Felix once again found no one in the workshop but, that was expected. He was still a couple hours early and if anyone was there as early as he was, he was expecting them to be in the design room above him.

Flying around to the stairs, Felix peeked through the window and saw almost everyone there and waiting, other than Krinitor.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen everyone together all at once.

Felix hopped up the stairs and walked into the room in the middle of their conversation.

Nova immediately leapt over and jumped into Aldahn’s lap where she started trying to get into his pockets. That seems to have been his intention judging from his smile and the way he was playing with her, so Felix let them be.

Taking the open seat next to Aldahn and slightly separated from the rest of the group, Felix tuned into their conversation to see what was happening.

“So is he the one?” Inorim smirked in Fralyna’s direction.

“We’ve been on one date- well, two… kind of. It’s way too early, Inorim.” Fralyna crossed her arms.

Looking over at her, Felix finally noticed that she wasn’t wearing her normal looking clothes and leathers that could have been protective but rather, a far more revealing small sundress.

Edemari grinned, “Well, at least you like him. Who knows in just a few epochs you could be like Ezaldor here, on your… which kid is this one?”

“17th.” Ezaldor nodded politely.

Inorim leaned in a little, “How do you choose?”

Ezaldor shrugged, “Process of elimination. Usually I look for the healthiest eggs then from there it’s just about which I feel the most connection with.”

“Does she get a say?” Edemari crossed her arms.

“She would, if she were conscious. Laying that many eggs, despite their size, is very taxing. She needs rest and I need to inseminate them as quickly as possible. So usually no, just for practicality reasons.”

Edemari seemed satisfied with the answer and just settled a little deeper into her chair.

Fralyna sighed, “I’m not sure if I even want kids yet, you know?”

“Nothing wrong with that. I will say, I was the same as you but now looking back… It was definitely worth it.” Inorim smiled.

Fralyna shook her head, “I mean when they’re young they’re easy. You just deal with them when they cry, feed them and so on. How do you deal with them later, when they start leveling? How do you not explode with anxiety? They are constantly in danger.”

Inorim nodded, “Yup. You just have to do your best to teach them and hope that’s enough. Not much else you can do. I can’t speak for everyone, but I got used to the stress. It does help that they are much stronger than I ever was.”

“Really? I feel like that would be worse. The danger’s you don’t know and all that.” Edemari frowned.

Inorim just shrugged.

Fralyna quickly glanced over and noticed Edemari sulking a little then deftly switched the topic of conversation, “So anyways. Who do you think the client is?”

Inorim shrugged and Edemari started to slowly work her way out of her depression as the topic of conversation shifted.

“I mean, we don’t even know what the job is yet. How are we supposed to guess the client?” Ezaldor looked over at Aldahn for confirmation.

Aldahn just nodded then went back to playing with Nova who he was currently tossing into the air and catching repeatedly.

“I mean, based on the budget alone, it has to be a god or something right? Also… why us?” Fralyna looked around at the rest of the group looking for an answer.

No one had any and most just shrugged.

The conversation continued for the rest of the couple hours until the appointment time. A few minutes before, Aldahn went to the front door to greet and lead them over to the design room.

None of the meeting rooms were big enough for everyone and Aldahn wanted everyone to hear the specifications of the job.

Felix shifted himself over to the side of the table so the client had a place to stand that wasn’t directly behind him and waited. Nova curled up into his robes but he actually stowed Nova in his Soul Space just to be sure. Then, Felix joined the others in subtly peering through the door and window to try and catch the first glimpse of the client.

Just a few short moments later, and a couple minutes early for the allotted meeting time, Aldahn led a very tall and lithe individual that wasn’t quite human, but very close, into the design room. They wore a very expensive looking set of short robes with a long coat overtop everything. The one feature that distinguished them from a normal human was their eyes.

Their eyes were both completely black orbs and they didn’t seem to have eyelids of any kind. Around their eyes, they had either ritualistic or arcane looking tattoos though Felix had never seen anything even remotely similar before in terms of the lines and shapes. They weren’t spell forms as far as he could tell so he just assumed they were likely just decorative.

Aldahn settled into a seat opposite Felix, on the other side of the table, leaving the head of the table empty for the client. They stood behind the chair rather than sitting in it and looked over the group of enchanter’s gathered in the room.

[?] Zarus (Lvl ?)

As soon as their eyes darted over Felix, his soul lurched a little, just for a moment. Their eyes left him a moment later and his soul calmed. It was still slightly on edge, similar to how it had been near the tome in The Raven’s nest and The Usorium castle ruins before that.

Pushing past the feeling, even though he couldn’t see their level or grade, Zarus felt far stronger than anyone Felix had ever met before. It was something about the way they walked and moved, the way they were attentive and aware as well as some kind of presence they had. Standing next to him, he made Aldahn feel like he was as weak as the average integrated Felix had left behind.

The client smiled warmly and offered a slight bow, “My name is Zarus. Thank you for taking the time.”

They all gave variations of acknowledgement, nodding, smiling and even waving.

Zarus looked amongst them, at no one in particular as he spoke, “We, the group I work for, have come into possession of something rather dangerous that we would like to transport. Unfortunately, anything that comes into contact with this object is… compromised. As such, we are in need of a container that will allow us to safely store and transport this object, minimizing the risk of a breach.”

The enchanters slowly nodded as they started to grasp the contract itself.

Aldahn was the first to speak and break the silence, “You mentioned it would need to be at least an A grade enchantment, possibly more. This object is that volatile.”

Zarus nodded once slowly again, almost as if he were bowing his head, “It is. Unfortunately, we cannot control the stability of its transport so the enchantment will also have to keep the object and itself, stable. The container will need to protect us from the object first and foremost while also protecting the object from the environment.”

“I have to ask, why us? We aren’t exactly creating A grade or higher enchantments… often.” Inorim crossed his arms.

Zarus smiled at that, “I come here on a personal recommendation actually. I am not aware of who recommended you but my employer personally requested this shop. After looking into you, we are confident you will be more than capable of handling this.”

Inorim nodded in acceptance then Ezaldor tapped a claw on the table, “You mentioned it corrupts everything it comes into contact with. How all encompassing is ‘everything’ in this circumstance?”

Zarus sighed, “Everything. All matter, aether and anima. Ambient included. The container will need to create a true vacuum within and use force tethers to keep the object centered and suspended at all times. Were the object to come into contact with the container itself… a lot of lives would be terminated prematurely. The enchantment itself will need to be robust as well as the object tends to pull on mana and anima.”

Felix immediately frowned, Everything? Including the ambient anima and aether? Pulls on mana and anima? This ‘object’ sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it?

To be fair, we didn’t actually get a description of the object from the ravens or Thezan.

Yeah but… that feeling when he looked at me. It was the same. Plus the Usorium enchantments could have totally been destroyed by having the mana ‘pulled’ out of them.

Could just be an instinctive danger sense though. I suspect Zarus is at least in the high A grade if not S or higher.

Right. Still… Something about this is…

Yeah, something is off.

Tuning back into the conversation, Felix heard Zarus explaining something to Fralyna, “…return in one term with a sample of the object. At that point you will be able to test if your enchantment functions properly with a prototype.”

Fralyna nodded.

“In terms of the materials for the container, how resilient must it be and how much is it protecting against?” Edemari frowned.

“Ideally the container is impenetrable from both the inside and out to anything below the S grade. While this requirement is high, hopefully the budget will allow you to acquire the proper materials to accomplish such a feat. Should you need more credits, feel free to stretch the budget well into the SSS range. Ideally it is not necessary however.”

A lot of eyes widened at that, a few smirks leaked out but no one spoke for almost a minute as they all digested. Once again, Aldahn was the one to break the silence, “Size of the object and container?”

Zarus nodded, “The object is about the size of this…” Reaching into his coat, Zarus produced a small metal orb and placed it on the table. It was slightly larger than a golf ball and looked to be a completely seamless orb of grey metal to Felix’s eye without the use of any skills.

He continued, “This is enchanted to detect anything it comes into contact with and is what we have been using to test various containers, tools and transportation methods. We have many so please take it. It does not have the same… gravity, as the real object but, it can be used to test the vacuum and suspension enchantments. It is very sensitive.”

Aldahn reached over and picked up the orb then nodded to Zarus.

Zarus looked around for a few moments to see if anyone else had any questions then bowed once again, “Should you need anything further, feel free to leave a message at The Cavern.”

A few of the other enchanter’s eyes widened again and they looked amongst themselves with knowing looks that left Felix wondering.

Zarus then smiled then turned and walked out, assuring Aldahn he knew the way out.

Felix turned to Ezaldor next to him, “The Cavern?”

Ezaldor nodded in his direction, “Very high end tavern, inn and so on. Often used for handling business for Gods and Demigods.”

Aldahn nodded and rose to his feet, taking Zarus’ previous position, standing at the end of the table, “Alright. Given the material requirements, we likely want to order them as soon as possible otherwise, they may not be ready in the two terms we have. In terms of the design, this is what we’re going to start with.”

Drawing a massive system out on the board, all the other enchanters in the room, including Felix, just tried desperately to follow along. Aldahn had come up with the design so quickly and yet, Felix was completely blown away by the complexity.

Having finished the diagram utilizing all the boards in the room, Aldahn turned to everyone, “Any comments?”

They all skimmed through the rest of the design but no one had anything to say so Aldahn nodded and looked at Inorim, “You’re handling the mana computer. Ezaldor you’re on the measurement and normalization structure for the computer. Edemari, you’ll be working on the defensive enchantments for the the container itself. Fralyna, the suspension and vacuum enchantments. Felix, you’re on mana batteries, the mana distribution and normalization.”

Everyone nodded as Aldahn assigned them their jobs.

“Every enchantment needs to be reviewed by me and if you need any help, come to me first. I’m going to be floating around to make sure everything is on track and all the enchantments will function properly together. Ideally we have a prototype in a term to test. Any questions?”

No one had any so Aldahn pointed at one section of the board in specific, “I doubt anyone has any concerns and you likely haven’t even heard of these materials, but any thoughts on the materials I’ve initially selected?”

Once again, no one said anything so Aldahn nodded, “Good. Felix should be the only other one who needs to acquire materials right now so Felix, you’re with me.”

Felix nodded and hopped to his feet then walked over to the door.

Aldahn led him towards the lobby then turned to Felix, “To keep things fast, mind opening a portal to the teleportation hub?”

Felix nodded and did so with the new portal spell form he had just recently finished the mold for. The 5 levels of spell focus he had saved from this spell form made a huge difference not only in the spell’s complexity but also in how much mana was required to cast it. Felix pulled the spell form free of the mold then inserted the anchor he had been provided and cast the spell.

Aldahn immediately stepped through followed by Felix right after he stowed the mold.

Arriving in a familiar looking room in the hub, an attendant appeared almost immediately and Aldahn spoke with them briefly before another portal opened and they stepped through.

The shop they walked into, Felix had never seen anything like it before. There was a large circular stage in the middle of the room that may have just been a large table. All along the walls were glass encased shelves that held raw ores, ingots, balls, gasses, liquids and every other form, shape and state of matter.

Just like Raidran’s, the shop was otherwise empty. Just a massive open space that held no customers.

A few moments passed and an elven woman drifted into the room on a small circular platform. Her dress billowed unnaturally as she moved and the platform held her just a couple inches off the ground.

[?] Nela (Lvl ?)

“Aldahn, it is a pleasure. You must be Felix.” She bowed to both of them then smiled in a very welcoming way, “Shall we begin?”

Aldahn nodded and Felix followed the two of them over to the center of the room where they all stood around a large stage in the middle.

Nela waved her hand over the stage and the top layer disappeared, either too fast for Felix to see or it simply teleported out somehow. Rather than a table or a stage, the top disappeared to reveal a large sandbox. Felix was certain it wasn’t actually sand as it was filled with tiny granules each of a slightly different color.

“Now that you’ve met with the client, you have more information to provide me on what you are looking for?” Nela smiled warmly at Aldahn as her fingers gently came together in front of her.

“Needs to be impenetrable to anything in the A grade. Obviously I’d like to surpass that so lets get it as far into the S grade as possible.” Aldahn crossed his arms.

Nela closed her eyes and slightly bowed her head then reopened them and waved her hand gracefully over the sand. The powder then rose up and formed a box, just as Felix had expected based on Mihto’s course which seemed to function on a similar concept. The granules here though were much finer and so the box it formed, was difficult to distinguish from an actual object. Mihto’s platforms on the other hand were very obviously made of granules.

“Size?” She smiled once again.

Aldahn bit his lip in thought for a moment then nodded, “Let’s say it’s a 1 meter cube.”

She waved once again, and the box grew to the exact size Aldahn had specified. They went back and forth on more of the basic requirements and gradually, the projection of a cube disappeared and the form of a very intricate box began to form.

They used different materials for the box itself and the bumpers around the edges. There were multiple layers of various materials, each one serving a slightly different purpose and complementing each-other in their functions.

“For the enchantment layer, we’re gonna need some very mana repellant and very strong material. Then we’ll inlay something very conductive into it.” Aldahn nodded in the direction of the box, his two hands resting on the edge of the sandbox.

She simply nodded and gestured for them to follow as she hovered over to one of the walls and pointed.

“It is an excellent thing your budget is so large this time.”

Aldahn nodded, “Yeah, for what they need though, it’s fitting.”

Looking into the glass box she had pointed towards, Felix saw a solid red chunk of some ore. He was curious how effectively it was and so he reached out with his mana senses and tried to feel at the aether around the ore.

Surprisingly, he found the case full of aether everywhere except, right up against the ore. Almost like it formed a barrier around it, the aether simply refused to approach the ore in any way forming a void around it.

He resolved himself to put it to the test when they bought some and if it was effective, to buy some himself for training purposes. Though it was very expensive, he only needed a small piece to train his mana control so he was hoping after his commission on this job, he would have more than enough.

They continued to discuss various materials, adding and removing from alloys, thickening and thinning the layers until they were both satisfied.

Aldahn paid Nela and she informed them that the box would be complete in 2 dekads. Aldahn bid her farewell and they portaled back to the teleportation hub.

“Over Capacity, right? That’s where you have the discount?”

Felix nodded and Aldahn gave the name of the shop to the attendant. Rather than the portal opening directly inside the shop, this one opened right outside the door. Hovering through the portal, Felix opened the door and Aldahn, unable to fly himself, hopped through into the shop.

Menan was at the back serving another customer so they waited while Aldahn looked around and examined the shop with a blank stare.

After waiting a few minutes for the machine to finish, the other customer left and they approached his desk at the back. Menan stretched his arms out in a welcoming gesture as they approached, “Felix, welcome back. Who’s this ye brought ’ith ya?”

Felix grinned, “My boss, Aldahn. He happens to also be my wallet for right now.”

Aldahn grinned and cocked a brow, “He’s not wrong. Since you’re the enchanter working on mana supply and distribution, what batteries are we buying?”

Felix nodded and thought about it for a second, “Definitely Instant so it can sustain sudden impacts. As for capacity, I think we can get away with 8 A grade common batteries. One for each corner, right?”

Aldahn nodded, “I agree. It’s pushing the original budget a little but we were given permission to do so.”

Menan looked at each of them incredulously as a smirk grew on his face. As soon as he realized they were being serious, his smile disappeared and he frowned, “I don’t even know if I ’ave the stones ter fill ’at.”

“How long will it take you to get them?” Aldahn crossed his arms.

Menan sighed, “I can ’et em fer ya… two to three dekads?”

Aldahn nodded, “That works for us.”

Menan sighed and opened his mouth but Aldahn already anticipated what he was gonna say and opened a transaction screen to pay for the batteries.

Menan shook his head and grumbled as he accepted the transaction, “Give a D grade kid a 10% discount and he comes ‘ack ’n’ buys A grade batteries in less ‘an an epoch. Fuckin’ …”

Aldahn chuckled a little under his breath as they walked over to the front of the shop.

“Can I just portal directly to Inscripticae?” Felix looked up at Aldahn.

He smirked, “You never tried that?”

Felix shook his head.

“The city redirects all portals back to the hub. There are some exceptions for intra building functions but those are managed by The System.”

Felix nodded in understanding then opened a portal to a set of completely random coordinates. As he filled the spell form with mana, he felt it lurch and the destination shift. He had no hope of pulling it to wherever he had pointed it to but pulled on it anyways just to test himself.

To his complete surprise, he wasn’t able to shift the destination at all. It wasn’t immovable, he did managed to tug on it but he wasn’t able to move it more than a few inches from where it was being pulled to.

After a few moments of fighting the city itself, the portal opened to the teleportation hub, despite his best efforts. He sighed and walked through followed by Aldahn who didn’t seem to realize what he had been trying to do.

Talking to an attendant, they portaled back to Inscripticae and Aldahn quickly met with each of the other enchanters.

Finding an empty table of his own, Felix sat down on the stool and got to work.

The first step was to design the enchantment and luckily, he had his Soul Garden’s time dilation to give him as much time as he needed.

Felix had also done something very similar just a couple dekads ago with the mana battery buttons on the dueling jacket so he already had some experience with the task at hand. What made this one tricky was just that it would have to be able to handle thousands of times more mana, delivered far faster with many times more precision.

He would have to do an initial pass of normalizing the mana, just in case, and some load balancing so that one section of the enchantment didn’t starve the rest of it.

As useful as his Soul Garden was, he had no way to test his designs inside so once he had come up with a number of designs, Felix returned to his body and tested them. He didn’t have as much mana as even one of the 8 batteries they were going to use but he figured his mana pool was enough for testing purposes.

Instead of inscribing his designs onto a scrap sheet of metal, which would take a long time for each iteration, Felix simply constructed his designs out of mana. He held the enchantment, simulated as a spell form, before him and pushed his entire mana pool through it, reabsorbing the mana back into his pool after it came out.

His task was no doubt the easiest amongst the enchanters of Inscripticae but still, he was surprised when Aldahn simply approved the first design he showed him, “We’ll test it in the prototype but I don’t think there’ll be any problems. Just be ready to redo it if there are. In the meantime, can you help Fralyna?”

Felix nodded and walked over to Fralyna’s worktable where she was very carefully inscribing an enchantment into a sheet of metal. Felix waited until she was done so as not to interrupt her.

“Oh, hey Felix. What’s up?”

“I finished the mana distribution design. Aldahn told me to come help you?”

“Oh sweet. Yeah I could use it, thanks.” Fralyna pointed to a stack of papers, “Can you inscribe those designs onto scrap sheets for me? I need to test all these to see which works the best.”

Felix nodded then walked over and looked down at the stack of paper almost an inch tall, which his Scan Literature skill had already scanned and memorized.

Inscribing all the enchantments would have been a waste of time, for Felix, so instead he did exactly what he had done with his own designs and simulated the designs as spell forms.

As he ran through the designs, he noted any flaws or issues then circled them on their respective pages. There were a few that didn’t seem to have any issues so those, he inscribed onto sheets so Fralyna could compare them herself.

Once she had finished with her test sheet, Fralyna looked through the stack and nodded along as she read through the issues Felix had pointed out.

“Enchantment simulation skill?” She didn’t even look up from the papers.

“Something like that.”

“Makes a lot of sense how you were done so fast. Sweet, I haven’t actually ever worked with anima or aether warding nodes before so that skill is gonna be super useful.”

“Happy to help.” Felix smiled.

Working with Fralyna on the suspension and vacuum enchantments was far more interesting than his own task had been. By far the most interesting part to Felix were the nodes. He had never seen nodes that acted specifically on the aether or ambient anima. He had adapted nodes himself to affect the aether but never heard of nodes like these.

Together, Felix and Fralyna fine tuned the enchantments until they were both satisfied with the effect. They had to make arrays of the nodes, minimize wasted mana in the overlap while ensuring the space between nodes weren’t weak points. They tuned the arrangement, size and shaping of the nodes until they couldn’t come up with any further iterations.

To test it, Felix himself pushed against the nodes with his mana control and found he couldn’t push mana through which meant he was satisfied. For Fralyna’s testing, they physically tried to push mana into the wards. It wasn’t impossible if they pushed with all their strength and used some Force spells but they didn’t have any leads on how to make it stronger anyways.

It also came as a complete shock to Felix that he actually had almost twice Fralyna’s strength, despite the fact that she was a much higher level and almost two grades up.

“When you neglect a stat, it ends up being very far behind. I probably have higher main stats though. Also, rarity is… well everything. Being an exile, I suspect you have a much higher rarity race, class and profession.” Fralyna shrugged.

Considering we have the same main stats and how stupidly high my Intelligence and Dexterity are…

“I guess. Still, I thought the grades made more of a difference.” Felix shrugged.

Fralyna nodded, “That depends on rarity too. You get a huge surplus of stats when you evolve but the amount is highly dependent on the rarity of the race you choose.”

“Gotcha. Just… didn’t expect it is all.”

“If you ever end up hanging out with higher rarity people, you’ll notice the difference.” Fralyna sighed out of her nose but smiled, like she wasn’t necessarily happy with the fact but she’d come to accept it.

Felix frowned, “Can’t you make up for the stats later?”

“Sure, it becomes harder and harder as you level though. Let’s say you’ve got a Legendary E grade everything and keep the same rarity in D grade. Your E grade stats would be contributing maybe 5% of your total stats. A common race, class or profession in E grade then, doesn’t make that much of a difference. Let’s say you were common everything for E and D grade then you lucked out and got Legendary everything for C grade. At the end of C grade, you’d be about 80% of the way there on stats compared to having Legendary everything throughout.”

Felix scoffed, “That’s not bad at all.”

Fralyna smiled knowingly, “No, it’s not. Issue is, it becomes harder and harder to upgrade rarity. You need to accomplish things, kill high level creatures and be amongst the best. You need to qualify for the race. While you’re in the E or D grade and stuck with Common everything, it’s nearly impossible to accomplish things worthy of upgrading. You’re stats alone are much lower then, there are the skills.”

Felix winced, “You’re stuck with buying high rarity skills which are super expensive or inventing them?”

“Which is very difficult unless you’re a genius, yup.” She shrugged, “It’s not like it matters that much though. You can live a great life off of a Common profession for example, if you work hard enough. It only really matters if you want to be a god or something. The vast majority of us don’t care. Take Inorim or Ezaldor for example, both have partners and kids and I bet you they’re completely satisfied with their lives. I want something similar, if I can find the right partner, and so it doesn’t matter to me much.”

“There are a lot more people just… being normal? Than I would have expected considering, this is all new to me.”

“Sure. I’m sure a lot of people from your planet were super motivated to change their lives, seeing the integration as the perfect opportunity to finally start over and to get strong. That’ll die out pretty fast. The initial burst of motivation is often attributed as one of the reasons a higher percentage of integrateds hit high levels and rarities compared to the rest of the multiverse. That difference is maybe 5-10% more people in Uncommon or Rare rarities though, not hugely significant.”

“So you just have to be lucky out here then?”

“Sort of, yes and no. It’s worse for integrateds because on the other end, there are significantly less Epic or higher rarities, almost half as much. It’s harder to accomplish feats and qualify for the classes, races and professions. Out here, you get to that rarity most often by being born into it or pledging your loyalty to a god early on.”

“Oh… not the luck I meant.”

“I know. You can get super lucky and do it yourself, find the right feats to accomplish and get ahead of the curve, it happens. Just… not often. It’s a lot easier to just start out with a Legendary class, profession, race and full roster of skills along with weapons, armor, spells and protective items.”

“Wouldn’t the feats mean less then?”

“Yeah but, you can take on bigger feats and riskier fights with the armor and protective equipment. With an infinite pile of escape items alone, you could retry a fight an infinite number of times until you got it. You can also train in perfect safety against the best of the best. Ignoring all of that, just being taught great skills can make seemingly impossible feats, easy.”

Felix winced, “That seems… rough.”

Fralyna shrugged and giggled a little, “Again, only if you care about being super strong. It matters little to us. Edemari’s husband, my brother, probably would’ve lived if he was stronger but… that situation is so rare and honestly… he was kind of an idiot putting himself in way too much danger. Was that way his whole life, ever since he was a kid.”

Felix nodded, “I see.”

“In the meantime, people like you and Aldahn can help us out with your simulation skills and high strength scores. Why would I need high strength myself when I can just get you to lift things for me?” She looked at him with a mischievous smile.

Showing their design to Aldahn, he immediately had a huge list of notes for them. Most of them were minor but he also showed them a much tighter array that alternated the shapes and sizes of the nodes resulting in a much stronger enchantment overall.

They quickly went back to the drawing board and tested Aldahn’s grid then iterated from there. Aldahn’s wasn’t actually better, it was much less efficient but it did point them in a new direction. They ended up pointing each node in the grid at a slightly different, and precisely calculated, angle which made the field it produced much thicker.

They went back to him for approval and Aldahn gave them a small list of minor changes. He conditionally approved the enchantment as soon as those were done and got them to start working on the components for the prototype.

They used materials for the prototype that Aldahn had gone out and bought. The materials he provided were much nicer than the testing materials they used but still no where near the level of the final materials they had bought.

Felix worked on and finished the 8 mana distribution components for the prototype before helping Fralyna again. He only ended up inscribing 1 of the 6 sides of her enchantment but that had still taken almost a day.

The other enchanters were also done with their components of the prototype so they started to piece things together and correct the kinks they found. Making enchantments work by themselves was one thing, making sure they worked perfectly together was another.

Aldan had given them precise numbers for their inputs and outputs so the process was relatively smooth but there were still some hiccups they encountered. Most of them had to do with slight alignment issues and once corrected, the pieces fit together fairly easily.

The end result of their prototype looked nothing like a finished product. Inorim’s computer was not in the box at all but rather inscribed out onto a stack of metal plates that sat next to the box. There were long strips of inscribed metal ribbons and mana conductive wiring attaching the two.

Felix’s mana distribution sections looked like they were glued onto the corners but overall, it was functional.

Aldahn had already picked up both the final box and the batteries for the final product. For the prototype though, they used much smaller batteries that they had in storage. Aldahn also used a small amount of the final materials, extra he had paid for, to create a small inert enchantment just to test if the material choice would function while in contact with the object.

With just a couple days left until the prototype was put to the test, they rigorously tested it and corrected any mistakes they found. They used the testing orb Zarus had given them initially but the vacuum and suspension runes easily passed that test after some minor tweaks. More challenging, was trying to make everything as strong as possible.

Just because the orb was suspended, didn’t mean the enchantments would function when the object inside was actively fighting against them. They simulated that as best they could with enchanted balls, discs and even just spells right up until the day came to test the prototype.

Even before he had knocked on the door, Felix knew Zarus was there.

His soul immediately tensed more than it ever had in the Usorium castle ruins. Felix immediately collapsed in the middle of the workshop floor, his entire body screaming in pain.

With his soul suffusing his body, he felt everything tensing and compressing.

Forcing his eyes open, through the tears, he saw his every vein bulging with each heart beat as he was squeezed like a balloon. A very similar experience to the one he had with the only dish he didn’t finish at Jozusto. An simultaneous feeling of nothingness and infinite pressure all around him, trying to consume him from every direction washed over him. He knew it wasn’t real, he knew it was a memory or flashback but even then, it was nearly impossible to push back against.

He could feel the others in the shop around him, trying to help, see what was wrong but all he could do was push back and try to forcefully calm himself. He heard someone enter the lobby in the back of his mind and felt one of the presences around him disappear but nothing more than that.

Pushing back against his instincts, Felix finally managed to wrestle some control from it after a minute that had felt like an eternity. He climbed his way to his feet using the tables around him and used the table closest to him to hold himself up.

His body was still tight and being attacked by his own soul but the pain gradually lessened to a bearable degree as he learned to fight back. He was still hovering at under half of his maximum health as his soul twitched and tightened counteracting his natural regeneration.

Looking around him, Fralyna was standing closest and looked like she wanted to help him physically but was worried to touch him. Edemari was a little further back and just seemed stunned while Ezaldor and Inorim were either confused or angry, he couldn’t quite tell.

He assured them he was fine as he continued to push back and slowly regain control.

Across the workshop floor, Felix saw Zarus walking in with Aldahn. They both walked over to him and it was actually Zarus who approached him first.

“I apologize. I know even a sample of the object can have serious effects on some and it seems you are particularly sensitive.” Zarus reached forwards and produced a vial in their hand which Felix was immediately wary of.

He carefully took it though and Zarus shared with him the identification which made him much more comfortable.

Felix drank the liquid and felt it immediately calm him down until he was no longer losing health. His soul was still tight and on edge but it was manageable and no longer painful. The liquid was the same thing they had drank at Jozusto but instead of a casual drink, it was more of an elixir with a much stronger effect.

“I always keep some of this on me just in case. You eventually get used to it but… I apologize, I should have warned you all further. You have just had the most serious reaction I have ever seen.” Zarus stood back up and inspected everyone else to see if they needed supplements to calm them down as well.

He quickly decided the rest of them were fine and Felix reassured them all by standing on his own and generally returning to his normal stance.

“As you can see, our containers are completely insufficient for holding even a sample of the object within them. We are hoping a specially designed container will produce different results but unfortunately, it may not be possible to completely contain it.”

“How are you going to transfer it into the prototype and keep things safe?” Aldahn looked concerned after Felix’s dramatic reaction. On top of that, he and every other enchanter in the room looked to be reacting to it in different ways.

Felix’s reaction was the most dramatic by far but the others each reacted in their own ways as well. Some shifted uncomfortably, others scowled, some twitched and Inorim was fighting a constant wince that was gradually beginning to win more often than not.

“I have tools we’ve devised to move it safely. Especially a sample this small, shouldn’t be a problem. If you’d like to stand back, I can perform the tests myself.” Looking directly at Felix, “Taking it out of its current temporary container is going to be much worse, would you like to leave for now and come back afterwards?”

Felix shook his head, “No thank you. I want to get used to it as much as possible, can’t have something like this happen in the future.”

Aldahn didn’t seem to agree but didn’t have a chance to argue as Zarus nodded and with a flourish of his hand, produced a small box just a few inches across, almost like a jewelry box.

They prepared the prototype along with the sample of final materials on the table then Zarus set himself up and stood behind the box.

As they prepared, Felix managed to wrestle almost complete control of his soul back. He could still feel that it was on edge but it was no longer controlling him. Now, it was more like a feeling or instinct that he was aware of along with goose bumps across his entire soul. He knew this was going to be worse but was hoping his calming his soul down now would help lessen the impact.

Zarus briefly looked around the room to ensure everyone was prepared then produced a long stick that was somewhere between a high tech screwdriver and a wand. He carefully brought the tip of it over to the small box and with his other hand, pressed the latch on the box.

Opening his eyes Felix looked around and found himself in small and dark room on a soft bed that was much too large for him. He briefly checked over his entire body and his status screen and found nothing wrong, in fact, he seemed entirely healthy.

Before he had a chance to check on his soul bonded companions, he heard Grim’s voice in his head, You’re awake.

Felix instinctively nodded as he rubbed at his eyes, What happened. Where am I?

Nap room in Inscripticae I think. I only see through your senses though so you’re going to have to confirm.

I take it… Zarus opened the box and I just…

Again, I can only see what you see from in here. I couldn’t even feel it myself.

Right.

Felix hopped to his feet and opened the door next to him and found that he was in fact, in Inscripticae’s nap room. He looked over into the lobby and saw no one so he headed back into the workshop where he saw everyone toiling away at their enchantments. Zarus was nowhere to be seen but the prototype had been completely disassembled so Felix assumed some time had to have passed.

Aldahn was the first to notice Felix enter the workshop and rushed over to him, the others occupied with their enchanting.

“Are you ok?” Aldahn placed a hand on Felix’s shoulder and looked him over with concern.

“I feel fine. How long was I out for?”

“A couple days now. We gave you another tranquility elixir immediately and Zarus left another three with us in case you need them.” Aldahn reached his hand forwards and offered Felix three vials.

Felix looked down at them then reached forwards and stowed them all, “Thanks.”

“If you still aren’t feeling well, I can inscribe your enchantments.”

Felix shook his head quickly, “No, I feel great actually. How’d the test go?”

“Well, all things considered. The box managed to hold the object, which I couldn’t identify by the way, for a few seconds before it pulled the enchantments free and one of the enchantments exploded. Zarus was ready though and quickly removed it. When we tested it on the final materials though, no such effect. The final product should work just fine. He seemed pleased with… well something so… that’s good.”

“What did it look like?”

Aldahn frowned, “The object?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s less of an object… it just looked like a tiny droplet of completely black liquid.”

“I see. Annoying I didn’t get to see it for myself.”

Aldahn shook his head, “Yours was the most severe reaction but we all felt it too. Inorim and Edemari collapsed and curled up into balls on the floor, Fralyna barely caught herself on the desk and Ezaldor very quickly left the room.”

“But you managed to get the necessary testing done? See how everything reacts and whatnot?”

“Yeah, took a few hours for us all to get over our own reactions after moving you.”

Felix nodded, “Alright well, I better get started on inscribing then, make up for lost time.”

Aldahn smirked a little, “Sure. You need to make a template first and have at least three of us approve it, one of which has to be me. These materials are too expensive to just wing it. If you haven’t done one before, see if you can help Fralyna for a day or two to get an idea.”

“Sure, sounds good.”

Felix walked over to Fralyna’s desk and waited for her to look up from her work.

“Oh Felix, how are you feeling?”

“Much better, thanks. I’ve never done templates before and Aldahn told me to help you for a bit to get an idea?”

“Sure. I’m working on mine right now.”

Felix ended up spending two days with Fralyna less because he needed the experience with templates and more because he wanted to help. Her enchantment was the largest in size and required the most actual labor.

Templates were rather simple, just the enchantment cutout of a thin sheet of some material that reminded Felix of ceramic. They needed it to have a very high melting point and insulating properties. Due to the final process they were using to enchant the box, the template would first be used to melt the same pattern into the final piece.

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

They would then stack the sheet of the final material onto another, with no holes melted through it, and fill the channel they had created with mana conductive material. Finally they add the last layer of another unmarred sheet, creating an enchantment sandwich, then fuse them all together at a high temperature. Effectively, they were perfectly embedding the inlay and enchantment within the sheet and in the end, the sheet would seem like one solid sheet instead of a stack of sheets.

Felix’s enchantment wasn’t actually a sheet though and wasn’t anywhere close to the object itself so his was less stringent. For his, he would have to use much thicker and stronger channels with more mana conductive material because his enchantment actually handled the most mana at all times.

Moving onto his own template, he only had to make one small one that he could simply use 8 times so it only took him a fraction of the time it was taking Fralyna. His enchantment was also much less complex. Aldahn had him widen the channels in the template a few times but apparently, his enchantment didn’t have any issues when they tested the prototype so he didn’t need to change anything.

HIs enchantment was also the least complex, smallest and furthest from the object, but he was still happy it had worked flawlessly.

Before using the templates, Aldahn had him float around to help the other enchanters finish their templates, first Fralyna then Edemari. Once he helped them both finish theirs, Aldahn had already helped the other two finish as well and they collectively reviewed each-others templates.

No one actually had any issues but they were all being as cautious as possible so they pointed out every miniscule thing they saw. They did end up fixing a few of them but for almost everything someone pointed out, they all agreed it wouldn’t matter or was fixable in the final enchantment.

They marked every flaw that was pointed out with a special quill that essentially highlighted the area in red then Aldahn handed out the materials they would be enchanting for the final product.

Felix immediately got to work on his own section after Aldahn demonstrated specific quirks of the material and templates to all of them. He wasn’t actually enchanting any of the mana repelling material but he was going to have to coat his enchantment in it.

Though he tried to focus on the enchantment itself, once it became clear he was going to finish with plenty of time to spare, he let himself get a little distracted. The first corner, he focused on but every one after that was just cloning the first and so he toyed around with the materials a little.

He didn’t compromise anything but he used the materials, while he still had access to them, to push his mana control to the limit. At no point was he able to beat the material but he was able to push mana closer to it.

With one corner done, he also tested pulling on the mana in the channels, the same way the object would, but that was like trying to lift a building. He didn’t feel like it was actually moving at all.

With his section done, Aldahn retrieved the batteries they had ordered.

[A - Common] Mana Battery (100,000,000/100,000,000)

[Normal][Instant]

A battery containing mana.

The capacity was completely insane and Felix had to hold himself back from gawking at the batteries as they were slotted into the enchanted section he had made.

They briefly tested everything as much as they could just to catch any issues ahead of time then they both split off to help other enchanters with their larger sections.

Over the course of another two dekads, the box was slowly assembled, each piece forming a more complete picture of the final product. They fused each one together once everything was aligned properly and conducted progressively more extensive testing before they committed to fusing the materials together permanently.

Luckily, they didn’t find anything to cause them alarm and none of it had to be disassembled so, all together, they performed the final fusing process followed by many chemical baths and a few layered coatings on the outside.

[A - Arcane] Containment Cell

[Enchanted]

A box designed to contain a very specific object and prevent it from coming in contact with anything else.

Felix was initially disappointed but Aldahn and everyone else’s excitement caused him to be confused, “I thought we wanted to hit S grade if possible?”

Aldahn chuckled, “We did, in a sense. It will never read S grade on the identification unless the majority of the materials are S grade. On the other hand, Arcane is one of the rarities that sits outside the standard rarity progression. I doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better than A grade, but considering the enchantment we put on it and some of the materials we used, we can be fairly sure that is what it means in this case.”

Felix shrugged as he thought through the implications of this knowledge on everything else he knew of using the Arcane rarity, “Oh, sweet.”

Aldahn walked over to stand in front of and address all the enchanters, “I will go personally deliver the box but two days from now, we can do a dinner. I figure you want to spend some time with your families and whatnot, this was a long one with a lot of late nights. We’ll figure out where later but… great work everyone.”

I think I’m actually looking forward to this one. I don’t love dinners or hanging out with people but… that enchantment was fun and… I don’t mind celebrating it I think.

It helps that they are all still better and more experienced enchanters than you, so you can talk to them and have an interesting conversation.

Yeah but still, I also appreciate them all being so helpful and patient with teaching me.

Are you starting to actually care for them?

Maybe. I’m not sure.

The enchanters left one by one followed by Aldahn, who brought the box with him, and Felix just behind him. For the first time Felix had ever seen, Aldahn actually locked the door to Inscripticae as it was empty.

Felix waved goodbye to the others as they parted ways and he headed straight for the Adventurers guild. First he wanted to see if there were any credits waiting for him or messages because they were supposed to debrief with Dogran. After that he had to go pick up his new outfit. He still had just over 5 days until he had to be at Eramith, according to the library, so he figured he would kill time training or in the library.

He also wanted to do some research on what that object may have been because he didn’t think his reaction to it was natural. It invoked too many ingrained experiences that seemed to be a large part of him and his soul, so he intended on at least trying to figure out what it was.

Now that the box was finally done Felix allowed all the leveling notifications to pour in, though he quickly had them combined.

Ding You have gained 299 levels in [D - Arcane] Mana Engineer (693 => 992)

Damn. That feels good.

Though the tools at his disposal, namely his mana control and identification skills, made the process easy, the box was still the most advanced enchantment he had ever worked on. It caused him to test everything he knew at every step, to iterate and learn from every tiny flaw over the course of the two terms it had taken them. Still, he had been expecting around a hundred levels so, almost 300 was a very pleasant surprise.

He was also now massively overshooting the recommended level for Eramith but he was hoping that wouldn’t be a problem.

Flying into the adventurers guild, Felix walked right up to the counter but was immediately redirected to one of the desks off to the side.

He found the correctly numbered desk and met a Drakene with a large belly, the first larger person he remembered seeing.

“Let’s see… You have a message and… 402 job requests, no credits.”

“402?”

“You were requested on specific jobs, those are just the ones that haven’t expired.”

Felix sighed, “Alright well, they’ll have to wait. Can you delist me from the available Adventurers? I’m going away for a bit.”

“Of course. Done.”

“And the message?”

The Drakene nodded then handed Felix a small sheet of parchment.

Felix took the parchment and unfolded it then read the message inside, “Felix, Dogran wants to debrief us as soon as possible. We have a room in the Adventurer’s guild and we’ll leave a second note if we’ve already left. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours and Dogran also has the pay from the last part of the job.”

Looking back at the Drakene who seemed to be waiting in case he needed anything else, “Who left me the message?”

The Drakene looked down at something, “Thezan of the Shade’s Wrath.”

Felix nodded, “Can you show me to their room?”

The Drakene quickly looked over and read something else then nodded, “Yes, you have been approved to visit them. Follow me.”

Felix followed the Drakene into what he now knew was an elevator then over to a specific room on the floor.

The Drakene nodded to Felix then disappeared and Felix knocked on the door.

Just a few moments later, he heard Thezan’s voice call out, “Enter.”

Opening the door, Felix stepped into a familiar looking suite.

In an instant, his surrounding changed. Felix immediately realized where he was but it took him a few moments to mentally adjust.

He saw Grim standing before him, “Why am I in my Soul Garden?”

Grim looked at him seriously, which meant the arcane symbols on his book cover face were sharp and angular, “You were knocked unconscious by a System Fuckery skill or item.”

“How do you know that?”

Grim sighed, “Felt the same as it did when you evolved except I doubt your soul was separated from your body. At this point, you would feel that.”

“With my soul suffusing my body?”

Grim nodded, “Yeah.”

“Well shit. Any idea how long I was out?”

“A few seconds at most, time dilation and all that.”

Felix nodded, “Right. Can I wake myself up, since my soul is still connected to my body?”

“Probably. Are you ready?”

“I guess. Not much I can do to prepare myself here and the sooner I get out, the more likely I am to surprise them.”

Grim nodded and Felix steeled his resolve then forced his consciousness back into his body. While he definitely caught the two individuals in the room by surprise, it didn’t matter much. He was already bound with something he had no hope of breaking judging from a quick pull. Realizing he had no way out, Felix quickly stowed everything on him that was irreplaceable, namely his rings and bracelet, in his Soul Space.

A halfling man with a rough beard and a buzz cut scowled in Felix’s direction, “How the fuck is he already awake?”

“Probably some resistance skill.” A woman with a short bob of light teal hair shrugged, completely unconcerned.

Felix couldn’t seem to get anything out of his Identify skill on either of them.

The halfling man reached down and grabbed Felix by his neck then lifted him to his knees, “You sure this is gonna work?” He clearly wasn’t addressing Felix.

Judging solely from his presence, dexterity and the ease with which he lifted Felix into the air, Felix was pretty sure this halfling was either high rarity A grade or even S grade. He dwarfed everyone else he had ever met in presence alone except maybe Zarus though, both of them were likely hiding a lot of their strength.

“Boss had Zarus test him and he’s convinced. Doesn’t really hurt to try, right? We were going to have to kill him anyways.” The woman shrugged.

“Yeah but it’s easier to just kill him.”

The woman shook her head, “We can’t anymore. Boss wants to study him, dissect him and find out why.”

The man groaned, “Another one? Don’t they have enough toys?”

The woman just shrugged.

“What if he tries to hide it?” The man looked over his shoulder at her.

“Sounds like it’s involuntary. We can test him for ourselves when we get there.” The woman brushed him off as she walked over to a bench and sat down.

Looking around and taking stock of his surroundings, Felix realized they almost definitely were not in an Adventurer’s guild room anymore, if they ever had been. The room was a completely empty box with the two individuals guarding him, a bench and 4 corpses piled up in the far corner.

Felix immediately recognized Thezan’s armor and signature hair. After recognizing Thezan, the rest of the corpses were easy enough to identify.

That’s… ominous… damn, I liked them.

He briefly considered casting a bunch of different spells but quickly decided against the idea altogether. Considering just how strong the two in front of him felt and how easily Erolan had detected his casting, he didn’t even think he would be able to cast a single spell. On top of that, he wasn’t sure they would do accomplish unless he was trying to kill himself.

Instead, he bided his time in the hopes that an opportunity would present itself. If it did, he would be ready. Until then, he remained as still, docile and agreeable as possible, in the hopes that they didn’t decide to take more drastic measures, Felix waited.

The room they were in was clearly moving, judging from the inertia he felt, even though it was damped significantly by enchantments. The other two in the cabin didn’t do, say, or even move much.

Their lack of movement was odd enough to Felix that he started to wonder whether they had something like his Soul Garden and they weren’t actually, entirely present.

Either way he sat and he waited.

His map didn’t function whatsoever and though he could tell they had teleported somewhere, likely passing through a portal, judging from the lurch in the aether he was so accustomed to. Unfortunately, there was simply nothing he could do with that information.

They remained in that crate for a few hours, Felix bound by ropes he had no hope of ever breaking and his two captors standing around, creepily motionless the entire time.

When they did finally come to a stop, Felix was forced back into his Soul Garden for just a second in which time his two captors had vanished. Just a few moments later, the door behind him opened up and the man who had held him by the throat earlier dragged him out of the crate they had been transported in.

The halfling man dragged Felix through a couple of halls and doorways into an empty room where he tossed him in. The door closed a few moments later and Felix was once again left alone.

He had seen enough to know this was likely a temporary location, the rooms were empty but still made of some high grade material he had no hope of breaking. Now that he was finally alone though, Felix started to cast spells.

At first he just cast small spells to see if anyone would react. When nothing happened, he started to test the durability of the walls and doors. Once he realized there was no hope of breaking them down, he knew his only hope was a portal.

Before taking out the mold he had though, Felix cast a completely inert spell he devised on the spot that would use a similar amount of mana as the portal. Before he managed to even get half of the required mana into the spell form though, the door opened and he was smacked. His body bounced off the wall to his left, the spell form dissipated and the halfling man looked down at him, “Don’t.”

After that, Felix briefly tried casting spells within his Soul Space but the results were odd. Some of them worked, others just didn’t but, he was also sometimes unintentionally simulating the result of the spell simply because it was his Soul Space. Instead of being moved by the cast spell, he found objects being moved by his subconscious. He quickly decided it wasn’t going to work and gave up on that.

The ropes were tied far too tightly for him to do anything about them and even if he switched to his Persona’s body, he was pretty sure the ropes would count as clothes. He would quickly get killed by the halfling man then he would immediately revert to plain old Felix, bound in rope.

On top of all that, he was pretty sure they were watching him somehow so whatever he did would either had to outsmart A to S grades or be truly instantaneous.

After realizing he had no hope of escaping the room, Felix approached the doors and simply listened. He reached out with every one of his senses and though nothing interesting was happening in the anima or aether, he did manage to hear some shifting around. Nothing interesting but he continued to listen as he waited.

Felix waited for hours, casting a huge array of spells sporadically in the hopes that he would start to confuse their danger senses. If they started to think he was constantly casting, it might buy him a few moments later when he actually cast something worthwhile.

He also slowly increased the amount of mana he used until he reached just under the amount they had stopped him at last time.

Listening through the wall though, he heard nothing but slight movements, steps and shuffling every once in a while for a few hours.

When he finally heard a door open, his own door was opened just a few moments later without so much as a word, that he could hear, being passed between anyone preceding it. Felix was dragged out of the room he had been in and through the building. This time he noticed another humanoid in one of the rooms he passed but didn’t see anything more than their knees.

He was tossed into a much smaller crate or vehicle as before except this time, it was truly empty other than Felix and a very familiar looking box.

Next to him, in the sealed crate, was the box him and all the other enchanters at Inscripticae had worked on for the last two terms.

[A - Arcane] Containment Cell

[Enchanted]

A box designed to contain a very specific object and prevent it from coming in contact with anything else.

Before he had a chance to do anything other than adjust himself, they were moving again. This time for just a few minutes in total.

Felix felt the inertia when they started moving, the slight lurch in the aether as they passed through a portal then the overwhelming pain of his soul attacking his body.

Just like before, his body was compressed, his veins pushing through his skin with every beat of his heart. His soul was on edge and fighting against him.

Now that he had fought it before, he knew how to manage it and was able to calm himself down much faster. He didn’t use any of the tranquility elixirs he had just yet, as he suspected he would need them more later.

This time, the feeling was both stronger and more clear to Felix, though he suspected that was a product of him not being as surprised by it.

This time he could tell, his soul wasn’t trying to attack anything, it was trying to compress itself down into a more defensive state. His outer layers were too thin and his soul was trying to protect itself by compressing them into a shell. There wasn’t anything he could do about that at the moment, with not nearly enough anima in his Soul Space to fix it at the moment, so instead he just fought back and calmed himself down.

Right as he finally felt himself regaining control over his senses, the door to the crate he was stored inside of was opened.

The same two individuals as before walked in. With the halfling man dragging Felix and the woman holding the box, they all exited the vehicle and Felix found himself in what he could only describe as a massive warehouse.

As far as he could see into the sky, there were crates on shelves. They were in a section with crates that were about 10 meter cubes but he caught a glimpse of another section, with much larger crates in the distance.

Quickly looking behind them as the halfling man effortlessly swung Felix around, he saw that they had traveled in what looked like a flying truck from the future. Oddly, Felix noted that there were no spatial enchantments making the back any bigger than it looked from the outside. The space Felix had just been in was exactly the right size for the back of that vehicle.

He didn’t have any more time to examine his surroundings though as he had to focus on resisting his soul’s instinct to tighten and defend itself.

The feeling only got worse as he was dragged around and used as a detector for the object affecting him.

He was fighting desperately to keep himself conscious and avoid imploding so, he had no hope of hiding the effect it was having on him. They were completely right, it was involuntary and he could do nothing about it, if he even wanted to. Right then, all he could think about was keeping his soul from killing him.

Though they were getting ever closer to the container they were looking for, the feeling and effect it was having on Felix growing every stronger, he actually felt like he was making progress.

Felix fell in and out of consciousness, not actually entering his Soul Garden at all but truly losing all cognition. From the brief glimpses he caught while conscious, based on what he felt and saw, they had found what they were looking for.

When he next returned to consciousness, he was back in a similar vehicle as before, once again accompanied by the box and this time the box wasn’t empty. Though he couldn’t really open his eyes, Felix could immediately feel the active enchantments on the box. Along with his soul reacting the way it was, he knew what was inside.

It was nearly impossible to fight his own soul when the object was just a few meters from him, even in the Containment Cell they had created, it felt like he was completely exposed to him. Like he was physically in contact with it. It felt like it was actively touching, grabbing, tearing and eating his flesh and his soul from all sides.

Despite the pain, he kept fighting through it, he refused to just sit unconscious forever. He refused to be this weak to anything.

The layer of his soul that used to suffuse his body had long since snapped out of it and formed the protective shell his soul had so desired. The issue was that his soul didn’t want to communicate at all with anything. It was trying to fight back against the connection to his own body which he knew, would be what he still considered, death.

In the brief flashes where he had access to his bodily senses, Felix saw the object in the crate. Just as Aldahn had described, it was like a perfectly black liquid. Suspended within the crate it remained completely motionless save for the occasional ripple passing over its surface. It was much bigger than the sample Zufaris had had though, the sphere inside the containment cell was 6 to 7 inches in diameter.

First, Felix wrested control over his consciousness, he couldn’t keep falling in and out of awareness if he wanted to get anywhere. All that gave him though was access to his base senses, to pair with the senses he got from his soul: his mana sense and whatever matter sense he had available to him.

Reaching out with every sense he had access to, in an attempt to find any amount of control over his current situation, Felix reached out towards the box. He could feel the batteries pumping mana into the enchantment, the computer whirring away and a ball of nothingness being suspended in a void.

His matter senses, though still new, were even more interesting. Instead of feeling like there was nothing in the vacuum, Felix actually felt like there was less than nothing. Like the nothingness was asserting itself against the vacuum surrounding it. That ball of black liquid didn’t feel like mana or matter or even just anima, it was something else but not quite at the same time.

It was distinct but not entirely separate and he had no idea how to think about it. All he knew was that his soul had dealt with it somewhere before and didn’t like it.

From there, he wrestled back his ability to use his Soul Garden and along with it, his connections to Grim and Nova.

Finally having reestablished the connection, Felix sighed in relief, Grim.

I’m here.

Is it hurting you? Am I?

Nope, Nova and I have been fine in here.

Good. I’m gonna keep trying to get back to normal.

Felix had no idea how long it took him to force his soul back into his body from there but it felt like a painful eternity. His body was completely battered and barely alive as he had managed to keep it attached to his soul by a thread.

He forced the third layer of his soul back into his body but left the fourth, the mass of ambient mana that followed him around like a cloud that had grown fond of him, compressed. For now, it formed a sort of shell around him that he was more than happy with.

He figured it would revert once this was all over but he was very fond of the idea of a soul shell for the future.

As his body slowly healed, his bones mending and muscles reattaching themselves, joints realigning and brain reinflating, Felix started to work at something else.

His only hope of getting out of here was to open a portal. Luckily, with this box right next to him, he was pretty sure there was no way for them to detect him casting anything. Unfortunately, he could barely move mana let alone shape it into a spell right now.

Every time he tried to do anything with mana, it was torn from his control. The object made it impossible for him to hold anything steady. While the situation was dire, it was also the perfect opportunity for him to practice his mana control. Although, it did feel like he was trying to work up to lifting a train as a normal human and he had an unknown deadline he had to beat.

He started, just as he had back when he first learned about mana, just moving it back and forth like the tide. With the object nearby though, even that felt impossible.

All the mana wanted to do was fill the empty void at the center of the box. Just feeling at the aether around him, Felix felt all of it rushing towards the box. Some of it recharged the batteries through their basic recharge function but most of it just formed a shell, much like his soul was doing with its outermost layer.

Before he could even try to shape the mana into anything, he had to at least be able to hold the mana still and keep it from being yanked out of his grasp towards the box.

Ironically, it didn’t feel like physical force was required, as Felix fought back against the object in the containment cell. It felt significantly different than when he lifted weights with his mana control. It was much more like he was actually exerting his will, fighting someone else’s control. Similar to when he had to cast the portal under the Usorium castle and when he was ripping the mana out of the Lich’s flying hands.

With the image of dominating an opponent’s will in mind, Felix actually found it easier to control the mana and force it to do what he wanted. He wasn’t just influencing the mana or telling it what to do, he was demanding it and his commands took precedence over any others.

It took him a few hours to comfortably move the mana back and force, entirely resisting the object’s influence but once he had, he quickly moved onto to doing something with it.

Skipping a few steps, he started trying to cast a simple Fire Bolt. The first step was the outer ring, the simplest shape that initially felt nearly impossible to shape. While similar to moving mana back and forth, this required precision which was much harder to achieve whilst actively wrestling with by far the strongest mana control he had ever fought against.

Rather than a clean ring, Felix started with loose fragments then slowly worked his way to a wavy mess. From there it took him far longer than he would have liked to finally end up with something that was solid enough to cast a very basic spell. Anything more complicated would undoubtedly fail.

Instead of taking it slow and making sure the ring itself was solid, Felix started to skip steps and worked towards forming multiple rings in the air around him. Once one ring was close enough to being solid, he immediately worked on adding another ring.

Just to make sure it was doing something, Felix dropped back down to a single ring and smiled when the ring was almost as solid as it would have been without the object being there at all. His practice was working and he hoped his skipping steps was helping more than it was hindering him.

Once he had gotten to 10 rings, Felix dropped down to a single Fire Bolt and actually managed to cast it. He let loose a long held breath that came out as a sigh of relief. He could finally cast spells again.

He may have been limited to what he considered to be level 0 spells, but it was magic and, he had feared he would be held next to this stuff forever, unable to ever touch the arcane again.

A Fire Bolt would never be enough to escape though so he repeated the same cast and started adding in a second at the same time. Once he could cast both with minimal failures, he added in another.

He once again worked his way up to 10 simultaneous spells then dropped back down to a single spell who’s level of complexity, he increased.

After the Fire Bolts there were Flame Throwers, Jump, Feather Fall, and a few new spells just to fill the complexity gap before he finally moved up to being able to cast a Fire Ball once again.

As he fought the object, his casting was slowed dramatically and therefore, the differences in his casting speed were exaggerated dramatically. Before, he had just measured all his spells as a fraction of a second or so, now he could tell his Force Spells were dramatically faster than everything else. Lightning was marginally faster due to his familiarity with it over Fire but Force, he used for everything.

He used Force spells to jump, run, swing the axe, fly, dodge and even punch back when he practiced the Dragon Dance. Specifically, he very often used a short burst which made it so that he was still able to cast a short Force Burst spell in less than a second, even under the influence of the object.

This is the spell that was just… going off by itself with Damoth and… Is it just because I’m so familiar with it?

He didn’t have time to explore the possibility at the moment because it had already been almost a day of just practicing and he was starting to grow anxious. Any day now the back of the vehicle would open and he would either be executed or moved to a cell to later be used in the exact same way again.

He was hoping to be able to do something about his situation by then. Ideally he simply portaled out but if that wasn’t possible, he really was not looking forward to having to get creative in any way.

Before that though, he had to actually get to the point where he could cast a portal and so, he continued training.

It took him another day to get the point where he was ready to try casting a portal and so, he carefully assembled the spell form using the mold. After pulling the spell form free of the mold, he quickly stowed the mold and channeled mana into the spell form. Just like when he was filling the portal to escape the Corrupted Drakeling swarm, he had to fight every step of the way.

The mana flowing out of his absurdly large mana pool. The mana flowing into the spell. The mana flowing through the spell. The mana in the channels. The mana flowing at the appropriate pace. He had to keep all of it steady, hold it stable and assert his will over it.

From what he could tell though, he wasn’t actually training himself from scratch but rather relearning something he had known. At least, that’s what it felt like to him and it logically made sense since he had the Mana Control Innate skill and his soul had evidently fought whatever the object was before.

He slowly rose past the halfway mark and grew determined when no one immediately came to stop him. As he approached 80% he started to prepare himself to fall through it.

Looking down at the floor, he felt the back of his head smash into the wall behind him, his skull completely shattered at the back causing a ridiculous amount of pain. No one on earth ever would have survived and remembered having large fragments of their skulls in their brain, but Felix did.

The spell had immediately fallen apart but that wasn’t an immediate concern as the halfling man’s hand closed around Felix’s throat, his frustration painted all over his face.

“Kid, fucking stop it already.”

Felix just gritted his teeth, not that he could say anything with his throat completely cinched.

The man’s top lip twitched a little as he leaned in, “The only reason you’re still alive is that Plague thinks he can turn you into a compass. So just sit tight for a few days while we arrange transport.”

The man was clearly waiting for Felix to acknowledge what he had said with a nod or something but Felix was stubborn and instead, he just stared right into the man’s eyes.

“Look, there’s no one out there waiting for you. No one is trying to find you. We already got rid of the Adventuring party and all the little enchanters at that shop of yours. Their families too so no one would be motivated to ask any questions. We made sure to dispose of them properly so, no afterlives either. No one knows you’re missing. There is no one left to go see. We even had to get rid of some of the Librarians you blabbed to. We would much prefer it if you just kept quiet and stopped trying. Cut. It. Out.”

Once again, Felix said nothing so the man sighed and threw Felix to the ground. Felix felt a knee on his back followed shortly by his finger being squeezed. Suddenly, he felt immense pain as his fingers were ripped off of his hands one by one.

The man tossed the fingers to a corner and stood to leave.

“Stop. Trying. To. Cast. I don’t care if you can resist this thing. If you don’t stop trying, next time I’m going to peel you.”

He didn’t wait for an answer this time and simply left, closing the door behind him.

As much as Felix could numb the physical pain, there was also pain coursing through his soul as the fingers were ripped free from it as well. Felix cried and screamed as his fingers slowly regrew themselves, only gaining any semblance of thought after a few minutes later, which had felt like days.

He scrambled over to the corner where his fingers were and held the Blood Ring in his mouth, around his tongue. He activated the ring and absorbed the fingers then let the ring heal him through its secondary function.

Felix expected regrowing fingers to be painful, and it was but not in the way he had expected. Instead of feeling them growing and the pain of bones aligning themselves, he felt the pain of his wounds closing and his nerves reattaching themselves. The pain of new senses overwhelming him as they adjusted to their fresh flesh.

Okay so it doesn’t mask the spell. New plan…

He was almost hoping for Grim to have something creative cooked up for him but he offered nothing.

Finally, Felix gritted his teeth, already aware of how awful the idea was, Fuck it. I have no other way out of here, I need to release it.

Felix felt Grim’s shock in his mind, That’s… not a goo-

Yeah obviously it isn’t a fucking good idea but I don’t really have much else I can do. Nova would take too long to get through a box of this grade. No spell I can cast does anything to the box, even the Pocket Star did nothing other than cook me alive. This thing corrupts everything right?

Felix felt Grim getting more and more concerned but he didn’t interrupt the thought.

I have… memori- no, experiences, of fighting it. Maybe I can stop it from… killing me. I fought it before, I can fight it again.

Grim winced, Maybe…?

I can’t just wait here. This thing scares them, I don’t. I need to use it. I don’t see any way to force them into a soul battle and it’s not like exposing my soul to their bodies will do anything.

Felix… If you do this… If it even starts to look like… I’m cutting our bond and you need to cut Nova’s. This thing…

I will. I’ll get you out if I can. Both of you. I promise. I wouldn’t do this if I had any choice.

Before releasing the object, Felix continued his training. He knew now that he had a few more days and if he did manage to survive against it, he wanted to make sure he could get out.

While he had managed to cast a single portal spell, or at least hold its shape steady, he had only done so on the far side of the room he was in, as far from the box as he could be.

Holding a series of spell forms that roughly added up to the complexity of the portal, Felix slowly approached the object, holding the spells steady. As soon as their form faltered, a spell dropped or it even became noticeably harder, he stopped and reasserted his control over the spell form. He trained and practiced until he could sit atop the containment cell and cast spell right next to it.

That wasn’t enough though, not enough to ensure his escape so, he started to fight both the enchantments of the containment cell and the object at the same time.

Pushing on the aether that was being held back by the warding nodes in the containment cell, the very ones he had helped Fralyna design, Felix exerted his will. He pushed the mana closer to the object but held continued to hold it back himself.

The closer he got, the stronger its pull became and it was evidently exponential, almost like gravity.

Carefully, he swirled the mana around the object, teasing it as he drew ever closer. Each millimeter a new challenge for him as the difficulty and danger mounted exponentially.

Once he was holding mana just a few millimeters away from it, It grew so difficult that Felix failed and the mana was sucked into the object. It was not a dramatic affair like Felix had expected. There was no explosive reaction though, he couldn’t say it wasn’t a violent reaction.

As soon as the mana touched the object, they became one. The droplet of mana turned completely back as it was sucked into the whole. Felix could no longer tell it apart from the rest, it had been transformed completely, in an instant.

While technically accurate… I’m not sure I would call that simply ‘corrupting anything it touches.’ More like instant and violent consumption and integration.

Felix was careful after that mistake and though he moved onto casting spells within the bounds of the containment cell, he didn’t push his limits nearly as aggressively as before. What he was doing was inherently risky and very likely suicidal. Pushing anymore than necessary was just asking to fail.

Now that he had an idea of what would happen once he opened the box though, he could prepare himself better. Once he was confident in his spell casting and mana control, he started testing out growing the object.

Mana was consumed instantly, faster than Felix could perceive at least. Anima was much slower, at least it took a few seconds if it was dense enough. Mana infused with Anima took even longer, which hopefully translated to his own body and how long he had before he had to start aggressively amputating.

He had been hoping for longer but a few seconds would have to do.

Preparations completed, Felix stalled no longer and pushed the containment cell up against one of the walls. Pulling on the mana in the enchantment, he bridged the connection from the object to the cell with a thread of mana.

He watched as the thread instantly turned black then slowed slightly as it spread through the mana and matter of the containment cell. It wasn’t uniform like a liquid but rather the inky blackness stretched outwards like tentacles as it consumed everything and grew.

The tentacles had no problem reaching out from the containment cell to the walls around Felix where it was slowed again. It still consumed at a ridiculous pace that was impossible to manage but it was noticeably slower. It also wasn’t quite as slow to consume as dense anima or mana infused with anima had been.

Felix then walked near it and dumped 5 million mana out of his mana pool and into a rough spell form. He was just hoping he wouldn’t have to waste time crafting an actual spell and thankfully, he didn’t.

A moment after he released the mana, the man burst through the doors and pinned Felix to the wall.

“I fucking told you to stop-”

Felix shoved his gloved hand into the man’s stomach and smeared as much of the blackness as he could onto him.

He watched with immense satisfaction as terror filled the halfling’s face for just a brief few seconds of flailing about before he was completely consumed.

Felix discarded his outer robes as fast as he could but he wasn’t fast enough. He saw a few droplets of pure black seeping into the palm of his hand.

It was growing far slower than it had with anything else but it was still growing. Felix clenched his jaw and tried to push against it but he already knew it was too late and he just had to amputate it.

His tests had had no way of revealing how it infected whatever it was consuming and so he didn’t know that its tendrils would reach through him immediately. They had already reached his torso and were spreading from there. They were thin and slow but he was still too late unless he wanted to try and regrow his torso, which he did not.

He pushed back against it as much as he could while he searched the walls and looked for a way out. There were no holes though, just all consuming ink that crawled its way around the room.

Remembering that the suspension enchantment of the containment cell had used force to hold it, Felix walked up to the first section of the wall that had been corrupted and cast a massive blast of Force.

Immediately a huge hole appeared as black liquid was spewed outwards in every direction.

Felix had expected to have to fight his way out of some warehouse, he had not expected to be in Telviras though.

The black liquid had long since reached out of the crate holding him and Felix saw the building he had been in dripping away as it was consumed in seconds. Looking down at the streets below, he saw the liquid droplets he had just sent flying taking root and rapidly consuming everything around them.

He briefly looked to the right, into the disintegrating remains of the building that had held him but decided instead to ignore it.

He jumped out of the hole and caught himself in the air, barely. The black liquid in his body, slowly seeping into the outer layers of his soul, was fighting his every move. A simple Force Burst was all he could manage and so he hopped through the air and away from the inky blackness.

Suddenly, a loud, constant hum filled the air as Felix and everything around him was bathed in a deep red light.

Looking around, it was the entire city as far as he could see.

In the distance, he saw massive blue iridescent walls appear between the portal spires forming a square cage around the area that rose far into the sky.

Beneath him, the inky blackness was no longer a spattering of droplets, it was now a blanket that reached a kilometer in every direction.

Felix heard screams and saw people flying around, he saw buildings collapse and implode as spatial enchantments failed. Some exploded, others contorted and all he knew for certain was that the death count from his escape was easily in the millions if not higher.

All he could think about though was getting out. First, he had to cure himself though so he flew as far and as fast as he could away from the epicenter of the calamity and landed on top of some random building.

He watched black tendrils wrap themselves around massive buildings in seconds but he wasn’t focused on them. All his attention was on his soul and his body.

Felix could feel the tendrils growing, branching and consuming more of him. It was becoming stronger as it spread and it was spreading faster as it grew stronger.

Felix quickly jettisoned both Nova and Grim out of his Soul Space and far into the air, I’ll break the bonds if I’m not gonna make it but… just in case, stay away.

Falling to his knees, Felix clawed at the ground as he wrestled for control of his own body, his own soul.

He didn’t even know if it was possible to revert the blackness back so instead he focused on stopping and removing it. Whatever it had already taken he would just replace. He convinced himself that would be easier as much as it might hurt to cut away parts of himself.

As the tendrils started to thicken in his arm where it had first entered him, Felix could feel it slowing but it wasn’t enough.

He pushed against it. He needed it out, not just slowed. Reaching his hand forwards, Felix pushed and watched the small specs of black in his palm slowly grow. The droplets turned to drops, which grew to a puddle as he pushed the tendrils out of his body.

Suddenly he felt Grim pulling on their bond, getting ready to break it but he squeezed back.

Not yet.

Pushing harder, Felix felt the tendrils receding within his body even as they were growing and spreading.

He couldn’t stop them just yet but he could push them out.

Risking a glance towards the rest of the city section that had been sealed off, Felix saw at least a quarter of it had been completely consumed.

He was trying to hold the liquid still, suspended by Force but the spells he used were not designed with that in mind and he wasn’t paying much attention to it. He inevitably dropped some on the building beneath him and it immediately started spreading.

Launching himself recklessly into the air, Felix focused on one thing only, the tendrils still in his arm.

He had removed them from his torso completely now but they were still in his arm, physically and in the soul suffusing it, meaning amputation wasn’t an option.

The tendrils had grown so thick though that it was suddenly out growing his removal of it.

Shifting focus, he concentrated on just stopping it. He pulled out every trick he had, trying to contest it’s will, asserting his soul and his body, his ownership of them, their affinity for him and finally his will to dominate.

Though it was the most effective, contesting its will directly was also the scariest.

As he focused on dominating it, exerting his will and crushing its will, he could feel it fighting back. He could feel its intent, to fill itself, grown and consume. The never ending hunger and emptiness that had to be filled.

He could feel what felt like a creature’s will but even stronger. He felt a will that easily rivaled his own in intensity and focus. A soul almost, that was equal to his own in every way except size, for now.

That thought alone scared him. If it was allowed to grow big enough, surely it would consume him. Surely it was unstoppable and Telviras was doomed. There was no way he could fight it if it was allowed to gr-

His fears were obliterated by a pulse from deep within his core soul and he felt himself refocus.

He had fought this before. His soul had fought this before. He had made it out alive. He could do it again. He would never give up, he couldn’t. He would fight no matter what happened. No matter how dire the situation or hopeless the enemy. He was unrelenting.

His soul reminding him of his conviction refocused Felix and allowed him to immediately stop the tendrils. To hold them completely still even with the matter and soul directly around them. Carefully, he pulled them free of his body without them consuming anymore of him and dropped the writhing mass out into the air around him.

He shot himself recklessly in another direction and checked himself over though he already knew he was free. His spells were easy to cast and he could breathe again. He had lost a chunk of his soul but he could reconstruct it, he had the anima to do so.

He sighed in relief as his trajectory carried him through the air at random but didn’t allow himself more than a second to revel in his victory. He was still locked down in a sealed area and he had to get out.

Before he did though, Felix debated with himself for a few moments before deciding he had no choice.

He flew down to the nearest stretch of inky blackness and reached his hand down into it, grabbing a small handful. It felt like a cold acid that immediately tried to eat him but he made certain it didn’t spread anywhere into his hand or soul. Instead, it felt like tiny needles all across his skin. Infinite bites as it tried to consume him, to gain any ground against him.

Preparing himself as much as he could, Felix stowed the liquid in his Soul Space.

It ended up exactly where he had intended it, in a small vacuum of space he had created where he suspended it with a conjured Force sphere.

He briefly ejected everything left on his hand and made sure he was otherwise uninfected, then flew off towards his bonds.

Both Nova and Grim were floating as high up against the Force walls holding them as they could. They had found the ceiling and were pressed right up against it as they backed as far away from the inky blackness below as they could.

Looking down, Felix saw an ocean of black roiling its way through the last fifth of the city from every direction. In just a few seconds, there would be nothing left of this section of Telviras. Thousands of square kilometers completely gone in a matter of minutes.

Looking around, Felix saw others flying against the ceiling in the hopes that the danger below couldn’t reach them. Some tried to use items and others vehicles but everything they pulled out was immediately broken and malfunctioned in some way.

Grim, noticing Felix, tentatively communicated through their bond, You… What happened? Did you…

I got rid of it. Time for us to get out of here.

Felix felt only disbelief from Grim and he didn’t have time to elaborate so he ignored him.

Pulling out the mold for a portal from his inventory, Felix pumped mana into it as fast as he could while the black sea below fought his every step. The blackness in his Soul Space ironically didn’t seem to have any effect on what he was doing which made it much easier, and much faster.

Just over halfway into filling the spell form, Felix caught sight of one of the Telviras citizens that had flown up to the ceiling next to them try and use some item. A few moments later, a black tendril shot up from the sea below and grabbed hold of them. The two merged and grew then fell back to the sea below.

After that, the tendrils came every few seconds, reaching for everyone that had thought they were safe. A few reached up towards Felix but he refused to let them touch his companions. Felix batted each one away with a slap of his hand, never once letting them corrupt any of his body or soul.

He targeted the portal somewhere other than Telviras and immediately felt, not the anchor trying to redirect him to the hub like he had expected, but the anchor trying to interfere. Something in the city was trying to completely shut down his portal and stop it from ever going through.

Felix resisted the will and shoved it aside as he pumped mana into the spell form until finally, a circle appeared revealing a barren white landscape.

Nova and Grim flew through first followed by Felix who batted away another tendril then closed the portal right behind himself.

Felix sensed Grim’s immense trepidation as he spoke into his mind, How do I know you don’t have any of it left inside you?

Grim floated off almost a kilometer away from him, guarding Nova from him at the same time.

I do. I kept some of it.

Felix felt his soul bond with Grim severing but he asserted his will and prevented that from happening.

It’s in my Soul Space, not infecting me. I’m holding it just like the container did.

FELIX! Get rid of it.

No.

It’s way too dangerous. This is… I’ve never… Felix, whatever that is…

I know. I can feel it too.

You can’t keep it. Get rid of it and let us go. We can’t be sure you’re not infected.

Grim, I’m not. This is the only thing I can actually fight against and train my mana control. My anima control. My will power. Like I said before, I or, my soul, has clearly fought this before. I got rid of it. It’s over now.

How can you know that? How can I be certain?

I don’t know. You didn’t ever feel it when you were in my Soul Space so I figure you wouldn’t feel it if it were infecting my soul. Grim, do you trust me?

I…

Felix sat down in the snow and looked inwards, just to be sure. The sample he had stowed was still suspended, exactly the same size, within his Soul Space. It hadn’t come into contact with anything else, thankfully and his Soul Space seemed more than capable of holding it, at least in that quantity.

Once he was certain, Felix looked around to try and see if he could spot any corrupted Drakelings, though he figured he was still too far from the castle. He didn’t actually spot any so he pulled out the portal spell form and started filling it with mana once again as he checked the date.

I’m fucking LATE.

As the portal spell form filled with mana once again, Felix pulled the raw form free and swapped in a different set of coordinates.

Grim slowly flew over and Nova bounded to him once Grim let her free.

Approaching, Grim physically touched Felix’s hand with his cover, I do trust you.

Felix smiled and nodded to Grim then finished casting the portal. They all stepped through into a completely pitch black cavern filled with coral pillars.

Once through, Felix immediately started funneling mana into the portal once again and this time, finally input his actual destination, Telviras.

He had almost expected his portal to be resisted but all he got was the standard slight alignment of the anchor multiplexor as he opened the portal back to Telviras and stepped through.

He was immediately greeted by an attendant who, when presented with his registration, frowned deeply at their pad for a few moments.

“It says you were… I guess it’s a mistake.”

Felix shrugged, preferring not to offer an explanation.

“Clothes are mandatory in Telviras though.”

Felix nodded, “I’m on my way to pick up a new outfit right now. My other one was just destroyed… completely.”

The attendant nodded and handed Felix a very basic E grade robe which he donned just before being released.

Bummer, I was kind of hoping to use the Kraken leather for something else. Even selling it would have probably netted me a decent amount.

Felix could tell Grim was still hesitant as he spoke, It was… infected?

Yeah, couldn’t save it. Wasn’t suffused with my soul. Maybe if it was I could have tried. Without that, it was eaten almost instantly. Weren’t you there for that?

That was about when I started to feel… it for the first time and I… wasn’t paying attention.

Felix’s first stop was Raidran’s and he didn’t bother teleporting there, preferring to exert his freedom by flying himself. He was late but he needed clothes and a few more hours wasn’t going to change the fact that he was already a couple days late.

He held Grim under one arm and Nova held herself to his back with her claws as neither of them wanted in his Soul Space at the moment.

While Felix didn’t blame them, he also knew their fears were unfounded. In his Soul Space, he could easily ensure they would be kept separate.

Flying in through the employee entrance, Felix let himself into the shop and immediately realized he was interrupting when he saw Rainoth and Kordran talking with someone. He waited off to the side but when he realized who they were meeting with, he shot over.

“Aldahn, you’re alive?”

“Felix?” Aldahn looked at Felix incredulously, clearly doubting his actually being there for a few moments.

Felix pushed through and ignored his disbelief, offering no proof that he was real, “I take it the others…”

Aldahn sighed and bowed his head, “Everyone else… Well, except Krinitor who was busy. Everyone who worked on the box.”

Felix winced, “I think that was my fault. I’m… sorry.”

Aldahn looked at Felix with a cocked brow.

“They also killed everyone in Shade’s Wrath an-”

Aldahn shook his head along with both Rainoth and Kordran, “It isn’t your fault Felix, even if you connected the two groups. That was a God, one of the stronger ones and… It’s no one’s fault.”

Both Rainoth and Kordran nodded in agreement.

“I heard them mention Plague as if they were an individual, is that a god.”

They all looked at each-other, Kordran pursing his lips and Rainoth sighing. Aldahn nodded solemnly, “Yeah, they’re a neutral god.”

Rainoth frowned and crossed her arms, “How’d you get out anyways?”

“They used me like a compass to find what they were looking for then transported me with it. It was so… loud? That I managed to cast a portal and slip out once I came to.”

Aldahn chuckled, “Bet they didn’t think some random D grade kid could cast a fucking portal. Smart thinking.”

“Think they’re gonna hunt you down?” Rainoth looked between both of them but her eyes ultimately settled on Felix.

“They could…” Aldahn scratched at his chin.

“I doubt it… There was… an incident right as I got out. The object… broke free.” Felix winced.

The others didn’t seem to have context so they looked at each-other with growing confusion before Felix elaborated, “They’re dead.”

They all looked very confused with that statement but Felix shrugged, “I was lucky to get out when I did. I saw it through the portal right as I closed it. It consumed them completely.”

Though they still evidently doubted Felix’s story, they were less confused and somewhat accepting.

“Anyways, any chance I could get some clothes?” Felix looked at Rainoth with a smile.

She nodded and chuckled as she finally realized what he was wearing, “Come on, follow me.”

Walking into the backroom with her, Felix immediately caught sight of his finished set of robes. They didn’t perfectly match the drawings Krinitor had shown him, the outer cloak or coat was more grey than white and there was no arcane blue pattern adorning it. The style and cut were slightly different too but Felix didn’t know or care why.

[C - Legendary] Robes of the Exiled Prodigy

[Regenerative]

A set of robes custom designed and tailored for use by The Exile of the 256th Integration. Designed to be enchanted and disenchanted with ease and crafted with the highest quality materials, this set of robes is of peak quality in the C grade without enchantments.

Supply the robes with mana to regenerate portions of it and destroying any severed pieces. Enchantments inscribed into the fabric will also be remembered, as a function of the Memory Crystal threads.

I don’t love the name but… I don’t know that I can really complain.

As if Rainoth had read his thoughts, “The name will change when you affinize to it. This is just based on what we know about you.”

Felix smiled in relief and nodded to Rainoth then walked up to the mannequin wearing the robes and lightly touched them, “You haven’t affinized them yet, right?”

“Correct. There are also boots there but they aren’t fabric, just high quality leather.”

Looking down, Felix saw the boots and nodded appreciatively, “Thanks.”

[C - Epic] Wyvern Leather Boots

[Regenerative]

A simple set of high quality boots crafted from C-Grade Wyvern Leather.

Felix turned to Rainoth, “To affinize the robes, am I replacing the soul in the memory crystal threading or just affinizing that anima to myself?”

Rainoth shrugged, “Can do either. Replacing it is better but harder because you need to make sure the anima you replace it with is imbued with the right intent. You want it to memorize and attune, so to speak, itself to the shape. You don’t want it to try and hold the robes solid but you do want it to be able to recreate the shape when it’s regenerating.”

To make it easier on himself, Felix pulled some of the anima from the robes right to the surface and reached into it. Feeling out the intentions already in the robes, Felix summoned some of the anima from his Soul Space and matched it as closely as he could then forcefully replaced all the anima in the robes. He made sure to compress the anima he pushed in to at least the density of his outer soul layers first and surprisingly, found he could have compressed it much further.

Before, his limit was the density of the layer suffusing his body, his body layer as he was dubbing it. Now, it felt like he could go much further and make everything much denser.

His assumption was that it was because of his time fighting the object but he wasn’t entirely sure. He made a mental note to revisit his soul layers and compress them later on now that he could.

With the robes affinized and suffused with his own soul, he could actually feel them like an extension of his body. Not that he was completely aware of them, he couldn’t feel through them like he could his own skin, they were more like hair or nails but still, they felt like they were his.

Donning the robes and boots, Felix was completely unsurprised to find that they were definitely the most comfortable clothing he had ever worn. They were a little looser than he would have liked, more wizard like and less tight but he couldn’t really complain. Realistically they shouldn’t ever get in the way, Rainoth knew what she was doing and had specifically tailored them not to. Still, it was instinctual to him that loose and baggy could potentially interfere or get caught on something.

The boots were comfortable, just as comfortable as his last boots but otherwise, didn’t really stand out in comparison to the robes. To complete the wizarding look, Felix pulled out the hat that had been cowering his in Soul Space and placed it on his head.

Once he had the robes all equipped and adjusted, Rainoth looked at him and nodded, her face painted with indecision more than pride.

She looked him up and down then stepped closer, “As for the other thing…” She reached forwards and a pair of shorts appeared in her hands that Felix quickly stowed.

He didn’t have much time to look them over but from the brief bit he saw, he was more than satisfied. All he cared about was that they wouldn’t be destroyed like his last ones had been.

Heading back into the main shop, Aldahn looked Felix over and nodded in approval, “Very nice. I assume you’ll move the enchantment over to these?”

Felix had no idea if he would. Theoretically he could feed the coat to his Reaper’s Mantle skill and it would be fine, in reality, he was hesitant to do so. He figured he would play around with the skill a bit first and see if he could better understand it before he made any final decisions.

Just to keep things simple, Felix nodded, “Yeah I will, just gotta find the time.”

Aldahn’s eyes widened, “Oh right, you had somewhere to be, right?”

Felix sighed, “Yeah, I’m almost 2 days late now.”

“How urgent is it? I’m sure whatever it is… I mean you were kidnapped…” Aldahn frowned.

Felix shrugged, “No idea. I’ll see you guys later though. I may not be back for a while, we’ll see.”

Aldahn was completely understanding but Rainoth didn’t look happy. She didn’t comment either way though.

Aldahn bore a wide and proud smile, “Well then Felix, it’s been a pleasure. I hope to see you back at the shop at some point. You are the most senior enchanter other than me now.”

Felix winced at the dark humor, “Yeah… damn.”

Aldahn sighed, “I told you before, you just need to accept these things happen and you… you learn to deal with them.”

Felix nodded, “I guess.”

Shaking Aldahn’s hand then bidding Rainoth farewell, Felix headed into the employee garage then opened a portal back to Telviras.

Stepping into the teleportation hub room, Felix waited for an attendant to appear.

“Where to?”

“Eramith.” Felix said with more confidence than he felt.

The attendant immediately frowned, “Do you… have an invitation?”

Felix nodded and pulled out the coin he had received so long ago then held it up in front of the attendant.

Their eyes immediately went wide as they scrambled back through the door they had come from, “One moment please.”

Felix was worried something was wrong but his fears were abated a few moments later when another attendant appeared along with the first, this one without a metal plate.

“May I see your invitation please?”

Felix nodded and held it up but they didn’t reach for it. Instead they briefly examined it in his hand then nodded and smiled, “Please, follow me.”

The, clearly more senior, attendant led Felix and his original attendant down a series of hallways and through multiple seamless portals that Felix could only detect because of the changes in the aether. They finally arrived a few minutes later in a much larger room than Felix was expecting that was otherwise similar to the ones he was used to.

The room was made of the same whitish materials with green inscriptions except larger and sitting in the middle of the room was a large portal frame.

Tapping briefly at a particular spot on the wall, the senior attendant entered something that was unclear to Felix then turned and nodded to him as the portal frame blinked to life.

The portal spell that filled the frame was surprisingly, an actual spell, unlike all the other portals Felix had stepped through in the teleportation hub. Unfortunately, he had no hope of mapping it. It was easily the most complicated spell he had ever examined.

Not only were the channels intricate and nodes diverse, but the enchantment seemed to actually be actively moving. Felix had no idea what was happening and just tried to map as much of it as he could. Unfortunately, nothing he memorized made any sense as the enchantment was in a constant state of flux, shifting in form and function, patterns and nodes moving around constantly. Some parts of it appeared then disappeared and he had no frame of reference to try and understand it from.

The enchantment only did this for a second or two at most then the frame filled with a portal as the enchantment or inscribed spell, as Felix was starting to believe, completely solidified.

Felix briefly looked through the portal and saw a large empty room with stone or concrete walls and a tiled floor. It wasn’t particularly unique or interesting, nothing stood out as extraordinary.

This time, Felix knew he would be coming back to Telviras eventually, he wasn’t actually leaving anything behind and so, he had no reservations.

With Grim under one arm and Nova happily searching through his new robes, Felix stepped through the portal to The Eramith Academy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .