Once the sun started rising again, Felix headed out to the Adventurer’s Guild where he signed himself up for a simple extermination job. It wouldn’t pay him much and were he not hunting as many souls as he could possibly find, he wouldn’t have bothered with this job. The job itself was recommended for low D grades but unfortunately, everything else that matched his requirements were too high level to be efficient.

He brought the portal coordinates to the teleportation hub and walked through onto a barren and desolate planet. He cast his air bubble spell to keep the dust out of his mouth and fought with the wind as he approached the canyon ahead of him.

The assignment was to clear out a the monster nest within the canyon because they kept climbing out and disturbing the research base nearby. The reason Felix chose this job in particular was that the monsters were actually large bugs. He was hoping that, like bugs, there would be a massive quantity of them.

Felix walked over to the edge of the canyon and looked downwards. Now that he was looking into the canyon, he saw the walls of the canyon actually widened towards the bottom making it seem more like a cave with an open top.

He dropped down into the gorge and caught himself with spells then flew along the edge looking for any sign of the bugs he was searching for. He flew for a few kilometers before he finally spotted a hole in the wall of the gorge that seemed to be big enough for large bugs to crawl through.

Felix cast his Mage Armor spell along with a Mana Shield in front of him then floated over and into the cave. The cave twisted, winded and branched a thousand times before Felix encountered the first bug.

[D - Common] Grelmite (Lvl 246)

The bug looked almost like a giant spider with 8 legs and a single carapace covered, rotund central body. It was mostly red and had either two sets of pincers or 4 exposed teeth, Felix couldn’t really tell the difference.

He struck it with an overpowered Lightning Bolt and it instantly died.

Ding You have slain a [D - Common] Grelmite (Lvl 246)

He continued venturing deeper into the caves and encountered a handful more Grelmites which he used to tune in the exact amount he needed to kill them with a single Lightning Bolt. He found if he overpowered his Lightning Bolts just thrice over, they all died instantly. A little less than thrice and the highest level Grelmites barely survived.

After almost an hour of aimlessly wandering through the caves, Felix decided he needed a way to find the core of the nest. He flew back out of the cave system and into the gorge where he hunted down a whole variety of creatures. Some fish, some grazing and a few birds. He made sure to keep their bodies mostly in tact then stowed them in his Soul Space.

He flew back over to the caves and dropped the corpses in a pile on the ground then pulled out his Starmetal staff and morphed the end into a blade. He lacerated the corpses then stowed the now sword staff and cast a wind spell to waft the scent further into the caves.

Finally, he backed up and dug an alcove into the cave wall just a hundred meters or so away from the bait. He then wrapped himself in his cloak in it’s shadow form and did his best to stay still, quiet and hidden. He didn’t need to be invisible he just didn’t want to deter or distract his intended target from the bait.

While he waited, he practiced his spell formation speed and mana control range. He made sure not to cast anything offensive so he didn’t deter his prey if they had a danger sense of any kind.

He didn’t have to wait more than an hour or so before he started to feel the ground vibrating almost imperceptibly. A few moments later, he a small handful of Grelmites that scurried in from one of the caves.

At first they started to tear into the bait but luckily they stopped themselves after just a bite or two each and, as Felix had hoped, they carried the rest off down a tunnel.

Felix followed behind them from just a couple dozen meters away. He didn’t want to risk losing them and they didn’t seem to notice or care. At first he tried to be as stealthy as he could manage but he quickly realized it didn’t matter when one of the mites turned and smelled him before turning back around and ignoring him.

He followed them down dozens of kilometers of tunnels and though he tried to map his way back out, if his actual map weren’t recording the path, he’d be completely lost.

Even with his Memory Palace, he had a hard time tracking the tunnels that constantly split and wound in three dimensions. He had started to create a kind of code for the directions he turned at the forks with a unit vector to indicate the three dimensional direction but he completely lost track of things relatively quickly. He always knew which way was up but he just couldn’t keep track of the horizontal directions and the tunnels themselves were too warped to act as reference points.

Luckily it didn’t matter because his map seemed to be tracking things for him.

As he delved further into the network of tunnels, following the Grelmites, the caves were mostly the same size until suddenly, they started to grow so that multiple Grelmites could walk side by side.

The Grelmites he was following handed off the stinking pile of corpses then turned around and headed back into the caves. Felix followed the ones carrying the bait he had set out as they passed the corpses from one Grelmite to another until the Grelmites started to care that he was following them.

Instead of just ignoring him, Felix followed the Grelmites to a section of the cave where larger and darker Grelmites grouped up in front of him to block his way. He was surprised at first that they didn’t just attack him but while he appreciated their willingness to be peaceful, he was much less willing.

He absorbed their souls and bodies into his rings then continued following his bait. He was fully expecting the rest of the Grelmites all around him to start attacking as soon as he had but they didn’t seem to care at all.

He continued down and followed the food all the way until he finally reached his destination, the hive. He didn’t start killing everything in sight just yet and instead started walking around and exploring a little. He ended up very quickly casting a sphere of fresh air around his head because the hive itself smelled awful.

He quickly found out why as he looked into a room filled with corpses and rotting flesh for the mites to eat. A little ways from the food storage he found a room filled with green liquid, eggs and larva.

He figured at that point that he had found the center of the hive more or less so he turned to the Grelmites scurrying all around him and just started blasting them. He stuck exclusively to Lightning Bolts at first because it was the most mana efficient but quickly realized in tight spaces, a Flame Thrower was actually better off because he could cook a whole swarm with a single spell.

He flew through the air darting around the hive, raining death on the thousands of Grelmites below him. Both of his rings were constantly activated causing countless ribbons of golden white and crimson to stream into his hands from every direction.

He made sure to have his Soul Reap skill disabled so he could use all of the Grelmite’s souls for his new layer. He figured he wasn’t losing out on many stats and any that he was, his new suffused soul layer would easily make up for.

He almost had to stop activating his Blood Ring just a few thousand Grelmites in because it actually got to the point where it was full. Instead of refusing to absorb more though, it conveyed the feeling of fullness directly to Felix. He had, for the first time since the very early days of the tutorial, felt physically full through the ring.

He wasn’t actually full, his stomach was completely empty, so it took him a little while to figure out that his soul was conveying the experience of being full. His body was interpreting that and so he actually felt full.

Instead of deactivating it though, Felix pushed the ring to just absorb everything for itself. Normally, a portion of the bodies it absorbed was stored, a portion was used to bolster his Persona and lastly a small portion went to feeding the ring itself.

Now, Felix adjusted the ratios so all of it went to the ring because it wasn’t actually helping his Persona anymore. He had already gotten all the stats he could from them.

He had no idea how much the ring could absorb and what feeding the ring would even do but he did so anyways because he had no other use for thousands of Grelmite corpses.

Eventually, his soul ring too, filled to the brim though, it wasn’t until he had scorched the majority of the hive. This was much easier to deal with and he simply dumped all of the souls into his Soul Space, forcing them in and compressing them all down.

He continued to hunt down every Grelmite in sight until he could no longer hear nor see a single one of them scurrying about.

Ding You have slain 53,289 [D - Common] Grelmite (Lvl 173-294)

Just so he could say he had completed the job, Felix scorched the food and egg rooms until there was nothing left but ash. He quickly memorized the portal coordinates of the most central location in the hive then he followed his map back out the winding corridors.

Once he popped back out into the gorge, at the bottom this time, he dropped to the ground and pulled out a number of the spell tablets in his Soul Space. He tested and iterated a new enchantment based on the one he had used to distract the corrupted drakelings and then sent them flying into the Grelmite tunnels.

He continued pouring the tablets into every opening he saw until he had gone through about a hundred of them and was satisfied. The tablets worked just as he had hoped they would, they flew off randomly down the caves then exploded which Felix was hoping would cause the caves to collapse and seal themselves.

He knew it wasn’t going to completely seal off the hive but he figured it would at least make it harder for them to recover. Once that was done, he opened a portal to the center of the hive and started blasting spells through it until everything through the portal had collapsed.

Finally he opened a portal back to Telviras and stepped through. He quickly shot off to the Adventurer’s Guild and informed them that the job was complete. They informed the contract holder who had to verify Felix’s work so he would only be paid a few days later, not that it mattered to him, the money was an after thought.

The whole job had taken Felix just a handful of hours so instead of heading back to Inscripticae, Felix sat down in the guild hall and started meditating. He immediately moved himself to his Soul Space where he started the long and arduous work of compressing all the anima he had collected and purged.

He had no intention of getting through all the anima he had collected but he did want to try and estimate if he needed any more or not. Luckily, he was pretty sure he had enough. If he did need more, it wasn’t much at all.

He happily flew back to Inscripticae just an hour later and checked in with Aldahn who still didn’t have anything for him. He sat down to start working on his soul in his Pocket Home but before he got too absorbed in it, he quickly checked how much longer he had until he had to go to Eramith.

Just 304 days left. Wow. Honestly, it’s going by a lot faster than I thought it would.

Yeah. You’ve been pretty busy though. You had a ton of things you wanted to do and learn outside of the integration. You still haven’t enhanced your mind or found much on spell formations.

Yeah, I still have so much I want to do. It almost feels like there’s more to do now than there was before.

Isn’t that just how it works? There’s always more to do and all answers lead to more questions?

I don’t know about all answers.

You know what I mean.

It definitely feels that way right now. On top of the things I want to find, learn and do, I have so many questions. Gods and afterlives, how the hell does all that work? Primordials, who or what are they? The System, why is it being weird? Is it actually degrading? Is it working as intended? Someone must have created it right, considering you didn’t have a System in your universe? Or is it actually a natural being that… evolved into what it is now? What’s up with Dragons? What’s up with that thing the Ravens stole, even the echo of it, or whatever that was felt… familiar and alien at the same time?

I didn’t actually get to feel that one myself, your soul seemed to have shielded me. Hopefully you can at least answer that one on the next mission with Shade’s Wrath to see the Ravens.

Yeah hopefully.

Refocusing himself on the task at hand, Felix began compressing the anima in his Soul Space in earnest. At first, he planned on compressing everything to satisfaction then integrating it all at once into his soul but he quickly decided against that. He realized all the anima was gradually decompressing itself when he let it be so, he needed to use it as soon as possible after compressing it manually.

Felix took streams of anima from his Soul Space, just small ribbons, and compressed them piece by piece. Each one he held onto with as much focus as he could muster as he dragged them into the second layer of his soul where he fused and merged them in.

He had Grim notify him once a day through their soul bond to check in with Aldahn but over the course of just over a term, there was nothing. Krinitor was hard at work on a pair of projects for personal clients he got through his parents but, nothing Felix was allowed to shadow.

He did update him on his outfit but, there wasn’t much to update him on. They were in the process of negotiating and acquiring materials which was apparently the most time consuming part of making all their commissions simply because of the rarity of the materials they used. They had contacts and apparently, one of the most impressive networks of suppliers but it still took a lot of time.

Their suppliers have also been unusually busy for the last few epochs or so, similar to the Adventurer’s Guild, not that anyone seemed to have an explanation as to why. Either way, Krinitor assured Felix it would be done in just a few more terms which was well within his timeline of when he had to leave for Eramith.

Over the course of the 50 days he spent compressing and fusing anima into his soul, he got much better at compressing anima. His control over souls and anima in general was noticeably but still not drastically better. He could tell the difference but he had only really been able to compress about 50% more anima at once.

Nova had also spent the vast majority of the time slurping away at the deformed chunk of Demitium which they had finally completely consumed. In doing so, they had also leveled up by a significant amount considering they hadn’t fought or killed anything.

[D - Cursed] Nova, Ravenous Matter Spirit (Lvl 500)

She spent the rest of the time napping or rather, when Felix checked in with her through his soul bond, working on digesting something. He didn’t bother them though as he was entirely preoccupied.

The entire process ended up being seamless though, he had proceeded with caution at every step. Most of all, he was extraordinarily careful when he was attaching the new layer of his soul to his brain. He attached his soul in very small increments and made absolutely sure everything was working as intended.

Ironically, his caution was the biggest issue. As he connected small parts of his brain at first, those parts were different enough to interfere with the rest of his brain. From that point onwards, he didn’t allow his consciousness to re-enter his body for a few days while he ensured the entirety of his mind was connected and affinized.

In the end, the process was the single most valuable thing he had ever done. He had felt his stats growing as his body became more connected and his control over every cell grew.

In terms of numbers, his stats had grown massively. His Endurance had grown the most by about 4000 or over 60%. His Dexterity and Vitality grew by almost 5000 or 40% and almost 3500 or 50% respectively. He was most excited about his Intelligence because, while it had only grown by a mere 10%, the fact that it had grown at all and by 2300, was exciting. It indicated to him that he was on the right path looking into integrating more anima in his mind.

His Strength, Agility and Perception had grown by 2000, 1200, and 1000 each or 35%, 20% and 10% respectively. Not as impressive or exciting as the other stats, but a more than welcome improvement nonetheless.

On top of that, his energy buff seemed to have marginally increased to the point where he was now literally doubling all of his stats. Though he had no idea why that had increased.

Besides the stats through, it was like everything in Felix’s body was known to him and now, truly felt like it was a part of him. His nerves never reached everywhere before but now it felt like they did, he could feel the experiences of each and every one of his cells, not that they were significant experiences, but they were present. Rather than just communicating with his cells, directing them to perform actions and influencing them, they were now a part of him.

Before he had felt an attachment to his body, something that prevented him from changing its form too drastically. He was fond of his shape and form as a human. Now he was not only attached to it emotionally and instinctually, but literally. He was directly connected to it in the most intimate way.

His body had never felt more connected and alive.

Ironically, he realized this was exactly how Nova must have felt all the time. Her soul was literally connected to each and every atom in her body.

She was still napping when he finished and decided to test out his bodily control by just vaulting around his Pocket Home.

His body felt amazing, with no learning curve or anything. It rather felt like the opposite, like he had reverted to something he knew rather than pushing himself towards something new. Like he had been controlling a puppet before and now he was back to his own body.

As he vaulted around, he quickly got distracted by the rainbow pools of liquid along with the ocean of liquid around him. It was bothering him a little that he had no idea what they were. He figured he would ask Nova at some point because they had a much better understanding over matter.

He did check on the sapling though which had actually grown a noticeable amount. It was now noticeably a tree as its stem stiffened rather than just a small green plant like thing. It also had a few more leaves which were an odd array of colors. More impressively, it’s roots had grown and reached through his little island, stretching themselves to the limit of his pocket dimension as far as he could tell.

He had no idea if it was because of the light here or something else but he figured it probably wasn’t a bad thing. He didn’t mind having a tree in his Pocket Home at all, especially if it was a cool mana tree with rainbow leaves.

Hey Felix, I just realized. You should try bonding with the tree.

Say what now? You mean like the same thing I did with you and Nova?

Yeah more or less.

It’s a tree though. How do I do that? Do I just affinize it the same way I did the Starmetal staff?

No, don’t do that. If you did that on a living thing, you’d destroy it’s soul. It would also be… difficult to move your soul into their body or vice versa.

So give it a soul seed? It’s not conscious enough to accept it, is it?

Nope. Plants are different. Like items. Just take a tiny soul seed, seriously make it really small, and plant it in one of the roots.

Was this a forbidden technique then? Why do you know how to do this?

No. One of the… bad guys the people that created me killed, controlled plants. I used to just store a record of the people they took down and their techniques in case someone copied them or they came back. Eventually things got worse and the knowledge was deemed… forbidden. There was an incident… anyways, I have other knowledge that isn’t forbidden too.

I see.

Most people wouldn’t consider something like this because of the stress on their soul, you can’t just bond to everything. You though… not really a concern.

As Grim had instructed, Felix created a tiny soul seed, using the leftovers from the Grelmites in his Soul Space to fully replenish the piece he removed. He carefully fused the soul seed into one of the roots that was close to the surface, pushing aside the tiny piece of its soul that was in there to make room.

He didn’t immediately feel anything but in theory the tree would grow over time and so would their bond. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to replenish the mana pools over time but he was sure he would. Felix figured he would deal with it later on, when it became an issue and hopefully with Nova’s help figured out what the hell the liquids actually were.

Leaving his Pocket Home, Felix got to work on some enchanting. Nova was still napping so he left her alone and headed into the workshop. He continued testing, designing and iterating on the successor to his Mage Armor spell while he waited for a job he could shadow.

Before he had a chance to check in with Aldahn though, Felix spotted Thezan walk into the workshop and over to Felix’s table. He saw Thezan wearing the same white armor as he had been before, so Felix assumed Aldahn had already fixed the enchantments.

“You free for the day?”

Felix quickly cleaned up the table from his experiments and nodded, “We going to see the Ravens?”

Thezan nodded, “Yup. Rathos is just in the lobby.”

Felix followed Thezan out of the workshop and spotted Rathos laying on the counter at the front desk.

“Hey kid. Ready to go?” She turned her head to the side and smirked.

“I think so. This seems to be a bigger deal than I think it is though…”

Thezan shrugged, “The Ravens are a big deal. You’ll see. You might not care much when you get there but, it’s hard to get in to see them at all. If we didn’t have personal connections we probably couldn’t have gotten in this quickly.”

Rathos smirked, “It’s also a bigger deal for us because of those… personal connections.”

Felix shrugged, “Alright. I guess I’ll see when we get there.”

Thezan nodded, “About that. You can open a portal right?”

Felix frowned, “Uh… what do you mean?”

Thezan frowned, “Aldahn told me you portaled out of here a few times.”

Felix sighed, “Damn. Didn’t think he knew about that. Yeah I can portal us to the teleportation hub. That’s where my mold goes.”

Thezan nodded, “Perfect. Means I can leave the vehicle parked here.”

Felix nodded and pulled out the portal mold for Telviras then pulled out all five of his batteries and feigned using them to hide how much mana he had at his disposal.

The portal opened and Thezan, followed by Rathos stepped through. Felix did as well a moment later and pulled the portal mold with him, closing the portal. He didn’t dare raw cast the portal here just in case.

Thezan tapped at something Felix couldn’t see and an attendant showed up a few moments later, “Where to?”

Thezan smiled, “Ravens.”

The attendant cocked a brow, “You have an invite?”

Thezan nodded and held up a coin that was larger than the one they had found on the last mission. The attendant nodded and tapped at the metal plate he carried.

Felix patiently waited with his mana senses fully alert because he wanted to try and record the portal spell form they were using.

A few moments later a portal appeared and Felix frowned. No mana had moved through the room, at all. At least none for a portal. There was mana moving constantly powering mostly scrying enchantments as far as Felix could tell. None of the mana flow changed when the portal was opened though.

He didn’t have time to think about it much though as he followed Thezan and Rathos through the portal.

They arrived in a large open room made of white marble with a single desk at the far end. Thezan led their group over to it where he presented the large coin, their invite. The individual behind the desk nodded and a door behind them slid open.

Thezan led them through and the door immediately closed behind them.

Looking around, Felix saw a number of doorways on either side of the massive hall that stretched out before him. Everything was made of white marble in this room and other than the countless doors on the walls, there was nothing other than a strip of carpet to indicate the direction they should walk in.

Thezan turned to Felix, “Alright here’s the deal. Think of The Ravens as a collection of scavengers. Really high end scavengers. The Ravens are more a collection of individuals than they are a group. All the members pay a share of the profits to the collection for their resources, the name and a space here. Other than that, they are entirely their own people with their own teams.”

Felix gestured towards one of the doors, “So each door is a Raven?”

Thezan nodded, “Yup. This building is the Raven’s nest. Each door is a Raven’s personal shop. They’re all scavengers. They go out and find anything they can get their hands on that has any value then bring them back here and try to sell them. Different Ravens will have their own specialties and so on.”

Felix nodded, “So who would have what we’re looking for?”

Rathos smirked and leaned in over Felix’s shoulder, whispering in his ear, “That’s where you come in.”

Thezan waved her off, “Not really, but sort of. You’re here and Elric and Aros aren’t because you actually have a shot at spotting some of the remnants of the Usorium empire. Also the larger the group, the harder it is to get an invite.”

Felix frowned, “So we just walk around and hope to spot the Raven that scavenged the Usorium empire before we got there?”

Thezan nodded, “Yeah, pretty much. Feel free to look around though you probably won’t be able to purchase anything. This place is even more expensive than it is exclusive.”

Rathos looked over at Thezan, “Should we split up?”

Thezan nodded, “If any of us find anything, just come back into the main hall and wait for the rest of us to rejoin you.”

They all nodded in agreement then walked off towards a different door. Rathos walked over to the first doorway on the left, Thezan headed for the other end of the room and Felix headed for the first doorway on the right.

All the doorways were completely open and absolutely massive. As Felix stepped through into what felt like a completely separate building, he couldn’t help but feel like he was in a museum or art gallery. Each shop, from what he could see of the first one and through the doorways of the others, was set up like an exhibit.

The one he walked into had dark grey walls with low lighting. The shop itself was massive and everything he saw had it’s own display case. He walked over to one of them and looked inside, reading the plaque that held it’s identification for him because the glass somehow blocked him from identifying it himself.

The object looked like a normal sword to Felix. It was about the size of a longsword and it was generally unadorned. Simple blade, cross guard and handle, not decorations or embedded jewels. It didn’t even appear to be made of any kind of exotic material.

[A - Divine] Lost Champion’s Blade

[Growth][Infused]

This sword was crafted to be the ultimate weapon for the champion of a long dead god. The god provided Divine level materials to the greatest crafters they had access to. Once the blade had been forged, the god carefully infused the blade with their will, their power and its abilities. They then sealed these away and forcefully lowered the grade of the blade so their champion could properly wield it. As the champion grew, the blade grew alongside them, becoming more powerful and unlocking more of their gods power.

This Champion quickly grew in power and notoriety until eventually, they vanished. The blade remains however, with much of its potential power still partially sealed even though the champion who wielded it and the god who created it have been lost to the throes of time.

Well that’s… gotta be worth a fucking buttload.

Felix continued to wander through the exhibit but it seemed as though the blade was the most notable item in this particular shop’s collection. He didn’t spot anything of value, to him or the mission he was on so he walked over to the next room.

This room seemed to be focused on artwork. There were paintings, sculptures, clothing and armor though, not intended for battle. They were all scavenged from long dead civilizations which no doubt increased their value. Felix didn’t spend long in that shop, only briefly checking everything before deciding none of it was obviously from the Usorium empire.

The specialty of the Raven who’s shop he walked into next was obvious, everything in the room was a raw material of some kind. There were a few that were unique and he immediately thought of Nova but considering all the materials were in the B grade or above, they were well outside of his price range.

He continued exploring the various shops and looking into the main hall to see if Thezan or Rathos had found anything. He walked into weapon specialty shops, weird relics which were mostly very old mundane objects and all kinds of other shops.

A lot of the Ravens, actually all of the ones he met, seemed to think he was the kid of some super powerful person.

“… This armor is of the finest quality. Crafting techniques like this simply don’t exist anymore. It would be perfect to protect you from harm and you’ll no doubt grow into it as you evolve. Ask your patron, I’m certain they’ll agree.”

Felix nodded and smiled politely to the small man that Felix was pretty sure was either a goblin or a gnome, or something in between.

He had no intention of purchasing plate armor and honestly, this wasn’t even the most impressive plate armor he had seen here. It was a set of full plate armor made of large and smooth black plates.

[A - Legendary] Dragonfire Forged Plate Armor

[Plate Armor]

This set of plate armor was forged from a metal that is entirely impossible to melt except under the heat of a Dragon’s breath. It is nearly impenetrable creating a suit of armor that can withstand just about anything below the S grade.

The most interesting part about it was that it had the word Dragon in it’s name.

“Dragonfire? I thought the word Dragon was banned or something?”

The man tilted his head a little, “Yes, well… kind of. This plate armor is from before that era. Not many artifacts survived the Dracopurge or The Great Hunt that followed.”

The what?

Felix just nodded, “I see. Thank you. I’m actually a little more magically inclined, if you have anything of that nature?”

“Ah but you misunderstand you see. Protection is even more important for the magically inclined. There is no reason you shouldn’t equip plate armor such as this…”

Felix ignored him but smiled and nodded politely as he tried to convince Felix to be interested in the plate armor. Once it became obvious he wasn’t going to be, the Raven walked him over to a couple more items before Felix realized he didn’t have anything of value to him.

He managed to slip away from the man and made it into the next store where the most interesting item to him was a pile of coins.

The coins seemed to be made of some kind of whitish metal and they were both small and very thin. The most interesting thing about them to Felix though, was their grade and name.

[E - Common] 1000 Credits

[Currency]

A coin with a value of 1000 E grade credits.

For the first time in a shop, Felix actually sought out the Raven just so he could ask about the coins.

A dark grey, almost black skinned man with a mane of horns sprouting out the back of his jaw and wearing an almost suit like outfit followed Felix to the display, “Ah, these are what we used before The System took over all currency way back in the mid 50th integration.”

“Wait what. It used to be coins? The System didn’t always handle all transactions?”

The man shook his head, “No. It was kind of a mess from what I’ve heard too. The gods who organized a common currency had to choose a material that held far less value than the currency they represented. Obviously there are issues with that because any material they choose instantly becomes orders of magnitude more valuable. They have to find a way to have valid currency and make it difficult to forge the currency.”

Felix’s face contorted in disgust as he thought through all the implications and more importantly, issues with that system of currency.

“Alternatively, for some values, they chose materials that were equal in value to the currency so anyone could make the coins and they would hold their value for that reason. Anyways, there were many issues and eventually, The System just took over. In the process, it destroyed all the previous currency as it replaced its value with its new currency.”

Felix frowned, “How did this survive then?”

He smiled devilishly, “Excellent question. There are some places in the multiverse that even The System cannot see not touch. This cache was likely held there in a vault of some sort or the Soul Space of a god. I found this cache buried in the ruins of a large estate planet that had long since been abandoned.”

“So they aren’t worth anything anymore?”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

The man looked taken aback, “Well, they hold the same value as they had before The System took over and you could exchange them. They are more of a collector’s item, a rarity. Some people display them in their houses to make it seem like they are old and powerful because they managed to subvert The System.”

“I mean, if they bought this, that would be a lie?”

“Correct. That doesn’t mean no one would fall for such a lie.”

Felix shrugged, “Fair enough.”

After walking through the rest of the shop, he decided to move on. As he walked out back into the main hall, he spotted Rathos sitting on the ground with a book rested against one of her knees.

Felix walked over to her, “You found something?”

“Think so. Have to see what you and Thezan think though. Not even sure I’d call it a likely candidate, just a possibility.”

Just a few minutes later, Thezan walked into the hall and joined them. They followed Rathos into an exhibit that seemed to specialize in the completely mundane. Felix saw brooms, furniture, spoons and other weird items he never expected to see in a place like this.

The item in specific that caught Rathos’ attention was simply a plate that was enchanted to keep food warm. It was incredibly mundane and exactly the kind of thing the Usorium empire would have enchanted.

[E - Common] Heated Dinner Plate

[Enchanted]

A dinner plate made of fine porcelain with durability enchantments, self cleaning enchantments and an enchantment to keep food placed upon it warm. This plate is a relic of a long dead empire.

Luckily for Felix, the enchantment was active to show how it worked and it was heating up a small amount of water that was in a constant state of evaporating and being refilled.

Felix walked right up to the glass and reached out with his mana senses to map out the enchantment. As he did so, his frown deepened. Not only was the plate itself mundane, but the enchantment was completely mundane. If anything, Felix was pretty sure this wasn’t actually a relic of any kind. The enchantment was more basic than even he could design and there were no signs of wear at all.

The scraps of enchantments he had seen in the Usorium castle were all intricate and beautiful. Possibly over engineered but they were elegant. This was the opposite.

It was completely possible that they didn’t bother with elegant and complex enchantments for the mundane objects like dinner plates. It wasn’t necessarilyy not a relic of the Usorium empire, but Felix’s gut had him doubting its authenticity, let alone its origin.

Thezan looked at it and shrugged but Felix shook his head.

Rathos and Thezan nodded and they all walked together to the next shop over where they talked about the plate without being overheard by the Raven selling it.

“I don’t even think it’s a relic at all.”

Rathos giggled a little and Thezan looked at him very seriously, “Shhh! I don’t think you realize how serious of an accusation that is around here. You may or may not be right but either way, an accusation like that will likely get someone killed.”

Felix nodded seriously in understanding, “Sorry, didn’t realize. Still though, I doubt its Usorium.”

Thezan nodded, “Alright. Let’s keep searching. If we don’t find any better leads, we’ll go back and question that Raven.”

They all nodded then split up again.

Felix only searched a few more shops before Thezan thought he had found something. It was more promising but the enchantment still didn’t awe and inspire Felix the same way the Usorium castle enchantments had. Those enchantments had used mana attunements as keys. Having mana attunements that were that precise and being capable of reading them with equal precision was, as far as Felix and the Telviran library were concerned, completely unheard of.

Felix himself could do it, but he never would have been able to figure out an enchantment to pull the feat off had he not seen it in action himself.

There were a few other close calls but still nothing that convinced Felix. Even though they exuded patience, Felix was getting an instinctual feeling that Thezan and Rathos were starting to have doubts. Although, whether they doubted him or any Usorium artifacts being here at all, he didn’t know.

The next shop in Felix’s path he was actually incredibly excited about. In the next exhibit, every display case was filled with a book, tome, stack of parchment or tablet of some kind. All in all there were just under a dozen pieces of literature in there.

The first book seemed to contain some kind of sword technique or skill set. He wasn’t entirely sure because the plaque clearly did not say what a normal identification would have. It was far too embellished and obviously fabricated.

Looking into the next case, Felix read the plaque and was pretty sure he was looking at a cookbook with various recipes contained within. In trying to decipher the plaque, he was also pretty sure it contained recipes for cooking humans and other sentient creatures.

Either way, this was the second case that seemed to be blocking his ability to scan the books. Despite the fact that he could see them, it seemed his skill also wanted him to be able to touch them somehow.

He didn’t care much for the contents of those books anyways but it didn’t stop him from trying to think up a way to get through the glass anyways.

There was a historical population record, a dictionary, a book on ancient agriculture and a couple books that described skills and how to get them. The eighth book he took a look at was by far the most interesting and the first lead that gave him hope, while simultaneously filling him with dread and putting his soul on edge.

He ignored the feeling for now and walked right out of the exhibit into the hall and waited. Thezan and Rathos were noticeably excited when they saw that it was Felix who had found something this time and they all walked back into the book shop together.

[A - Unique] Engineering Mana Nodes

[Secret Knowledge]

A book detailing a process to engineer and create nodes that output specific mana attunements, energy levels and densities. This knowledge is largely lost as it was a closely guarded secret from a long since dead empire.

On top of its subject matter and description, just looking at the book Felix immediately felt pangs of the same feeling he had felt in the Usorium castle. It wasn’t nearly as strong and Felix could tell it was barely there but whatever it was had his soul completely on edge. Even the faintest whiff on this book, through the glass, was enough for his soul to feel like it was squeezing itself and blocking everything else out.

The downside of having his soul connected and suffused throughout his body now, was that Felix felt this physically. His muscles tensed, his skin tightened, his heart accelerated and the hair on his body stood completely at attention.

On top of that, while he had gained even more control over his body on a much deeper level, he couldn’t fight his own soul and had no hope of suppressing its reaction to whatever this was. The best he could do was try to calm himself down but honestly, he didn’t really feel like he was doing a great job.

Felix looked up at Thezan then at Rathos and nodded to both of them then did his best to convey his thoughts with a look.

They seemed confused at first but Felix was hopeful they would play along as he found the Raven that owned the particular shop.

A man who appeared to be half man half ram, or rather just a man with a ram’s head followed Felix over to the display case, “Ah, you have a discerning eye. This book, and the knowledge it contains, is incredibly rare. It was an incredibly lucky find and an arduous journey to recover.”

Felix nodded, “Of course. If its contents are what you say they are well… it’s an extraordinary find.”

The man placed a hand on the glass case, “It truly is. I’m almost inclined to distribute the information myself. The innovation that would unfold would surely be wondrous. This capability, to engineer nodes as desired would surely accelerate any corporation to the forefront of technology.”

“So why not license or sell the information yourself?”

The man immediately got a little defensive, his body almost imperceptibly tensing, “Well, while the information is more valuable than the tome itself, I simply do not have the network or resources at my disposal to sell or license the information alone. I would surely be hunted down without some kind of significant backer.”

Felix nodded deeply, “Oh of course. Couldn’t you sell it directly to one of those backers though? Why sell it here?”

The man frowned a little, “The Ravens are the best protection I have access to. If you represent or know of a powerful patron willing to purchase the information, by all means send them my way. As it stands, I am not willing to risk my life venturing directly into the arms of some God or its Demigods.”

Felix smiled, “I guess that’s where someone like me would come in then. Someone willing to risk their life to turn such a profit.”

The man relaxed a little, his shoulders dropping just a couple millimeters, “I guess so. I must say though, you seem a little… low level?”

Felix smirked, “Makes me seem unassuming, doesn’t it? Father sends the babysitters to accompany me but,” Felix shrugged, “between you and me, I don’t really need the guards.”

The man cocked a brow and almost bowed, “My apologies then.”

Felix waved him off, “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to have to verify the contents of the book though before I pay such a sum.”

The ram headed man immediately frowned, Felix felt Thezan wince behind him and he heard a slight giggle from Rathos, “I see you haven’t dealt much with the Ravens then?”

Felix shook his head, “First time. Hopefully a fruitful venture.”

The Raven shook his head, “That’s not how things work around here. The contents are verified and if you find me to be lying, I will be executed on the spot, my merchandise auctioned off to the other Ravens and this shop, sold to the next in line.”

Felix frowned, “So I’m just supposed to trust you and the Ravens? That seems foolish.”

The Raven chuckled, “Well if you are a serious buyer, you are welcome to transfer me the full purchase price of the tome and I will offer a full refund if you are unsatisfied with its contents.”

Felix nodded, “How much for the book then?”

The Raven smiled warmly, “1 S4.”

Felix nodded seriously, “One moment please. My guard also happens to also be my wallet.”

The Raven bowed slightly as Thezan, Rathos and Felix walked out into the hallway where Thezan pulled out a small disc that he filled with mana. Felix immediately latched on and memorized the spell which seemed to be a bubble that blurred their image and ate any sounds to prevent anyone from listening in.

Felix spoke as soon as he felt the spell go up, “Sorry. I thought that would work.”

Rathos giggled and Thezan patted Felix on the shoulder, “No worries. You know now. It doesn’t really change anything for us though. We still need to question that Raven to try and figured out where he got it.”

Rathos grew more serious, “That might be a problem. You both notice how defensive he got when Felix asked about why he wasn’t selling it himself to a god or large operation?”

Thezan nodded, “Yeah, probably because he isn’t supposed to have it. I don’t see any other legitimate reason. He could have easily funded guards or taken a slight haircut on the profit and gone to Edras’ faction.”

Rathos nodded in understanding as Felix just tried his best to follow along.

Thezan bit his lip a little as he thought.

Though he didn’t want to interrupt, Felix wasn’t going to be much help without more context, “An S4, what’s that?”

Rathos tilted her head a little, “You know there’s E, D, C, B, A and S grade right? Then there are the equivalent credits. Well, after that there’s SS then SSS. Some people, or rather gods, deal with currency values larger than that so they simply give a number for the number of Ss. S4 would be equivalent to SSSS or 1 million SSS.”

Felix frowned, “That’s… ridiculous, no?”

Thezan shrugged, “It’s probably because you both immediately latched onto licensing it. It would be worth that much if that’s what you did with it. If you talked about it more as a collector’s item or a curio, he probably only would have quoted you an SS or something.”

Felix winced, “Sorry.”

Thezan patted Felix on the shoulder, “Don’t worry about it. We couldn’t have afforded it anyways. The price he quoted you is actually a little low by my estimation. Not, unbelievably too-good-to-be-true low, but a good deal low. He wants to move it and fast.”

Felix nodded, “Right, like he probably isn’t supposed to have it for whatever reason.”

Thezan nodded, “Yeah. The question is whether or not we call him on it or not.”

Rathos shook her head, “It’s too risky. I don’t think we’re wrong but… I also don’t want to be executed.”

Thezan chuckled, “You wouldn’t be.”

Rathos sighed, “I don’t want you to be executed. Or the kid.”

Felix snorted, “Thanks.”

She shrugged innocently, “So what do we do?”

Thezan sighed, “We could threaten him. Let him know we know where he really got the book and try to leverage that for information?”

Rathos grinned, “Back to threatening Ravens, are we?”

Thezan punched her in the shoulder, “Stop that. This is different and you know it.”

Rathos nodded then grew serious again, “We could just report back to Dogran.”

Thezan shook his head, “Nah. We aren’t giving up just yet. We were tasked with getting more and we need to at least try a little harder than that.”

Rathos nodded, “Should we send the kid home?”

Thezan looked at Felix who shook his head, “You sure?”

Felix nodded, “You know I can scan books that are near me, right?”

Thezan nodded, “Yeah I figured that’s what you were doing.”

Felix shrugged, “I have no intention of selling or licensing that information but… I want it.”

Thezan chuckled, “I know you’re just ignorant about The Ravens and all that but… alright fine. We might need you anyways.”

Thezan stopped pushing mana into the disc in his hand and the spell faded then they walked back into the shop and found The Raven, the man with the ram’s head.

Thezan smiled and leaned against the glass display case then crossed his arms, “So look. Here’s how it is, we were hoping you could go a little lower than that.”

The Raven nodded, “I might be able to do a little lower, say 0.5 S4?”

Thezan shook his head, “We were thinking a lot lower than that.”

The Ram headed man sighed, “If you were willing to provide me with royalties, I could part with it for a lot less. I’d be willing to take a meager amount now as a down payment with 0.1% of all profits going to me then my successors?”

Thezan chuckled and bowed his head, “How about, you take the book out and show it to us for free.”

The Raven scoffed, “What, so your child can scan it? Fat chance of that.”

Thezan smiled, “Oh really? How about this, you show it to us for free right now or, if you say no, the next offer is going to be you let the kid scan all the books you have here.”

The Raven sighed, “Never thought I’d have to report a client before. I never really wanted to be the one responsible for getting someone violently tortured and executed.”

Thezan’s smile grew, “Damn, well the first offer just expired and all that’s left is the second. Unfortunately for you, you weren’t smart enough to ask what you get in exchange, or rather, what you don’t get.”

The man looked disgusted, “You can’t threaten The Ravens. Who the hell do you think you are?”

Thezan chuckled, “Actually, you can. You just need to make sure whatever you’re threatening them with, is worse for them than it is for you. In this case… it is.”

The Raven just looked confused, “Just spit it out already.”

Thezan leaned in and whispered, barely audible to Felix, “We know the book’s real origin. We know you got it fr-”

The Raven smacked his hand over Thezan’s mouth and smiled to cover gritted teeth, a face that was rather creepy on a ram’s head, “Don’t fucking say it. If you’re telling the truth, I suspect you don’t actually know why it’s so… sensitive.”

Thezan shrugged, “We have our suspicions. Lets just say, we know. Oh and, new deal. Everything I said before but also, you’re gonna tell us where you got the book and what the hell happened to the rest of the shit you plucked.”

The Raven grabbed Thezan by the arm and pulled him a few meters away then whispered to him, “Take out the fucking privacy screen.”

A moment later, the two of them were encased in an orb that completely blurred them out and blocked all sound. Felix and Rathos were left by the display case and she smiled and shrugged at Felix, “Looks like it’s working.”

He nodded then turned his attention back to the display case. Staring intently at the tome contained within, Felix pushed on his Scan Literature skill in an effort to force it. While it didn’t actually work and just push through the glass, he realized it was likely a System Fuckery skill, for now.

While it did push on his ambient anima senses and somehow used them to read the book, it wasn’t him reading it. He was certain because he could actually turn off his anima senses and the skill still functioned, something he could not do with Reaper’s Senses and his Mana Senses for example. Event testing his identification skills, they simply failed when he suppressed the necessary senses.

His best guess was that The System was either measuring him constantly or straining him as a byproduct of the skill. With his anima senses suppressed though, no part of him, his body, his soul or his senses were straining themselves when he pushed on the skill. Doing so with other activatable skills like the Spear Strike he had learned in the tutorial, had strained him in specific ways. It had helped him identify how the skill was being automated.

In this case though, nothing happened.

Regardless, he was intent on moving the skill in a direction he liked anyways so he figured now was as good a time as any to figure out a way of doing so.

When he first walked into this Raven’s nest, and thought through ways of circumventing the display cases, Felix had come up with two alternatives.

He already knew it was possible to store memories in anima, if only for a brief time and he also figured there was probably a way to replicate the skill with his mana control and senses. Given many more epochs, he figured he could probably also use his, still nascent as of now, matter senses.

The anima method was likely easiest because it was more tailored to the task at hand but he had far more experience, tuned senses and control over mana. It was also telling that that seemed to have been the basis for the skill’s progression up to now. He was assuming it would have scaled based on his anima senses, despite not mentioning it would do so.

He figured the ultimate solution was probably some combination of his mana and anima senses, possibly even his matter senses as well, but for now, he started with mana. Once his matter senses were better, he would transition the skill in that direction.

Felix didn’t start with the tome, in fact he was uninclined to even try anything on the book at all because he figured there were likely alarms on it or something. He had seen Thezan use the privacy barrier disc standing right next to a display though so Felix wasn’t too worried about testing anything mana based near it.

He ignored Rathos who was curiously and completely unashamedly, watching him as he pulled a random piece of parchment with some enchantment diagrams on it, out of his Soul Space. He immediately started experimenting on it, running mana through it of different attunements and energy levels, trying to see if there was any reaction at all.

Unfortunately, though his test was rushed and hardly thorough, he felt no change or reaction whatsoever. Moving onto anima, Felix didn’t bother pushing any anima through the sheet at first and rather, he paid attention to the anima that was already in and around the sheet.

It was incredibly sparse but there was enough for Felix to get something. He tuned into it as much as he could and listened. Though there was static, a lot of static, he did get a general vibe of the parchment. An experience that was a common denominator amongst the anima of the existence of a parchment.

It was far from enough to identify anything written on the parchment, let alone the fact that it was a parchment at all. Had Felix been unable to see and hold the parchment for himself, he would have had no hope of reading from the anima that there was anything more than probably a thin object nearby, maybe.

It did give him an idea though so Felix switched back over to his mana control and suffused the parchment with blank mana then simply waited. After almost a minute, in which he started to wonder how long Thezan and the Ram-man were going to take, Felix separated out the mana and tuned into it with his senses.

Though he still couldn’t read anything on the parchment itself, Felix could now tell for certain that it was in fact a sheet with a vary similar shape to parchment. He could also feel a slight difference in the attunements of the sheet if he really focused but no precise shapes or anything of value yet.

Following that experiment, Felix tested mana of all kinds of different attunements and energy levels. Instead of subsequent experiments, he created a sheet of mana and split it into a grid. Each section of the grid then contained mana of a different attunement and energy level. If one of the sections showed promise, he would repeat the test where the sections contained only slight variations of the successful square.

He figured he didn’t have time to get much of anywhere but, he only had to conduct two tests. The first, he immediately noticed two things, one was that the biggest variation in the mana came from the highest energy mana. Second, the mana attunement with the highest frequency ended up with the most noise but had noticeably shifted to contain two fairly distinct attunements.

Unfortunately, the shape wasn’t precise enough that he could make out text, but there was significant progress. He could, distinguish entire lines of text, just not their contents.

Before he could get any further though, the privacy orb dropped and Thezan walked back over to them with The Raven in tow. Thezan looked pleased and The Raven a combination of nervous, annoyed and scared.

The Raven sighed and walked over to the display case then tapped at something causing the glass to rise slightly. Felix’s ability immediately latched on and he pushed on the skill as much as he could. He knew it wasn’t going to be a fast scan because the higher the grade and rarity of the book, the longer the scan.

At the same time, the feeling of his soul being on edge, magnified. It felt like his soul had grown spikes and his whole body was squeezing itself down. He could actually feel his arms, legs and most of all, chest, compressing. He pushed through, motivated entirely by the promise of the information in the tome.

Within just a few seconds of scanning, a blaring alarm sounded in room and Felix quickly sprang backwards. Thezan and Rathos looked towards each-other and Thezan grabbed Felix by the shoulder but when they saw the ram-headed-raven cursing at the back of the case and tapping furiously at it, they stopped.

The Raven looked up at them, “It’s not you, don’t worry. This stupid book is more trouble than it’s worth. It sets off every fucking alarm and now it… well you… Stupid thing.”

The alarm vanished a few seconds later and Felix looked to Thezan who seemed worried but wasn’t running or trying to run. Rathos shrugged and Thezan finally let go of Felix’s shoulder.

Felix walked back up to the case to be certain he was close enough and continued pushing at his Scan Literature skill. Whether or not pushing on the skill caused it to work faster, he was done scanning it in just over 3 minutes.

He nodded once towards The Raven who sighed and nodded then lowered the display case and presumably re-enabled the alarm. They walked over to the next book and The Raven made a show of describing, embellishing and trying to sell it’s contents to them while Felix scanned it.

It seemed as though The Raven was worried about someone seeing or overhearing them for some reason. Felix realized why a few seconds later when a couple Ravens showed up, one he recognized from next door and another he didn’t. The ram-headed man gestured towards the book in the middle and they nodded in understanding. It seemed as though the alarm going off for that book in particular was not an uncommon occurrence.

A few other Ravens showed up as they walked to each of the books in turn, many of them asking if it was ‘that’ book again which made Felix less worried they were signaling something to each-other in secret.

Once Felix had scanned all the books, they bid The Raven with the ram’s head farewell and Thezan led them over to another store. Once they were in the main hall, he whipped out the privacy orb and activated it while they walked.

Thezan sighed, “Sorry that took so long.”

Rathos chuckled, “What the hell were you doing in there? Did you ask him to-”

Thezan just looked at her, “Don’t”

She giggled.

Thezan sighed, “He was really intent on my not saying the name of the… place he got the book from. I didn’t get it out of him why but we just spent a lot of time figuring out how to toe around the issue and make sure we were both talking about the same place without saying much.”

Rathos grew very serious, something that was so out of character, it caused Felix to worry, “That bad? So he’s watching then?”

Thezan nodded, “Seems like it. At least, he was worried about that.”

Rathos nodded, “What are the odds he’s scrying through this orb now?”

Thezan sighed, “Very high.”

Rathos nodded and gave Thezan a knowing look and he just sighed.

Thezan dropped the orb and they continued walking towards the shop while Felix looked around with every sense he had to try and figure out how they were potentially being watched.

He didn’t sense anything off about the mana around them at all. He stilled all the mana in his mana control range just to be sure and felt nothing fighting him. Tuning into the ambient anima, he didn’t feel anything that stood out to him, just a lot of static again. There wasn’t much he could do to test if, whoever he was, was using the ambient anima to scry. In the end, Felix was pretty sure he was using System Fuckery to scry if he was scrying on them at all.

The shop they walked into was a few kilometers down the main hall and contained a huge array of magical artifacts and enchanted items. There were vehicles that looked ancient and didn’t seem to function any longer, armor, complicated mana computers and even an illusion or hologram generating device.

Felix immediately walked over to the hologram device and reached out towards it with his mana senses. Not only was the device not using System Fuckery, it was one of the coolest enchantments he had ever encountered.

It used a mana computer to calculate the output of a series of light nodes along with some very precise force and gas generating nodes. Felix did his best to map and memorize the enchantment but when there was a mana computer, and when it was this complicated, he knew it would take him a while.

In the meantime, he listened in on the conversation between Thezan and The Raven who was a halfling man with a loose pony tail that only held half of his hair and some messy stubble.

Thezan smiled in a warm and friendly way, “Nice to meet you. We were just in Sehmin’s shop and we were talking about this book on spell and enchantment nodes, you know the one right? Anyways, he referred us to you because apparently, he actually bought it from you. We were hoping to see anything else you might have from that particular expedition?”

The halfling man smiled with no concern in his eyes whatsoever, “Ah, yes a wonderful find. Unfortunately I don’t dabble in enchanting myself and don’t specialize in books. It just made more sense to sell it off. Unfortunately, there isn’t much else from that particular expedition. I have many other wonderful artifacts though.”

Thezan scrunched up his face a little, “Nah, we’re particularly interested in that, specific emp-”

“Shut the fuck up. Don’t say anything else. I don’t have anything else, the book is it.” The halfling man took a breath and put one a more hospitable expression and tone, “Buy it if you’re interested and feel free to peruse my nest otherwise.”

Felix already knew he was telling the truth, or at least, there was nothing else on display because none of it was causing his soul to stand on edge.

Thezan shook his head, “Look Finras, we need to know what happened and where everything else went.”

Finras grabbed Thezan’s sleeve and pulled him down a little, “Look, I wasn’t even on the expedition myself.”

“Ok great, who was?”

Finras shook his head quickly and scoffed, “Go find Nozem, Thilda and Enbi.”

Thezan stood back up and nodded with a big smile, “Thank you.”

Finras then put on a fake smile, walked over to Felix and started explaining the item he was looking at as if nothing was wrong. Felix just assumed the show he was putting on was for whoever they all seemed to think was scrying on them.

Felix didn’t mind because both Thezan and Rathos joined in on the charade and started looking around at all the items.

Once he was finished memorizing the hologram device enchantment, he had Finras walk him through all the rest of his shop as Felix carefully mapped and memorized everything. It seemed like scanning enchantments was not as much of a concern as scanning books or, they thought the display cases would protect the wares.

After a half hour of walking around, they bid Finras farewell then followed Thezan to the first shop on their list. Felix checked his map and realized how Thezan was finding the shops then continued his search for whatever was scrying on them. Unfortunately he still wasn’t finding anything.

They arrived at Thilda’s nest first because it was the closest but when they got there, they arrived at a completely empty room. There was nothing and no one in there. Felix looked around in confusion but got worried when he saw Thezan and Rathos’ faces painted with concern.

They almost ran to Enbi’s nest next and arrived at a nest with a closed door. The doorway was completely sealed over.

Thezan immediately turned around and started running backwards, Rathos easily following him and Felix flying to keep up.

Felix tried to find Nozem’s nest on the map but couldn’t spot it anywhere so he had no idea where they were going. He only realized when they arrived back at Finras’ shop, and the doorway was sealed, that something was wrong.

Thezan gritted his teeth, “Fuck.”

He ran back to the ram-headed Raven’s book store next and they found the doorway was also sealed.

Felix turned to Rathos, “What the hell is going on? Did they just close shop?”

She sighed and forcefully relaxed her face, “Ravens can’t close their own shops.”

Felix didn’t fully understand what that meant but he was starting to think it had something to do with whoever they thought was scrying on them. Thezan shook his head and gestured back towards the end of the hall where they arrived and they walked instead of ran to that door.

The door looked exactly the same but as Thezan approached it and it slid open, Felix saw a completely different room than he was expecting through it.

Thezan’s shoulders just slumped, “Fuck.”

Though the door, instead of a large empty lobby, Felix saw a completely empty, white room save for two couches that faced each-other. On one of the couches sat a completely bald human man wearing simple black shirt with rolled up sleeves and brown pants.

Thezan reluctantly walked over to the couch opposite the man and Felix followed him. Rathos walked over to the man, he stood and they hugged then she sat next to Thezan, stretching herself out over the side of the couch.

[A] Malrok: The Raven King (Lvl 3941)

The man briefly looked at Felix then focused his gaze on Thezan and smiled, “I appreciate you smoking out two rats so efficiently.”

Thezan gritted his teeth and looked at the man with a death stare.

The man simply chuckled, “Oh come now, I thought you were over this.”

The man sighed and turned to Rathos, “Rathy, mind introducing me to the thief?”

Rathos chuckled, “Malrok, this is Felix, Felix, Malrok.”

Felix just smiled and nodded. Thankfully, Malrok moved on completely from the thief comment and turned his gaze back to Thezan then grew very serious, “Look, those questions you were asking, just forget about them.”

Thezan frowned, “We just want to know what happened to the… items, you recovered.”

Malrok closed his eyes and sighed, “The items or something in specific. Let me guess, you’ve got a really fucking rich client you know nothing about looking for it?”

Thezan didn’t react at all but Malrok already knew he was right, “Look, the thing we found down there, it’s not… not something that… it shouldn’t exist… here. You need to forget about it.”

Rathos cocked a brow and sat up, “Roky, it’s not like you to scared of something being dangerous.”

Malrok sighed, “It’s not just dangerous. What did your client tell you you were looking for.”

“A weapon.” Thezan said blankly.

Malrok winced, “Fucking hell. Look, I would have paid someone a disposal fee to get rid of that thing. The fact that I got paid at all is a fucking miracle. I ‘sold’ it to the only person I trust to properly deal with it.”

Thezan frowned, “It can’t be that bad.”

Malrok shook his head, “Look Thezan… Nozem, Thilda and Enbi, I didn’t kill them, it did. That book was the only thing that snuck out of that mission because we destroyed everything else. It’s not worth whatever they’re paying you. Forget about all this shit.”

Thezan scoffed, “Bullshit. If it’s that bad, why not just kill us now? And don’t act like you’re not a reprehensible monster, what happened to Finras and Sehmin?”

Malrok sighed, “Finras and Sehmin? Nothing.”

Thezan gritted his teeth, “Sorry, what’s going to happen to them.”

Malrok shrugged, “They stole something and disobeyed a direct order Thezan, you know what’s going to happen to them.”

Rathos cut in to end the argument before it started, “Why not just kill us then?”

Malrok sighed, “You Rath, never. As for your friends here… let’s just say whoever hired you is not someone I want to deal with. I need you to go back and report to your broker or whoever it is that there’s nothing here, you were mistaken.”

Thezan shook his head, “Not gonna happen. Now that I know you aren’t gonna kill us, you don’t really have any leverage left.”

Malrok gritted his teeth, “I could just kill the kid, I’m sure your client doesn’t give a shit about him.”

Rath pouted, “Mal, he’s just a kid…”

Malrok chuckled softly and shook his head, “Fine Rath, you win. But,” Malrok looked straight at Felix, “Now that Sehmin’s books are mine to sell, you can’t share or sell the information in them with anyone got it?”

Felix nodded, “Yes.”

Malrok nodded, “At least for a couple epochs, then I don’t care.”

Felix nodded again, he had no intention of selling the information anyways, or at least he hadn’t really thought about it much. He had just wanted it for himself.

Malrok met Thezan’s glare for almost a minute before he sighed, “Fine, but let your client deal with it. I already said I sold it to the only person I trust to get rid of it. We sold it just a couple terms ago. Tell your client then back off, that should be enough for them to identify who it was so they don’t have to crawl up my ass.”

Thezan kept glaring at Malrok and Rathos leaned forwards to speak for them, “Perfect, we’ll tell them that then. They should be happy with that.”

Malrok nodded then stood up, “Seriously though Thezan, Rathos, you don’t want to get involved with this thing. Let your client deal with everything else.”

Rathos shrugged, “As long as they pay us for this, I’m happy.”

Malrok shook his head, “Fucking hell. Thezan, always a pleasure. Now get the fuck out, I have two rats to deal with.”

Thezan’s teeth clenched further and Rathos had to pull him off the couch and out of the room. Felix followed without hesitation and opened the door for them so Rathos could pull Thezan through. On the other side of the door was the same lobby they had entered from.

As they walked in and the door closed behind them, Thezan visibly relaxed a little though he was still tense. The clerk at the counter smiled at them warmly, “I hope your visit was fruitful. Will you be heading back to Telviras? Would you like me to open a portal for you?”

Rathos nodded, “Yes please, thank you.”

A moment later, a portal appeared on the far wall revealing the familiar portal rooms of Telviras’ teleportation hub and they all stepped through.

Once the portal closed behind them Thezan relaxed a little more and sighed. He turned to Felix, “Sorry about that kid. I didn’t think we’d actually see Malrok.”

Felix frowned, “Seems like whatever it is we’re looking for has him…”

Rathos grinned, “Shaking in his boots?”

Thezan sighed, “As much as I hate the guy, he might be right about this whole job not being worth it.”

Felix nodded, “Was there actually a chance he was going to kill us?”

Thezan winced a little, “A chance? Yes, and not just kill. The way Malrok does things is worse than that. In order to deal with their remnants and to prevent any secrets from getting out, Malrok tortures people to death. He inflicts enough pain that the experience destroys the soul and no remnant is left at all. Then someone tries to get the information with necromancy, a soul seer or scrying, there’s nothing left but pain. It also prevents the soul from snapping over to an afterlife.”

Felix winced, “Yikes.”

Thezan nodded, “Yeah, you can understand why I don’t like the guy. On top of that, he’s far too trigger happy.” Thezan sighed, “Thing is, with Rathos tagging along the chance he would actually do anything is super low.”

Rathos nodded, “I coulda just asked him not to.”

Felix frowned, “I have to ask, did or do you have a relationship with Malrok?”

Thezan chuckled and Rathos giggled before Rathos answered, “No, I dated his sister a while back. She died on an expedition and he’s…”

Thezan nodded, “He thinks of Rathos as his sister now. Or at least he treats her like she is.”

Rathos nodded, “It comes in handy especially considering he’s King of the Ravens now.”

Thezan shook his head, “Yeah. We wouldn’t have risked this mission at all and I definitely wouldn’t have brought you along if Rathos wasn’t with us.”

Rathos bowed, “Glad to be of service.”

Thezan stretched out a little and seemed to finally, almost fully, relax himself then he turned to Felix and Rathos, “Dinner? We’ll expense the client.”

Rathos smiled, “That’s what I like to hear.”

Felix shrugged, “Sure.”

Though he wasn’t a huge fan of going out with people in general, Felix figured there was a lot he could get out of a dinner with the two of them, not the least of which was an expensive meal.

Thezan nodded and tapped at something causing an attendant to walk in with their signature metal tablet.

“Where to?”

Thezan looked at Rathos and squinted a little, “Nanskift?”

She shook her head, “Jozusto. Client’s creds, right?”

Thezan snorted then turned back to the attendant, “Jozusto.”

The attendant nodded and the portal behind them reopened, this time revealing a room with all black walls and a single desk in the middle. Behind the desk there was a human man wearing a completely black set of formal looking robes.

The man smiled as they approached, “Reservation?”

Thezan shook his head, “The Enchantment please.”

The man nodded then led them to a door behind him, “Right this way please.”

Felix followed Thezan and Rathos into another, completely black room that was a cube a hundred meters to a side.

Right in the middle of the room was the only thing in the room, a large circular table with three chairs around it.

They all walked over and sat down. Just a second after they sat down, a masked individual appeared exactly a meter to all of their lefts and placed a glass in front of each of them then the three of them disappeared.

Felix reached forwards and lifted the glass as Thezan and Rathos did the same. Rathos immediately threw the glass’ contents down her throat while Thezan just sipped at it.

The glass itself was not made of glass but rather some kind of ceramic or porcelain he guessed. He wasn’t entirely sure though. He decided Thezan was probably the better example to follow so he too took just a small sip.

As soon as the odorless liquid hit his tongue, his body was filled with an overwhelming sense of calm and peace. He felt memories flash through his mind, experiences fill him, anything in his past that represented peace and calm came to him.

He saw Thezan pointedly not drinking more while Rathos downed another glass as soon as it was refilled. Shortly afterwards, a dish was served to all of them at once by similarly disappearing servers.

The dish was a plate holding a single deep blue rectangular prism with a small looking cheese knife as the only utensil. Following Thezan’s lead again, instead of Rathos who scooped the whole thing into her mouth at once, Felix took a small corner and placed it onto his tongue.

The dish was soft and cold but none of that mattered. As soon as it touched his tongue, he was filled with deep sense of sadness. Memories of learning about his parents death, pets dying, his friend David being sick, dying, flashed before his eyes. Looking up, he saw Rathos smiling wickedly while tears streamed out of her eyes and drenched her face.

Thezan looked sad but he wasn’t crying. Felix took a sip of the drink and all the sadness was gone again, he was filled simply with peace and tranquility.

He took a bigger bite this time, half of the entire dish and it was enough to cause him to shed a single tear. The next half though, was not. It seemed he was either too used to the effect or only had a single tear in him.

He wiped away the tear and noticed that Thezan was pointedly not drinking from his glass yet so Felix copied him. Both Thezan and Rathos held their eyes shut, not that it made much of a difference in the almost entirely black room.

As soon as they had each finished the first dish, it was replaced with a bright orange and yellow dish. This one was served as two cubes rather than a single rectangle. Felix reached for his glass but Thezan caught him and shook his head lightly. Felix shrugged and took half of the second dish into his mouth and immediately understood what Thezan had been trying to show him.

The second dish filled Felix with a sense of warmth and happiness. It was joy and fun all bundled up into a small like rectangle. He saw memories from his childhood, ones he didn’t even know he still had. He also saw the highlights of some of his fights over the last couple years since integrating.

On top of that, the new feelings didn’t override or wash out the sadness from the previous dish, rather they melded together and took him on a ride. It was like watching a carefully crafted movie where he was intended to feel sadness then have that sadness slowly give way to joy. In a way, it made everything more impactful and meaningful.

He followed Thezan’s lead and finally washed away the emotions with a sip then ate the second cube on the plate. He was filled with the same feelings as before but with no undertone of overcoming sadness, just pure joy and fun.

The plate was quickly replaced with another, once again served in two cubes and Felix was starting to get the idea. He ate one cube and felt his joy and fun meld together with feelings of worry and fear.

This process continued for hours, with dishes designed to complement each-other and create a progression of emotions. Felix had no trouble with any of the dishes and was thoroughly enjoying himself, even through the negative emotions until got a dish that comprised of two black cubes with dark purple swirls in them. Putting the first half into his mouth, he immediately spit it out and downed three subsequent glasses of calm and tranquility.

Neither Thezan nor Rathos were having issues with the dish but he just couldn’t do it.

As soon as it had touched his tongue, his soul freaked out and the memories and experiences that flashed before him were entirely incomprehensible. He felt nothingness everywhere and at the same time, an immense pressure all around. It was pushing him, trying to dig into him, trying to eat him, consume him. He fought back and held strong but the, not really memory but experience, seemed to be endless.

It was an endless fight where neither side made any progress, where the burden was no easier to bear over time. The fight wasn’t something he ever grew accustomed to, but it was everything. It filled every sense of his and he didn’t think or know anything but the fight.

Luckily the glass of calm helped out immensely and seemed to completely wash away the experience entirely. He didn’t bother finishing that dish and simply let the masked servers replace it with the next one.

That was the only dish he had to skip out of what had felt like hundreds. There were a few repeats but in the context of the other dishes around them, they felt completely new to him.

He also briefly spent some time trying to figure out how the effect worked but it didn’t take him long to dissect. Each dish was filled with anima that was almost vibrating with the particular emotion. There were no actual experiences though so when it interacted with his soul, his soul filled in the blanks with his own experiences.

Due simply to the nature of the meal, not a single word passed between the three of them. They did however laugh, some cried, they groaned and they wallowed together. Though they were each experiencing flashbacks to their own lives, they were together and the experience was shared.

Ironically, it was the closest Felix had felt to anyone in a long time. The meal, or rather The Enchantment, had caused Felix to grow fond of Thezan and Rathos as if they were long time close friends. They weren’t on the same level as David had been to him, but David was the only point of reference he had.

They finished their meals and by the end, Felix was actually surprised to find he felt invigorated physically. His soul felt at peace in a way, like it had been cleansed through hardship and emotion. His body though, it seemed as though the food itself wasn’t just a way to transport the anima, it was filled with nutritional value and it was by far the most efficient food Felix had eaten. All of it had almost immediately burst into energy within his body.

Once his body was completely filled with energy, the rest sat in his stomach which resulted in actually feeling full and satisfied. Something he hadn’t felt in years, since shortly after he had gone through his first evolution.

Thezan paid the eye watering 0.15 A bill and they all exited the building into a lobby area.

Rathos stretched out her body and rubbed her face while Thezan looked like he was finally completely relaxed.

“Ah, that really hit the spot.” Rathos said as she contorted her body.

Thezan nodded, “Yeah. Enjoy it, we probably won’t be eating anywhere like this for a long time now that this job is pretty much over.”

Felix nodded, “So that’s it then? There’s nothing else to do?”

Thezan sighed, “As much as I hate Malrok, he’s not an idiot. I’ll report back to Dogran and we’ll see if there are any follow up jobs but at this point, it seems like the next step is to track down whoever Malrok sold to. That person is more than likely a god so, not much we can do about that.”

Felix frowned, “You think an actual god has it?”

Thezan shrugged, “Probably a minor one holding and transporting it for a bigger player. Malrok said ‘the only person he’d trust’ not sure who that is but if he isn’t exaggerating, I have to assume it’s one of the big three or another god around their level.”

“Rhonan, Holy Mother and Edras are the big three?”

Rathos stood back up and nodded in Felix’s direction, “Yup.”

Felix looked to both of them then nodded, “Well, it’s been a pleasure working with you guys. I appreciate you taking on someone much lower level than you and being patient with my lack of knowledge.”

Thezan smiled and offered his hand, “I’m sure we’ll get you in on some missions in the future. If you keep leveling as fast as you are too, you could become a regular in a couple epochs.”

Felix took Thezan’s hand and shook it, “Well, just let me know.”

Thezan nodded, “We will.”

Rathos immediately pulled Felix out of the hand shake as soon as Thezan finished speaking and hugged him up off the ground. She squeezed him and shook side to side, “We’re gonna miss you sooooooooooooooo much kid.”

While Felix could feel her squeezing progressively harder, he didn’t actually feel the need to stop her. She held the hug clearly longer than she had expected to and continued to squeeze harder until eventually she just gave up and dropped him.

She regarded him with an equally impressed and confused expression but he just ignored her.

Thezan shook his head at Rathos’ actions, “Just make sure you say farewell to Elric and Aros. I’m sure Elric will stop by with more poisons. Aros might go with him then, I know he had been meaning to get some things enchanted so maybe he’ll finally do so.”

Felix nodded, “Sounds good. Oh and thank you for dinner.”

Thezan smiled, “Of course. I’ll stop by with the rest of the payment later or leave it with the guild if I suddenly get too busy.”

“Sure, thanks.”

Thezan and Rathos headed down to ground level while Felix flew out the open door in the room.

He flew for almost an hour through the portal spires back to Inscripticae, practicing his mana control the entire way.

It had been a long time since he had slept and for some reason, Felix was actually feeling tired so when he got there, he headed straight for the storage closet and slept in his Pocket Home. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .