Looking through the portal, Felix saw a room made of large stone blocks with dried and treated logs supporting the doorway and corners of the room. He stepped through and the portal closed behind him. The room he arrived in appeared to be a portal room. The only doorway in the room was easily as big as a garage door and had a series of rails that all conjoined a few meters outside the room before they all led into it, stopping right under his feet.

It seemed like the rails likely connected with rails on the other side of the portal when one was opened for that purpose.

Looking around, it seemed no one was around to greet him so Felix started wandering into the facility.

He followed the rails out of the portal room and into a large open room with rails winding through the space to various doorways, tunnels and lifts. He walked along one of the walls trying to see or hear anyone that may have been around but the whining, clanking and banging of the mine carts made it hard to hear anything else.

Eventually he found a doorway that seemed to lead to a living area, judging from the kitchen he could see through the doorway on the left side of the room and bunks in the room to the right. Across from him there was another door through which he finally saw another creature.

Standing at a table with just the left half of his body in view, Felix saw a large half giant man with a long messy hair and a bushy braided beard. He wore thick coveralls that were tied at the waist leaving his torso entirely exposed. Felix also spotted a small metal earrings and a set of rings from the side he could see.

[D - Uncommon] Arvo (Lvl 499)

The half giant was talking to someone out of view and only noticed Felix when he got within a few meters of the room. The man’s head turned to him and his already existing frown deepened.

“And who in the fuck are you?” He tilted his chin in Felix’s direction making it obvious to the rest of the room who he was talking to.

Felix continued to approach as he smiled and waved, “Felix. I’m here about a job to deal with creature’s sieging a mining outpost? This outpost, I take it?”

The man’s frown deepened which Felix didn’t even think was possible, “Fucking Strib might be the cheapest fucker I ever worked for.” The man sighed, “I’ve told him we don’t need more guards, fuck it. If he doesn’t cough up to deal with this shit soon, I quit.”

Felix heard another voice from inside the room, “Arvo, you’ve been saying that for the last 6 months. We all need this job, you more than anyone.”

The large man, Arvo, just grumbled.

Felix tentatively corrected their assumption, “I’m not a guard. Job said to stop the monsters for good.”

Arvo rubbed his face with his hands, “Fucking Strib… Kid, what level did the job posting recommend?”

“A team of high D grades or low C grades.” Felix hesitated to continue because he was confident it was going to further enrage Arvo, “Pay doesn’t really match that recommendation though.”

Arvo just sighed and fell into a chair behind him, “Go home kid. This one just ain’t worth it.”

Felix shrugged, “I mean, I can’t make it worse can I? I’m only really risking my own life, why not let me try and maybe I get lucky. I don’t get paid unless I accomplish something so…”

Arvo chuckled and dropped his head back, “You’d have to be really fucking lucky.”

At that point another person leaned out around the door frame with a curious expression and as soon as they saw Felix, they winced. After a second they shrugged and beckoned him into the room.

As Felix finally walked into the room they were in, he saw a lot more people than he was expecting. There was Arvo, the halfling man who had beckoned him in as well as two groups of five people who were adventurers, judging from their equipment.

The adventurers were largely off to the sides of the room and seemed to be whispering to each-other. In the middle of the room, there was a large map of the area. The map wasn’t traditional because it didn’t cover much of the geography, but it looked to be an overlay of all the mining routes with the topology above. It was a confusing mess and Felix had no idea how any of them could read it without their own extensive experience of the area.

Looking around, Felix saw a few of the adventurers giggling a couple whispering and a few sighing when they finally identified him. He didn’t really mind being underestimated as long as they didn’t make his job any harder than it needed to be or interfere in any way.

Felix looked around but no one seemed particularly inclined to start talking so Felix turned to the halfling who had beckoned him in, “Mind catching me up to speed?”

The halfling man shrugged, “Sure. I’m Sanbin by the way, just call me San.” He offered his hand.

Felix nodded and shook his hand, “Felix.”

San pointed to the two groups in turn then to Arvo, “These are the adventuring groups the mine’s owner hired as guards. This is Arvo, who you’ve already met. He’s the mine’s foreman.”

Looking over at the two adventuring groups, Felix saw their levels fell between 400 and 600. San’s level was just over 450.

San walked over to the side of the table, “We were just planning another expedition into the mines with our guards here. We can’t have miners there constantly anymore so instead we choose a mine, go out as a team and the guards try to keep us safe.”

Arvo grumbled something unintelligible but everyone seemed to be ignoring him so Felix followed suit, “When’s the expedition?”

San shrugged, “A couple hours likely. Need to let the miners know, get the carts ready… you know.”

Felix nodded, “Sure. I take it you have no leads on where the army’s are coming from or why they’re doing this?”

San shook his head and looked around the room. Everyone else either shrugged, shook their heads or just seemed uninclined to say anything.

“Mind if I tag along then?” Felix smiled to try and hide his mild annoyance.

Arvo grumbled again and San just shrugged, “More than welcome to. Try to listen to Arvo or the other guards when we get in there. When he isn’t grumbling nonsense he is actually a good foreman.”

Felix nodded having little intention of blindly following them. He wouldn’t specifically disobey but he also wasn’t as trusting of them as he was of Thezan. If he disagreed with their orders, he had no qualms with simply ignoring them.

San ran off to direct the rest of the miners to prepare themselves and Arvo followed shortly afterwards. The other adventuring groups didn’t seem to have any desire to talk to him so he shrugged and sat down in one of the chairs.

He had better things to do than trying to get information out of people who didn’t want to talk. He entered his Soul Garden and practiced on his rendition of Mihto’s course. It was hard to create a combat course himself because he couldn’t practice reacting to things when he knew where they were coming from at all times so instead, he had Grim create the course for him.

Once he had practiced for his usual 15 minutes of real world time, he shifted back over to his body and started working on practicing his mana control. He didn’t want to head into his Pocket Home because he was worried they would leave without him and he didn’t want to use his mana control to lift things in front of people so he focused on casting focus and speed.

Mostly out of annoyance, Felix threw in a couple hugely overpowered attack spell formations into his training just to throw the adventuring groups off. As soon as he formed one, he saw three people amongst the two groups flinch but by the time they turned to him, the spell was gone and he was already forming the next.

They shrugged but watched him warily then the next time he formed an attack spell they started to get more worried. The groups started whispering amongst each-other and Felix got some primal enjoyment out of seeing those three flinching every few minutes but none of them dared speak to him.

A few stared at him incredulously, a few with fear, a few looked like they had been challenged or almost dishonored and they all collectively backed up a few steps. Not one of them looked away from him for more than a few seconds though.

Felix had a hard time hiding a smile at first but quickly got used to hiding how much fun he was having scaring the adventurers. Two hours passed in no time and San beckoned them all to follow with a tilt of his head. Felix was the first to leave the room and he saw a long procession of mine carts containing tools as well as miners now filling the main room.

As Felix looked around, he noticed the vast majority of the miners were either half giants or halflings. He didn’t ask why but he was almost surprised not to see any dwarves amongst the miners. In fact, thinking back he hadn’t seen any dwarves at all which he found odd considering all the other races he had seen that mirrored fantasy from earth.

As he pondered the races of the multiverse, in a practiced fashion, one adventuring group headed to the front of the procession and the other took the rear. They set themselves up in their preferred formations then San looked over the whole procession and nodded to himself. Almost as an afterthought, he finally noticed Felix standing off to the side.

San shrugged and gestured towards the back so Felix nodded and walked over next to the adventuring group there. He noticed them bristle at him standing in and around their formation but he really didn’t care.

The procession slowly proceeded down one of the rail tracks with the mine carts moving themselves courtesy of some simple force enchantments on their rear. Felix briefly examined them but found nothing worth stealing so he simply followed along.

No danger presented itself as the procession slowly rolled out of the outpost and into the cave, never having to expose itself to the outside. They climbed upwards at a glacial pace for a few hours before leveling out and the cave morphed into an actual mine.

Felix looked around and saw stones and various glints all around him but nothing he, nor Nova were interested in. She had looked around a few times but Felix felt her radiate disappointment every time. He chuckled to himself then pet her as he followed the procession.

As they got further into the mines, Felix noticed everyone, especially the guards, getting increasingly nervous and skittish. They looked around faster, reacted to small sounds, rested their hands on their weapons and generally seemed to be on edge.

While he didn’t feel worried himself, he decided he wasn’t an idiot so he filled his cloak with mana and prepared a few levels worth of defensive spells around him. He didn’t prepare any attacks just yet to be sure none of the guards accidentally attacked him.

They arrived at their destination as the carts slowed to a halt and the miners collected their tools. Some had picks others had weird strips of thick plates attached by a string and some carried bags. Felix watched in fascination as they walked over to the walls and first used the picks to flatten. Then, they stuck the ribbons to the wall in a circle and filled them with mana. Felix immediately recognized the enchantment as softening the stone which proved correct as a few seconds later, the picks sunk much deeper into the stone.

For particularly difficult sections, they pulled small balls out of the bag and tossed them into the holes they had made with the help of some hand drills. The miners backed up and the balls exploded loosening the stone and allowing them to remove large chunks of it at a time.

The minerals they extracted got cleaned up a little then dropped into the now empty mine carts for a few hours until the miners decided to move forwards a few hundred meters.

They continued this process as the carts filled up until the remaining space for minerals dwindled and everyone’s nerves mounted. Felix saw Arvo’s frown deepening by the second as he barked out orders, inspected the mine and looked around skittishly.

Felix saw San standing off to the side waiting for more minerals he could inspect before they ended up in the carts and decided to approach him.

“Hey San, are there always attacks or just some of the time?”

San looked up and shook his head, “Always. Used to be sometimes, last few dekads it’s been every. damn. time. Sometimes they manage to seize the haul, sometimes we fend them off.”

Felix nodded and let him get back to work then wandered around and looked for any signs of enemies approaching. He looked forwards and backwards even wandering a kilometer from the miners in either direction, much to the chagrin of the adventurers.

He didn’t see anything and started to doubt they would attack from the caves on either side. As he rejoined the miners, his theory was proven correct as he, and everyone else in the cave, noticed the temperature starting to rise very rapidly.

Felix frowned and looked around trying to figure out what was happening because cooking them alive in a cave seemed like a very easily countered attack. The adventurers formed a line facing both of the walls on either side of the caves as the miners huddled up next to the carts.

With an attack imminent, Felix started preparing some attack spells and set himself up behind the adventurers with the lower average level.

As he waited, the mine grew so hot, it visibly became difficult on the miners so Felix created a simple wind spell to cycle the air as much as possible. He opted for wind instead of cold because cold nodes were inherently inefficient and on a large scale like the mine, he didn’t want to waste a ton of mana.

Over the course of the next few minutes, as the miners enjoyed the cool breeze and the adventurers fiddled, Felix noticed the walls themselves were getting hotter. Instead of getting hotter with the room, the walls started to redden and glow causing Felix to realize they were actually the source of the heat.

The walls continued to grow hotter and subsequently brighter until the stone became molten and dripped down the walls of the mine. Just a second later, molten rock sprayed out of the walls on either side in quick succession. Felix’s cloak caught a few droplets and simply caused them to drop to the ground while the miners dodged as much as they could.

[D - Uncommon] Mountain Turtle (Lvl 604)

Turtles that were similar but distinct from the world boss Felix had fought back in the tutorial began crawling out of the molten holes in the walls and dropping to the ground.

Grim gasped mentally in realization, That’s why they’re turtles and not tortoises.

They swim through mountains?

Grim shrugged mentally, Seems like it.

The adventuring group in front of Felix engaged the turtles with a couple melee fighters cowering behind shields to block their molten spittle while the other’s attacked wherever they found an opening.

Felix waited and watched at first, no one really seeming to notice him. He protected the miners a few times from stray attacks but they seemed to be managing on their own.

As he had expected, a few minutes after the turtles had tunneled into the room, a series of various jungle, mountain and cave creatures followed. There were large bugs, lizards, feline creatures, arachnids, scorpions and bat like creatures with various names and unique abilities.

Their levels were all lower than the turtles that had come before them but only by a small amount.

Now that Felix had a better idea of what was and what wasn’t believable from the last mission he had done and just talking to others, he only held back a little bit. Instead of overpowering his Lightning Bolts to the point where he instantly killed them, Felix overpowered them just twice and used his spells to support the other groups. He was still doing a lot of damage, just judging from the reaction of those he hit but he mainly focused on keeping people alive and uninjured.

He mixed in some Force Beams to push enemies away and Shields to protect the innocents. He only occasionally squashed them against the walls but as much as the fight was easy for him, he could still see the intelligence in the creature’s eyes. They used the turtles for cover, took strategic positioning and tried to whittle down the weakest member of the guards to create openings. The scorpions darted in and around corners, appearing and attacking in just a brief moment before darting away again while the bats mostly harassed everyone making it hard to focus.

None of what they did was random either, they coordinated everything.

The bats harassed at the same time as the turtle’s sprayed magma. They worked together to create openings for the scorpions, felines and lizards to pounce in and do damage.

While impressive, it didn’t result in more than a few broken bones, gashes and poisonings here and there. By the time Felix finished with his side, he glanced over his shoulder and chuckled as he watched Nova essentially playing with her food. The guards tried to attack her a few times but she just swatted them away and pounced on a new enemy.

Felix was grateful she was getting wise enough to realize who she could and who she shouldn’t attack which made his job a lot easier.

Nova jumped onto one creature, ripped their neck out then hopped onto a turtles back and tried to rip them out of their shell using their tail. She killed it far before succeeding then morphed her own tail into a long spiked appendage that she used to crush a bat. She looked over and toasted a lizard with fire breath then happily clawed at some other creature to the side.

The guards on her side just backed off and gave her room once they realized she wasn’t actually attacking them. It took her a minutes or so to kill everything she deemed an enemy at which point she started ripping into the corpses and consuming them ravenously.

Felix suspected she ate to satisfy the urges more than she desired their biological material considering how the creatures had been rather mundane, other than their intelligence.

Activating his rings, Felix consumed the bodies on his side of the mine causing a few of the adventurers to look at him funny. He had already confirmed there were some rare but not exceedingly rare skills that had similar effects at the library so he wasn’t worried about someone torturing him for his secrets.

Nova cleaned up her side of the mine a couple minutes later at which point she morphed back into a dragon-kitten and hopped onto Felix’s shoulder to nap.

Through the use of both of their skills, the mine was completely cleaned of animal corpses and viscera leaving behind just small blood spatters here and there from the miners and guards. Overall, they collectively didn’t look much worse than they had before they had been attacked.

Felix himself was out almost a million mana but that had gone towards killing the creatures, powering his cloak, which left him completely untouched and protecting the miners.

He walked back over to the others and saw a few miners smile and nod in his direction as well as a few of the adventurer guards who offered him a slight nod of either respect or gratitude.

Arvo walked over with his arms crossed and looked down at Felix, “Alright. You’re here to finally deal with this thing?”

Felix nodded, “That’s the goal.”

Arvo sighed, “I’ll give you everything we know back at the outpost.”

“Thanks.”

Arvo nodded in respect then glanced over at the guards and sighed. He joined San and the rest of the miners then the carts started slowing moving backwards where they had come from.

The group bandaged their wounds, drank potions and repaired their armor as they followed the cart’s slow progression back to the outpost.

Felix had been expecting it to be slow because of how full the carts were but he had forgotten that they had actually traveled upwards to get to the mine. It was therefore, a pleasant surprise for him when they reached the start of the decline and the cart started to roll down the hill much faster.

San steered the carts and rode the brakes so they didn’t roll down the rails and out of control but the trip back took only a quarter of the time it took to get into the mine in the first place.

The miners took the carts off to individual rooms from which Felix heard the banging of metal and stone along with the roar of forges.

He followed Arvo into the chamber with the map while the guards, along with most of the injured miners, headed towards the room with the bunks.

Felix stood on the opposite side of the table to Arvo who leaned over using the table to support him with both hands. Considering he was a half-giant, he had to lean over pretty far and bend his knees, which did not look comfortable to Felix.

“Sorry I doubted you earlier. Thanks to you and Nova, your familiar I take it? That was the smoothest attack we’ve fended off in a long time.”

Felix nodded, “Sure thing. You said you had more information?”

Arvo nodded and sighed then pointed at a spot on the map, “While we don’t know the actual source of… whatever the fuck is happening, we do know of one camp.”

Felix frowned, “A camp? They’re animals, monsters, what do you mean camp?”

The half giant nodded, “Yeah, supposedly. I mean what I said. There are tents, wooden shelters, a palisade and everything. One of the guards a few terms ago followed the creatures for a while. They found this camp but then vanished a few days later when they tried to find another.”

Felix nodded, “Alright, I’ll check it out then. It’s on the surface I take it? Is there a door out of here that doesn’t lead to caves?”

Arvo led Felix to one of the rooms in the building and pointed to a ladder that climbed up to a trapdoor in the ceiling, “We had to seal the other exits a while ago so all we have left are chimneys with many thick grates, and that.”

Felix nodded, “Thanks.”

“Feel free to take a bunk to sleep for the night. Not sure what time it is on whatever planet you came from but here, it’s the middle of the night right now. It’s also really dark outside, no moon and not many stars in the sky.”

Felix shrugged, “I’d like to take a look anyways.”

Arvo shook his head and walked away, “Sure, whatever…”

Flying up to the trap door, Felix slid the large metal bar to the side and pushed it open then flew out and into the completely pitch black of night. He looked around and saw absolutely nothing save for the small square of light below him.

While it was completely possible for him to create light of his own, that would have attracted a lot of attention so instead, Felix closed the trap door below him and sat down next to it. With no one around to see anything, he used his mana control to lift tiny weights and write things with his quill.

Nova didn’t seem to have any issue with the lack of light and she hopped off his shoulder and into the inky blackness of the night.

Lifting objects with his mana control didn’t take much focus at all and even while he manipulated the quill to write things, he had attention to spare so he tried to create a night vision spell. His Persona would have been able to see something because of the enhancement to their eyes and Felix would eventually add them to his own body but he wasn’t ready to do so yet. It was also a good challenge to create such a spell.

Theoretically, all he had to do was shift the light coming into his eyes into the visible spectrum. While he wasn’t sure if there would be any UV light around, he was certain there was plenty of infrared light as a byproduct of the jungle’s natural temperature. Unfortunately, he just didn’t have the nodes he needed. He wasn’t sure they even existed but either way, he didn’t have them.

Even mentally perusing the node creation tome he had scanned from the Raven, he only found nodes that created mana not ones that altered the existing world around him.

He quickly put the idea aside for when he found the nodes or if he found another way to do something similar and focused his attention on mana computers.

Instead of pulling out the computer he had been working on most recently, Felix started to create a new computer from scratch, in his lap. What he was trying to do was confirm whether or not his latest idea had any potential. Using his incredibly fine mana control, Felix created the smallest transistors he could and connected them together to form a network of transistors.

He was just replicating an earlier design for a computer, one that performed a very simple set of addition, subtraction and multiplication and nothing else. While he had already created much more complicated computers, the challenge with this one was how small it was. In theory, this scale created huge problems for stability and precision but Felix had an ace up his sleeve, his ridiculous mana control.

For his first test, Felix manually held the entire design of the computer in his mind then held it steady as he powered it on. It took him almost an hour to get it to the point where he could hold the shape stable without affecting the calculations themselves by allowing the mana to freely flow through it.

Once he had achieved that, he didn’t dare try to complicate the computer further but instead, he began suffusing it with the anima left over in his Soul Space. He quickly found that using the uncompressed anima did little to nothing but if he compressed it first as much as he could, the computer was almost stable.

It made slight errors and he could feel connections breaking every once in a while but it was already so close. As far as he could tell that meant his idea could work so Felix pushed ahead and started training his fine mana control exclusively.

He had already kick started the process when he had opened the mana control skill cube holding Grim but now, he wanted to go even further. He pulled out the skill cube and confirmed he could still complete it given a half hour then put it away and replaced it with the smallest droplet of mana he could control.

He then compressed that into a solid and carefully started to shave away at the exterior. As it grew smaller, he took breaks to simply move the piece around and get used to handling such a small amount then continued to shrink it when he felt comfortable.

At first he was making notable progress and he was becoming hopeful with how miniscule he was going to be able to make the computer. After a couple hours his progress notably slowed. By the time the sun started to rise over the horizon, finally breaking up the inky blackness that had surrounded him, he felt like he had gotten nowhere over the last hour or so.

He didn’t have time to dwell on it or more likely, smash his head against the training until he got it. Daylight had arrived and so Felix could finally head out towards the camp.

He left as soon as there was any amount of light and flew towards the point Arvo had indicated though, all he had to work with was a direction.

As he flew up into the air, he saw the outpost below him from the outside for the first time and saw that it was a collection of a walls with a couple towers poking out all location in the valley between a few large mountains. Considering they had climbed to reach the mines, Felix assumed the mines had to be in the mountains.

Felix darted out of the range of the outpost and immediately felt a tug on his soul from his bond with Nova. He headed towards it, more than a little shocked, and found her just a few kilometers ahead of him. As he approached, she jumped into the air and met him midflight then sent him a wave of memories from last night.

She had sought out and found the camp Arvo had pointed out while Felix was training in the dark. She hadn’t engaged them but she had gotten a good view of the entire camp, having circled around and flown over it.

It was a little confusing at first to see from Nova’s perspective but his own time practicing his matter senses had helped tremendously. On top of that, as Felix processed the memories and translated them in his own mind, he gained insights into his own matter senses progressing them even further.

Once he had gone through everything Felix asked Nova to guide him to the camp and together they flew off almost directly away from the rising sun.

Felix could finally see the planet around him and as he looked around, he saw an endless jungle filling the valley between mountains that rose up like islands from the green sea below.

Though he could see the horizon in the distance, it was partially obscured by a low hanging fog making anything further than a dozen kilometers a blurry mess. Even flying higher into the air though, there was nothing but mountains and jungle below a seemingly infinite fog as far as he could see.

The planet was a little warmer on average when compared to Telviras and the gravity was about twice as strong but it still didn’t affect Felix much.

Unfortunately, with the cover of night gone, Felix was spotted far before he ever even got close to the camp.

Flying over the jungle, a swarm of various bird creatures with different sizes, shapes and colors came racing towards him from every side. Despite all being so distinct from each-other, they worked together and synchronized themselves perfectly such that they executed coordinated maneuvers.

They dove together to claw at Felix while another group pelted him with blasts of wind and others cut off his escape by dropping rocks and logs. He dodged the wind and deflected the rocks but his cloak had to handle the talons. As fast as Felix was, the sky was not his domain and the birds outpaced him in every way except in a long distance, straight line race.

After recovering from the first attack, Nova hopped off Felix’s back and plummeted to the ground as she morphed her body. Felix didn’t get to watch though as a particularly large bird flew just a few meters over his head and bellowed out a screech that vibrated his body as it passed.

His cloak wasn’t designed to do anything against sound so it hit him full force.

Luckily its only real effect was to throw him off. Luckily, the subsequent blast of wind that followed, though he was stunned, was automatically and completely neutralized courtesy of his cloak at the cost of just a few tens of thousands of mana.

It was at that point that he heard a screech of pain from a short distance away and Felix recovered from the sound attack long enough to look up and smile.

He saw a beautiful blue phoenix completely ripping through the birds attacking him like it was nothing. Not that Felix needed the help, he was having fun analyzing how smart they really were and testing their coordination and adaptability. Still, he appreciated Nova’s desire to help and protect him.

Wrapping himself in a Shield of Force, Felix turned himself around and took out the birds flying around him one by one as they flew closer to him. He didn’t bother chasing them down because his goal was actually to follow them, physically or even just visually as it would have been a huge help to him finding the camp.

It only took him, along with Nova, a couple of seconds to reduce the flock down to half its original size at which point they all split off and dove into the jungle below at various points.

Felix had Nova return to him and she perched herself on his shoulder, her long tail feathers trailing along his back.

Damn, they were smart enough to obfuscate the camp’s location. Nova, you can still guide us towards the camp, right?

She chirped in assent and flew off ahead of Felix so he could follow.

No more birds flew out of the jungle to harass them and, much to Felix’s dismay, Grim assured him that the soul trick he had used to scout in the tutorial would have little to no effect on D grades. It was just something that worked on really low level creatures who’s instincts were completely untrained.

Felix really wished he had a better idea of how to create an illusion spell but the only thing he knew about them was the spell form he copied from The Raven: Finras’ shop. That spell was far too complicated for him to raw cast though and he hadn’t even begun to start dissecting it.

It was too late at this point either way, they already knew he was coming. As soon as Nova, with Felix in tow, started to descend towards the jungle, it was obvious that the camp was also prepared for them.

Giant boulders, with good but not great aim, shot up through the jungle canopy in their direction. They easily dodged out of the way but as they got closer, the stones turned into wooden javelins and their aim was much better.

Nova deftly dodged them all but Felix on the other hand was hit by a couple but his cloak protected him from taking any damage. As they got within a few dozen meters, a huge swarm of insects closed in on them from all sides. Felix wasn’t actually sure how his cloak would react to them so he slowed down and told Nova to start circling upwards.

As soon as the swarm bunched itself up, Felix let loose with a wide cone of billowing flames. Nova thought it looked terribly fun and couldn’t help herself from joining in with a stream of fire from her own beak after a cheerful and sing song chirp.

Together they destroyed most of the swarm and sent the rest back into the safety of the jungle.

Felix swapped out the Shield of Force surrounding him with a Mana Shell then let himself drop towards the canopy. Nova dropped herself as well which was an odd sight, seeing a bird dropping straight down like a rock though Felix suspected she was increasing the weight of her body.

The Mana Shell protected Felix’s body from the leaves that were sharp and the branches that were thick and hard. Nova just didn’t care at all and seemed to be loving it as she punched a hole right through the canopy and fell halfway to the jungle floor before she caught herself and circled back up to Felix amongst the branches.

Hopping from branch to branch, his training with Mihto helping immensely, Felix headed towards the camp as per Nova’s direction.

The javelins and bugs had ceased to bother them but now that they were in the jungle itself, they were well within the range of other creatures.

First was a group of chimps that pelted them from the tree tops around. Felix completely ignored them as they were just an annoyance and hunting them down was a waste of time. Then he felt something sneak up on him followed shortly afterwards by a shooting pain in his calf. Looking down, he saw a dark green snake wrapped around his thigh with four fangs buried in his flesh.

He didn’t bother killing it at first but once it started to interfere with his jumping from branch to branch, he reached down and squeezed its head until it popped. The venom was completely ineffective despite how cool Felix thought it was.

It used a combination of two separate venoms in tandem. One tried to relax his muscles while the other attacked his cells as they were put to sleep.

Neither were remotely close to doing anything to his body as his tolerance to and the defenses he’d built for toxins completely neutralized them. He was even converting most of it into energy which, was unnecessary but, nice. The bite itself did steal a small sliver of his health but it was nothing he was concerned about. With his energy topped up, his Vitality would seal and completely heal the wound within just a few minutes.

Nothing else assaulted them before they spotted the camp between the trees and vines. There was a palisade enclosing a large area in an artificial clearing in the middle of the jungle. Some of the stripped jungle trees were being used as posts for the tents while others had obviously gone into the palisade.

The tents themselves varied greatly. Some were enclosed on the sides and the top, others were just a canopy and some had large gaping slits parallel to the suns trajectory throughout the day. There were even some mostly wooden structures but they were simple in shape and design, barely log houses.

All the creatures of the camp seemed to be ready for their approach as looking down, Felix saw a veritable army of animals all in formation. There were chimp creatures riding lizards at the front wielding spears and shields. Behind them were larger apes with four arms each holding a different crude spear or axe.

Finally in the rear there were rows of javelins and another set of four armed apes. In the very back wearing a complete set of plate armor, though not necessarily a cohesive set, was a large Gorilla.

[D - Rare] Gorilla King Gormoth: Camp AG Commander (Lvl 760)

The rest of the animals were mostly rare with a few uncommons in the mix and their levels were all below Gormoth’s but still in the 6 to 7 hundreds. Nova circled around deftly tilting her wings back and forth to avoid the javelins blasting through the sky around her.

Felix dodged the easier ones and had a Force spell to deflect a number of others. The rest bounced off his Mana Shell harmlessly.

Unbothered by completely ineffective attack, Felix floated over the army a few hundred meters back and tried to decide which spell he wanted to use most. He was really starting to wish he had a Chain Lightning spell once again.

That wasn’t an option currently though so he tried to decide between Fire and Force mostly. He was thinking Fire Balls would be a good bet but he didn’t want to spread the army out to much, not when they had already bunched themselves up so tightly for him. That left either thin beams of force or superheated balls of fire with little to no force pushing outwards.

The range on his force beams was low so he settled on fire and slowly dropped down towards the army.

The mounted spearmen in the front adjusted themselves and corrected their posture, the mounts eager to pounce forwards but held back by something. As soon as his feet touched the ground, Felix dropped his Mana Shell because it was annoying when he was grounded and Gormoth roared.

That appeared to have been the signal they were waiting for so the army charged towards Felix. He quickly sent permission to Nova to do whatever she wanted and prepared three identical spells then simply waited for the mounted combatants to reach him.

They wouldn’t be the most efficient spells he had ever created but the quick adjustments he had made to the Flame Thrower spell proved to be well worth the cost. As columns of fire blasted into the army, the superheated flames became inescapable as a simple Force spell lifted and pulled everything inside.

Felix swept the flames back and forth slowly, making sure he had cleared out a line before sweeping over to the next enemy. He heard Gormoth bellow out another roar, an audibly distinct roar, not Felix had no idea what they meant, he just suspected they meant something.

A few seconds later he figured out what it was as teams of panthers, jaguars and tigers worked together to flank him from the edge of the clearing. A few of them got right up close to him and tried to bite down but found their jaw stopped by small blue hexagons that held their fangs back.

Felix quickly used the last bit of his focus to form and cast a spell he had designed for his Persona and created a burst of Force and Fire all around him.

The panther trying to bite his arm was launched into the air, with no friction to hold them back, and the other feline predators near him were charred and sent tumbling.

Now that the army was charging at him, Felix pushed himself up and into the air a few meters so he could get a better view of the battlefield and caught sight of Nova. She was still in the form of a phoenix and was busy dive bombing the four armed apes in the back. As she flew down and got close to them, she morphed her beak into a spear head and aimed for their shoulders or neck before darting off back into the air.

Looking just in front of himself, the front line had been mostly obliterated. Only a quarter of them actually lay dead either charred husks or piles of ash but, the rest were all scrambling. Gormoth bellowed out roars no doubt intended to be orders but none of them seemed to be doing anything orderly. They all ran in different directions, the mounts kicking their riders off into the distance, the chimp like creatures dropping their weapons and trying to climb the palisade to escape certain demise.

The middle layer of infantry, the four armed apes with crude looking melee weapons, just looked lost. Some of them, stupidly, ran up to meet their front line and assist while others simply looked around confused because both in front and behind them, they were being torn apart.

The feline stealth squads kept trying to distract Felix by flanking him but once he was aware of them, he simply used his remaining focus to take them out with a couple overpowered Lightning Bolts each.

Once the front line was almost entirely dealt with and nowhere to be seen, Felix dropped the three modified Flame Throwers and simply floated forwards. He used Lightning Bolts to deal with the scattered infantry that still seemed to be frozen, confused or just lost and helped Nova finish off the backline.

With nothing left between him and Gormoth, the Gorilla King roared and leapt into the air in Felix’s direction. Nova quickly asked Felix if she could help and he didn’t really want to say no when he felt the excitement leaking through along with her query.

The loss in experience wasn’t going to make or break him and there were plenty of other camps they could split up and take out individually. For now he wanted to fight with his familiar and was really just hoping to find a clue as to what the hell was going on.

Felix darted to the side with a burst of Force right before the Gorilla King landed then retaliated with a quick Lightning Bolt while they were still unable to dodge effectively.

The metal armor mostly nullified the attack, providing a safe route around its body so Felix relented and dropped the Lightning Bolts he had already prepared. He had kind of just forgotten about that and didn’t plan around it so he just switched over to Force Blasts and Flame Throwers.

He didn’t bother with the modified version of the Flame Thrower because there was only one enemy in front of him and he didn’t think trying to pull Gormoth in would do anything.

Now that he was closer, Felix got a good look at Gormoth and what he was wearing. He had already recognized the plate armor as cobbled together but what he hadn’t spotted was a couple of rings along with a pair of greaves that appeared magical simply due to their glimmer in his mana sight. Gormoth also had a massive and impressively crafted maul in his hands and wore a pendant of shining blue.

Most interesting to Felix though was the circlet Gormoth wore that had an eyeball placed right over his forehead. Not even a jewel, the eye was a real squishy sphere that could have easily been ripped out of a humans face, were it not for the fact that it appeared to still be functional. As the animal army crumbled around Gormoth, the eye darted about looking, seeing and focusing on the battlefield.

Felix made a snap decision and dropped the Flame Throwers, using all of his focus for Force Bombs and Beams.

Gormoth looked around frustrated that he hadn’t killed Felix with his leap but the eye on his circlet immediately locked onto Felix’s position.

Felix fired off a Force Bomb mostly to see what it would do and winced when he saw Gormoth stumble back a single step but otherwise recover after just a brief moment.

The Gorilla King stepped forwards and whipped his maul over his head then slammed downwards. Felix dashed to the side with a mobility spell then released a Force Beam at Gormoth’s knees. As soon as it hit, his balance was off and Nova capitalized, vanishing from off in the distance with just a trail of fire marking her path.

Gormoth toppled over, actually launched a couple meters from Nova’s hit but he rolled into it and got to his feet then instantly leapt at Felix as the eye on the circlet tried to keep track of Nova.

Wanting to make it more interesting, this time when Gormoth slammed down, Felix stepped to the side just a meter or so and punched upwards towards Gormoth’s face. Instead of actually making contact with him, Felix had simply attached his Force Beam spell form to his fist and released it mid arc.

Gormoth’s head snapped to the side and Nova dug her claws into the back of his head then vanished just a moment later in a trail of fire.

Felix lightly leapt backwards a few meters, no need to augment his jump and let loose a Force Bomb at Gormoth’s feet right as he swung his axe horizontally, twisting his torso to build momentum.

The Force Bomb sent his swing trailing upwards and over Felix’s head as he ducked then Nova dropped down and pecked at Gormoth’s real eyes.

As soon as Gormoth recovered, Felix waited for Nova to dart away again and she looked upwards but then nothing happened. She got half a meter or so off his face but she was moving glacially slowly.

Felix felt a pang of worry, his own mixed with the torrent of emotion coming from Nova’s soul bond as he saw the eye on the circlet lock onto Nova’s form. Gormoth reached upwards with his left hand, as if possessed and tried to grab Nova.

In that moment, Felix just reacted as a beam of significantly overpowered Fire, Force and Lightning all collided with Gormoth’s neck, launching the body backwards.

Felix thankfully saw Nova glide around in a circle and land on his shoulder, evidently exhausted. He quickly jumped over to Gormoth but saw that everything between his shoulders, including his chest, head and the circlet along with it, were gone. Felix had completely disintegrated them.

He sighed in relief, annoyance and acceptance. It was worth it to make sure Nova didn’t get killed and considering how tired she was, that had been a real possibility. He had felt her fear and that had been what caused him to react for the most part. He was quite satisfied with his casting speed though. Fully constructing and casting the Fire and Lightning spells from scratch had happened in just a couple hundredth of a second, the fastest he had ever cast them before.

With Gormoth dead, the rest of the animals scrambled off into the jungle and Felix didn’t bother chasing any of them down. He was here for levels though so he did kill any that were still in range of a Lightning Bolt.

Ding You have slai-

Felix dismissed the message before it could finish. He could check his levels afterwards and he was more than capable of basic math.

As he searched the camp, he questioned Nova on what had happened.

It was a confusing explanation to parse because her idea of mana was the balls Felix had given her and they were her base unit. As she explained that using the Phoenix ability that created a trail of fire used a lot of mana and she had run out, Felix saw in his mind, a pile of corpses. From that pile, one corpses floated into the air then turned into a ball. That ball then turned into a stream of fire.

She then went on to explain that she could eat bodies to get more balls but that just caused Felix to frown. He quickly questioned her some more but only grew more confused.

Does Nova not have a mana pool?

Grim shrugged, How the hell am I supposed to know that?

She seems to be pulling leftover mana from the corpses in her soul space to power everything…

Is that a problem?

Not on its own. She also doesn’t seem to have much mana. I think I need to go buy her a battery to use as a mana core. Speaking of which, I should buy you a new one too.

Definitely won’t say no to that, not that I much mana right now. You gonna try to make them yourself?

Not these ones. I’ll start working on that either in the next few terms or more likely at Eramith. Not enough time right now.

To keep that from happening again, Felix fed Nova as many single use batteries as he had, much to her delight, and promised to fix her mana issues in the future. She didn’t really seem to understand what he was saying but her confusion was laced with excitement nonetheless.

Having thoroughly searched the scorched remains of the camp, Felix didn’t find anything of value. Even Gormoth’s greaves and rings were basically trinkets. He pocketed them to sell later but there was nothing of note.

He was starting to realize the circlet was probably his best bet. Considering how smart all the creatures were though, he was pretty sure there was something else at play because Gormoth was the only one with a circlet.

He absorbed all the bodies and souls that had been left behind and examined a few of them but had a hard time figuring out what was different when he didn’t have a baseline to compare against.

On a whim, Felix decided to start searching for the next camp by circling the outpost and spiraling outwards. Nova was exhausted even though Felix had restored her mana as it seemed the phoenix form took more out of her than just mana. He quickly got Grim’s permission for Felix to place her in his Soul Space as she was smart enough now to not try and eat Grim.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

It was also Felix’s Soul Space so realistically it was impossible for her to do something he didn’t want her to. Just like Grim, she too didn’t seem to be bothered from being inside his soul at all, no doubt a product of their soul bond.

Flying over the jungle, Felix arrived at another mountain, one separate from the ones adjacent the outpost and circled around the outside. As he passed a particularly large cliff side, he spotted a number of tents buried in the rocky nook.

As soon as he spotted the tents, the residents of the camp spotted him.

He was once again attacked by birds but this time he didn’t need to follow them home so he simply ignored them and shot himself into the middle of the camp.

Felix slowed his fall so he didn’t injure himself but simulated an explosion of Force from his landing point anyways then jumped from outcropping to outcropping, killing everything in sight.

It didn’t take long for the leader of the camp, a mountain troll to make his presence known. As soon as Felix saw him, his theory was confirmed as he spotted the very same circlet with a creepy eye inserted right over the forehead.

This one Felix made sure he preserved which became an annoying endeavor as soon as the Troll realized the fight was futile and tried to commit suicide by jumping off the cliff face.

Felix raced down towards the corpse and absorbed it into the ring then caught the circlet just before it hit the ground but as soon as he turned it over, the eye was already shriveled and dead.

Damnit.

He flew off towards the next camp, this time ready to keep the commander alive while he investigated the circlet but as soon as the commander was obviously defeated, the eye shriveled all on it’s own.

Fucking…

Nova had recovered a few camps in and Felix felt waves of excitement as she danced around his Soul Space sniffing at everything in sight. Surprisingly to Felix, she recognized Grim and nuzzled up against him in affection, causing him to noticeably tense up.

She could try and eat me you know.

Felix just chuckled in response. He did remove Nova from his Soul Space shortly thereafter though and told her to be safe as she flew off towards the mountains on her own. She agreed not to use the Phoenix form relatively quickly as it had apparently scared her more so than it had Felix.

The sun began setting just a few camps later so Felix found a nice little cave in the mountain nearest him and settled in for the night. He spent a few hours trying to make more progress on shrinking his mana control until he finally had a break through.

Suffusing my cells with my soul hugely increased my control over them. So the same should work here… in theory?

Felix tried it. He started by compressing some of the anima he had in his Soul Space, affinizing it this time, then he merged that with exactly one point of mana. Now, he split the mana into two, then split those in two again. He repeated the process of splitting them all into two until he had gotten noticeably further than he had before.

He continued until he couldn’t accurately halve the little pieces of mana then tried to move to the next step, turning that miniscule bit of mana into a transistor in a mana computer. Doing so was very simple, doing so with the necessary degree of precision so it remained stable was very hard.

At first he just connected two together then he tested them as much as he could. He then attached another one onto the end and thoroughly tested it. By the time he hit a hundred transistors, the first flaw finally revealed itself and he had to carefully dissect the entire thing until he found the one that was flawed, then he continued.

The further he got, the faster the flaws appeared which was ironically a good thing. He was more likely to catch flawed transistors and ended up finding flaws in transistors that he had added way back at the start. This accelerated the process and also made testing much easier. Now he simply had to run very complicated operations that hit every transistor which were easier to come up with when the computer was more capable.

He had gotten to a few thousand by the time the sun rose and Felix carefully placed the prototype into his soul space so he could continue at a later time.

Hey Grim, remember when we talked about stealing memories?

Yeah.

You mentioned necromancy?

Yeah…

Felix sensed Grim’s hesitation, I just don’t see another way to track… whatever this thing is behind the eyeballs, down.

How about you start with what you can already do.

What do you mean?

Well… I don’t know, there isn’t anything written or stored in me related to this so everything I say is theoretical. The soul contains experiences right?

And I get rid of those when I soul harvest so I could just not?

Yeah… maybe?

Huh, that’s easy. Could I do that to learn languages and stuff too then?

Not this. This isn’t reading memories really. It’s reading experiences. You would need actual memories for that. The soul as I understand it is just for experiences. Significant experiences.

Right but learning a language could be a significant experience for someone? Maybe they can finally talk to someone they love or something.

Yes that is significant, but learning each and every word is not. Think about this, you have a martial artist that was pushed to learn by his parents. He enters the tournament of his life and wins. This is a big significant moment for him. If you were to read their experiences from their soul, my guess is you would glimpse the big moments of the fight, glimpse the parents being proud, standing over the opponent, begin awarded. The emotions of triumph, frustration, accomplishment, relief, pride and everything else. If you dug deeper into the martial art, you would probably find spars they lost, times they got hurt, times they finally mastered something they had been struggling with. You’d have to dig a lot deeper to find basic, fundamental knowledge, if it ever existed in the first place within their soul.

Ah, shit. Well… alright. I should be able to find this though right? At least, if my theory is right and something happened to them, someone gave them the circlets, then that should be significant. The point they became smart, right?

Maybe?

Any theories on whether I could do it on a live subject?

It would be torture…

Yeah but, I was thinking of trying it on the circlets.

Oh, I see. Maybe?

I mean I don’t see any other way they could work, other than being soul bound.

Could be System Fuckery

Damn. Yeah you’re right. Man, fuck The System. Stupid fucking System Fuckery.

Flying past the large sheer side of a mountain Felix glanced over and movement in a cave caught his eye.

Just over ten minutes later he stood over the body of a tusked lizard creature that had been the commander of the camp with streams of dark crimson and golden white pouring into his hands on either side. He had the passive Soul Reap skill disabled and shifted his consciousness inwards. This time there hadn’t been an escape so there weren’t any stragglers to attack him while he worked. He also had the cloak to protect him now so, he wasn’t particularly worried.

Felix took the soul of a random creature from the camp and started dissecting it. Normally he found the experiences and instincts then dumped them, now he specifically sought them out. He found some significant experiences but most of it was garbage. Animals were mostly satisfying themselves in various ways and their emotions tended to not be very complex.

As he had expected though, there was an experience of it becoming smart. He wasn’t quite reading or watching the experiences but he was able to get a general sense of the experience. This one was just filled with pain followed by clarity.

Taking the tiny piece of its soul that contained the memory, Felix compressed it down then treated it like it was a soul gem in the library. He pushed himself into it and let the experience wash over him.

He was an animal, a large bat and he was king of the cave. There were other bats in the cave but they were lesser creatures. He was the one that reproduced the most and he was the one that killed the most. He was strong, he was satisfied and he was happy.

Hanging in his cave waiting for prey, something new steps in. Something he had never heard before. It’s big, it’s covered in hair and it walks with purpose. It approaches. It’s under him.

He releases from the ceiling and darts for the exit, he feels it. He is weak, he is helpless.

Even before his body is crushed in its hand he knows he’ll be caught. He’s pulled in and it stares into his eyes. It carefully drops a liquid into his mouth. It tastes awful.

Suddenly pain. Pain everywhere. Body hurts. Head is squeezing. Head hurts. Head hurts a lot. Head hurts the most.

Pain lasts for days. Can’t get used to pain. Pain is constant.

Head feels… good. Head feels bigger, more capable. He hears the others around him waking up as well. He sees the creature that created him. He sees the commander and he knows he must follow.

The commander is smart and the commander will lead. He will lead us to be powerful, to be smart and to be clear.

The memory ends and Felix returns to himself, taking a second to suppress the urge to screech in order to hear and therefore see things then bite something’s neck to initiate copulation.

He half entered all the other memories, seeing much of the same thing until he finally decided it was enough and turned to the commander’s soul.

It didn’t take long for him to find the memory he was looking for now that he had context and reference as to how the process worked. Felix only partially dove into the memory so he didn’t lose himself.

So sleepy is The King of the Cave. His teeth still dripping with viscera from the creature he had hunted. The creature looked strong but it was weak. The hunt was easy. Itch in The King of the Cave’s side. He rolls over and drags his back along the big rock next to him. Satisfaction. Sleep.

Awake. Danger nearby. Nothing The King of the Cave can’t handle. He rolls over to his feet and stretches himself out. The King of the Cave has nothing to fear, he is King.

He stretches his mouth wide to expose his nose. He breathes in, he smells them. Danger.

The King of the Cave approaches the danger. He prowls in its direction, ready to introduce it to The King.

Suddenly pain. The King is slammed into the big rock next to him. He can’t move. His body hurts.

Pain in his mouth. His jaw is being wrenched open. Liquid. Terrible taste. Nothing like delicious blood.

Pain everywhere. Head hurts. Head exploding.

The King is reborn. Now The King is smart, he can direct the other creatures of the cave and they will listen. He looks around and sees others writhing. Surely being awakened just as he had been.

He looks around and sees the one who awakened him. A large bear creature with a crown holding an eyeball.

The memory then continues with the bear commander who had turned The King directing him on what to do and how to act then eventually gifting him his own crown.

Finally The King has his own crown. Now all would kno-

Welcome to the fold.

The King looks around. These wor-

You are Commander GZ.

GZ? That’s wrong, he is The King not a Commander. King of th-

You will obey me. I made you smart.

It was the bear, not this voice in his head, who aw-

I gave him that elixir. I made it. You are mine now. OBEY.

The King bowed to the voice. The King would follow.

The rest of the events were less significant so Felix didn’t really find anything of value lurking around.

That’s progress I guess.

Flying out and finding another camp, Felix found much of the same in their souls. The creatures were turned by the commander who had in turn been turned by some other commander. Unfortunately he had no way of finding the previous commander and following the chain so he was left with his only real option of just hunting down camps and exterminating them in the hopes they knew something.

As much as he wanted to perform the same interrogation on the circlets, they seemed to be destroying themselves far too quickly at the moment.

He was trying to figure out how to do it, possibly by removing and crushing the circlet before it had time to destroy itself. Or by destroying it without being seen so it couldn’t retract it’s soul back to the host.

Felix had been flying somewhat randomly for the last few days and had ended up farther west of the outpost than he would have liked to be. Judging from the birds that seemed to be watching him from afar as he flew though, he didn’t think he was necessarily in the wrong place.

At some point over the jungle, those birds that had been flying along with him, tracking his movements all suddenly dove into the jungle in tandem. In an unexpected turn of events though, they all dove into the same general area instead of obfuscating their destination.

That’s the most obvious trap I’ve ever seen.

Felix immediately dove after them. He made sure to erect his Mana Shell on top of his cloak and prepared a very overpowered burst of Fire from his own body.

He flew through the canopy of the jungle and broke through the high branches. He tore vines apart and blasted through the ferns as he followed the flock forwards.

Flying through the jungle, weaving through the trees was great practice but it did result in him almost losing the birds a few times. Luckily they were obviously leading him somewhere so they would loop back around to make sure he followed them.

They slowly started to fly closer to the ground so Felix prepared himself for the trap, ensuring his Mana Shell was active and the burst of Fire spell form was ready.

Right as Felix darted around a particular tree, a loose net of chains was dropped onto his head and suddenly he was pulled into the ground. He let it happen and didn’t do anything yet, just waited and pretended to be surprised. He put on, what he thought to be, a great show of struggling against the chains.

As he was pressed into the ground, he looked around and saw that he was right on the edge of a clearing. Felix quickly pulled something out of his Soul Space and started to fill it with mana but kept it under his cloak and out of sight, just in case, as he was dragged over towards the clearing.

They passed through the tree line and Felix saw, standing before him, at least 5 camp’s worth of creatures though it could have been twice that because he couldn’t see how far the army stretched in any direction.

He saw some interesting creatures he had never seen before, some flying fire serpents, large poisonous frogs and some massive bugs.

Holding the chain net were a group of five gorilla looking creatures except their lower half had four legs and they were covered in scales. They were like lizard gorilla centaurs and Felix honestly, just found them confusing.

He didn’t initially see any commanders but they quickly revealed themselves, a group of five walking through the front lines of the army and surrounding Felix.

One in particular, a large bright green frog, looked to be the leader even amongst the group of commanders.

[D - Special] Ra-i-a-i-a-i: Camp Q Commander (Lvl 962)

That’s… a name… I guess.

It’s level and rarity definitely helped with the feeling of it being the leader. The other commanders, some kind of jaguar, a tiger that stood on it’s hind legs, a parrot with four wings and finally a small and, frankly, adorable monkey stood behind them.

The large frog looked over at the monkey commander who nodded and walked towards Felix with a circlet in his hands.

Oh, perfect.

The Lizard Gorilla things holding his net pulled it taught because they thought it meant he couldn’t move and the monkey walked right up to him. The monkey carefully lowered the crown towards his head and Felix just waited.

Right as it was about to touch his head, Felix reached up with hand and grabbed it then stuck it into his Soul Space while simultaneously casting the spell he had been holding at the ready. A portal suddenly appeared right below Felix and he waved at the commanders as he fell through.

He quickly stowed the portal mold he had used to create the spell as he fell a few meters before catching himself and dropping a stream of Fire Balls down on the army below. He circled around and made sure to hit a large number of them then switched over to Flame Throwers because they were more efficient.

The commanders took a few minutes to figure out what had happened and during that time, their armies were sent scrambling. They held up much better than the first camp he had faced, no doubt forewarned of his arrival and techniques but they still fell prey to fear and indecision.

They tried to rally and launch counter attacks but Felix just dropped to the ground as the birds surrounded him and finally let loose the burst of Fire he had been holding onto.

A giant explosion centered on Felix completely wiped out a huge chunk of the enemy forces and cleared a massive radius around him.

Whoops, that may have been a little excessive.

The commanders finally saw their opening and leapt to engage. The standing tiger being the first to arrive tried to hold him down with its claws while the Parrot attempted to hit him with Lightning Bolts. None of them even got close to touching him with his cloak’s enchantment active but they were annoyingly bright.

The jaguar quickly joined the tiger trying to hold him down and the frog leapt over in an attempt to swallow him. Though the tongue had no way to stick to him, Felix used a Force spell to make it seem like it had gotten him anyways, shooting himself into the frog’s mouth.

He immediately felt its insides fill with a toxic gas that he promptly took a big deep breath of then recreated the same overpowered Fire burst spell except this time, with Force alone.

A second later, the frog splattered all over the other commanders and temporarily blinded them allowing Felix to take out the tiger and the jaguar with a barrage of Lightning Bolts.

He left the Parrot be for now but kept an eye on it so it didn’t get away from him as he proceeded to roast the rest of the army.

Suddenly he was struck with a massive and very arrow like object, or rather this cloak stopped one using an absurd amount of mana and he looked around in shock. He finally spotted the monkey commander way off in the distance reloading a large crossbow.

Felix shot over towards the monkey faster than they could move out of the way and purposefully collided with it, grabbing hold of it’s neck as it tried to scurry off.

He squeezed his hand around its neck as he cast a Lightning spell in his palm, completely frying the small creature then he continued wiping out the rest of the combined camps.

It didn’t take long before the parrot realized its lightning was useless and resorted to its talons at which point Felix simply killed it.

The rest of the army scattered off in every direction and he briefly chased as many of them as he could but didn’t commit to flying off very far.

Once again he found some items but nothing more than some Common and Uncommon trinkets lying around. He put out the remaining fire in the camp so the entire jungle didn’t burn down then turned his attention to the circlet in his Soul Space.

He had luckily been fast enough to stow it before it was deactivated and now he had it trapped. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it though because if he let it out, it would deactivate. If he removed its soul, it would be obliterated. His only real option was to try and read its experiences without removing its soul so he attempted just that.

Reaching into the circlet and specifically the eye, Felix forced his consciousness inwards. He thought of it like using a memory crystal except instead of letting him in, he had to force his way in against its will.

The eye didn’t have much will in it but pushing his consciousness into a body that didn’t belong to him was still difficult. His soul was monstrous but it seemed all it wanted to do was protect and defend, piercing the barrier that was a body and exerting his will was difficult and actually felt awkward.

It took him a couple dozen minutes to overcome his own soul’s aversion to it and finally caught glimpses of the experiences in the eyeball’s soul. It was nothing like watching a memory, all he got were flashes and images.

He saw hands. Floating hands everywhere. Books. A stone building. Bones. A perfectly round room. A window through which he saw a jungle and mountains. Alchemy set. Rituals.

There was nothing else Felix could ascertain and the eyeball on the circlet burst like a balloon. The soul that leaked out as a result, was instantly obliterated as it entered his Soul Space.

Well. That’s… progress.

Felix had Grim make sure all of the images he had seen were preserved then flew off into the air in search of either a camp or anything he had seen from the flashes.

By the time the sky darkened to unreasonable levels of visibility, Felix chose a tree and sat on one of its branched then pulled out the mana computer he had been working on.

Instead of continuing to slowly grow it as he had been the previous night, Felix decided to try something new. In order to realize his goal of making this into a much larger and actually usable computer, he had to somehow automate its growth.

Felix only really had one idea on how to do so. He started by completely removing a single transistor, leaving a gaping hole. Then, he provided raw unshaped mana to the computer.

The mana was almost instantly sucked into the hole and morphed into the shape of a transistor causing Felix to smile.

He then removed a large chunk of transistors and ripped their mana free then pulled some anima out of his Soul Space and compressed it down to the right density. He combined the mana that had been in the computer with the anima from his Soul Space and manually mixed it all together.

His hope was that the experience or instinct to form and hold a transistor shape would be passed around to the rest of the anima. Unfortunately, when he provided it with mana, it formed a loose blob at best.

Instead of scrapping that portion though, Felix took it and started to dissect it, ripping away anything within the anima that didn’t have to do with transistors. The experience of a transistor was what he was trying to isolate or rather, the experience of holding the mana steady and in the shape of a transistor.

Holding a transistor still wasn’t a significant experience but it was there because he had willed it to be there, and it was all this anima really knew. He suspected there was something else at play, something about his soul but he had no idea how to figure out what so he set it aside for later experimentation.

Once he had the concentrated essence of the experience in his hand, he took the rest of the anima and combined them, this time using his will to impose the experience on the blank anima.

This test was much more fruitful and he saw multiple transistors form in the anima but they weren’t connected to each-other, they were simply free floating. He had somehow lost the sense of structure from the original.

He extracted more anima from the computer he had grown the previous night, now just half of its size from the night before, and sifted through it until he found the experience of its structure. He isolated that experience then imposed it on the rest of the anima causing all the transistors it had formed to snap together in a very satisfying way.

Felix reconnected the two computers, saving some of the anima to keep going then compressed more anima and imposed the experiences onto it. He fed it some mana and connected it to the existing computer then repeated that process.

Now, instead of attaching single transistors one at a time, he was attaching thousands of them at once. He continued to do so until the veil of night was pierced by the morning light.

In that one night, his mana computer had grown by almost 500 times in size and he was very happy with the progress.

Heading out for the day, Felix’s only goal was to try and find the location he had seen from the circlet’s soul. He had initially thought of the outpost but the stone walls were different colors and the landscape around it didn’t match what he had seen through the windows.

The mountain in the background wasn’t necessarily distinct, it wouldn’t stand out on its own but it was capped in snow, which was somewhat rare. He also remembered seeing small specs of color in the canopy of the jungle, flowers or moss or something that had somehow grown through. Lastly, there was a small creek right on the far right edge of the image that flowed down from a nearby mountain.

None of it was much to go on but it was more direction than he had had the day before. He had also come out here specifically for levels anyway so he didn’t mind having to search a little to find it. On the way, he would wipe out all the camps he came across which were actually worth a lot more levels than he had expected and when he harvested them, a lot more raw stats as well.

He was also getting closer to the custom class’ stats per level. Considering how his leveling was slowing down dramatically, he suspected he would quickly surpass it if he just kept killing huge swathes of creatures. It also seemed like his harvesting efficiency had gone up and by his estimates, he was now around 25% efficient as a product of suffusing his body with a layer of his soul. Or possibly, just having another layer on his soul.

Felix spent the entire day hunting down anything he saw and managed to clear out almost 25 camps by the time he finally spotted something. As he flew around, he had been checking out every mountain capped with snow by flying up to the top and looking around for streams or color in the jungle canopy.

Finally, he spotted both off in the distance, far north-east of the outpost. Right in between the two landmarks was a cylindrical stone structure with a shingled roof rising just a few dozen meters through the tree canopy below. He immediately flew towards it but stopped himself short when he realized how dark it was. He chose a spot just a short flight away to wait out the darkness of the night and pulled back out his mana computer prototype.

He didn’t want to risk having to fight anything in the dark. He knew there was at least one window in the room but he didn’t know if the floating hands could see using something other than light. If so, there might not be any artificial light in the building at all so he wasn’t willing to risk it.

Looking down at the mana computer, while he was happy with his progress the past day, he wasn’t moving fast enough. His goal was to hit a transistor count in the billions and have the entire computer be much bigger. As of now, he had only just surpassed a million transistors and he really didn’t want to spend another thousand nights working on it just to hit a billion.

Before doing anything, Felix tested the computer as thoroughly as he could over the course of an hour and ended up having to replace almost a hundred transistors. It wasn’t a bad error rate by any means and it meant he was comfortable accelerating the growth further.

Instead of just fusing small pieces of anima to the computer piece by piece expanding it, he compressed enough anima to double it’s size then carefully fused that all around the computer. He wanted it to grow in every direction simultaneously so that he maximized the surface area of the new part, the part that had to be grown from scratch. Giving it a template to grow from would hopefully mean less errors.

He repeated this process, each repetition taking progressively longer than the last. He managed to get all the way to 8 million but didn’t manage to test it at all before the sky brightened and he saw the tower off in the distance once again.

Without wasting any more time, Felix dumped all his extra points into Intelligence, having more then enough room between his highest and lowest stats.

Name: Felix Kade FREE 0 Innate: Ascendant Prodigy: Mana (Wizard) STR 23624 Class: [D - Legendary] Reaper (Lvl 777) DEX 60531 Race: [D - Unique] Wanderer (Lvl 672) AGI 23842 Profession: [D - Arcane] Mana Engineer (Lvl 568) PER 41514 Health: 338,490 / 338,490 VIT 33849 Mana: 14,281,910 / 14,281,910 INT 84381 Energy: 1,215,040 / 1,215,040 END 30376

I really need to figure out this mana core thing. Why is my mana still tied to my intelligence? And my energy to my endurance for that matter? Also I really need to get new batteries for this charm.

He flew down and into the jungle canopy to keep himself slightly hidden and kept track of the tower’s general direction since he couldn’t see it anymore. He briefly informed Nova that he was attacking the tower and they would probably be leaving the planet soon. He got an excited mess in response but he wasn’t exactly sure what any of it meant.

As he weaved his way through the trees before him, Felix estimated when he would be close to the tower and soared back up above the canopy with the intention of blasting right through the window.

Spotting the tower a couple hundred meters in front of him Felix veered to the right to aim for the window but before he could get within a couple dozen meters of the tower, he bounced off.

Felix frowned and tried again slowly this time and realized there was a Force Shield erected all the way around the tower.

Not close enough to disable it as his mana control range wasn’t big enough, Felix just tried to peer through the window. Unfortunately it was so bright outside compared to the inside the building, all he could see was his own frown.

Quickly circling the tower, Felix felt the same Force all around so he spiraled downwards looking for an opening.

Only once he reached the ground and saw the door before him did Felix find something he could do. He wasn’t inclined on just pushing against the force because realistically, a tower could have far more mana than he did.

Outside the door though, there was a way to get in. There was some kind of trigger mechanism that no doubt had a key but, it was an enchantment which meant it was mana based and Felix didn’t need a key.

Well within his mana control range, Felix grabbed hold of the trigger mechanism and bypassed it entirely. This created a small hole in the force field that allowed him to approach the tower.

He stepped forwards, looked upwards and considered flying up to the window now that he was inside the barrier but decided against it. He walked up to the tower and manipulated some enchantments to open the door before him.

Peering inside, Felix saw some kind of lobby level that was mostly empty with what had once been a fountain in the middle. The basin was broken though and water covered a large section of the floor before being drained out.

Behind the basin lay two sets of stairs, one going up and one down.

Walking into the room, Felix made sure to keep his mana senses alert for any traps he might find and headed downwards. He knew the creature he was hunting was likely above him but at the same time, he could feel the source of the mana in this tower from below him.

The stairs were a tight spiral that led downwards and following them, Felix ended up in a room that was squared off and almost four times the size of the tower itself. There were cages on either side of the room that likely hadn’t seen use in a very long time. A couple of them were still closed and contained various skeletons but the others were broken down and dysfunctional.

In the center of the room there was a large circular glass window set into the floor from which a bright white light filled the room. Walking right over towards it, Felix looked down, both seeing and feeling, a large mana core below him.

He stepped back and started using various spells to lift the glass but it was held in place with some kind of enchantment. Closing his eyes and reaching into the stone and glass below him, he felt out the mana flowing through it but before he interrupted any of it, he hesitated.

The mana was doing far more than just holding the glass in place. As far as he could ascertain in the brief few minutes he examined them, there seemed to be functions that generated a series of wards as well. What the wards protected against, he had no idea. They seemed to be pointing downwards though so Felix wasn’t entirely sure how to proceed.

He decided to leave it in place for now and would come back once he knew more about it. Leaving the dungeon behind, Felix ascended to the second floor where he found a kitchen. There were rooms on the outside wall segmented out that contained some old food and wine. All of it was still recognizable despite how rotten it was for the most part. It was still better than most food he found. The grain and other dry ingredients seemed fine as far as he could tell but, he left it all behind anyways.

The kitchen was nice if a little mundane for a magic tower. Felix had been expecting all kinds of floating utensils, pots, pans and other various kitchen utensils.

The only thing that would have been out of place in any normal kitchen was a couple of skeletons scattered across the floor.

Some kind of necromancer?

The third floor contained a dining room with a large dining table along with a small ritual room. The ritual room had candles in a circle and a degraded spell form that Felix simply memorized before moving on.

The fourth floor appeared to be a sleeping chamber with a bed off to one side along with a desk, a bath, a sitting area and a few armoires. Opening them up he found a number of robes along with various boots, scarves, cloaks, hats and a small jewelry box, all of which he promptly stole. None of the enchantments were anything impressive and overall the clothes seemed to be mostly for fashion over function. The materials felt nice enough but they were all Uncommon except one that was Rare at best.

The last thing in the room was a broken portal frame which was once a metal circle with a portal spell inscribed around it. Examining the spell, Felix determined it was less complicated than his but more complicated than Orav’s. It was also incomplete but he memorized it anyways, just in case.

Walking up to the next floor, Felix found what seemed to be a large ritual chamber. Just like the other one, there were candles and a large damaged ritual circle. Off to the side of the room there were altars and next to that was a number of sets of manacles and chains. On the other end, there was a table with a small alchemy set, at least by comparison to Elric and Zufaris’.

Felix sighed, Why couldn’t you be a portal wizard or even a healing wizard or something. Did you have to be a necromancer?

As he approached the stairs leading up to what had to be the last floor, just according to basic geometry, Felix finally sensed a trap.

On the wall just over the railing for the stairs, Felix felt a circular spell form that was powered by the tower’s mana. He identified it as he approached, finding many nodes he recognized. It seemed to be some kind of Lightning burst.

He simply cut off the mana supply as he walked up the stairs. There were a few other, similar wards on the walls but nothing that gave him any trouble.

Lastly, there seemed to be a hastily constructed Force Wall blocking the top of the stairs. Unfortunately, whoever had erected it didn’t have the same foresight as whoever had erected the Force Barrier around the tower. Reaching out, Felix felt the spell form just behind the barrier and he simply wiped it out with his mana control.

Walking into the top floor, completely unimpeded, Felix saw what appeared to be a massive library. All of the walls around the outside were covered in shelves forming almost a complete circle of shelves interrupted only by the window and the entrance.

Within the room, there was a large circular table at the center upon which there were a number of books stacked high and a few that lay open. Floating over the top of the table in the middle of the room, Felix spotted a floating skull covered in glowing arcane symbols that appeared to be carved into it along with glowing purple eyes. It wore a long black cloak that fluttered about everywhere as it was completely empty below the neck.

[D - Arcane] Undead Infant Lich (Lvl 987)

Detached hands, mostly skeletal though not all, flew all around the room, placing and removing books from the shelves, writing and mixing potions.

As soon as Felix stepped in, the skull jerked over in his direction, almost as if it was surprised he was there. The hands closest to him darted over, a large half-giant hand tried to punch him with an explosion of Force that was stopped dead by his Mana Shell.

A skeletal hand shot 5 thin beams of Fire from it’s finger tips all smacking into his Mana Shell.

A floating bear paw tried to crush him, but got stuck just a few inches above his head.

A bird’s talon tried to claw him but it skittered off the shell as well.

Felix frowned as he looked around. The library had between 5 and 10 thousand books in it. In the worst case scenario, it would take him just over an hour to scan them all, if they averaged Uncommon. That meant he either had to stall for an hour and hope the books weren’t damaged the entire time, or he had to try and end it quickly and cleanly.

Alternatively, he could drag the fight outside so he didn’t have to fear damaging any of the tomes.

He decided that was easily the best option even though it was slightly annoying to execute.

Felix dashed over to the right, circling around the skull who very predictably moved backwards and in the opposite direction. As he ran, Felix focused on the books in the middle of the room and made sure they were scanned first and as fast as possible.

Hands clawed and punched at him from the side as he ran but Felix mostly ignored them. A few he batted away but they weren’t relevant at the moment. As soon as the skull was lined up, Felix jumped towards it, causing it to instinctively recoil to just a meter from the window.

A blast of force rocketed across the room completely obliterating the table in the middle of the room along with the books on top of it. The Skull smashed into the glass behind it which, completely shocking Felix, stretched like it was cling wrap, before finally shattering.

The Undead Lich flew off through the window and a few dozen meters out over the jungle canopy. A stream of severed hands all poured into the window hole after the skull, not a single one ultimately remaining in the room, some getting stuck initially though.

Felix flew out after it, stretching the hole in the window wider as his larger body and even larger Mana Shell passed through.

The Lich’s skull had caught itself in the air and it was surrounded by a multi layered sphere of hands.

Felix circled around to the right so he could get the tower off to their side instead of behind him.

The Lich’s eye sockets glowed much brighter and two of it’s hands backed up towards it where the fingers quickly moved right next to its face.

A sound suddenly echoed out of the creature and produced a loud and clearly artificial voice, “LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Felix stopped as he flew and looked back at it, realizing it wasn’t actually currently attacking him. He yelled out, mostly because he had no idea how sensitive a skull’s ears were, “You attacked the mining outpost, they sent me to deal with the… armies?”

More hand gestures followed by the same artificial voice, “The mining outpost sent you!?”

Felix frowned, “Uh, yes? There was a… bounty? To deal with the problem. Pay isn’t great but the levels are nice?”

“I don’t care how the levels are. You are ruining my mission. Where did you come from?”

“Telviras? Big city?”

“How? Where?”

“I took a portal? It’s on another planet.”

“Planet? Portal? What are you?”

“That’s a good question. A human… ish? A caster… derivative? An enchanter? All of the above.”

“Are there more like you? In this ‘Telviras’ city? Will they come here?”

“If I fail they likely will. More like me? …yes.” Felix didn’t feel like explaining he was somewhat unique and had a feeling the Lich meant more in terms of strength, of which there were plenty of C grades and above.

“How many?”

Felix shrugged, “Billions?”

“What is ‘billions’?”

“One thousand millions.”

“I- That… NO! LIAR! YOU ARE A DEMON! I WILL COMPLETE MY MISSION! YOU WILL NOT STOP ME!”

The robotic, artificial voice made the last sentence a weird one to hear but Felix recognized that the conversation was over. He was already prepared to start fighting at a moment’s notice anyways so it didn’t matter to him.

The outer layer of the hand sphere expanded outwards as the hands began to surround the skull from every side.

A hand soared in from behind his head, wreathed in flames masquerading itself as a meteor and struck his Mana Shell. Felix reached out and cut its mana flow, crushing its will with his own, then hitting it with a quick Lightning Bolt. The hand fell into the canopy below, seemingly dead.

Another flew by emitting a stream of Fire upon Felix’s Mana Shell while staying just a few meters outside his range.

He responded with another Lightning Bolt but this one was blocked by a small shield that had suddenly appeared.

Lightning, Force Blasts, Fire, Solid Mana and even Sound bombarded Felix’s Mana Shell as he struggled to hit back against their shields in turn. Neither of them seemingly making much progress.

Felix shot himself upwards towards the hands but the hands just split up and circled away. Choosing one of them to chase, Felix shot himself towards it but was slowed to a stop by a wall of Force just a few moments later.

As he pushed his way out of the slow field from the Force Wall, a tiny bead of Fire collided with his Mana Shell and exploded a short moment later into an inferno that consumed his body.

Finally breaking free of the Force Wall, Felix fought back. He launched Lightning Bolts and Fire Balls at the hands around him and at the skull itself. The Lightning Bolts found their marks most of the time but the hand’s personal shields apparated themselves into existence to block any real damage. The Fire Balls remained as beads the entire time though as the skull and hands simply swerved out of the way rather easily. A moment later, the Fire Balls exploded, harmlessly to the Lich, in the Jungle Canopy below.

Fucking spell slots. If I was using a spell on a spell list, the Fire Ball would explode next to it and wouldn’t need to collide with something. Fucking System Fuckery, making it too easy for spell list losers.

Looking around, Felix caught sight of a dozen hands making similar hand gestures and gritted his teeth. He flew off in a random direction, trying to get out of the center of them but the hands as a whole readjusted to keep him centered, some switching out with others.

Suddenly he flew smack into a much denser Force Wall and turning around, he saw the result of the spell they had been casting. Though it was well outside of his mana control range, Felix could feel a massive amount of mana surging into the spell at that moment, an amount easily in the hundreds of thousands and very quickly approaching a million.

Felix turned around and shot himself in the opposite direction but he immediately noticed the hands didn’t react to him at all. As a result, he was fully expecting it when just a moment later, he found the same wall just a dozen meters away.

Not wanting to deal with whatever the spell was, Felix whipped the portal spell form out of his Soul Space and started pumping mana into it. He was going to have to retrofit the coordinates to be a direction and distance instead but he had already done the same thing to get out of the 5 commander’s trap.

Note to self, make another portal spell form mold just to get my ass out of shit like this.

As Felix filled the mold with mana, the hands all collectively pumped mana into the spell of their own. Felix cursed himself for being too slow to realize what was happening as the winds in his enclosed area began to pick up.

His Mana Shell was resisting the wind but he was wasting way too much mana doing so so he dropped it and let himself be blown away. Suddenly a gout of flame erupted from each of the hands in turn and poured themselves into the whirling winds.

Felix’s cloak was easily handling them at first but the winds were still picking up and the flames weren’t stopping either.

With about half of the mana in the mold, Felix yanked the spell form free and started modifying it. The heat started to pick up and so did the mana draw of his cloak but Felix ignored everything and focused his entire attention on the spell form in front of him. As he modified, he pushed mana into the spell, making sure to stop just before it was ready. The winds whipped him around, no focus to spare on keeping himself steady so he was freely tossed around.

As soon as he finished his modifications, Felix pushed the last bit of mana into the spell then oriented it in the direction he was being pushed and cast it.

He was sent tumbling through the portal along with a gust of flame carried by the winds behind him and ended up right next to the Lich, just a couple meters away.

While he knew where he was going to end up, the Lich hadn’t, so he managed to catch it by surprise. Holding its mana still, Felix activated a Burst of Flame from his own body completely engulfing the skull along with most of the hands around it.

Felix had made sure not to add any Force into the mix because he didn’t want to push the skull away so, as the flames subsided, the skull remained in largely the same spot.

Preparing another spell, Felix pushed himself forwards to keep up with the skull as it tried to run but found himself held back by a veritable army of floating hands. It seemed they didn’t need mana to stop him because he was still holding all mana within his mana control radius still.

Felix cast a Burst of Force from his body and got rid of the hands but the skull was already a dozen meters away. Quickly glancing to the side, Felix caught sight of a giant Fire Storm in the shape of a sphere slowly moving towards him as the hands around kept trying to catch and hold him still.

While they were nearby, Felix took out as many hands as he could but as soon as he took out a couple, the rest scattered and outside of his mana control range and were protected by their shields.

Felix dashed towards the skull but the hands around it shifted and he smacked into another Force Wall. He groaned and turned around but found the same sphere used to contain the Fire Storm, trapping him once again. This time, there didn’t seem to be any winds whipping up a contained tornado or gouts of flame though.

Looking over at the Fire Storm rapidly approaching him, Felix knew the intention was to hold him still so it could engulf him once more.

While he had no intention of letting that happen, Felix was also very quickly blowing through his mana pool. His pool allowed him to have over 14 million mana at his disposal wen full but casting a portal was almost two million because most of the spell form was still adapted to coordinates. His cloak was decently efficient and had only cost him a million or so but maintaining Mana Shell and blocking everything it had, had cost him almost 3 million mana.

He could easily portal out of the Force Sphere holding him but, he needed a better solution to deal with something like this in the future. The issue was that with System Fuckery in the mix, he had no good way of knowing how the spell trapping him worked. If he had cast the same spell with many hands, he would have each maintain a small section of the sphere with some overlap.

Since the hands couldn’t have perfect mana flow between them, he could try and overpower one of them to break a hole and escape. With System Fuckery, it was entirely possible each hand was simply a token to guide the spell’s shape and provide mana. He could try and overpower the entire thing but that would probably use more mana than simply portaling out.

Running out of options fast as the Fire Storm was just a few meters away, Felix decided to try something dumb, inspired by a god. He pulled out the same portal spell form he had used before and started filling it up as the two spheres intersected. He flew as far from the storm as he could as he pulled the spell form out of the mold.

He quickly made his modifications, which were slightly more complicated this time, then pumped almost three times the mana as he had before, into the spell. It was going to take longer, but Felix hoped it would be worth it.

The heat of the storm started to activate his cloak’s defenses from just a few meters away and the winds started to pick up shortly thereafter. He was only 75% of the way through the spell but his time was up so Felix quickly shrank his modifications and cast the spell.

Just in front of him, a massive portal appeared almost big enough to swallow the Fire Storm, but not quite. At least, he hoped there was a portal there. He was on the backside of it so he couldn’t actually tell.

Felix pushed the spell forwards and swallowed the center of the storm until he had pushed a tunnel straight through. The spell had cost him 5 million mana but, looking over towards the skull who was now completely engulfed in the majority of a Fire Storm, Felix decided it was worth it.

As a by product of the Fire Storm engulfing the skull, Felix saw dozens of hands that were shriveled and charred fall to the jungle canopy below as the Lich dismissed the storm. It took a few seconds for the winds and flames to subside but the skull flew out of the area as soon as it could.

Quickly looking around, Felix have just under a quarter of his mana left and the Lich, just under a quarter of its hands. He had no idea if that meant it was a quarter of the way dead but Felix was really hoping it did.

The skull looked at Felix with its ever-present blank stare and just as Felix prepared to defend himself and strike back, the skull turned and started flying away.

Son of a bitch.

Felix flew after it as fast as he could but the Lich was almost just as fast. Felix could waste more mana to catch up with it in a straight line but the Lich was more agile in the air and better at dodging out of the way.

As Felix raced towards it, it quickly ducked to the side and started flying in a different direction, Felix overshooting his own flight by a couple hundred meters due to the speed. The entire time, the Lich peppered Felix and his cloak with various spells. Nothing strong because most of them missed but more than enough to be annoying.

He was started to get concerned he would run out of mana before the Lich would, which was ridiculous considering his core and charm together accounted for 95% of his mana pool.

Just a few seconds into the chase, a large bird shot out of the jungle canopy and smacked itself into Felix’s side, entirely blocked by the cloak but wasting even more mana. He turned to it, annoyed by the delay in the chase.

[D - Rare] Yi-yi-yi: Camp F Commander (Lvl 845)

Fucking…

Felix physically smacked the bird then hit it with a Lightning Bolt overpowered by a factor of 10 out of frustration and dashed after the Lich to continue the chase.

A number of other creatures from the jungle harassed Felix as he tried to catch the Lich in his Mana Control range, not all of them commanders but a large portion of them.

Fuck, I am wasting so much mana dealing with these stupid things. I’ve already blow through half a million just flying and killing these stupid nuisances.

Felix started trying to ignore them but it quickly became impossible as they formed a swarm behind him and coordinated their attacks with the Lich flying into them. Felix blasted a tunnel through the swarm and dashed through it then veered right in pursuit of the Lich when suddenly he was hit with a barrage of emotions.

He was confused and incredibly annoyed at first but relief washed it all away when he saw a little black kitten running on the air just off to the right.

Felix didn’t have time to communicate something complicated so he just pointed at the swarm and continued chasing the Lich.

He caught glimpses of the swarm as the Lich darted around in every which direction and heard sounds from the battle but not a single creature other than the Lich bothered him anymore.

The skull tried to fly back to the swarm a few times but seeing Nova tearing through over a hundred other creatures like it was nothing, quickly deterred it.

With just over 2 million mana left, Felix wasn’t realistically going to be able to cast a portal and kill it because he’d have no mana left to attack with. He started manually regenerating as he chased because he didn’t really have many other options but he kept himself ready at any moment for it to make a mistake.

Almost a minute later, Felix smacked into a Force Wall cast by four hands that had stuck behind. He flew upwards to get over it and managed to catch the two on the top in his mana control range. Instead of just stilling their mana, Felix reached into the hands and latched onto their mana, ripping it from them and storing it in his Soul Space. Both of them plummeted to the ground just a moment later.

He took the mana out of his Soul Space and added it to his core once he had wiped out and replaced its affinization. It had only added under a half million points, but it was more than nothing and if he kept doing that, he would have more than enough mana to win.

The Lich tried desperately to stop him again with a Flash of Light spell this time followed by a Force Wall but Felix managed to harvest 3 hands because of it.

There were just 4 hands left from what Felix could see and the Lich’s options were dwindling. It seemed to realize this as well because it stopped retaliating entirely and instead, used all four hands to cradle its head.

Suddenly it was flying much faster and Felix couldn’t really keep up anymore. In a straight line he could be faster but the Lich could turn and switch direction seemingly instantly. Felix started using Mihto’s techniques to redirect himself with Phantom Steps to kick off of even it was fracturing the bones in his legs.

He finally managed to get the skull and the last four hands just a couple meters out of his range and all he needed was a final burst. He was already pushing almost a hundred thousand mana a second into his flight alone though.

The skull suddenly shot to the side and Felix’s frustration mounted at having finally been so close.

NO!

Suddenly an instant burst of Force, far faster than he could ever have hoped to cast, shot Felix directly at the skull, actually causing him to collide with it. He was stunned at first but recovered quickly enough to wrench all of the remaining mana within the skull and the hands into his Soul Space.

The four hands held tight to the skull but Felix wrenched them off one by one. All of their fingers writhed and clasped at the air as they fell until there was nothing but the skull left. Felix made sure to hold onto it tightly even as it tried to escape his grasp.

Even without any mana, the skull was strong and fast. It pushed and writhed against Felix’s bear hug but there was no chance Felix was going to let it escape.

Reaching his hands down and getting a solid grip on the skull, Felix stretched it out a few inches from his chest and wrestled with it until he had seen every inch of it. With every rune and marking on it memorized, Felix cast a Lightning spell that simply arced between his two hands.

Ding You have slain a [D - Arcane] Undead Infant Lich (Lvl 987)

Ding You have gained 90,243 B Grade Credits, 273 C Grade Credits, 78,941 D Grade Credits and 729,834 E Grade Credits.

Ding You have gained a level in [D -Legendary] Reaper (777 => 778)

Just one level? Really? Damn. Stupid D grade wall. No wonder the vast majority of people are stuck in the D grade. Also I got credits… interesting. I guess that’s what happens when you die with credits on you? System, just show me the most significant amount next time with two decimal places.

Ding You have gained 90,243.00 B Grade Credits.

Perfect. Thank you.

Activating both rings, Felix saw hundreds of both crimson and golden white streams pouring in from all over the forest along with the skull itself.

Huh. Hands I guess?

Wiping the dust off on his cloak, Felix flew back to the tower and started walking around to make sure he scanned everything in there. He had Grim making sure there was space in his Memory Palace by clearing out some of the old shit and while he waited for the skill to work, he continued tinkering with his Mana Computer.

He had no desire to touch anything in the tower until he and Grim sorted through the books and found anything that might explain what the hell it all was.

A half hour or so passed before Nova finally joined him, having gained less levels overall but still exceeding his level, even in just his class alone.

[D - Cursed] Nova, Ravenous Matter Spirit (Lvl 822)

Damn. Especially once I get you a mana core and teach you how to use it, you’re going to be a fucking monster.

Nova meowed at him, seemingly in response to his thoughts then curled up and laid down against a wall to nap.

Many hours later, by the time his Scan Literature skill was done scanning the entire library, Felix had only added another 2 million transistors or so to his prototype. He stowed the computer and started sifting through the shelves in the library just in case there was anything hidden, magically or otherwise.

He sensed hundreds of enchantments but no traps or hidden compartments. One of the books in the library actually buzzed in his anima senses a little so he walked over and located it on a nearby shelf.

The book was a dark book bound with a very soft and fine leather binding. Opening it up to the first page, Felix found he couldn’t actually read the book. He kept flipping through and every one of the later pages seemed to have the same language on them, or at least the same alphabet, cross referencing the letters, but they moved.

The ink on the pages, much like within Grim, moved to form letters, words and sentences. Instead of the entire page rewriting itself though, it looked like someone was currently in the process of writing a new sentence at the bottom. The script continued written by some ghost hand or other force then it concluded its paragraph or sentence and there was a pause.

A couple seconds later, the scrip continued except Felix was pretty sure this was written by a different hand because the letters were recognizable but stylistically distinct.

There was nothing he could currently do with the book so he placed it on the table in the middle, worried that it might die in his Soul Space. He continued to sift through the books finding a few that were enchanted but nothing nearly as interesting as the book with the moving script.

With nothing hidden in the tower, Felix stowed all the other books in his Soul Space then entered his Memory Palace and met Grim.

Felix walked over to the shelves with all the books from the Lich, “Find anything interesting in here?”

“Some but I haven’t got through much of it yet.”

Felix nodded, “I’m gonna go watch the Lich’s memories, maybe get some more context.”

Grim nodded and Felix shifted over to the soul ring then located the Lich’s soul. He didn’t touch it in any way and simply allowed the entirety of its experiences wash over him.

Food. Trees. Jungle. Fingers. Pain. Death.

Light filled his senses as he saw for the first time. He could see. He didn’t know what he was seeing but he could see. It was unfamiliar, unknown. He could also feel. The ground below him was uncomfortable.

A face. Long white hair. Black irises.

“Welcome to the world servant. Welcome to renewed life. I am your master.”

He heard things. He didn’t understand them. He just looked into those black irises.

He was learning things. Being taught to read, to understand. He knew things. He knew the floor was made of stone. He knew it was uncomfortable because it was cold. He knew his master. He knew the voice that commanded him.

Master is proud of him. Surprised he is able to read so quickly. Shocked he can learn with such aptitude.

Spells, mana, souls. Its power. Master is giving me power of my own. Teaching me to be strong.

Some person came to kill master. I must stop them.

They are dead but I can’t move. My torso was shattered. Why won’t I die. So much pain.

Master found me. Surely now, the pain will end.

I am able to move once again. Master has fixed me. I didn’t need a body anyways. My head sits on the table and my hands simply go where I wish them to. Master is merciful. I am to be the librarian. Sorting and retrieving the books.

I am not fast enough for Master. Master is merciful. Master gives me more hands.

Master is proud of him. Astonished once again as he casts spells. The spells are complicated. Spells he had never been taught but he is the librarian now. He has the books.

Evolution. Master says it means power. I ask him what to pick and Master looks scared. Master insists I become a Lich. I obey. I always obey.

My Intelligence has grown exponentially. I have regained the ability to move once more. Master is proud of me. I see it his eyes.

He works with master to perform rituals. Creating the undead.

He collects souls for master, storing them in the tower for later use.

They are a pair now, a duo.

Master heads into the city again for supplies. Master never returns.

He begins constructing an army to search for master. Using the creatures of the forest along with some necromancy and alchemy, he makes them smart enough to obey. He commands them.

He creates eyes he can use to see. He must find master. He has to be here somewhere.

There’s an outpost with miners. They look like master but they are all too big or small. They must have taken master or they know where he is. Master always said his people didn’t like him. That is why they took him.

Master isn’t there. He isn’t in the outpost. He is somewhere. The outpost harvests metals from the earth. Metals are useful. He decides to put it to use.

He isn’t finding master. He has no leads. These people keep trying to kill my armies. They are too strong. They must keep moving. Find master.

An eye is blinded. More infighting surely.

Another? Something is happening.

I can see him. The one that looks like master. It must be master. Master is confused by my creations. Surely… that’s not master. Those flames, the shield…

I’m losing camps by the hour. This creature razes them to the ground. This stupid creature is stopping me from finding master.

There are two of them. This bird, cat… This thing…

STOP KILLING MY CAMPS!

I will trap them using the nearby commanders. Surely they will know where master is. They are strong like master. They must know.

NO NO NO YOU IDIOTS! YOU LET HIM ESCAPE THE NET AND IT WAS TOO FAST FOR YOU TO SEE!? IMBECILES. 5 camps in one hour and they got an eye. Can they find me?

It’s here. The demon. I will set up wards, traps. They won’t be able to get in. They can’t get in to master’s house. I CAN’T LET THEM.

NO THIS IS MASTER’S HOUSE. LEAVE.

He sees the fiery hair and blur of black robes enter the room and look around, curiously. He feels fear. He feels frustration. I must protect Master’s home.

A portal? A city? Many like him? Many… stronger than master? Liar. This isn’t- this can’t- it’s not- DEMON!

I have won. They are trapped in the Fire Storm. It is unescapable. I will interrogate the corpse and find master.

WHAT IS THIS. HOW DID HE GET HERE. STOP. NO!

This is not strong like master. This is something else. I need to run. I need to find master. Together we can stop it.

HELP ME!

RELEASE ME!

Master… where did you go? Don’t let me… die… alone…

Felix shook his head physically to clear it then moved back into his Memory Palace, finding Grim in the exact same spot as he had left him.

“Well, that was a mess.”

Grim picked up another book from the shelves and flipped it open, “You think master died?”

Felix shrugged, “Probably. Or the portal frame broke and they couldn’t get back.”

Grim chuckled, “That would be… unfortunate.”

“Yeah. Seems like the animals were enhanced with elixirs.”

Grim tossed the book he had been reading into the air where it slowed and floated around his head, “I haven’t found the recipe yet.”

Felix nodded, “Right I meant more that they might not attack the outpost in coordinated waves, but they still might attack the outpost, and they’ll still be just as smart.”

Grim shrugged, “Not much you can do about that. I don’t see why they would. More likely they fight each-other. Not like they need or even can use the metal themselves.”

“Guess we’ll find out. I’ll turn in the job and see what they say. I did get plenty of levels out of this though so, I already got what I wanted.”

Felix took the other end of the shelf and helped Grim sift through the books. He was only skimming them so he could hopefully find more information on the battery in the dungeon. Unfortunately neither of them found much about it skimming through all the books so Felix returned to his body while Grim searched more thoroughly.

He wasn’t going to leave the tower just yet so he started sorting through the furniture he wanted to steal. He put some of it in his Soul Space, some of it in his own tower but most of it he left to be destroyed. He briefly examined the portal frame but too much of it was missing for it to be useful. The rituals were indecipherable and the rest of the tower almost completely mundane.

With nothing else to do, Felix turned to his mana computer pet project and continued to slowly grow it.

Once Grim had gotten through everything and found nothing, Felix decided he would have to do something about the battery without touching it. The solution he settled on, was to just take the whole tower with him. He figured the raw materials were probably useful in and of themselves anyways.

Heading down to the base of the tower and walking over to a tree, Felix opened his Pocket Home against a large tree. He quickly found a suitable empty spot off to the side and kept mana flowing to the marble to keep the entrance open. Then, he pulled out the portal spell mold and filled it halfway with mana. Once that was done, he pulled out the spell form and modified it as needed.

Finally, he cast the portal with the direction pointing inside his Pocket Home. The portal opened but, not within the Pocket Home as he had hoped. Instead, the other end of the portal appeared on the other side of the tree he had used. Felix frowned and tried again except this time he made it very small. He cast the portal then moved it through the Pocket Home entrance.

As soon as his portal touched the entrance portal to his Pocket Home, the portal spell form lurched and pulled on his mana. He had to pump in another couple million mana into the spell but it finally pushed through, morphing the spell form itself. He quickly memorized its new, slightly altered form. Finally, he modified it on the spot and wrestled the spell form into submission until it was the exact size he wanted.

Felix flew the spell up into the air then positioned it over the tower and lowered himself along with the spell to the ground. Once there, he had Nova help him dig out as much as possible around the tower’s base then he had her lift the entire tower up a few meters so he could get the spell form under it. With the vast majority of the tower in his Pocket Home, where there wasn’t actually any gravity, it became relatively light. There was only a couple inches of the tower left outside so that was only a couple inches of stone she had to lift.

Closing it off at the bottom, the tower seemed to have been successfully transplanted. Felix dashed over to his Pocket Home where he found the tower floating in the air, gravity not affecting it because the spell excluded anything over a certain mass. Luckily, the stone work construction wasn’t just friction fit together though, he doubted anything inside would be in the same place it had been before.

Felix flew over and grabbed the tower then stuck it in the empty space where he wanted it. He had Nova help him secure it with some chain he had in his Soul Space then hopped back out and into the real world.

He didn’t even bother flying back to the outpost and instead just opened a portal back to Telviras on the spot. He then quickly headed over to the Adventurer’s Guild to mark the job as complete, pending review, followed by the library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .