Felix immediately felt aches and pains all over from the bruising, cuts and incisions. He took that as a good sign though, that he could actually feel his entire body, it meant his nervous system was somewhat intact once more.
Opening his eyes, Felix saw the blank ceiling above him. He slowly sat up and looked around. To his left, he saw Erolan’s body slumped on the ground against the table. Looking down, he saw his own naked corpse and released a breath he only just realized he had been holding.
He pulled himself over to the right side of the table and hopped off onto the ground. He winced at the slight pains that shot up his legs when he landed then carefully picked up and draped his Kraken Slayer set across his body. As soon as each piece was situated, he held the torn edges together and channeled mana into them.
Once his armor was completely repaired, Felix decided to check something with Grim before potentially killing himself once more.
It’s safe now to remove the rings from my soul space?
Yeah.
Are we sure?
Yes I’m sure this time. I can’t think of any way to have your core soul obliterated and still have enough left lying around to survive. It’s not possible. He also couldn’t have even tried to force you out without it.
Should I maybe find all the pieces of his body left lying around first? Just in case?
I think he did that for you, see that pile of body parts over there?
Felix looked in the direction Grim had mentally nudged him in and saw a small pile of heads and torsos, all Erolan’s, against the wall.
Gross. Why? and when?
Probably wanted as much of his soul in tact as possible for the operation, pushing someone out of their own body is no small feat even if you’re in the B grade and they’re in the D grade. As for when, probably that hour where he just disappeared.
So we’re sure… This time…
Yeah. He’d have already come back by now if he was still around.
Even as sure as Grim was, Felix wasn’t convinced. He grasped at anything that might reassure him and pulled up his quest screen
World Event: Special Quest
You, Felix Kade, have decided to forgo most of the treasures of the vaults throughout the city along with the final vault. Instead you have fixated on the fallen kingdom of Kroterra and Erolan’s body along with his personal treasures. Your familiar has already entered the final vault and will act as a participant, subject to the same rules they are.
(1/2) Kill Erolan [Complete]
(2/2) Unbind the remaining pieces of the Devourer Set
Good enough for me.
Felix waited a few minutes to be sure Erolan’s body was dead. He even stored the body along with the pile of limbs and viscera in his inventory to be sure it was all dead, since he knew he couldn’t stow anything living. Then, he pulled the Blood Ring out of his inventory and placed it on the ring finger of his left hand followed by the Soul Ring on his right ring finger, perfectly opposite the blood ring. He bound the two items the same way he had bound the axe and was rewarded with a System screen.
World Event: Special Quest
You have competed the quest.
You have successfully achieved all objectives.
Congratulations.
Felix sighed in relief and took deep breaths.
World Event: Special Quest
Rewards
Rewards will be granted upon leaving the World Event. Would you like to leave the world event now?
Yes.
No.
Yes.
Felix immediately decided to leave because he didn’t want to spend any more time than was necessary in that place. He had already almost gotten himself killed by messing with things far stronger than he was and he had no intention of sticking around and giving himself a chance to make that mistake again.
He knew he would probably do something just as stupid, somewhat accidentally, in the future as he pushed himself to higher levels. For now though, he was happy with the relative safety that was Trenus. There were higher level creatures on Trenus, but nothing he couldn’t handle, he was confident of that. Ironically, he figured that was likely why The System was officially kicking him out. Although, he figured it likely also had to do with protecting the other integrateds, just in case.
Looking around, Felix found that he was right back where he had left, in the central building of Atalus. He had expected to find himself in the reward room but didn’t question it too much. A few other screens appeared before him but he ignored them for now and immediately teleported himself to his tower.
He was happy to find his mana engine whirring away meaning it hadn’t filled itself or exploded while he was gone. It was however, very close to being full. Felix quickly descended to his bed chambers and laid his hand on the podium to spend some mana. He didn’t have the requirements to upgrade it to C grade, not even close, but he did have enough for just about everything else.
He scrolled through a massive array of options but ended up just making the tower a few meters wider. It cost a ton of mana and he figured it would always be useful down the road.
With that complete, Felix finally looked through the screens that had appeared before, that he had initially ignored.
World Event: Special Quest
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Rewards
You have equipped two unbound pieces of the Devourer set.
The remaining portions of Erolan’s Soul has been added to the Soul Ring.
The remainder of Erolan’s body is in your inventory.
The Portal Coordinates to the capital city of the multiverse have been added to your inventory.
Your class has been upgraded.
The crystal, added to your inventory can be activated to store your tower within it.
Note: As around 60% of Erolan’s soul was destroyed, only the remaining portion will be transferred to the Soul Devouring Ring.
It’s super weird that I got the class upgrade without actually having harvested any souls… right?
Maybe that’s not the point of the test?
Then what the hell was it?
I don’t know, it’s just a guess. Don’t ask me, I’m with you on this one. You’re just going to have to find the progenitor and ask them.
Alright, fair enough. I was just expressing my confusion. Speaking of… I take it I’m not getting experience for that kill then?
I think the way the kill happened was too weird. You killed him but… normally you kill something and The System will do something with their soul and your experience right?
Right, but his soul was…
Yeah.
So I don’t even get credit?
Doesn’t seem like it. You didn’t even get a title right?
Oh right. Damn. Stupid System.
It does get… weirder and weirder the more we learn about and… interact with it.
The first thing Felix did was to dump all the pieces of Erolan’s body from his inventory onto the ground. Once there, he reached out with his willpower and used the blood ring to absorb them all. The ring responded immediately and the whole body, along with all the miscellaneous pieces, liquefied into a dark red stream that poured into the ring on his right hand. Once the streams had disappeared, the dust that remained from their corpses was carried away by the wind and left no trace that anything had been there previously.
Next, he searched through his inventory and found the coordinates for the capital city of the multiverse. Pulling it out of his inventory, he was rather surprised to find a simple piece of paper with the coordinates written out. He was expecting a solid disc or metal plate for some reason, not that a piece of paper wasn’t the perfect medium, he just expected something more substantial.
The paper did seem to be some D grade material or better considering how tough it was, it just didn’t fit with what Felix had expected. He didn’t think about it for too long though and memorized the coordinates then had Grim file them away in long term storage just to be sure he always had them.
He stowed the slip of paper in his inventory and then pulled out the crystal that would contain his tower. The crystal that appeared in his hand was about the size of a large marble, a couple inches in diameter. Looking into it, the crystal looked like it was a dark grey or black but, looking around the edges, Felix quickly realized it was actually clear and that something inside of it was giving it the color he was seeing.
[D - Mythic] Pocket Home
[Empty]
This orb contains a limited size pocket dimension within. Once filled, the user may channel mana into the orb then touch it to a surface to open a portal to the contents. Once inside, simply repeat the process to open a portal back to the location you originally left from. When inside, the portal will not exist in the outside world. This pocket dimension is completely isolated from the outside universe. Once filled, the pocket dimension will need to be manually emptied and filled to replace the contents. If the object within the space grows, it is possible for the pocket dimension to be pierced and collapse. The orb will glow red when the bounds of the pocket dimension are being pushed.
Note: To initially fill the pocket dimension, simply channel mana into the orb and press it against the object you wish to move.
Felix thought about waiting to move the tower so he still had somewhere to teleport to on this continent then quickly changed his mind. If there were any issues, he wanted to deal with them right away. To solve his dilemma though, he quickly pulled out some Starmetal and inlay material then crafted what he hoped would work as a portal anchor based on Erolan’s research.
He was reasonably confident it would work as it wasn’t overly complicated or strong. As a backup, he also cast the coordinate measuring spell and filed those coordinates away in his long term memory.
With all his preparations and fail-safes complete, he started channeling mana into the Pocket Home orb. It took a lot more mana than Felix was expecting but after just under a million mana, the orb glowed white and he pressed it against the outside of the tower. He waited a few seconds then suddenly started falling.
Looking down he saw the ground beneath his feet had disappeared and now he fell into the center of a crater a few hundred meters wide. He instantly prepared and cast a simple Feather Fall and allowed himself to float down gracefully.
Looking around, as he fell, he saw that essentially a perfect sphere centered around the base of the tower had simply vanished. He already suspected where it had gone and as soon as he landed, he activated the orb to be sure. He placed the portal on the edge of the crater, figuring the freshly revealed stone was probably solid enough.
This time, the orb took just a few thousand mana before it glowed. He pressed it against the relatively flat stony surface and a 2 meter wide portal appeared, centered around where he had made contact with the orb.
Peering through the portal, Felix saw the mountain surface that had disappeared just in front of him and absolutely nothing else. Inside, it was completely dark with no source of light whatsoever. Felix cast a light spell which revealed his tower at the center of the mountain chunk. Felix stepped through and immediately started floating into the air.
No gravity, no light. Lovely.
He cast a couple of force spells to propel himself over to the tower and flew all the way up to the top where he was happy to find his mana engine whirring away. It seemed to have no trouble pulling in mana even though theoretically this pocket dimension was isolated from the greater universe.
He suspected that either that wasn’t entirely true or there was something about mana he was missing but he didn’t dwell on it too much because it could very well be both. He also had no way of actually figuring it out at the moment so he filed the questions away so he could look into them when he arrived at the capital city.
He was hoping there was a lot more information there than he currently had access to. He knew realistically there had to be, he was just hoping it wasn’t restricted or very expensive. There were quite a few things Felix had come across now that he could realistically have Grim ask The Guild of Answers, but felt like he was better off just finding a book on the subject. He didn’t really know what to ask and posting a torrent of unspecific questions would just be wasting his credits.
What he really needed was a lot more introductory texts so he could drill down on specific topics that arose and he would know what to look into specifically. He was hoping it would be trivial for him to find basic knowledge in the capital city but realistically, he had no idea.
There was no guarantee that the city operated anything like he was used to so he just decided to wait and see. All he could do for the next six months was to prepare himself as much as he could for what was to come then deal with things as they came.
For now, he had a Pocket Home to fix. Over a period of a dozen or so hours, Felix opened up a large area in the basement of his tower where he relocated the mana engine. In the future, he planned on creating channels for mana to travel up the tower so he had a large reserve to tap into from wherever he needed it.
He could then run the mana to lights and other enchantments all over the place. He could also then add a simple light and heat source above the tower and maybe even grow something on the land that had tagged along with his tower. He didn’t have anything in mind at the moment though, it was just a fantasy so, once he finished with the gravity simulating spell, he activated the orb against the wall of the tower and stepped back onto Trenus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .