, "I didn't realize you were the recipient of that armor. I enchanted it."

"I figured and I wasn't. It was some idiot who never ended up using it. After the tutorial, they quickly ran out of money so I managed to buy it for pretty cheap."

"Now that your D grade though, is it worth it?"

"Most stuff still works fine. I guess you had some crazy enchants huh? E grade materials are still useful, it's not like I can break a steel beam or anything. This armor should protect me quite well through most of D grade, at least the first half. The stuff that stops working is the complicated enchantments. Simple stuff will work fine, just be less effective, really complicated stuff becomes useless."

"Really? I remember Henry thinking differently, which is why we didn't make the enchantments very durable on that armor."

"Henry is a smith, he's got a different perspective. He can swap his armor out every month for something better he comes up with. He probably never even considered how useful E grade armor would be in the D grade. For us normal folk, this'll be fine."

"I guess that makes sense. Yeah I was mostly wearing cloth with enchantments. That seems unfair that I have to replace my equipment more often."

"It's also unfair that armor and steel costs way more than wool, cotton and even silk. Seems pretty even to me."

"Yeah… I guess. I guess it doesn't matter too much for me considering I enchant most of my stuff myself."

"Speaking of which, any chance you could enchant my axe? Commissioned it in preparation for the world event and it's my first D grade item." Benjamin said with a large toothy smile as he held out a large axe somewhere between a great axe and a battle axe. It had a slightly yellow tinge to the metal and was very shiny, reflective even.

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"Uh… Yeah sure. I don't have time for anything complicated though, just a simple stronger swing, maybe some durability. That ok?"

"Really? That's more than I was hoping for. I was kind of kidding, figured you didn't have time but I'll take it for sure."

"What material is it made of? Is it brittle or soft?"

"Henry said it was Audrine, said it was a little soft for a weapon material but it's D grade so it'll hold up better than what I had before. Just have to be on top of sharpening it."

"Alright, got it." Felix took the axe from Benjamin. He quickly designed an enchantment in his head that would increase the elasticity and hardness of the metal as well as make the swings faster and stronger. He also left room for more enchantments in case he had time and quickly pulled out his Parroukan feather enchanting quill. He found that even though it was an E grade quill, it mostly worked fine. It required more mana and more effort to keep it stable as it seemed to want to shake more than enchant, but it was usable and Felix had gotten used to it. He finished the enchantment in just under an hour giving him enough time to add a cosmetic enchantment. After thinking about which color of glow to add he realized he could probably add a slightly more complicated enchantment instead.

He asked Benjamin's opinion, interrupting his conversation with Will and Alan briefly, "Fire, Ice or Lightning?"

"Sorry?" Benjamin turned to Felix and shook his head.

"Fire, Ice or Lightning?"

"Fire!" Will called out.

Felix nodded and got back to work. In the gaps where he had planned on adding simple light nodes, Felix instead added Fire nodes with a tiny shape node and force node to direct it. The Fire was almost entirely cosmetic as it wouldn't get nearly hot enough to do significant damage, but it should look super cool. Felix stood from the table and stepped back to test out the axe. He gently pushed his own mana into the enchantment so he didn't have to wait for it to charge from the ambient mana and gave it a few test swings.

Benjamin, Will and Alan had stopped their conversation to watch and their eyes lit up as Felix swung the axe and it's head lit on fire. The fire trailed behind the axe as it swung with nothing keeping it in place on the head. Felix felt a little bit of imbalance as he swung it so he adjusted the enchantment with his quill before testing it again and deciding it was satisfactory. He walked over and handed it to Benjamin who looked like he was ready to tear up a little as he took the axe in his hand.

"I… Thank you… How much do I owe yo-"

"Don't worry about it. Seriously, it's no problem." Felix nodded to him and then walked away before Benjamin could insist, heading around the table to Noah and Amelia. Benjamin stood up to give the axe a few test swings, Will and Alan standing behind him a dozen meters away. He almost fell over on his first swing, not expecting the stronger swing, but quickly got the hang of it. As Benjamin swung, his face lit up and his smile grew.

Once he was happy with it, he nodded in Felix's direction again and then handed it to Will who wanted to give it a few test swing's as well. He swung it and the axe immediately flew out of his hand pulling him forwards onto the floor as the axe embedded itself in a pillar next to him. Luckily he had the foresight to swing it away from anyone so no one got hurt, well not physically. Benjamin helped Will to his feet while Alan chortled and bent over laughing. Will joined in and shortly afterwards Benjamin. Alan also tried the axe but he knew what was coming so he held on and swung it very carefully.

"How was Nova? Not too much trouble?" Felix asked Noah and looked at Amelia too as she was the one currently dealing with the cat.

Noah shrugged, "I know you said I didn't need to feed it but it kept begging for food whenever we walked by restaurants so I uh… well I added it to your tab. No buildings, but it did eat a suit of armor at some point. It did ask me, but uh… I didn't have it in me to refuse so we bought it."

Felix shrugged as well, "Sure sure, how much?"

Noah winced as he said, "The total tab is about 104k."

Felix reached out his hand and offered it to Noah who gingerly took it. Felix transferred him 115k, "I added a babysitting fee."

"Oh… Thanks, you didn't… It mostly just napped on my shoulder or followed Amelia around. I was worried at first it would fall behind with those tiny little legs but it didn't seem to care how fast I walked."

Felix smiled, "Glad it all worked out. Worst case it probably would have been fine without you, just walking around the city. Really you're more like it's wallet than anything."

"Yeah, I got that impression."

"You want me to take care of her while you're in the world event? or are you taking her with you?" Amelia asked Felix.

"You aren't coming with us?"

"Hell no. The list of shit I need to build is way too long to take a vacation. Besides, what would I build in a tomb?"

"That's a fair point. I think Nova will want to come along."

"You sure it's safe for her in there?"

"Uh… Yes." Felix answered, only hesitating because he realized Amelia didn't realize how ridiculous that question was.

Felix looked at Nova, You want to come to the world event? He asked with mental images of what he suspected the event would entail. Nova immediately rolled over, surprising Amelia and looked up at Felix, meowed then flew up onto his head before jumping into his hood.

"Wait, it can fly?" Noah asked.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. If you see Nova roaming around in the tutorial, don't worry about them, and just don't hit them."

"You're not going to have her with you?" Amelia asked with a shocked expression.

"Hell no. Again, don't worry, they'll be fine."

Amelia looked at Noah with a concerned expression but he just shrugged. Amelia sighed then turned to Felix, "By the way, they are a her right?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Noah and I made a bet and it just feels right. Although it doesn't actually have any genitalia so… Noah's bet is that they're male."

"I'm betting on neither and it's actually some kind of shapeshifting monster." Will said with a smirk.

"Dragon in disguise." Alan said.

Benjamin chuckled and shrugged when the others looked at him.

"Uh, it is a shapeshifter, though I wouldn't call it a monster… I guess Will wins?"

"Wait, what? Really?" Will said, "I was mostly kidding around."

"I knew it was a shapeshifter, just figured it was male." Noah shrugged.

"Yeah I asked, they don't know. They didn't understand the concept of sex or gender."

"So what are they really?" Amelia asked.

"A Matter Sprite. Technically a cursed one…"

"Cursed?" Will and Alan said in unison.

"Yeah, it's cursed with hunger. So far it hasn't been an issue though."

World Event

Welcome to the first ever Trenus world event! You were among the first 10,000 individuals to hit D grade and have been invited to participate. Anything you store in your inventory or have equipped will be teleported there with you and the same will apply when you return.

You will be teleported to the world event in 5 minutes.

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