He hopped off of Nova still in the mines, a kilometer or so away from the edge of the undercity. Nova remained in their larger form and followed Felix while Amani hopped off and took up the rear. Felix dimmed the light and walked right up to the edge of Kroterra. It wasn't difficult to find a Devoured and lead it away from the city with a couple of Mana Bolts.

[D] Devoured (Lvl 281)

Felix quickly dismissed the idea of trying to deal with it himself, which would have taken longer than Felix would have liked as well as potentially endangering Amani. Since this was mostly to prove a point, it was far more efficient for Nova to take it out, though the Devoured's level already had Amani stepping back into the mines, getting ready to run. With a small mental nudge, Nova pounced over a hundred meters into the Devoured, knocking them to the ground. Their claws ripped through the Devoured's tight black skin a few times then Nova latched onto it's head with it's maw and ripped it free of it's body.

Felix turned around and saw Amani standing almost a hundred meters behind him. He gave her a few seconds to process then started walking towards her when she still hadn't moved a few moments later. Felix reached out and snapped his fingers a couple times in front of her face causing Amani to briefly shake her head and snap out of her day dream.

"You ok?"

"Uh… Yeah."

‘You kind of zoned out there'… Nah, not worth it.

"Now you see why we can't let anyone else know about this? I don't want anyone overestimating themselves and thinking they can come down here."

"What if they find it on their own?"

Felix shrugged, "It might happen, not much we can do about that. Just hope they're smart and fast enough to get out."

"Nova… The cat…"

"Level? 353."

"How?"

"Fighting and killing things." Felix shrugged.

"No- Well- Duh, I mean how is that your familiar?"

"They weren't always this high level. I found them at 27, they just spent the last few months in the wilds of Trenus."

"Bullshit. That's way too fast."

Felix shrugged, "I don't know what to tell you. Just don't wander away from Nova and you'll be fine."

"Wait- What do you mean? Where are you going?"

"There are some things I need to do in the undercity."

"You can't go in there. Your only at 163, and your class is only 135. You're going to kill yourself. We need to leave. Right now."

"You can see my level?"

"What? Uh- Yeah, I have a skill to identify creatures."

"Huh. I'll be fine. It takes a while to kill them, but it's not impossible. Just need to make sure they can't get to you." Felix said as he started walking away. Amani reached forwards to stop him but Nova held her back with their body, having understood what was happening.

Felix darted off into the undercity, taking his light with him. He knew Nova could produce fire and assumed Amani would have some way to deal with the darkness herself. In the worst case scenario, Nova could protect her and if she wanted to leave, Nova could escort her easily. The hardest part would be communication, but Felix had full faith in them to figure it out. He ran through the streets, avoiding the Devoured as much as he could until he found a building he had previously found and cleared out. He walked up to the second floor in a now empty bedroom.

Hey Grim.

Hello.

So the Devourer set, the seals. How do we find them?

Binding a sentient soul to an object requires an extreme amount of precision and time, at least to do it well. Considering how rushed they were, the person who created the seals, there's no way they're perfect. If they aren't perfect, they'll act like a natural treasures. You'll be able to sense them, but so will everything else down here. Creatures will sense them, be drawn to them, try and protect them, to ultimately try and use them.

Lovely. So the strongest Devoured will be surrounding them. Guess that means one or all of them are in the castle then.

Not necessarily. It's not going to be that loud. I suspect it will be a local maxima in level, not a global one.

Great. So only Devoured in the 400s instead of the 700s and above. If that's the case, what's in the castle?

Could be a seal, you might be right it might be all of them. Who knows? Maybe it's some other natural treasure.

If I'm going to fight the strongest Devoured in here, I need to figure out a way to kill them efficiently and ideally get stronger and… I can't really gain levels.

You could level your profession.

The stats are nice, but increasing my intelligence hasn't increased my damage for some time now.

You could try creating new spells.

I thought about that. Am I realistically going to be able to create something that helps me kill the Devoured?

Sure. Just figure out a spell using blades or something.

I've tried that before. Creating blades out of mana isn't great. The blades aren't that strong and if they ever break, I have to run away to recreate them. Ideally I need actual metal blades that I can control with mana. I just don't see that happening right now. I'm leaning towards just using the axe.

That is definitely faster. Just doesn't really seem to suit you as much.

I agree. A spell is definitely ideal. Do you know any spells that would work?

I can't give you any spells, stupid forced convictions and all. I can tell you… no. I don't know any. Honestly though, I don't know that many spells. So what's the plan then with the axe?

I need to be stronger, literally strong. I want to modify my muscles but before I do that, I think I need to make my bones stronger. I don't want to accidentally fracture a bone or make my muscles stronger than my bones can handle.

Good call. Let me look through the experiments… Try looking at 31, here's the experiment log.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Pulling the corpse out of his inventory and placing it on the floor, experiment 31 was a race Felix recognized immediately, it was a minotaur. The corpse was easily 50% taller than Felix and proportionally much wider. It's shoulders and hips were wide and it's arms and legs were long and thick, all to support massive rippling muscles that differed only slightly in structure from a human's. In terms of it's bones, there were the exposed horns but Felix was wary of using them as a template as he figured they might be structured differently from internal bones.

Instead, he morphed his staff into a saw and cut right through one of it's legs and arms then cut off a small slice from the bones in each. Due to the way Erolan had preserved the corpses, they still contained blood so it was a messy affair. Felix did his best to stow the body and the extras as soon as he could to keep them preserved but he still ended up wasting a lot of blood.

Pulling the two samples into his soul space, Felix started by examining the leg bone and comparing it to his own. Structurally, they were essentially the same with three main parts, bone marrow which contained nerves, blood vessels and created blood cells. Then in the thick parts of the bone there was bone that looked like a sponge that was filled with similar stuff to what marrow was made of. Lastly, there was the hard part of the bone making up the vast majority of it's skeleton. This was what seemed to be giving bones their structural rigidity and their signature hardness.

Luckily, the Minotaur bones were very similar to his own in structure. He didn't plan on touching anything expect the hard part of his bone because he didn't want to mess with the marrow that produced blood cells. He wasn't knowledgeable or confident enough for that yet. Not that he thought modifying his skin or muscles was any less risky, he was just more confident he would notice the side effects before it was too late.

The big difference between his bones and the minotaur's bones, other than them just being bigger, was the fact that the hard bone was made up of a different material it seemed. Taking a closer look, the hard part of the bone consisted of a network of cells that constructed bone matter around themselves. Lastly, he noticed an outer layer covering the bone, both his and the minotaur's, though the minotaur's was thicker and it's fibers were much stronger.

The process to upgrade his bones was tedious and painful at first and involved using another experiment with cells that would eat his bone first. Once he created a cavity he would replace the cells that previously created his bones with modified ones using the minotaur's bones as a template. The other layer was a similar process but used even more temporary cells. He made sure to only replace the humerus in his left arm and by the time he was finished, had fallen into a rhythm of sorts that was much faster than when he had begun.

He figured that in the worst case scenario, having his left arm out of commission was better than not being able to run away. His right hand was his dominant one too so he would still be able to hold and use tools in that situation. He thought about using a smaller bone at first, but wanted to use a bone where the effects would be obvious and easy to test. Luckily, he had an easy test stowed safely away in his inventory.

Pulling out the great axe, experiment 43, Felix simply swung it using his left arm to guide it followed by his right. His muscles were still obviously being torn apart with each and every swing, but the bone in his upper left arm wasn't fracturing slightly with every swing. He planned on waiting just a little bit to make sure there were no other side effects, but so far it seemed to have worked out.

He quickly checked both of his legs and found that the fibrous tissue on his leg seemed normal but the regenerative layer on his other leg was slowly growing, like his skin was inflating. It was very slow as it didn't have anywhere to go, but eventually, it would cause his skin to become as thick as a trolls. He spent a few hours fiddling with it and eventually incorporated another experiment, a plant this time that reminded him of a fungi.

According to the experiment log, the plant would spread out indefinitely if it wasn't eaten or stopped. As it spread out, it would form a new plant completely independent of the original and they would continue to duplicate in every direction. These individual plants were tiny and consisted of just a small collection of cells. Each one had it's own control center cell, the brain of the plant that would direct and control the rest of the plant as well as communicate with the other plants around it.

Felix modified some of his own cells in the image of these control center cells and used them to keep the regenerative layer dormant while there was no injury to repair. He was glad this solution ended up working because the alternative was to shed his skin every few weeks or more as he recently learned trolls had to do.

Before looking at his muscles in any capacity, Felix headed out to properly test his bones as well as test the axe on the higher level Devoured. He wasn't proficient enough with the axe, and it was simply too big, to use it with precision so he avoided any alleys or tight corridors. Instead he found his way to a large open area in the Kroterra that seemed to have once been a town square or park. He used a couple Mana Bolts to pull a Devoured's attention and drag it into the square then readied himself and the axe.

The Devoured rushed at him, using all four limbs to run, resembling something out of a horror movie as it screeched. Ten meters from Felix, the creature sprung into the air and reached it's claws forwards, reaching for his face. Felix stepped aside, out of arms reach and swung upwards as hard as he could with the axe. His timing was off and instead of bisecting the creature he simply dug the blade into it's thigh. The axe dragged the creature's body with it as it swung all the way over Felix's head. The creature's body was launched off in mid air and collided with a building on the side of the square while the axe's head dug itself into the ground on the other side of Felix.

The creature pulled itself to it's feet and ran back towards it's prey, clearly favoring the leg that had been struck. Felix wrenched on the axe and just barely managed to pull it free in time to dive aside and dodge the creatures swipe. It managed to cut his leg but luckily it landed on the fibrous thigh and his modifications resulted in scratches on his leg instead of his leg being shredded. They both took similar time to recover so they squared off again, this time Felix rushing the creature as well. Instead of dodging to the side, Felix swung the axe straight downwards hoping to cut the creature in two length wise. While he did manage to strike it and stop it's advance before it struck him, his aim was off and he only cut through it's torso, to the side of it's head.

The Devoured jumped back and Felix wrenched his axe out of the ground once again. The creature's entire left side was useless as it's shoulder and arm hung loosely to the side, completely detached from the waist up. Of course, instead of running, the crazy zombie monster just ran at Felix once again. Possibly the most disturbing part to Felix, was the fact that the injury was completely dry, he had expected the creature to be trailing ichor behind it. Instead, it clearly didn't need anything resembling blood or liquid. The fact that it was so different, so alien to what he knew was simply disturbing. It also made him rethink his next attack. He had planned on beheading the creature but decided against that. His best bet at this point, was simply delimbing it and removing any threat it posed, whether or not that killed it.

Ding You have slain a [D] Devoured (Lvl 294)

Luckily with how injured the creature was, whether or not it seemed to realize it, it didn't pose much threat to Felix anymore and he was able to take it out fairly efficiently. Before any other Devoured caught wind of him, even if their perception was abysmal, Felix hurried back to a safe building and meditated. Even though the creature had only hit him a single time and barely scratched him, he was missing a sixth of his health, mostly from swinging the axe around. Turning his attention internally, Felix inspected his body and saw his muscles were torn to shreds and his bones were fractured all over the place. His body was clearly not built to handle the axe, at least not yet. Looking at the humerus in his left arm, the bone was entirely intact and seemed to be uninjured.

So long as he didn't notice any side effects in the next few days, Felix planned on modifying the rest of his bones, at least the large structural ones. He was wary of modifying the small ones in his ear for fear of losing or altering his hearing forever. He would have to look at the Minotaur or maybe even some other creature's ear for guidance. While he waited to be sure about the modifications to his bones, Felix planned on scouring the kingdom for any sign of the seals. If he could at least locate them, he could figure out what he was up against and maybe even form some kind of plan.

Before that though, Felix quickly went through his morning routine of Dragon's Dance and lifting weights. It wasn't morning and it had been slightly over a day since he had last done it but he figured now was the best time because he wanted to average doing it about once a day. He realized he should probably also do some stretching and mobility work. The Dragon's Dance incorporated some, but especially if he was going to modify his muscles and actually stress his body with the axe, stretching should help with fighting and staving off injuries. At least, that's what he remembered from when he was working out back on earth. He did a quick series of stretches, mostly focusing on large areas for now.

Once he was done, Felix headed out of the building and deeper into the kingdom of Kroterra. Instead of heading straight for the center of the kingdom, where he knew the lake, cliff and castle were, he headed east. He crossed over the river, out of the commercial district and into the poorer area of the residential districts. It was possible the seals, multiple or even just one of them were in the castle. It was likely even, but Felix didn't think he was ready to face the Devoured guarding the castle yet so instead he decided he would deal with the rest of the kingdom, leaving the castle for last. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .