Felix headed up to the ridge of the volcano and immediately noticed the treasures were gone as well as a good chunk of the gravel that once filled the bottom of the bowl. All that remained of the rock was a single smooth black stone right in the middle of the bowl.
It's gone, Grim, where the hell did it all go?
You found one.
What do you mean?
I'll bet you my back cover that that stone is a sprite.
How would that even work?
I don't know but I prefer my front cover anyways. Not that it matters, cause I'm right.
Felix slid down the bowl and walked right up to the stone. He had the ruby in his hand just in case but it didn't seem to react at all. He bent down and placed the ruby on top of the stone. The ruby rolled off the stone, exactly as Felix expected it would, nothing else happened.
Maybe it really was a bird.
Felix scoured the sky above him to try and spot a bird or other flying creature of some kind but couldn't see anything. He looked back down at the sto-
It's gone? Wait…
Felix looked down and noticed the ruby had disappeared. The stone remained exactly where it had been the last time he had looked at it though.
Looks like it's just a little shy. Offer it something else. Grim said.
I don't have anything else.
Give it another battery I guess, it did eat them after all.
Felix pulled out a mana battery and held it out in his hand. The sprite didn't react at all. Felix changed the attunement to light and the sprite instantly reacted. It leapt from the ground and shot towards the battery in Felix's hand. It wasn't very fast, but it did surprise Felix so he jumped a little and tossed the battery towards the sprite. What was once a giant black rock was now an amorphous blob that surrounded the mana battery in the air then consumed it.
[E - Uncommon] Matter Sprite (Lvl 27)
Are they always Uncommon?
Guild says Matter Sprites are, most sprites are just common though. This one is pretty big but seems normal otherwise. People tend not to notice them as they integrate with their element. Sometimes you might look at a river and it looks normal, but actually half of the water is made up of water sprites.
So what do I do now?
That is a great question. Normally, in my universe, you would keep feeding it until it follows you around then you would train and care for it, develop a bond, until it offered you a soul seed.
I can just use the skill though, right?
Yup, the system will present the offer to the sprite so it can understand it and then complete the exchange for you. You want it to like you enough that it agrees though. If it doesn't work, offer it another attunement and try again. Worst case we grab some more treasures.
Felix mentally activated the skill and focused on the sprite.
[Bond Familiar (Uncommon)]
Would you like to offer the [E - Uncommon] Matter Sprite (Lvl 27) a soul bond?
Stats gained: 0 while bonded, 0 per level.
Note: This is not guaranteed to succeed as it is possible for the target to decline. Ingratiating yourself with the target ahead of time can increase the odds of success.
Yes.
No.
Yes.
Felix waited patiently for a few minutes, watching the sprite on the ground as digested the battery. It didn't seem to move and Felix got no indication that it had even been offered the bond let alone accepted or rejected it. As per Grim's suggestion, Felix pulled out another battery and changed it's attunement as well as slightly increasing it's energy levels. As soon as he altered it, the sprite leapt into the air to eat it. Felix was worried at this point that it might try and eat his hand with it so he threw it forwards and recoiled.
[Bond Familiar (Uncommon)]
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The [E - Uncommon] Matter Sprite (Lvl 27) has accepted your soul bond on the condition that you provide it with at least 5 more mana batteries of different attunements.
Please create and present a soul seed to complete the bond.
Huh, I kind of thought it would just make the soul seed for me.
That was my understanding, people in this universe tend not to understand how bonds actually work. I wonder if this is a you thing or it's because you know how to make a soul seed so it let's you do it?
Felix shrugged and presented 5 more mana batteries from his inventory and shuffled the attunements and energy levels at random. Once it accepted, Felix carved out a miniscule piece of his soul and presented it before him. He expected the sprite to present one as well but instead, the seed he held before him was simply swapped in an instant. Felix quickly planted it in the hole he had made in his soul.
[Bond Familiar (Uncommon)]
The bond is complete. You will be able to see the current level of your familiar at all times. The familiar will grow alongside you and you may attempt to communicate with it, if possible, through this skill.
The sprite gobbled up the mana batteries and simply remained perfectly still on the ground. Felix walked a few steps away but it remained where it was. He tried communicating with it, sending ‘follow' as an intention rather than a word but it still sat there perfectly still.
Should I feed it more? I'm running out of batteries.
Feed it whatever you want, anything really. It should be able to fly, it might be sleeping though. So if feeding it doesn't wake it up, just carry it around.
What if it tries to eat my hand?
It probably can't now that you're soul bonded.
Probably?
Almost definitely?
Felix took all the things he didn't have any use for anymore out of his inventory which was mostly corpses. The sprite didn't move at first then began to consume them one by one until the pile vanished. He fed it the panther as well as some vuloxator corpses he had been holding on to. Then he fed it all of the alpha corpses he had picked up from his natural treasure hunt.
I see now why some people call it a trash sprite.
Once it had consumed all of the corpses it reverted to it's rock form and simply lay there in the middle of bowl. Felix bent down and tentatively touched it. It didn't try to eat him and didn't seem to react at all. He picked it up and held it in his arms.
Hey, can you make yourself lighter? You kind of weigh a crap ton right now.
It once again, did not react. Felix gradually hovered into the air and slowly adjusted to the increase in weight as he descended back to his tower. He was happy to see that this time, his engine hadn't exploded, at least not yet. He was slightly worried the sprite might try to eat the mana engine or his tower so he landed on the mountain about a half kilometer away and put the sprite down for now. Even if he flew away, he would still be able to feel the general location of the sprite so he wasn't worried about losing it, even if it's camouflage was perfect.
On top of his tower, the engine was slightly wobbling slightly but the instability was constant and not growing so there was little to no risk of it collapsing or exploding. He quickly examined the engine to try and find what was causing the shaking. He found that the shape of the shell was currently slightly off and not perfectly aligned so he quickly modified that one the fly. Normally he would be worried about it exploding but it was such a minor change, he figured it shouldn't matter.
Once it was done the slight vibrations slowed to a stop. Felix decided it was good enough for now and headed down into the tower to the lectern to see if it would accept this mana. He found that it not only recognized but also accepted the mana in the center of the battery so, he had accomplished his mission. The upgrade he was most interested in right now was the one to replace the tower's materials from E to D grade materials. It cost a small fee of credits and a massive amount of mana. He was currently generating around 400 mana a second and the upgrade cost 320M mana so it would take almost 9 days to generate enough. He figured he would just save up for that then worry about other upgrades afterwards.
So how do I manually level my familiar?
There are two ways with one being strictly better but vastly more annoying. First, I need your permission to spend a billion credits for that souls and levels question.
A billion?
Yeah turns out, you aren't that rich. The credits you have are E grade credits, 1 million E grade credits makes a D grade credit. So here, on this planet, for now, you are absurdly rich. Give it a few years or leave this universe and you don't really have that much at all.
Well that sucks. Yeah go for it.
Give me a minute to process the response.
Felix waited patiently.
Alright yeah so this is a doozy. Basically, your body has capabilities like strength and perception. Your soul then taps into those. For most of the E grade you are simply leveling your soul and gaining access to new capabilities of your body. For most people, The System handles all of it. It keeps your body and soul progressing so that neither limits the other, for you that's not true anymore, or won't be. Apparently things get weird at the really high grades, like S and Divine but we can worry about that later. Also it probably costs more money than you have to answer that.
Alright you already knew that though, didn't you?
Yeah, here is where it get's interesting. In my universe, people manually level and evolve. You gain experiences which strengthens your soul, then you cultivate your soul and harden it. This results in you gaining power. It's a tedious process that takes a ton of time. Here, the system seems to do most of the work for you and simply levels you up when you gain experiences. The more impactful the experience, the more experience points you get. The other weird thing is it seems the system uses a portion of the souls from enemies that are killed to strengthen your soul. That's why fighting in a party greatly reduces the experience gained. It's both much safer and therefore less impactful, and you share the soul with the party.
Wow there must not have been many high grade beings in your universe.
Yeah the distribution was worse. That's the other thing, grades are just an arbitrary splitting of power levels. In my universe people continuously increase in power, here that continuous curve was just broken into segments and you get skipped and jumped between them. Where people would have to slowly progress and upgrade, you get an evolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .